Aanchir

City has had a few sets like that, usually as part of the "Town" subtheme (which is sort of a catch-all for stuff that doesn't fit as neatly in other subthemes or the Great Vehicles). Other examples include the even more expensive https://brickset.com/sets/60097-1/City-Square from 2015 and the slightly less expensive https://brickset.com/sets/60026-1/Town-Square from 2013. To be honest, I suspect one of the reasons LEGO does this is the stuff in these sets is stuff that might not be nearly as enticing on its own to kids who crave the kind of excitement or action they get from Police, Fire, or Arctic sets. Most of the subject matter in these huge sets and other smaller Town sets tends to be more "everyday" stuff like buses and bus terminals, statues/monuments, restaurants/street vendors, shops, etc. — stuff that might be more appealing to the kind of serious kid and adult collectors who want to build a believable "tabletown" than people who buy sets to play with or display individually or as a smaller group. In some respects, you can think of them as the modern equivalent of https://brickset.com/sets/6390-1 ($40 USD in 1980, or the equivalent of about $122 USD in 2018). Also of note: in the case of a double-decker bus, note how a set like https://brickset.com/sets/60154-1/Bus-Station with a single-decker bus has a high price per piece due to having an unusually high number of minifigures for its price. With a double-decker sightseeing bus, filling enough seats to keep it from looking under-populated would take even more minifigures — so putting it in a set with lots of bricks besides those used to build the box helps to offset the cost associated with minifigure printing and pre-assembly. After all, even if a standard minifig only counts as 4 pieces in a set's piece count, it takes at least 10 molds (9 different elements, assuming the hands are both the same color). Then each torso and legs assembly is its own additional element, and then the printed versions of those torso assemblies and the heads are additional elements still. So a 4-piece minifigure with printed torsos, heads, and legs and unprinted headgear has at least the same logistical costs associated with it in terms of packing, warehousing, etc as 13 different standard unprinted bricks/plates of a similar total volume. THESE are the kinds of costs that tend to result in some of the biggest discrepancies in price-per-piece (like the $1 per piece cost of the collectible minifigures, which include a disproportionately high number of unique prints/molds/recolors compared to regular sets). If LEGO is going to keep their number of total elements limited instead of letting it explode out of control like it did in the early 2000s, then needless to say they're going to price their sets roughly in proportion to the manufacturing resources (including the space and time required to manufacture those elements) of the elements they contain. And outside of some weird edge cases like the redesigned UCS Millennium Falcon (for which I believe the designer was basically allowed to make the greebling and other contents as complex as they wanted, regardless of how high the final price turned out to be), the usual tendency is for set designers to be given a strict budget for the sets they work on according to the intended price point, and a computer program that will tally how much of that budget each part will eat up. In some cases, people accusing the LEGO Group of pricing sets based on pure greed feebly attempt to avoid implicating their fellow builders of that greed by claiming that the designers are just doing the best they can to design quality sets, and that it's some accountants or executives elsewhere in the decision-making chain who are then arbitrarily hiking up the price tags after the fact. For the most part, the implication we've gotten from designer interviews is that this is nowhere close to the truth. In fact, it's often hard work for the designers to make sets as cool as possible while still keeping it within the budget for the intended price point. Remember that the prices we talk about for sets are their recommended RETAIL price. At least 50% of that is usually going to be kept by the retailers to cover their overhead and/or to let them offer sale prices without selling the sets at a loss (LEGO does keep a greater portion of the total revenue with sets they sell on their own online shop or in LEGO Brand Stores, but they don't have the option of charging less through their own retail site and stores without losing the much-needed support of other, bigger retailers). Then a lot of the price is also covering the costs associated with distribution For what it's worth, the number of sets LEGO was actively LOSING money on in 2003 (including every set that wasn't part of the Bionicle or Star Wars themes) should also be a pretty good indication that some of the most popular sets at that time like https://brickset.com/sets/8366-1/Supersonic-RC and https://brickset.com/sets/8374-1/Williams-F1-Team-Racer may have in fact been priced too LOW compared to the licensing, manufacturing, design, and logistical expenses associated with them. Well, you're right that I don't have any experience with industrial level cost calculation. That said, I think you're severely underestimating the level of precision LEGO demands of their molds if you think a typical cost of CNC machining a steel mold is a good estimate of how much LEGO might pay for them. As @Nabii stated on the Brickset Forums here, "As for davee123's dream option of raising $2,000,000 dollars for 20 molds to resurrect the old monorail parts, this is seriously underestimating mold costs at the precision required for LEGO elements." and "There are… good reasons that even well selling motorized trains are only borderline profitable." There are of course a lot of other costs he mentions separately that are more specific to motorized sets (safety and longevity testing, etc), but even non-motorized sets are inevitably going to cost considerably more than a similar-sized plastic toy from the dollar store, and probably more than many similar-sized toys from major brands like Hasbro or Mattel whose business model doesn't necessarily entail designing the molds for each individual plastic component with the same intended precision, total lifetime, and quantity produced within that lifetime. That particular Friends set includes at least a few molds that are more complex than a typical brick. Besides the newly recolored, printed, and pre-assembled mini-doll torso and leg elements (see the comments above about the costs of minifigure elements), the helmet and hair are both a new recolor and a 2K mold created in two stages with separate plastic colors and materials, and the bear cub element has not appeared with this color/print in other sets from the past two years, so this set needs to cover the costs of reintroducing it (and whatever factory floor time/space and warehousing space that entails).

Honestly, as cool as that might be, I almost think a concept a broader audience might relate to might be an “action figure fan” with, say, a baseball cap with a Bionicle logo, a 1x1 round brick patterned to resemble a classic Bionicle canister, and a nanofig patterned to resemble a Toa. In that case, kids and adults with no nostalgia for Bionicle can relate to it as a more general archetype that just happens to reference a past LEGO theme. That may partly be a self-indulgent wish on my part, though, since those are the sorts of parts I’d love to have for my sigfig. Certainly a biomechanical hero , while possibly a more bizarre concept to people who don’t know Bionicle, is more action-packed and exciting in terms of the type of play scenario suggested by their design and accessories. Really? Because most of the ideas suggested here on recent pages are derivative in one way or another — whether based on an idea LEGO has portrayed in a past theme (like Bionicle characters), an idea based o. real life (like a plague doctor), or an idea proposed in some past non-LEGO creative medium (like a Renaissance wingsuit). And any of these ideas could just as easily be something LEGO is already contemplating behind the scenes, since they have just as much access to the concepts that inspire us as we typically do. If people can moan about LEGO “stealing” the concept of a Helicarrier set from LEGO Ideas, despite that project being based on an ongoing licensed theme and widely available movies, and having a completely different scale than the eventual set, then it goes without saying that somebody who proposes a concept to LEGO for a archetypical, public domain concept like a Centaur or Medieval Bard, they might get irrationally defensive should LEGO release a similar-looking figure without crediting them.

