Aanchir

I actually quite like the interplay of the detailed character designs and more simplified effects and scenery, myself.

Didn't Tower of Orthanc surpass Night Lord's Castle three years ago?

They do advertise them one place: their lifestyle page (currently, only the first chapter book is listed, not the second book and graphic novel, but those will probably be added at some point). Presumably this is partly because LEGO no longer sells the books themselves through Shop@Home like they did back in 2004–2006. Plus, they aren't even available in all countries, so LEGO might prefer to focus their advertising on stuff that has a wider reach. And "big bang" themes get multi-season TV shows because of their immediate precedent. When Atlantis launched, it didn't get anything but a 22-minute TV special. But this was generally successful, so when Ninjago launched it got a 45-minute TV special. Since this was WILDLY successful, they signed on for a full 13-episode season, then another, both of which were also wildly successful. Nowhere to go but up, thought LEGO, so they started Legends of Chima off with a 20-episode season. This was successful, but not as successful as Ninjago. The theme only got two such seasons before it ended. In the meantime, Ninjago got back on its feet with an eight-episode third season, a ten-episode fourth season, and a ten-episode fifth season. These did well, so Nexo Knights launched with a ten-episode first season. Get it? Contrast that with Bionicle. Bionicle isn't a part of the "big bang" category. It's part of the constraction category. And the constraction category hasn't been wildly successful like LEGO Ninjago in years. On the contrary, Bionicle sales steadily declined from 2002 until its cancellation. Then Hero Factory launched, never getting anywhere near what Bionicle was at its peak, and likewise it steadily declined. It wouldn't be smart of LEGO to say "Oh, well, the last year of LEGO Hero Factory only got a 22-minute special and didn't even make it to broadcast, but you know what, let's give Bionicle a full ten-episode season right off the bat!" They'd have a hard time convincing networks to air that too, since they can't point to any similar themes in recent years that were popular enough to justify that. Instead, LEGO has to gradually build up to a bigger media presence. We're already seeing that, with LEGO going from around 30 minutes of webisodes in 2015 to an 88-minute Netflix miniseries in 2018. Considering 88 minutes longer than the running length of any of the individual Bionicle movies, I think it's fair to say the Bionicle reboot is doing pretty well for itself.

Sorry. Insults to creative professionals like writers, designers, etc. are a pet peeve of mine; always have been. It's one thing to say you don't think a designer did a good job. That's just criticizing their work. Designers aren't infallible — they screw up sometimes and don't always know what their audience wants. And if they don't deliver, you have every right to criticize that. However, if you say they "phone it in" or don't put in an effort or aren't devoted to what they do, then you're insulting their character. That's a lot worse, in my opinion. LEGO being a profit-driven company (as they've always been) doesn't mean their designers are mere drones who only value the company's bottom line. A designer doesn't even get hired by the LEGO Group, let alone get to a position in the company where they get to make big decisions about a theme's direction, by not caring about their work.

I understand that AFOLs who never went through a "dark age" are the exception rather than the norm. If it were the other way around then it would make more sense for this topic to be asking if you DID go through a "dark age" than if you DIDN'T! I will say, though, that it seems like the "dark ages" may become slightly rarer with younger TFOLs and AFOLs, because LEGO and how it is perceived are changing. For starters, LEGO is no longer "just a toy". Themes like Bionicle, Ninjago, and The LEGO Movie add a story– and character-driven element that sow the seeds for a fandom like you see for other cartoons and movies. Rather than experiencing these themes only through building, fans of these themes create fan art and fan fiction, they mingle with others who share the same interest, they theorize about past installments of the story and anticipate new ones. That's the kind of thing that can prolong a person's interest in a series. Additionally, the idea of "fandom" as an adult pastime is rapidly gaining legitimacy. People who love superheroes and sci-fi fiction and video games well into adulthood used to be considered social outcasts. Now they're rapidly becoming the mainstream. And I think we're seeing the same thing with LEGO as it continues to gain exposure through AFOL events, LEGO themes of popular all-ages franchises, media like The LEGO Movie, etc. Obviously, the majority of LEGO fans are still kids, and that will probably always be the case. So there are probably always going to be insecure people who want to let go of LEGO as as they become young adults simply so they can distance themselves from things they associate with their childhoods. But I think that the tremendous social pressure to move away from LEGO, and the misguided stigma that you can't be a LEGO fan and also have a life outside of LEGO, are beginning to erode somewhat.

