Aanchir

Classic has a very different design philosophy than Creator. Both Classic sets and Creator 3-in-1 sets do tend to use a lot of basic bricks and emphasize reusing the same bricks across different models, but Classic sets lean much more heavily into complete freeform building and "miscellaneous" brick boxes than kits curated for specific "A", "B", and "C" models representing some unified concept or category. A Creator 3-in-1 set might have builds for three different types of animal, three different types of vehicle, or three different types of building — but a Classic set is more likely to have instructions for miscellaneous subject matter like one animal, one vehicle, and one building. Ironically, in the early 2000s, this was sort of inverted — "Creator" sets back then were mostly basic brick collections with extremely simple builds and an emphasis on freeform building, while the "Designer Sets", "Advanced Designer Sets", and "X-Pods" performed a more similar role to today's Creator 3-in-1 sets. However, the distinction between these themes wasn't helped by the same yellow box graphics being used from 2003 to 2006 across the entire "Make & Create" category, which included themes as wide-ranging as Creator, Designer Sets, Advanced Designer Sets, X-Pods, Technic (yes, really!) and Inventor Sets (which I guess were sort of, but not exactly, equivalent to LEGO Boost). In 2007, LEGO effectively ditched this nightmare of confusingly-branded nested categories in favor of more distinct branding for each theme — the Designer Sets, Advanced Designer Sets, and X-Pods were rebranded as LEGO Creator, while the basic brick sets were rebranded first as "Creative Building", then as "Bricks & More", and finally as "LEGO Classic". By this point, the Inventor Sets theme had already ended, and Technic had already reverted to using its own distinct branding and graphics. From what I can tell, the main objective behind the "LEGO Classic" brand name is to give basic brick buckets a clearer and more consistent branding of their own, since even today you still get parents complaining about how "everything is kits now" and how much they miss when it was just "buckets of random pieces". If they were labeled as "LEGO Creator", then people who looked them up online or at the LEGO Creator section in a store would still end up finding a confusing mix of more "specific/themed kits" and more miscellaneous basic brick assortments.

Given that there isn't a full construction/demolition/mining wave in the first half of 2021 like there had been every three years prior, it'd be interesting if they might be saving something like that for the summer. The new road system would present a great opportunity for them to focus a wave more heavily on road construction rather than building construction (with sets such as a paving machine, milling machine, road roller, road grader, or even a crane for constructing highways. It's possible that they'd choose to release those types of sets in the middle of the year ahead of the Christmas season instead of at the beginning if they intended for them to have higher price points (like, from $30 to $120 instead of from $10 to $100like sets from mid-year subthemes tend to have. That said, it's also possible that they've simply abandoned that particular three-year release pattern, particularly since they've been deviating from the corresponding release pattern for police and fire sets over the past couple years. Certainly, since construction sets in the past have usually focused so heavily on vehicles, I can see how releasing a lot of them as Great Vehicles or Town sets and reserving larger waves for categories that would require more accompanying buildings/scenery could make a lot of sense. I actually wonder whether it'd be realistic to expect a coast guard subtheme next year — after all, they might not want such a nautical-leaning subtheme so soon after last year's Ocean Explorers sets and this year's very nautical-leaning Police wave. Plus, if they intended to release a Coast Guard wave this year, it would be strange for them to also release a set like 60286 Beach Rescue ATV at the beginning of the year with medical (rather than Coast Guard) branding. In terms of subthemes that have typically been summer/mid-year releases in the past, I kind of feel like LEGO might introduce another Jungle Explorers wave in summer 2021. That would be able to reuse a lot of the sorts of parts and tie in with the same sort of educational partnership as this year's LEGO Friends Jungle Rescue wave. That would fit with how the LEGO City Ocean Explorers sets came out one year after the LEGO Friends Sea Life Rescue sets and reused some of the parts that series had introduced.

