Nabii

Right I'm back from New York and it's amazing Comic-Con. So, first, thanks to everyone who defended me/LEGO but please speak your mind, tell me you think I'm wrong if that's what you believe and be honest about what you think, I can take it (and compared to what Eurobricks said about the stuff I did for the original Agents theme when those pictures first leaked everything here is a lovely pat on the back :) ). We designers won't stop reading the thread (hi guys), here and elsewhere, because it's the first feedback we get and because generally our adult fans are our harshest critics and if we can win over some of you with such a radical departure from traditional castle themes then we're half way there. The only thing I do ask castle fans to remember is that you are adults, you can wait a few years, build models yourself, show us what you think a more classic castle theme should be, because although we would never copy you the styles and part usage you show us can have an effect. Look at Space police 3, without the AFOL space fans influence those sets would have looked very different, the way fans were building space MOCs was reflected in the sets. This is a chance to rest the traditional classic castle theme for a year or two, give it a chance to breath. In the meantime the fans can take the parts in Nexo-Knights and Ninjago (and Scooby Doo - whatever) to show us what is possible. This is the point of LEGO bricks after all.

Yes. That thing. Where are you finding your Duplo sets, they must be awesome. ☺

So you wanted a fantasy castle theme.We make a fantasy castle theme, then you complain because the fantasy kids went for is not the kind of fantasy you like. It has Kings, Queens, Princess, Knights, squires, magic books, magic swords, magic shields, castles, heraldry, jesters, evil monsters attacking the kingdom... but it's not a castle theme? Because the horses hover and one of the castles has tracks? For those doing the wishful thinking on a normal castle line, like the one else we just did, how likely do you think it is there will be a traditional ninja line while Ninjago exists?

I see a lot of comments early in this thread where people were excited for a steam punk twist to castle, but that would be mixing modern day with Victorian technology AND then mixing that with castle. Instead Nexo Knights takes castle and magically twists it with modern-ish technology. If anything this is castle-punk (though I prefer cyber-castle as a term). I do get the issues some people have with this as a 'castle' theme, I build castle for fun myself, hell I've won classic castle competition categories in the past, but as a LEGO theme it needed a shake up, to be reinvigorated, to bring in a whole new generation. In 10 years there will be so many new AFOL castle builders who look at this as their gateway. Plus we love the old stuff, look out for our easter eggs.

This is a castle theme. There's a castle and knights, wizards, jesters, princesses and everything is castle themed. How come previous themes with magic powered vehicles and with dragons, witches and orcs are historic themed but this theme with magic powered vehicles is not?

Just to clarify, no, nothing for Chima was developed for a 'dropped' Thundercats theme. It was developed for LEGO, by LEGO and doesn't really look anything like the Thundercats heads in the original or the remake (except Lion-O and Laval are both lion humanoids with red spiky hair/manes.) The Chima lion head was originally a fully printed head rather then a 'mask' head over a standard head, the final form developed as it is to allow for more printed colours. Master of the Universe is Mattel property, I think it is unlikely LEGO will ever license it! And I don't really mind if a set I've designed does not appeal to you, I know the the big-bang themes can be a bit polarizing and I appreciate being reminded of this now and then. Though I think it's appealing to kids, which is good. To bring some relevancy to this sub, (if not this thread) I did get to design the Chima Lion Castle, which is the first yellow castle since 1978 and I threw in a few homages to the original, which was designed by my neighbour and friend, retired LEGO Designer Daniel Krentz, and it got his seal of approval, so that was nice!

