Aanchir

Not to me they don't. Particularly in this shot, the moss and plants look life-size. And even when Sensei Wu is knocked into the sand, the individual grains of sand are quite large relative to him.

Part of me thinks "cousin" might be more likely than "sister", simply because if Emily had a sister it would be weird not to have seen or heard of her before now. But yes, I'm hoping we get mini-doll parts that can be used for younger characters!

This sounds amazing! And also, I'm getting some serious "Labyrinth" vibes. I say that having (gasp!) never actually seen "Labyrinth". Goblins make more sense to me than leprechauns (they better fit the "high fantasy" approach we've seen elsewhere in Elvendale). And glad we are, in fact, getting an evil dragon! A gondola and a flying ship also sound like great new subject matter for sets, though it's a bit frustrating that Naida and Aira continue to get vehicles while Farran and Azari haven't had any. Still, I'm getting really excited!

Flying Dutchman would make sense with a $250 cost, considering that it's not only a huge ship but one with a disproportionate level of greebling and detail (compared to the much more clean-cut look of the Imperial Flagship).

You know, there's a third option besides buying aftermarket sets outside your price range and buying cheap illegal knock-offs. It's called "being a grown-up and knowing you don't always get everything you want". There are plenty of LEGO sets out there that are affordably priced and offer just as much value or more than similar-priced sets of the past. It's true that LEGO doesn't have any kind of monopoly on ABS plastics. However, if you think all ABS is chemically identical you're sorely mistaken — not only are there several different formulations of plastic that fall under the category of "ABS", but the possibility of impurities exists, which is part of why the LEGO Group takes great care in screening their raw materials. Also, LEGO and LEPIN alike use several different materials besides ABS. What about the rubber they use for tires, or the inks they use for printing, or the adhesives they use for stickers, or the metal they use for train axles? Toy companies in Europe and the Americas face constantly evolving safety regulations, and the LEGO Group has a reputation for remaining on the cutting edge of toy safety — there's a reason that only two of their products have ever been recalled for safety reasons. The LEGO Group's own internal safety standards are often actually stricter than legally mandated safety standards in the countries where they operate. Can LEPIN make that claim? We don't know. They are a brand founded on deception, and as such without analysis from an outside regulatory agency, it's impossible to know whether they adhere to any kind of reliable safety standards.

That's assuming LEGO fans will always see the mini-doll as some Johnny-come-lately minifigure substitute, which simply isn't a realistic expectation. The mini-doll was introduced in 2012, over four and a half years ago. That means in just a few years, there will be girls entering the age range for LEGO Friends who have never known a time that the mini-doll did not exist. In ten years, kids who were four when the mini-doll came out will be eighteen, and many of them might become AFOLs. As the LEGO brand changes, so too will the LEGO fan community. For instance, when it was launched fifteen years ago, Bionicle was treated basically as a punch line by the AFOL community as a whole, and many didn't consider it "real LEGO". Of course, there are still some curmudgeonly old AFOLs who believe Bionicle is worthless garbage, but as the millions of kids who grew up with Bionicle (including myself) have grown up, a considerable portion of them have joined the AFOL community, and now Bionicle hate among AFOLs is nowhere near as universal as it once was. So when you look at how certain segments of the AFOL community have already warmed up to the mini-doll, not to mention how warmly kids who previously never got bit by the LEGO bug have responded to it, what makes you so sure that it will never be respected by the wider AFOL community?

Chances are the Dragon Blacksmith set and "Dragon Wrought" are the same set, and one name or another was a mistranslation. That's the thing about leaks — you can't always count on specifics such as names to be accurate to the final product, particularly if the specific source isn't known. I'm guessing "Dragon Wrought" is a mistranslation since it doesn't particularly seem to make grammatical sense.

I think if any of the events of "Dark Island Trilogy" are mentioned in "Day of the Departed" it will be in passing, kind of like how Ronin was introduced in Possession as just a thief the ninja had met before, without going into too much detail about that prior meeting. In general, there have been quite a few times when stuff has been implied to happen between seasons without the context being really essential. For example, the ninja had various new jobs in the Season Four premiere, but it wasn't strictly necessary to know when or how they got those jobs.

