Aanchir

Yep, I think Lyi brought that up on the previous page as well. While this function would be neat on its own, I also think it's pretty neat that the "disk shooting" function and the bomb dropping function seemingly utilize the same trigger, and which function gets activated depends on whether you push or pull the trigger. Pretty creative if you ask me! It's definitely a high price per piece, but I think that it's probably similar to the Systar Starship in how much of that is on account of the sheer number of large pieces.

My feelings on stuff like this definitely vary. There are some accessories that I think really do a good job both "fitting in" with the design standards of real LEGO parts and serving a useful purpose that existing LEGO parts don't, while there are others that feel so detailed that they have sort of an "uncanny valley" effect when juxtaposed with the more basic shapes of real LEGO parts. For example, the BrickWarriors tattered wings feel far too detailed for their size, IMO — the membrane and cutouts are just fine, with little more detail than we're used to in parts like the Ninjago ghost blades or a tattered cape element, but the "muscles" on the main limb are far too clearly defined, considering that they are thinner than standard minifig arms and legs, which lack this sort of molded muscle definition. So even in their primary intended use on minifig armor, that discrepancy will always be extremely apparent. By comparison, BrickWarriors' spurs do a better job avoiding detail that is unnecessary or out of proportion with the part. The shape, at least, looks rather believable as something that COULD exist as a LEGO part and fit in aesthetically with existing ones, yet perform a function that no existing part can match. Also, from what I've seen at conventions, the material and color quality of BrickWarriors parts also leave a lot to be desired, to the point that BrickWarriors parts that appear together in a bin with official minifigure parts and accessories stick out almost as conspicuously as Mega Bloks parts from the 90s. I've been more reliably impressed by what I've seen from BrickForge in terms of color matching and material quality, though there aren't a whole lot of their designs that particularly appeal to me. One part of theirs that I was actually so impressed that I purchased one (despite never having really made use of it since) was their centaur legs. Citizen Brick has excellent quality custom printed elements! While a lot of it is gory zombie stuff, military stuff, etc. which doesn't interest me so much, they do really well at maintaining a similar economy of detail to LEGO parts — sticking mostly to solid colors and controlled lineweight, rather than an overuse of gradients and stippling. Granted, LEGO themselves went through a period when they created prints and stickers with some awful-looking stipple effects for shading, but classic prints as well as modern ones mostly steer clear of them. EclipseGrafx has also had some impressive quality custom prints from what I've seen.

Something interesting to me is that this is clearly the same photo from the box art for the original BSB set (same water texture, all minifigs in the same poses, same light sources, and in "new condition") — but WITHOUT the island scenery in the foreground and background. This suggests that either those were photographed separately and edited in rather than photographed as a single scene, or that during LEGO's original product shoot they captured multiple shots (one with additional sculpted scenery and one without). Furthermore, it tells us that LEGO must still have the "raw" photographs from that photoshoot in their archives, since they could provide Newsweek with a print-quality file to use in this edition. That's really neat to know, and makes me wonder how much other archival material LEGO might have that they might surprise us by sharing some day!

Thanks for the link! I love the function on the starfighter (a trigger you push to fire stars from the disk shooter or pull to deploy the stars in the third cockpit as bombs/paratroopers)! Great also to see some of the other nice features like the storage compartments for the disk-style stars and the new facial expressions for all the characters (including Benny). The Good Morning Sparkle Babies set also features some awesome otherworldly-looking scenery. This is something I also loved about LEGO Elves, and something that I'm hopeful that we'd get in a future girl-oriented Space theme if a theme like that ever came about. Much like the lack of livable interior spaces in a lot of traditional LEGO castles, I can't help but be slightly disappointed that the only extraterrestrial environments that we ever tend to see in Space sets can all be described as "desolate". I want to see the kind of WEIRD alien worlds that the Planetary Romance genre is built upon. I want to see lush alien worlds, societal and cultural norms that vary from our Earth-based frame of reference, and a premise where space is NOT simply treated simply as "unexplored frontier" like it is to us in the present day, but as a place that futuristic societies genuinely think of as home, and relate to accordingly.

I'm also preferential to non-licensed themes, even in the case of ones based on IPs I'm genuinely a big fan of outside of LEGO. I think that for me, one of the reasons for this is that in non-licensed themes (as well as themes co-produced by LEGO and a media partner, as in the case of TLM/TLBM/TLNM/TLM2), the subject matter is often designed with equal emphasis on how cool and fun it will be in any media appearances that are planned as how cool and fun it will be as a LEGO set. Even when there are differences in appearance between the sets and media, LEGO set designers tend to have considerable involvement and input in coming up with the designs of both versions so that their appearance and design strengths translate from one form to another reasonably well. By comparison, when trying to translate a subject from a pre-existing, non-LEGO iP into LEGO, there's often an unavoidable need for compromises. Even if LEGO were to translate an iconic movie scene into a building set with the utmost accuracy, it might still turn out to be a really crummy building and play experience, and not even necessarily a great display piece. After all, a lot of stuff in movies derives its wow factor from being "larger than life", which a miniature toy can't really reflect, particularly at an affordable price point. And there are a lot of times when movies introduce establishing shots of huge dynamic locations like futuristic cities or skyscrapers simply for visual effect, even if in the end the only events of any consequence to the plot or that would translate to exciting play scenarios occur in just a small fraction of that space. This seems to be one of the major reasons that the Lord of the Rings sets sometimes earned a lukewarm reception even here on Eurobricks — they just didn't seem as huge and grandiose as they felt in the original movies. And how could they be? After all, we've seen AFOLs create MOCs of some of these iconic scenes at closer to minifigure scale, and in many cases they dwarf even ludicrously expensive sets like the UCS Millennium Falcon! Similarly, look at how many complaints there were from AFOLs that the big Hogwarts D2C set last year was too expensive AND that it was microscale — even though Alice Finch's amazing minifig-scale Hogwarts MOC already showed us how ludicrously massive a minifig-scale Hogwarts Castle would need to be, even with a lot of the interior spaces like dormitories and classrooms condensed from their actual student capacity in the films! Mind you — as a kid I was less picky, and did end up getting quite a few sets from early 2000s licensed themes like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman, and SpongeBob SquarePants. But as an adult I feel like if I want to maintain a responsible budget I should keep my wish list mostly restricted to the sets and themes I enjoy most, and usually that ends up being non-licensed themes, with only occasional exceptions.

