Aanchir

The comment about expecting them to be larger is interesting to me, and reminds me of the many confusing comments I've seen that even if you got rid of the minifigures and replaced them with mini-dolls, the sets still wouldn't look right because the scale would be off. Generally, both "minifig scale" and "mini-doll scale" are very flexible and often overlap. For example, most minifigure and mini-doll kitchen countertops are 2 to 2.33 bricks tall, and most minifigure and mini-doll beds vary between 2x6 for a basic cot or sleeping bag, 4x6 for a single bed, and 6x6 for a double bed. This is definitely not accidental, as a big factor in deciding the mini-doll's size seems to have been making sure they still scale well with many of the parts designed for and used with minifigures, like cabinets, trash cans/rubbish bins, door and window frames, motorcycles, skateboards, etc. It helps that the mini-doll's main differences from the minifigure (thinner waists and longer legs) are the same adjustment many "minifigure scale" sets already make, since many things like doors and vehicles would look unrealistically squashed if they followed the same proportional rules as the minifigure's unusually short and wide shape. Ironically, I think in some respects the similar scale is a part of why the mini-doll HAS gotten so much criticism, since people believe that not having a different scale means it is unnecessary and has no reason to exist, whereas it is widely accepted that much more "off-scale" themes like Belville, Fabuland, Bionicle, Technic, and Model Team provide different kinds of building and play experiences than a play theme with minifigures possibly could. Now, there ARE certainly ways that the proportions of Friends and City sets vary, but that often involves Friends sets being bigger to accommodate more interior detail, rather than on account of the size of the figure. By comparison, Town/City sets are often smaller and more sparsely furnished. Compare 3315 from the 2012 Friends sets to 8403 from the 2010 City sets, or 41015 from the 2013 Friends sets with 60221 from this year's City sets. They're more or less the same sort of subject (family home and cabin cruiser), but the Friends versions are not as heavily downscaled compared to their real-world equivalents, which raises the price but allows for a more detailed and playable interior.

And plenty of molded versions of smaller creatures like snakes, fish, dogs, spiders etc. It's certainly possible that despite being considerably bigger than those kinds of animals, LEGO still wanted to keep this wolf/fox below the size at which they would opt for a brick-built animal… much like how in LEGO Elves, the dragons and elemental guardian creatures were brick-built, but the pegasi were molded.

I don't feel like this is a very strong counter-argument. The characters in the sets are typically the same characters as in the media, and the media is just as much a part of the theme as the sets are. Just as an example, Ray and Maya are husband and wife, as well as the parents of Kai and Nya, in the Ninjago TV series. So doesn't make any sense to act as though their minifigures in the Dragon's Forge set are NOT husband and wife or the parents of Kai and Nya. It would be no more difficult for the sets and media to work together to establish that two male characters or two female characters are married, in love, etc. Also, even in sets, it'd be downright easy to add a rainbow flag as a decoration in a bedroom from a LEGO City or LEGO Friends set, have a genderfluid character wear both masculine and feminine coded clothes in different sets, etc. There are way more ways for LGBTQ+ people to be visible besides caricaturing them based on stereotypes. It's also rather insulting that you would insinuate that I used the term LGBT and not LGBTQ+ because of some exclusionary "beliefs or personal truths" and not just because the terminology has evolved within my lifetime and I'm no more used to seeing one than the other. You're correct that more inclusive terminology is better, and I'll go back and edit my post accordingly, but it's both deceitful and petty to call my values into question on those grounds. And of course kids can imagine characters however they like regardless of whether there's official media supporting or contradicting it, but it's preposterous to act as though that somehow would make it entirely meaningless to officially establish any characters as having a particular trait. I mean, it's the same as how a kid who was adopted might relate to that aspect of Jay's character in LEGO Ninjago, or a kid who loves coding and computer games might relate to that aspect of Ava's character in Nexo Knights, or a kid who loves studying myths and ancient history might relate to that aspect of Samantha Rhodes' character from LEGO Atlantis, even if none of those things are obvious in the sets themselves. These are the kinds of things enrich kids' experiences with these themes, and make it even more exciting to include those characters in their creations and stories. Just because you didn't care about feeling represented in media as a kid doesn't mean that people who do are just making unreasonable demands. And being able to appreciate fictional characters who you can't relate to isn't the same as not having characters in stuff you love who you CAN relate to. I've enjoyed plenty of LEGO themes that don't have any canon lesbian couples or transgender character… but I might enjoy them more if they DID have a canon lesbian couple, and certainly wouldn't enjoy them any less, because I'd be seeing parts of myself reflected in something I already enjoy. I doubt anybody who's ever wanted to feel represented has felt like the entirety of pop culture is unpleasant unless they're represented in it. But simply put, being able to relate an aspect of yourself to an aspect of a character in a work you enjoy feels validating, and that's ultimately something that few people can understand who HAVEN'T experienced that thrill of seeing a character who's "like them" in a way that they've seen rarely or not at all in other works. Wow! So what do I have to do to be one of the people who gets to decide which contexts LEGO ought to stay neutral in and which they don’t, or what “neutral” means in any of those contexts? I mean, as I understand it, your country's largest independent toy store chain, The Entertainer, has refused to stock a considerable range of sets and themes because they perceive them as promoting the occult. Sets from themes like Harry Potter, Minifigures Series 14, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Monster Fighters, Pharaoh’s Quest, Pirates of the Caribbean, certain versions of Castle, etc. If LEGO simply chose not to make any theme with wizards or the undead, would you be praising them for becoming neutral? Because that’s about how much sense it makes to act as though excluding same-sex couples from LEGO sets and themes entirely (thereby pandering to some potential buyers’ irrational prejudices) is “neutral” and including them in even a small capacity is not. After all, kids can always just imagine that the characters in their City and Friends sets are undead or have magic powers…

