Aanchir

The original site where I saw pictures of it from LEGO World Copenhagen 2013 (lekgodt.no) no longer exists, though there is another picture of it here from Flickr user Teabox. For reference purposes I also saved and uploaded one of Lekgodt.no's photos to Flickr myself years ago: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7517/15604244814_eaa96c409b_o.jpg I also did my best to reverse engineer it using LEGO Digital Designer, which I shared as an image and LXF file here. But because of a lack of reference photos I never did figure out a lot of how the less visible parts of the back were constructed, including where the wings attach. That said, I used a lot of techniques inspired by the parts of that MOC I was able to figure out in a MOC of similar height, Caitlyn Gauss XL. The original MOC is by long-time Bionicle lead designer Christoffer Raundahl, who is also one of the three designers credited as the inventors of the CCBS on its patent documents and featured in the LEGO Group's own "Explaining the Character and Creature Building System" video series. Among the classic Bionicle sets designed by Raundahl are the original Tahu and Kopaka sets from 2001 and the Cahdok & Gahdok set from 2002. He was also interviewed in a 2007 issue in LEGO BrickMaster magazine about the design of the Toa Mahri sets. There was a second copy of this MOC hand-painted by Søren Westborg as a commission and exhibited at LEGO World 2013 alongside the original, but all the sites where I remember seeing pics of it (including Westborg's own personal website) seem to have disappeared. I saved probably saved at least one pic of it for reference, but if I did, I never uploaded any (I'll bet I have them on a flash drive somewhere, but don't have time to dig through old files like that right now). Glad I recognized which MOC you were asking about! Hope this helps!

I was pretty much taking that as a given, but if a whole series is chosen that way then you'd end up with a lot of sour grapes like after the LEGO Ideas review results announcement, with AFOLs getting salty about "X deserved to be chosen way more than Y!". If any step of the decision-making process happens behind closed doors and based on factors fans can't know with any kind of certainty (how well the chosen products complement each other and/or other planned product lines, how well they appeal to established vs. potential audiences, how practical they'd be to manufacture, etc), then a lot of people would hold those decisions against LEGO instead of acknowledging what complex decisions they probably were to arrive at. For a more minifigures-specific example, remember the VIP Top 5 Boxed Minifigures set? LEGO held a vote for VIP members to select their top 5 minifigures from Series 1–3. The winning entries were all from Series 3, and some of them had rarer recolored elements from the original blind bags (like the Dark Red scorpion, Sand Green fish, and Titanium Metallic peg leg) replaced with more common recolors. There was immediate outcry that LEGO had both rigged the outcome to focus on more recent figures, had been too cheap to rerelease those figures as-is, and shouldn't have even held the contest if they weren't going to give AFOLs exactly what they'd voted for. …Never mind the fact that a lot of VIP program members are probably not AFOLs who were voting for early series figures like Spartans and Forestmen, but parents who might have just as easily left the decision to kids with much shorter memories and attention spans. …Never mind that blind bag exclusive recolors might not have been feasible if those same molds were booked round-the-clock to produce the same parts in other colors for current themes. …Never mind that a low-capacity promotional release tends to have considerable limitations on its production budget by default. …Never mind that even among AFOLs, the Elf and Space Villain were beloved "army builder" characters in their own right, and that few people would have thought less of these figures to begin with if their original recolored elements hadn't remained exclusive. It was still regarded by many as a "slap in the face" to the company's most loyal fans, much like any number of other initiatives (even the most well-intentioned, like shout-outs in kid-targeted sets and media to classic sets/themes released before the target audience's lifetime) that have failed to measure up to AFOLs' lofty and extremely particular expectations. That's why I think a smaller scale contest to design one particular minifigure might be more preferable, at least in the short term. Hopefully that would allow any "grumpledumpuss" AFOLs who are grouchy about the contest results to still get as much enjoyment out of the series as a whole as they would have if it hadn't included a fan-created design.

I think that's where the matter of representing the theme as a whole comes in… for a book like this I think they really want a figure that's clearly ninja-related even for people who don't know the theme, so somebody dressed like how kids expect a ninja or ninja master to look is a better fit than most Ninjago villains, supporting characters, or even casual designs for the main characters would be. We probably stand a better chance of seeing casual Harumi in some other type of promotional release, like the Bricktober minifigure collections and battle packs we've seen in the past.