Well, as far as Creator Expert is concerned, I don't get the impression that the Winter Village Station was anywhere near as popular as the Winter Holiday Train, so perhaps today's buyers are not too keep on buying station platforms unless an actual train is included with them. In a more general sense, though, the upcoming LEGO Hidden Side ghost train comes with a train station.

Some Ninjago themed LEGOLAND attractions, like the "LEGO Ninjago: The Realm of Shadows" live show at LEGOLAND Malaysia featured the ninja costumes from the summer 2016 "Day of the Departed" sets a little less than a year earlier than those sets were released, and well before we knew that they would be appearing in sets. But of course by the time that and subsequent Ninjago-themed LEGOLAND attractions like "LEGO Ninjago: The Ride" or the Ninjago-themed rooms at LEGOLAND hotels were rolled out in other countries, those minifigs were not all that new or surprising anymore. Similarly, the LEGOLAND Castle Hotel in Billund opened just this year, but LEGOLAND California had one as early as April of last year, and they broke ground on it in January 2017. So even if Merlin had been able to get advance notice on what was coming up in the next year or even the next two years, they probably would have needed a lot of their graphics and so forth for the LEGOLAND Castle Hotel in California locked down far before designs were finalized for any themes coming in 2020 or beyond. And afterward, any subsequent LEGOLAND Castle Hotels at other parks/resorts would just get the same stuff that was designed for the California one, even if it's out of date. Well, I agree with you that parents might veto a child's toy purchases, but I think in most cases it's less on the basis of "coolness" than on the basis of "Is this a good value?" or "Will my child enjoy this?" or "Do I object to this on some moral or practical level?" So for instance, some parents might take a hardline stance against toys involving potty humor because they see it as "inappropriate" or against toys that make noise because they anticipate it being extremely irritating to everyone else in the family besides the person playing with it. But I have not really known a whole lot of parents to tell a child they can't have something because it's "uncool". I also think that as kids get older, they have a little bit better ability to articulate what they want or what they like. So for instance, for Duplo designers creating sets for children as young as 18 months old, the parents' perspectives are a BIG factor in design decisions — the main thing that will matter from the kids' perspective is whether they're CAPABLE of playing with the toy or recognizing what it is, not so much their individual tastes. By comparison, kids 5 and up (the general age range for City and Friends sets) have somewhat more defined tastes for what they like or dislike, but a lot of these are still heavily informed by their parents' tastes, as well as by the kids their age who they are beginning to meet at school. But kids in the 7+ age range are VERY capable of articulating what they like, what they dislike, and why, and a lot of the time their tastes might begin to diverge from their parents' tastes at that time. It's for this reason that this is a highly marketable age range for kids' TV shows and TV commercials for kid-targeted products — kids at this point in life are typically beginning to branch out beyond their comfort zone and experience stuff they've never experienced before, even if it's something the adults in their lives don't like or "get". For instance, I was around 7 when the Pokémon craze began, and MANY of the kids were into it even though their parents (like mine) probably thought of it as a confusing or pointless fad. I'm sure heraldry is a big factor in making sets enticing to kids, but I don't know that kids tastes in heraldry align all that neatly with adults' tastes. Sometimes they certainly might, but we've seen plenty of examples over the decades of stuff that sold well on account of its KFOL appeal but which many AFOLs (at least initially) hated: Bionicle, Power Miners, Ninjago, Friends, Chima, Nexo Knights, etc. There's no reason to think that heraldry or any type of graphic design would be the one place that different generations can flawlessly agree, when even different generations of AFOLs tend to differ in their opinions of which Castle themes had the best heraldry. And it's worth bearing in mind that LEGO isn't basing any of this sort of stuff on guesswork — they do fairly extensive kid testing for just about any new kid-targeted theme they launch, including focus groups from lots of different countries and lots of different backgrounds. And a lot of the time they're not just testing one concept at a time, but presenting kids with a lot of different concepts and asking them to choose which they liked best. For example, a lot of the concept art for unused Legends of Chima or Nexo Knights factions or unused Space Police 3 aliens are images that were presented to kids to observe which ones they responded most positively to, with those being the ideas that end up being developed into the final product. It seems reasonable to assume that heraldry, which we both agree is a big part of what defines how much a particular faction appeals to builders, is held to a similar amount of scrutiny. Depending on how cynical the designers in question are and whether the body language in question was a response to how well it'd meet your tastes specifically or Castle fans' tastes in general, it's entirely possible they've just been in the business long enough to know that they're likely to get a lot of negative initial reactions from AFOLs, whether they end up warming up to it later on or not. And of course, it could also be misdirection! I know LEGO employees sometimes like to toy with the fans a little bit when they have an exciting product coming up that they can't reveal yet.