I dunno, I think I can probably agree that today's kids tend to spend a lot more time learning different sorts of skill sets than earlier generations might've. I mean, generational shifts are definitely a real thing. But I don't have an especially negative outlook about this sort of thing myself — this year has given us plenty of examples of how stuff like knowing how to get around and find things online, differentiate between reputable and non-reputable sources, or spend social time with friends remotely can be to a person's well-being at any age. There are also quite a number of skills like visual-spatial skills or hand-eye coordination that translate very well from popular hobbies today like video gaming to LEGO building. Do you have any idea how important stuff like literacy, color and pattern recognition, directional skills, numerical skills, memory retention, problem solving, and time and resource management are to many of the types of video games kids enjoy playing? In my own experience, I knew the names of colors like "Cyan" and "Magenta" MUCH sooner than a lot of my peers in elementary school specifically because of the time i spent playing computer games, so it feels bizarre to act as though tactile crafts or hobbies are the only way of developing that sort of skill. Particularly when many AFOLs seem to struggle with certain color identification skills like recognizing lavender as a shade of purple (not pink), or knowing what the term "pastel" means. Part of my frustration with the sorts of complaints we often see in topics like this one is that as an autistic adult with ADHD and NVLD (nonverbal learning disorder), I strongly feel that the reasonable response to differences in thinking, learning, and experiencing the world is to accept that they exist and try to design experiences to be accessible to anyone, whether or not they fit some hypothetical norm. I would not have had anywhere NEAR as much success in academics or other parts of my adult life if I hadn't been taught to understand the differences in how I think and learn, and learned ways to accommodate for or even benefit from some of those differences. There's nothing to be gained from denigrating kids who struggle with things that are much easier for others. Nor is it fair to them to pathologize the stuff that makes them different and try to forcibly "break them out of it" like people used to do (and sometimes still do) to kids who were autistic, gay, transgender, or even left-handed. As such, perspectives like "if I could handle this back when I was that age, why can't everyone?" feel unintentionally hostile to these sorts of natural differences in how kids experience the world around them. Chances are that back when we were kids (yes, ANY of us), there were still quite a few kids who lacked skills that helped LEGO building come more naturally to us. Kids back then probably could have benefited just as much from being offered more user-friendly "universal design" philosophies as kids today.

Sometimes I've built sets that had just three pieces per step, and I had no problem with it. I mean, it's a toy that you build for fun, not some kind of cognitive assessment. It's possible that part of why I feel this way is that over the course of my life I've done a lot of building as a social activity with other people like friends or siblings, with all of us alternating between steps. In that kind of situation it's much more fun and engaging if your turn comes around more frequently than if you're spending longer stretches of time sitting and waiting for another builder to finish with all the parts on their step, or frequently handing the model back to the previous builder if you notice that they missed some of the ones on their step. Plus, while my twin brother and I have more or less had the same aptitude for building our whole lives, other "building partners" are often less experienced. The building process feels much less frustrating and more rewarding when both builders can complete their steps fairly quickly, whereas when a less experienced builder is clearly struggling for much longer with their steps than their more experienced partner, it can result in the more experienced builder feeling bored/impatient and the less experienced builder feel inadequate/self-conscious. And this DOES apply even to adult builders — I've been building consistently since childhood, but a lot of other adults haven't built a LEGO set in years and aren't anywhere near as used to the parts or the process of putting them together. So if a set aimed at adults ever seems a bit simple for you, that's probably a sign that LEGO is trying to make it more accessible to adults who are just getting back into the hobby, or even building their very first set in their entire lives. All in all I just don't see why this would be a big deal for anyone. It's not as though it's a personal insult to your intelligence or anyone's — it's just an experience that's intended for builders across a wide range of proficiency levels, and I feel like the benefits of having that broader level inclusivity far outweigh individual moments of discomfort for builders who are blessed with greater skill and experience than others.

