Aanchir

I'm surprised at the notion that a single colored jewel can make or break a color scheme. That makes even less sense to me than the idea of a logo ruining a minifigure part. It kind of reminds me of when Bionicle fans complain about a character's eye color not matching the rest of their colors. I think if you're so picky that it takes that little to ruin a minifigure for you, that's entirely on you. I mean, my sigfig carries a blue pen in the breast pocket of his coat. I never carry a blue pen in the breast pocket of my coat. I don't let that ruin him for me. If I ever find a torso I like better I'll switch it out, but if not, a tiny detail like that is basically inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Plus, if you're that picky about details, then that doesn't make themes like Ninjago, Chima, and Nexo Knights uniquely flawed. It means any fig part from any theme is one colored dot away from being useless to you. The Fantasy Era Good Wizard could be ruined by the pouches on his legs being green instead of blue or brown. The Castle Lion Princess could be ruined by her jewels being red instead of blue. Unlike, say, a minifigure with the wrong skin tone showing through the collar of their shirt, these aren't the sort of details that are really expected to match anything in the first place — so why does it matter what color they are?

Agreed with this entirely. There are also a few other things that I would wish for besides that. My favorite themes are overwhelmingly story-driven themes. The last Castle theme I bought into heavily was Knights' Kingdom II, which is the only Castle theme (barring Nexo Knights ) that was anywhere close to as story- and character-driven as themes like Ninjago, Elves, Bionicle, Exo Force, etc. HOWEVER, there's a part of me — perhaps a somewhat hypocritical part — that feels like the classic themes City, Castle, Space, and Pirates should remain more open-ended than that. I did not buy a lot of the Fantasy Era, Kingdoms, or 2013 Castle sets, but I admired them from afar because they felt in a lot of ways like what a LEGO Castle theme should be like. So I would not mind another Castle theme that's iconic like those three, that doesn't depend on highly developed characters or a specific plot structure. But again, that might be a bit hypocritical of me to suggest something like that knowing I would probably not buy a lot of sets that way. For sort of the same reason, I think the target age range should probably stay around where it's been. (5–12 at the lowest price points, and maybe 8–14 at the highest, D2C sets notwithstanding). Sure, themes like Nexo Knights and Ninjago do a great job with higher target age ranges than the classic themes like City, Pirates, and Castle. With that said, I think there's more opportunity for a more classic sort of theme at the lower age ranges. You'd want to capture an audience for whom traditional, iconic medieval play (maybe with a bit of fantasy) is still fresh and exciting. Some of my fondest memories playing with Castle sets and building castle MOCs were when I was still a fairly young child. As I grew older I started craving themes that had more of a "twist", more novelty, and a deeper and less familiar story. Bionicle, Exo Force, etc. If you want a Castle theme to appeal to a broad audience I think you have to hook them at that young age when a castle-themed birthday party still feels cool and not childish, and when kings, knights, wizards, and dragons still feel exciting and magical on their own without needing a unique mythology built around them. Additionally, I think we'd have to see an increase in price points. There's really no getting around it: between inflation and other factors, it's not realistic to expect Castle sets to get bigger and better if the maximum price point for non-D2C sets continues to stagnate at $100. That may be where the max price point has been fixed since Vladek's Dark Fortress in 2005, and it was a beast of a set back then! But $100 back in 2005 is like $125 today. Older sets like Royal Knight's Castle, ($95 new in 1995) and Black Knight's Castle ($85 new in 1992), would be closer to $150 today. The era of the raised baseplate may be over (which is probably for the best considering what an awful price per piece those sets offered even back then, and how limited those bases were), but I'm sure LEGO castles could get a LOT bigger and more impressive if their price point weren't being held back. In the very least I think the Castle theme could benefit from expanding into $120 sets like the Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Nexo Knights themes tend to get once per year. A wider range of higher price point sets might not be a bad thing either. It's kind of weird how recent Castle and Pirates waves tend to jump straight from $30 or $50 sets to a single $100 set without covering any of the price points in between. Sure, that has something to do with how few sets there are per year compared to themes like Ninjago and Nexo Knights, but still, Castle might benefit from having more $70 and $80 sets so you don't have such a paltry-looking "evil" castle next to your "good" King's Castle. Anyway, those are my thoughts. I realize I am not really qualified to speak for people who still play with Castle sets and build Castle MOCs. I dabble in it on LDD every now and then but nothing brings back the magic I felt building castles in my basement when I was 6 or 7. Still, I love seeing how the LEGO Castle theme has developed over the years, and I'd like to see that development continue.