I think trying to break things down into eras can be something of an oversimplification, though of course that's just as much a problem for mainstream historians as it is for people trying to make sense of the history of a particular brand or fandom. I do think that it might make sense if instead of merely generalizing what you perceive as trends in design, you tried to identify particular turning points that changed the course of the brand going forward to signify how. An obvious one is the brush with the specter of bankruptcy in 2003–2004. It's true that from an AFOL perspective the company might not have been visibly out of its perceived dark age until 2007. But as far as sales to kids and responsible design and business decisions are concerned, 2005 (the launch of LEGO City, the shift out of financial peril and into financial growth, and the realization of the recovery measures Jorgen Vig Knudstorp had initiated a year prior) seems like a more significant turning point. While I was typing this I glanced at Wikipedia's "History of Lego" article and it turns out that's also how they marked the start of LEGO's "Recovery" period. I do appreciate that you've steered clear of categorizing the periods you've chosen using highly subjective terms such as "golden age" and "dark age", particularly since "dark ages" has another much more individual meaning among AFOLs to refer to when a person decides to stop playing with LEGO, and thus is confusing when applied to a more universal period in the company's history. But there's definitely still a lot of subjectivity in what you think these eras' strengths and weaknesses are. For example, you describe boxes from 2000 to 2006 as "bland" simply because they don't have a lot of gimmicks you associate with what you consider to be LEGO's stronger years, like flaps or windows. But in fact, this was a time that LEGO was doing a LOT of experimentation with entirely new packaging style. For example: the various styles of reusable plastic canister in themes like Dinosaurs, Bionicle, Knights' Kingdom, X-Pods, and Tiny Turbos the lenticular holograms on the packaging of the 2004–2005 Alpha Team sets that showed off how the models "transformed" between two different modes "Try Me" features showing off the light-up LED elements in some 2005 and 2006 sets Treating photoshop effects in catalogs as "unimaginative" is also a bit of an odd concern. Some older catalogs had speech bubbles pointed to the minifigures — are those also somehow "unimaginative", since kids could just as easily create their own conversations between the characters on the page? What about the motion lines behind the Forestman minifigure on the cover of the 1988 UK catalog, or illustrated sound waves and lens flares used to show off light and sound functions in many 80s catalogs and box images, or the overlaid glow effects on parts like Majisto's wand, Aquazone crystals, or the Adventurers ruby in the 90s? I hardly think anybody's imagination is stifled by this kind of effect any more than one's imagination would be stifled by seeing the same sorts of effects on a comic book cover or movie poster. These are all just visual shorthand that add a sense of energy and movement to a still image, in a much more pronounced way than simply arranging the subjects of the image differently would allow for. I think that trying to describe the design philosophy of the "eras" you have identified without so much judgment towards whether they should or should not look a certain way be would be a lot more informative and useful than just singling out what you perceive as strengths or weaknesses — particularly since it would help to showcase why this particular breakdown of "eras" you've chosen can be useful for people even if they do not share the same preferences or priorities.

These are genuinely pretty brilliant! To be honest I would not mind a theme with this sort of concept/aesthetic. In the very least I'd be interested to see if a girl-oriented Space theme might be able to deliver more in the way of alien landscapes, flora, and fauna than we typically see in traditional LEGO Space (after all, one of the most defining features of the Elves theme when compared to more boy-oriented counterparts like Castle was its emphasis on environmental detail). I wonder if your "Elves Fighter" could be improved even further with a different color/pattern for the windscreen like https://brickset.com/parts/6230217/cockpit-dia-47-79-w-shaft-no-11 from the Goblin King's Fortress, https://brickset.com/parts/6254646/cockpit-dia-47-7-w-shaft-no-16 from The LEGO Movie 2's Systar Starship, or even https://brickset.com/parts/6230222 from Marvel's Sanctum Sanctorum. At the moment, the very rectilinear, mechanical appearance of the TIE fighter windscreen seems a little at odds with the more ornate magic motifs elsewhere on this particular model or the scooter. The Goblin King's Fortress portal could be a particularly apt replacement as it would echo the smaller portal piece you used on the scooter!

I'm not sure where you're getting the sense that the Pharaoh's Quest mummy designs were"lazy", particularly as the Pharaohs Quest mummies DIDN'T all reuse the classic Nemes piece from the 90s— the winged mummies had an entirely new Nemes piece with a falcon shaped upper part. Anyway, I think y'all are looking too closely at the shape and not at the color, which is probably a bigger clue as to when this prototype might have been developed. The color of that prototype resembles either the color "Cool Silver, Diffuse", which was mostly in use during the mid-2000s to early 2010s, or a metallic spray finish similar to the helmet and armor of the LEGO Atlantis Portal Guardian and Golden King minifigures in 2010 and 2011. So it being a Pharaoh's Quest prototype would make a lot more sense than an Adventurers prototype, unless LEGO was testing color finishes of this type a LOT earlier than they actually ended up releasing any (it's not out of the question, considering how many prototypes they had for stuff like "alien" minifigs with uniquely molded heads and bodies, years before they actually released any figures like that in sets).