Honestly, I feel like making LEGO building accessible to a wider audience is a much more important outcome than making already proficient builders feel better about themselves/superior to others. It's a toy, not a puzzle — and it's not like it'd be considered praiseworthy for any other sort of toy to makee its instructions needlessly unclear or package its components in the cheapest and least organized manner possible. If you really don't like the numbered bags, there's no rule that you have to open them in order. Just go ahead and dump them all out in a single pile like you would have with older sets. And if the step-by-step instructions bother you, go ahead and try to recreate as much as you can from the box art and only consult the instructions for the parts that are harder to figure out. That certainly seems a lot more rewarding than treating basic elements of user-friendly design as an insult to your intelligence. Furthermore, I don't have any idea what era of LEGO you grew up with, but it's not like sets of the past didn't include gratuitous features designed to simplify the building process — including ones that feel ridiculous in hindsight. Several sets of the 1960s came with baseplates that had studs only where they were needed for that particular model, while others from 1969 to 1990 printed white dots to mark the studs where parts needed to be attached for that model. The manuals of early LEGO Town sets like 1592 included special callout windows to explain how to connect basically any parts that weren't a simple stud-to-antistud connection (windows to window frames, doors to door hinges, hinge tops to hinge bases, etc). And of course, it goes without saying that many sets today have far more intricate/complex builds than many of their classic counterparts from the 70s and 80s — so isn't it pretty much common sense that even kids of the 80s would've probably needed considerably more guidance to build a set like 71705 Destiny's Bounty than one like 6285 Black Seas Barracuda? The Bounty has an entirely brick built hull and figurehead, multiple interconnected Technic mechanisms, extensive SNOT techniques, multiple sections rotated "off-grid" with hinges, and 20 different colors and more than 480 distinct elements for builders to differentiate. The Barracuda has a prefab hull and minifig figurehead, is built almost entirely studs up and "on-grid", includes no Technic mechanisms, and has fewer than 10 colors and 200 distinct elements for builders to differentiate. There's no honestly no comparison between sets back then and sets like this one — even as adults, it took more than a day for my brother and me to build the set in its entirety — even with the two of us often building a lot of sections simultaneously when we already knew they would be identical or mirrored on the final model. So yes, the manual is more than three hundred pages long, and yes, it's broken down into 14 numbered bags, and has some brightly colored bricks and plates buried inside the model. But honestly, it would've felt lazy and cheap if LEGO had omitted conveniences as minor as those just to save a few bucks on printing and massage the egos of middle-aged builders who are convinced that kids these days aren't challenged enough.

This is also an extremely good point — there is SO MUCH about even the less fantasy-heavy "historic themes" like Castle, Pirates, Ninja, and Wild West that more closely represents a "pop culture" version of these particular historical settings than how these settings actually were in reality. So sometimes I suspect what gets included in these themes really does come down to "what feels right" (particularly among an audience of kids) than how accurate it is to historical reality. Hence why LEGO vikings almost invariably have horned helmets, LEGO pirate captains almost invariably have the whole hook/eyepatch/pegleg trifecta, and LEGO wizards wear pointy hats and carry star-tipped wands. Heck, you could even extend this to modern themes, given how LEGO City crooks tend to wear obvious prison stripes and bandit masks, and LEGO City fire and police stations are color-coded to match their respective vehicles!