Compared to Ninjago, maybe. But compared to past Pirates waves last year didn't seem so bad. 70410 had a lower PPP than 6240 or 6257, and as many or more figures. 70411 had a lower PPP than 6241 or and as many or more figures. 70412 had a lower PPP than 6242 or 6265, with one fewer figure than 6242 but two more than 6265. 70413 had a lower PPP than 6243 or 6274 and, technically, as many or more figures (Brickset lists it as one fewer than 6243 because the figurehead is not fully assembled; however, the legs you need to complete him are included loose elsewhere in the set so you can complete it if you so choose). This is all without making any adjustment for inflation. The only set that could be said to have an unusually high PPP was 70409, which cost 2.2 cents more per piece than 6239 but had the same number of figures. Even so, it still offered a much better PPP than classic Pirates sets like 6235 and 6245. As for new molds, there were six of them: the new bandana, the new sawfish jaw, the 3x6 half-circle plate, and the three new crocodile molds. As far as I remember, the 2009 Pirates theme had seven: the feather, spyglass, fish, dynamite, and two boat hull sections. So the latest Pirates theme has only slightly fewer new molds, assuming I'm not forgetting any from either year.

I picked up the graphic novel LEGO Ninjago: Dark Island Trilogy — Part 1 today at Barnes & Noble! I figured I'd offer a sort of a mini-review for anybody still on the fence about getting it. The book is hardcover and is way more classy-looking than any of the previous LEGO Ninjago graphic novels. The cover is a super-glossy metallic color with beautiful cover art. It measures 5¾ by 8¼ by ⅝ inches. There is no book jacket. The endpapers are decorated with art of Ninjago and the Dark Island in white on a stormy blue background. The cost marked on the back of the book is $14 USD/$17 CAD. The book begins with bios of the nine central characters in this volume: Sensei Wu, his six ninja, Misako, and Ronin. Rather than using stock art from trading cards and key visuals like many past graphic novels have, each ninja's bio is accompanied by art of them from one of the comic panels inside. The story (which is canon) is written by Greg Farshtey and the illustrations are by Paul Lee. It is told in two 20-page chapters, each of which is followed by 17 pages of Sensei Wu's journal that relate events prior to and during the events of this adventure. The journal pages include illustrations by Richard Suwono. Caravan Studios, where Suwono is employed, is also credited with providing additional inks and colors. The story is suspenseful yet high-intensity and mostly seems to fit neatly into the Ninjago canon, although there are some unanswered questions which might be addressed in the next two volumes. It takes place between the events of Season Six: Skybound and the special "Day of the Departed". Despite a lot of the action taking place on the Dark Island, and a lot of the enemies the ninja face being ones we've seen before, it doesn't end up feeling like it's retreading old ground. The characterization of the known characters feels very authentic to the series. It doesn't introduce any new named characters, but does feature the origin of one of the summer 2016 Ninjago sets. Although the illustrations generally feel very authentic to both the sets and the show, one quirk I noticed is that the ninja never wear hoods, masks, or shoulderpads during the events of the story (though they do in some panels depicting Sensei Wu's thoughts). Fans will be used to the show, and increasingly the sets, showing the ninja without hoods, but generally in the show they at least don them during fight scenes, whereas in this story they do not. The ninja also generally do not carry or use weapons except at the very beginning, but the reasons for this are pretty clearly explained by the events of the story. The book also includes a 57-page episode guide, which includes two pages of screenshots and captions to relate the events of each episode from the pilot and seasons one and two (the 57th page is because the season 2 finale, "Rise of the Spinjitzu Master", is spread across three pages). Overall this is maybe the most thorough yet easy-to-read summary of the story that's ever been available in book form. If we assume a similar two-season episode guide will accompany each volume of the Dark Island Trilogy, it might make this trilogy a great resource to recommend to new fans who want to understand the events of the past six seasons without watching the entire series. Overall I'd recommend this book to any fan of the show, particularly those who need something to get them through the hiatus between "Skybound" and "Day of the Departed" (although be aware that Part 3 will not be released until November 22, well after "Day of the Departed" airs). It has fewer actual comic pages than previous graphic novels, but makes up for it with exceptional quality of illustration, storytelling, and presentation.