Although the 2015 sets were not really innovative in terms of subject matter, I think they took some really impressive strides forward in terms of building techniques. For example, I loved the rocky, uneven coastlines visible in sets like 70410 Soldiers Outpost and 70411 Treasure Island. It called to mind detailed landscaping techniques I was only accustomed to seeing in sets aimed at somewhat older builders like 9476 The Orc Forge from The Lord of the Rings theme, and felt like a major step up from the single-piece island base from 6241 Loot Island or the much less compelling blocky yellow coastline from my childhood's 6254 Rocky Reef. It was also delightful to see the reliance on printed or stickered wall panels for exposed brickwork in previous imperial fort and outpost sets give way to smaller and more versatile parts like arch and masonry bricks. Don't get me wrong, I love pieces like BURPs and wall panels, and it frustrates me when people treat them as "dumbed down" even when they are genuinely useful for efficiently creating a sturdy structure… but actually building up the patterns that were previously represented by predefined graphics felt both more authentic to the LEGO aesthetic and more respectful to kids' building ability. I also loved some of the throwbacks to many classic Pirates sets and figures I have fond memories of to this day, such as the re-imaginings of Captain Roger/Captain Redbeard and Bo'sun Will Cavendish, a brick-built skull motif that echoed those in sets like 6248 Volcano Island or 6279 Skull Island, and a redesign of the classic Pirate map (instead of just reusing maps from entirely different themes like Indiana Jones). Even if you weren't convinced that these sets measured up to the classics that inspired them, it's easy to see how many ways they were intended as a love letter to the theme's heritage. To be honest, I think that wave might have been a lot better appreciated if it had just gotten more than five sets, and more intermediate price points between $30 and $100 (either as part of the same wave or as a follow-up wave). That's definitely something we can all hope for with the next Pirates (and Castle) wave — but I think the best chance of actually GETTING bigger waves of sets will be if LEGO takes their time and releases them when they see the strongest chances of success, which I suspect would not be in a year like this one when their main focus is on The LEGO Movie 2. I would personally also like to see more sets at price points ABOVE $100 in both the Castle and Pirates themes, since even if great things are possible at the $100 price point, a lot of the scale and grandeur of sets such as Black Seas Barracuda, Skull's Eye Schooner, Imperial Trading Post, Eldorado Fortress, etc. was only possible because they cost considerably MORE than the equivalent $100 in today's money. Those sets' original prices were between $66 and $126.50, and after 26 to 30 years of inflation that's equivalent to between $136.44 and $224.42 in 2019 dollars. Is it any wonder that today's $100 sets often seem underwhelming by comparison? It should be clear how much more LEGO is able to give buyers at price points over $100 — even non-D2C, 9+ and 10+ sets like 70618 Destiny's Bounty, 70357 Jestro's Volcano Lair, 4195 Queen Anne's Revenge, 9474 The Battle of Helm's Deep, 70657 Ninjago City Docks, and provide ample evidence of that. The biggest obstacle I see to giving the Pirates or Castle theme this same push is conventional wisdom among parents and even some AFOLs that anything over $100 is an exorbitant sum kids can't hope to afford. And while this isn't true either for LEGO from a historical standpoint or for the toy industry more broadly (have any of y'all looked at what a Barbie Dream House costs nowadays?), I can see why LEGO has been hesitant to take that risk with the Castle and Pirates waves up to this point. Still, I've been keeping my fingers crossed for years now to see these themes get out of that rut and start applying more of the strategies we've seen pay off so well in today's most successful themes.

