Aanchir

I wouldn't necessarily call secret agent or exploration themes "core themes". LEGO has done three different secret agent themes, but it's hard to tell whether that's enough to qualify it as a staple like Castle or Space. And I hesitate to lump "exploration themes" together; for instance, I normally think of "underwater" and "underground" themes as their own discrete categories. This also raises the question: how long does a theme have to be around to be considered a "core theme"? Could Ninjago or Friends or Elves be considered "core themes" that are still in their first incarnations? Or can a theme not be considered "core" until it's been retired and come back with a new name and characters? Ninjago in particular has been running for six years, and for the past two years or so it's been considered "evergreen". Friends has been running for five years, and likewise doesn't show any signs of stopping. I wouldn't blame DC or Marvel for this perceived shift. 50% of the superhero sets this year are tied to The LEGO Batman Movie, which is probably getting as many sets as it is because it's a LEGO cinematic universe theme, not because it's a superhero theme. Last year, a more typical non-movie year, DC and Marvel combined had a mere 34 sets, considerably less than City, Friends, or Nexo Knights.

The builds in Elves are anything but simplistic… Queen Dragon Rescue, the set with the highest recommended age range of the theme to date, uses loads of SNOT techniques to create the shape of its body. I'd say it's more complex than most Ninjago or Creator dragons. And the landscaping in that set is also fairly elaborate. Ragana's Magic Shadow Castle is easily as complex or more than $100 Castle/Kingdoms castle from the past ten years. And Aira's Airship and the Amulet Chase has an amazingly creative Technic function. The $10 Elves sets tend to be fairly simple, but that's usually the case with most themes.

I'd disagree about Elves or Minecraft targeting a very young audience. Even the smallest Minecraft sets are aimed at ages 8 and up, with no upper age recommendation. Contrast this with City, Friends, Castle, and Pirates which are generally aimed at ages 5 and up, or Juniors and Classic which are aimed at ages 4 and up. I would consider all of those themes that target a very young audience; not so much Minecraft. Even some small Technic sets are only rated 7–14! Elves is aimed at ages 7 and up, much like Ninjago or Nexo Knights. The recommended age range for Elves does cut off at age 12 (rather than 14 like most other 7+ play themes), but this is the case with all the girl-oriented themes, for reasons I don't fully understand. Maybe LEGO just isn't confident in their ability to market to teenage girls yet; I dunno. In any case I wouldn't call kids 7 and up "a very young audience" as far as LEGO is concerned, because most themes that AREN'T specifically aimed at TFOLs/AFOLs are aimed at either 4+, 5+, or 7+. Target audience also doesn't in any way keep people of every age from loving a theme. As you point out, plenty of adults love Castle, even though hardly any Castle sets are aimed specifically at adults and most are aimed at fairly young children. Same goes for City. I think it's fair to say that Elves and Minecraft are loved by people of every age. If fewer adults love these themes than Castle or City, it's mostly because they simply haven't been around long enough for many adults to have played with them as children, not because the themes themselves are aimed any younger. If I had to guess why there might be fewer themes this year, I'd assume it's in part because of the LEGO Batman Movie and LEGO Ninjago Movie demanding an unusual amount of attention and resources (even more than Super Heroes and Ninjago generally require). LEGO has less incentive to invest in short-lived movie licenses like Scooby-Doo, Jurassic World, Ghostbusters, and The Angry Birds movie when they have two movies of their own to capitalize on. Also, don't forget that for the past few years LEGO has had difficulty meeting demand for certain product lines, particularly during the holiday season. Reducing the number of themes frees up resources that can be redistributed to the themes that need those resources more. However, I should point out that if you count The LEGO Batman Movie separately from Super Heroes, you should probably also count The LEGO Ninjago Movie separately from Ninjago. You didn't mention Speed Champions for 2016 or 2017 at all, even though it's had new sets in both of those years. Nor did you count LEGO Boost, which is new for this year. If you make those changes, then 2016 and 2017 each have 22 themes, just three fewer than 2015. Not nearly such a sharp or steady decline.

A four-years-old topic isn't necessarily the best place to ask this! But to answer your question, it's pronounced "Nin-JAH-go" (rhymes with "Chicago"). However, the ninja also use "Ninja… go!" (two words) as a battle cry.

I'm super excited for the Sunshine Catamaran! Truly a worthy successor to the Dolphin Cruiser! The banana boat is hilarious, and the overall structure is really unique! The sliding glass door on the back is a very nice feature. I look forward to seeing clearer pics of the interior, but I can tell there's a lot there! The hospital is also brilliant and maybe the best LEGO hospital ever, just in terms of how much detail and playability it boasts! I love the colors and architectural style!

