Aanchir

Personally I don't care much for Dino 2010. It's not that the idea of it being non-violent was bad in and of itself (truly Dino Attack feels kind of outrageously militaristic even by today's standards). But the fact that they were merely sanitized versions of much more violent/militaristic toys rather than toys designed with nonviolent capture scenarios in mind in the first place meant that the cages, grappling hooks, and so forth were far weaker than the cannons and things they replaced in terms of both design and playability. Additionally, stripped of Dino Attack's context of the dinosaurs being biomechanical mutants created as a science experiment gone wrong, the absurdly unrealistic designs of that theme's dinos felt pretty random and out-of-place in Dino 2010's more natural-looking wilderness setting. Overall, though, I don't feel like there's a particularly strong case to be made for Dino, Dino Attack, OR Dino 2010 having inherently stronger set designs than Jurassic World. While I don't really care at all about that license, its set designs include some pretty impressive vehicles, structures, and landscaping in their own right, and they're not lacking in play value, either. The prices are high, but that's the norm with themes with huge molded creatures — in fact, the 2012 Dino sets weighed less and had lower piece counts on average than the Jurassic World sets released so far. In fairness, there's no reason to think they couldn't release sets with branding for other DC super heroes or superhero teams like the Justice League. After all, the first wave of Marvel Super Heroes sets this year all were branded as "LEGO Spider-Man", but we've since seen them introduce sets with the brand names and logos for other IPs like Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Man: Far from Home. Even when all sets did have a "LEGO Super Heroes" logo on them, LEGO generally had to license the individual IPs separately. It's just that the branding on the boxes used to treat them as subthemes rather than themes of their own (like how https://brickset.com/sets/76028-1/Darkseid-Invasion had a "Justice League" logo, but towards the bottom of the box rather than the top). So I don't think changing the way the sets are labeled should be perceived as LEGO giving up on other DC Super Heroes subthemes entirely. But if we're being honest, Batman and Spider-Man tend to be some of the biggest money-makers for their respective publishers as far as merchandise is concerned. I don't think it's a coincidence that they were the first two superhero licenses LEGO acquired, nor that when they launched the Super Heroes theme in 2012 those were the IPs that they focused most intently on even without any current Hollywood blockbusters to base them on. So I don't think it'll be surprising if those two continue to make up the majority of non-movie-based Super Heroes sets going forward. Not sure what gives you that impression. I mean, by the time Disney acquired Lucasfilm, LEGO Star Wars had been going strong for around seven years since the end of the prequel trilogy, generally maintaining a bestseller status usually reserved for non-licensed heavy hitters like LEGO City. A lot of licensed themes struggle to remain anywhere near that relevant in non-movie years! And it's hard to imagine that we wouldn't have seen new Star Wars movies return to keep the hype train rolling if not for the Disney acquisition. What's more, LEGO had only really begun launching Disney licensed sets with any regularity in 2010, just two years before Disney acquired Star Wars. Before that, Disney licensed sets were mostly limited to a handful of early 2000s preschool themes/subthemes. So LEGO's relationship with Lucasfilm at that time was far more securely established than their relationship with Disney.

Here's some stuff that comes to mind just thinking about various small businesses from towns I've spent a lot of time in: Newspaper/magazine/publishing company, with a printing press, writers' desks, etc. Martial arts studio Historical society archive Bookstore Comic shop Antique shop Record store Tailor shop Daycare Pet groomer Jeweler Outdoor apparel store Sporting goods store Art gallery Tattoo/piercing business Cosmetics store Bed and breakfast Spa/massage parlor Travel agency Psychic/palm reader/fortune teller Locksmith Electronics repair/IT business (though that might be more modern than many people's modular towns). Graphic design studio Craft store (selling fabric, yarn, beads, etc) Dunno if all of those do anything for you but at least a few of these ideas either suit your needs or help you think of some more ideas of your own!

I mean, I was definitely aware of Kitsune as a kid, because the Pokémon Vulpix and Ninetales are based on them, as is Tails from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Kitsune tend to be referenced in a LOT of video games, cartoons, and comics created in Japan, so even kids who don't know the term probably won't be completely bewildered by the concept. Kids in most of East Asia should certainly have little difficulty relating to the concept, since besides Japanese kitsune, a lot of other Asian countries have their own folklore about many-tailed fox spirits, like the Chinese huli jing and the Korean kumiho. To be honest, it feels weird to retread this discussion about whether kids will understand the idea of a magic fox with multiple tails or not, because I believe I had a similar conversation with somebody on Facebook last year in reference to Liska the Earth Fox from the LEGO Elves sets. I suspect among Western LEGO fans like many of us here, there's probably a generational factor in whether many-tailed foxes are a strange concept or a familiar one, depending particularly on whether your childhood took place before, during, or after the 90s anime boom.

Part of me feels like this list feels incomplete without the various heraldry from the Yellow Castle! I know those factions weren't named or clearly defined, but some of that heraldry was interesting in its own right. Not to mention various other KK2 heraldry, the revamped Black Falcon heraldry from the Kingdoms Joust, and various other CMF heraldry like from the shields of the Elf, Evil Dwarf, Evil Knight, Frightening Knight, Forest Maiden, Elf Maiden, etc. There are a lot of these that I would rate more highly than the Fantasy Era skeleton or troll heraldry. In general I often have a hard time picking favorites, especially when a lot of the options are fairly similar in terms of content. I will say that I actually prefer some of the more simplified or geometric heraldic motifs compared to, say, the lifelike lion and dragon motifs from Kingdoms or detailed skull motifs from Fantasy Era. After all, minifigures themselves are by their nature rather simplified and stylized. In a world where skulls look like this or this, why should they even know what a real human skull would look like? In that sense, of those listed here, I think I might be partial to the 2013 Lion Knight heraldry. The colors are bright, the patterns are crisp, and yet the lion looks like a fairly reasonable approximation of what a male lion might look like as a molded LEGO animal, unlike the much more exaggerated facial features of the Royal Knight and KK1 heraldry, or the curvy and furry looking lions from the Crusaders or Kingdoms Lion Knights. The Forestmen heraldry also deserves a shout-out for having perhaps the most LEGO-like appearance of any of the pre-2000s heraldic animal motifs, with a simplified shape and black dot eyes not unlike a LEGO horse, as well as some really great colors at a time when very few LEGO themes were really using non-primary colors extensively in their graphic designs. Stepping outside of traditional "Castle" sets, though, I'm also really fond of some of the more abstract heraldry from the Elves theme, such as Ragana Shadowflame's insignia (which was actually a reuse of an insignia that set designer Wes Talbott had previously designed for one of his D&D characters), or Cronan Darkroot's stylized eye motif.

So it wouldn’t seem at all strange in a review of a Star Wars set to categorize R2-D2 together with the vehicles and scenery when assigning number ratings, instead of with C-3PO? Popularity isn’t the point. Themes that feature both minifigure and brick-built characters do so when the brick-built characters are intended to stand out from minifigure characters for an actual reason, whether it’s having body shapes or proportions that are not meant to look human-like (like R2-D2), being “cyborgs” with a mix of human and machine/vehicle parts (like Metalbeard), being too big in the source material for a minifig or even a bigfig to adequately represent them (like Giant-Man or the Sentinel), or in some way representing freeform creative building and the freedom to change shape and size that comes with it (Unikitty, Watevra, Clayface, etc). But as long as they are treated as characters/“people” in the source material rather than objects, vehicles, or non-sapient animals, then kids can be expected to play with them and think of them as characters/people, and it seems crazy to insist on treating them as if they’re an inanimate object. I agree words matter. That’s why I am advocating for more use of terms like “figures” and “characters”, particularly when dealing with sets or themes like this in which minifigures aren’t treated as the constant default. Is anybody here this pedantic about Fabuland reviews that put the characters under a Minifigs header? Or Star Wars and The Hobbit reviews that include specially molded or “bigfig” characters like Jabba, Sebulba, Gollum, or the Goblin King under the same header or as part of the same ratings criteria? Or is there something about this set/theme in particular that makes people feel like the definition of a minifigure is under attack and needs you to leap to its defense?