I don't think you're a dummy at all… but I do think you need to avoid the temptation of thinking there's any need to rank interests based on which are more or less valid, no matter your criteria. Considering your own interests innately superior to other people's is an easy temptation, but alienates other people and also can limit your frame of reference. Whereas considering more popular interests innately superior to less popular ones can both result in unreasonable pressure to "follow the crowd" and suppress the value of your own individual experience, plus close you off to exploring stuff that might be niche or low-profile, but align well with or complement your other interests. To be honest, I strongly suspect you and I have some experiences in common. As a kid growing up in the 90s I greatly enjoyed LEGO Pirates, Imperial Guards, and Islanders (along with lots of other themes), and my brother and I even dressed up as an Imperial Guard and King Kahuka one year. I didn't get many of the actual large pirate ships, but I didn't regret it too much either, because my interests changed steadily over time as I learned about new things like robotics, fantasy storytelling, space exploration, video games, etc. I was just getting into Technic shortly before Bionicle came out and was a little unsure about it from the first pics I saw in catalogs — it was the magical, adventurous storyline and characters as well as my first few sets that managed to make it one of my favorite themes for its entire duration. Truth be told, it might have played some role in my lack of a "dark age" — after all, even if themes like Knights' Kingdom 2, Vikings, and Exo-Force hadn't appealed to teenage me on their own merits, the prospect of colorful new parts I could use in my Bionicle MOCs was very compelling indeed! But at the same time, I also try to keep a healthy sense of perspective. Perhaps this tendency has in part been fostered because as somebody who was fairly antisocial as a kid, my parents' attempts to shelter me from and discourage any interest in stuff my peers liked such as Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, or Rugrats only further alienated me from most of the people I met at school, making me a prime target for bullying or ostracization. I quickly learned that thinking I was "better" than other kids for indulging only in stuff my parents approved of didn't earn me any sort of respect or even make me all that happy. So when the Pokémon craze sprung up in the late 90s, I finally broke free of watching the primarily educational shows that my parents had raised me on and started watching the type of Saturday morning fare other kids my age talked about at school — regardless of whether my parents liked or understood it. Since then, even among fellow Bionicle or Ninjago fans, it can sometimes be uncomfortable to hear the same level of dismissiveness that I am so used to seeing directed at various themes I've enjoyed over the years, from Royal Knights to Aquazone to Exploriens to Bionicle to Exo-Force to Atlantis to Ninjago. Particularly since as time has gone on, I've seen perspectives on MOST of these themes shift dramatically. For example, when Rock Raiders first came out, it was pretty much met with the same hostility as many other themes of the late 90s that epitomized that period's trend towards simplistic builds, large specialized pieces, and unconventional genres. A lot of these critiques weren't necessarily wrong — even designers with the best of intentions can misjudge the tastes of their audience, and that was very true of that period's assumption that the growing popularity of video games was a sign that kids craved nothing more than instant gratification. But fast forward a decade or so, and Power Miners was seen by many as a sign of how far LEGO had FALLEN compared to supposedly "mature" themes of the late 90s and early 2000s like Insectoids, Rock Raiders, and Bionicle. This, despite the Power Miners sets being far more technically intricate and complex builds, a far better value for money, and on many levels even more believable/realistic! And nowadays I'm seeing people on this very site point to 2009 as the ideal LEGO should aspire to, when beloved classic themes like Space, Castle, and Pirates coexisted alongside licensed themes like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as newer non-licensed themes like Bionicle, Racers, and Power Miners. Having lived through ALL these eras, it never stops being disorienting to see TFOLs and younger AFOLs being just as hostile towards the current variety of themes as the AFOL community during THEIR childhood had been towards the themes THEY enjoyed! It's the same type of cycle we see on a broader societal level with each generation attacking the musical tastes or fashion sense of the generations that follow theirs. I think something else to keep in mind is that even in the 80s when LEGO was a lot more based on plain, archetypical stories, they had aspirations of breaking into other types of media like comics, storybooks, TV programs, movies, and computer games (Jim Spaceborn, the star of a couple classic Space comics at this time, was envisioned as a potential star for this kind of wide-reaching IP). So on some levels, their preference for less wacky themes in the 80s seems to have been less a matter of some purity of philosophy than having limited means to create media that would help kids to contextualize subject matter that wasn't grounded in familiar archetypes. After all, it's not as though kids in the 80s had less of a taste for wackiness than kids today — just look at the popularity of wacky, over-the-top, or nonsensical 80s brands like Voltron, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Super Mario Bros, Thundercats, and Masters of the Universe. For all we know, if LEGO had been capable of launching a wacky, media-supported, genre-mashing theme like Ninjago at that time (without overextending themselves like they ended up doing in the late 90s and early 2000s), it might have been a major hit even back then. But instead, kids who craved types of stories, fictional worlds, and play experiences that their parents had not already exposed them to in some form in their preschool years might have had to look for those outside the LEGO brand entirely. And as such, the "Generation X" kids who might've been most likely to welcome a theme like LEGO Bionicle, LEGO Ninjago, or LEGO Nexo Knights with the most enthusiasm are also the generation of kids who might have been least likely to have developed enough of a childhood passion for LEGO to even be drawn into the AFOL community. So I don't think the themes that are currently most popular are necessarily a sign that kids and what they like have really changed as much as people might think — just that LEGO is reaching kids that they couldn't have back then when they relied less upon thorough consumer insight research and more upon "conventional wisdom" that was slightly out of date even for its time. After all, how many other major toy companies besides LEGO took until the 90s or 2000s to really affirm and cater to kids' long-established interest in ghosts, dragons, ninjas, dinosaurs, wizards, fantasy monsters, giant robots, video games, skateboarding, superheroes, spies, and space aliens? LEGO was well behind the curve on a lot of things, including genre mashups. Mind you, I don't think that makes the more conventional interests they catered to back then were any less legitimate than the ones they failed to acknowledge, nor are most of them any less legitimate today. I think that LEGO will continue to revisit these "traditional" themes well into the future (my bets are on Castle for the next to get a revival, as since the turn of the millennium it's gotten a refresh almost like clockwork every three or four years). But the same can be said for a lot of the other recurring theme categories introduced since then, like secret agent themes, underwater themes, underground themes, dinosaur themes, globetrotting adventure themes, ghost/monster themes, etc. So it's harder to justify granting the pirate and medieval genres a unique "evergreen" status within that much larger list of categories to choose between when figuring out which new product line will be best suited to kids' interests in any given year.