A few facts for this thread! (Because it's seriously lacking in them :P ) First, from early in this threads speculation; the LEGO Legends of Chima range had absolutely nothing to do with the return of the Thundercats TV show. Although several of us remembered the show from our childhoods it was never the basis for the theme and the Chima theme was well into development when we found out it was returning. This worried us, fortunately it wasn't very good and most kids didn't see it or draw any parallels. We probably drew more inspiration from Fabuland than the original Thundercats! Second, just to clear things up, it has been revealed on several occasions that around 5 to 10 percent of sales (depending on theme) are bought for adults. As an AFOL we are hugely outnumbered by kid fans, though as customers we will (generally) spend more in a year and over a period of more years then most kids. Thus the adult sets are made to cater for us, and I would speculate, are likely to continue being made. Third, if a theme is marked 5 and up it is obviously designed for younger kids, it will be more basic in structure and building style (it's actually very difficult to design for 5 year olds and under) and probably hit only the iconic aspects of that concept. (See the latest Castle and Pirate lines). If the sets are marked 7 and up they will be more complex both in story and building style, probably appealing slightly more to AFOLs. Sets marked older are pretty complex, almost AFOL sets, enjoy them! Can't comment on the rest, and as you noticed none of my facts are really 'historic' related, sorry about that! I will be able to talk about January sets (whatever they may be) from either 15th November or 1st December (I need to check) - I'm sure by then you guys will have figured out a way to know one way or another if this theme exists or not. Until then, cheers.

Well as no one else answered your question. If this theme even exists, I hope always more promising. :)

Megs (Megan Rothrock author of The LEGO Adventure book) made a great 'shield toad' back in 2005. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=153575

Just a note on 'turtle'. In German, Dutch, Danish, there is only one word for both tortoises and turtles: 'shield-toads'. Personally I won't be discriminating against Tortoises in my judging!

I saw it yesterday, I'm fairly sure it's said a lot more then that, particularly given the number of times the song turned up - I think Emmett alone might have said it 24 times! That said, it was brilliant, I was really entertained from the logos at the front to the version of the song over the last part of the credits. It really is awesome - pure kid crack and AFOL dreams!

On all the Legend Beasts the eyes and faces are printed - the armour is stickers.

Feel free to tell me who you are in a personal message - but I don't remember discussion LotR with anyone last weekend - and I definitely didn't say anything about Azog as I actually have no idea if he is in any sets (though it would surprise me if he isn't) as I try to avoid movie spoilers at work and keep away from the LotR and Super Heroes areas because of this! If you're new at LEGO please remember LEGO Designers (all LEGO employees below senior management) cannot discuss sets until about six weeks before they come out without specific permission, to do so is to risk our jobs. Cheers. EDIT: I didn't see this post. I'm Mark Stafford. I sent no such email. To do anything like this would be to lose my job. Please disregard this little twerp. Cheers, Mark.