I think there is LOTS of room for improvement, but I think that it is in forms much different than the kinds most AFOLs tend to wish for. Many of the LEGO Group's biggest achievements in recent years have in fact been super divisive among AFOLs and often remain so. LEGO Ninjago, like Bionicle before it, achieved massive, long-lasting success with kids and raised the bar for the amount of media support LEGO was able to commit to their "big bang" themes going forward. Many AFOLs still outright hate Ninjago, even if it's not as widespread as the gut reaction many had when it was first announced or released. LEGO Friends, likewise, was more successful at making the LEGO hobby as enticing to girls as it's always been to boys than any theme before it. A lot of AFOLs are still extremely dismissive of the Friends theme's color palette, design language, and storylines. I think a lot of the biggest potential improvements to LEGO going forward will be things like this — not things that pander to the tastes of people like you or me who already had amazing childhood experiences playing with LEGO and continue to enjoy the LEGO brand as adults, but things that make LEGO more enticing and accessible to audiences that have previously been alienated by one aspect or another of the LEGO brand and the way its products are designed/marketed Just as one possibility, consider how over the years LEGO has dabbled in ways to convert many types of toy once thought of as separate from construction toys into LEGO-style creative building and play experiences: Toy cars (City, Racers, Speed Champions, etc) Toy train sets Action figures (Bionicle, Exo-Force, Nexo Knights battle suits, Creator 3-in-1 robots, etc) Spinning tops (Ninjago spinners) Robotics kits (Mindstorms, Boost, etc) Puzzle toys (the Ideas Maze, etc) Collectible figurines (BrickHeadz, Minifigures, etc) Scale models (Model Team, Creator Expert, etc) But think about all the kinds of toys out there with different forms of play that we HAVEN'T seen combined with authentic LEGO building and play experiences so successfully or seamlessly: Fashion dolls Yo-yos Puppets Model rockets Plush toys Dress-up toys and costume jewelry Musical toys …and so on Additionally, and I know this kind of thing tends to be controversial… but I've heard a LOT of complaints over the years from African-Americans in particular that they have a hard time seeing themselves in LEGO products. Dark-skinned LEGO characters currently tend not to appear outside of licensed or girl-targeted themes, and while their representation in those themes has improved considerably in recent years, a lot of the representation issues in the mainstream movies and TV shows LEGO bases their themes only further reinforce the imbalance between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned LEGO characters. While the yellow skin tone of the typical LEGO Minifigure may be intended to be raceless, it hardly escapes my notice that a white, straight-haired brunette like me has a much easier time creating a sigfig that I feel closely resembles my real-life appearance (as seen in my Eurobricks avatar) than people with darker skin tones or the tight, dark, curly hair typical of people of African descent. At some point LEGO may have to seriously consider whether the intended racelessness of non-licensed LEGO characters is still making it easier rather than harder for current potential customers to relate to the characters on an equal level. Abandoning this status quo would be difficult, and it would be controversial, but at some point it may be necessary. Other forms of representation could also be improved, particularly in story-driven themes — disabled characters, neurodivergent characters, LGBTQ characters, characters and settings associated with different ethnic/cultural backgrounds, etc. Again, every time I bring this up, it tends to be met with a weird amount of hostility from people who reject the idea that representation matters at all, or that it can even exist in a brand where you can supposedly imagine anything about any character. But I think it goes without saying that a lot of LEGO sets and media DO depict their characters having lifestyles associated with a particular cultural background, experiencing opposite-sex romantic attraction or being in opposite-sex couples, etc. As far as more personal preferences, there are loads of things I would like to see in the future, whether or not they would lead to stronger-than-usual success for the company as a whole… for instance, more buildable action figure themes in the spirit of LEGO Bionicle (albeit not necessarily with the same building system or similar mechanical-looking characters), or a new girl-targeted action/adventure theme (either fantasy, sci-fi, or both) in the spirit of LEGO Elves. I don't tend to make a big deal of these wishes, though, because the way I see it, LEGO revisits older concepts often enough that it may only be a matter of time before something fitting one of these descriptions shows up again. Also, I often tend to enjoy entirely new sets and themes about as much as ones I enjoyed in the past — so it's not urgent in my eyes for LEGO to bring back any one particular theme category or product idea I'm nostalgic for. I'm excited to learn what's in store for the future regardless of what it might be, because I feel like LEGO has a good track record of both coming up with fun and surprising new ideas, and learning from whatever mistakes they end up making along the way. So yes, I see lots of room for improvement. But unlike many other AFOLs, I don't think that the most important forms of improvement they could work towards are ones you find from looking at how the company did things decades ago. Right now, the LEGO brand is vastly bigger, more popular, and more successful with all ages than it was at any point in the 20th century. So I'm skeptical that the secret to greater success can be summed up as "go back to the way things used to be". And I certainly don't think purely hypothetical concerns about whether today's KFOLs will or won't become AFOLs are reason enough to go back to how things were back when the idea of kids growing out of LEGO was taken for granted and nobody imagined there being a community of adult LEGO enthusiasts as big and passionate as today's AFOL community. LEGO's 1986 medium catalog advertises sets for "every age and stage of your child's development", but the "stages" in question only list one theme — Technic — as suitable for even the youngest teenagers (the sets in question have the same 7–14 and 9–14 recommended age ranges as is typical of many Ninjago, Legends of Chima, or Nexo Knights sets). Do you really think that LEGO knew more about how to keep the LEGO hobby exciting for builders of all ages back then, when all but one of their themes were aimed at builders 12 or younger, than today, when they have all kinds of sets and themes specifically designed to be enjoyable for older kids, teens, and adults, and when many of their designers are AFOLs themselves? Maybe you're right and it would be better as a 10 Euro set. I can't even hazard a guess at how much it costs to make. I will say that on BrickLink, the average value its parts have sold for over the past six months (for parts in "new" condition, no instructions, no box, and no extra parts) is close to $15 already, and the part out value based on current listings is nearly $20. But regardless, it's literally just one set, and it's bonkers to assume that occasional sets being seemingly overpriced speaks to some larger trend of LEGO trying to cheat their consumers. For one thing, as stated previously, there are both all kinds of examples of sets with much better values than their counterparts from previous years. Cherry picking examples is inevitably going to make it easier to see the trends you expect to see, and is hardly an effective way of analyzing LEGO's overall pricing trends. There are all kinds of reasons BESIDES testing the limits of their customers' LEGO obsession that they might price a set higher than might ordinarily be expected — for example, creating a more varied range of price points instead of too many clustered together, seeing much stronger demand in kid testing for it than for other sets its size, or certain parts being more expensive than others for reasons that people outside of LEGO would never guess (like how ten years ago, 4M cross axles used to be more expensive than 5M or 6M cross axles because the 4M axles came from an older mold which produced only half as many copies per molding cycle). The idea that you can look at a set and know how much it costs to manufacture or how much it should be priced at is laughably arrogant.