The issue with that thinking is that regardless of what you read in the AFOL community, Legends of Chima WAS successful on the whole. It seemingly didn't end up having an even stronger launch than Ninjago like the LEGO Group had hoped, but it did end up lasting a solid three years, longer even than the two to two-and-a-half years Ninjago was originally intended to get. There was never any indication that Chima was ever expected or intended to last more than three years. And while certain Chima product lines like the Speedorz and buildable figures ended up being cancelled before it reached the end of its run, that's not to say that the theme as a whole was a failure or a disappointment. So why has the AFOL community continued to believe that Chima was a flop? Maybe because they wanted it to be one. Maybe because AFOLs and KFOLs alike can't help comparing it to Ninjago, even though Ninjago's longevity caught just about everybody by surprise, was not part of its original brand strategy, and might have done more to disrupt Chima than anything AFOLs ever said about it. Or maybe because the English-speaking AFOL community tends to be skewed towards Europe and North America, while the 2013 interim results mentioned that Chima "has performed particularly well in Asia, where it has been a strong contributor to the high growth." Whatever the case, in the 2013 annual report they mention that globally, LEGO Friends and LEGO Legends of Chima were the company's biggest sales growth drivers for the year as a whole. Overall, the possibility that Nexo Knights "might just be another Chima" isn't a remotely negative outcome for the theme. For all we know, it might be more or less the scenario the LEGO Group is hoping for.

I guess by "people" you mean "adults", because young girls (i.e. the users who are actually responsible for these themes' incredible success) generally prefer the mini-doll to the minifigure. Adults are outliers, kids are the core audience. The set designs are outstanding too, but it's hard to believe that kids would buy enough of a theme they despised the figures of to make it one of the top five LEGO themes year after year. In 2012, the LEGO Group sold twice as many LEGO Friends sets as they expected to. They had to increase production to meet demand for the sets in the run-up to the Christmas period. They still weren't able to meet demand. Olivia's House was the top-selling LEGO product that year out of all themes, and LEGO Friends was their fourth best-selling product line after City, Star Wars, and Ninjago, successfully tripling the number of girls playing with LEGO bricks in the U.S. market. In 2013, Friends experienced double-digit growth, and it and Legends of Chima together contributed the most to the company's overall 11% sales growth that year. In 2014 it was one of their best selling themes, and accounted for four of the ten best-selling sets. In 2015, Friends remained one of their top five themes. That year the LEGO Disney Princess set Elsa's Sparkling Ice Castle was their best-selling set that year, and the LEGO Friends Heartlake Grand Hotel was their fifth best selling set. Overall, I don't see how anybody can look at this evidence and assume that most LEGO Friends buyers do so with some kind of half-hearted reluctance. And AFOLs alone could never dream of commanding this kind of sales performance — clearly, girls have responded better to LEGO Friends than they have to just about any other LEGO product line in history. Couple that with the four years of research and development that went into LEGO Friends, and it starts to seem kind of silly to assume that the LEGO Group just somehow stumbled into this kind of success with a losing strategy, let alone that LEGO Friends would have somehow been a more monumental hit than it already is if the LEGO Group had ignored or rejected the results of their extensive research.

Why would what they put in the interim results affect whether it flops? The vast majority of their buyers (especially kids) don't read the interim results. Us AFOLs are outliers, and definitely nowhere near a big enough audience to support a theme this big if kids aren't into it.

The "different, therefore bad" complaints could probably be broken down into two different groups (the people who think it should be more like The LEGO Movie and the people who think it should be more like the Ninjago TV series), and there's also a subset of people who either don't get the appeal of Ninjago or are afraid non-FOLs won't get the appeal of it. But otherwise I agree with you, we haven't seen much to be really apprehensive about at this point. This is to be expected, because we haven't seen much at all, really (though I'm impressed that we've seen as much as we have with the movie still over a year from release).