I think your issues with the Fortrex could just as easily be argued for a lot of castles in fantasy settings. Can any castle really be any safer against aerial assault by dragons than the Fortrex is against aerial assault by flying machines? Or any safer against magical plant conjuring which tears apart the very ground beneath it than the Fortrex is against landmines? I think it should go without saying that in a fantasy setting, a mobile fortress could offer just as many tactical advantages as a stationary one — which should be obvious given just how many fantasy and sci-fi series alike have included mobile fortresses or mobile bases for their heroes and/or villains. And that's without getting into the deefensive capabilities of Merlok's Nexo Powers (the digitized versions of the magic spells he was able to use before he died and was reborn as a hologram). As for your next point: what makes you think that even in the world of Nexo Knights every town or village could realistically afford a bunch of war robots? A lot of the storylines in Nexo Knights revolve around the kingdom of Knighton having been at peace for many years before Jestro used the Book of Monsters to summon his evil army, and thus most towns not being prepared for an invasion. Most of the kingdom's technological resources are relegated to peacetime applications like infrastructure, agriculture, and industry. Incidentally, this ends up making the Fortrex's mobility even more important, since it allows knights from the capital city of Knightonia to travel to whichever towns are likely to be targeted by Jestro's army and set up fort in order to defend them. Likewise, what "simple soldiers" do you see in the Nexo Knights theme do you see without helmets, besides the supernatural monster armies? Because the Nexo Knights themselves, the Knighton soldiers and royal guards, and the squirebots ALL wear helmets into battle, with many even reusing the same helmet molds used in other Castle themes. Besides, the Forestmen and Wolfpack factions have never worn any armor or helmets whatsoever, and I can't imagine you trying to employ this same argument as evidence that those subthemes aren't "real" Castle sets. There are probably a lot of arguments you could make for why the characters of Nexo Knights or the castles and fortresses that they call home don't actually qualify as knights in the medieval sense. But nitpicking the tactical effectiveness of their combat strategies and equipment is not one of them. Just because medieval castles were intended to be a safe refuge from enemy assaults doesn't mean that they always were implicitly invulnerable to enemy siege tactics. These are some pretty well thought out answers! I think I'd probably agree with you on most of this stuff. The LEGO Elves theme (which I remain a huge fan of) took an approach very similar to the one you propose for some of their fantasy technologies — most of the non-fire-based lighting in that theme is based on magical glowing plants, animals, or crystals, Azari's flying chariot is both pulled by a Pegasus and propelled by rocket-like bursts of fire magic, and the theme's entire premise hinges on the existence of magic interdimensional portals! One of the things I especially loved about the theme (but which would of course not be necessary in all medieval fantasy contexts) is how many aspects of the Elves' way of life was made possible by living in harmony with the elements that made up the environment surrounding them, like ovens powered by lava floes, baths and showers built around natural springs and waterfalls, and homes built into trees which provide shade, shelter, support, and protection. This helped the theme's uses of magic feel natural to the setting and its inhabitants, rather than just an excuse to write modern conveniences into a setting much less high-tech than the world we live in. The point you make about the skill and training required for older styles of combat is definitely an interesting one, and funnily enough one that Nexo Knights took quite a few opportunities to explore as a concept. Most obviously, the guide book "The Knights' Code" is written as an in-universe textbook used at Knighton Academy, originally authored back when the kingdom was still fairly low-tech, and extensively revised in subsequent years to address the rapid technological and societal developments that occurred during Knighton's era of peace. Margin notes by the Nexo Knights throughout the older course materials lampoon the way teens growing up in such a high-tech society would feel about the horror of having to live back in a time without the same high-tech conveniences, and yet at the same time, a lot of thought goes into just how much long and rigorous training students would need to go through to master their futuristic weapons and equipment before they could graduate from the academy and earn their knighthood. After all, there's a reason that in the modern world, there are far fewer hurdles to jump through (no pun intended) to be allowed ride a horse than to drive a car, ride a motorcycle, or pilot an airplane! That's not to say that the Nexo Knights characters actually exhibit the same skill levels or diligence in their training as real-world knights did in medieval times, obviously, and it goes without saying that it's much easier to deal lethal damage in combat with modern firearms (or futuristic laser guns) than medieval weapons. I don't think I ever really thought about how much that element of lifelong skills training plays into the societal differences that define so much about medieval or medieval fantasy settings (e.g the elite status and prestige of knighthood, and the highly specialized nature of even much more "everyday" career skills) as opposed to settings more typical of other genres! Growing up in the 90s I was only used to seeing the yellow-bordered "LEGOLAND" boxes in secondhand yard sale lots or the few vintage sets owned by older relatives… but truth be told, even having grown up with boxes that were color-coded by theme, there's a lot of it that I'd entirely forgotten about by the time I became an adult (especially since one of my family's decluttering strategies from my childhood was cutting out the pictures to save as inspiration/reference material and throw away the rest of the boxes). I was pretty surprised one year at BrickFair Virginia to see an exhibit of a bunch of the classic LEGO Pirates, Imperial Guards, and Islanders sets I'd grown up with, alongside their original PURPLE boxes!

