Aanchir

Believe it or not, the colors are actually one of the more realistic attributes of Power Miners. It's common for real-life mine vehicles to be brightly colored much like construction vehicles, and for much the same reason: high visibility in low-light conditions. Of course, I also understand the appeal of Rock Raiders' gritty, vaguely dieselpunk color scheme, particularly since there are so few other themes with color schemes quite like it. But in a typical mine the last thing you typically want is for your equipment to blend in with its environment. I suppose the difference between the color schemes (and, perhaps, the characters' costumes) could be seen as an extension of the very different story scenarios for the two themes. Rock Raiders had a stranded space crew making do with what limited resources they had, whereas Power Miners had miners outfitted with the best and most advanced equipment the well-populated surface world had to offer.

Maybe in some fantasyland where production capacities and store shelves are not limited, and customers didn't have limited budgets, there'd be no reason for LEGO to ever stop producing old sets, and no reason not to produce new sets. In the real world, what I just said should make the problem obvious. It is simply not possible for LEGO to grow their production at a brisk enough pace to keep every set they make in production indefinitely while still introducing new sets. Even if LEGO could keep all sets around indefinitely, then each year customers' spending would be divided between a number of sets and themes that grows explosively with each passing year. Needless to say, this is bad — in fact, one of the components of why LEGO nearly went bankrupt in 2003 is that retailers couldn't reliably sell new 2003 products when their shelves were still flooded with unsold 2002 product. LEGO makes a lot more money off of each modular building by keeping just three or four recent sets available at any given time than by having a dozen of them all competing for the same customers. And generally, the market for new sets is far bigger than the market for older ones. That's pretty much common sense, since a new set is a set that nobody owns, while a lot of the most eager customers for older sets already bought them while they were still available in the primary market. Let's suppose LEGO sold half a million copies of 3315, the best-selling LEGO product of 2012. Do you think after two years, more people will be lining up to get a set that half a million people already own? Or would there be more demand for a set that has all the same appeal yet is entirely new? Retailers, in turn, would much rather stock sets that haven't been seen before than continue stocking older sets with shrinking demand. If that weren't the case, then they wouldn't have any need to put older sets on clearance — they don't do that because of any sort of pressure from the LEGO Group, but because they know they'll make more money on new sets than on retired ones. The fact that a company like Lepin can make a quick buck off of retired sets doesn't mean that companies like LEGO, Target, or Toys 'R' Us stand to make as much money off of old sets as off of newer ones. It just means that Lepin is too cheap and dishonest a company to bother creating products that generate NEW demand, so they have to leech off of demand that LEGO has already generated by copying existing LEGO products. And of course, companies like Lepin are also a factor in why LEGO has to release new sets as often as they do (and thus, retire their older sets at around the same rate). LEGO will never be able to compete with shameless knock-offs on price, because developing new ideas will always cost more than copying somebody else's ideas. If LEGO stopped coming out with new sets, then more and more copies would have time to emerge — people who think knock-off companies only copy or makes money on retired sets are kidding themselves. But when LEGO puts out new sets, it generally takes at least 12 weeks after its release for knock-off companies like Lepin to have copies available for purchase. That gives LEGO twelve weeks to sell something nobody else in the world can offer, instead of focusing on older products and therefore not having anything to offer that doesn't exist as a cheaper copy.