I personally think of the mini-doll a lot like I think of Bionicle and other constraction figures: I would not usually use them interchangeably with minifigures, but they're still useful for their own sorts of worlds and creations. And don't get me wrong, I'm also not afraid to make "worlds collide" in silly ways. A bunch of My Little Pony figurines are presently populating my Temple of Airjitzu. I started collecting them when I realized they were close to the same size as LEGO minifigures and mini-dolls (i.e. could fit the same doorframes and so forth) and it's fun every now and then to see what they think of my LEGO worlds. :)

I'm 24 (turning 25 in March) and I don't see LEGO disappearing from my life at any point in the future. I don't think it'd be wrong to say it's one of the most important things in my life. Most of my best friendships and professional connections come directly from my involvement in the LEGO fan community and my ambitions of becoming a LEGO designer. College didn't get in the way of my love of LEGO — on the contrary, it just helped me understand why LEGO is so important to who I am, from its creative potential when I needed to express myself, to its therapeutic value those days when I felt overwhelmed, to its usefulness in establishing and maintaining social connections. "Discovering who I am", in my case, has meant realizing that LEGO has been instrumental in helping me to become who I am. I never had a dark age. I like to say that Bionicle carried me through what might have been my dark age (and it's true that most of the themes I bought from 2004 to around 2008 piqued my interest first and foremost because they contained cool Bionicle-compatible parts and Bionicle recolors). But in truth, if Bionicle hadn't been there then I feel like other LEGO themes might've filled in for that need I had to explore my creative and social impulses. Perhaps not quite so well, though. BZPower (then just a Bionicle fansite) was my first online community, and it inspired me to make friends, attend social gatherings like BrickFair, seek creative feedback from others, and eventually find a sense of belonging that I had never experienced previously. I have a hard time imagining other more general LEGO communities like Lugnet could ever have made me feel so welcome back then!

Fixed. Though, to be frank, the Ninjago and Nexo Knights stories are actually very, very different. Ninjago's story has more in common with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic than it has with Nexo Knights. The only things they really have in common are that both are character-driven science-fantasy stories that make use of extremely common tropes (like a team of youthful color-coded protagonists with an older mentor character).

Having met several of the people behind the Bionicle reboot, I'll be the first to tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. The people creating Bionicle G2 care deeply about what it is they're creating. That care obviously doesn't override the business angle of the theme (questions of profitability, target audiences, etc), and it never did, even in G1. That's part of why Bionicle succeeded when other wildly ambitious LEGO projects like Galidor and LEGO Studios were failing left and right. But it's extremely insulting to insist writers, designers, and marketers don't actually care about what they create just because you don't appreciate the decisions they've made with it. Perhaps the creators of the Bionicle reboot don't care about what you think personally, but judging from your general ignorance and willingness to assume the worst of them, they probably shouldn't.

Any fanbase will have its bad elements, especially when it's a large one with lots of different perspectives. Members of a lot of fandoms also often seem to have a nasty habit of seeing other series and fan communities, even friendly ones, as "competition". Some people just seem to have a hard time raising up series they like without tearing down others. Anyway, loving this Tahu character video. The Journey to One style looked cool enough in stills, but seeing it in motion and watching the interplay between the detailed, largely set-accurate characters and the more expressive scenery and effects is quite thrilling! I also think Tahu looks much, much better in this style than he does in the actual sets, since his hips and upper legs aren't so scrawny. The style is set accurate to a point but it's also not afraid to add extra articulation and fill in gaps. In this way, it feels lifelike without feeling particularly "unfaithful" to the original designs. I dig it!