This is an interesting perspective! That said, I have to wonder — do you have any geographic considerations for what you consider a Castle theme? After all, countries like China and Japan were using gunpowder weapons like fire arrows, fire lances, and hand cannons much earlier than Europe was. For their part, although LEGO chose not to brand the Ninja theme as a Castle theme (at least not in any of the catalogs I've seen), it did seem to take the place of the Castle theme in 1998 and 1999. What's more, its box art featured the same yellow-orange borders that had been reserved for Castle themes in years prior.* So in one way or another LEGO seemed to feel it performed an equivalent role to their earlier Castle sets, although it did feature both cannons and firearms. Also, just how generous would you be with that allowance for fantasy equivalents of technology? Like, would you accept automata with robot-like "artificial intelligence", as long as they ostensibly run on magic, clockwork, or some combination of the two rather than post-industrial technologies like steam engines or electricity? What about handguns or rifles that fire some sort of supernatural or spiritual energy rather than bullets (a fairly common concept in anime, manga, and video games)? I feel like at a certain point, even a definition spelled out as carefully as this one carries the risk of allowing its fantasy technologies to become functionally indistinguishable from more modern or sci-fi equivalents, almost like an inversion of Clarke's Third Law. And even without invoking any kind of supernatural forces, it doesn't take a whole lot for an armored siege cart with a tube-shaped projector for "Greek Fire" to look more like a tank than anything you'd find in a medieval setting. So in the end, you might at times still end up having to rely on gut instinct to determine which elements don't feel "Castle-y" enough. Mind you, this is not a weakness of your definition so much as a challenge of trying to define the ontological attributes of a LEGO theme or narrative genre in the first place! I'm not sure I could come up with a definition that includes fantasy tech but clearly and decisively excludes excludes any sort of tech that would pull the theme into another genre entirely. But it's certainly still fun to compare our different approaches to dealing with these sorts of questions. * Solid, color-coded borders on boxes were the norm for LEGO System sets throughout much of the 90s: blue for Town, Boats, and Model Team; grey for Trains; black for Space; purple for Pirates; pink for Paradisa; brown for Wild West; etc. But series like LEGO Ninja and LEGO Insectoids were some of the last themes to adhere to this design standard — by this time, some other System themes like Time Cruisers and Adventurers had already started decorating the top, bottom, and sides of their boxes with painted backdrops and textures like on the front and back, rather than placing the front box art neatly within a solid-colored rectangular frame.

I mean, the price of "standard" sized buildings is definitely already approaching that point. We've already seen it increase steadily from $140 in 2007 to $180 in 2019. However, given that the Corner Garage was both larger and higher-priced than the buildings before and after it, and the Police Station is both larger and higher priced than the building before it, I actually feel like that's a strong sign that LEGO is making a purposeful decision NOT to keep all their buildings the same size — unlike the first ten years of the series, in which the price only increased sharply above the rate of inflation for the two "premium" buildings which celebrated the series' 5th and 10tth anniversaries. I could be entirely wrong, of course! Perhaps LEGO has a totally different reason for this latest price increase (like to coincide the 18+ age recommendation and premium design), andn that it WILL be the new standard for other Modular Buildings going forward. That's part of why I'm so eager to see whether that pattern of "standard building, premium building, standard building, premium building" continues in future years.

Interestingly, some of the German names I've seen for the Extra Dots packs actually give them a specific title identifying the "theme" of each one. Series 1 was "Smiley Expansion Set" (Ergänzungsset Smiley), Series 2 was "Comic Expansion Set" (Ergänzungsset Comic), and Series 3 was "Secrets Expansion Set" (Ergänzungsset Geheimnisse). I haven't found any listings for Series 4 with these sorts of subtitles yet, but that's probably just because relatively few shop sites have them listed at all this far in advance, and many of those that do have a placeholder name assigned to them. Giving each series its own theme is certainly an interesting approach, and early on I definitely felt a little disappointed that Series 2 didn't continue with the emoji theme (especially given how many emojis we'd see in the promotional "creativity box" that hadn't and STILL haven't appeared in sets). But as the line has gone on, that disappointment has been balanced out by curiosity and excitement for what other sorts of themes LEGO will come up with. The cartoon facial features in Series 4 that are designed with mixing-and-matching in mind are particularly exciting and inspiring, especially since Series 4 differs from earlier Extra Dots packs in having surprise dots in two different shapes, each with their own assortment of patterns! They also seem especially well tailored to use with the bag tags that launch alongside them, which raises the possibility of future Extra Dots sets being inspired by their usefulness on future Dots "canvasses".