Sorry for making assumptions. In your posts, you seemed to have a hard time believing the LEGO Group's findings that boys and girls tend to relate to the minifigure differently, or that there was anything about it that was skewed in favor of the way boys play. I'm not saying that the mini-doll is not designed for girls specifically or that I have any kind of problem with that. I have no problem with gendered marketing on a fundamental level, although there are definitely specific examples of gendered marketing that I would consider good or bad (for instance, I dislike any kind of marketing that "talks down" to its intended audience). I realize the LEGO Friends and LEGO Elves sets are not aimed squarely at me, and I'm fine with that, particularly since as an adult, I could say the same for most LEGO products. I'm happy to enjoy what I can of my favorite themes regardless, and do my best not to assume that any themes should be more geared more towards my particular interests than they are, even though I'm not afraid to speak up about what I don't like about them. But I don't believe that the minifigure is "gender-neutral" simply by virtue of NOT being designed for one gender specifically. Regardless of intent, I'm not convinced a toy that overwhelmingly appeals to boys rather than girls can truly be considered "gender neutral", even if it has no obvious gender coding in its design. A failure to appeal to a particular demographic means that demographic's preferences were not fully considered in its design. So it's weird to me that girls are often expected to just enjoy the minifigure as much as boys do as long as they have gender-balanced characters to choose from, yet few people expect boys to be able to enjoy the mini-doll the same way girls do regardless of the gender of the characters. Incidentally, I have similar questions about whether the yellow-skinned minifigure is indeed as "racially neutral" as the LEGO Group often purports. Even if the intent is that people of any race can identify with a yellow smiley-face (and I fully respect that intent), it's not entirely clear whether people of all races actually do identify with the minifigure in an equal capacity. A lot of the AFOL conventions I've been to skew pretty white, at least among the exhibitors, and I'm never sure how much of that is due to inequalities in the US making it easier for white families to enjoy an expensive hobby like LEGO, and how much of it is because people of different races do not relate to the LEGO minifigure or the LEGO system the same way. I really wish the AFOL community did more self-analysis, like the Brony community used to do with the herd census, so we'd have a better sense of how diverse our community really is, and whether there's more that we could do as AFOLs or the LEGO Group could do as a company to make the LEGO fan community more welcoming to people of all backgrounds. But most AFOL surveys I've seen and/or participated in limit demographic questions to gender, age, and nationality, rather than other categories like race, sexuality, and disability status, which could all offer interesting insights into the community. Pulling things back around to the subject of Castle, LEGOLAND California announced yesterday that the Kingdom rooms at their LEGOLAND Hotel will be refitted as Ninjago rooms next year. However, this isn't as bleak for Castle fans as it might sound, because the reason for eliminating the Kingdom rooms specifically is that next year LEGOLAND will be beginning construction of a new Castle Hotel, separate from the main LEGOLAND Hotel. That hotel will be opening in 2018. Obviously, the LEGOLAND parks are owned by Merlin Entertainments, and so shouldn't be taken as any sort of precognition of future LEGO Castle sets (the preview images shown in starting at 1:08 are clearly based on the earlier 2013 Castle range, and not on some not-yet-announced Castle theme). However, this at least indicates that Merlin considers Castle a popular theme among their park guests. So regardless of when exactly LEGO Castle will come back, it's safe to say that its popularity endures and it isn't gone for good. I'm still of the opinion that 2019 is the most likely year for a Castle comeback, possibly with other licensed castles in the interim.

I don't often buy hair and torso pieces on their own. When I do, it's either from BrickLink, vendors at LEGO conventions like BrickFair Virginia, or the Build-A-Mini stations at LEGO Brand Stores. But I realize that the latter two options will not help you since Brazil does not have LEGO Brand Stores or US-style LEGO conventions. And most of these options are just as expensive as BrickLink if not more so. Can you be more specific about what kind of hair and torsos you need? Do you need hair and torsos for custom figs of specific people or characters, or just hair and torsos to populate crowds of minifigures in a big layout? Also, is BrickLink expensive because of shipping charges, because stores that ship to Brazil are limited, or just because the type of hair and torsos you're trying to buy are not common? Hair like 3901 in Light Bluish Gray or Reddish Brown, or 4530 in black, red, or tan, will generally be a lot cheaper than rarer hair colors and styles, no matter where you buy them. Also, 60134 Fun in the Park is a current set that has a good supply of generic hair and torsos. It comes with 14 civilian minifigures, ten with hair and four with hats or helmets. I do not know what it costs in Brazil, but in the United States it costs $40 — which is a high price for the number of bricks, but a fairly low price for so many different minifigures.

The fact that girls can identify better with the mini-doll than with the minifigure isn't just "assumptions". It's what the LEGO Group found during their research and development. Certainly some girls enjoy the minifigure, and there's no reason why any girl would not be able to enjoy the minifigure. But the research showed that many girls were able to identify better with a toy figure if they felt it looked like them. That meant they could identify better with the mini-doll than with the minifigure, just as, to use your example, they could surely identify better with a minifigure than with a box of rocks. Do you genuinely believe that the LEGO Group didn't think to test the type of figure they already had with girls before concluding that they didn't respond to them as well as boys did? It's not as though the higher-ups at LEGO wanted to believe that one of their most enduring icons was sabotaging their own efforts to make girls into LEGO fans. It took solid evidence to convince them that redesigning the minifigure was necessary to creating toys that would appeal to girls as well as themes like LEGO City appealed to boys. Astrid and Fenella were quite clear about this when presenting their panel at Brickfair VA the year LEGO Friends launched, as were other designers during the LEGO Inside Tour last year.

