Aanchir

The New York Toy Fair display cards listed them for August, but those cards only apply to the North American release dates. From what I've seen the Elves sets are June releases in many European countries.

Having spoken to the designers myself last year I can answer that with a firm "no". Mind you, the person who leaked it did so on purpose, but they were not supposed to, and were breaking an NDA by doing so. It was not a promotional stunt.

Maybe you aren't. The UK is getting the new Ninjago and Nexo Knights sets sooner than the United States, after all, so maybe there was a trade-off.

I think you're misremembering that quote from Wyldstyle. The word "LEGO" is actually not spoken by any character in The LEGO Movie, not even the human ones. LEGO Dimensions and I think also the LEGO Movie video game do break this rule, though (Unikitty specifically mentions "rainbow colored LEGO bricks" in one of the first cutscenes of LEGO Dimensions). The characters in The LEGO Movie do hold bricks and put them together, but really, is that all that much different than putting things together from any other sort of materials. To the characters of The LEGO Movie, the parts they construct things from aren't strictly plastic bricks — they're wooden floorboards, metal beams, cinder blocks, mechanical parts like engines, etc. Is the work of Emmet's construction team in the early scenes of the movie really much different from the ninja assembling the pier in Stiix and Stones? Is the characters of The LEGO Movie working together to build a spaceship to sneak into President Business's office building really that different from Nya and Dr. Julien working together to build vehicles on the Dark Island? Really, a lot of stuff is constructed over the course of the LEGO Ninjago TV series — the biggest difference from The LEGO Movie is that in Ninjago, a lot of the vehicles and things are built off-screen, and we only get to see it once it's finished. So I don't think you'd need to radically alter the story to incorporate more building, just show more of the sort of building we already know happens.

Good review! Thank you for explaining the problem with the gear shift and how to correct it. I'm not a gearhead so it would never have occurred to it. Since all the correct parts exist in the model, correcting this issue should be a lot easier than problems like the LEGO Ideas Wall-E set's neck. All it really needs is an errata sheet for the instructions as a placeholder until new instructions can be printed with the next production run, and fixing it for people who bought a set without the errata sheet is as simple as releasing it online. I'm 25 and I prefer color-coded pins and axles whenever possible, even in my own MOCs. I pretty much have since they were first introduced back in 2003 or so. They're rarely very noticeable for me on a finished model, and when they are I don't think they detract from the overall look. Some LEGO fans think colored pins should only be used when they match the color of the model, but the chief purpose of colored pins is to make it easier to identify them, whether in the instructions and in a pile of parts. Coloring pins to match the other parts of a model would essentially defeat the purpose, making the building experience more tedious and frustrating instead of less. Mind you, when a pin or axle is being used decoratively, like Quidditch poles from LEGO Harry Potter, teeth on a Bionicle model, or guard rails on a building or vehicle, I have no problem with them being colored according to their function. But when they're being used purely as connectors, I think the advantages of being able to identify them at a glance and not confuse them with similar-sized axles and pins significantly outweigh the disadvantages of some tiny spots of color here and there on a finished model. What Lyi brings up about this model having the potential to draw in less experienced adult builders is a good point as well. I'd compare it to how some recent Architecture sets like 21026 Venice have callouts to make sure you don't confuse bricks of similar shape and size. While these sets are definitely aimed at mature and sophisticated builders, they are not necessarily aimed at people with lifelong LEGO building experience. It's harder to market them as classy gifts for sophisticated adults if they alienate adults who never quite escaped their "dark ages" and haven't built a LEGO set in years, let alone one this large and complex. I do not think the 16+ age range is all that surprising. After all, Temple of Airjitzu is 14+, and having built both it and the chassis of the Porsche I'd say the latter is undoubtedly the more complex set. The piece count of the Porsche is the third highest of any Technic set ever, and the gearbox and paddle shifter mechanisms are more complex than the gearbox of any other Technic set I've built (mind you, I've built the Unimog and Mobile Crane MK II, but not the Arocs). The instructions are difficult to follow as well. Many other sets (Technic and System alike) I have built while watching movies or TV shows in the background, but I am fairly sure I could not have built the chassis of this set with those sorts of distractions. There is also the building and play experiences to consider. Just as an Architecture set might be tedious, frustrating, and not very rewarding for an eight year old even if its building techniques are simple enough, I think this set, as complex as it is, could have similar potential to bore or frustrate younger builders. Compared to the new Bucket Wheel Excavator or Arocs, which have more varied color palettes and more diverse structures and mechanisms, the Porsche might seem very monotonous to a 12-year-old or 14-year-old. Especially since all the functional elements are all concentrated in the chassis rather than distributed throughout the entire building process. For an adult who seeks elegance and authenticity, it has a lot to offer. For a teen who hopes for a building experience with more variety and surprises throughout the entire process, not so much. Playability-wise, a younger teen might also be less impressed by the number of speeds on the gearbox than with a set that can switch between lots of discrete functions. The 24 Hours Race Car is a simpler set, but it has gear-driven gull wing doors and a gear-driven engine cover. This car... well, it drives, steers, and changes gears, but that's about it. That may be fairly authentic to what a real supercar can do, but it's not quite so action-packed. The working steering wheel and paddle shifters add to the authenticity but not so much to the playability, since they are harder to access while rolling the car around than externally mounted steering knobs and switches. It's not strictly a display model, since it has moving parts and working functions, but it's not really a model for zooming around the kitchen table, either. Definitely a more "grown-up" sort of set.