Another issue with making a whole series out of fan designs is that the "best of the best" entries might not wind up being the ones that offer the most appealing sense of variety for the intended buyers… so you might end up with, say, a series that's all historic or sci-fi army builder characters, leaving kids who like sports or costume characters in the lurch. I could definitely see LEGO attempting a smaller contest with either KFOLs or AFOLs and creating ONE character in a future series based on the winning design. We've seen with the LEGO Friends Designer contest a couple years ago that LEGO is experimenting with forms of fan engagement like that which might not have been possible or practical earlier in the company's history. I don't think knock-offs would be an issue with a promotion like that, either, since the novelty of that minifigure being a fan-designed character that became a real LEGO product would probably be a bigger part of the promotional angle for that contest than what type of character happens to be chosen.

I'm not so sure. It's not a matter of recognizability so much as having a really unique and appealing design. The singers from the blind bag series all have very colorful, distinctive, and zany design, while the Bruce Willis minifigure would just be a serious-looking bald guy in a tank top. As such, he would mostly appeal to kids who'd already seen the movie and who both remember and understand the jokes around the character's two cameo appearances, whereas other movie-related minifigures and sets tend to be designed so that they would make fun and engaging toys even without the movie as context. I think that's something that can be said for licensed themes in general. It's same as why if a superhero movie has a scene that takes place in an ordinary house or office building that doesn't involve any sort of action or fighting, that scene is unlikely to show up in a set. Or why civilians and background characters rarely show up in licensed sets unless they are either a part of the set's core conflict or help establish the stakes in said conflict.

Honestly, as long as the new train wheels function as well in practice as the old metal axle ones, I think switching to an all plastic design is a big improvement, since it would hopefully make them cheaper and allow designers to spend a little more on other parts of the train sets. Other types of LEGO vehicle switched away from metal axles many years ago. This might also make the parts safe and accessible to younger builders so that it'd be easier to include train models and pieces in 4+ sets. I know that in the past, one of LEGO's only product recalls involved a Duplo truck with a metal axle that could be a puncture hazard for kids if the wheels became dislodged. And it's well known that trains are still really cool even to kids in the Duplo age set, so no reason to think kids between the typical LEGO City and LEGO Duplo target age wouldn't enjoy them!

I was just seeing leaks of this figure myself. It's definitely not Wu because besides his printed braid on the back of his head, he also has a full printed beard. Seeing this it suddenly dawned on me where this figure is probably from — it's probably going to be the exclusive figure in the new edition of the LEGO Ninjago Visual Dictionary (much like the pre-digitized Merlok minifigure from LEGO Nexo Knights' Book of Knights)! Promo figures like the ones that are packaged with DK reference guides, DVDs, etc are perfectly suited to character designs like this that are visually suited to representing the theme as a whole, but neither important enough to the current story arc to show up in other sets, nor reliant on any unique new molds.

I think for those concerns it's worth bearing in mind that "archetypical" is somewhat relative. All things considered, Ninjago is a pretty straightforward example of the sentai genre, which originated in Japanese series of the 70s with series like Gatchaman and Super Sentai (adapted for American audiences as Battle of the Planets and Power Rangers). Like most examples of that genre, Ninjago features a color-coded team of super-powered teenage masked heroes who protect the world from a huge variety of creepy sci-fi and fantasy monsters using cool vehicles, giant mecha, martial arts, and supernatural abilities. The sentai genre has had a profound and lasting impact on both Japanese and Western kids' media. By contrast, Aquazone is not a theme that a whole lot of people outside of the LEGO community might think of as "archetypical". Certainly there is media that can be considered part of the same underwater sci-fi genre as Aquazone, like Attack from Atlantis, Stingray, Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, Sealab 2020, and SeaQuest DSV. But not only are these, like the sentai genre, overwhelmingly from the mid 20th century onward, but it is also not a genre that appears to have ever been as ubiquitous and influential as the superhero, medieval fantasy, space opera, pirate, western, or sentai genres, much less remained as ubiquitous and inflential as many of those have to this day. Also, a lot of media related to this underwater sci-fi genre is specifically centered around interactions between underwater civilizations and those of the surface world — something that was never a part of the premise presented in the Aquazone sets. I also think that there needs to be some perspective around the fact that two action/adventure themes ended in just the past year and it's not realistic to expect both to get immediate replacements when so much of the LEGO Group's promotional emphasis this year is going towards a new LEGO Movie. And even Elves, to its credit, was a fairly archetypical example of the portal fantasy/isekai genre (e.g. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia, Labyrinth, etc)… but it still got a lot of flack from Castle fans both for using mini-dolls and not for being bog standard historical fiction/medieval fantasy. Many of the same traditionalist-leaning AFOLs who are bothered by Ninjago today likewise looked down on it in 2011 when it was released alongside Kingdoms, Pharaoh's Quest, Atlantis, and Alien Conquest, and in 2013 when it was released alongside Castle and Galaxy Squad, or in 2015 when it was released alongside Pirates and Ultra Agents. So I'm not sure I really buy the idea that it would be more accepted by those parts of the AFOL community if they weren't lacking for the types of themes they prefer.