If you read the two articles linked above you'd already know the answer to that question. The LEGO Group found that boys tend to play with toy figures as characters, whereas girls are more keen on projecting themselves onto the figure as a sort of an avatar. Essentially, boys tend to play with toy figures in the third person, while girls tend to play with them in the first person. And girls had difficulty projecting themselves onto a figure that looked more like a noseless yellow block-man than like a real person. This was all discovered before the LEGO Group even began developing or testing an alternative figure. The minifigure being "androgynous" never had anything to do with it — the problem wasn't that the minifigure didn't look "girly", it was that it didn't look real or human. Which presented a much bigger obstacle for first-person play than third-person play. And developing the mini-doll wasn't just a matter of shrinking down a doll, asking girls if they liked it, and putting it in a box. The LEGO Group tested many concepts for the mini-doll in order to come up with a design that girls would love just as much as boys loved the minifigure. For instance, one common criticism minifigure-lovers have of the mini-doll is their lack of wrist articulation. Mini-dolls with minifigure-like arms were, in fact, tested with girls, and they didn't like them. They preferred a narrower arm with no major change in thickness at the wrist, even if it meant losing that point of articulation. A lot of effort also went into ensuring the mini-doll still felt like it belonged to the LEGO System. So more detailed hands were rejected in favor of minifigure-like hands, and more doll-like sculpted faces were rejected in favor of smooth, printed faces with just a little egg-shaped bulge for a nose. And the question remains: if it's really so hard for you to believe that girls and boys have different styles of play or different tastes in play figures, then why would it be any harder for boys to enjoy sets with mini-dolls than for girls to enjoy sets with minifigures? It's a huge double-standard to assume that a style of figure girls have been shown to prefer is ONLY appropriate for them, but a style of figure boys prefer is inherently gender-neutral and should be acceptable for anybody. How are lifelike body proportions and facial features things that only a girl could tolerate?

Overall, I definitely felt like Power Miners was far better than Rock Raiders. It may not have been quite so gritty, but it had better builds, better functions, better monsters, bolder colors, and a great sense of humor. As for the characters themselves? The Rock Raiders may be a ragtag band of desperate spacefarers, but the Power Miners are the only blue-collar chumps crazy enough to tunnel into the earth to fight off swarms of crystal-eating monsters! Who knows what'd happen if they went toe to toe? Whatever the case, it'd probably be hilarious! I don't know that that's a fair generalization. After all, a lot of the classic sets were about as uniform as today's sets, including the classic Spacemen in your avatar. The heroes of Nexo Knights and Ninjago tend to have considerably more differences in their costumes than those do! And were the heroes of LEGO Atlantis any less alike than the heroes of Aquazone? Recent themes are also packed with examples of characters who DON'T all wear the same uniforms. The heroes of Ultra Agents, Monster Fighters, Pharaoh's Quest, and Dino were all easily as varied as the Rock Raiders or Adventurers.

Having the hover-horses as stand alone sets would have been cool on some levels (easier to army build them, for instance), but I feel like they work better as part of larger sets. Since they're more or less identical, it would have felt way more repetitive if they were the FOCUS of the sets rather than just an add-on to help balance the play scenarios of the larger ones. Also, a big purpose of the Ultimate sets seemed to be to promote the app, and I feel like the interchangeable accessories were a cool way to bring the variety of the Nexo powers into the physical toys.