Weird that you say that, because honestly that set stands out to me as a pretty decent value, all things considered. The price per piece is not ideal, but it includes some very detailed scenery with loads of potential play scenarios. Hardly what I'd call "subpar in every way" or worthy of "embarrassment and shame". And anyhow, last year the "deluxe bedroom" sets offered considerably higher piece counts for the same price. A single year does not signify a downward trend by any stretch of the imagination. And there are plenty of counterexamples from this year that I think speak just as loudly. The current LEGO Ninjago spinners involve way more building than any previous spinners/fliers at the same price points, and what's more, the spinners themselves are much more versatile as building elements. The Creator 3-in-1 Deep Sea Creatures set is $15/€15 for a whopping 230 pieces, while Ninjago's Monastery Training is $10/€10 for 122 pieces (more than any other Ninjago set at that price point to date)! What about Emmet's Thricycle, which has 174 parts (including 3 fairly beefy tires) for just $15/€15, or the reliably thorough building experience and high piece counts of the Speed Champions sets at the same price point? While I appreciate the amount of time you put into these comparisons, I think it's worth pointing out that several of these sets you are comparing are Juniors/4+ sets, and as such not really fair comparisons against a set like this which inherently tends towards smaller detail elements. That's exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Currently, LEGO doesn't really have any media-driven IPs aimed at an audience younger than 6 or 7 (even the Unikitty! TV series has a TV-Y7 rating in the United States), but if they really wanted to introduce one (like Fabuland back in the day) it'd make sense for the sets in question to all carry the 4+ label, rather than a mix of that and higher target age ranges like most current themes with 4+ sets. Again, fewer minifigures or not, the larger examples you cite here include way more elaborate builds than the smaller ones, and in the case of the drill set, also some decidedly more complex play features. Whether you prefer more minifigures or more building will inevitably come down to personal preference, and I'm not at all saying your preference is WRONG, but I don't think LEGO putting more emphasis on more construction-heavy sets is some sign that LEGO is targeting wealthy adults at kids' expense — particularly when so far, most complaints about current sets in this thread are coming from the perspective of adults speaking anecdotally about THEIR personal preferences, and not, say, from parents sharing anecdotes about their kids' preferences, or toy store owners sharing anecdotes about their customers' preferences. And once more, one year does not constitute a trend. Maybe in the future LEGO will introduce some other type of low-priced City minifig pack comparable in value to the Starter Sets — or even, perhaps, minifigure packs in the Xtra theme, similar to how that theme has now become the home of City/Town related accessory packs, playmats, and sticker packs. But it's worth keeping in mind that the City Starter Sets were originally something of a DEPARTURE from the norm, having only appeared from 2015–2018. There were a few low-priced minifig packs somewhat like them in earlier years (namely https://brickset.com/sets/8401-1/City-Minifigure-Collection and https://brickset.com/sets/7279-1/Police-Minifigure-Collection), but in most cases, from 2005 to 2014, the number of minifigures in a City set being proportional to the set's size was normal and expected.

As an American I can attest that the Eurobricks name never particularly bothered me after I joined, but it did perhaps make it take longer to realize I would be ALLOWED to join once I turned 18, and that it wasn't a Europe-only site. I think the number of users with non-European location tags plus the "Uniting LEGO fans around the world…" tagline that's used these days help to clarify that so that most eligible users can quickly dispel that misconception. I suspect that at the current point in time, the more likely reason for people NOT joining Eurobricks is those people being more accustomed to the format discussions take on social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/Reddit/YouTube/Discord) than the "bulletin board/discussion forum" style of online community that's lost a lot of favor since this site got its start. I wouldn't be surprised if to some younger folks, visiting sites like Eurobricks or BZPower might one day feel the way visiting newsgroup-style communities like Lugnet or the BrickLink forums often feels to folks my age — if Gen Z kids aren't already getting that impression from this type of website! But I don't know how much there is that could really be done about stuff like that in the grand scheme of things. I know there are some sites that have radically reinvented themselves, like reference or news sites becoming forums or wikis, but I think changing an entire community-driven site into something entirely different is a much bigger trick to pull off, especially when a lot of the newer types of community hub on the Internet are sites that by their nature AREN'T specific to a particular fandom or interest group. I think it's more the quality of the logo that's the concern than the symbol in question. As cartoon and video game fans realized some time ago, outdated CGI often doesn't age that well. Some of the old PS1 and Nintendo 64 graphics that once looked groundbreaking now look laughable, even though extremely pixelated spritesheets from the SNES or Sega Genesis can much more easily retain a sense of timeless charm. And 2D animated movies from the early 90s like Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King often look just as gorgeous and magical as they ever did, while characters (particularly human characters) in late 90s computer-animated movies like Toy Story or the CGI special effects in the 2002 Spider-Man movie can look anywhere from laughable to nightmarish. If the stars in the logo were shaded in a way that looked more like the ones at the beginning of recent Paramount movies, rather than a Windows 95 screensaver or cheaply-animated bowling alley scoring animation, then they might not seem quite as awkwardly outdated. Same if the brick itself (despite its stylized cubic proportions, which I suspect are meant to give it slightly more of a globe motif) had the glossy texture of a real brick or high-quality render and not the flat color look of running LDD on the lowest graphics settings and then converting everything to 16-bit web colors. It's the same as how playing a graphical remaster of an older video game can do a much better job recreating the feeling of how playing those games felt decades ago than the reality check that is replaying the games in their original format and realizing that Mario and Bowser's first confrontation in a 3D game looked less like the highly polished promotional artwork from the manuals and advertisements: …and more like… umm… this:

A Harley Davidson! Interesting if true, considering that the previous LEGO Harley-Davidson Motorcycle was part of the Hobby Set subtheme in the 1970s, which, with its emphasis on constructing advanced, large-scale brick built models of specific real-world subjects, could arguably be considered a great-grandpappy of the Creator Expert range. That said, I hope it wouldn't become a trend for more than one of the extremely limited slots for Creator Expert sets per year started to go towards licensed vehicle sets, as opposed to either a return for the Landmarks series, trains, or even experimental launch of a new subtheme entirely! After all, I doubt we'd have gotten exciting new series like the Creator Expert Fairground sets if LEGO had been more interested in increasing the number of sets per year in the Modular Building series, Winter Village series, or others likewise already established. In a theme so incredibly small, one set per series per year (or even one every few years in some of the more niche or expensive series) would appear to leave more room for experimentation. Any motorcycle enthusiasts here who would know if there's any sort of new model Harley Davidson coming out, anniversary relevant to the Harley Davidson brand, etc that would explain the choice to release a set like that this year specifically?

