Aanchir

In general LEGO tends to release seasonal sets, licensed sets, etc. a month or two ahead of whatever they're meant to tie in with. For one thing, it gives friends and relatives more advance notice so that they can give kids seasonally-appropriate gifts without waiting until the last minute to buy them. Also, when a new product comes out shortly before a movie or holiday that drives up demand for it, it can make it harder to reliably satisfy all that urgent demand. Giving people a little longer to buy sets makes things easier on retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. To top things off, some of the folks at Toy Fair said they were hoping to do a special Halloween event in the app itself… so launching the sets and app before that gives buyers a chance to get accustomed to what the game's core experience is like before that "twist" is added later on.

I don't mind LEGO animals being somewhat blocky, but I can't say I agree about the scale being more proportionate to minifigures. In real life, Stegosaurus and Triceratops were 26 to 30 feet long and between 9 and 10 feet tall. For comparison, a real-life horse is about 8 feet long and usually less than 7 feet tall (counting the head, even though horse measurement IRL is more typically measured from the withers). But the Stegosaurus and Triceratops from the Dino Island sets were between 5 and 6 bricks tall and between 16 and 17 studs long — shorter and less than twice as long as a LEGO horse! Likewise, a real-life Tyrannosaurus Rex was 40 feet long and 15 to 20 feet tall, but the LEGO version was less than 18 studs long and less than eight bricks tall — only twice the length of a horse and less than twice the height! Additionally, the repurposed arm pieces used for the Tyrannosaurus and the repurposed horn pieces used for the Triceratops were an extremely feeble likeness of the real creatures even considering how much less we knew about them at that time than we do now. The reason for the size and other inaccuracies of these early LEGO dinosaurs was seemingly less about scaling them to match minifigures, and more about making it easier for them to reuse parts and/or jaw and tail connections from existing LEGO animals like crocodiles and dragons. And while I definitely appreciated the way the dinosaur parts from the 2000 Dino Island sets and 2001 Dinosaurs sets were often shared between dinosaur species and/or with other LEGO creatures, they weren't particularly accurate in terms of proportions, scale relative to a minifigure, or anatomy. Ideally, if I wanted to come up with a LEGO dinosaur design that was scaled accurately to minifigures (within reason… when you compare a 6-wide LEGO train to a 6-wide LEGO car, it's obvious that minifigure scale includes a lot of wiggle room) AND less reliant on highly specific molds than current dinos, then I'd probably opt for a brick-built or mostly brick-built design like many of the dragons in LEGO Ninjago or LEGO Elves. And just on a personal level, I tend to prefer printed LEGO animal eyes to ones represented by a recessed area in the mold most of the time — except on brick-built animals where a differently colored piece can be used for the eye than the rest of the head. If we want LEGO animals to "fit in" with minifigures, it only makes sense that their eyes should be at least as expressive and clearly defined as minifigures' sparkly black dot eyes whenever possible! Overall, though, I understand LEGO's preference for molded dinosaurs. After all, dinosaurs have a lot of appeal with kids younger than the audience for Elves/Ninjago level builds. Plus, I know a kids probably enjoy "playing rough" with them when acting out fights or chases, which is better served by a sturdier build with fewer fiddly details that can break off during play. What about The Flintstones?