I don't think the idea of having a different style for the movies than for the TV shows would be anywhere near as disastrous as you make it out to be. For all we know they might be totally separate continuities. It wouldn't honestly be that surprising to me, considering that cinematic movies of other largely toy-driven media properties like Transformers and TMNT have generally had both a different visual style and a separate continuity from whatever cartoons they've happened to overlap with at any given time. This would be slightly different in that both universes would be animated (rather than one animated and one live action), but I think the same principle applies. While the non-LEGO environments of the Ninjago TV show may be distinctive to that show, and it would be shocking if the Ninjago TV show itself started having everything be brick-built, I do not think the lack of LEGO environments is an essential, indispensible aspect of the Ninjago brand. After all, the sets themselves use LEGO environments and yet don't feel inauthentic to the brand. With that said, I'm kind of used to you blowing any kind of inconsistency in or around the show way out of proportion. If you think that I'm more open-minded about different visual styles because I don't care about LEGO Ninjago as much as you do, you're sadly mistaken. This series is profoundly important to me, and it's been amazing getting to watch it develop over the years. But with that said, when a video game, graphic novel, or yes, movie comes out that presents things slightly differently from how I'm used to seeing them in the show? That's cool too! I have no problem with that — particularly when the things that I think are actually a lot more important and less superficial to the series (like tone and characterization) remain reasonably consistent.

Some of the ones missing from your list are listed in the Brickset database. I have 4000010 LEGO House, 4000016 Billund Airport, and 4000020 H.C. Andersen's Clumsy Hans. I'm not interested in parting with them since they're souvenirs from the two trips I took to Billund last year. I haven't really attempted to obtain any of the others.

I don't see why the emblems in Ninjago "mar" those figures any more than the emblems in any other theme like Town, Castle, or Space. As a MOCist you can always come up with whatever new meaning for those emblems you like — nobody's forcing you to adhere to the "official" meanings from the theme those emblems originated in. Even LEGO isn't that strict with how they use their emblems. The boy in 31052 wears a LEGO City Deep Sea Explorers jacket with their emblem on the back, but it doesn't mean he's a deep sea diver. Maybe it's just a stylish jacket, or the logo of a popular brand of clothing. The artist in 10243 Parisian Restaurant wears the same shirt as Sensei Wu from 2012, with his dragon emblem on the back, but that doesn't mean she's a Ninjago character transplanted to the world of LEGO Creator. For her, It might just be an Asian-inspired fashion statement. There's a generic red City/Town jacket with a Classic Space logo, but that doesn't mean that everybody who wears it is a spaceman from the future. I've seen plenty of people use the animal-emblem torsos and armor from Knights' Kingdom for generic castle or fantasy creations. Likewise, there's no reason Ninjago's sky pirate logo couldn't be used for traditional pirates, space pirates, or even bikers. No reason the Skulkin logo couldn't be used by orcs or supervillains or a metal band. No reason Kai's animal symbol couldn't stand for a faction of medieval warriors, or Zane's for the crew of a spacefleet, or Cole's for a street gang. This isn't like if the word "Ninjago" were written out on every figure. The sky's the limit!

Well, she's also the only one with printing on the back of her head, so maybe there was only enough of a budget for this set for each fig to have one or the other. It's already got way more unique prints than is usual for battle packs like these.

Done! By the way, there's also a high resolution pic of the box on LEGO.com, but sadly none of the figures. Still, a box pic might mean it won't be long until it shows up on the online LEGO Shop.

Onikari posted a flickr album of a new Ninjago battle pack in the Ninjago topic, and I thought I'd share it here. I realized looking at it that the "sky pirate foot soldiers" in this pack might work very well as crew members in a more traditional pirate layout, since they don't have any of the steampunk-ish orange metal armor that appears on a lot of the other sky pirate minifigures. We also got high-resolution pictures of the other Ninjago sets in case anybody wants to scour them for useful pirate parts. Personally, I don't see as much Pirates theme fodder in these as in the Skybound sets for the first half of the year. Although three of the summer sets are still Skybound-themed, the characters who wore epaulettes in the first wave wear armor on their shoulders in this one, and the sky pirate vehicles and so forth in 70593 and 70594 do not include as many useful parts for pirate ship building like flags and anchors. 70591 Kryptarium Prison Breakout does have a new pirate hat, face, and map, though the last of these things appears to be a sticker.

