Aanchir

The Ninjago panel from SDCC is live!

I don't really like the new thigh shells that much from these pictures, but it's nice that they have more connection points than just the ball snap. Jyn's new torso shell seems well-proportioned and could probably be used effectively with different printing in the future, even though its connections and printing seem just as limiting as the previous Star Wars torso shell. I'm still disappointed that they gave Jyn a hat — I'm sure she wears it at some point in the movie, so it's probably not inaccurate, but her head piece would be a lot more versatile without headgear. On the bright side, as with Rey, it doesn't appear that the choice was made for the purpose of hiding her gender, which I was genuinely afraid they'd do with Rey since they could have easily had her mask covering her face. The face sculpt is high quality, and as with previous head sculpts, it matches the CCBS's distinctive blend of smooth curves and angular, well-defined contours. I'd say her gun is the most creative build yet to use that blaster housing. The Death Trooper uses some creative techniques for their gun and munitions, but monochrome figures like that tend to sort of bore me, particularly on a generic trooper physique. That's part of why I haven't ended up picking up Phasma, the First Order Stormtrooper, or Kylo Ren yet. K-2SO is even more monochrome, but has an incredibly creative build that helps redeem it somewhat. It feels very robotic, but in this case it's supposed to, and it's neat to see that yes, droids can translate well into Star Wars buildable figures. It has a weirdly cute face considering its spooky-looking physique and color scheme. Overall, Jyn appeals to me most out of the new figures, but perhaps not as much as Rey did with her brighter color palette and interesting combination of basic shells and textiles.

If the Comic-Con exclusives are any indication, the BrickHeadz' recommended age range will be 10+, positioning them more as collectibles like LEGO Architecture than as play figures like the Mixels (which are recommended for ages 6+). With that kind of age rating, there's no way that BrickHeadz are meant to replace any kid-focused play theme. We know the age rating is not just because of their exclusive status, because SDCC exclusive minifigures are all marked for ages 5+ (for the 2013 ones without accessories) or 6+ (for the later ones with accessories), and other SDCC building sets from the past several years have been marked for ages 8–14.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie was originally scheduled for September 2016 but was postponed to 2017. The same goes for The LEGO Movie Sequel, which was originally scheduled for 2018 and delayed to 2019. The spin-offs were confirmed to exist in the same universe early in their development. In this interview, Chris Miller says that outright: "The thing is about these movies is that each of them have their own tone and their own voice. We’re doing this Ninjago one with Charlie Bean, we’re working on the Batman one, and each one of them feels like its own movie, but obviously they all exist in the universe that the Lego movie existed in, and so finding that balance has been part of the trick." That's sort of how I saw things as well. In fact, we've seen that Emmet has some degree of agency even in Finn's world, so I think it's a lot more believable that they are two separate worlds that sort of cross paths with each other than that Emmet's world is a make-believe one that only exists in one family's basement.

This looks fantastic. You really did a great job fitting it to the style of Jestro's lair while still keeping it distinct (i.e. using 90-degree angles instead of 135-degree angles on the towers). I feel like it might benefit from using a bit more Tr. Bright Orange. For instance, if the Dark Stone Grey 1x1 round bricks that the spikes are attached to were swapped with Tr. Bright Orange 1x1 cones, it would better match the colors of Jestro's lair as well as the smaller encampment in the Black Knight Mech set. A bit more red wouldn't hurt either, but I'm not sure where best to integrate it since you'd want to keep it as an accent color rather than as broad fields of color. The use of the Transparent Bright Orange 5x5 saw blade piece to hold spare weapons is very inspired! I also like the squirebot cart, which really feels like a great modernization of one of the oldest siege weapons, the battering ram.

I'm pretty sure Castle is still considered evergreen. There may not be new Castle sets every year without fail, but a new take on LEGO Castle comes out like clockwork every three years. People can dispute all they like whether Nexo Knights is a "true" Castle theme in AFOL terms, but I think LEGO made a deliberate choice to launch it in accordance with this cycle so it wouldn't be in conflict with a separate ongoing Castle series. I also feel like Ninjago is definitely still drawing in younger kids, judging from the new Ninjago-themed Juniors sets that came out earlier this year. The increasing profile of streaming services like Netflix may be helping to extend its life, since LEGO does not entirely depend on TV networks to air reruns for new fans to discover the characters and world. Things I read on Twitter also indicate that it has a devoted following both from younger kids who are just getting into it and older kids and teens who were introduced to it in the early years. Each season has a separate central conflict, but follows the same cast of characters. The show is also pretty open to changes in the status quo that affect future seasons, as opposed to some other long-running shows like Pokémon or SpongeBob SquarePants that tend to be much more beholden to a status quo. That said, the Ninjago TV series is still plenty episodic, so if you jump in with a random episode, it will usually devote at least a bit of time to setting up any essential context you'll need to be aware of later in the episode (like specific characters' abilities, relationships, and objectives).

