Aanchir

I have a spreadsheet comparing older set, theme, and character names from various countries if you like, though it's very incomplete and might have errors: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dT_lHtnZLce6EgssDvITRQ41bxtpykPIbyCFWYM84P8/edit?usp=sharing

Hard for me to judge the Creator castle as a whole until I've seen the alt builds, which are a big part of any Creator 3-in-1 set, but the main build looks nice, and definitely stands out from the more squarish design of the previous 3-in-1 castle. I imagine it'd be modular like that set, which always provides a fun source of inspiration for ways to expand on it. Even more so if it adheres to the same style of connections, so that you can mix-and-match builds from both sets! It's great to see that the new shield mold from last year's Legend of Zelda set is not IP-locked, since it's such a useful shape! The 2x2x5 corner panels in Medium Stone Grey are also a very useful new recolor that will be great for Castle builds. And the brick-built horses look a lot nicer than the ones in the 3-in-1 pirate ship set (of course, I'm sure it helps that the caparisons cover up parts most of the legs, which are probably the part of a horse that's hardest to achieve a good-looking brick-built design for at this scale). Gonna be interested to see more details as the official reveal approaches. Like, does the main model or one of the alternate models include a stable for the horses? What other sorts of interior details does the set have to offer? Will any of the alternate models feature horse builds without caparisons, and if so, how will they look? What sort of play features might there be besides the drawbridge and the obvious role-play elements.

Yeah, I can definitely relate to this opinion on a lot of levels, even if it is unpopular! That said, I don't know if brick-built solutions can effectively take the place of cloth or plastic film parts in all cases. For example, a brick-built cape on a large large figure model tends to impede posability more than a cloth cape. Brick-built sails can't be raised or lowered for different play and display options like the cloth sails in Pirates of Barracuda Bay. And using materials like plastic film or cloth for dragon or glider wings not only reduces their weight (which can be a big help depending on what sort of hinges you want to use), but also can allow for a posable wing membrane in some cases like https://brickset.com/sets/70593-1/The-Green-NRG-Dragon, without needing highly specialized rubber wing molds like those used for the molded Smaug in the Hobbit sets. From a MOCist perspective, flexible cloth and plastic film parts can also be repurposed in very clever ways, since they can be bent into different shapes than in the original set. So for example, cloth dragon wings can become sails on a ship or a dress on a brick-built figure, and cloth minifig capes can become sails on a raft, curtains on a dressing room, etc. None of that is to say your preference is bad — brick-built approaches have plenty of obvious advantages of their own, after all! And it's definitely super exciting seeing either LEGO or MOCists come up with brick-built solutions for stuff that we're used to seeing tackled with these sorts of flexible materials! But those varying advantages are a big part of why I like seeing varying approaches in sets.

Big agree on these ones! Similarly, it's not really any surprise that licensed themes like Indiana Jones, Cars, Toy Story, The Lord of the Rings, and Minions tend to get full waves of sets around when a new movie is coming out, and then STOP getting full waves of sets shortly thereafter. Sure, there are always more sets that LEGO could make for those themes, but a full wave of licensed sets is generally gonna be more profitable when people are already surrounded by marketing and hype for that particular series than when LEGO has to do that heavy lifting themselves.

I don't mind minifigs (or mini-dolls), but it does frustrate me sometimes how quickly people disregard a LEGO set or theme if it DOESN'T have minifigs, or treat a set with both minifigs and brick-built characters as if only the minifig characters matter.

For a narrower candle that still has a receptacle for a flame, one good option is part 78258 in white. This is even how the candle in the bedroom of the A-Frame Cabin set is constructed! But honestly, I feel like it's fine for minifig accessories to be somewhat oversized in a lot of cases. After all, the minifig's proportions are kind of goofy in general, and so what looks best is not always gonna be what works best from a play perspective. Even the minifig greatsword (66964) is about as long as an adult minifig is tall! Plus, candles in real life vary quite a bit in size, so it makes sense to have a lot of different build options for differently sized candles.