While they were definitely heavily criticized for this by AFOLs, I have to wonder whether the target audience for these sets really cares about this kind of repetition, particularly in the case of Pirates. After all, before 2015, the last full wave of Pirates sets was in 2009. Any kid younger than 10 when the 2015 stuff came out would not have been within the target age range for the 2009 stuff when it came out. Since the general recommended age range for Pirates sets is 5–12, that's a pretty sizable chunk of their intended audience. If LEGO could successfully sell a new version of the Destiny's Bounty just three years after the original, shouldn't six years be enough time between new versions of a more "normal" pirate ship?

"Modular" in this case seems to mean that each one of the builds can separate into multiple sections that you can rearrange, like many previous Friends and City buildings. For example, the Modular Modern Home seems to have an 8x16 lower section, two 8x8 upper sections, and an 8x8 roof section, which can be moved around in various ways. Modular Poolside Holiday has one 8x16 lower section, two 8x8 roof sections, and an 8x8 pool section, so if you so chose, you could put the pool on the roof! You can even exchange sections between multiple sets or between multiple builds of the same set, though the latter might require multiple copies of the set since the modules you want to combine might require some of the same parts. Arguably these are even MORE modular than the Creator Expert Modular Buildings. Those, at best, let you rearrange them on a street and add or remove middle floors, but you can't take a floor from the Fire Brigade and add it to the Town Hall, or put the roof of the Brick Bank on the Palace Cinema. LEGO did something similar with some of the mini vehicle sets for the first half of the year. Every one of the three models for 31054 Blue Express, 31055 Red Racer, and 31060 Airshow Aces can separate into modules using Technic cross axles. And the modules are all inter-compatible between vehicles. This video illustrates this concept. LEGO has even shared video building guides on how to make other modular vehicles that you can mix-and-match the same way, like a limo and boat.

Besides the redesign, the delay of the Saturn V project could also have to do with trying to fit a set that size into an already packed production schedule. Even nine months is a pretty short turnaround time compared to most non-Ideas sets (ESPECIALLY big exclusive sets), and as such, a lot of the factory resources for the year are probably already committed to sets that LEGO has had planned for well over a year. A smaller set like Research Institute or Adventure Time can be much easier to squeeze into the schedule than something two to four times that size

Judging from The LEGO Movie and LEGO Batman Movie minifigures, it would include alternate versions of the main characters, as well as an assortment of more minor characters. In Ninjago's case, the movie's main characters are the six ninja (Kai, Zane, Cole, Jay, Lloyd, and Nya), Master Wu, and Lord Garmadon. But the rest is completely up in the air. Just looking at the trailer, some of the remaining figs may be from Garmadon's new army of aquatic-themed baddies. But I'd expect several of those designs to instead show up in the full playsets. Also, it's possible that some of the ninja figs will be in more civilian-type costumes, since the regular sets are more likely to include their ninja costumes.

Personally I was very attracted to this set from the first time I saw it. I love Final Flight of Destiny's Bounty, so it's sort of neat to see how that ship's "little sister" can implement similar ideas and a similar design language in a much different way (a stealthy riverboat rather than a majestic sailing vessel). I think it offers a very creative build, a modest price, a good value for money, some fun play features, and a good balance of traditional and futuristic bits. Its design really suits the wave's swamp setting without feeling overly specific to that sort of environment. Throw in a Cole minifigure that only appears in this set and it's hard as a LEGO Ninjago fan to justify skipping it! Specific techniques that excited me include the use of ball joints for both structural and functional aspects of the design, the nice half-stud offsets of the short staircase, the use of Exo-Force robot arms and axle plates to create the angled bow, and the clever mini-dragon figurehead. I feel that these days the intricacy and creativity of even kid-oriented Ninjago models rivals many more AFOL-oriented sets. The parts in this set are very useful indeed, and last month my brother and I challenged ourselves to come up with an alternate model. That resulted in a cute little scene we dubbed Ninja Boat Chase. Great review!

On another note, if people want to use this emblem for a castle army, it's also available as a printed 1x1 tile that you could probably make use of on studded armor (like Magpie's black feathered armor, a recolor of a Chima armor piece). The goblin king's crown is molded with the same emblem.

Source? Because I've seen no evidence to back that up. In particular, Space Police III got two more waves after its initial launch — that doesn't happen with "big flops". Maybe where you are, Galaxy Squad didn't sell well. But that's hardly any indication that the same is true everywhere. And even sets from highly successful themes like City, Friends, and Ninjago sometimes linger on shelves for years depending on where you look. More to the point, LEGO has a tendency of revisiting their classic themes from time to time even when they DON'T expect them to sell as well as their top brands. It's easy as a fan to think that themes can neatly be divided into "good sellers" and "bad sellers", but the truth is that it's more of a spectrum. And as long as LEGO is cautious with how much they invest in each of their product lines, there's often still a lot of money to be made in that space in between mega-hits like Star Wars and City and poor performers like The Lone Ranger or Heroica.