I think you're missing my point if the example you jump to is a set from LEGO City, which has hardly any characters with defined personalities or even names. I'm referring more to themes like Ninjago, Friends, etc. In these more story-driven themes, there are plenty of male characters with female romantic interests and vice versa: Jay+Nya, Kai+Skylor, Zane+PIXAL, Lloyd+Harumi, Emmet+Lucy, Tidus+Sira, Macku+Hewkii, Roodaka+Sidorak, and most characters' parents regardless of theme. A kid growing up seeing these sorts of couples but not any clearly established examples of same-sex romance could easily get the impression that feeling attracted to somebody of the same sex or having two parents of the same sex is freakish or scandalous. Which I think we can agree isn't a great message to be sending. And in any case, this is all beside the point I was making, which is that necessary or not, there are a lot of things that are perfectly tame/innocent by any reasonable standard that some adults still feel aren't "kid-friendly".

I don't see why you think that. Right now it's projected to have a $34,400,000 result from its opening weekend. Even though it's a big drop from the first LEGO Movie, it far exceeds the opening weekend results for any of Warner Animation Group's non-LEGO movies like Storks or Smallfoot. It's also worth noting that the United States box office as a whole has been in a slump for the past two months or so, which could suggest fewer people are going to the movies for reasons that aren't specific to any one movie. If WB didn't give up on LEGO movies after The LEGO Ninjago Movie, I can't imagine why they'd give up on them after The LEGO Movie 2, which was considerably more successful. Heck, Disney gave Planes a sequel after a weaker opening weekend even in terms of its per-theater average, not to mention a far worse critical reception.