If LEGO acquires the Voltron license via Ideas, I hope they also consider releasing one or more sets based on the new version of the series on Netflix. That's the first version of Voltron I've really gotten to experience firsthand (though of course I was aware of Voltron before that due to references in other media), and I really enjoyed it! My biggest concern about the Voltron project getting through Ideas is that it's pretty huge. Even if we're being conservative and estimate that the smaller lions for the arms could be $15 each, the mid-size lions for the legs could be $20 each, and the biggest lion $30, that's $100 altogether! And that's a lowball estimate. More realistically, I'd expect the smaller lions to be $20 each, the mid-size lions $25 each, and the biggest $35 —or a total of $125. Ideas sets have been getting bigger, and the set for the Saturn V Rocket will likely push that trend even further, but it still feels like a big jump from where they are now.

What is it with LEGO fans calling everything "creepy" nowadays? It's a bit out-of-proportion, but I don't really see anything creepy about it. Is "acting scared of kids' stuff" the new "acting too cool for kids' stuff"? The "prestige" costumes (the ones with the shaped legs) do look better than the ones that just have pants. Although, for Nexo Knights, they only have that type of costume for Clay. Aaron and Lance have to make do with the normal grey pants of the "deluxe" costumes. The whole selection (including Nexo Knights and Ninjago costumes) can be seen here.

It varies. Of the last three fire stations (7208, 60004, and 60110), each has contained substantially more than the last (in terms of weight, piece count, and number of minifigures), and the newest has both the lowest price per piece and the lowest price per gram. Of the last three air terminals (3182, 60022, and 60104), the sticker price has remained stable, but the newest one weighs the most, has one more minifigure, and has only nine fewer pieces than its counterpart from 2010. Of the last five police stations (7498, 4440, 60047, 60069, and 60130), this year's has the second lowest price per piece and price per gram, placing behind 60047 by a very narrow margin and ahead of any of the others by a wider margin. It also has the most minifigures. Of the last three full-size garbage trucks (7991, 4432, and 60118), the newest one has a price per piece and price per gram equal to or lower than either of its predecessors. All those comparisons are without making any inflation adjustments, so if you adjusted for inflation the prices on the current sets might look even more favorable. I acknowledge that there are certainly other sets (such as basically any ship with a floating hull) where the contents have failed to increase at the same rate as the price. And then there are sets like the new service station where it's tough to make any sense of their pricing (unless the City designers somehow decided people would pay that much more for an alternate model in a City set). But it definitely doesn't seem like there's been an across the board shift towards higher prices for less substance.

To me it looks mostly the same animation style as The LEGO Movie, just with life-size objects appearing as scenery instead of just as "relics". It still has a lot of the same sense of authenticity, though — All the plants, sand, etc. are scaled to the LEGO props and characters the same way they would be to real LEGO bricks and minifigures. There are differences in things like lighting and atmospheric effects, but we saw plenty of that in The LEGO Movie as well.

Yep, they also didn't include the Stone Armor, Tournament outfits, or the new throwback outfits. Kind of disappointing for me given how great it would have been to have similar graphics of those, but I understand they probably based the number of Wu-Cru graphics they created on the number of levels they intended to have and not the other way around.

It's not like there'd be any advantage to "getting rid of it fast". I mean, it would still take at least two years to develop a new Castle theme to take its place. It's just a distinction between "Nexo Knights ends in 2017 and Castle is renewed in 2019" and "Nexo Knights ends in 2018 and Castle is renewed in 2019". Castle isn't likely to come back any sooner either way. I agree that nothing about this interim result makes it sound like Nexo Knights has the same spark that Ninjago had in 2011, so in lieu of any huge upswing in popularity, it'll probably have a healthy two and a half to three year run and then retire, much like Chima did. And then in 2019, judging from previous cycles, we'll probably get a different take on LEGO Castle.