Also, since mini-dolls generally have more lifelike proportions than minifigures, I feel like a dwarf or child mini-doll would need not just shorter legs but also shorter arms and possibly even a shorter torso. The main reason the dwarf/hobbit/child minifigure doesn't need a shorter torso is because the rounded hip portion is cut off halfway so it looks like it's "recessed" into the torso. This is also part of why I generally don't feel like articulated short legs are an option for minifigures. To do that convincingly you'd have to introduce a shorter torso, and thus make "hobbit" torsos and "human" torsos less interchangeable. Otherwise you end up with short figs who are hardly any different in height whether they're sitting or standing, because their leg pieces are all foot and no leg. I do think "child" mini-dolls are something the mini-doll themes have to get to at some point. There have already been child characters in the LEGO Friends webisodes and the LEGO Elves webisodes, and child character type would also open up new options in Elves and Disney Princess sets. Young Anna and Elsa, anyone? I don't think dwarves in a theme like Elves would necessarily need to be adapted to "modern, Tolkien fantasy" standards, though. There are plenty of "wee folk" in fantasy who aren't necessarily burly. The Smurfs are a good modern example, but I'm sure you could also find more classical depictions of small fantasy races who have fairly child-like proportions.

Is this topic just for punny names in historic themes, or in general? Back in the 90s most character names weren't standardized, so they'd get different names from each regional marketing team. The American names from the LEGO Mania Magazines often included puns. The Adventurers' names were good examples... as mentioned above, the American names were all weather puns. Later on, when the names were standardized across all languages, some of the Adventurers started using names from other regions of the world which were not puns... so for instance, Dr. Charles Lightning became Dr. Kilroy, and Gail Storm became Pippin Reed. However, Johnny Thunder and Harry Cane kept their American names. Ogel is obviously a pun (it's LEGO backwards). The original Alpha Team names were also puns for each agent's area of expertise. Dash was the motion expert, Flex the ropes expert, Cam the motors expert, Radia the lasers expert, Charge the electronics expert, and Crunch the explosives expert. Their robot buddy Tee Vee was literally a walking TV set. The vast majority of Ninjago bad guy names are puns. Bonezai, Chopov, Spitta, Fangtom, General Cryptor, Kapau, Howla, Cyren, etc. Even some supporting characters have punny names, like Cyrus Borg and P.I.X.A.L. Chima characters have theme naming (the first letter or first two letters of their names tend to correspond to what tribe they're from), but not all of them would really qualify as puns. Some certainly would, though, like Crooler or Mungus. A lot of the main characters of LEGO Nexo Knights have puns for names too. The main knights' names are puns for their signature weapons: Clay Moorington (claymore), Macy Halbert (mace), Lance Richmond (lance), Aaron Fox (arrows), and Axl (axe). Jestro is obviously a jester, and a lot of the lava monster names are puns. The wizard Merlok's name is a play on "Merlin" and "Warlock".

Whoa, the new Ultra Sonic Raider now splits into FOUR vehicles? Not just two? Now THAT'S exciting, if true!

Still, you have to realize that a person who doesn't have as much nostalgia for classic LEGO minifigures might think "the classic minifig is too fat and has a weirdly-shaped head"! Realistically, if you scaled a mini-doll up to average human height, they'd have a 32 to 35 inch waistline, while a minifigure would have a 73 to 80 inch waistline. Which of those is really out of the ordinary? And in real life, a head that has a nose and chin is far more realistic than one that doesn't! I also don't think the Friends figs are boring-looking as a rule. Sure, their outfits in general tend to be more modern/casual, but I think a lot of them still look really stylish, especially the ones from the more exciting subthemes like "Pop Star", "Jungle Rescue", and "Adventure Camp". But this is all getting off topic. My point about LEGO Friends was just that most of the stuff that LEGO Friends has and LEGO City doesn't is stuff that we weren't likely to see a lot of in LEGO City anyway. By the time LEGO Friends came out, City had already been around for seven years and there was still just one residential house! If designers had really wanted City to cover more slice-of-life settings and play scenarios (as opposed to action-oriented ones) they'd have had plenty of time to do so. It's hard to claim Friends "stole" those types of sets from a theme that had barely touched upon them previously.