The Shire set seems to have a lot of great new elements. A few from the interior particularly caught my eye: white pens as dripping candles, two recolored elements in Dark Orange for the chair legs and backrests, and an unprinted LEGO Friends hedgehog as a pinecone! The new 1x2x2 circular window frame mold will also be useful not only for buildings, but also for animal burrows or porthole windows on ships. And the Medium Nougat boomerang recolors not only work great for a woven fence like the one in front of Bag End (a technique I imagine could also be used for animal enclosures in a medieval layout), they are also a great natural color for actual boomerangs in fantasy adventure settings. And perhaps a stack of them turned sideways could make a nice peaked roof on a well or market stall!

Oh, that's so beautiful! I think this might be my favorite redesign of the Caribbean Clipper that I've seen thus far. It definitely evokes the original very nicely, even with the re-arranged sail plan (which definitely helps the two masts make a little more sense). The bed in the governor's cabin is indeed ingeniously constructed! You even made great use of the belowdecks area, despite the main deck being so low compared to that of the Black Seas Barracuda. The beds converting into cannon emplacements without any additional modding is particularly impressive! The one thing absent here that I wish had been included is is a gap in the side railings (at least on the port side) for a gangplank or ladder that can be used for loading/unloading the ship.

The dragon head is indeed the same Nexo Knights weapon piece used in Barad-Dur, coupled by a 1x2 plate with tooth on either side. It looks pretty effective to me, though, so I can't fault the designer for that decision! Meanwhile, the wings appear to be the ones from Kai's Rising Dragon Strike. The tent looks like it's gonna be a flexible plastic film piece similar to the ones used for the wings of the Fell Beast, many boat sails, and for the Bilbo's birthday party banner elsewhere in this set. It's a different tent shape than we've seen before, but definitely looks very effective! That does indeed appear to be a new frame for 1x2x2 window panes! Those will surely be extremely useful for ships, trains, submarines, small animal burrows, and — once released in other colors — potentially even stuff like washing machines and speaker cabinets! The Brick Yellow/Tan skirt worn by the hobbit on the far left also appears to be a new mold! Longer and wavier than the miniskirt piece but not as wide as the wavy skirt piece used for Rosie Cotton in this set. Looks very versatile, although when used on longer legs it will probably reduce the legs' range of movement quite a bit compared to those existing molded skirts. I'm pretty impressed with some of the building techniques here, such as the fence built from Medium Nougat boomerangs (a very useful recolor for that piece), the mailbox built from 1x1x2/3 round bricks with side stud, and the shiny doorknob made from a gold-printed microphone! Probably no exclusive molds, but it's not really uncommon for a GWP set to have one or two uniquely printed elements — for example, the Blacktron Cruiser and Majisto's Workshop each had a new printed torso and sticker sheet, the Disney 100 Years Celebration had a new printed torso and 1x2x2 window pane "animation cel", Cerebro had a new printed communicator tile and name brick, the Fell Beast had uniquely printed wings, and the Retro Record Player had two uniquely printed tiles. As these examples show, whether that new element budget gets used for minifig parts or other parts depends on what makes the most sense for the individual set. And for a set of Sméagol and Déagol, I can't imagine there'd be too much need for uniquely printed non-minifig parts. So the designers might want to use this set's budget to give Smeagol to have a printed head with an alternate crazed/enthralled expression for when he steals the ring, or to give one or both characters new printed torsos.

Very lovely to see this built in real life (even if you had to change stuff like the palm tree construction that didn't work as well in physical bricks as I'd hoped it would)! Your back section looks fantastic, especially with the little market stall to add even more bustling harbor town vibes. Plus, of course, it fixes the lack of a ladder to the tavern roof in my model! The characters you populated the scene with are also wonderful — I can't help but laugh at the one guy trying to carry three watermelons without dropping any! I definitely considered trying to add a bridge there in my model (especially since that would've also solved the ladder issue), but I couldn't manage to come up with a design that I liked, and so ended up sticking closer to the original set for my final submission. It is definitely not a bad idea if somebody wants to give it a go!