I think what is or isn't "kid-friendly" is highly subjective. I mean, I've had homophobes and transphobes on Facebook try and tell me that LGBTQ+ characters in LEGO set or themes would not be "kid-friendly". Some people whose values are even more laughably outdated think that putting female firefighters and construction workers in sets is inappropriate for kids. And then you'll have many adults who are a lot more permissive than usual about what kinds of content their kids engage with. Even the official ratings for movies and games often vary from country to country depending on what the cultural norms are in those countries — for example, many films and TV shows like Deadpool 2 or Game of Thrones are rated R/TV-MA (both meaning only appropriate for ages 17+) in the United States, but only rated FSK-12 (appropriate for ages 12+, or ages 6–11 with parental guidance) in Germany. Often this depends on how taboo individual factors in age-appropriateness are in those countries (some countries might be very opposed to sex and swearing, but not to violence or gore, while in others it might be the other way around). And LEGO's own standards for what is or isn't appropriate for kids have changed dramatically over the decades in many ways that I would consider positive. For example, LEGO's upper management used to be so firmly opposed to portraying death in sets that back in the 80s, then-CEO Godtfred Kirk Christiansen threatened to fire long-time designer Niels Milan Pedersen for putting a prototype LEGO skeleton in a castle dungeon as a joke. For that matter, back when the first LEGO Space sets were being developed, the higher-ups at the time were resistant to allowing a black-suited spaceman because it was perceived to be "too scary". And of course, let's not forget how all the laser guns in older Space themes had to be marketed as "sensor arrays" and so forth — rather deceptively, I'd say, considering that the designers created them to resemble guns and fully anticipated many kids playing with them in that fashion. I think it's honestly a good thing that LEGO is now willing to give kids and parents a little more leeway in what they do or don't consider age-appropriate, instead of being in denial about the things kids actually enjoy or the kinds of play they are actually drawn to. Honestly, it would be a little insulting to continue designing toys for kids who enjoy conflict-driven play while simultaneously condemning those styles of play. This literature review summarizes a lot of research into education and child psychology that supports the idea that "play fighting" is a perfectly natural childhood interest, and that outright prohibiting such forms of play can actually harm kids' ability to understand interpersonal conflicts. This is in line with LEGO's "Conflict and Weapons Policy", first codified in 2010, which states that: (source: https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/lego-history/articles/lego-pirates-a81ba1cc2d424808b7c937dd4563f5a7)The Indiana Jones theme is definitely one that came closer than usual to the kind of real-world warfare that the LEGO Group prefers to avoid, considering that it prominently featured soldiers and military equipment based on real-life mid 20th century warfare. It's very possible that some of the stuff that appeared in the Indiana Jones theme in 2008–2009 might very well be prohibited in today's sets, now that LEGO has a clearly defined conflict and weapons policy rather than a nebulous de facto policy like they had before. I think superhero sets often have more flexibility with this kind of stuff than some other themes, since most superhero characters frequently vary in their kid-friendliness from one continuity to the next. Additionally, I think it's important to consider that March Harriet is usually characterized as a former sex worker. And while sex work is not child appropriate, the same can be said for sex in general, including sex between married couples — yet it'd be ludicrous to argue that all married characters with children are inappropriate for kids because they are implied to have been sexually active in the past or off-screen. And honestly, I think a lot of fictional characters and real people alike have done things that would not be suitable for a kids' toy. I mean, Zeus/Jupiter from Greek and Roman mythology has a long history of being presented as anywhere from a serial philanderer to a serial rapist, yet while he hasn't appeared in sets, LEGO did create an aluminum minifigure of Jupiter to help publicize the mission of NASA's deep-space probe Juno.

I don't know whether The LEGO Batman Movie Series 2 was strictly "necessary", but I definitely appreciated a lot of the minifigures that showed up in it, including many characters who'd appeared in the movie and not in any other sets. It was also less bogged down with Batman variants than the first LEGO Batman Movie series, allowing room for other fun characters like some of the Super Friends and more variants of supporting characters like Alfred and Batgirl. Additionally, any "regular" series figs they could have released at that time would probably sell about as well no matter when they released them… but the window of opportunity for releasing those LEGO Batman Movie figures was already closing by the beginning of 2018, and if LEGO had waited any longer they might very well have missed their opportunity to release those figures altogether. So to be honest, I'm grateful LEGO seized that opportunity instead of letting it slip by. There's also something sort of nice about the way recent "regular" minifigures series have had a series number corresponding to the year number… makes it a little easier to keep track of when those series came out, whereas I often can't remember what year many of the earlier series came out without looking it up. Also, I remember with the early series how some people were worried that LEGO was "running out of ideas" or that they were losing interest in the Minifigures theme as a whole due to how many series they had to keep track of per year, and how many figures in each of those series were merely variants of already released archetypes like skaters, surfers, snowboarders, robots, or clowns So I think there's some benefit to varying up the "theme" of the minifigures so that they appeal to different groups of buyers. There's no point in releasing three generic numbered series a year if that's more figures than many fans of those series have the patience, interest, or attention span for collecting in the first place. It makes more sense to use those production slots for series that are better at attracting other groups of fans who might not be interested in the "generic" series at all.