I don't quite agree that "nowadays kids aren't interested in these" (well, maybe for Western, but that was never really a core product category for them, just a brief two-year theme). The number of castles and Castle-ish subject matter we've been getting in non-Castle themes seems to indicate to me that things like kings, castles, knights, dragons, fantasy creatures, etc. still resonate very strongly with kids. Really, Nexo Knights seems more to me like LEGO taking a few years off from traditional Castle to see if they can leverage its timeless appeal in a radical new way, than giving up on the traditional stuff entirely. It's not as though other "weirder" Castle themes of the past like Fright Knights or Knights' Kingdom II represented a permanent departure from what LEGO Castle had once meant. They were just LEGO taking a little detour off the path, so to speak. And just because Nexo Knights is a little further off the beaten trail than usual doesn't mean LEGO has no plans to return. A person in 2004 might've said that kids had no interest in Space sets anymore and only cared about Star Wars. Yet in the past decade there have been four different non-licensed Space themes and various stand-alone Space sets. Our hypothetical 2004 spokesperson might've also imagined that buildable figure themes like Bionicle would be the new normal for kids' play preferences, whereas they've actually become more niche over time as other, more brick-based themes have made a huge comeback. Kids' interests do change with time, but those changes aren't necessarily as permanent and straightforward as we sometimes imagine them to be. They tend to ebb and flow, retracing their movements in ways that can be hard to see coming ahead of time.

Really nice! It sort of feels like the entrance of an abandoned mine that has been converted into a hideout. It is very true to the design of the original set while still having a personality of its own. If I have one gripe, it's that the falling axe in the original set appears to reach further and strike more in the center of the entranceway, making it less likely to miss its target. Here it seems like only the right side of the entranceway would be within striking range. It may not make the trap any less dangerous, but in its "sprung" position I feel like it at least LOOKS less dangerous. I'm sure you can find a way to fix this if you think it's an issue; if not, it's still a pretty great MOC regardless.

Thanks to New York Toy Fair we have better pics of various summer sets. The sets that are most historic-looking overall are probably still 41188 and 41187 from the Elves theme. The title vehicle of 70355 doesn't have any really historic-looking bits, but the enemy character Lord Krakenskull has an epic new helmet and a pretty cool gargoyle steed! You can see a more detailed pic here. That set, Macy's Bot Drop Dragon, and Axl's Rumble Maker also have some nifty recolors of various knight helmets on their respective bots, though I know bright colors like that aren't to everyone's taste. Other cool new Nexo Knights minifigures with possible historic or fantasy applications include the Harpy from 70353, General Garg from 70356, and King Halbert and Stone Queen Halbert from 70357. We haven't gotten pics or names for them yet, but two Thor: Ragnarok sets were confirmed in the press guide. If it's anything like the first couple Thor movies, then those sets could have some good fantasy sorts of parts in them.

That's possible. They considered featuring a space base in The LEGO Movie but it ended up getting cut, along with some other concepts like Metalbeard's home port. It wouldn't surprise me if ideas like that found their way into the sequel.

I guess for me knights can be knights on AND off the battlefield… even King Arthur's knights had a round table to gather at in between quests or battles.

Do you honestly think your temporary disappointment matters more than anybody else's? There's no underwater or underground or secret agent or western or viking or pirate or space themes right now, either. There's not even an ongoing fantasy action figure theme right now besides Star Wars. Do you think as a Bionicle fan I'm not frustrated by that? But I deal. And there are loads of great sets out there for Castle fans if they'd just step outside the myopic bubble of what they consider "true Castle". Even if we ignore Nexo Knights sets, Elves is loaded with great fantasy adventure sets like an inn, shops, castles, dragons, etc. Seriously, when's the last time the Castle theme included an inn? Ninjago lacks a lot of European medieval fantasy fare, but has great sets with classical Asian-styled architecture, brilliant dragons, and fantastical villains and monsters that could fit nicely into a swords-and-sorcery setting. The Disney theme has a wealth of different fantasy castles, including the Disney Castle itself, the biggest LEGO castle set there's ever been. Continuing to insist that there's nothing for Castle fans today is just being obstinate. Judging from the way LEGO castle tends to be re-imagined every three years like clockwork, I'm pretty confident there will be a "real" Castle theme again in 2019 or so after Nexo Knights ends. It's not a long time to wait in the grand scheme of things. You guys made it way longer without an AFOL-approved Castle theme in the early naughts. In the meantime, maybe think about expanding your idea of what sets can be useful to you so you don't continue to set yourself up for disappointment any time LEGO takes a few years to try something new and different? How is this more drab than this or this or this? Star Wars does have some brightly-colored sets (especially in the Rebels sets), but I wouldn't call them the norm. That said, I think your point kind of gets to something else I was going to say to x105Black, which is that Nexo Knights does not in any way imply that kids can't like sets in neutral colors, or that LEGO believes they can't. From the very beginning, the bad guy vehicles in Nexo Knights have used colors like grey, black, and brown extensively. Kids and adults alike can enjoy sets with neutral colors, sets with bright colors, or sets with neutral and bright colors together. And none of those color schemes are inherently less mature than others. It doesn't disrespect kids to have sets that emphasize bright colors over neutrals. But it disrespects kids and adults alike to call brightly-colored sets "immature" and call people who like them the "lowest common denominator". I was not very excited for the sets for the first half of the year, besides the Battle Suits, but I'm really excited for some of the stuff coming in the second half, especially the Knighton Castle and all the big brick-built monsters! Like Jestro's lair or the Fortrex, the new castle feels more like an actual livable space than any castle from the actual Castle theme ever has. And this is not a recent problem, since before 2000 it was rare for LEGO castles to even include so much as a treasury or throne room. I hope that when Castle DOES come back (which it will), it will at least take some cues from Nexo Knights in this respect, because I'm fed up with "true" LEGO castles being purely action-focused and not having anything for the king and his knights to do when they're not out fighting.