I suspect that may be part of it, along with the fact that themes more inherently based around basic elements and creative building don't really need as many sets to deliver the same variety of experiences as ones based around more specific play scenarios. Similar to how LEGO Classic is a pretty strong seller in its own right, and yet usually has even fewer sets than Creator 3-in-1 does. For example, in a "play theme" like LEGO City or LEGO Friends, a helicopter, an airplane, and a boat might ordinarily need to be released as at least two or three separate sets whereas in Creator or Classic they can just as easily be alternate builds of the same set (albeit without the kind of playability after the building experience or shared scale/visual language from one model to the next that you might expect within a particular "play theme") Juniors/4+ originally seemed to have some sets that weren't as specific to existing themes, at least not current ones. And it still does as far as the licensed Pixar sets are concerned. But I can see why LEGO shifted towards 4+ sets focusing primarily on the same themes they have for older builders. For one, it makes it easier for kids who like the kind of sets their older and more experienced parents/siblings might collect to feel like they're able to have those hobbies in common. After all, younger kids often look to older siblings or parents as role models for what's "cool" — it's not until they get older that they develop a slightly more subversive streak and start seeking out interests older folks don't get, and that give them and their same-age peers a sense of being in on some exclusive or revolutionary trend. Additionally, the cost of Juniors sets is already pretty high by default on account of their larger-than-average pieces and extensive printing. But they can offset that somewhat by using minifig prints or other moderately theme-specific parts that are already common in much bigger themes. Finally, having Juniors sets that are the same themes as "big kid LEGO" helps streamline the transition OUT of Juniors-level builds once kids are experienced enough to feel ready for them. Whereas if it's a theme like, say, Western that's usually not exciting enough to most older kids to justify a "big kid" theme of its own, then that severely weakens the sense of compatibility between Juniors parts and other System parts (one of the Juniors theme's strengths compared to earlier preschool product lines like Fabuland and Jack Stone). The kids who got their start with Juniors then wind up stuck with lots of printed or otherwise specialized parts that, aside from shared connection points, seem to belong to a totally different world than any of the sets more appropriate to their current building level. That said, who knows? Maybe at some point, now that "Juniors" is now no longer a theme of its own but a label appended to beginner sets in other themes, maybe at some point we'll see LEGO introducing new non-licensed themes entirely at that building level, just like with the licensed Cars 3 and Toy Story 4 sets. I was being facetious about the bricks being "yucky". It just strikes me as strange how often AFOLs who are dedicated collectors and experienced builders would rather pay more per part just to pay less per minifigure — even if there are other reasonably affordable sets with a way better value for money and more or less the same minifigures. It's the same as how strange it's always seemed to me when fans would rather pay high prices for the licensed LEGO magazines (LEGO Star Wars, etc), the old LEGO magnets, or the early LEGO Ninjago Spinners, but didn't care at all about the non-minifigure contents, just about obtaining already-available figs without having to pay for substantial non-minifigure builds. After all, aren't those builds (and the original creations you can then turn them into) the main point of these characters being LEGO minifigures in the first place? Otherwise you might as well collect generic, non-buildable action figures from a company like Hasbro or Mattel. Even if the $10 LEGO City Starter Sets sometimes have as many pieces total as the $10 Great Vehicles sets, a lot of those pieces are eaten up by minifigures, minifigure accessories, and animals. For example, even excluding standard building elements like bricks and tiles used for the minifig headgear and accessories, all three of last year's Starter Sets devoted 25% or more of their piece counts to the minifigs, accessories, and prefab animals. So while some technically had higher piece counts than some of that year's $10 Great Vehicles sets, the reality is that the amount of non-minifigure building in the Great Vehicles was decidedly more extensive. A similar case can be made for several of this year's $10 Great Vehicles sets. It's simply not plausible that builds as substantial in terms of both piece count and size as this year's Desert Rally Racer, Construction Loader, Kayak Adventures, and Police Patrol Car could have been released with three more minifigures plus accessories (in other words, at least 15 additional pieces per set) and no price hike. After all, if LEGO could do that, they could have just as easily put builds of that size and complexity in the $10 Starter Sets to begin with! None of this is to say that a set that prioritizes a greater number of minifigures is inherently better or worse than a set that focuses on more substantial brick-built contents at the same price point. But it's easy to see how keeping most sets' minifig counts in relative proportion to their size and piece count might make it easier for LEGO to combat the obnoxious stereotype among non-FOL parents (and other non-FOLs) that "sets these days are just pathetic little builds people only buy for the minifigs" (something VERY frequently leveled at the licensed themes like Star Wars, but also at non-licensed themes frustratingly often).

Well, also one of the builds in https://brickset.com/sets/10404-1/Ocean-s-Bottom, one of the builds in https://brickset.com/sets/40290-1/60-Years-of-the-LEGO-Brick, the microscale set https://brickset.com/sets/11910-1/Micro-Scale-Space-Cruiser that was included with the book "Great LEGO Sets", arguably https://brickset.com/sets/21109-1/Exo-Suit (though that's more of a "neo-Classic Space" set), https://brickset.com/sets/5002812-1/Classic-Spaceman-Minifigure, the logos on several Collectible Minifigures, a major LEGO Worlds update, etc. If you define the kind of "Classic Space" stuff you want in new sets as "must be minifig-scale and purposely limit itself to obsolete set and character design standards", then it goes without saying that you're setting yourself up for disappointment. It's honestly remarkable how MANY references to Classic Space there have been in recent years, considering that if it weren't for Benny, most kids would have no more reason to care about Classic Space references than references to Space Police, M:Tron, or Exploriens. I mean, where's this idea coming from that expensive Star Wars sets pander to adults at kids' expense, but LEGO failing to make more than one or two sets referencing Classic Space per year is some big missed opportunity for them? I guarantee you that way more kids have watched the Star Wars original trilogy and developed a passion for those movies, characters, and ships than have had any firsthand experience playing with LEGO sets from a subtheme that ended more than 30 years ago… There has definitely been an increase in the super-expensive sets, but I don't feel like it's out of control. Of last year's sets (excluding stuff costing less than $5 since that includes a lot of polybags that Brickset has less consistent price information for): 7 sets (2%) cost more than $200 USD 20 sets (5.7%) cost more than $100 USD but less than $200 USD 48 sets (13.7%) cost more than $50 USD but less than $100 USD 100 sets (28.6%) cost more than $25 USD but less than $50 USD 175 sets (50%) cost more than $5 USD but less than $25 This seems like a fairly healthy spread of prices from my perspective, with as many or more sets within any of those price brackets than in all of the higher price brackets combined. Likewise, I think any recent trend towards LEGO "churning out lackluster low-end stuff like every other cheap toy company" only exists in AFOLs' imaginations. Teeny-tiny impulse sets were ubiquitous back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. A healthy chunk of Classic Space sets like https://brickset.com/sets/885-1/, https://brickset.com/sets/886-1/, and https://brickset.com/sets/6804-1/, and https://brickset.com/sets/6805-1/ were piddly little builds featuring fewer than 30 pieces, and by today's standards look downright mediocre in terms of minifigures, play features, pieces, and building experience. Many modern polybag sets demonstrate more quality and value than those sets did. I don't see how that change implies any sort of connection to increases in bigger, AFOL-targeted sets, particularly when the one remaining set like that you can cite is a fairly bland set one that is only especially interesting through nostalgia goggles. If anything, moving away from "starter sets" strikes me as an attempt to bring the emphasis of sets at those lower price brackets back towards more substantial amounts of building, rather than on making it easy to stockpile minifigs without having to pay extra for the yucky building elements and play features that appear in other sets containing the same figures. After all, City still has three $10/€10 Great Vehicles sets and three $10/€10 4+ sets, so it's not as though they've abandoned the entire price point or shifted it away from stuff kids can enjoy. Don't really see how that says anything about any major shift in LEGO's focus/quality, either. After all, it's mostly just a change in the sets' labeling, not their contents — same as how this year's Super Heroes sets are labeled at the top with the names of the particular superhero IPs/subthemes they relate to (Spider-Man, Batman, Captain Marvel, Avengers, etc) rather than with a shared "LEGO Super Heroes" logo. The actual number of 4+ sets does not appear to have increased substantially compared to previous years.