To me, the colored windscreens in themes like Classic Space, M:Tron, and The LEGO Batman Movie sometimes almost seem less like they actually represent colored glass and more like they represent clear glass with colored cabin lights inside. However, that's not universal. I also think that Nexo Knights used its transparent fluorescent reddish orange windscreen and banner elements in such a way that they often felt less like any sort of physical material and more like energy fields or "hard light" hologram projections. Which I think goes to show that sometimes what kind of material a transparent windscreen color suggests depends less on the color itself and more on what other non-windscreen elements are used in those colors. Because Nexo Knights uses the same color for its windscreens as for its laser/energy blasts and holograms like Merlok 2.0, it creates the sense that all of those things are some kind of energy projection rather than a physical material, whereas Classic Space has less of that feeling because its lasers and other transparent elements are typically not the same color as its windscreens. I've seen some MOCists put this to good effect even in less sci-fi creations, such as some of Aaron Newman's "Dragon Lands" MOCs like this one where parts that might ordinarily represent sci-fi lasers or windscreens are repurposed as magical energy blasts and energy shields. Bionicle G2 in 2015 and 2016 also did some cool things where transparent elements in sets like 70795 or 71312 created the sense that characters' bodies were coursing with supernatural energies, even on parts that would have had more of a strict sci-fi look in a different color.

Having finally seen the movie, I think it's definitely a step up from the first movie in terms of complexity of storytelling, though I think it's hard to say whether it's a "better movie" since unlike, say, some Marvel sequels, it DOES depend heavily on the previous movie as setup. On the plus side, it's not as incomplete a story on its own as, say, The Empire Strikes Back., which lacks either the setup provided by A New Hope nor the satisfying conclusion provided by Return of the Jedi. A lot of my more specific and spoilery thoughts line up pretty neatly with what Lyi brought up when he saw it earlier. It did a really good job of giving its female characters (new and old alike) narratives that didn't revolve around their male co-stars. I also think that it did a really good job not only bringing in more feminine-coded styles of LEGO building and play but also storytelling tropes associated with more feminine-coded movies: I've also seen some criticism of As far as character cameos go, I particularly loved seeing That said, as primarily a fan of non-licensed, character-driven themes like Elves, Ninjago, and Bionicle, I kind of wish there had been more prominent cameos for characters from those themes. The end credits sequence also had not only a funny song, but some really amazing animation! Neat that it used a Minilander style to depict the characters we're used to seeing as minifigures, mini-dolls, and brick-built characters. Also…

As far as hints at future movies in The LEGO Movie 2 go:

I agree! It'd be cool to see similar packs that are less "modern-day" coded, like one with assorted stickers for maps, flags, shields, scrolls, etc. which would be more suited to use in fantasy themes like Castle and Elves.

Ah, OK, I was misremembering quite a few details, it seems. Here's a picture for anyone interested: As neat as it is to see some of the foreshadowing in this book come to fruition, and as cool as Forbidden Spinjitzu is as a plot device and a way to keep the Spinjitzu sets from being too repetitive, I do think it'd be neat to see more characters learn Spinjitzu in future story arcs so that LEGO can release Spinjitzu sets for characters like, say, Skylor or Pixal. Right now the number of non-ninja characters who are capable of using Spinjitzu in the canon story is not only small but somewhat random (we never really did get an explanation for why Doubloon knew Spinjitzu other than that he must have learned it at some point).

That looks brilliant! Haven't seen mention of it anywhere here on Eurobricks, but Promobricks has shared pics of a new Xtra sticker set with a lot of neat stickers for signs, posters, etc… including lots of City, classic Town, and even Paradisa references! https://www.promobricks.de/lego-853921-xtra-brick-stickers-offizielle-bilder/75976

It's mentioned in "The Book of Spinjitzu" as something described on a scroll that Wu and Garmadon discovered and their father told them not to ever use. Wu stole the scroll to keep Garmadon from getting his hands on it and had included it in his journal, but then replaced it with a note saying he should never have stolen it. I can share a picture of the pages in question later.