Because Paradisa was never a really successful theme and Friends is? I somewhat liked Paradisa as a kid, but there's no doubt in my mind that Friends is a much better theme in terms of colors, designs, figures, and sheer variety of subject matter. Buyers seem to agree. Besides, I could name maybe four pre-Friends City sets that really strongly resemble Friends sets we've gotten: 7639 Camper, 7635 4WD with Horse Trailer, 8403 City House, and 4641 Speedboat. So if Friends has "stolen" anything from City, it hasn't been a lot. The majority of Friends sets have been quite unlike anything we've ever gotten in LEGO City, and there's no reason to assume that those kinds of subjects (diners, veterinary clinics, riding camps, schools, beach houses, hotels, summer camps, supermarkets, etc.) would've shown up in LEGO City by now if Friends hadn't come along.

I don't think AFOL polling is necessarily a good reflection of a theme's real sales potential/profitability. There are a lot of sets AFOLs tend to love that never sold enough units to be profitable, like monorail sets. And I've seen plenty of AFOL polls that rank the Friends theme very low despite it being one of the LEGO Group's top-selling current themes. It took years for AFOL polls to finally start recognizing the popularity of the the Ninjago theme, despite it having achieved the LEGO Group's highest ever single-year sales in its very first year in 2011. I hate to get into this again, but I don't think it's all that sensible to say Kingdoms skews older than Nexo Knights. A lot of AFOLs here and elsewhere have expressed their love of Nexo Knights, demonstrating that no, it's not something that only appeals to kids. And aside from the Kingdoms Joust (which is bigger than any Nexo Knights set released so far), Kingdoms sets are aimed at a younger age range than Nexo Knights sets across all price points. A $10 Kingdoms set is aimed at ages 5–12, a $10 Nexo Knights set at ages 7–14. A $20–60 Kingdoms set is aimed at ages 5–12 or 6–12, a $20–60 Nexo Knights set at ages 8–14. A $100 Kingdoms set is aimed at ages 7–14, a $100 Nexo Knights set at ages 9–14. You're right that a Kingdoms revival and expansion could be awesome (Kingdoms was an amazing theme, even if I didn't collect it), and it would be a great opportunity to work in "bandit" factions like the Forestmen and Wolfpack, which I think really do work best when they supplement a larger knight faction. But I don't think it'd make sense to aim a Kingdoms reboot at an older age range than Nexo Knights. Exclusives could skew higher, as they pretty much always do, but keeping the lowest-priced sets aimed at the 7–14 age bracket (if not lower) would maximize their audience.

Cartoon Network does that a lot these days, with a lot of their shows (Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Ninjago, etc). To be honest I don't know when they started doing this or why, but I guess they decided it gets them higher ratings. A bit frustrated that Cartoon Network had listed new Nexo Knights episodes this week on their schedule, then decided to air Clarence instead without updating the cable listings. Now I'm going to have to go and delete all the recordings on my DVR that are marked as LEGO Nexo Knights but are actually Clarence.

DK has announced a new book called "The Book of Knights" with a new shield icon for the Merlok 2.0 app and an exclusive minifigure! No idea what the fig will be, but the book looks pretty stylish. Link

How does what themes I like have anything to do with how truthful I'm being? Robin Hood is nowhere near as ubiquitous in pop culture as he was in the 80s and 90s. Just see this article. I have nothing against Forestmen or Wolfpack, but I've seen nothing to indicate that they were ever as successful as actual knight factions. If they had been, we surely would have seen more of them! But instead, the number of sets featuring Forestmen and sets featuring Wolfpack never really approached the number of sets featuring knight factions from that era like Crusaders/Lion Knights and Royal Knights. And if those themes were niche back then, then surely they'd be even more niche now, with Robin Hood having greatly faded from the pop culture landscape. And yes, Vorkosigan, you're right that LEGO didn't have as many ways of evaluating the popularity of themes back then as they have now. Even so, if Forestmen were every bit as popular as the other factions they had at the time, I have a hard time believing LEGO would not have noticed or been able to respond to it. Nor can I believe that LEGO has never so much as tested the idea with kids since then.