I mean, Ninjago has been massively popular since its launch, so maybe the problem is on your end. The fact that it combines ideas so freely is what makes it so imaginative and inspiring — it empowers kids to create their own models and stories without feeling constrained by rigid, unimaginative rules about which types of pieces, characters, ideas, or subjects "can't" or "shouldn't" go together. If you really think that today's kids who have overwhelmingly embraced many of these themes you so despise simply don't have the good taste that your generation had as kids, then I think it's YOU who are failing to take LEGO's customers seriously. It's true that LEGO didn't abandon basic bricks in favor of minifigure-based play themes back then. They haven't abandoned them today, either, yet you still see boneheaded comments on Facebook from people complaining about how LEGO today is all "specialized themed sets that only build one thing" and miss when you could just "buy a box of basic pieces and make your own things", in spite of the fact that Classic and Creator sets designed to inspire different ways of using basic LEGO parts still exist today. Nobody here is saying that complaints in 1989 about LEGO "losing its identity" with themes like LEGO Pirates would have been true or rational. But complaints that LEGO has "lost its identity" today because they're making themes you don't like are just as untrue and irrational as those type of comments would have been 30 years ago. The idea that kids only flock to themes like Ninjago because there aren't any alternatives is way more "laughable" than the designs of the 2009 or 2015 Pirates sets. After all, in Ninjago's debut year (2011), other themes it coexisted with include: Kingdoms Pharaoh's Quest Atlantis Alien Conquest Pirates of the Caribbean Harry Potter City Racers Games Creator Technic Hero Factory …and more! So it's not as though there were no other themes out there for kids to choose from. And of course, just like today, there were numerous other toy brands back then that kids could have chosen from if they felt let down by all of the current LEGO themes. So even if kids were only grudgingly buying Ninjago in lieu of historic themes that would truly be of interest to them, you would expect it to result in rather middling sales as kids unwilling to compromise on their preferred genres of play veered away from the LEGO brand entirely, right? But as it turns out, LEGO Ninjago sales in 2011 were stronger than ANY previous launch for a new theme. And since then, even in years when there have been other licensed or non-licensed historic/fantasy themes for kids to choose from, Ninjago has pretty reliably maintained a place among LEGO's top-selling themes even in years when LEGO sales and profits were at an all-time high. It was so popular that LEGO even extended it BEYOND its intended final season in 2012 and final episode in 2013 due to fan outcry over the rumors of it being cancelled, and have since elevated it to "evergreen" status alongside themes like City or Technic. Outside of building sets, several of the LEGO Ninjago graphic novels also reached #1 in the paperback graphic books category of the New York Times bestseller list (volumes 2, 3, 7, 9, 10). In the United States, the TV series' Season One finale on Cartoon Network in April 2012 had 3.340 million viewers, and the Season Two finale in November of the same year had 3.108 million viewers. Are you also going to argue that kids in these years also didn't have any other books or TV shows to choose from? Furthermore, when you have this much obvious disdain for themes like Ninjago that have been massively popular and successful among kids, it's hard to really imagine that your dismissive attitude towards the past decade of Pirates, Castle, or Space sets accurately reflects how kids at the time felt about those themes, either. After all, if you believe it was those themes' "childishness" that resulted in their short lifespans or unremarkable sales figures, why would knight- and pirate- loving kids congregate to a theme that you seem to be convinced is even MORE "stupid", "messy", and "childish"? A lot of this dismissive attitude to these waves smacks of nostalgic bias, considering that the cheerful G-rated marketing, simple and colorful builds, and smiley-faced figures of LEGO Castle and LEGO Pirates have been pretty unapologetically childish for those themes' entire duration. I mean, the jail cell doors, jail cell door frames, staircases, and lower mast segments in 80s Pirates sets were literally repurposed from Fabuland, a post-Duplo intermediate theme that was effectively the 1980s analogue of today's Juniors/4+ sets or the early 2000s Jack Stone/4 Juniors sets! The 1990 Forestmen river baseplate even had dots printed on the studs so kids wouldn't misplace the bricks! Not to mention the cheesy, cliche-riddled stories and comics published to promote these themes in magazines and catalogs. But even if we humor this notion that these themes' potential in the present day has been stifled by the latest incarnations' "childishness", I don't see how you reconcile that with Ninjago's enduring success. In conclusion: I agree that would not be too unrealistic, and to be honest, they might still do something like that! After all, it's not as though gift-with-purchase items tend to be leaked/rumored as far in advance as normal retail sets or D2C sets. Often we don't even see rumors about them until a month or so ahead of time when the LEGO Store Calendar for the following month gets released. And we still have more than half the year ahead of us.

Not really, no? The reason they celebrate Star Wars this year instead of Pirates, etc. boils down to those two words "years of". LEGO Star Wars has been around for 20 full years. That's a big deal. Every theme LEGO makes will eventually be 10 or 20 or 30 years old, regardless of popularity. But not all will have maintained their appeal successfully enough to stick around that entire time. So the latter is a bit more of an achievement. It's the same reason that last year they celebrated "60 years of the LEGO brick" and "40 years of the LEGO minifigure" but not "40 years of LEGO Space" or "20 years of LEGO Ninja" — because LEGO Space and LEGO Ninja hadn't maintained an active presence for the entire duration in question, while the brick and minifigure had. Even though LEGO Pirates turns 30 this year, there haven't been "30 years of LEGO Pirates" — there have really only been 13, and even that's being generous and counting 2013 as a "year of LEGO Pirates" because of https://brickset.com/sets/850839-1/Classic-Pirate-Set. Anyway, it's not like a failure to acknowledge this anniversary is somehow the canary in the coal mine for the loss of LEGO's identity. LEGO already had a well-established identity long before they had a LEGO Pirates theme. I suspect there might've been LEGO fans who in 1989 thought that all the huge specialized pieces, detailed face prints, character-driven storytelling, and gunplay in LEGO Pirates were a departure from what they understood to be LEGO's true identity!

Oh, whoops, I didn't even notice that the other one of Balthazar's vampire pals was a boy! I don't know if these three waves would necessarily rule out future sets, though, since while the LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie themes each only got about three waves of non-D2C sets each, their final waves came out in December/January, about a full year after their initial wave! The same was true for Ninjago City Docks' North American release date compared to the first wave of LEGO Ninjago Movie sets. Whereas we got both the second and third waves of LEGO Movie 2 sets closer to the MIDDLE of the year. So in terms of number of waves or number of sets, it's true that the LEGO Movie 2 theme has gone just as far as any of its predecessors… but in terms of duration, precedent suggests there could potentially still be more to come.