On an unrelated note, wonder if those armor pieces Emmet and Lucy are wearing might show up in a future set? They could be cool for more modern/rugged sci-fi creations. Unlike my brother, I haven't had a chance to see the movie itself yet, so I don't know whether those are just a pre-production thing that didn't made it into the final movie… I guess I'll find out tomorrow evening! This! Growing up, Star Wars wasn't just an "old movie" to me. A pretty much constant stream of new material, including video games like Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Star Wars Episode 1: Racer for the N64 or books like the Star Wars Incredible Cross Sections books and Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear chapter books, kept a lot of the stuff even from the older movies as relevant and interesting to me as if they had just come out. I remember spending quite a lot of time playing these games, watching Lyi play them, and looking at them and our cross-section books for reference to MOC our own LEGO Star Wars creations. Some of our earliest encounters with the existence of the AFOL community even came in the form of our dad downloading LDraw instructions that adult fans had drawn up for how to build some of the podracers that hadn't been released as sets. And I can't remember exactly what year it was, but there was definitely a year sometime between the ages of 3 and 7 that he and I dressed up as Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi for Halloween, including a toy lightsaber that lit up and a toy blaster pistol that made laser sound effects. Plus, as a kid, it's often really hard to really register just how old some things could be. To me, "Beauty and the Beast" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" were both fairy tale movies that I knew weren't brand new, but when i first saw them I certainly wouldn't have been able to realize that one came out just a couple years before I was born and one came out before my PARENTS were even born! As an adult, it's very easy to recognize how much more advanced the animation is in "Beauty and the Beast" or how much crisper the voice recording is, but as a kid you don't have so much of a frame of reference, particularly experiencing them primarily via what were (by today's standards) low-fidelity recordings on VHS. Even with live action films like Star Wars, it wasn't really until a lot later in my lifetime that I started being able to really pick up on the noticeable differences between how the colors, lighting, and effects looked between older and newer movies. Nowadays, as an adult, I can certainly recognize that glossy orange look white people's skin often has in older movies. But as a kid, again, I had no reason to look out for that kind of thing, and hadn't watched enough movies or learned their release dates to recognize these kinds of differences as consistent patterns and not just stuff that varied arbitrarily from movie to movie. Classic Space was different. Yes, I was aware of it as a kid, but mostly through visibly used and weathered older parts and idea books that my dad obtained for Lyi and me via yard sales. Their "oldness" compared to a new set was pretty unmistakable, not just in terms of their rudimentary designs (weirdly cylindrical helmets with no visors, faces with no defining details, torsos with a logo and nothing else) but also the visible aging of the parts themselves. And even knowing it was old wasn't enough to tell me that its oldness made it special somehow. I think LEGO has proven with The LEGO Movie that they can enjoy Classic Space, but that's not the same as demonstrating that it's more appealing than Star Wars would be, let alone more appealing than a Space theme more tailored to the way kids today imagine adventures in deep space. Because the vision people had of the future in the 80s certainly isn't the same as the vision people have of the future today. One Classic Space part that's a pretty clear testament to that is the walkie-talkie, which these days rarely appears in more sci-fi leaning themes like Nexo Knights or Ninjago. Once upon a time, a walkie-talkie wasn't just a modern gadget, but a forecast of how people would increasingly communicate wirelessly in the future, especially out in the frontiers of space where there were no phone lines. But nowadays visions of the future usually invoke people communicating with a wrist communicator, a headset, holograms, or head-up displays and video screens in their actual vehicles. I think part of what makes Benny so appealing to kids and adults alike, in fact, is that he's something of a comic relief character… obsessed not only with space, but with a very particular and increasingly outdated vision of the future.

Reading interviews with and posts by LEGO designers, watching behind-the-scenes/designer videos, and speaking with designers firsthand is a big part of it. My main career ambition for a long time has been to become a LEGO designer, so I have spent a lot of time trying to learn more about what they actually do and what skills and responsibilities are required of them. It's not some kind of big secret that LEGO designers working on the licensed themes often make up their own stuff — in fact, it's something fans of licensed themes have often joked about and/or criticized, as in the case of 76008 (which had basically no counterpart in the movie that inspired it), or the downright absurd Hulk-sized vehicles in 76078. This article specifically talks about the designers of the DC Super Hero Girls sets having originated the idea of the Kryptomites. Marcos Bessa's website brings up how he came up with the original designs of Wonder Woman's jet from 76026 and all three vehicles from 76054. The "Making of the Movie" books for the LEGO Batman and LEGO Ninjago Movies have lots of insights into the co-creation process of the movie sets, and you can also find some assorted behind-the-scenes insights in the notes on some of Brickset's Featured BrickLists. There's lots of stuff out there, and I'm sorry I don't really have any sort of unified reference source for this stuff that I can point you to — perhaps I should get better about bookmarking interviews that I learn interesting stuff from. But suffice to say, it's not just stuff I'm making up or getting from some secret confidential source I'm purposely withholding.