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LEGO manufactures a huge number of parts for their various themes. Nothing I've said implies the cost of putting new elements into production is something they haven't learned to manage. But with finite manufacturing resources and a potentially infinite number of new elements they COULD produce, they're not going to waste the budget they have on elements that none of their customers or potential customers actually value. Which is what you seem to be implying when you keep insisting, without a shred of evidence, that kids have no interest in swapping or rotating minifig heads when playing, and yet that LEGO is somehow still boosting their sales by introducing minor facial variations that, by your argument, kids don't have any use for or interest in, and collectors just see as a pointless and frustrating obstacle standing in the way of a complete collection. What's more, plenty of posts by and interviews with designers, as well accounts in Brick by Brick of the out-of-control costs of new elements that helped LEGO to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s, and the restrictions on new elements introduced during their recovery process (pages 110 to 115 if you're interested) speak to this being a real concern for the company and one that could send them to financial ruin if they didn't take it seriously. But I guess because you're some kind of brain genius and expert on all things related to manufacturing, you know your speculation about what stuff should cost LEGO internally is infallible, and thus that literally every statement ever made about the dangers of frivolously introducing new elements, or the difficult judgment calls about which are most useful or necessary and how much of a budget can be assigned to any given theme, are all lies. Maybe LEGO really IS spending money on new parts and graphics that nobody but the most obsessed collectors care about. instead of ones a mainstream kid audience would actually like, and somehow making more sales in the process. Who am I to question such ineffable brilliance? I believe you misread my post. I'm not saying YOU'RE alienating anybody. But in your opinion, LEGO makes a lot of terrible sets and puts desirable minifigures in them. If these sets are truly so terrible and ugly that nobody would want them without the minifigures, and even some people who DO want the minifigures would rather skip them than pay extra for the rest of the set, then those SETS are alienating buyers. So why is LEGO paying people to design those sets instead of just tossing the minifigs in a box of generic loose bricks and putting that on a shelf instead? Which do you think is more likely? That LEGO designed the Hulk vs. Red Hulk set for minifigure collectors despite purposely making the build something that would make minifigure collectors enjoy it less? Or that they designed the set for kids who would enjoy both the figures AND the build, and that AFOLs are just wrongly assuming that because they don't like anything about it except the figures, nobody else could either?

On some levels, I can certainly understand this perspective. But on others, I think you are selling more play-focused or aesthetic details like many of the newer buildings have featured a little short. Back in the day I built a lot of the older Creator 3-in-1 houses on LDD, and there were definitely some neat things going on with them in terms of architecture, but part of why I never felt drawn to buy any is that they didn't have any kind of scenario to turn them into a more complete play experience. I suppose the idea, as with the older Modular Buildings, was that builders would fill in the vacant interiors themselves using parts and figures from other themes. But I found that rather alienating, part of why I didn't get any Modular Buildings either until the Pet Shop (thankfully, my dad had already purchased some of the other Modular Building sets unopened and later brought them out of storage and invited us to build them). In some ways, I think this parallels some of the things LEGO found when they were researching girls' play patterns at the start of LEGO Friends' four-year development process. For boys, it was often not so important whether a building had a lot of interior detail or furnishing to make it feel livable, because its value in display terms was as an architectural achievement, and its value in play terms was as a stage or backdrop. Girls, on the other hand, tended to be more concerned with what scenic, aesthetic, and practical features it had to make it feel like a place they would personally like to live or even just visit. I wouldn't be surprised if the shift in Creator 3-in-1 and the Modular Buildings in the years before and after the launch of LEGO Friends was meant to more effectively balance what boys and girls enjoyed about these sets in what was already among the less overtly masculine-coded themes of its time. Similarly, shortly after the launch of LEGO Friends, Creator animal sets stopped focusing as narrowly on cool or powerful looking creatures like dinosaurs, dragons, sharks, lions, and crocodiles (although these still continued to show up) and started to also introduce cuter and less dangerous creatures like cats, dogs, frogs, ducks, and parrots. Even more recently, we've started to see more playset-style Creator vehicle sets like Vacation Getaways, Island Adventures, Cruising Adventures, and Outback Adventures that don't just treat vehicles as cool, fast, or powerful machines (a very masculine-coded selling point), but also as a fun way of traveling the world and seeing new places. I definitely think it'd be nice to see another BIG house like the Family House from 2013, much like how cool it would be to continue seeing occasional larger-scale, highly functional vehicle sets like https://brickset.com/sets/5893-1/Off-Road-Power or https://brickset.com/sets/5767-1/Cool-Cruiser that in some respects almost resemble the old Model Team theme. But I do appreciate the Creator buildings' shift towards increased variety, the less sterile-looking landscapes, and the less vacant-looking interiors.

Yes, it has projectiles (1x1 transparent light blue cylinders, since as in the City firefighting sets it's used as a water cannon). And yes, they appear on the box art. You could have found either of those things out yourself in one click. And the fact that they included a weapon/shooter piece to match subject matter is exactly the point I've been making! If they'd put a "pretend" cannon in a Creator set of a "pretend" pirate scene, why assume that they wouldn't put a "real" cannon in a Creator set of a "real" pirate scene? Let alone catapults and other weapons in a medieval scene, or ray guns in a space scene, or revolvers in a Western scene? As long as they can do those things without reducing the set's rebuilding potential, it seems like an intuitive choice for them, given how many people even here on Eurobricks frequently expect those things to appear in sets based on those genres/settings. You may think it's silly that I refer to set descriptions to identify which sets are being advertised for violent conflict play. I don't see how that's any sillier than acting as if the violence in a set boils down to whether the front of the box has people pointing weapons at each other. This Mega Bloks set doesn't any actual fighting happening between two factions, and I don't think either of us would consider it "non-violent" on those grounds. As such, how much sense is there in treating Siege Cart as "non-violent" just because the figures are cartoonish and the weapons are pre-modern? And if we've decided that the blurbs/advertisements are unreliable evidence, then why should we assume that the forward-facing antenna piece on Gamma V Laser Craft is anything OTHER than a laser gun, as the set name implies and a designer from that time says was his team's intent? I apologize for how rude and snarky my previous post probably sounded, by the way… I tried to clean it up a bit before posting it to make it less confrontational, but I was also trying to sound breezier and less "pseudo-intellectual" than usual. I tend to be wordy by default, and I know it's annoying and I need to get better at it. Lately I've been trying to at least make my paragraphs shorter and use bullet points to break any lists of facts or opinions up into smaller chunks, though one-line responses still feels "snippy" in a way I'm not so comfortable with. So yeah… sorry for my part in driving a wedge between us in this discussion. I really DO like talking about what could be cool in future sets, and especially about ways LEGO could depict more of the types of stuff they've often missed out on. One of the things that always frustrated me about the Castle theme compared to the appeal of LEGO Elves WAS that Elves focused on the more appealing parts of medieval life, whereas Castle sets even before my time often felt like "all fighting, all the time" and focused on castles as a stronghold against attacks rather than a place for people to live full, enjoyable lives. And it frustrates me when conflict-driven play is implied to be some recent and worrying trend, rather than something LEGO has been catering to since the 70s, and just used to be deeply in denial about. I think there's a lot more to delivering on currently under-emphasized subjects and play scenarios than just going back to a status quo when LEGO purposely designed sets knowing many kids would act out scary or violent scenarios with them, while also outwardly treating those common forms of children's play and storytelling as unwholesome or shameful. But I believe future Castle and Space sets, regardless of their target audience or how they were branded, could ideally do both. Some Elves and Nexo Knights sets were clearly able to include both intense action related features like weapons, traps, monsters/dragons, or dangerous environments, AND more everyday "creature comforts" like bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms, bathrooms, libraries, and shops. I see no reason a more "traditional" Castle set or theme couldn't manage the same.