Great photos! Do you mind if I report on this for BZPower? I will be sure to give you credit. If you'd rather I didn't that's fine; I can just wait for official pics. Kind of a shame that Nya doesn't have back printing, but that's really the only disappointment. A new Samurai X minifigure is not strictly necessary (and to be honest, I'd still have sort of preferred Nya in the outfit she wore in "Rebooted"), but it's not a bad design either. Tournament Zane, while he doesn't exactly fit in the Ninjago timeline, does sufficiently fill a void from the Tournament of Elements wave's minifigure lineup, and he does so quite well. I'm just now noticing that neither of the sky pirate foot soldiers have any orange metal "armor" like most of the sky pirates who appear in sets, which might make them more appealing to classic Pirates builders.

I guess I can mostly agree? I think last year's Toa were better designs on average than this year's Toa, but this year has had other standout sets like the creatures, both versions of Umarak, and some of the Star Wars sets that help make up for that. At the same time, I think you could have just as easily said this about 2012 in 2012, or about 2013 in 2013, or about 2014 in 2014, or about 2015 in 2015. No year of sets is without its faults, and this year is no exception to that, but each has managed to bring something new and impressive to the table. Everyone might have their favorite year of sets, but personally I don't think there's been a year yet when CCBS hasn't advanced in some noteworthy way, let alone a year when it's experienced an overall decline.

Last year may have only had one licensed series, but it technically had two "themed" series (The Simpsons Series 2 and Monsters). And I wouldn't worry a great deal about themed series until I know what's in them. Let's not forget, The LEGO Movie series was "themed" but managed to be pretty diverse anyway. There's no reason to automatically assume a LEGO Ninjago Movie series would be as limited in its scope as the LEGO Ninjago sets, and even the minifigures in the sets have been pretty diverse in their own right. What other theme has had enemies as varied as skeletons, snake men, stone warriors, robots, a jungle cult, ghosts, and sky pirates? I could understand the concern if we were talking about a theme like City or Space that typically falls into one very specific genre. But Ninjago has always drawn from an eclectic mix of genres, from futuristic science-fiction to historical to fantasy to modern day. There are a few big concerns I would have about that. One is over saturating the market. If LEGO introduced more CMF series per year, it's possible that they would compete with each other and people would buy fewer of each series. Even though LEGO releases a lot of themes at any one time, they are very careful not to release more than they think the market can bear, and that number might be different for CMFs than it is for regular retail sets. The other is production capacity. Collectible minifigures are all produced in one facility, a facility LEGO technically doesn't even own. Who's to say that LEGO would even be able to produce more CMFs than they do at present? And if that's the case, producing more series might necessitate producing fewer copies of each series and of each fig.

That'd be nice, since that version of Cyren is unique. However, there have been some promotional polybags in the past that haven't been made very widely available, and I'm kind of worried that this might be one of them. BrickLink already has some for sale from Germany, Hungary, and the Netherlands.

The two minions in that set (Chris and Martin) definitely appear to be possessed statues. Each has two faces: one grey and expressionless, the other Sand Green and angry. This is especially apparent on the box art when you compare the main picture (which shows them both with possessed Sand Green faces) and the minifigure lineup on the bottom right (which shows one with a "possessed" face and one with a "statue" face). As for the fabric look of the gi, there are cracks running through the belt so it's probably just carved to look like real fabric.

If they had released it last year it might have oversaturated the market and stolen sales from the individual fliers. It's also possible that the LEGO Group's production line for the fliers themselves was already running full speed just to produce all six of the individual fliers, and so LEGO couldn't produce this until after production on those had halted. Or that LEGO might've wanted to wait to see last year's sales figures before giving the OK to put another Airjitzu set into production. Those are just a few possibilities I can think of for why LEGO might've wanted to spread their Airjitzu releases out a bit more. Also, while the Airjitzu fliers may no longer be as novel as they were last year, the launcher mechanism this set uses for ground-based Airjitzu battles is entirely new. That could potentially help generate new interest in this set even for people who already bought last year's fliers. Not to mention that this gives people a chance to get Airjitzu minifigures and fliers for the two ninja who didn't get them last year. I understand your disappointment, though, since it's not what you were hoping for it to be. It's interesting to me that LEGO went ahead and designed it in the same colors as the Temple of Airjitzu, with some fairly understated weapons and no real sci-fi elements. Maybe they're hoping that some people who loved the Temple of Airjitzu might be interested in this set, even though it's more of a "playset" than the temple was. Actually, I almost wonder if there might be a way of connecting the buildings in this set to 70751, considering that the pins used to attach the launchers to each side are so similar to the pins used to attach the three building foundations in 70751 together.