Yeah, definitely among the LEGO-buying population too. Most LEGO fans who were born any time after the mid-80s are only familiar with Classic Space by association (e.g. references to it in The LEGO Movie or in later Space themes) and didn't have any firsthand experience with those sets. But most generations of kids born in the 1970s or later will have had some childhood experience watching Star Wars movies. It's not like LEGO fans are some bizarre subculture that ignored all mainstream trends in popular culture unless they had to do with LEGO, and one of the big motivating factors in LEGO acquiring the Star Wars license was that it was already popular with many of their existing fans.

Single purpose buildings were never really the norm to begin with. Cafe Corner was a cafe+hotel, Market Street was an outdoor market+bakery+apartment, Green Grocer was grocery store+apartment, etc. The Modular Building sets were mostly single-use from 2009 to 2013, but even that span was neatly split in half by 2011's Pet Shop (vacant apartment+pet shop+loft apartment). Honestly I don't get much of a "simple Classic Town days" vibe from ANY of the modular buildings. Maybe Market Street, if only for its relatively simple peaked roof construction using basic slopes. But in general I feel like the defining characteristics of the Modular Buildings are their highly detailed textures and color schemes, huge size, complex building level, and extremely varied architectural motifs and part usage even within each building individually… none of which I'd associate with Classic Town.

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, there are very few themes that I wouldn't consider "kiddy". I guess there's Architecture, Technic, Forma, Model Team, Creator Expert, Speed Champions, and some of the licensed themes… but other than those, "kiddy" has pretty much remained the norm for LEGO in one way or another. And if it were a licensed theme, they probably wouldn't have been allowed to share a teaser that didn't have a copyright disclaimer on the part of the IP owner (Warner Bros, Disney, Viacom, or whoever), no matter how cryptic it was about what IP it was referencing in particular.

Between these two posts this hypothetical color scheme is hewing dangerously close to Nexo Knights sets like 70310, 70315, 70317, 70351, and 70362. Particularly since so many of the parts in those sets actually originated as LEGO Space parts.

Yeah, up until last year, the only official definition of "Ultimate Collector Series" was "any D2C LEGO Star Wars set". As of last year they've split the branding up a bit by using "Master Builder Series" for more playset-type D2C sets (Ewok Village, Assault on Hoth, Betrayal at Cloud City, etc) going forward and reserving "Ultimate Collector Series" for the more model-style ones (R2-D2, Red Five X-Wing Starfighter, Super Star Destroyer, etc). But even then, most other D2C sets are analogous to one of those two categories. So the typical answer to "why aren't there UCS sets for other themes" is "because UCS is a subtheme of LEGO Star Wars, and the many non-Star Wars D2C sets like the Kingdoms Joust, Medieval Market Village, Haunted House, Temple of Airjitzu, and Roller Coaster are basically the same thing with different branding". It varies. For instance, a lot of LEGO Batman sets and other non-movie-based Super Heroes sets are entirely original designs created by LEGO and then sent to DC Comics for their stamp of approval. Certainly there are some colors and motifs that any Bat-vehicle is supposed to have, and this is informed by non-LEGO Bat-vehicles of the past, but the same can be said of how LEGO City fire engines and police cars are beholden to the expectations kids around the world have about how fire engines and police cars are supposed to look, or how LEGO pirate ships, castles, and spaceships are obligated to meet certain expectations kids have of those things. Most sets and characters from themes that are co-produced by LEGO and an outside media partner, like Mixels, Unikitty, LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles/LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures, and The LEGO Movie and its sequels/spin-offs are also originated by LEGO designers via a back-and-forth process that simultaneously tailors to the needs of the media they appear in and the needs of the subject as a building toy. In some cases, LEGO has even influenced media that isn't their own via their licensing agreements — the Kryptomites in DC Super Hero Girls were an idea pitched to DC by LEGO as a type of adversary kids related well to in play scenarios (compare with other small, mischievous baddies like the rock monsters from LEGO Power Miners or goblins from LEGO Elves), and which was subsequently incorporated into the DC Super Hero Girls cartoon. Frankly, a lot of the complaints fans of historic themes have about ways LEGO Elves, Disney, Minecraft, Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and The LEGO Movie sets fail to meet their demands for historic sets (too colorful, too cartoonish, too high-tech, too simplistic, etc) could just as easily be held against many LEGO Batman, LEGO Spider-Man, LEGO Disney, or LEGO as ways they deviate from the media they're inspired by.