Not sure whether Netflix is an option in your country. In the United States, Great Britain, and I think most other countries, the first three seasons of the TV show are all on Netflix, which is a great starting point. The show is also available on DVD in many countries. Watching the TV series itself is probably the best way to get acquainted with the story. Other than that, the website used to have an "Explore" section, though it's no longer on the current version of the site. Here's a link to a cached version. "Welcome to Ninjago" sums up the events of the show's first three seasons, while the other six sections describe the events of the show's fourth season ("The Tournament of Elements").

As BrickJagger points out, Chima lasted three years. But lasting many years is not an inherent quality of a "big bang" theme. LEGO Atlantis was a "big bang" theme and lasted just a year and a half (two years in North America, but only due to the final wave being split into two). LEGO Ninjago was a "big bang" theme as well, and it was only intended to last two and a half years — the only reason LEGO revived it in 2014 is because Ninjago turned out to be ridiculously popular. I also don't think it's fair to say "most people hated Chima" — it seems to have been very popular with its target demographic, at least in Europe. But it's interesting for you to say "most people love Nexo Knights". I wouldn't have expected to hear that in this topic of all places, and frankly (even as a fan of the theme) I think it's way too early to be saying anything like that. Some AFOLs love it, some AFOLs hate it, but AFOLs aren't its target audience. What will decide its fate is how well it appeals to kids, and all I've heard about that so far are a few scattered anecdotes from AFOLs who are also parents. They also generally sound like bad ideas. Forestmen and Wolfpack were never popular enough to support more than a handful of sets as an offshoot of the main knight factions, and I don't see any reason why they would be more successful today when tales of Robin Hood-style highway banditry haven't had a lot of pop culture currency in years. If a theme of actual knights can't sustain more than a couple consecutive waves, then I hardly think a theme based on their more obscure contemporaries would fare much better. Likewise, replacing the brick-built Elves dragons with more specialized molded ones would be a very definite step backwards. Putting aside nostalgia for "how things used to be", you're basically asking for the current Elves sets but with more specialized parts and less building. Seems to me like the opposite of what adult builders should be asking for. Almost like saying "gee, the Speed Champions sets are great, but wouldn't they be better if they were built like the Mega Bloks Need for Speed sets?" I know brick-built dragons are a bit blockier than pre-molded ones, but minifigures are way blockier than mini-dolls and that doesn't seem to have affected your preferences there. So you're saying that Castle was a popular and successful theme, and LEGO chose to end it around fifteen months before the next Castle-esque theme (aimed at an entirely different demographic) was due to come out? Seems improbable to me. They kept LEGO Hero Factory going for two whole years after the decision was made to bring Bionicle back just so there wouldn't be a gap between the two themes. They launched LEGO Legends of Chima while LEGO Ninjago was still running. So why would they casually stop releasing a popular theme over a year before they would have anything similar to replace it with? Oh, absolutely there are complaints. My point is that fans of those themes have dealt with much longer hiatuses between new waves of sets than Castle fans ever have. Their frustration is justified. With Castle, on the other hand, it's been less than three months since the last wave of Hobbit sets came out, and there are three "castle-esque" themes (Elves, Nexo Knights, and Disney Princess) still ongoing. At this point, I think the present amount of worry seems a little premature. Also, I agree with you that a more traditional Castle theme and Nexo Knights could probably coexist, especially next year or the year after that when Nexo Knights is more established and has possibly diverged even further from traditional Castle. This is part of why I don't think Nexo Knights is as bad for the future of "true" Castle as a lot of people make it out to be.