Master Wu Dragon's piece count was itself pretty extraordinary for its price, one of the many reasons I can't stop singing the praises of that set. Mind you, a lot of its parts were fairly small detail elements, but on the other hand, many of those were fairly rare or useful ones, so I think it's still an amazing set in terms of overall value. Even if you held Airjitzu Battle Grounds to the same standard, though, I think it would have to cost at least $50. Great point about price per gram being a more useful metric than price per piece in some cases. Of course, even that can be something of a distortion since things like unique prints, recolors, and new molds can add a lot to a set's cost without adding any more to its weight than more generic pieces would. So while price per piece and price per gram can both be great metrics for comparing how much you're getting for your money, neither is a foolproof way of assessing how much you SHOULD be getting. That can be a lot more ambiguous. (Cute Ninjago/Classic Space mashup in your sig, btw!)

An observation that I brought up on Brickset that I think deserves consideration here as well: While LEGO may be more violent than they used to be, the notion that violence in kids' toys and media is a recent trend is complete balderdash. Toy guns have been a popular kids' toy for decades, and toy soldiers for centuries. In fact, the first toy LEGO ever patented was a life-size toy semiautomatic pistol that really fired, back in the 1940s! http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/325_Halvautomatisk_Leget%C3%B6jspistol Another LEGO pistol that fired Modulex bricks was released in 1960: http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/LEGO_Pistol So the notion that violent weapons are NOT appropriate subjects for kids' toys and media is much younger than the notion that they ARE. If you think enjoying a theme like LEGO Bionicle and Ninjago where people use medieval-esque weapons — not even to hit each other but to generate beams of fire, ice, and lightning — makes today's generation "immersed in a culture of violence", what does that say about kids of the 1940s and 50s who grew up on realistic toy guns and TV shows like The Lone Ranger that glorified gunplay?

The Mega Bloks fanbase, among both kids and adults, seems to be built largely on their low price and their licenses these days. I went to the Mega Bloks website sometime in the past year to see what brands they had and it was almost entirely licenses or Mattel brands. Literally the only original theme listed there today is "First Builders", their preschool line. Kind of sad, since the only Mega Bloks sets that ever interested me as a kid were their original themes. I don't know if there are any organized Mega Bloks fan communities on the Internet. I've honestly never really looked.

Cute! I can't help but notice that after the Classic Pirate Set (which used a lot more modern parts, decorations, and building techniques), this one feels really authentic by comparison. Much like the Classic Space Set that started off this series. Perhaps this is LEGO's way of responding to feedback that the Classic Pirate Set didn't feel very classic. Town, maybe? That's the last of the original "evergreen" themes that they haven't covered. Though maybe they might go for some non-evergreen theme with a long-reaching history, like Adventurers or Western. It's a shame getting an Aquazone pack seems unlikely, because that there was a key part of MY childhood! In those days (to a kid like me, anyway) it seemed every bit as core to the LEGO brand as Castle, Space, Pirates, or Town. My, how times have changed! I guess it'll probably be a year before we know what LEGO plans to do next. I'm betting on Town, though. Maybe a police officer or firefighter in a car built on the old 4x7 chassis.

It's 666 pieces — getting that many bricks for $40 would have been extremely unusual in any theme besides Classic. For comparison's sake, $40 in LEGO Creator would get you the Corner Deli (467 pieces) or Toy and Grocery Shop (466 pieces). $60 would get you the Lighthouse Point (528 pieces). Besides that, Airjitzu Flyer sets on their own are $10 for less than 50 bricks each, so chances are the fliers themselves add a lot to the cost of a set. With this set you're effectively getting the value of two $10 sets plus 576 other bricks. For that, $60 is a downright steal.