It's not about the cost of "modifying a print template", it's about the logistical cost of introducing new elements willy-nilly. LEGO isn't going to make alternate minifig and mini-doll heads in kid-targeted themes if kids aren't going to care about those differences. And the cost of introducing a new printed element in terms of production space/time, warehouse space, inventory management, etc. is the same whether it's conspicuously different from existing printed elements or not. Unlike AFOL-created sites like BrickLink, on which minifigures with even slight differences tend to get entirely separate listings, LEGO never makes any noticeable effort to promote or advertise the fact that the Batman minifigures in 70900, 70901, 70905, and 70915 are at all different. Many people probably wouldn't notice they have different facial expressions until they own two or more of those figures. Especially with double-sided heads being as common as they are, you almost always have to look at multiple pictures of each set to know for sure that the different facial expressions in the main catalog images or on the front of the boxes aren't just on opposite sides of the same head piece, and most kids aren't going to be bringing their physical minifigures into stores with them to compare them against the boxes for the sets they don't yet own. But a kid who likes the LEGO Batman Movie theme is inevitably going to end up with multiple Batman minifigures in his default costume, and these variants are a great way to make that feel at least a little bit more worthwhile to them. On a side note, I suspect the variant facial expressions that appear in the LEGO movie themes in particular are somewhat intended as a means of paying tribute to and supporting the BrickFilming tradition that inspired the style of these movies in the first place. Back in the day of smiley-faces-without-exception, Brickfilmers who wanted their characters to show emotions often had to customize their faces with a sharpie. But in these themes, there are usually at least four facial expressions to choose between for the lead characters. And if kids, as you speculate, "have difficulty to swap out heads or even rotate them", then why did LEGO ever begin printing so many double-sided heads to begin with, even in largely kid-targeted themes like Exo-Force, Agents, Power Miners, Atlantis, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Nexo Knights? How would that be "making them more money"? I have never heard of ANY collector, no matter how obsessed, specifically seeking out multiple copies of the same minifigure just so they can display one with the front face print showing and one with the back face print showing. The idea that alternate faces are a "cheap and lazy way to make more money" falls apart when it suggests LEGO taking on additional costs, even small ones, that from what you're assuming shouldn't make the sets any more playable OR collectable. Never mind that in my own childhood experience, customizing minifigures — whether just by swapping out the heads or by making much more extensive changes — was a big part of what made them so much fun, well before the idea of "collecting" them even registered with me. Even back in the early 90s when there were so many fewer facial features to choose from, you could still make a basic smiley-face character :) look cooler and more confident, if you gave them a smiley face with sunglasses B) , or "disguise" a character by giving them a wizard beard. Why would kids today be any less likely to play with minifigures in this way now that there are so many more minifigure parts to choose between? I mean, LEGO designers surely ought to know what ways kids play with their sets, because they conduct extensive play testing with basically all of their themes specifically to figure out what types of features enhance kids' play experiences. I get frustrated by this too, but at the same time, I think it's worth keeping in mind that sometimes more information about the build is omitted for other reasons than the reviewer or their readers not considering it noteworthy. As strange as it sometimes seems to me, I've seen people get legitimately upset at reviews that talk about the building experience in great detail, because they see it as "spoiling" the surprises that they would experience when they get around to building the same sets themselves. In my case the minifigures certainly impact my purchasing decisions, but rarely to a point that I ONLY want the set because of the minifigures. This is because from my experience, MOST sets are interesting and appealing on some level, particularly those in the themes I'm most drawn to like Ninjago, Elves, and the movie themes. So when I know that basically any set on my wish list will offer me a rewarding experience, often a good way to narrow it down and keep from overspending on this hobby is to prioritize the sets that would get me minifigures I don't already have. That said, that's far from the only condition that decides which sets I get. In a lot of cases, the cheapest way to get all the figures from a particular theme I enjoy would mean missing out on stuff that's just as cool to me if not more so, like certain buildings, vehicles, or brick-built animals/creatures like dragons. And frankly, unless a person literally has no idea that they can buy minifigures individually on sites like BrickLink or at conventions for less than the full cost of the set, it's safe to say that any set they've chosen to buy "for the minifigures" also appeals to them in other respects, even if it's just that it would look nice on a shelf or has a nice value in parts they can use in future MOCs. This is exactly the same thing I was talking about earlier with the Thor vs. Hulk set. The critics of this set (you included) are the ones who are putting the minifigures on a pedestal and ignoring everything else about the set, not the kids or designers. The Hulk vs. Red Hulk set, from many AFOLs' perspectives, may be just an overpriced minifigure pack with a bunch of useless filler bricks. To many kids, though, the idea of two huge, rugged, all-terrain, Hulk-sized vehicles with bright colors and lots of play features is most likely a source of appeal in its own right. There have been plenty of sets in themes like Agents, Ultra Agents, Racers, World Racers, Rock Raiders, Power Miners, Aquazone, Atlantis, Bionicle, Time Cruisers, and so on that included similar goofy, over-the-top, gimmicky vehicles, yet which clearly weren't designed with adult minifigure collectors in mind. Many adults similarly dismissed those sets as overpriced, nonsensical garbage, but clearly at least some of those types of themes resonated with kids all the same. So why is a set similar to those, but with characters who adults and kids alike are more likely to know and care about, assumed to be aimed at adult minifigure collectors at the EXPENSE of the younger audience that has previously enjoyed similar sets? Furthermore, the designer of that set was Justin Ramsden, who's designed many sets that far more adults appreciated for their building experience and display presence. If LEGO had wanted him to create a Hulk vs. Red Hulk specifically to appeal to older buyers and collectors, he absolutely could have done so with a better price per piece, a more serious-looking design, and possibly even with lower production costs. But instead, he clearly designed the set to have a quick, sturdy build that was suitable for the kind of rugged action play kids would likely put it through; a wacky and colorful aesthetic; lots of stud shooters that adults tend to whine about but kids tend to love, and even a gimmicky crash function that launches the Hulk figures out when the vehicle gets into a collision with another vehicle or obstacle. (Side note — how many adults started hating on this set as soon as they saw pics of it without even realizing that it had a crash feature like that, let alone how it was constructed?) It'd be another matter if the build seemed like it had been designed for different characters and then had some random Hulks and She-Hulks thrown in to make an entirely unrelated build seem more interesting. But the design of the crash feature and the proportions of the vehicles couldn't be more obviously designed specifically to seat two Hulk-sized bigfig occupants, and the task of creating the set was specifically assigned to designers who were at that time working on the Super Heroes team. It's crazy that AFOLs see all those features that clearly have no value to most adult fans and collectors, and tend to alienate even those who ARE interested in obtaining the figures, and still assume that LEGO added all those features specifically to make the set's intended audience pay more to enjoy the product less.

The only reason I shared the blurbs is because I was pretty sure if I just pointed out "this robot has a massive gun…" and "this T-Rex has obviously flayed the flesh from another creature's bones…" you would have just dismissed it as "well what if kids just want to pretend those bones were already there?" or "what if that's a radar gun or sensor?" or some other nonsense argument. I guess I underestimated your knack for coming up with excuses to dismiss any factual evidence you don't like, no matter how clearly spelled out it is. I mean, "describing the contents of the sets in LEGO's own words just proves I'm right!" isn't a very compelling comeback… Oh, I see… Because you don't want to admit to being wrong about Creator having plenty of obvious examples of violence, you're just gonna move the goalposts and say that a robot with a huge, long-bore gun or a picture of a pile of bones next to the dinosaur that tore the flesh from them aren't "violence" unless it meets a lot of insanely specific characteristics. Reminds me of all the hoops people jumped through to say that basically any space theme of the past two decades wasn't "real" LEGO Space because LEGO Space has to be X, Y, and Z. I mean, the first part of your argument could just as easily describe Dino Attack, one of the most military-looking themes LEGO has ever created, because it "never had armed minifigures from different warring factions shown fighting on the box cover". Along with sets like Muaka & Kane-Ra, which literally had a function with which by pulling off the masks of the opposing creature, you could make its arms fall off. Totally non-violent! Oh, and about Creator having "no action gimmick shooters"… want to rethink that one? And if that's too long ago here's one from last year. Clearly LEGO has no problem putting that stuff in sets if they feel it enhances the play experience and sense of authenticity. Uhh, lemme just bold an important part of that comment you seem to have missed. I was pointing out that if YOU believe there's a non-compete clause that would rule out a space theme of any kind, it would also rule out the same sets with Creator branding. If I wasn't clear enough, I DON'T believe the Star Wars license includes any non-compete clause that broad. After all, the numerous other space-related products I brought up in an earlier post proves that non-Disney-owned sci-fi robots, spaceships, astronauts, aliens, etc. have still been allowed even while the sequel trilogy has been ongoing. Therefore, while I'm sure there are some kind of non-compete clauses in the Star Wars licensing agreement, they are obviously much narrower restrictions than "you can't make any space-related sci-fi toys besides ours". LEGO could make Space-related theme if they wanted to. Rather, I suspect they've chosen not to because they realize that launching a new space toy when the airwaves are going to be flooded with Star Wars hype by the time the Christmas season approaches would be a great way to sabotage their new product line before it even gets off the ground. I would love to see more Space and Castle themed Creator sets. After all, fantasy and sci-fi stuff is my jam! I don't think it's a bad thing for you to want them, either. I'm sure they'd deliver some AMAZING building experiences. After all, the dragons and robots we've seen are already not too shabby. But I also think you're setting unrealistic expectations for them by imagining Creator as being somehow immune to all the forces that drive LEGO's decision making in their other themes — including the extent of their "conflict and weapons" policy (which specifically prohibits violence and weapons in realistic, modern-day contexts — not fantasy or sci-fi ones) and concerns about what products might get overshadowed by more established product lines (whether their own or their competitors'). It's not out of the question that Creator could include peaceful fantasy or sci-fi sets. After all, even Ninjago has occasional sets that aren't based around violent conflict. But the designers can't be expected to outright exclude stuff like swords or lasers or catapults or shooters in any set that happens to have a Creator logo on the box. (also I'm not a man, thanks)