I actually wasn't entirely sure about this idea myself, since I've never been nearly as passionate or knowledgeable about trains as my dad was, so I went ahead and looked up some images of different styles of dome car, and in some models it seems like either there isn't a flat center, or it's narrow enough that you could potentially get away with building a similar coach at just 7 studs wide. Here are some links to examples like these that I found: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pleasure_Dome_cars https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Strata-Dome_cars https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiture_panoramique_de_type_Rheingold_1962

I definitely get how you feel that a hybrid theme like that would fit in better with people's existing collections, but usually hybrid themes of this sort are intended to stand out, not fit in. From what we've seen and heard about the theme's development from designers, the entire concept of Nexo Knights was first pitched many years before its launch as a broad idea for a "future castle"/"future knights" theme, and it's doubtful that LEGO would have ever chosen to develop that pitch into a full theme in the first place if they thought the futuristic twist would be some kind of deal-breaker. The idea that it came out of some sort of broader exploration of ways of "renewing" the Castle theme often seems to be based on the assumption that the theme was some sort of last-ditch effort to "save" a classic theme they feared was losing relevance, but that seems to mostly be a projection of what fans felt Nexo Knights' purpose should have been, or perhaps the only reason they could imagine a theme like Nexo Knights getting developed. But to me it seems a lot more likely that it was envisioned as a cool and slightly absurd concept for a new sci-fi theme and decided to pursue it on those grounds.

While I understand your frustrations, expecting LEGO to price their sets using ordinary currency conversions is simply not realistic. One of the simplest factors that you're ignoring is tax rate discrepancies. In the UK, a 20% value added tax is charged on all toys, and included as part of a product's retail price. In the US, sales tax is a surcharge added on TOP of the retail price, and the rate of that surcharge can vary wildly depending on what state and city/county you're in. As such, if you were to exclude taxes from the value of sets like the Tournament of Elements or Overlord Dragon, the UK price would be LOWER than the US price, even compared to states like New Jersey which charge no sales tax on consumer goods! Plus, your individual feelings about the design of the Overlord Dragon don't really have any bearing on the set's value for money in a more general sense. After all, would you really expect LEGO to charge MORE for a dragon set this same size if it were built in a way that was more appealing to you? After all, even if you remove the scrawny wings entirely, you still end up with a dragon with it's a considerably beefier design for its torso, legs, neck, and tail than this year's Empire Dragon, and with 90 pieces more, despite that set having a brick-built head instead of a molded one!

I think mods will probably change the topic title, since Eurobricks tries to be fairly consistent about accurately labeling MOCs and reviews. Without meaning to be rude, I'm struggling to see any ways that this really improves on the new X1 Ninja Charger set. It feels very uneven and lumpy compared to the streamlined muscle car look that both the old and new versions of the X1 Ninja Charger exemplified, and despite the cleverness of some of the techniques you used, it ends up adding several unsightly gaps and harsh, jagged textures. The high ground clearance and the thick, angular bodywork make this MOC feel more like some type of all-terrain tank than any sort of car. There are a few attributes that make this one a little closer to the original version, like the weirdly narrow grille and simulated engine block attached to the missile turret, but they stick out awkwardly on your version rather than more closely matching the contours of the original, and as such I feel that they detract from the appearance more than they contribute to it. And the conspicuous gap in the middle of the golden front bumper makes the "escape motorcycle" feel much less well-hidden than in either of the official sets. Even the way the color scheme is organized feels messier. The original set had solid-looking red body panels on a black chassis, only broken up slightly by the technic beams used to raise the turret and hood, while the Legacy set adds some tasteful, more or less continuous black racing stripes along the center and sides. By contrast, your model has exposed black plates, hinges, slopes and brackets scattered much more haphazardly, and visible from almost every angle. I keep wanting to wrap this up by pointing out something I actually really like about your version, but no matter how may times I scroll back and forth through your pictures, the only features that really stand out in a positive way are stuff like the windscreen and spoiler that are designed just as well or better on both of the official sets. I guess the dark brown seat cushions on your versions are a pretty nice touch? It certainly adds a sense of comfort, at any rate. I deeply apologize if this ends up reading like some sort of pile-on, but please understand that the topic title raised my expectations for this topic just as high as the rumors of a new Ninja Charger set raised yours, and that instead seeing this attempt at a "improved" version presumably ended up disappointing me just as much as seeing LEGO's official attempt ended up disappointing you.