It hasn't really "died". In fact, there was a developer diary posted earlier this month. But I suppose there's just not a whole lot of people here who are interested in discussing it compared to other games like LEGO Dimensions. The only reason I haven't been discussing or playing it myself is because there's still no Mac version.

Nope. They aired the first episode of Skybound back in March as a "sneak peek" and ran a promo afterwards saying the show would return again in May. But obviously it got pushed back, possibly by the five week Steven Universe "In Too Deep" event this month since that has also been airing at 7:00 on Thursdays. Airing this season closer to the middle of the year rather than the first quarter might have been a strategic decision since Nexo Knights aired in January and March, so they didn't want to air such similar shows too close together. They also might've wanted position the Skybound premieres somewhere in between the March and August launch dates, since there are Skybound sets in both of those waves. I know a lot of people have been really frustrated about this wait and especially about the unannounced schedule change. I don't mind waiting so much personally (the episodes are already made, after all), but I wish it hadn't taken this long to get a confirmed date when the series would be returning. I understand that's how a lot of kids' TV works, though — the networks don't want to show too much of their hand to their competitors until a couple weeks in advance. Getting new episodes announced on short notice happens with a lot of the other shows I watch too, like Steven Universe and Miraculous. As for this almost certainly pushing Season 7 back in the United States, it'll be frustrating having to dodge spoilers from other countries, but I've been dealing with that for like three seasons now so I'm kind of used to it. And not having Season 7 air right when the sets come out might make it easier for me to avoid buying all the sets on impulse, meaning I can be on the lookout for good sales and deals. One thing I'm still wondering is when seasons four and five will be added to Netflix.