Keep in mind that some of the new blister-packed battle packs like the Ninjago and LEGO Batman Movie ones are priced the way they are in part because they include entirely unique characters that don't appear in other sets. In that sense, it makes sense that they are priced more like collectible minifigures than regular building sets. Value-wise, classic boxed minifigure packs like this one are more comparable to LEGO City starter sets, which include three or four generic figures plus sixty to eighty other bricks for $10. On the one hand I recognize how useful a set like this which is just figures and no builds is to army builders, but personally I have never been an army builder and feel like it's better for the brand's reputation that today's low-priced sets tend to have more substantial builds and play features, even if it means fewer figures. Since I was a child, low-priced "starter sets" have often been the types of sets I've been most likely to skip, because I knew that if I saved up for the bigger sets I could get a lot of the same figures along with much more exciting builds. And I didn't see much point in getting multiple sets with the same figures unless there was something interesting or unique about the parts or builds that came with them. I did enjoy these figures and the ninja theme as a kid, at least in its first year. Sort of like Nexo Knights today, it put the type of LEGO Castle sets I was used to on hold in order to explore a concept that LEGO had never really tried before. The Ninja theme didn't really hold my attention as well in the second year, which I found more confusing than anything since it became harder to tell who was good and who was bad. The first year's color coding was much stronger, with the black and red characters being evil bandits and the blue and grey characters being heroic subjects of the shogunate. In hindsight the torso decorations in this theme feel kind of flat, and the eyes of the grey, green, and white ninja feel sort of racially insensitive. At the same time, these adhered far better to minifigure design standards than many other themes of that era, like the Indians of the Western theme whose faces felt like grotesque racist caricatures, or the Insectoids and UFO minifigures which went way overboard with their level of detail. And the Ninja theme did sort of pave the way for Ninjago, which is one of my favorite themes, so I can't fault it in that respect!

The hoods for the LEGO Ninjago Movie seem like they are specially designed not to hang down over the torso, probably so they can rotate more easily. That battle pack is awesome! I was expecting to see Skylor's new costume as a physical minifigure eventually, but totally wasn't expecting to see it in a set with two other Elemental Masters!

This might be one of your best MOCs yet! The design is super-streamlined and the shape of the nose is excellent. I also love how the detail pieces on the sides give it texture for its gills! The colors are also generally pretty coherent. Fantastic work!

This article about the LEGO Ninjago movie seems to tell a very different story. According to Justin Theroux (movie!Garmadon's VA), “It’s about a son having to live with this father who’s a threat to Lego-manity (but) more about the son’s journey of forgiving him and learning to accept him for who he is." That does still seem to diverge considerably from the cartoon, but definitely doesn't seem to jibe with the idea that movie!Garmadon is toxic or irredeemable.

Some of the LEGO Ninjago Movie vehicles revealed in that movie's first trailer have a definite sci-fi flavor to them. Several of them feel like throwbacks to Exo-Force, more so than I'm used to with Ninjago mechs and vehicles. There are some good screenshots in this post: Many of the actual sets based on these will probably be simplified and scaled down, as LEGO Movie and LEGO Batman Movie sets often have been in the past. But it still gives a good taste of what the feel of these vehicles might be like in set form.

This is awesome! I love the limited color palette you worked with. And the technique you used for the curved roofs is incredible! I don't really like the texture of the walkway, though. This certainly looks much more beautiful than the original set. Great work!

I doubt there should be much risk of them breaking… polycarbonate is generally a very sturdy material, and I'm assuming that's what these are. My bigger worry would be them getting stuck or causing damage to transparent arm pieces, since the hand–arm connection is very tight and polycarbonate parts don't handle tight connections to each other so well.