I mean, for what it's worth, LEGO usually doesn't make any kind of tremendous effort to call out which minifigures are new and different. Like, The LEGO Batman Movie had a variety of different head patterns for most of the main characters, but I doubt most kids cared much about whether the Batgirl they got had faces A and B or faces C and D. The way I see it, most of the reason for a lot of those sorts of minor changes aren't to squeeze money out of collectors who actually keep track of those kinds of variants (who I'm sure are a tiny sliver of their buying audience). Rather, it strikes me as a way to make it so that characters can express more emotions, while simultaneously making the inevitability of getting repeats of a theme's main characters feel less worthless/redundant. It's not as though they wouldn't put Emmet or Batman minifigures in just as many sets even if they were all exactly the same. After all, they are some of the most popular and well-known characters of their respective themes. But including some variations in outfit or headgear or facial expressions, even subtle ones, makes getting a set with Emmet in it when you already have an Emmet feel like less of a waste. Notably, if this were all about making people buy more sets than they'd want otherwise, there'd be no logic in spending more money on minor differences in facial expression that most buyers wouldn't notice or care about when casually browsing a catalog or toy aisle, instead of less money on something that's practically impossible not to notice, like changing the characters' hair colors or clothing colors, or even giving them a neck accessory or headgear piece that already exists but is clearly absent from other sets in that theme. After all, if manufacturing more character faces were just about making people buy more sets, why put two or three different Unikitty/Ultrakatty faces in a single set in so many cases, instead of spreading them out between different ones?

I agree that it's probably not accurate to call them minifigures. But as I said before, the ideal solution would be to group all figures together in a category called "figures" or "characters", not to arbitrarily segregate them based on what types of parts they use. After all, regardless of their construction, they perform a similar role in the set in terms of play value, storytelling value, and collectibility. I mean, how ridiculous would it be in a Star Wars review to talk about C-3PO's design in the same section as the "human" characters, but talk about R2-D2's design in the same section as the vehicles and props, solely because C-3PO uses minifigure parts and R2-D2 does not? Or to separate comments about Scooby-Doo's design and all the other characters' design into separate parts of a Scooby-Doo review because the literal main character is an animal? Furthermore, a LEGO monkey is about 89% classic minifigure parts. A LEGO skeleton is only around 17% minifigure parts. A LEGO baby includes no minifigure parts. Does that mean a monkey has more qualifications to be discussed in a review together with the minifigure characters than a skeleton or baby do? And for that matter, how do you deal with a character like Tee Vee from LEGO Alpha Team, who has classic minifigure legs but a four-piece, brick-built head/body? Where does that leave the Venom figure from 30448, who has a brick-built body but FIVE minifigure heads? How a "true minifigure" should be defined is not only messy and complicated, but as far as their play value, collectibility, or design quality is concerned, entirely meaningless. Some non minifigure characters have more, fewer or the same piece counts as classic minifigures. Some have more, less, or the same amount of articulation. Some cost more, less, or (theoretically) the same amount to manufacture. Some are larger, smaller, or the same size. The only potentially useful outcome I can think of for defining a clear definition and and differentiating characters on how well they adhere to it is to determine which character designs are or are not protected under the LEGO minifigure and mini-doll trademarks. But I don't see how organizing reviews on such terms would add any real value. In general, this is part of why I prefer to categorize LEGO play figures in my head as "characters" or "figures" instead of splitting hairs about just how far the definition of a minifigure should or shouldn't be stretched. Clearly, that way lies madness.

Maybe it would make more sense to label that section of the review as "characters", but regardless, I think it makes a lot more sense to keep the appraisal of the characters in one place than to establish some kind of arbitrary hierarchy between characters who are brick-built and those who are not. After all, even BrickLink has been listing the brick-built "droids" from Classic Space sets as minifigures for well over a decade — long before characters like Unikitty or Zebe began showing up.