True, but that's basically what the Bionicle and Hero Factory chapter books from Scholastic have always done. Sometimes the stock art they used wasn't even finalized. The Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Elves chapter books from Scholastic also use stock art, but in their case they use actual illustrations of the characters (from trading cards, posters, key visuals, etc.) rather than just renders of the sets themselves, so it isn't as obvious that it's stock art at first glance.

I'm not actually sure any of the 2016 sets will include Samukai. However, that's not to say there's no chance of him showing up. Bear in mind that sets for the Skybound story arc are continuing into the second half of 2016, so it's possible that sets for… whatever you call this new story arc will continue into the first half of 2017. And so then we might get a chance of seeing additional villains. The bigger question for me is how seeing Samukai and Morro again would be justified in the story, since both characters seemed to be unmistakably destroyed. And for that matter, what weapon Morro is carrying in that back-of-box image since all the Tr. Flu. green weapons from the "checklist" on the back of the boxes are otherwise accounted for in that group shot. The lack of that weapon on the checklist could be further evidence that if Morro and Samukai show up it will be in a separate wave.

Looks great! I love Tournament Zane. Interesting that he uses a "battle damaged" face print and one yellow and one silver arm, like the battle damaged version of Techno Zane from 2013, rather than using two silver metallic arms and a "Zane 2.0" face. The previous picture made it a little ambiguous. It's also a bit unusual that he uses a full hood rather than a mask and hair like the other Tournament figs, but that's an easy swap to make. Samurai X looks nice. Between this, Skybound Nya, Throwback Nya, and Airjitzu Nya, there are actually FOUR new Nya minifigures this year! She's previously been under-represented in sets, so it's good to see that on its way to being corrected at last.

Yes, LEGO products have become more violent. There's no disputing that. In the name of being anti-war, LEGO used to insist that any kind of person-versus-person conflict play was bad for kids, and that they wouldn't put any weapons of war in their sets. Even then, though, the classic Space sets had lots of forward-facing "antennas" and "radar arrays" that were obviously meant as laser guns, and classic Castle sets had plenty of swords and axes. LEGO designers knew how kids would naturally want to play with these toys, they just didn't want to admit that to parents or to their own upper management. LEGO's past "innocence" was based on the assumption that violent role-play is harmful to child development and would make kids grow up to be violent. However, as the company has evolved, they've recognized that kids are naturally drawn to good-versus-evil conflict play, and that this doesn't hurt them (yes, I know there have been studies suggesting that acting out violence makes people more violent, however, there have been just as many studies disputing that). Many LEGO designers probably grew up playing with toy soldiers and watching movies like Star Wars, but that hasn't made them violent, so why should they be overly concerned about today's kids doing the same? Science is also increasingly demonstrating that kids CAN differentiate between fantasy and reality better than many adults give them credit for, and as such LEGO avoids realistic, present-day violence and warfare in their themes, instead focusing on fantasy conflicts. It's worth noting that in LEGO, "good" characters are generally motivated by honorable values like freedom, equality, and protecting the people they love. "Evil" characters are generally motivated by dishonorable values like greed, selfishness, or a thirst for power. As you yourself observe about villainous characters like Hero Factory's Pyrox, LEGO generally makes it painfully obvious which characters are good and which are evil, that good characters routinely triumph over evil ones, that good characters are happier than evil characters, and that the good characters' values and methods are the ones kids should emulate while the evil characters' values and methods are ones kids should steer clear of.

Yep, I noticed this in the Toy Fair pictures and videos. The only returning enemy character who uses the same design as in his previous appearance is Chen. Which is surprising, since he's the one character we know of whose appearance already HAS changed in the show! It'd be cool if they printed his face on the opposite side of his head in purple to represent the Anacondrai version of him, but since it's not shown in any of these pictures I wouldn't count on it. I can't tell what the name of the special version of Cole in the Rock Roader is. "Cole _X", so a very retro sort of character name, but I can't make out that first letter. Besides the differently colored arms, the part of his chest around his badge is lighting up with elemental energy.

According to the hi-res box art their names are Chris and Martin. I'm guessing they're meant to be two of his former pupils. Also, you guys! One of the viewscreens in Samurai X Cave Chaos references the Phantom Ninja from the tenth Papercutz graphic novel! Mind=blown! I compiled all the new high-resolution summer set pictures here if anybody wants to browse them. Besides the many easter eggs in Samurai X Cave Chaos, I also found this picture of The Green NRG Dragon amusing.