His head print and Twitchy's also seem like they could be great for pirate characters! Twitchy's for a scrappy castaway or old sailor, and Dorama's for a captain or other officer.

I definitely get the nostalgia for the old air tank piece… but at the same time, I feel like the 2024 Space minifigures still feel plenty "hard sci-fi" without it, particularly since the astronauts in most of the sets wear chunky backpack-type accessories similar to the life support systems that real astronauts wear (which not only provide oxygen, but also include equipment to keep the wearer cool, track their vitals, and filter exhaled carbon dioxide, moisture, and odors out of their oxygen supply). If anything, the bigger issue I see is the absence of these life support packs from the polybag and 4+ sets. By comparison, the old air tank piece never particularly resembled a real astronaut's life support pack in the first place. What it DOES resemble are the sort of pressurized air cylinders worn by firefighters or scuba divers — which was probably a deliberate choice to ensure they could also be used for those sorts of minifigures in the Town theme, rather than just for astronauts. The Futuron-inspired spacesuits from this year's Galactic Spaceship also lack life support backpacks of any sort… but I assume this is because they are intended as flight suits similar to those worn by NASA astronauts while aboard a spacecraft or space station, whereas the 2024 versions are pressure suits geared more towards spacewalks.

The older ambulance color scheme (white with red accents) is also closer to the colors I'm used to as an American, but honestly I find both color schemes plenty appealing (and I kind of prefer the new ones since they contrast so strongly with the colors used in other subthemes, as opposed to using the same colors as firefighting sets but in different proportions). I assume that the current colors are meant as sort of a compromise between countries like the US, Germany, and Japan (where ambulances tend to be white with varying accent colors like red, blue, or orange) and countries like Great Britain, Denmark, and New Zealand (where modern ambulances tend to be green and fluorescent yellow). But in any case, subjective preferences about color or studded vs. studless builds aren't really pertinent to the point I was making with these examples, which is that current City sets seem about as complex and detailed as ever, and can hardly be compared to the so-called "juniorization" that afflicted Town/City sets from the mid-90s through the early 2000s.

Yeah, even in terms of subject matter I think the City theme has really been making some great strides. A lot has been said about the how much better the Friends theme tends to do than the City theme when it comes to "everyday" subject matter, but the past few years of City sets have definitely started to make slight progress in that area, introducing an impressive variety of residential buildings, eateries, food trucks, parks/recreational facilities, and even the first ever school, grocery store, and barbershop in either City, World City, or even Classic Town. Which I think is pretty satisfying in a theme category that's always had a rather disproportionate emphasis on stuff like construction and emergency services. And even just in terms of build quality and complexity, I think that the City theme's been really strong lately. Like, compare https://brickset.com/sets/60451-1/Emergency-Ambulance to https://brickset.com/sets/4431-1/Ambulance, or https://brickset.com/sets/60418-1/Police-Mobile-Crime-Lab-Truck to https://brickset.com/sets/7288-1/Mobile-Police-Unit. The newer counterparts have much more detailed bodywork and cab construction, less reliance on large panel or roof pieces, and in the police truck's case, even a much more detailed interior.

Creator doesn't really tend to shy away from minifig accessories or other small decorative elements, so I don't think a part like this would be off-limits. My bigger concern would be that the hobby-horse head might be too small relative to a brick-built horse large enough to carry a minifig or pull a wagon.