I generally don't like the word "overrated" because it implies that there's something bad about groups of people being really passionate or enthusiastic about the things they enjoy. There's a lot of stuff about minifigures that's genuinely worth valuing, such as the various types of creativity, detail, humor, characterization, and visual appeal they demonstrate through their colors, molding, graphic designs, and play features. Now, "underrated" is a term I can more easily get behind, but even then, I'm not sure that appreciating or valuing minifigures more than other aspects of a set is something people should necessarily be ashamed of. My general perspective is that there's no wrong way to play with or enjoy LEGO. Frankly I find it kind of obnoxious when people try to establish some kind of hierarchy of creativity with MOCists above people who don't MOC, particularly since it disregards other ways LEGO helps kids express themselves creatively, such as telling stories using the sets and characters. Plus, there are plenty of other forms of value people get out of LEGO beyond its creative potential, like its decorative or therapeutic value. I'm sure a lot of people get emotional comfort from having a collection of minifigures to display in their house or on their desk, to play or fidget with, to mix and match, etc. I'm not going to shame those people for that or insist they're enjoying LEGO incorrectly or for the wrong reasons. What's more, there are a lot more ways that people sell the other strengths of LEGO products short than just having a "collect them all" mentality about minifigures: When fans say that licensed sets are just "overpriced minifigure packs", the usual implication is that LEGO is making a mistake by pandering to people who buy sets just for the minifigures. But from my perspective, it's the people insulting these sets who are by ignoring any strengths the sets have to offer besides the minifigures. Consider the set https://brickset.com/sets/76088-1/Thor-vs-Hulk-Arena-Clash. A lot of AFOLs acted as if there's no reason anybody would buy it except for the characters. Really? Because I see quite a few different play features built in — a smashable wall, another wall that folds open to reveal hidden weapons, lampposts that can be knocked down, a prison cell behind the main structure, a door that slides open, etc. It's also a fairly recognizable rendition of the source material… perhaps more brightly colored than AFOLs tend to prefer, but for a lot of kids bright colors are a strength, not a weakness. And as for it being "just a wall"? So was https://brickset.com/sets/6059-1/Knight-s-Stronghold, and nobody seems to act as if it was "an excuse to sell minifigs". A wall is a great play or story starter, because it inherently represents some kind of obstacle characters are unable to overcome. Many AFOLs counter that an "obstacle" like that is meaningless because "the characters can just walk around". I'd argue in turn that this is exactly the kind of weak imagination such AFOLs claim to be against. It's no trouble for a kid to pretend that there is an implied "fourth wall" to a set that is not fully enclosed, same as people typically do with stage performances except those that invite them to imagine otherwise. Why is that type of pretend play so foreign to the very people who claim to miss when LEGO was "all about imagination"? A lot of the same AFOLs who complain about licensed or story-driven themes being mediocre, creatively stifling builds designed to sell minifigs, are also the kinds of people who complain that LEGO has made it too expensive to stockpile mass quantities of interchangeable, nameless Castle, Space, or Pirates figures. It astonished me how many such fans gladly went out and bought numerous copies of https://brickset.com/sets/70841-1/Benny-s-Space-Squad, even though it offers no particularly innovative play features or building techniques, no surprises or challenges, and not even any new graphics. Even many Batman sets demonstrate a lot more originality than that, in that they have a broadly-defined design language inspired by many decades' worth of Batman movies, comics, cartoons, and toys created by all kinds of people, instead of a narrowly-defined design language inspired by a specific LEGO Space subtheme that ran for less than a decade, was created by a small team of designers in Denmark, and ended more than 30 years ago. It's not that Benny's Space Squad is a bad set for its price in terms of design or playability, but it's extremely hypocritical that fans who thumb their noses at licensed or story-driven themes and their fans would eagerly buy several copies of a set that's so derivative and so unapologetically minifigure-focused, yet be "meh" about sets with far more creative, elaborate, and advanced builds because they happen to feature other types of figures like brick-built characters or mini-dolls. I think it further speaks to many old-school fans' simultaneous appreciation of the minifigure's nostalgic value and collectibility, yet disregard for its creative value as a storytelling tool, that they think sets back before minifigures had distinguishing names, personality traits, facial features, and physiques were fundamentally more creatively liberating than today's highly-detailed and varied LEGO characters. After all, it seems a teensy bit stifling when all the characters in a theme are identical besides having one of five different colors of spacesuit. How are you supposed to tell a story with more than five Classic Space characters without some of them becoming impossible to differentiate? Today, in the very least, you have the option to swap out Space minifigures' facial features or facial expressions to give them more individuality, and many Neo Classic Space builders do exactly that. But prior to 1989, even THAT wasn't an option. Plus, I think a lot of people neglect that even when LEGO characters do have established identities and backstories, that kind of thing is how a lot of kids learn new storytelling styles, character design skills, and narrative devices they can repurpose for their own original characters and stories. Hardly anybody ever became a storyteller without reading or hearing other people's stories, or became an actor without watching other people's acting, or became a musician without listening to other people's music. I know it's a heartwarming cliche that kids are a wellspring of unbridled creativity straight from the womb and that said creativity is then squeezed out of them, but that's not how the real world works. Creativity is not a magical ability people are born with, it's a practiced skill, and denying yourself influences from the world around you (including the creative influences of the other people in it) is just refusing opportunities to develop that skill further. This post illustrates yet another way that even many grown-ups who often may not "play" the same way kids do still manage to embrace the minifigure's creative value as a storytelling tool: creating comics, brick-films, or even just photographs that happen to tell a story about what's happening in them!

I definitely get that from the perspective of an adult who values a sense of realism, but when you look at what other LEGO themes have been most reliably successful over the years, it seems like cartoonishness is typically more of a strength than a weakness. Real-life police, fire, and coast guard stations don't typically paint their buildings the same colors as their fleet of vehicles. Real-life police don't spend the majority of their time non-violently pursuing crooks wearing prison stripes, twisty mustaches, and domino masks. Real-life ninja and samurai didn't typically wear color-coded clothes, drive color-coded vehicles, or ride color-coded dragons. Nor do they fight monstrous-looking snake people, skeletons, ghosts, demons, mummies, zombies, sky pirates, or Mad Max style dieselpunk barbarians using magical Tasmanian Devil spin attacks. Real-life pirates didn't typically emblazon "death's head" patterns on their sails for all the world to see, force captives to "walk the plank", or go on voyages in search of buried treasure (much less bury it themselves). Real-life astronauts don't wear color-coded spacesuits, communicate via oversized walkie-talkies, carry laser guns, lock up spies behind cell doors made of lasers, battle aliens, hunt for energy crystals, explore planets using robotic mechs/walkers, interact with bug-eyed aliens, or dock their winged spaceships on helicopter-like landing pads. Do you understand the point I'm making? I have no doubt that a realistic Castle theme would make a lot of people here on Eurobricks happy, but I can't say it seems like a recipe for the Castle theme as a whole to become a reliable staple of the LEGO portfolio like it used to be back in the day. Even here on Eurobricks, a lot of people thought there was a dissonance between the Lord of the Rings sets' modest price points typical of mainstream KFOL-targeted themes and their gloomy, subdued color palettes that seemed to resonate more with adult buyers. I'm not sure I'd agree with this particular assessment, since the Star Wars theme is pretty reliably popular with KFOLs even when many of its most iconic sets have dingy, mottled color palettes heavy on black, brown, tan, and greys. But to get sets you enjoy as an AFOL with the kind of regularity of the current best-selling themes, there has to be some compromise between your tastes and those of kids. What's more, it feels kind of… odd to say that the Bright Red accents on the Dragon Mountain set's parapets weakened it while those of the Kingdoms King's Castle strengthened it. It's not as though either Bright Red or Bright Blue blends in any more with grey than with black, or as if classic sets like Forestmen's Hideout, Wolfpack Tower or Black Knight's Castle, Majisto's Magical Workshop are any less beloved by the people old enough to have grown up playing with them because of their conspicuous use of bright, classic colors. In my case, I believe I missed out on all but the last of those, but as poor as its value was in hindsight, it certainly made a meaningful impression! The current castle I'm building on LDD is currently making heavy use of Sand Green, because I often feel bored going to LEGO fan conventions and seeing the Castle displays awash in monochrome greys. Hopefully, though, this will still resonate strongly with traditional-leaning Castle fans if it ever gets to a state good enough to submit as a LEGO Ideas project! One thing that frustrates me about this particular piece is that a shield built with it can't be held facing the figure's side, which is often essential if you want them to look very natural when riding a horse or other creature (this was a minor source of frustration for me with Farran's shield in the final wave of LEGO Elves). The figure's clip-shaped hands will always hold it pretty facing forward. Because of that, I tend to prefer using a pneumatic T and a 1x1 round plate with hole when trying to create a custom shield.

If they'd been box office smashes, then they could have easily been greenlit for a sequel a few years later and the themes could have come back stronger at that point, just as the Jurassic World sets did. After all, even Jurassic World has only had ONE set based on the current films so far, so it's strange to act as though it being a multi-film franchise has been the reason for its ongoing potential. A theme doesn't have to stick around year after year to be a success in its own right. in fact, with so many themes like City, Friends, Ninjago, Star Wars, Super Heroes, and Disney that DO have that type of constant presence, it makes sense that LEGO might want a lot of their newer product lines (whether licensed or non-licensed) to focus on subjects they can rotate between instead of on long-term commitments, so that they can always count on having something really new and unexpected to catch their customers and competitors by surprise. It's honestly strange to me how frequently people flip-flop about how what longevity can tell us about a theme's success. If a theme gets a lot of love from AFOLs, like Monster Fighters, Scooby-Doo, Castle, Pirates, or The Lord of the Rings, then a short-ish lifespan with relatively few sets supposedly means that either LEGO failed to design and market it right, or that they cut a theme with considerable momentum short for no reason at all. But at the same time, a lot of AFOLs act as though longer-running themes like Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights, and Elves were failures from day one and their 3-year lifespan was just a sign of LEGO having no idea what fans want or how well their own sets are selling. Some even struggle to accept that themes like LEGO Friends or Ninjago have been major successes, even with Ninjago on the verge of surpassing LEGO Pirates' original nine-year run in the late 80s and early 90s and showing no signs of stopping. By that argument, how come they licensed The Angry Birds Movie from Sony in 2016 but failed to license three vastly more successful Disney films from the same year (Finding Dory, Zootopia, and The Jungle Book)? I think there's a lot more to LEGO's licensing decisions than any sense of brand loyalty. The Lone Ranger in particular could have been a game changer for the entertainment industry had it succeeded, since it might have revived the Western genre's relevance with mainstream audiences in a similar manner to how Pirates of the Caribbean revived the pirate genre after it had suffered something of a killing blow from the failure of Cutthroat Island in the mid-90s. It seems strange that fans of these "traditional genres" would treat major Hollywood films backed by one of the world's largest media empires as poor licensing decisions on LEGO's part, while also believing that there's major potential for in-house success in those same genres even as they remain mere shadows of the pop culture megaliths they once were. Let's also not forget that with these licensing agreements built up around new movies, LEGO has to make their decisions well before fans have enough info about the franchises to make any sort of judgment call about their likely quality. And it's not as though Prince of Persia, The Lone Ranger, and The Angry Birds Movie came out of nowhere, — they were all reboots or adaptations of series that had a history of great success in TV, gaming, and other forms of media. I can see how LEGO might have seen all these themes not only as a fairly worthwhile investment, but also — perhaps just as importantly — as brands that would stand out from other major themes and provide a major dose of novelty to the then-current LEGO portfolio.