Ooh, good point! I'd spotted that piece and been really excited about its architectural potential, but I hadn't even begun to think about how many uses it might have on various sorts of vehicles. It could also be awesome to attach them sideways and use them as the glass ceilings of a dome car.

Even in America, "kart" is only used to refer to go-karts, which I believe originated as a brand name which became genericized over time. All other types of cart are spelled with a C, including things like shopping carts, luggage carts, serving carts, and mop bucket carts (all of which are usually called "trolleys" in British English — whereas a "trolley" in American English refers to a tram or streetcar).

I'm not sure what you're seeing? There are some very obvious refractive/reflective/diffractive optics visible in these pics, as well as an actual 3D surface. Just compare the gem and star tiles which are photographed from head-on in the Extra Dots Series 3 photo to the ones that are tilted at an angle (like the gem tiles at the bottom or far right, or the star tile immediately below the "keep out" pattern). It's even more obvious in some of the alternate pics which appear under the "More Images tab", like this picture of the Starlight Bracelets.

Given that both this set and the Corner Garage were a higher price and larger size than other "standard" Modular Buildings (i.e. the ones that aren't special-edition anniversary sets like Town Hall and Assembly Square, and tend to cost about the same as they always have aside from occasional adjustments for inflation), I'm beginning to think that LEGO may now be following an alternating pattern between "standard" buildings in even-numbered years and "deluxe" buildings in odd-numbered years. I suppose we'll just have to watch over the next couple of years to see if they continue following that same pattern.

The Starlight Bracelets and Extra Dots Series 3 both include Dark Blue 1x1 square tiles with an embedded Tr. Light Blue gem and Lavender 1x1 round tiles with an embedded Tr. Medium Reddish Violet star. My brother and I haven't had any print quality issues in any of the Dots sets we've gotten (including those he's reviewed for New Elementary), but perhaps we've just been lucky in that regard. In any case, my comment about not seeing those tiles in any retail products was not really driven by any personal desire for those particular patterns (there are several I could do without, even if the emoji ones are a lot of fun) and more by how weird it would be for LEGO to produce 32 uniquely printed tiles like that (two random assortments of 16) and then not put them in any sets aside from a limited-release promotional kit. Of course, given that the Dots theme was delayed by a year due to a material issue with the bracelets, it's possible that they were designed for Dots sets which ended up getting cancelled or pushed back because of that delay.

Discussions about what color is optimal for LEGO roads could be a whole separate point of discussion! I myself am quite fond of representing asphalt roads using Dark Stone Grey, which is also conveniently the color LEGO has been using for roads in the City theme for the past decade and a half. I like that by making roads in this color, you're free to use Medium Stone Grey for lighter-colored materials like concrete curbs and cinder blocks, and Black for darker-colored materials like rubber tires or wrought-iron fences. You do lose some of that contrast with sets like the Modular Buildings since they tile so much of their sidewalks/pavements in Dark Stone Grey, but honestly your use of studded road surfaces ends up helping to restore that lost contrast by making the road surface appear much coarser than the more pedestrian-friendly paving stones on either side!

I don't feel like that was all that baffling, considering the sorts of sets those narrower tracks were used in. If LEGO had used it for actual train layouts or trams instead of just minecarts or roller coasters, I'm sure they'd have felt more incentive to create a straight version. Similarly, although I would be very interested to see how LEGO would handle curves in this new system, I feel like the relative prriority of curves vs. inclines might depend on what contexts LEGO ends up using it for in the future. After all, neither curves nor inclines would be entirely essential for ordinary city roads, and possibly not even even if they expanded its use to airport runways. But curves would become a lot more important if LEGO decided to expand its use to include race tracks, whereas inclines would become a lot more important if they decided to expand its use to include overpasses. In any case, the upfront investment LEGO has put into this road system and the emphasis they are putting on it in their new sets seems to be a lot greater than the four-wide tracks, which never showed up in more than a single set per year. This feels more on par with the level of commitment they showed with the launch of their original road baseplates in 1978, the 9V track system in 1991, the modern Technic panel system in 2009, the Character and Creature Building System in 2011, or "Mixel joints" in 2014. So I have high hopes that they'll continue to use and expand on this system quite a bit in the years to come.