Just because the context of the Creator 3-in-1 theme ALLOWS for more variety of non-modern-day subject matter does not mean that LEGO has any reason to WANT the theme to become a "catch-all" theme like you envision. Not when the modern day types of Creator 3-in-1 sets seem to remain reliably popular and successful despite coexisting with multiple other modern-day themes (City, Friends, Speed Champions, etc). And of course, it can't be understated how frustrated many LEGO Creator fans would be if the "modern day" categories of 3-in-1 sets they've grown accustomed to were reduced in order to make room for new categories they haven't previously expressed interest in. When people have come to expect modern house/shop sets, aircraft sets, car sets, truck sets, motorcycle sets, animal sets, etc. pretty much every year, what executive or designer or retailer is going to want to risk letting all the fans of those established categories down just to make room for ancient Greek/Roman/Mayan/Aztec sets, steampunk/cyberpunk sets, pulp-inspired sets, etc. for which the prospective audience remains largely hypothetical? To you, the modern-day categories are repetitive to the point of being overdone or redundant, but that's largely because you group all these categories together by genre alone, when the construction-based nature of LEGO Creator means that the style of build is probably a bigger consideration in which sets many fans are drawn to than any sense of a shared genre. Even here on Eurobricks, people NOTICE if there's a wave without a set focusing on houses/shops, or on real-world animals, or on large-scale vehicles, or on impulse-priced microscale vehicles. And Creator 3-in-1 is not a huge theme! For the past few years the tendency has been to have 12 to 14 non-polybag 3-in-1 sets per year. If that has to include a minimum of 2 sets per year in the categories of posable robots/creatures, microscale vehicles, large-scale vehicles, minifig-scale vehicles, and minifig-scale houses/shops, that leaves only two to four sets per year with more flexible subject matter… and there are signs that fairground ride themed sets might become yet another recurring category for this theme, which would further eat into that. I definitely think you and I have both cited examples of designers beginning to dabble in more fanciful subject matter, and I think you and I both appreciate those examples! But I don't think there's as much room as you think for a wider range of sets like those without it happening at the expense of other categories that people are already passionate about. The fact that the value of an individual piece can be so unpredictable is exactly the reason that expecting sets from the 80s to have the same value as sets from today with the same number of pieces makes no sense at all! After all, if you compared sets from today based on how big and playable they are compared to ones with the same piece count, then you'd arrive at the utterly bonkers conclusion that https://brickset.com/sets/10770-1/Buzz-Woody-s-Carnival-Mania! is a better value than https://brickset.com/sets/31088-1/Deep-Sea-Creatures, because with the same number of pieces it's bigger and has more play features than the latter — even though the former costs more than THREE TIMES as much as the latter! I'm not sure what you mean here, considering that even as the examples I cited showed, LEGO's price per piece has gone down tremendously when adjusted for inflation. This blog entry gives a more thorough statistical analysis which backs this up (although it is at this point about six years old). And for what it's worth, many of LEGO's strongest "competitors in the construction toy field" tend to have an extremely similar price per piece to comparable LEGO sets. For example, in Mega Construx's (formerly Mega Bloks's) Pokémon range, their Charizard set is 198 pieces for $20, their Blastoise set is 284 pieces for $25, and their Gyarados set is 352 pieces for $30. If LEGO's price per piece were really "too high", surely their biggest competitors like Mattel (Mega Construx's parent company) would be taking advantage of that by offering toys with equivalent piece counts for lower prices? After all, back in the 90s and early 2000s, Mega Bloks used to have a reputation as a low-priced alternative to LEGO. Giving that up (at risk of alienating buyers who would prefer the same products at lower prices) implies that they CAN'T create successful LEGO-quality products at a substantially lower price per piece. I feel like this comment demonstrates a little bit of bias against newer parts, or at least selective memory about older ones. 58846 is an incredibly versatile piece, usable (and used in the previous 30 set appearances of that part) not only for vaguely flying saucer shaped builds but also as roofs/awnings, landscaping, interior, aircraft/spacecraft wings, ancient stone structures, helicopter landing pads, the curved edge of roads/racetracks, or generally anything you might want a big circular shape for! A basic circular slope piece like that is certainly no more "nefarious" than many much more specialized and less frequently used parts that appeared in actual Classic Space sets of the 80s: for example, 2336, 3430, 3947, 4089, 4228, 4597, 4737, 4741, 4746, etc. Some of those have gone decades without finding use in as many sets or themes as the 10x10 quarter circle slope has in just 12 years! And anyhow, weren't you earlier extolling the value of big wing pieces that make it easier to rebuild sets into original creations? Why would a big quarter circle brick be any less conducive to original creations than parts like, say, 4475? Doesn't seem likely. KFOLs still vastly outnumber AFOLs, and if anything, a lot of the concerns you've discussed are very typical frustrations of OLDER fans, not younger ones. In 1988, LEGO revenues were around 5 billion DKK (equivalent to around 9 billion DKK in 2018). Whereas their revenue last year, 30 years later, amounted to over 36 billion DKK! That growth hasn't been driven by the handful of spectacularly wealthy adults who collect high-priced sets like the Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series or the Modular Buildings. In fact, most of the best-selling LEGO sets and themes often tend to be ones preferred by kids, like City, Friends, Ninjago, or even Duplo! This isn't to say AFOLs don't enjoy these themes, but they aren't the typical audience expected to get excited for new seasons of LEGO Ninjago, new LEGO City police sets, or new LEGO Friends dollhouses. It is extraordinarily naive to assume that kids who grow up loving today's top themes, so different from those you remember from your own childhood, will be more likely to lose interest in LEGO permanently. I say that as an AFOL born in 1991, whose childhood favorite theme was Bionicle, of all things. I believe it was in part thanks to the Bionicle theme coinciding with my teen years that I never had anything even resembling a "dark age" between my KFOL and AFOL years, even though for earlier generations of AFOLs the idea of temporarily losing interest in LEGO as a teenager or young adult was practically taken for granted. Do you honestly believe that today's Ninjago sets have less creative building potential and less chance of "hooking" kids on the LEGO building experience than the vastly more specialized parts and builds of the late 90s and early 2000s? If not, why are there even so many AFOLs today who are nostalgic for those themes? "In the end, the teenager who has stopped building will never become the adult buyer of a Ucs Millennium Falcon or a Bugatti Chiron", you posited in your initial post, but I think the fact that there even exists an audience for these sets today proves that to be false. It has NEVER been the norm for kids to consistently enjoy LEGO as a hobby from childhood into adulthood, because kids in general go through all kinds of different phases during their childhoods and teenage years as they try to figure out what passions best suit their skills, interests, and aspirations the best. How many buyers of today's AFOL-targeted sets do you honestly think never lost interest in LEGO, not even for reasons entirely unrelated to the availability of sets that suited their creative building needs? I think in the case of the licensed AFOL-targeted products in particular, many are probably bought by AFOLs who otherwise never had any unique passion for LEGO compared to other brands, and yet who are excited by the prospect of a high-quality building toy of something they recognize from an outside brand that they are CURRENTLY passionate about.

I mean, a lot of the time when we don't get stuff like that in other existing themes it's because kids genuinely aren't as drawn to it as the stuff we do tend to see more often. It's not as though releasing sets like that with a different theme name on the box magically cracks the code for how to make kids like it more than they would as its own theme. I suspect Creator, like any other theme, tests WAY more different concepts with kids than ever wind up becoming actual products, at least in the short term. What products get made is decided by which concepts get the most positive feedback from kids, not just according to the whims of the designers. It's the same as how designers tested way more animal tribes for Legends of Chima or monster categories for Nexo Knights than they ended up using. We'll always Town/City sets have almost always surpassed other themes in terms of both popularity and sheer number of sets. There's a reason why relaunching City was one of the first major development milestones designers sought to tackle during their recovery process from 2004 onward, and why Town/City layouts are among some of the biggest at any LEGO convention or LEGOLAND park. Suffice to say, the modern world is "alike" enough from place to place that there are a lot of things about it that most kids and adutls alike can relate to on some level, whereas the success of historic and sci-fi themes depends on kids having both an awareness of and an attraction to what society and culture were like at a very particular place and time, or an even more particular vision of the future. The fact that so many AFOLs specifically wish for a return of "classic space", rather than "a space theme" in more general terms, is a good indication of just how particular these tastes can be. While a lot of us like to imagine this is because there is something uniquely and universally appealing about that specific blue-and-yellow, arrowhead-shaped aesthetic that can't be said for any other Space aesthetic, let alone for any one specific Castle or Pirates subtheme, the much more likely possibility is that the wider population's tastes in space-related toys and media vary as broadly as those toys and media themselves, and what's most widely agreed upon as "cool" or "futuristic" can hardly be expected to remain unchanged over a 30+ year period! Modern technology and architecture at least offer something a little closer to what can be considered a shared frame of reference. And anyhow, there have been loads of non City/Town based Creator models over the years if you count humanoid robots, dragons, trolls, giant spiders, etc. After all, let's not kid ourselves — many Town/City/Trains fans would no doubt be up in arms if LEGO put a dragon or a giant flying robot into a City set! Besides https://brickset.com/sets/31090-1/Underwater-Robot and https://brickset.com/sets/31086-1/Futuristic-Flyer released this year, https://brickset.com/sets/31073-1/Mythical-Creatures came out last year (and remains available), while both https://brickset.com/sets/31062-1/Robo-Explorer and https://brickset.com/sets/31058-1/Mighty-Dinosaurs came out just the year before! It makes no sense to complain that "LEGO Creator never indulges in non Town/City subject matter, besides all the times they do". That's not a useful insight, it's a tautology. Well, not as A-models, but the Houseboat set has a buildings as its C-model. We saw something similar in the Summer 2016 with https://brickset.com/sets/31052-1/Vacation-Getaways as an A-model and stationary houses/shops only as B- and C-models.