Reaper's shotguns are fairly cartoonish sci-fi guns both in the sets and the source material. In fact, I'd say they're a lot LESS realistic than the guns in many Star Wars movies and sets. And in terms of a "body count"… couldn't you say the same for several of the villains in Super Heroes sets or dinosaurs in Jurassic World sets? While over the decades LEGO's attitude towards dark, scary, or violent subject matter in sets has shifted a lot, LEGO's "conflict and weapons" policy that they finally codified in 2010 draw some pretty clear boundaries on what subject matter they will not allow: "The LEGO Group believes that conflict between good and evil can form an important part of children’s play as it teaches children about their own, and other people’s, aggression and helps them recognize and handle disputes in other situations. However, the LEGO Group has no intention of glorifying war or encouraging violence, and therefore refuses to produce realistic weapons and military equipment with the risk of children recognizing these types of weapons from hostilities around the world. Instead, the LEGO Group supports children, stimulating their imagination by launching only historical and fantasy weapons. With the aim of toning down the conflict element, a good dose of humor is incorporated in the models and the storytelling around the play themes." On a broader level, I think LEGO generally seeks to avoid stuff that would resemble the real-life traumatic experiences that kids or their families may have had. Note that in LEGO City, despite Police and Fire being some of the major subthemes, there are no guns and no house/apartment fires. When violent or scary scenarios do show up in sets, they're usually things no real-life child or their parents are likely to have experienced in real life, like alien invasions, pirate raids, medieval siege warfare, superhero battles, attacks by hungry dinosaurs, wizard duels, etc. In that regard, I think that scary or even deadly monsters like in Stranger Things are well within the type of subject matter LEGO has allowed in the past. But I suspect they will still steer clear of creating sets realistically depicting scenarios like child abuse, police brutality, sexual violence, modern warfare, terrorist attacks, hate crimes, plane crashes, etc. It's not so much a concern that knowing about these things or seeing depictions of them will be harmful to kids, but that it would be insensitive to reduce real-life traumatic experiences like this to something for people to build or play with for fun. Now, as far as media licensing goes? Obviously, the appropriateness of media content is highly subjective, and what's perceived as "kid friendly" or "not kid friendly" often varies from one culture to another. But so far I think LEGO has managed to maintain a mostly consistent track record of avoiding stuff that might merit an "adults only" rating. For example: In the United States, this would rule out films with an R, NC-17, or (obviously) X rating, TV shows with a TV-MA rating, or games with an M or AO rating. In the United Kingdom, this would rule out films or shows with an 18 or R18 rating and games with a PEGI 18 rating In Germany, this would rule out films and shows with an FSK 18 rating and games with a USK 18 rating However, ratings that signify content that's appropriate for teens but potentially not for younger kids appear to mostly be fair game: LEGO has had licenses for movies with a PG-13 rating in the United States (meaning kids under 13 are only allowed to watch with parental permission and supervision) or an equivalent TV-14 television rating for over a decade. For example: Spider-Man in 2002 Jurassic Park 3 in 2003 Spider-Man 2 in 2004 Star Wars Episode III and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005 Video game licenses in general are newer territory for LEGO, but even before Overwatch they had licenses for several T-rated video games. For example: One of LEGO's own games, Bionicle Heroes from 2006, had a T rating in its Nintendo DS port due to effectively being a first-person shooter (home console versions were able to avoid this using an over-the-shoulder camera, but the Nintendo DS's screen was too small to allow this without disrupting gameplay). Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in 2008 Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2012 Even so, it remains at LEGO's discretion whether even a property that has a rating deeming it suitable for kids and/or teens fits with their brand values, or whether there are scenes in such properties that would be appropriate for kids/teens in the source material but not as a toy building set. For example, even if a TV show or movie about a real-life tragedy/disaster like the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion were presented in a form kids could handle, depicting an event like that as a toy (particularly with the intent of generating profits from it) would probably be too insensitive/exploitative for LEGO's tastes.

Truthfully, I think the biggest "door" that a Stranger Things license opens is not with regard to its content but with regard to its format. This is the first time LEGO has developed a licensed theme based on a show exclusive to a streaming platform like Netflix. While they've had several TV show based licenses, and even had series of their own brands released as Netflix exclusives like LEGO Bionicle: The Journey to One and LEGO Elves: Secrets of Elvendale, this is a bridge they haven't previously crossed, and one that could potentially open the door not only to some of the shows that are more "mature" than many mainstream television series, but also to Netflix's many amazing kids' animated programs like Carmen Sandiego, Hilda, Trollhunters, 3Below, Little Witch Academia, and The Dragon Prince. In the past I've thought about how fun it would be to see LEGO sets based on these properties, but my biggest worry wasn't their content so much as whether they had enough viewers for LEGO to see a potential market there (Netflix doesn't tend to release viewership numbers for their individual shows, and it's often tricky to gauge the popularity of more kid-targeted properties like these based on online buzz. Sadly, one of the Netflix series I've been enjoying most lately — She-Ra and the Princesses of Power — is still owned by Mattel, which means it's likely to remain outside LEGO's grasp for the foreseeable future (that said, I'd be interested to see if Mattel would consider making Mega Construx sets based on this brand, and if so whether their attempts would live up to the awesome designs featured in the Netflix series). Now, I haven't watched a whole lot of more "mature" Netflix exclusives yet aside from Stranger Things and some of their Marvel series. And in a lot of cases, what I have seen pales in comparison to their kids' animated content as far as potential subject matter for LEGO sets is concerned. I suspect part of the reason is that it's hard to make huge, stunning, Hollywood-caliber live-action setpieces on a TV budget, and adult animated series like BoJack Horseman are notorious for having relatively low production values. That said, I've heard great things about Netflix's Castlevania, despite having yet to watch it myself. And in terms of not-yet-released Netflix stuff that I think might be worthwhile for LEGO to look into licensing… well, there's a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series in development which seems to have better chances of being faithful to the original than the disappointing movie adaptation from back in the day. The original animated series was full of amazing locales, characters, and scenarios that LEGO simply wasn't able to do justice when they had that license back in 2006. I could see a faithful live-action adaptation as a great "second chance". Other projects Netflix has in development that pique my interest are Chronicles of Narnia series and films (Netflix has the rights to all seven books, something no other production company has had before), Wizards: Tales of Arcadia, a live-action Carmen Sandiego film, and a Pacific Rim anime. Some of these are all-ages series while others I'm not so certain about. But regardless, it's interesting to think about the possibilities…