Honestly, I suspect there are a LOT of AFOLs who play experiences very different than the sorts that either of us prefer! After all, online AFOL communities are the origin of terms like "swooshability" to describe how well an aircraft or spacecraft MOC can be picked up and zoomed around while making "whoooooosh" and "pew pew!" noises. And I've seen other adults get up to quite a bit of silliness at fan conventions! I also think that as much as LEGO knows about the thriving AFOL train community, they have to balance that with the far more extensive and reliable buying habits of their kid audience. I imagine that the factory openings and expansions over the past few years have helped them to expand their production capacity somewhat, but even so I also know that even so they've had repeated issues with struggling to produce enough of certain highly sought after products to meet demand in the run up to the holiday season. As such, they have to be really strategic in figuring out how many sets or what quantity of each set they should produce in any particular product line. And Creator Expert in general, despite having grown somewhat in both scope and popularity since the Emerald Night first came out, still tends to be considerably lower in priority than major kid-targeted themes like City, Friends, and Ninjago. All that said… we still don't know whether we're getting an "out of the vault" set this year or what it might be, so maybe there's still a chance of an Emerald Night re-release. It would certainly seem like this year or next would be a pretty good time for one, considering how many other such sets have come out close to ten years after their original release.

You realize the only reason most Creator sets are non-violent is that they're roughly based on realistic, modern day subjects — the very thing you want them to branch out from? After all, that's the characteristic shared by most of LEGO's least violent themes, whether they're current ones like City, Friends, and Speed Champions or past ones like Sports, Jack Stone, or LEGO Island Xtreme Stunts. In fact, many of the Creator theme's futuristic, fantastical, or historical based sets have been just as "violent" as their equivalents in themes like Castle, Space, Bionicle, or Ninjago: The Power Mech's description encourages kids to "Suit up for futuristic battle with strong green armor, powerful arms, grabbing claws and leg-mounted boosters". The Rescue Robot's description encourages kids to "Blast the enemy with the laserbot’s arm-mounted laser beam!" Mighty Dinosaurs "Also includes the dinosaur’s prey in the form of a buildable rib cage". One of Fiery Legend's alternate builds is "a powerful ogre warrior with a massive hammer and shield!" The alternate builds of Mythical Creatures (2018) include a "menacing troll with an axe that doubles as a heavy metal guitar", while those of Mythical Creatures (2006) include a troll and a lizard creature, each armed with both a hammer and a flail Several of the robots from sets like Robo Platoon, Robo Pod, Robobots, Mini Robots, and Titan XP are about as heavily armed as any Exo-Force, Ninjago, or Nexo Knights robot/mech! And anyhow, if designers were willing to put guns, axes, flails, crossbows, catapults, swords, and enemy factions in the Pirates and C astle subthemes of Duplo, then it seems kind of unlikely that they'd make some unprecedented effort to keep Castle or Space inspired Creator sets free of any violent weapons or conflict scenarios. After all, they've been putting that type of stuff in Castle, Space, and Pirates sets for a good three decades at this point. It's safe to assume that they've found kids respond well to it, and aren't just embroiled in some nefarious scheme to "trick" kids into enjoying conflict-driven forms of play and storytelling that they'd ordinarily have no interest in. I see no reason at all to assume Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts will get in the way of new Castle sets, considering that every new incarnation of LEGO Castle since 2001 has launched the very same year as new Wizarding World or Middle-Earth movies and licensed sets. Star Wars is perhaps a different issue, but even in that case I feel there's plenty of reason to think that the hiatus since the last in-house Space theme is not due to any rigid licensing clause, but rather LEGO not wanting to self-sabotage their new product lines by making them too similar to the unstoppable marketing juggernaut that is LEGO Star Wars. Even since 2015, there have been all kinds of non-Disney-branded sets involving futuristic space travel, spaceships, aliens, and astronauts: The Voltron set from LEGO Ideas Numerous LEGO Movie 2 and DC Super Heroes sets A spaceship and launch platform in the Overwatch sets. The Rocket Boy, Retro Spaceman, Galaxy Trooper, and Alien Trooper blind-bag figures. The Alien, Space Shuttle, and UFO monthly mini model builds from LEGO Brand Retail. The Creator Robo Explorer set and the Futuristic Spaceship alternate build of Futuristic Flyer I simply can't fathom any kind of licensing clause that would allow LEGO to release so many different space-related products, and yet somehow still have any power to categorically exclude a line of space-related toys no matter what their designs or premise happened to be like. And before anybody gets antsy, I'm not saying that anyone has to like any of these "Space-adjacent" sets or consider them equivalent to your preferred visions of "LEGO Space"… But LEGO has shown time and time again that AFOL preferences don't have much impact at all in how they design their main kid-targeted product lines, even many of their previous Space themes. Regardless of the circumstances, I think there's a strong possibility that no matter what shape the next Space theme takes, there will be some of us who don't consider them real "LEGO Space" themes, same as there have been for every Space theme since the 90s if not earlier! This year in particular, I would say The LEGO Movie 2 is probably a bigger obstacle to a new Space theme launch (or any number of other potential new product lines) than LEGO Star Wars. But by next year, with that theme presumably moving into its final wave, there's no telling what new themes LEGO might be cooking up…

Some of the positivity towards simpler Castle projects is encouraging to see here, since I've been dabbling on a Castle MOC on LEGO Digital Designer for some time, and all this positivity really boosts my confidence that if I can get it to a finished state it might be well received by people here who have been enthusiastic for a "traditional" castle using more modern parts and techniques!

Love this set! It's got lots of really advanced techniques I feel like I learned a lot from, like how it was able to use curved slopes for a nearly seamless transition from the 4x4 quarter circle elements used for the canopy, the way the light brick button and gears can both be activated with one hand (using a far more compact mechanism than the one used for the light brick in the Temple of Airjitzu's shadow puppet theater), the use of a towball and double clip as a locking mechanism rather than a hinge, and of course the combination of a light brick with a faceted transparent element to refract the light in all directions! The color scheme is refreshingly original, unlike any we've seen in any themes before, even ones like LEGO Friends and LEGO Elves that have featured several of the same colors individually. The curvy design language is also a delight — I've learned over the years that creating models primarily defined by smooth curves using what's usually thought of as a blocky and rectilinear medium is a challenging but always gratifying experience! It really helps push the futuristic feel of this set in a way we haven't seen before, calling to mind similarly streamlined and opulent visions of the future like the Heart of Gold from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie or EVE from WALL•E. And it contrasts well with Rex's much more boxy and angular fleet, reinforcing their diametrically opposed roles in the movie itself. The cartoonish "bus" elements like the tiny wheels are also lots of fun. I wouldn't mind seeing a full space theme with this aesthetic! The mini-doll characters are great, what with their expressive faces and colorful fashion sense. I love the curvy and brightly-colored star patterns on their outfits and the bus itself, which remind me of both Steven Universe and Kirby! Disco Unikitty is as much of a delight as any of the Unikitties from the first movie, especially her comically large high heels and rainbow tail. Zebe is also a lot of fun, even though I didn't recognize him as a zebra until it was pointed out in a designer video. After getting the set, it was a little more obvious due to his equine-looking mane and tail, but when the first pics of the set appeared and showed him from more limited angles, I thought he was some kind of bear. I think it says a lot about some folks' biases that a lot of people who feel underwhelmed by the LEGO Movie 2 sets seem to completely disregard it, and yet feel like Benny's Space Squad was a standout set of its wave just because it pandered to an extremely superficial sense of nostalgia. Or for that matter, how many fans of the classic themes lament how today's sets/themes are "no longer original", yet dismiss most sets that do really new and creative stuff instead of adhering blindly to aesthetic and subject matter standards established 30 years ago. Let's not forget the Facebook users that put their misogynistic biases on full display for all the world to see with ignorant comments like "nobody wants mini-dolls or brick-built characters!" Hopefully this set's sales continue to prove them wrong, just as LEGO Creator and LEGO Friends sales have been doing for years.