Not sure what you mean… LEGO has been using the same gold color (297 Warm Gold) since 2006! It's had some slight variations over the years, but has never been outright replaced the way that the old browns and greys were. It's possible you're thinking about colors like lacquered gold (BrickLink's Metallic Gold) or metalized gold (BrickLink's Chrome Gold), but neither of these colors has been "replaced". They've just appeared in fewer sets since Warm Gold and other "pearl" colors are much less expensive and much more versatile from a manufacturing standpoint (not requiring any specialized machinery or molds different than those used for other colors). But the lacquered version appears in at least 4 current sets and the chrome version appeared as recently as last summer.

It seems to me that a lot of the "lack" of mid-range sets as expressed in the initial post is specifically due to how it defines "mid-range" based on piece count rather than other factors like price. Sets today often have considerably higher piece counts for their price than ones from the 80s or 90s. For example, a set from my childhood with a piece count similar to those you cited was https://brickset.com/sets/6175-1/Crystal-Explorer-Sub, which cost $33 USD back in 1995… equivalent to nearly $55.50 after nearly 25 years of inflation. It goes without saying that if you compare it to sets with similar piece counts like https://brickset.com/sets/70666-1/The-Golden-Dragon the newer ones seem underwhelming, but that's to be expected when the Crystal Explorer Sub costs more than twice as much as a typical 150–200 piece set today, and has less than half as many pieces than a $50 set like https://brickset.com/sets/70669-1/Cole-s-Earth-Driller! Now, actual prices from the 80s and 90s are nowhere near as consistently documented on sites like Brickset as prices for more recent sets. Often the best option I've found for identifying prices for these kinds of older sets is to look at mail order catalogs. I don't know what mail order catalog brands were operating in Australia at that time (you may have to research that yourself), but I've found that Sears catalogs are often a good option for looking up older US prices, or Argos catalogs for UK ones. So yeah, that FX Star Patroller? It cost $20 USD back in 1985. Fast forward nearly 35 years and that equates to $47.65. Again, by today's standards, that's still a pretty normal price for a "mid-range" LEGO set… it's just that the piece count of sets at that price is much higher! Even in themes like LEGO City and LEGO Star Wars that are often perceived as a poor value by today's standards, $40 to $50 or can easily get you sets like https://brickset.com/sets/60175-1/Mountain-River-Heist, https://brickset.com/sets/60186-1/Mining-Heavy-Driller, https://brickset.com/sets/60193-1/Arctic-Air-Transport, https://brickset.com/sets/60214-1/Burger-Bar-Fire-Rescue, https://brickset.com/sets/75210-1/Moloch-s-Landspeeder, https://brickset.com/sets/75233-1/Droid-Gunship, or https://brickset.com/sets/75205-1/Mos-Eisley-Cantina with as many or more pieces AND play features than the Star Patroller had. So perhaps a better way to think about this is that decades ago, a mediocre piece count could result in a set that qualifies as "mid-range" in terms of both size and price, whereas today the standards for how much building can be expected from a medium-size/medium-price set have risen much higher. I suspect part of the reason is that the "conceptual retreads" are what tend have the most sustainably strong sales… same as the reason that LEGO Ninjago keeps on introducing new dragons and motorcycle twin-packs, LEGO City keeps on introducing new police stations and helicopters, Star Wars keeps introducing new X-Wings and TIE Fighters, and LEGO Friends keeps introducing new houses, performance stages, shops, and science labs. In fact, even in the 80s and 90s when themes like Castle, Space, and Pirates were still a much bigger deal than they are today, a lot of the sets for those themes kept on revisiting a fairly narrow slice of the possibilities those genre entailed. Surely even in the LEGO Group's most conservative days, the themes could have in theory explored subject matter fantasy creatures like elves, trolls, and goblins in LEGO Castle, or weirder and wackier alien species and landscapes in LEGO Space, or ghosts and sea monsters in LEGO Pirates… but the amount of demand for subject matter that HAD already been successful in the past usually outweighed the demand for forms of novelty that were further from what the company had experienced success with in the past. As nice as the kind of "progress" you want to see sounds in theory, the reality is that if the less typical Creator subject matter doesn't sell as well as brick-built motorcycles, houses, airplanes, animals, dragons, and race cars, the design team is going to continue dedicating most of their limited SKUs to that type of subject matter, and only explore more unusual subjects when they see opportunities to do so without neglecting the stuff kids are most consistently enthusiastic for.

Hmm, interesting. I believe the stickers for sets sold in North America and in Europe are produced in different factories, so maybe it's something that they already resolved in sets produced for sale in North America but not sets produced for sale in Europe? Or as @Johnny1360 suggests, it could be some kind of environmental factor, but for the most part LEGO still does their best to account for that in their designs, so I feel like it's worth reporting anyhow so they know that something is amiss and can hopefully even replace your sticker sheet.

That's really bizarre. Apparently the issue back in the day resulted in a faulty adhesive that reacted badly with the paper, but LEGO had supposedly resolved that years ago. The last sets I had this issue with were from as far back as 2007 — the stickers from my 2008 Agents sets and everything else since have all had no issues whatsoever. Definitely be sure and report this to LEGO! Not only would they probably be able to replace the stickers for you since the set is still recent, but if they got a faulty batch of adhesive then they need to make sure they get enough reports to figure out what sets it was used for, what countries it was found in, and which of their factories was making stickers for those sets in those countries, so they can replace that adhesive as quickly as possible and prevent it being used on any future sets. Personally, I really prefer the white stickers over the clear stickers (except on transparent or metallic parts where the color behind the sticker needs to show). Clear stickers tend to show even tiny bits of dust, air bubbles, or fingerprints much more clearly than white-backed stickers, and since the edges are transparent it can make them a lot trickier to line up as well. But I might feel differently if I started experiencing "sticker horror" on recent sets again…

Probably a beluga whale. Young beluga whales in real life are often pinkish white or pinkish grey in color before turning white as adults: I suspect it will appear in one of the LEGO Friends ocean animal rescue sets that we've heard about for this summer!