In the US, Stranger Things is rated TV-14, which is the same rating most PG-13 movies like The Avengers, Iron Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy when broadcast on TV. So I'm not sure I'd describe it as "definitely older than PG-13". In general, I would generalize PG-13 ratings for movies, TV-14 ratings for TV, and T ratings for video games as intended for teenagers and older, but acceptable for kids with adult permission and supervision. Also, for what it's worth, the UK ratings for Stranger Things vary between episodes. In Season One, episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are Rated 12 in the UK, while only episodes 3, 7, and 8 are rated 15. And in Season Two, episodes 1, 5, and 7 are rated 12, while episodes 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9 are rated 15. And while a 15 rating in the UK is often applied to stuff that has a "mature", 17-and-up rating such as R or TV-MA in the United States, like the examples you named, it's also often applied to other movies and shows LEGO has licensed in recent years such as Beetlejuice, Gremlins, Arrow, Black Lightning, and of course James Bond. So while LEGO hasn't been licensing Rated 15 properties for nearly as long as TV-14 or PG-13 ones, Stranger Things is not quite their first time for that, either.

2009 had two SpongeBob SquarePants sets, three licensed Racers sets (Ferrari and Lamborghini), a licensed City set (Toys 'R' Us), and seven licensed Duplo sets (Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder). But there weren't Harry Potter sets in 2009 — those came about in 2010 along with other new or renewed licenses like Ben 10: Alien Force, Maersk Line, Toy Story, Cars, and Prince of Persia. And if you go back one year to 2008, you had licenses including not only Star Wars, Indiana Jones, SpongeBob SquarePants, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Ferrari but also Speed Racer, Batman, Vestas, and Volkswagen. Go back to 2007 and you have Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, SpongeBob SquarePants, Ferrari, Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, of all things. So even if there were fewer licensed sets in those years than there are today, I don't feel as though LEGO was as restrained in their licensing as your post makes it sound. Furthermore, "random licenses that nobody ever asked for" is a great way of completely ignoring the many people who HAVE expressed interest in LEGO making sets based on IPs like Stranger Things, Overwatch, Mustang GT, Jurassic Park/World, The Wizard of Oz, and so on. Even DreamWorks Trolls, the current thing that AFOLs are having so much fun whining about (even though it's not coming out until next year, and will most likely be replacing Toy Story 4 rather than adding to the overall number of licensed themes) was incredibly popular with kids, and I have no doubt that many of them would have been thrilled to have LEGO sets based on its world and characters. Which isn't to say that "nobody asked for this" would have been a great argument against any theme even if it were true, since it presupposes that any set worth making is one that somebody else has already thought of, neglecting the possibility and value of new ideas that catch the whole world by surprise. You've got a hard life ahead of you if you're really that bothered by the idea of kids liking things you don't… surely when you were growing up there must have been things you and other people your age liked that people your parents' or grandparents' age found weird or confusing? OK. Let's suppose that this year LEGO didn't have any licensed themes except for Star Wars, DC, Marvel, Harry Potter, and Disney. I think we can agree those are all themes that are of value to a lot of people here, right? Naturally, we'll keep The LEGO Movie 2, since its main characters from non-LEGO media fall under the DC umbrella, and I think we can also agree to keep Toy Story 4 since it falls neatly under the Disney umbrella. Do you know what that would do to the number of licensed sets this year? Turns out: not as much as you might be thinking. Of what's known/rumored about the 2019 set lineup so far, Star Wars, DC, Marvel, Harry Potter, Disney, Toy Story 4, and The LEGO Movie 2 not only account for more than half of this year's licensed themes, but also over three fourths of this year's licensed sets and slightly more than a third of this year's entire range of new sets. The only licensed themes you'd be getting rid of this way would be Minecraft, Overwatch, Speed Champions, Jurassic World, and Stranger Things… which, collectively, comprise just 28 sets, more than half of which are priced at $30 or less. That's enough for one big theme or five small (5–6 set) themes, but considering the disappointment and lack of staying power that the 2013 Castle wave and 2015 Pirates wave had, it'll be hard to turn so few sets and such low price points into the Castle, Pirates, and Space comeback that people here have been dreaming of… You make some good points. And even when the benefit of these themes might not seem huge, the harm generally isn't either. There's no reason to think that LEGO would free up monumental resources by skipping themes that are only designed for a small, short-lived run. I mean, in the past when themes like Castle, Pirates, or Bionicle have been relaunched with six or fewer sets, many AFOLs have criticized that as pathetic or cheap on LEGO's part. I don't see how it's fair to treat the same number of sets as a gratuitous expense if it happens to be a licensed theme, whether or not it's one AFOLs happen to care for. This is a silly argument. Just because something used to be MORE popular doesn't mean that it's no longer relevant. If we applied that reasoning to non-licensed themes then we could outright disregard many of the themes people are worried about current themes getting in the way of! Pirates and trains are decidedly less popular today than they were in the late 80s and early 90s. Bionicle and Harry Potter are much less popular today than they were in the early 2000s.