In order to determine if you are suitable for admission into this prestigious program, please answer the following questions to the best of your limited human abilities and then payment information will be provided so you can begin down the road to learning. Have you participated in a learning experience of this nature in the past? [_] Yes [X] No - unless the story below or many many years of RPG's is relevant. [_] Learning? No one said anything about learning If you answered yes to the previous question, did that lead to a successful result? [_] Yes [_] No [X] I'm not sure This learning experience may take as much as 6 weeks to complete and a failure to participate can lead to unpleasant results. Will you be available for this entire time? [X] Yes [_] No Do you appear well educated to others? [X] Yes [_] No Are they wrong? [_] Yes [X] No (Though I can't remember anything I'm supposed to know.) Are you currently being observed? [_] Yes [_] No [X] Not Sure - if you are reading this, and you are not me does that count? Have you ever sued a scientific corporation for an injury you received? [_] Yes [_] No [X] An Injury prevents me from remembering Why do you wish to participate in this experiment learning experience? Please limit your response to no more than 10,000 words. Many years ago a friend and I went camping on the bank of a large river. We had a camp fire, it was warm and glowed a pleasant orange colour but it was a little boring. So we figured it would be much more exciting to carry out a scientific experiment. We walked down the riverbank gathering all of the empty aerosol cans we could find to put them in the fire one at a time to see what happened. Science is great – dangerous explosions with shrapnel shards of metal cannisters flying all over the place proved our hypothesis to be correct: they would explode and that indeed it was very exciting and our fire was no longer boring. We hid behind a large sheet of plywood we had found on the river bank for protection, and had moved our camping stuff and bicycles a way off. Our experiment was so cool that once the cans ran out we decided to check the river bank further afield and see if we could find some more to throw in our fire. Well, yes, we found plenty more aerosol cans. And to our delight (and eventual regret) a small blue gas canister for a camping stove. At this point our self preservation instinct should probably have taken control, but our desire to advance science was unstoppable. We saved the canister until last. I guess we knew that at this point the experiment was taking a turn for the even more reckless and we may as well enjoy the regular explosions for a while longer. We did, it was very dangerous (DO NOT EVER DO THIS) and very very stupid. Then all that was left was the gas canister. We dropped/threw it into the fire, and ran scared of immediate death, to our 'protective' piece of wood, then began backing up towards our bikes and bags. Nothing happened. We relaxed after several minutes, it must have a hole we figured, or it must be open, completely empty and not going to blow. So we decided to head home, not go back to the fire (we were idiots, but not suicidal). Then it blew. The bang was so loud all I could hear was ringing, the piece of wood between us and the fire was blown on top of us and a neat hole about the size of a fist appeared like magic in it, we still have no idea what went through it, but it missed us. Our nice boring fire was gone. As was the gas canister, the stones around the fire and some of the soil under it, instead there was a shallow crater and a large area of grass with red hot burning embers spread over it like dangerous black burning hot snow. (Not much like snow at all really – bad analogy.) We jumped on our bikes and pedaled like mad, our ears ringing and our minds almost as blown as out camp fire. We were freaked. Science had turned on our stupidity and tried to slap us in the face (or at least to remove our faces). As we biked away we heard the gas canister land with a 'clang', at least one disappearance was solved! We went home agreeing on the way that, no matter what, we would never to admit to our presence at the river bank. To this day we stand by this. Later we found out from the local newspaper that the fire brigade attended and they had to put out a number of 'small fires'. I found out several years later from a fireman they found no fire at all but sprayed water everywhere anyway just in case, but they said 'fires' in the paper as it's a better story. I never told the fireman I was there, just that I had heard of the incident, he claimed all the local firemen knew about it, it was used as an example of weird call outs and they considered the 'idiot teenagers who did it' to have been legendarily lucky. (We were lucky they looked for teens, we were not quite that old at the time.) Scientific curiosity drove our idiocy, love of high speed reactive chemistry (explosions) and physics (projectile parabolic arcs) kept us going, we caused some damage to our own biology and fear of the terrible monster we had unleashed stopped our research. This proves I love science and explosives - how could I not be right for any task that could advance science further? And as the above is obviously a completely fictional story, and for legal reasons has no basis in reality, this also proves I can roleplay quite well? Right? Did you feel pressured to write more because of the above limitation? [X] Yes [_] No [X] I can't count that high [_] Oops, I didn't read that [X] My ears are still ringing (Never ever do in reality what I did in my fictional story that no one would ever be so stupid as to do for real, and if you do, then remember I told you not to, I told you it was stupid and I'm really annoyed you did it. Oh- and get well soon, because no one will ever be that lucky for real.) Science!!

That video is completely fake. If he had a speedorz set this is not the way to demonstrate it, in about two months he's going to look very dumb. The animal clans were chosen according to 'coolness' of creature in testing with kids. The 'helmets' and minifigure heads together make up the character head, this allowed more colours to be used in creating the heads without investing in hugely expensive new printing machines, meaning we could put more bricks into the models.

Hi Prominence. unfortunately this years LEGOWorld falls at the exact same time as the LEGO Designers are presenting the first versions of the 2014 themes to our bosses, (normally it's a week out) this means we are far too busy so this year most of us can not be at LEGOWorld in Zwolle. Very sorry. There will be a couple of Friends Designers around but there will not be a Designers booth as there has been for the last five years. This is particularly sad for me as this is the 12th year of LEGOWorld and this is the first one I have not attended. I'm sure it will be great anyway as it always is, but I wish I was there!

Hi Brett - I asked Megan - the author - she tells me the publisher told her there are only hardcovers at this point, so you should be fine!

I got your member number beat! I keep meaning to ask if Pete Reid had anything to do with this? He's on a bit of a Zoid bender right now. Looks great BTW. Mark.

I almost built a version of this about six months ago, though the original artist call it the 'Vulture', I might finish my version one day. The Vulture I do think if you're going to put in on Cuusoo you should get the artists permision, though I think it was done for a computer game so LEGO will need to get the license too. Nice MOC though. Cheers, Mark.