Also, as much as LEGO values secrecy, toy retailers can’t make plans for which and how many future LEGO products to order if they don’t know what those products even are. So even though things like retailer catalogs and toy fairs/expos present a risk of future products getting leaked before LEGO’s ready for the public and their competitors to know about them, on some levels it’s a necessary risk to get that info to the people who are supposed to have access to it.

While the heraldry in the 2013 sets is more stylized than we're often used to, I wouldn't call it "cartoonish", at least not to any greater capacity than LEGO in general is cartoonish. Frankly, it's sometimes bewildering to me to see graphic designs closely resembling "real" animals in a world populated by stumpy little block people! And again, I doubt that this sort of slight stylization would have given most kids any particularly negative impression. Honestly, from a modern perspective a lot of authentically medieval depictions of animals and fantasy creatures tend to look downright silly, sort of like how a lot of pirate flags look from a modern standpoint! And even a hypothetical subset of Castle-loving kids who would elect not to buy Castle sets based purely on their printed designs would hardly be comparing them against printed patterns from sets released decades earlier. To put it another way, even if you think of the 2013 Castle heraldry like something that would appear in a cartoon, there are reasons why the people who create cartoons design things in that manner, and part of it is because they want their work to resonate with kids in a way that centuries-old principles of visual design might not.

I honestly don't think they would see it that way — not because they wouldn't recognize the Winter Holiday Train (and the older Holiday Train from 2005) as a separate category from the rest, but rather because to them there isn't any sort of hierarchy that puts the "proper" Creator Expert trains higher in importance. It's not like they ever seem to split hairs the way our communities often do about what's a "proper" Space theme, Castle theme, minifigure, Bionicle mask, etc. Such products are typically designed on their own individual merits according to what they perceive a market for — not in terms of how neatly they will fit neatly into established categories, let alone how fans will categorize them after-the-fact. That said, I kind of think many train fans would prefer if LEGO DID think of the Winter Holiday Train as part of the same category as the others, because judging from the 10,392 people who list it in their collections on Brickset, it's one of the most popular Winter Village sets (at least within that community), and possibly even more popular than most of the older Creator Expert trains. So if LEGO did think of it primarily as a train set and not as a Winter Village or holiday themed set, then they'd probably be capitalizing on that by making more Creator Expert trains, potentially including the more realistic types that y'all would prefer.