There's something kinda ironic about the way many AFOLs talk about mini-dolls. Many would certainly like to believe that if the mini-doll didn't exist, girls would have still liked themes like Friends, Elves, and Disney Princess just fine, regardless of the type of figure. But then when there isn't a minifigure option equivalent to sets or themes that come with mini-dolls, having the wrong style of figure is an instant deal-breaker. Are only boys and grown-ups allowed to be that picky about their play figures, while girls are expected to just settle for what's available? The hoods on the current LEGO Elves sets fit minifigures just fine, as do all LEGO Elves hairstyles. At least, that's how I feel from testing them out on the Forest Maiden. Take note, however, that the cloaks that go with those hoods do not fit minifigures, due to having a smaller neck hole. The hoods still look fine on minifigures without any sort of fabric cloak due to the minifigure's bulkier shoulders, so if you're a purist the only drawbacks will be the color of the hoods and ears, and if you're not afraid to touch them up with a dab of paint then even those concerns are mitigable. The goblins in the upcoming LEGO Elves sets sound fun to me, but from the descriptions I've seen, they sound like they'll be more fairy-tale/folkloric goblins than Tolkien-esque goblins. As such they could be great for populating magical forests, but not so great facing down armies of human soldiers. That's not to say they won't have useful parts like hair or headgear, though.

Chinese ships sound interesting, and the LEGO Group might look favorably on a good one since they have been trying to expand their business in Asia. Might also have some degree of crossover appeal with Ninjago fans, while still being distinct enough not to be in direct competition with that theme. Basing it on a historical fleet might hit some of the same scholarly buttons that projects like the Saturn V Rocket have (even though the humanities aren't quite as trendy as STEM right now). And if you were to base a project on, say, Ching Shih's Red Flag Fleet, then it might also appeal to feminists and others who like projects that raise awareness of successful and diverse women in history, much like the recent Women of NASA project. Ching Shih might not be the role model every parent wants for their daughter, but I think you'd still find an audience eager to see such an awesome and powerful female icon represented in LEGO. Note that Ching Shih is the subject of a TV limited series currently in development, which could potentially generate wider interest in her story and in Chinese pirate history that you could tap into. You're right that it might be tough to get the LEGO Pirates community to rally around such a set, since it isn't traditional LEGO Pirates subject matter. Even so, that uniqueness might actually HELP its chances. The LEGO Ideas Exo-Suit had little in common with actual Classic Space sets, but by exemplifying the spirit of LEGO Space rather than specifically emulating something the theme had seen before, it garnered a lot of support from the Spacer community. A lot of the criticisms of the latest batch of LEGO Pirates sets came from it feeling like stuff we'd seen before — and the best way to overcome that sense would be to take a risk with something new and not yet proven. As for the specifics of such a project, I'd say to aim for a $100 price point (so, around the same size as 6243 or 70413). The biggest LEGO Ideas set revealed to date is the new Caterham, which is $80, and the Saturn V Rocket is likely to push the peak price for LEGO Ideas sets even higher. A set much bigger or more parts-intensive than those two pirate ships would still be super risky, but since this would be an entirely different style of pirate ship, it wouldn't need to be bigger in order to stand out. So, is anybody willing to try and take the plunge and design a project like that? I have little experience building LEGO pirate ships but after giving it this much thought, I'm really liking the idea. So if nobody else is eager to give it a shot I'd be happy to take a stab at it. But if some more experienced shipwright wants to give it a try, go for it!

You do know that weddings exist in other religions besides Christianity, right? And a lot of the wedding customs presented in this set, like a white bridal gown, a wedding ring, and a wedding arch, have more cultural and geographic roots than strictly religious ones.

Well, "goblins" as a concept are pretty hard to generalize, since they've been depicted so many vastly different ways over the centuries. For instance, Tolkien's Goblins/Orcs were grotesque warriors, human-sized if not larger, and some other modern fantasy works take inspiration from that portrayal. But many goblins in traditional folklore and even in pop culture are more diminutive and mischievous. Anyway, the new sets sound as creative and exciting as ever! Seems like LEGO Elves hasn't lost its touch.

This sounds amazing! I look forward to seeing what they look like, but I love the concept. It's the sort of thing I've tried doing on LDD in the past, but never really managed. Having a new compact torso piece to enclose the minifigure will probably help greatly. I hope there is plenty of potential for customization (i.e. lots of good connection points).