It's especially frustrating to me that often this preference for Classic Space often seems to revolve around a fairly superficial sense of nostalgia. For example, The LEGO Movie 2 has some incredibly innovative spaceship builds associated with both Rex Dangervest and the Systar System, but it feels like a lot of the LEGO Space hype revolves around sets with far less impressive builds like 70841 (an impulse-priced set with a few tiny builds at a 5+ building level) and 70821 (a 4+/Juniors set with a prefab hull). I definitely have doubts about whether a non-licensed space theme is likely to outsell Star Wars at any point in the foreseeable future. After all, I've seen no indication that they did so at any point even between 2007 and 2013, when Space and Star Wars coexisted and the range of Star Wars media and products was a lot smaller. The annual reports in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 all credited City and Star Wars as the best-selling product lines in those years, even without any new Star Wars movies in theaters at the time, while no mention is made of themes like LEGO Space Police, Alien Conquest, Castle, Kingdoms, or Pirates. But I agree that one of the main things that would open the door for successful original Space themes again alongside LEGO Star Wars would be for the current slate of Star Wars movies (or at least the current trilogy) to wrap up. I don't think its any coincidence that LEGO Space themes made a comeback shortly after the end of the prequel trilogy, and gave way to non-spacefaring sci-fi themes like Ultra Agents and Nexo Knights shortly before the beginning of the sequel trilogy. The "if done properly" consideration often tends to crop up as an explanation for why themes like Castle, Space, or Pirates don't ever seem to sell nearly as well as today's mega-hits like City, Star Wars, Friends, Duplo, and Ninjago — presumably, they just weren't "done properly". But I think this is pretty unfair to the people who are in charge of designing new versions of those original themes. Furthermore, the nebulous idea of how these themes should be "done properly" is rarely explained. Is it just a matter of having more sets/more variety/heavier marketing like these bigger themes have? Because even back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, LEGO seemingly didn't perceive anywhere near as much demand for Space, Castle, or Pirates sets as for Town — and this was back when train sets weren't even counted as part of the town theme! So I don't think LEGO has any reason to take a gamble as big as giving the Castle, Pirates, or Space themes 30 to 50 sets per year. The cost of giving a theme that much emphasis is far from negligible. The difference between a series of six Castle or Pirates sets and a series of five times as manyCastle or Pirates sets could very well tip them from "small success" to "big failure", and pulling resources away from themes that have proven they DO reliably sell in larger enough volumes to justify those resources would only compound the risks at play.

That's fine. I'm not directing any of this at you specifically, just pointing out that everybody has different preferences about what stuff they enjoy as LEGO fans, and lots of people (regardless of their preferences) are prone to exaggerating that by saying the sets/parts/themes that don't fit into that framework aren't "real LEGO".

My favorite so far is the Nya minifigure from 70627!

And why is that? Belville is not only seven years older than the first Bionicle sets, but lasted 15 consecutive years. And many Belville sets use pretty standard LEGO building techniques, albeit with a lot of heavily oversimplified parts and builds. Likewise, licensed theme are two years older than the first Bionicle sets (or even older if you count licensed car sets like https://brickset.com/sets/390-2/1913-Cadillac and not just pop culture based themes like LEGO Star Wars), and almost all of their parts are the same sorts as any other theme. By contrast, Duplo uses an entirely different palette of parts than any other current sets or themes, and its figures for the most part look nothing like minifigures. But I never see people saying that Duplo isn't real LEGO. It's just a different kind of LEGO designed for toddlers. I'm not saying I agree with the people who think constraction isn't real LEGO, not by a longshot! But any claim that an official LEGO theme "isn't real LEGO" is just as biased and inaccurate, and arguably just as snobbish.