To clarify, are you saying the 90s color palette was fine as-is, or that 90s sets should have ONLY introduced those four colors? Because even in the 90s there were a lot more colors than these introduced: medium red, dark orange, light yellow, bright yellowish green, medium green, bright bluish green, medium blue, medium reddish violet, etc. To say nothing of even older colors like Nougat, Light Orange Brown, Red Orange, Brick Red, and Pastel Green that had already been around for years by the time the 90s rolled around, despite being mostly limited to themes like Duplo, Fabuland, or Modulex. I've long felt that one of the best things about the LEGO color palette from around 2012 onward is that there are way fewer colors like these that are used far too sparingly to actually build anything of consequence with them. Like, sure, there might be many more shades of blue and green today than there were in the 90s, but all of them are used widely enough to actually be useful when creating your own builds. Which I suppose is part of why these colors have had more staying power than many of those older colors from themes like Fabuland or Scala did. Also, for consideration Tr. Fluorescent Green Tr. Fluorescent Reddish Orange both came out in the 90s, and many LEGO Space fans in particular are incensed that they've been retired, even though other transparent green and orange colors are still widely in use. So clearly, even among older LEGO fans, there's a huge difference between having a color that's "just right" for a certain subject and one that's a rough approximation of the desired color. 'Cuz sometimes you want a green that's lighter or darker or more yellowish or bluish, not just one that's sort of in the middle.

That's a reasonable perspective, although I do think this figure stands out quite a bit from Blacktron CMFs in that it sticks to classic colors and a very rudimentary white harness print instead of having lots of modernized details. In that respect, this one is a much closer match to the figs from the Blacktron Cruiser and Renegade. Honestly, isn't it preferable for a book exclusive promo figure to be one that "doesn't really need to exist" rather than one that's super desirable or tailored to army building? I mean, most other figs that appear exclusively in DK guides (like the zombie skateboarder, white Boba Fett, pirate Batman, and samurai Lloyd) are also pretty unnecessary and easy to do without if you don't care for their designs. And I'm sure a lot of people would be infuriated if they instead made a modernized Black Knight footsoldier or Unitron astronaut that was only available as a pack-in with a $50 hardcover book. This way it's a nice bonus for people who choose to get the book, and no major loss for anybody who chooses not to.

Yeah, I agree about this. I am a big fan of the new Renegade design, but the B-model isn't anywhere near as strong as the Galaxy Explorer's B- and C-models (though in fairness, the three sets that Galaxy Explorer's builds took inspiration from had much more similar shapes and had much more similar inventories than the Renegade and Alienator/Strider, so the designer of the Renegade was working at more of a disadvantage here). The legs in particular are an area where it's very obvious the parts were selected based on what was available in the A-model rather than what would make a coherent-looking leg design. Truth be told I don't mind the foot design as much, especially since it makes a little more sense conceptually for the feet to take cues from the landing gear of the spaceships than the wings, but it is certainly also a very big departure from the original set's wedge-shaped feet. I am looking into trying to MOC a modernized Alienator that's more to my tastes, though — in fact, the canopy of the new Renegade's rover seems like it could be a good fit for an upscaled revamp of the Alienator's canopy.

I also like the Dark Orange recolor of the sword piece for a wooden training sword! Making this figure a Viking child is a great way to ensure it stands out from any of the figures in other recent Viking sets, and the training sword really completes that look. Besides its obvious utility for historic themes, the sword could also be useful for Legend of Zelda MOCs, since a number of those games have wooden or rusty swords in them. Besides that figure, there's also a "Year of the Snake" minifigure who wears a pink dress with a snake-patterned collar and carries a Bright Bluish Green snake piece. The dress will probably be a bit too vibrant and festive-looking for many people's tastes, but the new snake recolor could certainly be useful for historic MOCs!

Good on you! Did you ever get your hands on https://brickset.com/sets/1788-1/Treasure-Chest or https://brickset.com/sets/1906-1/Majisto-s-Tower? Those were a couple other American-exclusive sets from that era that I have fond memories of. I suspect the gimmicky boxes of those sets were yet another way for LEGO to try and stand out in a competitive toy market. The "magic castle box" gimmick of the latter set still stands out as extremely unique to me, even if in practice it didn't really add that much play value due to the box not having any interior details or any way for minifigs to interact with it besides entering and exiting the doors. And the box art certainly presents an interesting, stylized take on the Dragon Masters design language. The Treasure Chest box also wore out its novelty pretty quickly, since it was mostly just a sales gimmick/storage option, and a much smaller and flimsier one than the plastic storage bins that were available from other themes at the time. But the set itself did provide a neat "sampler" of the sort of parts, figures, building techniques, and play features used in other Pirates and Islanders sets of its time. I remember especially liking the little campfire!