I wouldn't necessarily assume that. Last year LEGO gave away free $50 and $60 Ninjago sets with the Temple of Airjitzu on specific days, even though Ninjago was one of their top-selling themes that year. And Toys 'R' Us gave away free $10 Airjitzu fliers with $50 purchases earlier this year.

Zane's hair in the new sets isn't painted or lacquered. It's possible it's just the mold getting old. LEGO molds do wear out and need replacing after a certain amount of use. No, if you're talking the color of Zane's hair, it comes in the same types of plastic as any other color, just with an additive to give it its metallic appearance.

Yep. It never became bigger than Ninjago like some early interviews suggested LEGO hoped/expected it to be (I think the failure of the Speedorz to live up to the popularity of the Ninjago spinners held it back), but it basically lasted as long as they had planned for it from the outset. Which is pretty good, considering that even Ninjago wasn't originally expected to last more than two and a half years, and is only around today because of how far it exceeded its initial expectations.

In answer to your question, some Space themes in the past have launched in the winter and others have launched in the summer. For instance, Space Police III's first wave was a summer 2009 release. Alien Conquest was a summer 2011 release. Galaxy Squad's first wave was a Winter 2013 release in North America and a Summer 2013 release in the UK. So there's no specific rule on when Space themes launch, but summer releases seem to have been more common. It probably varies depending on lots of factors like production capacities and what other themes it would be running alongside.

I think the biggest obstacle the Women of NASA project will face in review is that it depicts several real people, and as such, LEGO needs to reach agreements with all those people (or their next of kin, for those who are deceased). That might be more complicated than your run of the mill licensing agreement.

leninjamarron on Flickr has an album of photos here. The figures look pretty good. Both Nya and Zane have new face prints. The biggest drawback I see is that Nya doesn't have back printing, possibly because she's the only one of the four figs with two face prints.

Polybags in general rarely include exclusive molds, and magazine gift sets never even include exclusive recolors, let alone exclusive molds. Frankly if the LEGO Group doesn't have any current plans to release the Mask of Ultimate Power, there's no way they could design, produce, and release a set containing it between now and the end of this year. They just don't operate on that short a timetable.

None of those things you mentioned even comes close to amounting to a promise or a guarantee. There were all kinds of characters and creatures in the Bionicle G1 story that didn't become sets (Makuta's Matoran form from the Mata Nui Online Game, various other Matoran characters like Kotu and Tamaru, various Rahi from video games and online games, Graalok the ash bear, the mutated Kikanalo from the 2005 Bionicle comics, the Mata Nui robot), and even all kinds of things in the Ninjago TV series that haven't become sets (the Serpentine moving fortress, the Overlord's dragon form from the Season 2 finale, various Stone Army vehicles like the Tusk Invader and Hover Glider, Borg Industries mechs, Borg Tower, Master Chen's blimp, the Preeminent from the Season 5 finale). If those sorts of things amount to "promises", then LEGO has been breaking promises left and right for well over a decade. LEGO is fully at liberty to show us things, even important things, and not release them as sets, particularly when they're forced to end a line prematurely due to weak sales and don't realistically have any other choice. Do you honestly expect ANY company to design and release a product, fully expecting it to be unsuccessful, just to fulfill "promises" they never actually made?

I've thoroughly enjoyed Bionicle G2, so it certainly wasn't wasted on me. It feels kind of unreasonable to act like cool things should never be shown to fans unless those fans are subsequently given the means to buy and/or build them. Complaints like that are the reason LEGO no longer puts inspiration models on most boxes — because they got too many calls from parents who felt that showing kids cool examples of what they could build with their own imaginations and then not going to the extra expense to make and release instructions was false advertising.