Probably depends on what exactly you are looking for, to be honest. I'd recommend Master Wu Dragon right now, simply because it's a lower price to begin with and as an older set it's easier to find it considerably marked down. At least, that's how it is in the United States. I have no idea whether the same is true for stores or online shops in Greece. From a design standpoint, The Lighthouse Siege has a lot more play features than Master Wu Dragon. The dragon has a couple shooters in the tea farm fence and the possessed kiosk, but The Lighthouse Siege is packed with traps, stud shooters, a rail for ninja to slide down, and of course a light brick. This can be a plus or a minus depending on your perspective. Master Wu Dragon is still very playable but more in the sense of being able to fly it around or put it in different poses. In terms of bricks, Master Wu Dragon's parts are more suited to building organic-looking creations, like animals or mecha. The Lighthouse Siege has more bricks that would be useful for buildings and landscaping. Of course, some of the rare and useful parts in both sets are generic ones that could be used for all kinds of different models. The figures in Master Wu Dragon are more generic, while those in The Lighthouse Siege are more eclectic. The Master Wu Dragon has four ghosts plus a black-robed ninja, a sensei, and a dog, while the the Lighthouse Siege has red and blue ninjas, two human sky pirates, a Serpentine sky pirate, a djinn sky pirate, and two clockwork robots. Generally I would say that The Lighthouse Siege would have the most appeal for fans of the Ninjago TV series, since it gives context to the set's characters and accessories, while the Master Wu Dragon's minifigures are a little more conventional. But this also means that The Lighthouse Siege has more unique contents to offer. Overall, I think either set could be a good buy. But Master Wu Dragon might be a better buy now, since it's a year old, whereas if you prefer to get The Lighthouse Siege, there is no particular advantage to getting it sooner rather than later.

Sounds interesting! By "like bionicles", do you mean using the same building system? Or are they brick-built action figures like Sparkks and Burnzie? Either way I'm quite intrigued. I was experimenting with minifigure-headed buildable figures on LDD just yesterday trying to see how that could be done. Shield blind bags are an interesting concept, though I hope the price is low, and I feel like demand would be limited by the fact that they're not really a complete, playable toy. I think the Ultimate sets were a better concept for making shields available in quantity, but maybe LEGO has a better grasp on what people are willing to buy than I do. Still having a really hard time visualizing the bad guys. Purple rocks can work, Elves has showed us that, but it seems like a rather unintuitive step from this year's red, orange, black, and brown color palette for the magma monsters and their vehicles. Although maybe the new bad guys just look rocky but their actual unifying theme will be something else.

For my part I never would've thought to put an SUV pulling a smaller vehicle on a trailer in the same category as, say, a flatbed truck or car carrier. When 60060 came out two years ago I was actually struck by the novelty of it, since double-decker car carriers like that are ubiquitous on US highways, but LEGO had only had one as a Town Racing set in 1996, one as a mini Creator set in 2006, and one as a big Creator vehicle in 2009. The appeal of vehicle transporters with kids is easy for me to understand — it's sort of the same appeal they get from spaceships that can deploy rovers and escape pods, or Ninjago and Chima vehicles that split apart into other vehicles. Even as a teenager I absolutely loved the Mobile Command Center from LEGO Agents for being able to deploy two cars, two boats, and a plane from one tractor-trailer truck, and a lot of my disappointment with Ultra Agents Mission HQ stemmed from it reducing that to a buggy, a barely-hidden plane, and an unmanned drone. Honestly, I'm often more surprised at the number of mobile police HQs in LEGO City, since from living in a smaller city, I hardly realized those existed before seeing them in LEGO sets. But I understand that those tend to have decent play value and are good for filling the intermediate price points between police stations and police cars or SUVs.

The Death Star price is not quite THAT much more than the original version. The original version's $400 price tag in 2008 would be $457.04 in today's money, so even if you believe that the actual value of the set has not increased at all, the new price is less than 10% more than it should be. Imperial Flagship cost $180 in 2010, or $203.07 in today's money, so $250 would be 23% higher than its inflation-adjusted value. All that said, I think expecting a similar scale to the Imperial Flagship would be quite realistic for a $250 pirate ship, if that ship is in fact the Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman has the same number of masts as the IFS, but its greebly, decrepit look would probably demand a much greater level of detail — and consequently, a much higher piece count. Compare the Sea Cow, the only previous $250 pirate ship. It had a solid 2741 pieces and weighed 3.85kg, compared to IFS's 1664 pieces and 2.59kg. It had a shorter hull, yes, but also a lot more greeble.

It was one of the images in the slide show from the USA Today article where this sneak peek was revealed.