@x105Black The dragon comparison is what I figured you were thinking of, and exactly the kind of way that 3-in-1 sets COULDN’T become what you want without losing what makes the sets appealing to many of the people who already enjoy them. Obviously, you understand that Creator 3-in-1 and Creator Expert sets (like Classic or Technic sets) are defined by their building experience, not by their subject matter. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be pitching sets depicting subject matter so far from anything the theme’s depicted before. Plus, there'd be no point in the theme even including so many modern-day buildings and vehicles in the Creator 3-in-1 theme if their design language and philosophy didn't provide them with some type of appeal that differed from their equivalents in "play themes" like City or Friends. As such, sets like that dragon or this year’s shark are designed for kids who want the experience of building three different creatures using a shared inventory of standard LEGO parts. They are also positioned at fairly low price points despite the creatures themselves making up most of the set. The LEGO Castle dragon, on the other hand, is designed to be a figure/accessory that accompanied a bigger castle. As such it is designed for play, with little to no value as a stand-alone building experience. Without the wings, horns, or flame, it would have even less of a building experience than many Galidor sets. Unsurprisingly, big molded animals like dragons or dinosaurs take a huge bite out of the budget for sets that contain them (even larger ones). Dragon Mountain from 2013 was largely panned by Castle fans right here on Eurobricks because at $50 for 376 pieces, it was perceived as overpriced and mediocre. But that can pretty safely be attributed to having huge specialized dragon molds that might easily account for at least $10 of the set’s off the shelf cost despite making up less than 1/10 of the piece count. After all, the price per piece of the Skeleton Tower set from Fantasy Era at the same sticker price was only slightly better, while the value of the Troll Warship set at a $70 sticker price was even worse, since it has huge boat hulls to consider as well. Also, take note: those $50 prices for Skeleton Tower (released 12 years ago) and Dragon Mountain (released 6 years ago) are closer to $60 and $55 in today's money. Having said all that, consider: the price range of Creator 3-in-1 sets usually skews EVEN LOWER than that if Castle sets. That means you’re not likely to get sets as big as King’s Castle Siege or The Lonely Mountain which contain enough small or inexpensive elements and a high enough price point to offset the ludicrous cost of including a huge molded dragon. This year’s Creator 3-in-1 sets include a $10 set, a $13 set, two $15 sets, two $25 sets, a $30 set a $40 set. Rumors I’ve seen for the summer sets suggest two $50 sets and an $80 set… the last of which is a higher than all but six Creator 3-in-1 sets in the theme’s entire history. So unless a set featuring a big molded animal took the place of one of the large-scale vehicles, minifig-scale houses/shops, and now fairground rides that are typically in contention for most of the $40-and-up price points, I don’t see where there’d be any possibility for a set to include a molded dragon unless it somehow was able to craft three high-quality, minifig-scale models on a budget smaller than Dragon Mountain and the Skeleton Tower had for ONE. Certainly it wouldn't be able to deliver any meaningful building value whatsoever at the $15 price point the two previous Creator 3-in-1 dragons were sold for… at that point, you'd be lucky to have enough of a budget left over for a polybag-sized 3-in-1 build. As for the dog? Yeah, it looks extremely silly, although I would say the humor inherent to such a dopey, wall-eyed look is a big part of its charm. More importantly, though, even with such a low piece count, it is made of pieces that can be reused for entirely different things in the alternate builds. In the B-model (the Lakeside Home), the arch that forms its body supports the kitchen sink, and its nose and collar become the burners on the stove (one running, one turned off). In the C-model, its eyes and head become the eyes and head of a lawn gnome, its collar becomes the foot of a bird, and its tail becomes one of the supports for the see-saw. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these alternate uses for the parts (particularly the gnome) were in fact a major reason the dog is built the silly-looking way that it is. By comparison, a City style molded dog would add not only add no value to the building experience, but it would add so little play value that there'd be little to justify including a dog in the first place! And yeah, I understand that you would like Creator 3-in-1 to be able to carry your interest in Castle building through periods when that theme is on hiatus. To be honest, I would love if there were more sets in any theme with parts and building or play styles that appealed to as a LEGO Bionicle fan, so I get that the struggle is real. But I think hoping for a popular, wel-established theme you don't normally have much interest in to change its course so that it can take the place of a theme you prefer is kind of misplacing one's priorities… much like how I wouldn't expect LEGO Xtra to introduce Bionicle mask packs or LEGO Harry Potter to introduce Bionicle-style buildable characters and creatures. As long as you're hoping for a return of a type of sets you must enjoy, you might as well hope for it in a form that more closely suits the characteristics you already loved about it, not as a radical re-imagining of a much different theme that's already running. After all, in a lot of ways this is all hypothetical anyway, so there's no need to compromise your vision of future Castle or Space sets to shoehorn them into another much different theme. And even if LEGO employees are reading this thread and taking notes, I get the feeling that relaunching Castle or Space as their own themes (as they've done so, so many times in the past) would be a much easier and more desirable option for them to pursue than redefining an existing theme so it can meet the expectations people have for two very different themes that are popular for two very different reasons.

Whichever ones we get next, obviously. It's naive to think that these themes being on hiatus for a little while means that they're never coming back, particularly in Castle's case since a designer on this very forum literally told us that traditional Castle was merely on hiatus and would be coming back.And even if you do believe that there is some reason LEGO can't or won't return to making these themes in a form you can accept, I can't fathom why releasing the exact same type of product and figure designs but with different branding would be a viable loophole — particularly when Castle and Space themes often don't use "LEGO Space" or "LEGO Castle" logos or branding in the first place. Do you think any of LEGO's licensing partners are out there writing non-compete clauses that can be subverted with that little effort?

Let me flip that right back to you. "Is it really exclusionary to have "female colors"? Isn't it more sexist to assume that men are so weak minded as to turn away from a profession in STEM because the LEGO sets used to teach it weren't boyish colors?" After all, the inclusion of colors like Medium Azur and Bright Reddish Violet (Magenta) in this set wouldn't be noteworthy at all if it weren't for their glaring absence from the color schemes of most other Technic-based sets and themes. White and Bright Yellow, of course, have always been pretty common in most themes, regardless of whether they're masculine-coded, feminine-coded, or neither, so I can't imagine they're what you're taking issue with. For that matter, even Medium Azur has shown up in a few Technic sets by now, including https://brickset.com/sets/42059-1/Stunt-Truck (which paired it with white accents) and https://brickset.com/sets/42050-1/Drag-Racer (which actually paired it with Bright Reddish Violet accents, albeit as stickers rather than recolors). So this set's extensive use of Bright Reddish Violet building elements in a theme that's not specifically girl-targeted is basically the only thing about it that's too surprising compared to what we've come to expect. That said, either version of the statement you gave is pretty absurd and reductionist, considering the colors in this set are no more inherently "girly" than the colors in many older Dacta, RoboLab, WeDo, and Mindstorms kits are inherently "boyish". Heavily masculine-coded themes and subthemes of the late 90s and early 2000s such as Cyber-Slam/Competition, CyberMaster, Throwbots/Slizer, early Mindstorms, early Racers, and early Bionicle) allused Bright Violet (Purple), Bright Bluish Green (Dark Turquoise), and Bright Yellow (Yellow) parts pretty conspicuously, sometimes all three together in the same set. This set's colors roughly correspond to those same three colors, albeit adjusted slightly to form a more balanced and aesthetically pleasing triadic color scheme, and without first-generation Mindstorms sets' other extraneous colors like Bright Blue (Blue), Bright Red (Red), and Dark Green (Green) which reduced the color scheme into a random-looking mess. I'm not sure why anybody (regardless of gender) wouldn't see this as a vast improvement on the trying-too-hard-to-be-edgy brand identity that RCX-era Mindstorms, and EV3-era Mindstorms, and Power Functions were unfortunately saddled with. If you genuinely feel like using a CMYK color palette is "sexist", though, I'm sure you can take it up with the printing department at your nearest office supply store! They could probably use a laugh!

