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I've also sometimes seen it in the United States. In some cases it's because the bathroom used to be something different but was converted into a bathroom. A solution I'm used to seeing besides frosted glass is small curtains over the windows.

Depends on country. Germany has Region 2 DVDs of those seasons, each with 5 episodes and both English and German language options: https://www.universumfilm.de/filme/149171/lego-ninjago-staffel-81.html https://www.universumfilm.de/filme/149617/lego-ninjago-staffel-82.html https://www.universumfilm.de/filme/150321/lego-ninjago-staffel-91.html https://www.universumfilm.de/filme/151049/lego-ninjago-staffel-92.html But I haven't seen them for any other countries.

Not really. The mini-doll themes have almost always used the same designs as classic minifigure themes for their smaller animals like frogs, fish, crabs, spiders, chickens, etc. And even many smaller animals designed specifically for mini-doll themes like the baby bunny and hamster don't vary that much from traditional LEGO animal design standards except in terms of having 1.5mm holes to attach accessories like bows and party hats. You could probably get away with using those animals together with minifigures, just as easily as both MOCists and set designers did with the Belville kitten before the collectible minifigures introduced a more specific minifigure-scale cat piece. I suspect that in this set, at least, the bird is meant to be deliberately generic. All the descriptions I can find translate to stuff like "bird", "bird figure", or "Jasmine's feathered friend". The most similar real bird I could find with some cursory Google searches is the yellow beak zebra finch.

Something to consider about putting a wall between the staircase and the rest of the building, especially on the ground floor, is that it could make it very difficult to reach your hand in to make a minifigure climb the staircase. As often tends to be the case in the modular buildings, the ground floor of the Corner Garage is the tallest of the three (11 bricks tall), which is a long way to reach into a four-stud-wide corridor, especially with adult-sized hands. With this in mind, I suspect it's no accident that in Cafe Corner and Green Grocer, the ground floor stairwells were six studs wide even though the staircases themselves were only four studs wide (leaving a 1 stud wide gap on either side). Even just a little bit of added width makes it that much easier to reach inside, although it also creates the risk of accidentally losing small parts or accessories into the gaps on either side of the stairs.

That probably is one of the least "gimmicky" LEGO sailing ships. In most cases since then I think kids are drawn to sailing ships more for the potential adventure scenarios they can be used to act out, rather than purely a love of the elegance and historical significance of big sailing vessels. I suspect you might be best off just browsing the Galleon tag (which I KNOW is not an accurate term for many of the sets in it, but I don't know enough about sailing ships to competently raise that issue with the database moderators and propose an alternative) on Brickset: https://brickset.com/sets/tag-Galleon Personally, my favorite is the Destiny's Bounty from The LEGO Ninjago Movie, but that's more because of its size, complexity, ornate design, and level of interior and exterior detail. It's not that realistic in the grand scheme of things (though it's less blatantly fantastical than previous versions of it released in 2012 and 2015), but its level of realism was never a particular concern to me outside of the broader idea of "does this look like a ship that a sensei and his team of ninja could live in and/or use as a home base and training facility?"

Harvesters come in loads of different sizes — if you search "Small harvester" on Google Images you'll find some designed for small-scale rice farming that are barely even larger than a forklift. Given the main idea of this set (a harvester being carried on a transport truck at a Great Vehicles price point), I think this more moderate size is plenty suitable.