A couple things: LEGO has seemingly been OK with licenses rated PG-13 or the equivalent since the early 2000s — Stranger Things is not groundbreaking in that regard. Past examples include: Star Wars (Episodes 3, 7, 8, Rogue One, Solo, The Force Unleashed, and The Old Republic) Indiana Jones (Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) Harry Potter (Goblet of Fire, Prisoner of Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows) Pirates of the Caribbean (all movies) Marvel Super Heroes (all movies) Fantastic Beasts (all movies) DC Super Heroes (all movies, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow) Jurassic Park/Jurassic World (all movies) Prince of Persia The Lone Ranger As such, I'm surprised at how many people see themes like Overwatch or Stranger Things as uniquely groundbreaking. THAT SAID… I also think that in general there are some types of "mature content" that LEGO seems particularly keen on avoiding — specifically, stuff that's likely to directly relate to trauma that kids and their families might have experienced. Even though they have no obvious objection to scary or violent content involving, say, medieval siege warfare, dinosaur attacks, space battles, etc, it's worth noting that they tend to steer clear of content such as police brutality, house fires, suicides, modern warfare, etc. As such, I think a lot of "mature" brands are likely to largely remain off the table — for example, media with storylines involving rape or sexual assault like Law and Order SVU, Game of Thrones, or Watchmen, media focusing on realistic modern warfare like Call of Duty or Apocalypse Now, etc. Now, as for potentially dark or mature themes I would enjoy seeing, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" has been a passion of mine for a long time, and the recent Netflix series could make a neat foundation for a LEGO theme. And while it includes a lot of scary situations, it generally has lower content ratings than many of the examples listed above (TV-PG in the United States, PG in the United Kingdom). But of course, now that it's reached its finale, it's probably past the prime opportunity for a tie-in theme. "The Legend of Zelda" games vary in their ratings, but could be seen as somewhat violent (the latest for a home console, "Breath of the Wild", has an E10+ rating in the United States but an M rating in Australia, just to give a sense of how varied the perception of its violent content can be). Still, I think they'd be a neat subject for a LEGO theme. The "Ace Attorney" series of video games is another I've enjoyed thoroughly and thought about as a potential subject for at least a stand-alone set. But since it's a series about murder trials it naturally has a lot of blood and violence. Most games in the series have a T rating but the fifth game, "Dual Destinies", had an M rating — possibly due to some of the animated cutscenes being more graphic than earlier or later games. That's all that I can think of right now. It's far from the only/most mature media I enjoy, but a lot of the other examples like "The Adventure Zone" and "Monster Factory" aren't exactly stuff I can envision making particularly interesting LEGO sets/themes.

I definitely agree with this assessment that LEGO has specifically avoided in-house space themes during ongoing Star Wars trilogies. The point I'm trying to make, though, is that all the other incidental Space stuff they've made in the meantime shows that they're making a CHOICE to focus on other types of sci-fi themes, and they're not beholden to some non-compete clause that would outright prevent them from making space sets. It's less "we can't make a new Space theme" and more "we could, but haven't felt a need to as long as we've had so many other less Star Wars-ish theme categories to choose from." I understand that this might seem like splitting hairs, but stuff like The LEGO Movie 2 is why I think it matters. If there were a non-compete clause broadly defined enough to rule out any new Space theme, then it would almost certainly rule out all those other spaceship-related sets from other themes. The fact that it doesn't means that LEGO remains free to release future sets and themes in a space setting, even if they aren't specifically developing them to answer the question of "how should we bring back LEGO Space?" Maybe Cartoon Network Studios will partner with them to make a cartoon about Benny the Spaceman. Maybe their next play theme aimed at the same girls 7-and-up audience as LEGO Elves will have an extraterrestrial setting. I just feel like it's nice to know those and other possibilities I might not even be able to imagine are still on the table.