LEGO has had non-licensed ghost pirates before, but funnily enough, not in the Pirates theme! There was a ghost pirate in this Duplo set (well, the design resembles a skeleton, but the glowing eyes and body make it pretty unmistakable that it's a skeleton of the undead variety), and similar undead pirate skeletons in this fantasy era Castle set! I agree that this could be a very fun new direction for the Pirates theme with lots of room for innovation and imagination, just as Fantasy Era was for Castle! Well, with one exception: the 4+/4 Juniors Pirates sets released in 2004 featured rival pirate crews: one with a red and green color scheme (Captain Redbeard, Harry Hardtack, Cannonball Jimmy, and Jolly Jack Crow), and one with a blue and black color scheme (Captain Kragg, Drake Dagger, and Scurvy Dog). I agree it would be interesting to see two rival pirate crews, though having one be supernatural in some way might still be useful, since if they're both ordinary human factions, then ragtag outfits worn by typical pirates might make it difficult for people who don't know the supporting story to know which characters belong to which crew. Unlike with uniformed soldiers, for whom color-coded outfits are pretty much to be expected, giving pirates color-coded clothes (as in the 4+ sets) might seem too tacky and unrealistic for many buyers' tastes (particularly AFOLs in this thread who are used to getting a more motley-looking band of ruffians). Those 4+ factions did, of course, have other differentiating characteristics — Redbeard's crew was neatly dressed, much like the minifig version of Captain Redbeard/Captain Roger, while Kragg and his crew were shabby, scruffy, and often shirtless similar to Captain Ironhook from the classic Pirates sets of the 90s. But without color coding or Ninjago-style insignias festooned on every outfit, I think that would still be too vague a distinction for many kids to pick up on without first having it pointed out to them. "Undead"-looking skin tones, spooky enchanted red eyes, skeletal bodies, and other supernatural traits jump out a little more clearly.

Since nobody's mentioned it here, there's another Systar System ship in one of the LEGO Movie 2 sets coming out this August… and in another of the set, the Systar System version of Benny! Very excited for both! The catalog page featuring these sets can be seen here, but be mindful that there are some spoilers if you haven't seen the movie yet but still want to avoid being spoiled: https://brickset.com/article/44227/more-summer-sets-in-2hy-lego-catalog

Awesome! It's neat to see how many different ideas for Lucy and Sweet Mayhem's confrontation were considered.

It's true that a smaller set with just the gates and a Jeep or other Jurassic Park vehicle might be a very popular set. That said, I think a lot of people aren't considering that D2C sets IN GENERAL tend to be fairly niche products aimed at a smaller audience with more advanced building skill than the normal retail products. And the gate and Jurassic Park vehicles are things LEGO could VERY easily still be saving for a future release — possibly another mid-range "throwback" set to accompany a planned JW3 wave, similar to the Raptor Chase set from the Fallen kingdom lineup. If the first Jurassic World D2C set HAD included the Visitor Center, a Jeep and however many other classic scenes/vehicles it might've needed to flesh it out into a complete play scenario, I wouldn't be surprised if it got a similar negative reaction to Assault on Hoth, Classic TV Series Batcave, or Betrayal on Cloud City — "Ugh, this sucks! I only care about *insert dino/vehicle/building here*. Why should I have to pay over $200 for a bunch of other stuff that could have been sold as smaller retail sets?" I'm not saying people's disappointment can't possibly be justified, but I do think it's understandable that LEGO might've expected AFOLs to be more enthusiastic for a large-scale sculpture as opposed to an enormous minifig-scale playset, considering how often in other licensed themes they seem to be UPSET when a playset takes up a D2C slot. And if anything, I'd expect people who are frustrated with the number of large exclusive sets LEGO makes to be HAPPY that in this case it's something they can skip without feeling guilty, rather than the playset they'd been dreaming of. That said, it's ALWAYS confusing to me when I see comments from people about skipping a set from a theme they like as though that's somehow a sign it's failed spectacularly. In my case, I almost invariably look for opportunities to reduce my wish list whenever possible, even if it means skipping sets I actually really like or even would enjoy owning. That way, at least I feel a little more in control of my LEGO spending habits. Yet for some reason, people who never seem able to skip a set from a theme they enjoy without blaming the designer's lack of creativity, skill, or intelligence for their personal disinterest seem to think that makes THEM the intelligent free thinker and ME the mindless sheep who buys whatever LEGO wants me to.

Also, I think it helps that the Systar System sets already don't have totally identical color schemes, but rather just some unifying color harmonies and motifs. For example: The Party Bus uses Vibrant Coral and Tr. Bright Bluish Violet (Trans-Purple), neither of which are major parts of the the Systar Starship, Wyld-Chaos Starfighter, or Space Palace color schemes The Systar Starship doesn't use either of those colors but DOES use Tr. Medium Reddish VIolet (Trans-Dark Pink) more prominently than the rest of the aforementioned sets. The Space Palace and the ships it deploys feature Warm Gold, Medium Lilac, and Tr. Light Blue much more prominently than either the Party Bus or Systar Starship. With all that in mind, I don't think the Wyld-Chaos Starfighter would feel too out of place among them. If I were buying multiples of any of the sets to create a fleet I might stick with just one of that ship as some sort of elite fighter, but as somebody who's more interested in just getting one of each, I think it will fit in quite nicely alongside the others. I would also love to see some of these in the future, Particularly the other character mashup ships from that big climactic scene in the third act (I'm a little more indifferent to some of the Apocalypseburg stuff, which I think has gotten decent representation in the earlier waves). And I wouldn't be at all surprised to see another wave late this year or early next year, just as we did for The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie. Sure, some folks are anecdotally observing that the sets aren't selling well, but people said the same thing about Nexo Knights even in its first year, and it not only ended up being successful and surpassing the LEGO Group's sales targets, but also lasting a solid two and a half years. Another omission that still stands out to me is the other vampire girl who showed up alongside Balthazar in his debut scene. It's possible that like some of Garmadon's IT nerds she might not be a big priority compared to more unique or named characters, but I'm holding out hope that she and other mini-doll characters from the movie end up showing up in sets, considering the outstanding quality of those that have appeared in sets so far. A set representing Harmony Town in some way could also be nice, since particularly when it grew into a towering maze during the big chase scene, it had a pretty nifty aesthetic we haven't really seen in any of the sets so far. I'm not sure that's a sign of something being "wrong" when store exclusives are a pretty normal thing in larger themes regardless of what size/price point they end up being. Who's to say that Smyths wasn't planning to have an exclusive all along, and that just happened to be the one that LEGO agreed on for them? And "barely anyone even saw the movie" is a pretty severe overstatement, particularly when the movie's difficulty breaking even seems to have considerably more to do with the size of its production budget than with low box office numbers. Its worldwide gross so far has been over $191 million USD. If its budget had been as low as The LEGO Movie's $60–65 million USD (about $65–70 million if adjusted for inflation) it would have already more than doubled, and possibly nearly tripled, its production expenses.