It certainly might still be a slight challenge to make the most efficient use of all that floor space using conventional building techniques since the walls are not all aligned with the studded grid, so it might (for example) make it a little more of a challenge than usual to attach additional furniture in a way that it's flush with the 45 degree angled walls. But these are hardly insurmountable challenges or ones that outweigh the opportunities that come with being able to work with a building that has such an interesting floor plan. Honestly when you start to pick the modular buildings apart on a real-life practical level, you can start finding these kinds of omissions and impracticalities all over the place. For example Fire Brigade has no clothes for the firefighters to wear when not wearing their fire suits. If you've ever seen a real fire suit, you know it's not something you'd want to live/sleep in when not responding to a fire! I guess you can pretend they're in the nondescript brown dresser, but that doesn't really suffice from a role play perspective. Also, the only sleeping accommodation is a couch. Another thing that strikes me as odd after seeing the Winter Village Fire Station is that there is no radio or telephone. How exactly do they hear what's going on outside the immediate vicinity of their fire station? Finally, of course, no bathrooms at all, though I guess in this case you can pretend the firefighters are rowdy folk who simply hose down in the garage after fighting fires. Grand Emporium, of course, has just ONE escalator connecting every two floors, which doesn't make much sense if you know how escalators work. For a store its size, it would also be surprising in real life for it to have no stockroom, manager's office, bathrooms, or any sort of rooms or facilities where employees can go that isn't right out in the public where people are shopping. And again, no bathroom, but that was normal for when this set came out. Also, there's no way to get onto the roof except from the window washer's platform, which raises the question of how he connects the platform to the roof or gets onto the platform in the first place. Maybe from an adjacent building… The Pet Shop set introduces the first bathroom and telephone in the series… but in the vacant and otherwise largely unfurnished apartment next door. The Pet Shop itself and the upstairs apartment have no bathroom or phone. The upstairs kitchen has an oven, stove, sink, coffee machine, and dining table, but no drawers, cabinets, fridge, or pantry for dining implements and food. The only food item in the official photos is… whoops… the fish from the pet shop downstairs (I guess the dead fish in the vet's office photos is part of a larger trend of wanton cruelty to goldfish)! It has a loft-style bedroom, but no dresser for clothes. It makes the Corner Garage's bachelor pad feel downright luxurious! Town Hall has, again, no bathroom (although I suppose the expectation in most LEGO sets is that buyers typically tend to associate bathroom-related storytelling with homes or schools, not businesses and civic centers). While the secretary's computer has been criticized for seeming out of place for the supposed pre-1940s setting, it at least helps excuse her lack of a telephone or other means of communication. I'm not really sure enough about what other practical stuff a Town Hall is supposed to have that it doesn't accommodate for, and I suppose that perhaps the designers were counting on that. :P Right from the start, Palace Cinema lacks any bathrooms. What it also lacks are curtains to cover its many windows while showing a film, which has got to be inconvenient with so many lights outside shining directly towards the building (although I suppose it could be argued the open windows are to enhance its value as a display piece by letting you see what's happening inside without removing the roof). The theater has a projector, but also no obvious speakers (even if it's a silent film it should have either pre-recorded or live music to accompany it). Parisian Restaurant has the most well stocked kitchen yet, as well as a fairly serviceable kitchenette for its apartment tenant upstairs, but alas, still not another bathroom (also, have you noticed at this point that there hasn't been a fire hydrant since the Green Grocer? That's going to remain the status quo for the foreseeable future. Must make things hard for the firefighters, since their truck is plainly not a tanker vehicle). Detective's Office has the first public bathroom we've seen! But the apartment above it has no obvious amenities except the illicit cookie kitchen: certainly not a bed, shower, or even armchair in sight. The pool hall's lack of obvious snacks or drinks can be forgiven due to what was almost certainly a purposeful attempt to downplay its resemblance to a bar/pub, even if the style and storytelling are an obvious wink and nod to that association. The barbershop and detective's office, at least, seem adequately furnished for what they are. I could go on but there's not much of a point. Suffice to say, generally the way things work out in practice is that buyers will shape the types of scenarios they imagine inside a set around what the contents of the set allow, and if there's enough of those to keep their imaginations active, then they won't be so worried about what kinds of scenarios it DOESN'T allow for.

If they wanted to remake the Maersk Train, I suspect they'd just change the color to Medium Azur, since that's closer to the color Maersk currently uses in their corporate branding. Frankly, there's a good chance that Maersk would insist on that update in order to better meet their current brand standards even if the old color (Pastel Blue/Maersk Blue) were still available to LEGO. That said, I think Emerald Knight is probably a more immediate candidate for a re-release, because it's closer to its 10th anniversary, and because its nostalgic appeal is based on its design, not divided between the design itself and the connection to a well-known brand.

Another thing I think a lot of people fail to consider about Brick Bank is that not only did it only have two floors, but around 30% of the interior space was a big hole that opened up to the first floor (and that’s NOT including the opening for the stairwell). I imagine that huge empty space probably has a lot to do with its ability to pack so much detail into a building that extends all the way from a standard size pavement to the back of the baseplate, with no cutouts or bevels on either the street-facing or rear-facing corners! The Corner Garage not only has three floors, but the two upper floors are each only around 12% smaller than the ground floor due to the garage door sticking out about four studs further than the right front wall of the upper floors. It’s probably for this reason that despite complaints about the footprint or interior being too small compared to past buildings, it actually has the most floor space than any standard-size building since the Pet Shop! I wrote out that and other comparisons with past modular buildings (piece count, height of the main roof line, price with and without inflation adjustments, minifigure count, etc.) in this spreadsheet. I think a lot of people also tend to be too quick to assume stuff that hasn’t shown up in a modular building in a while must no longer be considered in line with the series’ current design standards, rather than just that it’s been years since the series had a suitable type of architecture or type of business for those sorts of parts and techniques. On the Brickset forums I got into an argument that ran far too long with somebody who was extremely disappointed with the door that opens to the stairwell, because doors that shape hadn’t appeared on the front of a modular building since Pet Shop, which to them meant that piece was no longer suitable for front doors in expert level sets.