I would say that it's appreciated by AFOLs, but doesn't necessarily leave quite as much room for community involvement as themes based on a more particular premise or category of subject matter. For example, with many of those other themes, a lot of the community is built up around the idea of building MOCs within that universe or category: Space MOCs, Bionicle MOCs, Castle MOCs, Technic MOCs, etc. But aside from alternate models or combination models of Creator 3-in-1 sets, there's not really many MOCs or layouts people build that could be described as "Creator 3-in-1 MOCs", because unless you're building something specifically for other people to try and recreate themselves, there's rarely much point in designing three different conceptually-related models to use the same pieces. Also, as much as some of the fans of the classic themes might scoff at heavily story-driven themes like Ninjago or Bionicle, a lot of community discussions do depend on some kind of agreed-upon sense of what a particular theme is about or who the different players are within that theme — for instance, most Space fans understand that certain color schemes and logos represent Blacktron, an organization of shady criminals opposed by the Space Police. Most Castle fans likewise understand the hierarchy of a typical medieval factions, with royalty at the top, knights in the middle, soldiers a bit further down, and peasants/serfs at the bottom. And Pirates fans, of course, tend to be in decisive agreement on the contentious order vs. chaos relationship between the pirate and soldier factions. Even in Creator Expert, fans also share an understanding that each of its minifig-scale subthemes represents a particular local area, whether it's a city, a quaint village, or a fairground. A lot of this sense of commonality guides people's MOCing as well as their wishes for future sets. But with Creator 3-in-1, there IS no shared world or story framework that can guide fans in this manner. And the sets represent not only depict wildly varied genres and interest categories, but also are even at wildly varied scales — meaning the Creator 3-in-1 fanbase is on some levels a microcosm of the heavily fragmented state of the LEGO fan community as a whole. From my experience at LEGO fan conventions, it's not uncommon to see Bionicle builders, Space builders, Castle builders, military builders, Star Wars builders, and town/train builders hang out largely as separate social "cliques" depending on what their preferences in LEGO sets, MOCs, and building styles happen to be. I think it's safe to say that plenty of AFOLs enjoy Creator 3-in-1… but usually with specific focus on whatever type of subject matter they're most drawn to collecting or building outside the constraints of that theme. Fans of the modular buildings, Friends, or City tend to like the 3-in-1 houses and shops, while fans of action figure themes like Bionicle might prefer the many articulated robot and creature sets, and fans of Model Team or the Creator Expert Classic Cars might enjoy some of the 3-in-1 theme's larger-scale vehicle sets. It's doubtful that too many of these AFOLs would describe Creator 3-in-1 as their favorite theme, though, because for every set from the theme that appeals to them, there might be several that they're entirely disinterested in (except possibly as parts packs). To be honest, it sounds like your second and third wishes would be better served by putting 3-in-1 set designs in the themes you're describing like Castle and Space than putting Castle and Space sets in the Creator 3-in-1 theme. 3-in-1 sets already DO sometimes include smaller molded creatures like fish, crabs, and spiders — usually because these creatures are too small to be recognizable if built from standard bricks at minifig scale, and are about as cheap to manufacture as a similar-sized, single-color brick. But molded creatures larger than a minifigure (like horses, sharks, crocodiles, dragons, or dinosaurs) would eat up a much more substantial portion of a set's budget, taking the place of more versatile parts that could be reused in different ways in the alternate builds. That goes against a lot the 3-in-1 theme's design philosophy and the source of its current appeal, considering that it's one of just a few themes where rebuildable animal models made largely of standard LEGO elements are the norm rather than the exception. Even the Minecraft theme typically usually uses specialized head pieces to define its creatures' appearance, but in Creator 3-in-1 you'll rarely see any pieces more tailored to one particular use than a printed tile for their eyes. The playability factor is also probably one of the things that would keep the designers from implementing bigger brick-built animals — no matter how blocky the animals in these sets might look, they often feature considerably more points of articulation than similar-sized molded animals: Compare the T. Rex in https://brickset.com/sets/31058-1/Mighty-Dinosaurs (16 points of articulation) or the dragon in https://brickset.com/sets/31073-1/Mythical-Creatures (19 points of articulation) with a typical Jurassic World T. Rex (7 points of articulation) or Castle dragon (12 points of articulation) Compare the moose in https://brickset.com/sets/31048-1/Lakeside-Lodge (4 points of articulation), the bear in https://brickset.com/sets/31052-1/Vacation-Getaways (8 points of articulation), or the crocodile in https://brickset.com/sets/31093-1/Riverside-Houseboat (7 points of articulation) with a typical Castle horse, City bear, or Pirates crocodile (2 points of articulation each). Compare the ray in https://brickset.com/sets/31090-1/Underwater-Robot (4 points of articulation), the dog in https://brickset.com/sets/31075-1/Outback-Adventures (6 points of articulation) with a molded LEGO Aquazone ray or City dog (no articulation). Same can be said for many types of more specialized element, assuming you define those as parts MORE specialized than stuff that already shows up frequently in Creator 3-in-1 like wheels/tires, windows/doors, propellers, and plants. I remember quite a few complaints when https://brickset.com/sets/31025-1/Mountain-Hut included two 3x8x7 mountain bricks, even though as with so many sets with such parts, they were put to use not only as a cliff face (which can just as easily be created with more basic bricks and slopes) but also a playable cave interior (which is a lot trickier to do with more solidly built brick walls except at a far larger scale). Realistically, a Castle wall/window panel, Castle wagon wheel, Space rover wheel, or could just as easily show up in a 3-in-1 set as similar-sized windows and wheels from more modern-day settings. After all, https://brickset.com/sets/31094-1/Race-Plane from this year uses one of the big 7x7 siege engine wheels from Fantasy Era, and it isn't even a medieval model, so it's not far fetched to think an actual medieval set could justify the use of such parts where appropriate! But I doubt we'd be very likely to see a Creator 3-in-1 set using parts like prefab rowboats, 4x8x2 parapets, or 8x8x2 plane fuselage segments. Frankly, even designers of the classic themes have not relied nearly as extensively on those types of theme-specific parts in the past decade as they used to — for example, the forts from the 2015 Pirates sets largely shied away from prefab wall panels, and likewise the 2013 Castle range stopped relying on prefab parapets, despite both having been staples of those themes in the past, and both those molds remaining in use in other sets and themes up through this year or last! It's probably safe to assume that the 3-in-1 designers will generally continue to opt for less specialized brick-built solutions so long as they can function adequately in the finished model, whether or not they'd streamline the appearance or simplify the build. Even setting aside any sort of lofty ideals on their part, you have to remember that it's a lot of work to design three models per set that offer extremely varied building experiences, use most of the set's pieces, AND meet all the LEGO Group's stability and quality standards (the back of box "inspiration models" designed from the parts many older sets were rarely held to such high standards). So using a big or specialized piece where a more versatile one might be easier for them to find new uses for in the B and C models would be kind of like the designers shooting themselves in the foot! 3-in-1 has increasingly been fulfilling the third of your wishes, though (more new prints and recolors). We can probably expect that, at least, to steadily continue. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the sets increasingly dabbling in sci-fi and medieval fantasy subjects beyond the sci-fi robots and fantasy monsters we've been seeing for years now. I know it will be controversial, though, considering how upset fans of a particular 3-in-1 category get when they feel like new categories of sets like fairground models, dollhouse-style modular buildings, minifig-scale vehicles, etc. are displacing the categories they've come to love and expect each year, like fold-open or otherwise fully enclosed houses/shops and large-scale or microscale vehicles.