I think many of the most successful projects on LEGO Ideas often skew towards whatever has a sense of "never seen before" — especially with stuff like castles that LEGO tends to keep revisiting again and again, since builders don't want to wind up in a position where there's a good chance of a set already in development rendering their project redundant. Something else to keep in mind is that until a couple years ago, very few Ideas sets had a $100+ price tag. So in order to reconcile that and the amount of detail needed to make a non-licensed project particularly attention-grabbing, I think a lot of project creators were motivated to avoid making those projects as large as a typical LEGO castle would need to be. Just compare Medieval Market Village, which at $100 offered not one but TWO charming medieval houses at an AFOL-oriented building level, with the Kingdoms Joust, which at $120 didn't even contain what most AFOLs would think of as a complete castle. With all these sorts of conflicting motivations and design considerations in play, as well as fans not having nearly the same kind of insights as LEGO themselves and so having to make educated guesses about what would or wouldn't be a deal-breaker in review, I would hesitate to treat LEGO Ideas as any indication of what would or wouldn't have a strong business case as a regular set or theme. I'm not sure that I can agree that the 2013 Castle factions were that much more cartoonish than the Fantasy Era ones. Fantasy Era had much more cartoonish vehicles and siege engines for all of its factions, such as the King's Battle Chariot, Dwarves' Mine Defender, Troll Battle Wheel, and Skeleton Prison Carriage. Among its locations, Skeleton Tower of course has a ludicrous skull-shaped entrance that looks like something straight out of He-Man, but it and King's Castle Siege alike also have precariously positioned towers, bridges, and/or parapets that seem like they could collapse at any moment, and almost certainly wouldn't have been viable using real-life medieval castle construction techniques and materials. The Dwarves' Mine is laid out like some kind of crazy Rube Goldberg machine that moves gold and silver crystals in a complete loop with no specific point of origin or destination. And Trolls' Mountain Fortress, like Jestro's Volcano Lair or Garmadon's Dark Fortress, is more committed to establishing an over-the-top grim and evil aesthetic than any sense of realism. As minifigures are concerned, the most "cartoonish" human characters in either series are the evil wizards… and of those, the Fantasy Era evil wizard has blood-red robes, a Dracula-esque pointed, scalloped cape, and a glowing red glass eye, while the 2013 Dragon Wizard has more understated black robes, an ordinary (albeit brightly colored) cape, and a pretty plain-looking bearded face. The human knights in both themes wear fairly ordinary-looking tabards, mailshirts, and/or plate armor, often with the very same crown emblem. The lion and dragon knight heraldry has been criticized as unrealistic, but besides the question of whether kids would even know what to expect from realistic medieval heraldry, the lion is fairly similar to motifs from real-life heraldry, like the coat-of-arms of Dalmatia or Spreitenbach, and the front-facing dragon head is hardly any less authentic than the unusually realistic human skull or heavily stylized troll skull emblems used in Fantasy Era. Among the 2013 sets, the architecture of the King's Castle is fairly tame by both real-life and LEGO standards (rectangular gatehouse, octagonal towers, straight walls, and no precarious bridges or overhangs). Its biggest logistical weakness is unreliable access to the upper levels, a common issue in LEGO play themes (even in some advanced and highly detailed sets like the Kingdoms Joust and Temple of Airjitzu). Dragon Mountain is certainly spooky and evocative with its spikes, red and black color scheme, and being built on the ruins of an older castle, but even so, that all still feels like it could be physically plausible in real life. The vehicles and siege engines are likewise fairly tame… a stylized but low-tech and practical battering ram and catapult in King's Castle, even more ordinary wheeled catapults in Dragon Mountain and The Gatehouse Raid, and a no-frills carriage, ballista, and cart in Gold Getaway and Forest Ambush. I don't mean for any of this to suggest the 2013 Castle sets were stronger designs overall than the Fantasy Era ones, but the strengths of the Fantasy Era sets weren't due to any lack of cartoonishness on their part! On the contrary, the Fantasy Era designers demonstrated a willingness (if not outright eagerness) to make those sets and character designs highly outlandish if it made them more fun or distinctive. That said, I'm also not entirely certain about whether the 2013 Castle sets were even any less popular than the Fantasy Era or Kingdoms sets that preceded them, or if that level of popularity was simply no longer enough to justify a three-year commitment after standards for LEGO sales had been raised so high by both new themes like Ninjago, Friends, Legends of Chima, and continued growth in themes like City, Creator, and Technic. It's also possible that between the huge efforts that went into developing sets for The LEGO Movie and the unexpected rush to get new Ninjago sets into development for 2014 (after they'd already finished creating what was thought to be its final wave and been reassigned to other themes), resources that might have been expected to be available for new waves of Galaxy Squad or Castle sets may have been spread a bit thin. After all, don't forget that one of LEGO's big struggles from 2014–2016 wasn't in designing popular sets and themes, but in managing and growing their development and manufacturing capabilities so that they could actually meet demand on their MOST popular sets and themes. So all in all, I think it's risky to try and draw meaning from which themes/subthemes have sold better or worse than others, when our community rarely even has a reliable sense of which themes DO sell poorly. Often we're only making assumptions based on AFOL community feedback, clearance sales, or themes being cut short "prematurely" (itself a highly subjective term). All of these things can happen for any number of reasons besides weak sales. And considering how many people here on Eurobricks have wrongly assumed that longer-lived themes like Legends of Chima and Nexo Knights were failures even though both those themes surpassed sales targets, I don't know how much any of us can really trust our assumptions about which shorter-lived themes succeeded or failed.