Really? I think it's quite easy. "Inferior" or "Superior" are value judgments that depend entirely on what is important to you in a figure. For some people, more lifelike shapes and proportions are a huge advantage even if it means a couple less points of articulation. The mini-doll's authenticity can make it easier for some people to understand it as an extension of themselves and not a cartoon caricature. The mini-doll has some functional advantages too. It's much easier to fit two mini-dolls side by side in a six-stud-wide vehicle than two minifigures, since their narrower shoulders allow them to sit side-by-side without a stud separating them. And minifigure skirts are either a printed pattern with no dimension to it, or a slope brick or textile element that prevents the character from sitting down. Mini-dolls generally can sit down just fine even if they're wearing skirts or full gowns — the only exception is Belle's hoop skirt from this year's Disney Princess sets. Mini-dolls with long hair can generally still turn their heads a considerable amount, whereas minifigures with long hair often can't due to their bulky torsos and shoulders obstructing the hair's rotation. Compared to that, minifigures have what? Individually moving wrists and legs? When developing the mini-doll, LEGO tested versions of it with articulated wrists, and girls didn't like it. A longer backlog of accessories? That has more to do with how long the minifigure's been around than any kind of functional advantages. A blockier shape? Hardly a discrete advantage. Personally, I find the Elves characters have much stronger designs as mini-dolls than they ever could have as minifigures. Their designs are authentic to the series' beautiful, slightly animesque art direction (somewhere that the Exo-Force theme fell short, with stubby noseless yellow characters in the sets and more believably human characters in its comics and media). They have details that would've been difficult or impossible to achieve on minifigures, like detailed printed shoes and distinctive skirt and trouser styles. Their varied skin and eye colors give them a sense of diversity that non-licensed minifigures often lack. And of course, as the LEGO Group has found, most girls greatly prefer mini-dolls over minifigures. I'm sorry your daughter doesn't enjoy the mini-dolls, and even more sorry that the type of figure is a deal-breaker for her when it comes to the Elves sets, because they truly are outstanding models, and many of them would be even if they didn't include any figures. Your daughter's not wrong for disliking the mini-doll, as ultimately that's just a matter of personal preference. However, it's probably not fair to generalize and assume no girls will ever have more than a fleeting interest in the mini-doll, and it's certainly wrong to call them the "inferior figure" as if that could ever be anything more than a subjective assessment.

I found the sensei robes by editing the URL of the images themselves (i.e. going to the image of the level 11 robes and changing every "11" in the URL to "12"), so if there were any descriptions connected with them I wasn't able to see them.

We're seeing it this early because it's not from the movie, which launches next year, but from "The Master: A LEGO Ninjago Short", which launches ahead of the movie "Storks" later this month. Anyway, looks pretty amazing!

I don't think the LEGO Group would cancel a theme worldwide to cut losses in the Americas unless that theme was struggling in other parts of the world and was mainly being sustained for the sake of the American market. Moreover, this year's interim results only describe a slight decline in sales. It's enough of a decline to make the LEGO Group seek to respond, but not enough to send them immediately into crisis management mode. What's more, these figures only apply to the first half of this year, which seems far too recent for the decision to end Bionicle to have been made in response to them. The LEGO Group's 2015 annual result and LEGO Systems, Inc.'s 2015 year-end highlights both reported double-digit growth in the United States. According to Reuters, the main reason for flat sales in the Americas is something nobody I've seen no forum commentators suggest: LEGO invested less in marketing in the Americas this year in response to difficulty keeping up with demand. However, that issue very well MIGHT explain the decision to end Bionicle — it could be that it was in fact making money, but the LEGO Group needed to cut it so they could increase production and distribution of other themes like City, Star Wars, Friends, and Ninjago that were struggling to satisfy their extremely high demand.

I'd like to hope so! But I don't know if the current state of things really supports that. Already it's "conventional wisdom" that LEGO is getting way too expensive, even though for the most part the actual value in bricks (by piece count or by weight) has simply kept pace with or outpaced inflation. LEGO City, Star Wars, and Technic are basically the only current themes that have proven they can still support normal retail sets at a $150 or higher price point. All other $150+ sets tend to be D2C sets like the Imperial Flagship. Friends is the next non-licensed theme that I'd expect to grow to those higher price points — its biggest set so far has been the Heartlake Grand Hotel at $130/1552 pieces, which was one of last year's top selling sets. If it retires next year, we may see another set as expensive or more so to take its place. Most other LEGO themes tend to peak at $120 or $100, if not lower. If Pirates can't achieve lasting success with today's kids at those kinds of lower price points, it's hard to imagine it suddenly achieving that kind of success at higher ones.