It's not impossible for the TV show and movie to have separate continuities. That's how other merchandise-driven franchises like Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have handled things lately. Granted, that's a difference between animated cartoons and live action movies rather than animated cartoons and an animated movie. But it still shows that a toy line can handle separate ongoing continuities. Of course, it's also possible that the movie universe and TV universe will be linked somehow, in which case they might influence each other or even share a continuity. But making them the same continuity could present problems if, say, the movie gets a sequel and then everything that happened in the TV show between the two movies has to be accounted for in the second. There are a lot of ways LEGO could handle things and I think it's too early to rule things out. Technically, the ninja DID use the tornado of creation to create the Ultra Sonic Raider in the season two finale. The tornado of creation, in all its appearances, pretty blatantly represents taking parts from the surrounding area and rebuilding them into something new, so it could arguably be even MORE effective in a world that's actually made of LEGO than in a world that isn't. I see absolutely no reason that building couldn't be incorporated into the story in other ways as well, especially if it's a different continuity. I also see no reason to worry about fight scenes, as fight scenes in The LEGO Movie were generally pretty strong to begin with, and the creators of the LEGO Ninjago movie would have every reason to push its fight scene choreography even further. And as for the characters acknowledging that their world is LEGO, none of the LEGO characters in The LEGO Movie acknowledged that, so I don't expect it to be any different in this universe. Bionicle is a very different series, and came out at a time when the LEGO Group was trying to target kids who didn't ordinarily like LEGO building. Ninjago, on the other hand, makes no apologies for being a LEGO theme. The main reasons the world isn't entirely made out of LEGO in the TV show are production constraints and British broadcast constraints (which Samuel Johnson discusses in this interview, in reference to Legends of Chima). A theatrical movie wouldn't face nearly such strict constraints in either of those categories. Anyway, Season Six premieres Thursday, June 9th in the United States! There's also going to be a ten-hour marathon Sunday, June 5th consisting of the Season 3 finale and all of Seasons 4 and 5, if anybody needs to get caught up.

The last time we got battle packs in an action theme was with Ninjago, just last year. I guess you were referring to the Chima battle packs, but even that theme lasted three years. I wouldn't call that "dying swiftly" at all.

So far it seems like only the two-stud version comes over-molded in two colors, while the four-stud version is always molded in just one color.

Tintin isn't unknown in the States by any means. Maybe not as relevant as it once was, but I grew up watching the Adventures of Tintin cartoon on Nickelodeon in the 90s and reading the classic comic books at my local library. The 2011 movie by Steven Spielberg was commercially and critically successful, and last we heard its sequel The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun is being released towards the end of this year, though it may have been pushed back. All in all, I think Tintin is a lot more relevant today than the A-Team. Let's not forget the attempted movie reboot of the A-Team underperformed in the box office and isn't getting a sequel (though there is a project underway to reboot the series yet again for TV in 2017). So if that franchise appears in LEGO Dimensions this year, it'll be riding purely on 80s nostalgia. The Adventures of Tintin is a much older franchise, but due to its movie incarnation it's still pretty relevant. All that said, I think Adventure Time still seems like the most likely candidate for the "AT" packs, though I could be wrong.

I think it's fantastic and absolutely works on multiple levels. That said, I'm just 25 and my interests often skew younger than a lot of people's. Most of the shows I'm into these days are cartoons aimed at kids like Steven Universe, Miraculous!, My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, and of course LEGO Ninjago. The Ninjago story has gotten a bit darker and more sophisticated as the years have gone on, but even season one had some incredible episodes like "Home", "Tick Tock", and "Day of the Great Devourer". It has a good balance of action, sincerity, and humor. The soundtrack of the series is absolutely incredible, and the visuals have gotten better and better with each passing season. The cheesiest moments take place in the first half of season two ("Darkness Shall Rise" through "Wrong Place, Wrong Time"), which indulges pretty heavily in cartoon silliness and Saturday morning cartoon cliches (fighting evil doppelgangers, entering a race, being turned into kids, going back in time, etc), but the second half of season two takes things in a much more serious direction. I would not consider it a masterpiece on the level of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but then again, few shows are!

All the hover horses are built roughly the same, only the colors (and the handlebars, in Axl's case) vary. But there is one horse color-coded to each of the five knights. I'm not sure what you mean by "stand up". They won't fall over when the knights are riding them, if that's what you're asking. The weight is balanced pretty well. But there isn't really any way to have them rear up like a real horse, since they don't have legs (so even if they could balance in an upright position, they'd probably end up looking less like horses and more like seahorses).

True, but the lack of monorail sets hasn't been for lack of opportunities. LEGO could have easily put a monorail in City, Space Police III, The LEGO Movie or even Nexo Knights if they thought there was money in it. But LEGO monorails have never been successful, even back when monorails were still considered the future of transportation. With as obscure as they are nowadays, it's hard to imagine a real justification for a new monorail system. Maybe we could get a monorail via LEGO Ideas if somebody could come up with a sturdy, inexpensive system that uses only parts that are still in circulation, but that's no easy task.