Something else to think about with regard to new molds is that all LEGO molds wear out after a certain amount of use. In a theme like Ninjago with lots of different sets produced in extremely high quantities, even some theme-specific molds might wear out from just a couple years of use in that theme alone. I suspect the same can probably be said for some of the older Castle molds I described in my previous post, or for any number of different Bionicle molds. Given that, designers have a few options. They can create extremely non-specific molds that they will recreate at full cost after the original molds wear out. But alternatively, they can focus their budget on creating new molds after the old ones wear out, thereby creating both a stronger sense of novelty for the sets themselves and a wider range of part options for MOCists to choose from (MOCists, after all, are not limited to the use of current molds the way set designers are). In fairness, anthropomorphic LEGO animals have been a thing since Fabuland, so even before Legends of Chima, anthropomorphic LEGO elephants, lions, mice, bulldogs, pigs, bears, raccoons, walruses, rabbits, crows/ravens, foxes, goats, hippos, sheep, etc. all existed for more than a decade before any appeared as full non-Duplo animal molds. Keep in mind that minifigure head or headgear molds tend to be way cheaper than actual animal molds, ESPECIALLY bigger animals like horses that often have to be pre-assembled from several different components. As such, while LEGO only tends to introduce either when they have a theme that needs them, they tend to have the option of introducing many MORE anthropomorphic animal head designs at one time and working them into a wider variety of sets than full animal designs. For instance, in just three years of Legends of Chima characters showing up in sets (2013–2015): the lion headgear appears in 28 sets the crocodile headgear appears in 22 sets the eagle headgear appears in 21 sets the wolf headgear appears in 18 sets the sabretooth headgear appears in 17 sets the gorilla headgear appears in 14 sets the raven headgear appears in 13 sets the vulture headgear appears in 12 sets the bear headgear appears in 8 sets the phoenix, spider, and lioness/leopard/tiger headgear each appear in 6 sets the mammoth, bat, rhino, and scorpion headgear each appear in 3 sets the skunk/fox headgear appears in 2 sets By comparison, the 3 or 4 pre-assembled molds that make up the molded LEGO cow each took five years to find use in even just four sets, while the 5 or 6 pre-assembled molds that make up the molded LEGO bear have each taken seven years to show up in seven sets. Besides the number of molds required, these sorts of big multi-piece animals are often hard to work into low-price, high production volume sets like Speedorz, magazine gift bags, Minifigures blind bags, smaller Friends sets, etc. that have helped cover the costs of a lot of the new molds across those themes. On that note, though, with the existence of the current "big cat" design, a more traditional-looking maned lion could become a lot easier for LEGO to introduce when they have a theme suitable for them — it could conceivably use the same midsection and legs, with only a new head element (featuring a lion mane). The number of DIFFERENT big cats that could be created with the same molds honestly seems like a big part of the justification for those molds' introduction. But again, when we see that will depend on when LEGO is developing a wave of sets they're suited to — same as how other animal molds have specifically appeared in themes where they help reinforce the premise, setting, or play scenario, like crocodiles, monkeys, and parrots in Pirates; undersea animals in Aquazone and Divers; dinosaurs in specific dino-related themes or subthemes, rats and owls in Harry Potter, camels and ostriches in Prince of Persia, etc. LEGO's approach to introducing new molds is rarely "let's make these sets as an excuse/opportunity to introduce these molds", but "let's make this product line kids seem excited about, and then decide what new molds will be the best use of that product line's budget". As far as the prospect of Legends of Chima crossover stuff goes, I wouldn't be at all surprised if somehow a CHI and/or fire CHI crystal that somehow made it from that realm to Ninjago were the explanation for how these two new undead factions returned to life, just as CHI crystals were in Chima's own Fire vs. Ice wave. It wouldn't even need to be explained in great depth within the series — just that they are some mysterious powerful artifacts from another realm. That way, it would be a plot device that makes sense to newcomers, but also doesn't come completely out of nowhere and serves as a sort of an easter egg for people aware of Legends of Chima lore. It's certainly much easier to deal with without as much exposition as an actual guest star character from the Chima storyline or a Ninjago storyline set in the realm of Chima would require. (side note, I wouldn't say the Chima characters' eyes are much more anime or manga-ish than a lot of actual LEGO animals like recent crocodiles, big cats, and

I mean, in sets? Some of it might not be, but there's no way of knowing for sure. After all, we've seen seemingly highly specific parts unexpectedly repurposed before plenty of times. Even if dual-molded, often all it takes is a recolor to make it look very different from what it originally appeared as. Who ever expected a Spartan helmet, mermaid tail, fairy wings, a tutu, a bunny hood, Clay's sword from Nexo Knights, etc. to be used on BATMAN, of all characters? Or for the Scurrier body from Nexo Knights to be repurposed as some weird character from an old Beatles cartoon? Or the snake whip from the 2012 Ninjago spinners to become Mixel boogers? That said, it's not like it's unusual at all for LEGO to introduce molds and use them exclusively in just one theme or context for decades. I mean, the Forestman hat, Dragon Master helmet, and bullet-shaped helmet with chin guard have only ever been used on castle minifigures. The fantasy era dwarf and troll helmet were never used on any figures besides fantasy era dwarves and trolls. The shako and bicorne hat from LEGO Pirates have each only been used ONCE outside of a pirate-related theme (on the Toy Soldier minifigure from the LEGO Minifigures Character Encyclopedia and a skeleton ship captain from Fantasy Era castle, respectively). The Swamp Creature and Frankenstein's Monster headgear have only appeared on figures inspired by those particular monsters, usually in specifically monster-based themes or subthemes. And it's not like ANY of the ninja or samurai headgear pieces introduced to date have ever been widely used in non-ninja-related themes. In fact, when Lord Garmadon used the classic samurai helmet in 2011, he was the first minifigure to wear that helmet in well over a decade, AND the first outside the short-lived original Ninja theme! The "flames" on the new snake heads could be treated as crystal or glass decoration on an ancient statue in any number of themes just as easily as they represent flames in this theme. In transparent light blue it could easily become a decorative fountain, or in green it could become algae on an underwater treasure (for example, in a sunken ship), or in an opaque blue and green combination it could represent represent the head of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. It's not as though LEGO has never used "fire" pieces to represent things besides fire, after all! The frozen headwrap? LEGO could easily recolor it for the next time they want to bring ghosts into Ninjago, seeing as the ghost ninja minifigures from 2015 had headgear with a similar two-color mold, and it also looks like it might be the new standard for future "elemental" or "energized" versions of the ninja (forgoing the need for printed elemental patterns like the NRG versions had). By recoloring it with a solid color in the back, it could even become a mask that exposes the wearer's spiky hair. Icicle-crusted samurai helmets and armor? Put them in an opaque "earth tone" and it becomes rock or petrified wood! Put it in a less icy transparent color and it becomes crystal. Put it in transparent yellow and it can be crackling lightning. Plenty of other crystalline-textured parts have already illustrated this kind of versatility in the past. And naturally, when it comes to MOCs, anything goes!

Baristas, chefs, and presidents are people who have jobs with specific responsibilities, and dress in attire indicative of those jobs. Also, when designed by LEGO, they usually have fun, evocative facial expressions, detailed headgear or hairstyles, and appear with builds or accessories that help contextualize who they are and what they do. Jor-El is a super-powered character who wears cool futuristic armor, a wizard-like gown, and a cape, plus a costume that makes it obvious that he's related to Superman even if you have never known about Superman's parents or origin story. These are "boring" compared to "middle-aged bald man with stubble and white T-shirt" only if you know actually know who Bruce Willis is and what kinds of film roles he's associated with. And most kids won't know those things… the context of the movie might give them the sense that he's a gruff-voiced person who spends a lot of time in air ducts, but none of that even touches on the cooler or more interesting stuff that he does or that happens to him in films like Die Hard.