I think that’s the wrong question. It’s safe to assume that most of the variety of Space-ish motifs and subject matter we’ve seen in The LEGO Movie 2, Ideas, Nexo Knights, Super Heroes, City, etc. could just as easily be featured in a “real” Space theme. And in the future, they might be. But there wouldn’t be much incentive to develop a new Space theme around them if these same sorts of subjects and motifs showed as much potential or more in a different theme/genre, which is what I suspect has been the case in recent years.

Same! I tend to work with curved elements a lot in my building so more variety is always great, particularly when it matches the radius of so many already existing elements!

Amazon.co.uk has finalized pics of the bus. So to continue this list, its characters are Worker Bill and Worker Hanna.

I think it was mainly just a fun easter egg/bonus the designers threw in for AFOLs. After all, one of the main Boost designers, Carl Merriam, is himself an AFOL. Of course, it's possible LEGO might plan to reuse it in a future LEGO Movie 2 set or some other Classic Space throwback.

Who says it does? Besides Benny's Space Squad, The LEGO Movie 2 features two different Space factions with their own fleet of vehicles. LEGO clearly isn't under any illusions that such sets aren't viable alongside Star Wars. There have also been entire futuristic themes that were so "fresh and different" that they broke away from conventional Space settings entirely, such as Ultra Agents and Nexo Knights. To Classic Space fans, it's understandable that these space-adjacent sets and themes would be no substitute for "real" LEGO Space. But to kids whose preferences aren't informed so heavily by nostalgia, transplanting iconic sci-fi design elements into less conventional contexts could very easily help them to stand out even MORE from mainstream sci-fi flicks like Star Wars than they would if they were set on generic cratered landscapes under a generic starry sky. So much of the concern about LEGO not having Space, Castle, and Pirates sets assumes that they would never go so long without these themes unless they somehow felt prevented from bringing them back. But it's just as possible that they recognize the possibility of bringing them back at any time, yet have consciously chosen to focus on new, different themes that they felt would bring more freshness to their portfolio at the time being. In recent years we've seen plenty of people complaining about LEGO making too many mech sets, regardless of how different they look, how differently they're built, or how different the themes they belong to are. Has anybody here considered that to a younger LEGO fan without the same nostalgia for classic themes, having a whole bunch of spaceship-focused sets in Star Wars, Super Heroes, Iverwatch, City, The LEGO Movie 2, AND an in-house Space theme in the same year might feel just as redundant? To a classic Space fan the aesthetics of a "real" Space theme would make its sets feel worlds apart from any of those, but to a kid who just thinks of spaceships as a broad category, the same way so many old-school AFOLs think of mechs, yet another wave of space travel related sets might just feel like more of the same.

Just saw a comment on Facebook pointing out a new-yet-not-new printed element in the Boost Droid Commander set: Check out that vent on R2-D2's right side…

Just thought I'd drop in to share that LEGO Customer Service has put up the instructions and inventories for the LEGO Friends Heartlake City Amusement Pier and Funny Octopus Ride. Specifically I thought folks here might be interested to know that the Amusement Pier set includes the chrome gold ingots/coins prepack (https://brickset.com/parts/6052266/coins-no-1100), which last showed up in the Brick Bank set. Nice to know that LEGO is keeping both the part and color around! Additionally, more finalized Hidden Side pictures recently surfaced via Amazon.co.uk, though some like the bus and diner are still missing: https://www.brothers-brick.com/2019/05/08/lego-hidden-side-augmented-reality-theme-sets-revealed-news/ Don't see much obvious stuff that wasn't brought up around the time of the Toy Fair reveal (like all the fun recolors from the school set), but I still figured I'd share it for y'all to peruse.