According to the online LEGO Shop, you're getting them June 1st! But I know that brick-and-mortar retailers can sometimes be slower to get them than shop.LEGO.com. I'm kind of surprised the new "coming soon" listings don't tell us a lot of really new story details, besides confirming that Chris and Martin are students of Sensei Yang. I like that the swords of the Skulkin Mech are identified as silver Dark Blades, as I'm pretty sure that is how they were described on the original Ninjago website, so it's a nice callback. The Rock Roader description does reveal a new function for it: by pressing down on it so the center wheel underneath makes contact with the ground you can fire the rapid shooter on the front or spin the drill! I'd wondered what that center wheel was for and now I guess I know!

The unique plate in the Porsche is less like the one in 41999 (which was a serial number) and more like the ones in 70813, 70814, 70815, 70816, (which were codes to unlock digital content). In this case the digital content will be online rather than in a video game, but the principle is the same. Rest assured that this set is not going to be anywhere CLOSE to as limited as 41999.

One thing that surprises me is that the collectible minifigures have never had a single fireman! I know firemen are ubiquitous in LEGO City, but so are policemen and that doesn't seem to have held LEGO back from doing the Policeman, Constable, and Traffic Cop (not to mention Chief Wiggum and Scribble-Face Bad Cop in the themed series). But this isn't the wish list topic so I don't want to get too deep into what specific occupations the CMFs have yet to get around to. Suffice to say there are plenty of them, some of which seem like they'd be pretty obvious candidates for future series! While we've seen somewhat of an increase in themed series since 2014, it's certainly not due to a lack of material for non-themed series to draw from.

Great insights! I love getting behind-the-scenes info like this. I definitely prefer studless Technic for a lot of applications. And really, this is one of the more unusual "old vs. new" debates in the LEGO community since studded Technic parts never really went away, they're just no longer the default for Technic and constraction models. Studded Technic still makes loads of sense when you need those extra connection points to attach System parts (System themes with a lot of Technic functions like Ninjago and Nexo Knights still make great use of studded Technic beams), but I think for Technic or constraction models it's nice when you can have parts flush with each other without worrying about the corners colliding at certain angles. Especially when you have something that's going to function as a hinge, a studless beam needs less clearance around the axis of rotation. I think studless Technic also improves the aesthetics of modern Technic models a lot. I've never been in the "all LEGO studs should be hidden" camp, but when you have them showing on a model at all kinds of odd angles like in 8880 I think it can be distracting.

Yep, I brought that up when the images first surfaced on the LEGO.com cache. Really amazing easter egg! :D

Oh my goodness, I love General Magmar's face! His sneer and sideburns remind me of General Zhao from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The face seems to suit his personality as described in The Book of Monsters, where he's presented as what TV Tropes would call "affably evil". He's apparently a lot more intelligent and cultured than most of the other magma monsters.

Haha! The really irritating thing though is that I can't even wear my orange coat to conventions I bring my sigfig to a lot of the time, because many of the conventions I attend are in the spring or summer when it's too warm. Now that LEGO has finally started producing minifigures with short sleeves I'm always paying attention to new releases in hopes of finding something looks like a shirt I might wear in the warmer months. Honestly, I love CMFs for their individual designs and all, but I'm also always on the lookout for sigfig parts. I've been tempted to pick up Blacktron Fan's torso from The LEGO Movie, since I do often wear a red flannel shirt with a T-shirt underneath. I don't actually have a Blacktron T-shirt, but I'd definitely love wearing one if I did! The torso with red flannel shirt and Ford T-shirt from Speed Champions is also nice, but I'm not really a car person and can't picture myself wearing a Ford T-shirt for the life of me. Not when I have so many LEGO and My Little Pony T-shirts I'd rather be wearing.