For what it's worth, I don't think the idea of having a whole different portfolio of products for China is any part of what the CEO was proposing/insinuating. The quote in the initial post specifically talked about stuff inspired by Chinese culture that COULD maintain a global interest (and as such, that would presumably still be promoted and sold to a global audience). This could potentially include things like a licensed theme based on one of the the increasing number of films that are co-produced by Chinese and Western companies, and which thus might have a stronger marketing presence in China than ones produced by Western companies alone. Or introducing more LEGO Architecture sets based on iconic Chinese cities/buildings, like the Shanghai set released last year. Or even a modular building with some Chinese-inspired subject matter and design cues, as mentioned by others above. I think you may be reading too much into some of the hype around Western companies like LEGO expanding their business in China. After all, in this case in particular, it is to a certain extent PR-speak. They make it out to be a big deal because from a corporate perspective, it is — China is something of a new frontier for them and one that may show long-term promise. There is also perhaps a slight sense of urgency for Western companies to establish a foothold there, since those that don't respond to the emergence and/or growth of a potential Chinese consumer base might lose market share to other Western or Chinese companies that DO capitalize on that consumer base. But I don't feel like anybody at LEGO in particular is really pushing the idea of China being a "savior" — it's just one place LEGO is looking at as an opportunity for future growth now that there's no longer as much obvious room for growth in their European and North American markets.

I also see a lot of other ways they could reduce the piece count as well! The tender and locomotive alone could be reduced by 45 pieces just by swapping 90 small side-by-side pieces for bigger versions introduced since the original set's release (1x1 cheese slopes for 1x2s, 1x3 curved slopes for 2x3s, 1x4 tiles for 2x4s, etc). Never mind the possibility of removing parts that are included for the Power Functions conversion but are no longer needed with Powered Up due to it being much more System-friendly and not needing an separate receiver element. With a little creativity and some of the newer, more compact SNOT elements introduced over the past decade, they could even make it so the motor goes inside the boiler instead of the cab.

You put this really well, probably better than I did. Another thing is that a lot of the stuff that stands out as extraordinarily big in real life is also very repetitive in terms of contents. Jumbo jets have lots and lots of identical rows of seats, cruise ships have lots and lots of identical cabins, hotels and hospitals have lots and lots of identical rooms, skyscrapers have lots and lots of identical offices, parking decks have lots and lots of identical parking spaces, forests have lots and lots of more or less identical trees, etc. Even in licensed themes like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings, many of the BIGGEST sets are scaled down considerably from the subjects they're based on, because there's simply not nearly enough interior contents established in those films to fill all of what shows up in the exterior shots. The recent Darth Vader's Castle set is a pretty good example. The design in the movies is bigger, but like Orthanc, The Death Star, or Avengers Tower, relatively little of its interior is ever actually shown in the movies or any supporting media. And just making up stuff to fill space in the name of realism/accuracy can potentially risk diluting the emphasis on parts of the interior that are genuinely iconic or recognizable and will be among the set's key selling points. So to keep sets from becoming boring, it often makes sense to shrink them down. After all, it's usually much easier to buy and combine multiple smaller sets than to buy only half of a bigger one!