It was one of a few different American-exclusive "value pack" sets back in the 90s — some others from this same year (with similar names, to boot) are the Cactus Canyon Value Pack and Sandypoint Marina Value Pack. Besides the subthemes you brought up, I believe Roboforce, Aquaraiders, and most of the Outback subtheme of Town were North America exclusives as well. The reasoning I've heard is similar to your understanding: LEGO already had a very strong market share in Europe in the 90s, but in the US and Canada they had a much tougher time getting a foothold due to the amount of competition from American toy companies (including, but not limited to, American building toy brands like Mega Bloks and K'nex). So LEGO produced a lot of North America only products to make sure that even if they couldn't always compete with other toys on price, the sheer size and variety of the LEGO shelf/aisle in toy and department stores would help draw kids' attention. There were a few cases of mostly NA-only sets getting promotional releases in Europe (e.g. at least one Roboforce set and one Aquaraiders set were offered as rewards for redeeming LEGO World Club magazine points), which I suppose worked well since they could be advertised as "exclusive offer/not sold in stores", but IDK whether there were any offers of that sort for the NA-exclusive Pirates sets.

That depends how you define playability, I think. Brick-built animals, even at minifig scale, often have a lot more articulation than their molded counterparts — for example, the shark in 31109 Pirate Ship has not only a posable jaw but also posable pectoral and tail fins, the birds' wings can pivot, and the horse in the B-model can move all four of its legs independently. But the more limited articulation of molded animals can also make them sturdier, easier to stomp around without the limbs buckling at the joints, and easier to place in a pose that's guaranteed to be balanced — all things that can make them more play-friendly for younger kids. It's a real trade-off for sure — even outside decisions about "molded vs. brick built animals", it's a big part of why mechs and brick-built creatures in sets aimed at younger kids often have fewer points of articulation than those aimed at older kids (despite that often making them less popular with TFOLs and AFOLs). Neither is intrinsically more or less playable, they just cater to different styles of play.

Counterpoint: in the late 2000s/early 2010s I remember a number of complaints here on Eurobricks that themes like Mars Mission, Space Police 3, and Alien Conquest didn't feel like true Space themes — despite including features like space aliens and mysterious energy crystals — because they were too near-Earth or near-future compared to far future, deep space stuff that could conceivably represent an interstellar society entirely separate from our own. Part of this was probably because back before Eurobricks had an "Action and Adventure Themes" subforum, discussion of themes with a roughly 20th/21st century setting like Adventurers and Agents took place in the Town subforum, regardless of whether they included sci-fi or fantasy elements. But even today, if the current City Space stuff WERE branded as its own theme, I could imagine similar complaints about aspects like the astronauts eating Earthling foods like sandwiches and pizza, watching Earthling sports broadcasts/recordings, cultivating Earthling plants, etc. — stuff that you would never see in an 80s or 90s Space set. For my part, I think sets like these can work pretty well either as part of the City theme or as a theme of their own. After all, the earliest LEGO Space sets included lots of rockets, satellites, forklifts, rovers, launch structures, and gadgets that looked fairly similar to contemporary American or Soviet technology. It was a few years before even sci-fi staples like walkers/mechs and robots/droids started to show up in Space sets. And the cratered surfaces included with some of the sets could just as easily belong to Earth's moon as to some distant planet. So there's nothing about LEGO Space as a theme that strictly needs to be any more remote or more futuristic/high-tech than what we see in the current City Space sets, or even the NASA-inspired City Mars Expedition sets. But also, it's also hardly unheard of for Town/City sets to deviate from strict modern-day realism if it means matching kids' imaginations more closely. Consider how City crooks wear prison stripes and domino masks almost as a rule, even when "on the lam", how some City Jungle Explorer sets have included giant carnivorous plants or ancient ruins full of dazzling treasure, or how the Arctic sets back in 2000 included meteorites containing frozen extraterrestrial creatures! Given that encounters with alien species are a situation many kids like to imagine as a possibility for real-world astronauts, including alien species in City and Friends space exploration sets (or even Creator ones like 31107) could be considered a similar sort of creative license.