I actually really love both expressions on this minifigure — the scuff marks and frown on the one side and the smirk and tooth gap on the other do an equally good job showing that Macy is a rough, tough fighter, and the tooth gap is pretty adorable too! I really like the colorful armor of the Nexo Knights, including the transparent parts. The use of the gold and orange lines really makes the armor look like it's buzzing with energy. It kind of gives me a MegaMan Battle Network vibe and makes them look like cyber-knights. But I also think you could conceivably use the transparent armor pieces as fantasy crystal armor, kind of like the diamond armor from Minecraft, or as magical light armor of some sort. So even if you can't use it in more grounded historical MOCs, it doesn't have to be strictly for sci-fi creations. The accessories this set includes to go with the Nexo Powers are quite cool, and I like the display bases/armories that come with all of the "Ultimate" sets. Macy's standard mace design is quite clever too, though I think it looks better when all the points are rotated 45 degrees, and with another stud added between the center brick and the pyramid on top (like in this pic). The spare parts in the Ultimate Nexo Knights sets tend to be quite nice as well! And I like the orange and silver treasure chest to store the spare ammo! Overall, Ultimate Macy and Ultimate Clay were the first two Nexo Knights sets my brother and I bought, and I don't regret it for a minute. They're great character designs and offer some pretty neat pieces for their small size and price.

Couldn't the explanation be just "that's just something a lot of people do in this kingdom"? I mean, might not work for a kingdom that's meant to be 100% historical, but if you're even considering using Chima torsos in the first place I imagine you're already open to stepping outside the bounds of "strictly historical" when it comes to costume designs. I guess we just have different ideas of what constitutes "very narrow". I already named a bunch of things you can use Ninjago pirate torsos, ninja torsos, skeleton armor, etc. for, and you clearly found a use for the largely logo-less snake torsos so I don't even need to illustrate their uses. Lord of the Rings/Hobbit torsos are indeed more generic for the most part, but expecting every theme to be as generic as that is silly. Castle has always had logos (or "heraldry" if you prefer that). Space has always had logos. Even Town/City has always had logos, albeit not as many at first as they have now. So treating logos like a fault that Ninjago torsos are distinctly "marred" by is absurd. Ninjago figs don't need to be any more overwhelmingly useful to historic builders than to sci-fi builders, any more than Town figs ought to be overwhelmingly useful to sci-fi or historic builders. These are separate themes and when they do have the potential for overlap it's pure serendipity — it's no failure if parts aren't designed with usefulness to all other theme categories in mind. Back on-topic, never have I tried to argue that Ninjago minifigures are as versatile as figures from any other theme out there. But what I am saying is that if you could choose one single existing theme to focus a series of Collectible Minifigures on, Ninjago is probably the closest besides The LEGO Movie to being able to offer parts ranging from historical to fantasy to sci-fi to modern in their utility. It might not be the ideal series for builders in any of those categories, but which other theme could have as much potential to have something for builders in all of those categories? Maybe Super Heroes, because superhero comics and movies can be about as all over the place as Ninjago, but that's the only one that comes to mind. So yeah, there might be a lot of Ninjago parts that a primarily historical builder might not be able to use. But name me a collectible minifigures series that hasn't had a lot of parts that were either too sci-fi or too modern or too specific to one character or one brand. It'll still stands a better chance of offering something for historical builders than most other potential themes that aren't historical or historical fantasy themes to begin with. What it doesn't offer in torsos it might offer in, say, weapons or headgear.

Hoping for Ninjago and/or Nexo Knights panels, at least one LEGO Batman Movie set reveal, and maybe another exclusive Bionicle mask giveaway!

The beard was used on Vitruvius from The LEGO Movie, so it's already available on BrickLink. But the price is kinda high ($2.63 minimum). Not sure if this will really have any chance of lowering it since I can't imagine a lot of people will buy a $20 book just to part out the exclusive minifigure. It does at least reassure us that the part is still in production, so it may show up again in the future, if you'd rather risk waiting.