The difference really isn't all that great, to be honest. Last year we got six heroes, six villains, and six supporting characters. The biggest difference from what we saw with Hero Factory and the last few years of Bionicle is that LEGO has returned to having all the heroes in one wave and most of the villains in a separate wave, instead of splitting the waves more evenly between heroes and villains. I guess that one disadvantage of the Shadow Traps compared to the Skull Spiders is that they make little sense as adversaries for the Toa... but on the other hand, I think the designers probably consciously decided they didn't need so much "conflict in a box" this year since they knew the Skull Creatures would still be available. In several years of G1, the designers compensated for the imbalance in hero and villain sets by releasing the villains in the first half of the year with the small supporting characters, and then the heroes in the second half of the year. This way there'd still be a conflict while they waited for the heroes to arrive. However, this often meant less time in the spotlight for the hero characters, plus it wouldn't work so well for this year since then you would have to wait half a year to really get the most out of the creature sets' "unity" function.

Why would you throw out the best parts of both themes? I'm kidding, sort of. I'm not sure if the cutesiness of Elves or the techno-ness of Nexo Knights are really their "best parts". Both themes have a lot of good qualities. However, I do think both those themes are better and more unique with those traits than without. You'd be taking away part of what makes those themes special in favor of making them ordinary. And we've had "ordinary" Castle time and time again, decade after decade. I think it's only fair to let the weird and wacky and wonderful themes have their turn. And if that can't happen without "ordinary" castle going on hiatus, then no better time than now when ordinary castle is already in the middle of a hiatus anyway. I could understand all the hand-wringing if an ongoing Castle theme got canned to make room for Elves or Nexo Knights, but that's not what happened here. Castle had two very grounded themes in relatively quick succession and then just sort of petered out. Once Nexo Knights is over then a more ordinary Castle theme can have its turn again, just like what happened with Knights' Kingdom II. Pirates and Western fans have survived far longer than this without new sets, and during each of those themes' hiatus fans didn't even have options like LEGO Ideas at their disposal.

That would be interesting. Especially if it turns out she's one of the five sisters from the legend. I'm sure all of the sisters dealt with Emily Senior's departure in their own way, and it wouldn't be surprising if one of them took a more villainous path. If that is the case, of course, it would probably mean this year's story would be resolved by redeeming her, which might frustrate some people who want Regana to be a more sinister villain and not merely misguided.

That'd be nice. It's kind of frustrating that his hair color changed the year after we FINALLY got hair pieces for all the Ninja! If LEGO never releases the flat top in silver I might attempt to paint some of the spare tan hair pieces I ordered for my Zane minifigures back in 2012 or 2013. Obviously a painted hair piece will never perfectly match the silver color of his head piece but I'm not too concerned about that. I'm sure it'll still look alright if I choose a good silver paint. Normally I'm a bit of a purist, but I want to get into customizing at some point. Speaking of hair, is anyone else kind of frustrated that the ninja half-mask from 2014 doesn't totally work with Nya's hair? It hasn't been an issue in sets so far, but it would have been nice if that were an option for future Ninjago minifigures, especially since the half-mask DOES come in Dark Red thanks to Nadakhan and Ronin. If the summer sets do feature a "villain team up", that leaves open the question of whether Ronin will be teamed up with the ninja or with the villains. I hope he's teamed up with the ninja and that he assumes the mantle of Samurai X now that Nya's a ninja. I think that would be good character development for him — going from just being a mercenary/bounty hunter to being a legit hero who fights with the ninja, and not just when it's in his best interests. Oh, on another topic that's not quite set related and not quite TV related: I finally picked up the chapter book The New Ninja recently after realizing that it was an original story rather than just an adaptation of a TV episode. It's a story focused on Nya that takes place in between "Possession" and "Skybound", and it's about Nya learning to adjust to being an equal member of the ninja team. A lot of people understandably don't consider the Ninjago chapter books canon, but I think this one and A Team Divided are still definitely worth reading, as they fill in gaps in the TV series, don't currently contradict it, and tell high-quality stories in their own right. The New Ninja also includes the winning entries from the LEGO Message Boards' "Write like a Ninja" contest. Those are available online but I think it was really cool of LEGO to actually publish them in print!