I mean, wouldn't another Classic Space set be even more "more of the same"? The piano Metalbeard looks decidedly different from any other Metalbeard released so far, and Wyldstyle and Sweet Mayhem's ship expands the otherwise still quite small Systar System faction fleet, rather than a faction that we've seen throwbacks to over and over again in recent years.

If I had to guess, I'd wager that it's more likely the other way around (they play Teen Titans Go so often in part because the 15-minute length lines up well with their preferred scheduling strategy and/or kids' viewing habits).

Nifty find! I think that stuff like this, along with the unfulfilled ambitions of creating a Jim Spaceborn animated movie, TV series, and video game back in the late 80s really supports something I've believed for a long time — that the tendency of today's themes to be supported with character-driven storytelling, TV shows, TV specials, mobile apps, and video games is a matter of LEGO having greater means and know-how to create successful branded media than they did back in the 80s and 90s — not, as fans of the classic themes sometimes suggest, a matter of them losing touch with some loftier creative philosophy they had back then.

Thank you! That was just a typo on my part. I can go back and edit that.

Besides some inferred American desire for simplification, I think another factor to consider is that LEGO didn't have many publishing partners in the United States until the mid-90s when they signed on with Dorling Kindersley. By the time DK started publishing theme-specific books in the United States, the Pirates theme had already gone on hiatus. So on the whole, during the original run of LEGO Pirates, there weren't many avenues other than LEGO Brick Kicks magazine, LEGO Mania Magazine, the LEGO Shop at Home catalogs, and LEGO.com that LEGO could use to communicate story content — and especially at that time, none of that stuff was nearly as well-suited to storytelling as the actual comic books and picture books being published in Europe. Believe it or not, these sorts of discrepancies have persisted in more recent years. While both North America and Europe have quite a few LEGO publications through various publishing partners, they often aren't exactly the SAME publications, so there is content available in Europe that isn't available in North America or vice-versa. For example, in 2011, Scholastic published four LEGO Ninjago chapter books (Kai: Ninja of Fire, Zane: Ninja of Ice, Cole: Ninja of Earth, and Jay: Ninja of Lightning), each with a short story and a longer multi-chapter story. The same four short stories were also published in the UK by Ladybird in the Kai/Zane and Cole/Jay 2-in-1 Ninja Handbooks, and in Germany by Nelson in individual Kai, Zane, Cole, and Jay Ninja Handbooks. But the European books had accompanying illustrations for these short stories, while the American ones did not — whereas the multi-chapter stories in the American chapter books were, to my knowledge, never published in Europe. The discrepancy in number of pages between the German single editions from Nelson and UK 2-in-1 editions from Ladybird also suggests to me that some European editions had content the UK ones did not. Even more recently, the LEGO Ninjago Magazine and many other retail LEGO magazines only began to show up in stores and newsstands last year — while in other countries like Germany, Italy, and the, UK, they'd been available for many years prior. Some of the actual story content in these magazines (particularly the comics) were reprints of ones published as graphic novels in the United States, but others (such as the comics from the LEGO Nexo Knights magazine) never made it over here in any form! And in that case, it seems to have less to do with any differences in storytelling tastes between America and Europe than with far fewer kids in the US buying magazines. Most of the ones I was familiar with growing up were education-focused like Highlights, Ranger Rick, and National Geographic Kids, rather than primarily designed to entertain or to promote a brand. This is definitely the most credible supporting evidence of Ironhook being his own character, and I think it's further supported by the fact that in the 1992 and 1993 sets that name Ironhook as a character in the set names or magazine descriptions, Ironhook noticeably differs from Redbeard/Roger in that he doesn't have a peg leg. I think that pretty strongly suggests that he was intended as a different character at least in those years, whether or not later figures WITH a peg leg were meant to represent Ironhook or Redbeard/Roger. That said, there are definitely a LOT of magazine pages in both the US and UK that use incorrect or inconsistent images for stand-alone character callouts. For example, each of the three Aquanaut minifigures (blue visor with headband, black visor with goggles, and black visor with communicator) were identified as Jock Clouseau in LEGO Mania Magazine depending on the issue in question. In another obvious goof, the August 1997 (U.F.O.) issue of Bricks and Pieces featured names, bios, and a story for the three minifigures "Commander X", "Techdroid 1", and "Techdroid 2". But the image they assigned to "Techdroid 2" was in fact merely the same alien minifigure as "Commander X" with their helmet removed! Presumably, the ACTUAL Techdroid 1 minifigure would be the red U.F.O. droid minifigure named "Andy Droid" in the US Mania Magazine. Beyond that, there's no telling whether the image assigned to "Commander X" was correct — given the elite status described in his bio, I strongly suspect this name was intended to refer to the black-helmeted alien minifigure named "Alpha Draconis" and described as the faction's leader in the US Mania Magazines.