A lot of the reason for that is probably that teams like the Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy usually originate mainly as team-ups of already known/established superheroes, sometimes with some new characters to mix things up. So they typically don't have to go to the effort of establishing a widely varied range of origin stories all at once. Also, a lot of LEGO's in-house themes are intended to be stuff that people can jump into playing with whether or not they've already been exposed to the underlying story. Characters having shared motifs, insignias, or a shared design language (like the Alpha Team agents, Nexo Knights, Toa, Turaga, etc) helps with that since kids can quickly get a sense of which characters are teamed up together as part of the same faction. Whereas if you didn't already know characters like Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America it would be hard to tell that they're all good guys, let alone that they're all part of the same team! In terms of design language, a lot of superheroes have more in common with the supervillains from their respective titles (e.g. Hulk and Red Hulk, Iron Man and Iron Monger, Flash and Reverse Flash, etc) than with the other heroes from their team up comics/movies/cartoons. They can get away with this because unlike with LEGO, comic book superheroes tend to be much more widely recognized for their media than their toys. Even in the case of Monster Fighters, it's very easy to tell who the "good guys" are — despite their very different outfits, the Monster Fighters are all obviously human and many have shared motifs like metal prostheses and other steampunk-ish aesthetics. Whereas the bad guys are in part drawing on the same cultural saturation as superhero teams do — they are not only monsters, but well-known classic horror archetypes. If LEGO were to do a "hero team-up" as varied as the Monster Fighters villains, it would likely need to draw on equally well-known public domain heroic archetypes, like Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, etc. Compare with Alan Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", a comic book reimagining Victorian-era literary figures like the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, and Allan Quartermain as an Avengers or Justice League style superhero team, or DreamWorks' "Rise of the Guardians", which formed a hero team based on figures from children's folklore like Santa Claus, Jack Frost, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny.

Not really. Lots of people agree about all kinds of ridiculous things. Just look how many people still believe the moon landing was faked or that the earth is flat. For that matter, I frequently see Facebook comments from old-school LEGO fans who believe today's sets have fewer pieces than sets in the 80s or can't be used to build anything besides what's on the box, despite both those things being obviously untrue. You've already admitted in your own topics that you were wrong about play features disappearing or The LEGO Movie 2 not having any non-set vehicles, so I don't know why you're suddenly getting defensive about the suggestion that your recent topics criticizing LEGO have been based on false assumptions.

I agree, but there still ought to be a certain amount of restraint. How LEGO redesigns Ideas projects into sets often depends not just on what they can or can't do in terms of costs and logistics, but also what they think it was about the original project that the most people were drawn to. If a project is so huge, complex, or elaborate that people are supporting it for those very reasons, it becomes increasingly difficult for designers to simplify it or scale it down in a way that doesn't eliminate what supporters liked about it in the first place.

There are plenty of types of discussion you can start about the older sets/media that don't rely on contrasting them with flaws of the current sets and media which only exist in your imagination. In fact, many of these topics of yours focus are heavily focused discussing "the newest sets", even if it's in terms of what you think is wrong with them rather than what you're excited about. If you would really rather discuss the things you like about older sets, rather than complain about newer ones (something you can just as easily do in the topics that already exist for those sets/themes), then instead of topics like "What happened with functions/play features?" that are primarily focused on some attribute you mistakenly assume the newest sets lack, you could create a more positive-minded topic like "What functions/play features from past sets should LEGO bring back?" The way you talk about my responses to your topics, it sounds like you're just as frustrated by them as I am by the topics themselves (particularly since my earlier response in this thread is not very long at all). But you can't expect to make a topic asking a question asking "is something-or-other about LEGO getting worse?" and expect only to get responses from people who agree with you, let alone for people who agree with you to have more to say that you haven't already said than people who disagree.