It's a good question. I would say so — after all, the Knights' Kingdom II constraction sets were System-based, and the Invasion from Below battle machines were minifigure-scale piloted mecha. At the same time, that raises the question of how broadly you can define constraction before it loses all useful meaning as a discrete category. After all: There's no lower bound on how much articulation a constraction set must have (the Turaga had fewer points of articulation than even a LEGO minifigure) Constraction sets do not need to be humanoid or even bipedal in form (the Visorak, Tunneler Beast, and many of the Elemental Creatures were not) Constraction sets do not need to contain any type of "action features" like swinging arms or shooting projectiles (the 2010 Hero Factory heroes and General Grievous did not). Constraction sets can contain System or Technic-based props and vehicles regardless of size (such as the catapult in the King Jayko set, the trap in the Karzahni set, or the Drop Ship) Ultimately, I would perhaps be willing to include such sets as the Nexo Knights Battle Suits or even the Creator 3-in-1 Rescue Robot under the broad umbrella of how "constraction" is defined. But I would be much more wary about opening the definition up to include such sets as the Ice Dragon Attack, Shadow Crawler, Recon Robot, or Park Animals. Perhaps, though, we should be taking that as a sign that the terms "constraction" or "buildable figure" are no longer a useful way of classifying specific themes and subthemes now that there are so many different ways of creating a buildable LEGO action figure, and so many different themes and subthemes containing them. After all, a lot of this probably comes down to the similar messiness of how the term "action figure" is defined, since action figures are defined not by their subject matter so much as their intended play pattern and target demographic, both of which tend to be a lot more flexible with a versatile building toy like LEGO than with non-buildable toy brands.

Hard to predict. It's entirely possible that LEGO might have been developing a new constraction line for a 2019 release and had to delay it for some reason or another. It's not unheard of them to do that — I've seen posts asserting that the Dots theme intended for release this year has been delayed due to one of the materials not meeting the LEGO Group's quality standards, and even Ninjago's release was held back a year so as to get it just right before its big debut. There's always the very real possibility that LEGO wanted to avoid launching too many new themes this year since they didn't want the huge marketing emphasis on The LEGO Movie 2 to drown them out. Conversely, it's also possible that with the company's growth trajectory looking a little less reliable than it had seemed from 2005 onward, LEGO might be purposely trying to avoid too much emphasis on themes that depend so heavily on a parts palette that few other themes employ. And in that case, if/when a constraction theme does come back, it might employ a totally different building system, perhaps one utilizing 10.2mm ball joints like the Mixels so that the parts are easier to spread out across other themes than G1 Bionicle or CCBS parts were. It would certainly be poetic if a new constraction theme were to come out in 2021 for the 20th anniversary of Bionicle's launch, but usually I get the sense that LEGO prefers to schedule product releases they have long-term plans for according to when both the product line is ready for market and the market is ready for the product line, not according to what would be most "poetic".

With regard to the Bruce Willis stuff, I think their answer was less because they think he's not appropriate for kids as that he's not interesting to kids. Same as how they haven't had any other minifigures in sets based on real-life actors who are more well known for the fictional characters they play. Like, let's be honest. To a kid who hasn't seen any Bruce Willis movies, the only defining traits of the Bruce Willis minifigure as he appears in the movie are that he's bald and wears a gross-looking tank top. Without the context of his roles in this or other films, his design isn't cool, cute, colorful, stylish, fun, or funny in the way that most characters who are designed to appear in sets are. It's the same as why Super Heroes sets focus almost exclusively on exciting action scenes, not on calmer or more suspenseful scenes. Even if a movie or comic book character or setting is well designed, that alone isn't enough to make it a fun toy that kids will want to play with. There's not much play value in a "Peter Parker gets detention" or "Tony Stark and Captain America argue about the Sokovia accords" set.

I didn't even realize before reading this post that making custom wheel sets and bogies that didn't use the full wheel-and-axle assembly was a thing that people did! Just did a Google search and it's kind of neat to see some of the designs people have come up with. But given that a lot of people have already attested to using non-purist metal axles, it doesn't seem as though the prospect of cutting parts should be a deal-breaker. Also, is it normal for sets to come with warped or deformed train wheels or axles? Because if it is, that strikes me as MORE reason to replace the current molds, since ordinarily I feel like getting a noticeably deformed part in a brand-new set is a rare "worst case scenario", not something common enough to worry about whether the shape of the part makes it easier or harder to replace. And if plastic axles do in fact turn out to be cheaper for LEGO to manufacture themselves than metal ones, then that should be a big plus as far as their ability to fulfill replacement part requests is concerned, since the actual kids who most train sets are targeted at aren't necessarily going to have the skills or knowledge to buy some third-party metal rod and cut it to size, as older train fans have learned they can do to save themselves the expense of ordering official LEGO train axles.

The Insectoid storylines varied between countries. In the United States Mania Magazines, they were presented as creepy intergalactic mischief makers led by Gypsy Moth, while in most other countries they were variously called Zotaxians or Otopians and were presented as intergalactic refugees who settled on a planet variously called Armeron or Holox. This planet was inhabited by enormous alien Bilgen Bugs, so the refugees redesigned their ships as camouflage so they could collect Voltstones without having to fear Bilgen Bug attacks. Character names also varied between countries (even those that shared a common language), as was the norm in most themes prior to 2000.

@Pdaitabird For what it's worth, the United States forcibly "re-educated" Native American people for centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools I'm not saying that some of the actions of the Chinese government does aren't outrageous in their own right, but I do think that the United States in particular has a really bad reputation of framing government overreach or unequal societal norms overseas (particularly in Asia and the Middle East) in such a way as to gloss over both historic and present-day issues of corruption, oppression, mass surveillance, injustice, etc. within our OWN government and society. Sometimes it's even used as a form of "whataboutism" to belittle American reform, advocacy, or protest movements — for example, comments like "If you really cared about fighting (sexism/homophobia/religious intolerance/pollution/poverty/corruption/whatever), you'd be protesting the government of (insert Asian or Middle Eastern country)! Clearly you just hate America!"

Really? Because when you bring up RPG miniatures, some examples that quickly spring to mind include: Warhammer 40K, which mashes up elements of Warhammer's original medieval fantasy genre with futuristic sci-fi in a lot of unconventional ways (at least, unconventional by the standards of when it first launched, though those twists on the usual sci-fi formula have since somewhat influenced subsequent examples of the genre). BrikWars, the LEGO-inspired wargame that purposely embraces madcap storytelling mashing up the various genres that exist within LEGO and other construction toy brands. Dungeons and Dragons, which while inspired by medieval fantasy RPGs, also pulls from lots of other genres like Lovecraftian horror, monster movies, global mythology and folklore, science fiction, paleobiology, and even its own invented creatures like the Gelatinous Cube that were not original to any established genre. And this kind of playful approach to genre is honestly pretty common among all kinds of toy and game IPs. It's not as though toy and game designers are out there making a concerted effort to ensure their works are as derivative, formulaic, or by-the-book as possible. When you look at video games, you see the same thing — "The Legend of Zelda", for instance, has an overarching European medieval fantasy flavor with swordplay, dragons, magic, castles, and princesses, but it also has plenty of motifs not typical of that genre like zombies, slime creatures, lasers, robots, ninjas, genies, sandworms, carnivorous plants, teleportation, time travel, Shinto spirituality, etc. None of this stuff is intended to alienate fans of more conventional medieval fantasy media — but it does help the games maintain a sense of novelty in terms of both storytelling and the play experience.