I feel like some of these concerns seem fairly naive. LEGO has made MANY sets over the years that have been targeted at much narrower audiences than a country that represents around a fifth of the world's population: Just look at BrickLink's list of co-branded items and you'll find many promotional or exclusive sets are likely to be fairly obscure in most parts of the world. Before the Internet, a lot of people outside the countries where these products were sold wouldn't have even realized they existed. Also, the comment about LEGO having "always been about a somewhat universal appeal to a wide range of audiences" seems a little suspect. The reason we're hearing so much about LEGO's success in China all of a sudden is that for a long time, they had little to no foothold in Asia. As such their products and other initiatives have been tailored largely to a Western consumer base. Products and initiatives that neglect huge parts of the globe are no more "universal" in geographic appeal than themes before LEGO Friends were "universal" in terms of gender appeal. And the comment that the Chinese "not exactly known for long attention spans and brand loyalty" just sounds like cultural stereotyping. Brand loyalty is not something that has historically been innate to other countries — it's something that brands themselves have fostered and cultivated in the societies where they operated. LEGO is doing that themselves now in China, and seemingly achieving some success at it. So I don't think there's any grounds to assume it's any more of a "novelty fad" than the brand loyalty LEGO went to such lengths to cultivate in other countries. If LEGO's success in China doesn't last then it doesn't last, but that's a ridiculous reason not to try. After all, it's not like new themes tend to be a make-or-break investment or even a long-term commitment for the LEGO Group as a whole. Considering that some of the licensed and non-licensed themes that ARE released globally consist of just a one-and-done wave of six sets or so, it doesn't seem so far-fetched that at some point in the future there could be a strong enough business case for at least a line that size specifically tailored to the Asian market, or even to China in particular, without there being noticeably fewer new global releases than the rest of the world is used to. All that said, I don't have enough insight into Chinese culture to know what subjects besides huge national holidays are well-known, trendy, and marketable enough to kids to have an extraordinary business case. I'm not sure what you're talking about with Creator Expert being overwhelmingly American-based. After all, loads of the sets are based on iconic subjects, architectural styles, or brands from other countries: Great Britain: 10262, 10258, 10253, 10242, 10226/3451, 10211, 10214, 10194, Denmark: 10268/4999, 10241, 10219, 10155/10152, India: 10256/10189 Italy: 10248 Germany: 10252, 10220, 10187, 10024 (arguably also 10235, but Christmas markets are also found in Central Europe more generally — hardly ever in America, though!) France: 10243, 10233, 10181 Australia: 10234 By comparison, there are only 13 Creator Expert sets that I would consider unambiguously American-inspired: 10265 Ford Mustang (2019) 10264 Corner Garage (2019) 10260 Downtown Diner (2018) 10246 Detective's Office (2015) 10232 Palace Cinema (2013) 10218 Pet Shop (2011) 10213 Shuttle Adventure (2010)/10231 Shuttle Expedition (2011) 10197 Fire Brigade (2009) 10185 Green Grocer (2008) 10177 Boeing 787 Dreamliner (2006) 10124 Wright Flyer (2003) 3450 Statue of Liberty (2000) I know some European AFOLs would even disagree about whether some of them truly belong on that list, because many people seem to be convinced that American-based Modular Building sets are an aberration, rather than having accounted for practically every other building since the start of the series! It's also surprising to me that you brought up cars specifically, because this year's Mustang is literally the ONLY set in Creator Expert's Vehicles/Classic Cars subtheme that represents an American brand. Likewise, only 9 Speed Champions sets are based on American automotive brands, versus 24 based on European brands. Among licensed Technic vehicle sets, there are two based on American brands, versus 11 based on European brands. And in the Racers theme, there were 30 licensed sets for European vehicle brands and none for American brands. There's certainly a strong case to be made that LEGO's media licensing focuses overwhelmingly on American IPs, which is probably because of Hollywood's vast reach in the global entertainment industry. But their automotive and heavy equipment licensing, not so much. I think a case could be made that Asian buildings aren't necessarily as "un-Western" in their looks as pastiches like Ninjago or even Palace Cinema tend to look. If you do a Google image search for postcards of 1950s Shanghai, for instance, you will find some shops and buildings that look a lot more "normal" from a Western point of view than the Palace Cinema, other than the writing on signs being in Chinese instead of a European language. Plus, by the vague mid-20th century period the Modular Buildings tend to be inspired by, many major cities in Europe, the Americas, and Australia had their own "Chinatowns" populated by Chinese immigrants. Considering how many comments and pictures I've seen shared by other AFOLs in Western countries who have given their modular layouts their own Chinatown using sets like Battle for Ninjago City or the Temple of Airjitzu, I don't think the demand for sets designed with that sort of purpose in mind would be as slim as you're imagining. And let's be honest — many AFOLs have been grousing at length for the past decade about certain modular buildings being "too American" or "too modern" — if that sort of nitpicking hasn't hurt the series by now, then I think the series has room to at least dabble in other forms of architecture in the coming years. Again, if it turns out to be a misstep or considerably hurts sales, it's very easy to reverse course and continue making more of the types of sets that have had better sales previously. Idk anything about what Mylenium does outside of this site, but insinuating that they're not "grown up" particularly on the basis of what themes they enjoy collecting/discussing, seems totally uncalled for.