I definitely don't mean to suggest that your color preferences are informed strictly by gender biases, but I can't say the same for other people's. A lot of people don't have a very strong understanding of what makes certain color schemes work or not work… when you look at a lot of "Friendsified" MOCs out there like this or this , they often use "girly" colors somewhat randomly rather than even in as purposeful a way as the actual sets. And in general, I can't say I see a lot of complaints about LEGO Friends color schemes being being weak because of color choices like tan, brown, yellow, or red — it's always the "girly" colors that are perceived as the offending elements. The same can be said for a lot of color scheme complaints in other themes — Downtown Diner's color scheme was often criticized as too tacky, garish, or "Friends-ish" because of its use of pink and teal parts, even if it used these colors in a tasteful, realistic, and well-organized way. Spike Prime's colors have been criticized by Technic fans as "eye-searing" (among other complaints) even though they're a well-balanced triadic color scheme and hardly any brighter than other colors frequently used in Technic and Mindstorms sets like Bright Red and Bright Orange. In some discussions about the original LEGO Movie sets I even saw complaints about Wyldstyle's magenta and azure accents spoiling an otherwise strong character design. I don't think any of this speaks to an AFOL community that would gladly embrace LEGO Friends sets if they just adhered more to established principles of color theory. Well, one way or another, Vibrant Coral is the closest possible match to this "faded red" color on the current LEGO color palette. In a LEGO set, that's the most anyone can reasonably expect. And if anything, the fact that Vibrant Coral skews more yellowish/orangish than the actual color of these lighthouses makes it even LESS "pink" than the genuine article, since in general pink tends to describe colors anywhere from a pale red to a pale reddish-violet. On another note, I do not feel like "tricks of the light" should necessarily be ignored when recreating a subject in LEGO. I've often found that particularly in licensed themes, it's better when a set recreates how the scene in question looks, including any color distortion due to lighting, rather than necessarily what the actual colors of the scenery and props might have been. An example that always stood out particularly well to me is the Council of Elrond set. The actual scenery in the film did not have nearly as many warm colors, but the digital color grading added an amber filter, as can be seen in this picture (digitally graded final cut on the left, ungraded footage from Fellowship of the Ring TV spots on the right). The set, however, recreates the warm sunset colors of the final cut rather than the dull greys of the actual props and scenery. As such, it FEELS more authentic to the scene in question than if it were designed to resemble the same setting under more neutral lighting. But this kind of design consideration is far from unique to licensed themes. The Shadow World from LEGO Elves is perpetually moonlit in the supporting media and box art. Obviously, actual moonlight (especially of the exaggerated sort often shown in film and animation) would be impossible to recreate in a toy, but the sets based on the Shadow World recreate the FEELING of this moonlit environment via their use of Aqua bricks and plates for the terrain and other cool colors for Shadow World scenery and vehicles. It's quite difficult to look at any of those sets even under neutral lighting and imagine them as depictions of a brightly sunlit environment.

…There were LOADS of vehicles in The LEGO Movie 2 that haven't appeared as sets, not to mention loads of OTHER non-set contents. Were you not paying any attention at all during those scenes? It's feeling more and more like you just WANT to believe that anything and everything about LEGO is getting worse whether the truth of the matter supports it or not… at least, that's the impression I get from you making topic after topic about ways that you imagine LEGO is declining.

I wouldn't describe Vibrant Coral as "very light pink"… if anything, it resembles a brighter version of the older color Medium Red (BrickLink's "Salmon"). You can compare the colors in this photo from New Elementary's Pop Up Party Bus review… the System brick colors shown from left to right are Light Red (Light Salmon), Medium Red (Salmon), Vibrant Coral (Coral), and Bright Purple (Dark Pink). Vibrant Coral is much closer to the red/salmon colors than any of LEGO's current pink colors. All in all, Vibrant Coral pretty closely resembles the color that the red paint on many real-world lighthouses often fades to as they get older (such as the stripes on Westerheversand Lighthouse in many of the photos on this page). As for the heart sticker, couldn't you just leave that off?

I can't say I agree there. Certainly, too many colors can be a bad thing, but making the sides of the pirate ship like 90% brown would be utterly boring. The Medium Lavender does a great job visually separating the cabin level from the rest of the hull in much the same way that the Bright Red does on The Brick Bounty or the blue did on the Soleil-Royal in real life. And of course, as always, an amusement park attraction of any kind has even more of a reason to look gaudy or ostentatious than whatever subject it's inspired by! Just look at this pirate ship themed restaurant that opened at Disneyland in 1955! Again… not sure what that would improve? Dark Red stripes on the sails would look more historically accurate, sure, and as such improve its value as a parts pack to Classic Pirates fans. But as far as this set's aesthetics are concerned, it would just detract from the festive, whimsical theme park atmosphere, not to mention introduce even more colors — the opposite of what you were claiming the set needed a second ago. Unless you're suggesting to get rid of the pink entirely, which seems absurd considering how poorly Dark Red would contrast with the Medium Lilac and Reddish Brown that pink appears next to in other parts of the set. The set's current color scheme is currently very unique with all of its dazzling sunset tones, and it sounds like most of the suggestions you have in mind would diminish that if anything. Furthermore… I think it says quite a bit that I never seem to notice any complaints about sets like https://brickset.com/sets/31084-1/ and https://brickset.com/sets/31095-1/ having too many colors, even though their color schemes are hardly conservative or subdued. And while I remember the color scheme of https://brickset.com/sets/10247-1/Ferris-Wheel being divisive, I hardly remember anybody expressing concern with it having too MANY colors — it was more often a matter of objecting to one or more of the colors chosen, or thinking that it needed MORE color variety. So I very much get the feeling that a lot of folks' objections to the colors in sets like this one have more to do with a bias against "girly" colors than any concerns about how many colors there are or how well they're balanced. :/