In that case it sounds like your definition might be better phrased as "a theme focusing on knights and castles, but without any technological elements from the 20th century or later". You could certainly narrow your definition even further than that, but I feel like that's about as much as you could narrow this definition without also excluding 19th century technologies like airships, which tend to be relatively popular even in fantasy media that's otherwise more medieval-inspired like Dungeons and Dragons, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, and even LEGO Elves. For my part, I don't tend to be too concerned about putting themes into any sort of rigid categories, even if it can be a fun distraction at times to think about the ways certain themes are alike or different, or the past themes which might have influenced them. After all, Rock Raiders can be considered a space theme, but also an underground theme. Ultra Agents can be considered a sci-fi theme, but also a spy theme. Nexo Knights can be considered a castle theme, but also a sci-fi theme. And Hidden Side can be thought of as a horror theme, but also a modern-day theme. There's no reason to think that any of these categories are somehow more essential to these themes' identities than any other.

In some cases I'm sure you may be right, but I feel like a lot of Castle fans who don't care much for Ninjago just prefer themes that adhere strictly to "pre-modern" subject matter, regardless of how much of it is based in fantasy and how much is based in real-world history. A fan who feels like that would probably be totally okay with stuff like dragons, genies, ghosts, wizards, or magical weapons, but would draw the line at stuff like mechs, cars, jet planes, or motorcycles. Granted, many fans have this sort of preference still end up enjoying Ninjago sets — but they're a lot more selective in those purchasing decisions than if their interest in the theme extended to its modern and sci-fi elements as well. And new story arcs or factions that LEGO Ninjago introduces fluctuate quite a bit between these different types of subject matter. The baddies the mid-2019 "Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitzu" sets don't really utilize any modern-looking or futuristic-looking technologies, nor did the various new factions in the mid-2020 "Master of the Mountain" sets. But the baddies from the early 2020 "Prime Empire" are much more cyberpunk-influenced, utilizing tech like lasers, neon lights, arcade machines, video game controllers, and hoverboards — things that people in medieval times would have had no frame of reference for.

Don't City trains usually tend to come out in the middle of the year anyhow? The catalogs that showed up a few days ago are only for the first half of the year, so train stuff probably wouldn't be featured in them one way or another. Whenever the next City train sets end up coming out, it'd be lovely if they integrated the new City road system in some way — for instance, a new level crossing build that links together neatly with the roads in some of the other new City sets, or a train station that uses the new road pieces for a brick-built equivalent of the station platform bricks from the 9-volt era. Also, I feel like I end up mentioning this pretty much every year, but it'd be lovely to see a LEGO Friends train that boasts the same level of style and passenger comfort that the theme has previously achieved with airplanes like 41429 or boats like 41347. I realize that train sets are often stereotyped as a somewhat "boyish" hobby, but it's not like there's anything implicitly "girlier" about cars, trucks, buses, planes, or boats than about trains. Plus, a lot of passenger trains in particular have a wonderfully streamlined aesthetic that would fit in perfectly with Heartlake City's colorful and stylish design language.

True! There are also ordinary tile pieces in sizes like 6x6 and 8x16 which are already fairly effective for that purpose, but even then, these new roads make it a little easier to keep tile-based driveways like those level with the road surface. We might even start to see more sets that find unique or interesting ways to incorporate a driveway into a design. I'd love to see a set with a brick-built foundation that has a similar level of charm to the raised baseplate in https://brickset.com/sets/6416-1/Poolside-Paradise! That baseplate was one of the biggest contributors to that set's charm IMO, but needless to say, it was a pain in the butt to try and use in MOCs or integrate into larger layouts.