I think they may have meant "shortcomings" (as in, weaknesses). Personally I have not done very much with LEGO motors in many years aside from installing Power Functions motors in the sets designed with that sort of motorization in mind. So I don't have too much firsthand experience to speak from with regard to their versatility in MOCs. Overall, I think the Powered Up/Boost motors do a nice job of compensating for one of the weaknesses of many Power Functions and Mindstorms motor designs, which is that their more Technic-oriented proportions and connection styles made them a little unintuitive for younger kids. The 4x6x4 size of the Powered Up motor is not a bad size overall. Not quite as compact as the 4x4x6 9V motors of my childhood or the 3x6x3 Power Functions M-motor, but I think the greater number and versatility of connection points is a fair trade-off in either case. I doubt the 4-stud length of those older motors would have allowed enough unused interior space for Technic pin holes in the front, and as you mention they are also able to add more torque using a planetary gear. Another neat bit of functionality added in the Powered Up system that wasn't present in Power Functions or 9V is that all Powered Up motors (except I think the train motor) now also function as servo motors and/or rotation sensors, similar to the motors from LEGO Mindstorms NXT and EV3. Considering that those Mindstorms motors measured 7x5x14 and the Power Functions servo motor measured 7x3x5, I think it's honestly remarkable how SMALL the Powered Up motors are! Also, some of the inconveniences associated with the newer motors being larger than 90s 9V motors are offset by the convenience of the 4x8x4 Power Functions battery boxes and Powered Up hubs being vastly more compact than the old 4x14x4 9V battery boxes. Remote control models can even gain some additional free space by using Powered Up, since they no longer require a separate signal receiver element (signals are received directly via the hub). On another note, while I sort of miss the way that older electric systems had wire contacts that were "stackable" via studs, I do think it's more space-efficient that wires, switches, and buttons now no longer add any additional height to Powered Up motors or hubs. Plus, the plugs themselves each only appear to take up the same space as a 1x2x1 brick, about 1/3 less space than the 2x2x2/3 space that the contacts for Power Functions and 9V wires took up. I'm curious whether LEGO will introduce as many varieties of Powered Up motors in the future as they did Power Functions ones, or if they'd rather keep things simpler for kids by keeping the number and specs of Powered Up motors smaller and more standardized. Certainly they would no longer need a separate servo motor now that servo functionality is standard. That said, they do currently have at least four motor types: the standard Powered Up motor, the WeDo 2.0 motor (same size as the Power Functions M-motor), the train motor (same style as in Power Functions or later 9V but with an updated wire/plug), and the integrated motors of the Boost "smart hub". Frankly, I think the more important potential improvements to the Powered Up system in the short term will be the Technic Control+ software and any future Powered Up app updates that would allow for more customizable control schemes, rather than new hardware.

Perhaps you're right. I am sort of generalizing my experiences here on Eurobricks, but considering how long I've been here, some of the themes that used to stand out as "underrated" might not be nearly as underrated now that they're old enough to be a source of nostalgia in their own right.

It will definitely be a neat thing for them to explore, though I think it will take them a lot longer to develop something like that since introducing that level of freedom to the player can make it a little trickier to ensure a digital experience that can account for anything the builder does and convert it into a quality play experience. Most of the LEGO Fusion apps and sets were designed with more creative and open-ended styles of play in mind, but besides the fact that the apps could only recognize the parts that came with the sets themselves, the actual digital gaming component was generally regarded as mediocre, to the point that one of the LEGO Fusion products (Create and Race) was pulled from shelves and the app store since it did not meet the standards of quality that LEGO aspires to. Furthermore, the sets were so basic that the types of models the game could read had no play value of their own outside of the digital game component. And for that matter, look at how long it took LEGO to create a game like LEGO Worlds that delivers anything close to really compelling sandbox-style creative gameplay, even without any form of integration with their physical products. Trying to create a combined physical+digital play experience that can ensure the same quality of gameplay AND the same degree of creative freedom may be even harder.

Worth noting that LEGO has already previously dabbled in AR-based play experiences using existing themes in their AR Playgrounds app. So what's really new and groundbreaking about Hidden Side isn't the idea of using AR technology together with LEGO, but rather a LEGO theme being specifically designed with both traditional physical play experiences and combined physical+digital play experiences in mind. It'd be an interesting thing to test for sure, though at the time being some of the color-coded elements the sets use are new recolors that don't appear in other sets. Even if/when those sorts of parts become more readily available outside of these specific sets, I feel like trying to recreate the AR play experience of this theme without the sets themselves would probably be more trouble than it's worth. Plus, I feel like it would result in a more sub-par play experience, since the rendered and animated in-app scene would no longer match the physical build you're using to interact with that scene. The only real advantage I can think of for creating a mock-up like this to "trick" the app into thinking it's an official set is if you actually owned that set, but wanted to borrow some of its parts for MOCs without losing the ability to continue playing and making progress in the app game.