Yeah, that's the thing, I click on 'find posts' in your home page and I can see at least 3 pages of posting, lots of stuff. But Legomilk has only made 18 posts and none of them seem to include any announcements or predictions that have come true. That's what puzzles me - why is his proclamation being treated as fact? Is it possible he is being confused with some other person? EDIT - Oh, I see it only lists posts in the last year! Okay confusion solved. Continue the discussion, ignore my skepticism!

I'm confused, why is this from a reliable source? Legomilk has made only 18 posts and none of those are predictions on future sets or themes... I can't see any evidence of him always being right in the past, does he have another account or something? I'm just wondering why so many people are sure this is going to happen?

What? My comments from Brickset are being taken out of context on Eurobricks? When did I say anything about spinners not selling well? I definitely didn't, spinners are actually doing great. I was complaining about the *potential* damage of the way Brickset was presenting next year’s spinners as including cheap low quality minifigures from China, and that once that misinformation was out there it's impossible to take it back as even when corrected as most people will not return to read it again. As others have said any difference is negligible and will be pretty much irrelevant to most purchasers, the China figures are from identical moulds, the colour mix has been an issue, but this has been solved. What's not great for LEGO production is the complexity of having to ship parts around the planet before packing them into LEGO boxes this is the ONLY issue as far as anyone I've spoken to at LEGO is concerned and this was the issue that was solved by making the new design spinners in house next year - nothing else.

Yes, that's the idea. It was fun, I had a great time. I'll announce what I'll be presenting once I'm allowed to talk about next years products! Cheers.

AFOLCON and The LEGO Show are back for 2012! It's just been confirmed that AFOLCON and The LEGO Show are back for 2012! Specifically, the 3rd - 7th May 2012 in Manchester, UK. For those of you that haven’t heard about the show before, ‘AFOLCON’ is a special adult only fan convention for AFOLs from all over the world. After private convention days, the show is opened up to the public as ‘The LEGO Show’. In 2011, AFOLCON had around 80 attendees from all over the UK, Europe and even Zimbabwe! There was a full day of conference sessions giving the inside track about the LEGO community. The keynote session saw the launch of the LEGO Master Builder Academy, followed by sessions from LEGO and TT Games designers as well as a LEGO certified professional and LEGO Serious Play consultant. Not only that, but every AFOLCON attendee also received a goodie bag worth over £50 each and were invited to visit the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre too for a special after hours visit. The LEGO Show attracted over 5250 members of the public and included both Bricklink stores and a LEGO Brand store, as well as a LEGO museum and theatre. For 2012, the team have raised the bar! - New Location! We’re moving to a huge new location at the Trafford Center with over 6000 sq meters of exhibition space (and it’s right opposite the Discovery Centre!) - Free Parking. Not only for AFOLS, but also the public. There are over 3000 free spaces. - More sessions. AFOLCON will be split over two days this year, giving more time for talks, workshops and of course socialising. - Open to everyone. The extra space available also means that now anyone can display at The LEGO Show - you don’t have to register for the full convention to join in the weekend fun (though, of course, you’ll miss out on all the sessions and other goodies!) For more details on AFOLCON and how to be involved, check out www.afolcon.com now. Registration is open to attend the full conference or just display a MOC. Public ticket sales and information are also open right now at www.thelegoshow.com.

Every single one of these images is from the LEGO Design Archives and I scanned and sourced them for exclusive publication in Brick Journal Magazine. With each of them I included what comments I could from the Design notes in the file explaining what I could about them and why they did not proceed. I'm not particularly happy to see them reproduced without credit to myself, the LEGO Group or Brick Journal and without the explanations of the themes this is even worse. Scanning in copyrighted material is illegal and saying 'I recently stumbled across these images' like you are one of the archivists in the LEGO Idea House is just a little bit rude. I'm not going to make you remove them as I don't want to stop the discussion, but I would recommend someone includes the information from the magazines and I request that in future permission is sought from myself and Joe Meno at Brick Journal - he will say 'no' as Brick Journal is his living and exclusive content is *EXCLUSIVE* and I'll say 'no' as I can only get permission for Brick Journal and nothing else, but at least you'll have an official statement. (Copyright is lifetime plus 70 years so assuming I live to be northern European average you can reproduce them without permission in around 2130.) I will continue to put similar images in future issues, enjoy.