Honestly, I don't think it's realistic to blame this on Ninjago's continued existence. LEGO has always tended to market new themes with the same strategies that they've found to work in recent years. It's like how in the 90s, most themes would get promoted with magazines, truck tours, and sometimes audio dramas and picture books. Or like how in the 2000s, basically any new theme got marketed with Flash-based online games, videos, and comics. Or how in the early 2010s, new themes would also get a mobile app game (although at that time, "interactive" apps were still an experimental thing relegated to small, dedicated product lines like LEGO Life of George or LEGO Fusion) and short mini-movies on LEGO.com and YouTube. As soon as LEGO has evidence that a marketing strategy is both effective and within their means, it gets added to the toolbox for how they might promote the next new theme. In other words, even LEGO did end up abruptly ending Ninjago, they would likely continue making apps and animated series for any new themes aimed at kids. The only thing that would stop them from doing that is if 1) those approaches for marketing to kids stopped being effective and 2) newer, more effective marketing strategies emerged to take their place.

I think the size of the cockpit feels appropriate — besides scaling up the width of the canopy by 1.5x, it also makes the crew capacity twice that of the original (just as with the Galaxy Explorer redesign). The canopy does need to be longer proportionally to allow for this, but the end result is essentially as if if you cut the black bulge behind the original set's canopy in half, and recolored the front half Tr. Yellow to match the windscreen. If you did want to keep the cockpit more proportional to the original set, you'd have to make the canopy not only two to four studs shorter, but also a full brick taller. I'm not sure any current windscreen pieces exist with quite the right proportions for that, and many of those that come close are way too curvy to fit this set's aggressive angular aesthetic. The ratio is alright, but I'm not a big fan of how the yellow parts are kinda scattered about in over a dozen small splotches instead of forming a few longer bands of color. And even those yellow splotches aren't spread out all that evenly — for example, the mod leaves the cockpit with basically no Bright Yellow besides the insignia and the tips of the blasters under each wing, whereas the original Renegade had a long, thin yellow stripe along each side. Overall, I'm fine with having more yellow than the original Renegade if the yellow parts in question are arranged in clean bands of color like that instead of just haphazard splashes of yellow greeble. By comparison, I love the idea of having a cargo bay that can take the rover's place as the Renegade's payload — not because I have anything against the rover design, but because being able to carry different payloads adds even more play and storytelling value. That said, I do have some gripes about Huw's version of the cargo bay: In the original set, the cargo bay's canopy was high enough to allow standing room for a minifigure, so if you wanted you could even remove the small rover from inside and replace it with a furnished lab or barracks. The canopy shape also gave it a futuristic angular shape that differentiated it from real-world cargo containers. By comparison, Huw's cargo container is very flat and boxy, and the use of slopes and trusses to shape the exterior instead of thinner panels gives it a very low "ceiling". Also, while Huw says he plans to add the standard clip and bar connections to the front and back once he has the parts he needs (which, again, adds great play and storytelling value!), I feel like that boxy shape is gonna look kinda awkward when combined with other sleeker-looking modules like the cockpit and engines. I appreciate that he kept the yellow stripe around the cargo bay, which is a great detail in both the original Renegade and his mod of the new one! But unlike in the original set, the placement of this yellow stripe leaves it entirely hidden when the cargo bay is "docked" on the new Renegade, so the only yellow bits that remain visible are the smaller plates on either end of the trusses. Could be as simple as "they thought it looked nice". I definitely understand why you dislike that detail, but a lot of those sorts of likes/dislikes ultimately still come down to personal preference.