I can get that with regard to castle, trains (as a non-driver I truly envy the value your country places in rail infrastructure), and I guess also Ancient Rome, but in a lot of cases I've seen people argue that the tastes of German kids, often citing long-running Playmobil lines as evidence, mean that LEGO should be regularly producing themes with decidedly non-German roots like Ancient Egypt, Pirates, Space, and Western. And I feel like those types of comments often speak more to AFOLs projecting their own preferences onto their country's youth than those kids genuinely having a far greater interest in those things than kids in other parts of the world. The undeniable popularity of Ninjago in Germany, despite it drawing most of its cues from American action cartoons, Japanese anime and sentai series, and Chinese martial arts movies, also makes me question how much a theme's relevance to an area's cultural heritage really accounts for its popularity. There may be age-related considerations in play, though, since in general a lot of the weirder and wackier themes are aimed at older kids who are drawn to stuff that feels different than the familiar stories and interests that they have been surrounded by throughout their younger years. Just as with adults, it's not always rational, but a lot of preteens and early teens tend to think of stuff they enjoyed when they were younger such as trains, big work vehicles like dump trucks and fire trucks, cute animal characters, fairy tales, and so on as "little kid stuff", and feel like they can't "grow up" or be accepted for their maturity without moving away from those interests. Incidentally, that was yet another very important lesson of The LEGO Movie 2 besides those about gender — the idea that "growing up" shouldn't have to mean rejecting who you used to be. That message is manifested variously by Emmet, Wyldstyle/Lucy, Sweet Mayhem, Rex Dangervest, and Finn himself.

I absolutely do respect the frustration people have when a theme they love only lasts a short while. And I can even relate to an extent… while some of my favorite themes over the years (Bionicle G1, Hero Factory, Ninjago, Elves, etc) lasted several years, many others (Life on Mars, Agents, Power Miners, Space Police 3, Atlantis, Bionicle G2, etc) lasted only a year or two. What’s more, the Castle theme itself had a near-constant presence from 2004 to 2013, and likewise for the Space theme from 2007 to 2013. But even during that time, there was a frequent refrain that many of those incarnations weren’t “real” Castle or Space themes. And it’s not even as though the years these themes were active were free of vindictive or condescending attitudes towards other non-classic themes they coexisted with. Consider this post, for example: And since 2013, a lot of complaints I’ve heard have not just been that these themes should get “more than scraps”, but that these themes should have a CONSTANT presence, and that other more current or recent themes (from huge long-runners like Ninjago or Friends to small, short-lived themes like Unikitty, Boost, Forma, and the Angry Birds Movie) are garbage that LEGO shouldn’t be wasting their time on. At that point, when even the type of “scraps” that were such a disappointment to Castle and Pirates themes are treated as more than other, newer themes deserve, it starts to feel less like legitimate frustration and more like unchecked entitlement. I appreciate that you seem to have a healthier and less self-centered attitude about these frustrations than many people do, but please understand that those of us who grow weary of newer themes we enjoy being treated like rubbish just because they’re NOT classic castle/pirates/space also have legitimate reasons for our frustrations. I personally love to speculate about what could be next for themes like Castle, Pirates, and Space, because they were a big part of my own childhood. I have spent lots of time on LDD sketching up visions of potential sets within these themes. And sometimes, as with other fans, my ideas are informed by where I feel like past versions of these themes fell short. While I find it grating when people employ “no true Scotsman” arguments to suggest that themes like Life on Mars, Mars Mission, Space Police 3, and Alien Conquest aren’t “real” LEGO Space, I don’t by any means think being a fan of a theme should mean not acknowledging its flaws or the areas in which it could use improvement. But even so, it sometimes feels like other fans of these themes bear a grudge against me simply for daring to enjoy things about themes like Elves, Ninjago, or Nexo Knights (like them having beds, baths, dining tables for the protagonists, varied hues, female action heroes, brick-built creatures, and/or character-driven storylines) and suggesting traditional Castle sets could take a few pages from their book. It creates an atmosphere where it feels like I can’t be respected as a fellow Castle fan with legitimate ideas of where the theme could go next unless I am willing to denounce any theme that isn’t “real” Castle, and by extension, denounce all the things that set other themes apart from “real” Castle as fundamental weaknesses.