I haven't heard anything about how it's doing. I'd assume the show's not doing as amazingly well as Ninjago was in 2011 or 2012, or else we'd already be hearing about the show bringing in tremendous numbers of viewers for its timeslot. But then again, Cartoon Network has managed to draw in HUGE numbers of viewers with shows like Steven Universe lately due to changes in how they schedule them (airing new episodes each weekday for a week or longer, instead of just one episode per week), so it could just be that the bar for newsworthy viewership ratings is a lot higher than it was back then. As for the sets, we usually don't hear a lot about how sets are selling until the interim result comes out in September, and even then it's usually just in very generalized terms (i.e. "such-and-such had a successful launch and is on track for a good year").

I think the LEGO Ninjago movie sets are more likely to come out at least a month before the movie, like maybe August 1st (just like how the first LEGO Movie sets and the first LEGO Batman Movie sets are January releases when the movies both launched in February). With that in mind, I don't expect to see a separate summer wave in addition to that.

Not true — according to CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp in this article from last year, licensed products "contribute no more of our business than about a third." He says more or less the same thing in this interview, and also adds that this has been the status quo for over ten years, rather than being a recent phenomenon. In last year's annual result, only two of the five top-selling sets (Elsa's Sparking Ice Castle and the Millennium Falcon) and only one of the five top-selling themes (Star Wars) were licensed ones. What's more, if Bionicle wasn't selling in numbers great enough to justify its continued existence, then its cancellation shouldn't shift the balance in favor of licensed themes, particularly when in-house brands like City, Ninjago, Friends, and Elves continue to thrive. It's only the constraction category where the in-house themes seem to be struggling more and more with each passing year, and even licensed themes don't appear to be a guaranteed hit in that category — after all, Super Heroes constraction sets only lasted one year compared to Legends of Chima's two. Whatever reasons there may be to worry about what Bionicle's cancellation means for the future of LEGO, licensed themes aren't one of them.

Could just be that they want to launch something new which could potentially appeal to even more kids. Or, it could be that the Cartoon Network partnership involved a limited-time contract and one of the two parties didn't want to renew it. Mixels occupies a sort of weird licensing space since it's co-developed by LEGO and Cartoon Network, unlike Ninjago or Legends of Chima which Cartoon Network airs but isn't involved in producing. I wouldn't make any assumptions based on the lack of a Comic-Con presence, though. After all, it might just be that Cartoon Network wanted their space at the LEGO booth to go towards promoting the Adventure Time set from Ideas.

I've never seen any real evidence that Chima flopped badly. A lot of the sets got heavily clearanced in the United States, but the fact that they kept releasing so many sets year after year suggests that in Europe it was successful for them. It's also worth noting that Chima could manage to get a lot smaller. So for instance, the 2014 constraction sets were only released in Europe due to low North American sales, and the last wave of Speedorz in 2014 was cancelled outright, which allowed it to remain profitable for another year. But Bionicle G2 was never as big a theme to begin with, so they didn't have so many stages they could go through to lower its profile. Generally, Chima's one of those themes that a lot of AFOLs like to assume was never even marginally successful, but then, there are still to this day a lot of AFOLs who have a hard time believing Ninjago or Bionicle G1 were ever successful.

EMILY: I love the birds and the way they sing for me RAGANA: I love the face you make when I make you scream EMILY: I believe in kindness RAGANA: And I couldn't care less EMILY: I try to be the best person I can be RAGANA: I'm gonna rule you and everyone who laughed at me EMILY: Love and forgiveness RAGANA: Love's only weakness EMILY: I love rainbows RAGANA: I love scarecrows BOTH: I do believe I could make you think twice If you could see the world through my eyes I do believe I could change you from somewhere deep inside RAGANA: I believe in what I do EMILY: I believe in what I see RAGANA: I believe my point of view BOTH: And you can't take that from me! EMILY: I believe in friendship and unity RAGANA: I just need someone to do my hair for me EMILY: We unite the magic RAGANA: You guys are tragic EMILY: I am the sun, the hills, and the mountain streams RAGANA: I am the song you sing in your darkest dreams EMILY: Magic in the making RAGANA: Magic for the taking BOTH: I do believe I could make you think twice If you could see the world through my eyes! I do believe I could change you from somewhere deep inside I do believe I could make you think twice (Emily: Rainbows! Ragana: Scarecrows! Emily: Snowflakes! Ragana: Earthquakes!) If you could see the world through my eyes (Emily: Laughing! Flowers! Ragana: Dark spell powers!) I do believe I could change you from somewhere deep inside RAGANA: I believe in what I do EMILY: I believe in what I see RAGANA: I believe my point of view BOTH: I believe it to be true… and you can't take that from me!