I think something to keep in mind is that with stuff not based on a specific subject from real life or a licensed brand, there usually isn't as much incentive to make a set as massive, pricy, and parts-intensive as the UCS Millennium Falcon, Hogwarts Castle, or Taj Mahal, because there's no obligation to match specific predefined shapes, details, and proportions. With a set like Assembly Square or Ninjago City, the designers have much more freedom to omit details that real-life equivalents of those same subjects would probably have, but that might feel superfluous, inefficient, or redundant in a LEGO model. Consider the Saturn V Rocket set, for example. It has to use many extremely elaborate and parts-intensive techniques to match the subject it's based on. But a LEGO Space or LEGO City rocket that doesn't have to specifically match one particular real-life or fictional equivalent could very easily opt for parts like curved panels that might not have suited the proportions of the Saturn V in particular, but authentically convey the FEEL of a multi-stage rocket at a much more modest cost and piece count. The same can be said for a LEGO City car like 60239 vs. a Speed Champions car like 75890 or 75891. They're all close to the same size, but the City set has a considerably lower piece count, price, and target age. Because the LEGO City set is not based on one particular real-life car, the shape can be defined according to what makes the most efficient use of the existing parts palette, rather than having to reverse-engineer a more specific car shape from existing parts not necessarily designed with that particular car model in mind.

That’s an interesting possibility, and while it hasn’t happened in the sets, the show DID take this approach in the Tournament of Elements season before the ninja got their tournament clothes — in that case, they each wore a different costume from a previous story arc, specifically to symbolize how Zane’s presumed death had weakened their team spirit. Also, while The LEGO Ninjago Movie did use the same hoods for every character, it did dabble in other types of variety we hadn’t seen to that extent before… for example, Cole was the only ninja without sleeves, Kai was the only one with a shoulder guard and sword holders, Nya was the only one with a skirt, and Zane was the only one whose hood was in his signature color with a black headband rather than the other way around. I think there are a couple potential drawbacks to this idea, though. First, even though those molds weren’t necessarily replaced by specific subsequent ones, we can’t be sure that they are all still in use and that their later uses didn’t bring some of them to the point of needing to be replaced. If they did, then reintroducing those molds would cost the same as introducing a new one, with the same pressure to spread its use out across several sets to offset those costs. Second, not giving all of the ninja equivalent upgrades could easily make some of them feel more like downgrades — particularly since a lot of the time when LEGO has reused an older hood on a newer character design (like the Airjitzu they have made it stand out by using different color combinations or patterns. The classic ninja hood doesn’t have any surfaces designed for printing or a mold designed for co-injection or overmolding, so in its case those options wouldn’t be on the table. Third, there’s the issue that some of the hoods, namely the movie ones, aren’t really designed to match the aesthetic of the others in the same way that, say, the Rebooted scarves, ZX hoods, and Possession hoods were all designed with close to the same shape/texture for their mouth and chin shape. So even if all the characters used different hoods, some would stick out like a sore thumb. This is why in the Nexo Knights sets, the five main knights were all were given new molds for their visors and signature weapons, so they would look visually compatible even if they were way more high tech and over-the-top than any previous Castle weapons and visors, whereas the bots all use older LEGO Castle headgear and weapons, because those were typically designed to appear in sets alongside earlier molds, so adhere to relatively similar design standards. It creates a fairly well defined hierarchy, with consistent upgrades for the main characters and reused molds for the Squirebot supporting characters. Even if they were the same shape, introducing one with multiple plastic colors would have required a new mold, since it has to be designed with different injection points than the previous one. A good recent example of an existing mold being replaced with a new design that’s more or less the same shape but designed for a more complex type of molding is the LEGO Friends bird. Prior to 2018, these were single-color molds with all colored details created via printing. But last year, a new mold was introduced with the capacity for two plastic colors: one for the beak, feet, and trailing edge of the wing feathers, and one for the rest of the body. Now, doing the reverse (a single colored version of a 2-color mold) is not nearly so difficult. That can be done with the same molds as the 2-colored version, just using the same plastic and dye mixture at every injection point or stage of the molding process. But in cases where LEGO has both single and dual colored molds still available, they are more likely to use the single colored version when they don’t need/want a second color, as with the reused 2012 hood molds in the Airjitzu flyer sets and Airjitzu Battle Grounds.

EDIT: Some responses to @Renny The Spaceman: EDIT: Whoops, I cut and pasted my stuff from the other thread after I saw that other people had replied and I could make my subsequent thoughts a separate post, but I guess you were already typing your reply I'll just leave it here though instead of going back and editing it into my previous post. EDIT 2: and some more responses for @Gorilla94:

@Gorilla94: Besides what @TheNerdyOne_ and @Lyichir brought up, a couple additional notes: Also, shouldn't all this discussion be going on in the spoiler thread?