It varies depending on the figure. The flyer version of Morro (no cape) costs USD $2.37 on Bricks & Pieces, but there's one on BrickLink for USD $2.90 and five on BrickLink for $3.10, so it's less than a dollar difference. Whether it's cheaper to get it from LEGO or BrickLink might come down to shipping costs and whether there are any other bricks/figures you want to include in your order. The Final Flight of Destiny's Bounty version of Morro can't be bought on Bricks & Pieces because the cape is out of stock.

I think the toy soldier looks adorable! I love his mustache! It's weird to me how "creepy" seems to be people's first reaction to just about anything released this year that's the least bit silly or cartoony-looking.

Maybe the LEGO Ninjago Movie Collectible Minifigures are 71015? The LEGO Ninjago Movie was originally scheduled for September 2016 then delayed to September 2017, so it could be that the minifigures series was assigned a number before the movie got delayed rather than after.

I've heard from designers (can't remember if it was in an interview or presentation) that some kids are VERY picky about how a fire engine or fire station should look. For instance, a fire engine absolutely MUST be red. Kids in playtesting might actually break down in tears if a fire engine is any color but red, because to them that's "wrong". I'm not sure if the same color mandate applies for fire stations, but LEGO generally tries to have buildings and vehicles affiliated with the same characters share the same color scheme. More styles of fire station could be nice, especially if we got some as varied as the LEGO City Swamp Police Station and Forest Police Station. I imagine part of the reason there hasn't been as much variation in fire stations is that there just aren't as many LEGO fire stations — while police stations are now released every year, fire stations are still released just every three years. The more often sets of the same subject are released, the more pressure there is to make them stand out from one another, whereas conversely, the less often they're released, the more pressure there will be to have them consistently meet all the same basic expectations (since the intended audience for the new version is less likely to have experienced the previous version).

It's kind of funny you say that because like just like Galaxy Squad, the "good guy" vehicles in Nexo Knights have shared main colors but also accent colors specific to the character they're affiliated with. So Clay's Rumble Blade and hover horse have Dark Azur accents, Lance's Mecha Horse and hover horse have White accents, Aaron's Aero-Striker V2 and hover horse have Bright Yellowish Green accents, Macy's Thunder Mace and hover horse have red accents, and Axl's Tower Carrier and hover horse have Flame Yellowish Orange accents. Even King Halbert's King's Mech joins the fun, coupling the usual main colors with Warm Gold accents. Perhaps it's just the use of "louder" main colors (Bright Blue, Earth Blue, Silver Metallic, and Tr. Flu. Reddish Orange instead of White, Dark Stone Grey, Black, and Transparent) that makes the Nexo Knights color schemes work better in your eyes. Or perhaps it's just that the character-specific accent colors in Nexo Knights tend to be used more sparingly.

Your daughter's insights on this matter are definitely a valuable contribution to this discussion, and it'd be interesting to see how widely they hold true. And yet, I don't entirely know how much of that is due to the actual characteristics of the figure failing to appeal to older kids, and how much of it might be due to other factors like societal pressure on girls to grow up fast and put aside interests they think of as "kids' stuff". If your daughter didn't live in an AFOL household that reinforced the idea that LEGO bricks and the LEGO minifigure can be for all ages, maybe by now she might have started to distance herself from those by now as well, and could be well on her way into her dark ages. We have to remember that playing with LEGO into one's teenage or adult years used to be quite rare for boys and girls alike. And the LEGO Group is quite new to having any meaningful success with girls. Honestly it's not surprising to me that they started out focusing their girl-oriented products on the core toy-buying years (5–12) instead of trying to jump headfirst into marketing towards the older and less predictable audience that more boy-oriented "big bang" themes of the past decade like Exo-Force, Power Miners, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Nexo Knights tend to target. Another factor to consider is that I'm assuming your daughter did play with LEGO before the launch of LEGO Friends, which might put her in a somewhat different category than other girls who first became interested in LEGO because of girl-oriented themes like Friends. If she played with minifigures more than with mini-dolls from the start, then it doesn't entirely surprise me that her interest in minifigures lasted longer than her interest in mini-dolls. But I get the feeling that the vast majority of girls who have made LEGO Friends such a reliable hit are in a very different boat.

From what I've read, the reduction of the marketing budget was specific to American marketing campaigns. So it would have primarily affected things like how many TV commercials LEGO themes got on American TV networks or how many special events were held at American stores, rather than things like the production values of LEGO TV series, TV specials, and Netflix series. Those things are generally produced and budgeted on more of an international basis.