Kind of a moot question. Generally, themes that have more fans make more money and themes that have less fans make less money. If a theme isn't making money, then chances are more fans would be served by investing in more successful themes, or in new themes with the potential to appeal to a wider range of fans. LEGO doesn't have unlimited resources, so they can't keep all their less successful themes around for ever-shrinking groups of fans while also growing their more popular themes and introducing new themes for new groups of fans. Loyalty to the dollar IS loyalty to the fans if the fans are where the dollars are coming from. Also, if a theme is not successful, then chances are a lot of stores won't want to carry them (the retailers want to make money too), which means even if LEGO did introduce a Mask of Ultimate Power mold, finding a way to get it to enough fans to both satisfy their desire for for that mask and subsidize the cost of making the mold could be tricky.

She'd need a redesign, because the Phantom Ninja as she appeared in the graphic novel (and Samurai X Cave easter egg) wears a metal mask and helmet instead of a cloth mask and hood. The headgear from the comic also has sort of a headband shape that the Rogue's headgear lacks.

Congratulations, you named a bunch of a potential problems with the LEGO Group's marketing approach for G2. But none of the problems even come close to refuting my point: that the ways LEGO DID choose to market G2 Bionicle, effective or not, required effort, care, and money. I'm getting really sick of all these claims that LEGO didn't care or didn't try or was too cheap just because the ways they DID focus their efforts, care, and money weren't effective enough to make the line successful. Particularly when so many of these same marketing techniques have been used effectively for other themes in the past but now suddenly weren't enough. Sure, many of these marketing techniques were more likely to reach LEGO fans than non-LEGO fans. But at a time when the LEGO fan community is bigger and wider-reaching than it has ever been before, when LEGO is being praised in marketing circles for the effectiveness of their social media strategies on sites like YouTube and Facebook, why does promotion via those kinds of sites and communities suddenly not count for squat? LEGO even ran Bionicle TV spots and trailers as ads before other YouTube videos. But kids don't watch YouTube, I guess? The amount of flak the Bionicle books get for taking so long to come out is likewise ridiculous. People bash the first chapter book and graphic novel for not coming out until August and December, but even so, the chapter book was literally the FIRST piece of media to reveal the entire summer story! And the Bionicle graphic novel was originally scheduled for November, so its later release was clearly due to unforeseen delays, not a lack of care or money or effort. Furthermore, the first LEGO Ninjago chapter books didn't come out until September of 2011, and the first Ninjago graphic novel wasn't out until October (or, in many countries, until years later), yet Ninjago still managed to become the LEGO Group's most successful launch year of any new product line ever. More recently, the first LEGO Elves chapter book came out August 25th of last year. Does that sound familiar? It should, because that's the same day the first LEGO Bionicle chapter book launched. LEGO Elves, by the way, is still going strong, even though its TV specials' Disney Channel premieres get pretty much zero promotion even on LEGO.com, Facebook, and the LEGO magazines! There's no official LEGO Elves Facebook page at all, no LEGO Elves graphic novels, no LEGO Elves designer videos, hardly any presence at all for LEGO Elves at events like Comic-Con, and only two LEGO Elves apps which are advertised no more than their Bionicle counterparts. Its webisodes, fewer books than Bionicle, store displays, and barely-advertised TV specials are practically all the promotion it gets. It has no heritage as a beloved classic LEGO theme, no nostalgic credentials to call its own. And still it thrives. It's starting to look like a lack of promotional investment isn't the real problem, huh? Maybe today's kids just don't care for Bionicle sets the way kids once did.

I think Robin's got a lot more in common with Nya than with Lloyd. If Ava's the team's top programmer, Robin's the team's top engineer. I haven't seen a single thing pointing towards him having any sort of chosen one or team leader role in the future. If Ava does in fact end up becoming Merlok's apprentice/successor, than I think she's the team member who would be the closer analogue to Lloyd. Being the student of the last remaining wizard in the realm feels a lot more chosen one-ish than just being an expert at building machines, particularly since it was Merlok's wizardry that actually defeated Monstrux when he threatened Knighton long ago.