I don’t really get a Friends vibe from it. If anything it’s got a lot of the same design language as the LEGO seagull or chicken, except smaller than either. Friends animals not only tend to be rounder, but also tend to have bigger and more oval-shaped heads in relation to their bodies. For reference, see the already released LEGO Friends/Elves bear, cat, dog, tiger, bird, bat, penguin, owl, rabbit, chimpanzee, and baby dragon designs, particularly compared to their nearest equivalents from more boy-targeted themes. Also, I feel like some of the smaller and less detailed LEGO Friends animals, particularly the hamster and baby bunny, can be just as suitable for System as for Friends anyhow. They already have more minifigure-like than minidoll-like eye prints, and they aren’t noticeably more rounded or exaggerated than a lot of similar-sized LEGO animals like the spider (new OR old version). For that matter, the new spider itself has already been used in the Elves theme, and the chicken from 2009 has been used in LEGO Friends, which if anything only further reinforces how little a difference there is between minifig and mini-doll design language once you get below a certain size.

That's not so difficult to believe. King Tut from The LEGO Batman Movie Series Minifigures and N-Pop Girl from The LEGO Ninjago Movie Series Minifigures.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I get the feeling that the decision to leave the ground floor untiled had nothing to do with budget and was more to create a rougher texture that stands out from the paved driveway, same as in Fire Brigade. Tiles would have looked a bit too fancy and clean for a dirty garage/warehouse type floor. That said, if it were a matter of budget it’d be pretty understandable. Just look at how much more tiled space there is in the front than many other buildings, which are often placed much further forward with a lot of untiled ground in the back.

I think exaggerated sizes in LEGO are pretty much expected in a lot of cases, given the minifigure’s wonky proportions and the size limitations of the established system of LEGO connection points. LEGO mice, rats, astromech droids, ladybugs, crabs, ants, babies, monkeys, swords, telephones, books, laptops, etc. all tend to be far larger compared to a minifigure than the typical non-LEGO versions of those subjects would be next to a real person. In a lot of those cases, if they weren’t so oversized, then they’d be much too small to have any meaningful amount of playability!

Well, not all Oni would necessarily look like that. They could have different shapes and sizes or different outfits… particularly as shapeshifters, there’s arguably as much room for variety for them as with some of Nexo Knights’ monster factions. Now, that said… while I don’t necessarily have any supporting evidence, I have generally been thinking that the upcoming special event will be its own thing, and the return of the Oni will be saved for the next full ten-episode season. With all the buildup they’ve gotten as one of the biggest threats to Ninjago yet, a villain scary enough to frighten even Lord Garmadon’s evil side (something not even the Overlord was able to do), it’d feel kind of underwhelming if it only took 88 minutes of animation to both set up AND resolve the conflict between the Ninja and the Oni.

I think both — a lot of sets/themes back then performed poorly, but for the most part it was not because of a general disinterest in LEGO, but rather because of a failure to adequately understand, research and test what kind of products people were actually interested in buying. In this Reddit thread that I linked above, Mark Stafford specifically addressed some of the problems with selling individual carriages rather than more reliably successful all-in-one trains or train sets, including the strain it puts on production resources to produce limited-run sets aimed at smaller audiences.

Sparse interiors are honestly a big part of why I might expect a higher than usual weight per brick, since interior details like tiled floors and furniture often use smaller bricks than stuff like walls/floors/ceilings, and if this set doesn't have as much of that stuff as other buildings, then they aren't there to pull the average piece size down. Also, regarding the building's size, I think a lot of people are considerably underestimating it. Out of curiosity (and because I knew I'd measured previous buildings before and failed to put it anywhere I'd remember to find it), I went ahead and made a spreadsheet (still in progress) to compare the modular buildings' interior floor space, height, etc. I was a little surprised myself to find that this set has the highest roof line of any building since Town Hall (excluding stuff like towers or chimneys that stick up from the main roof line) and the most interior floor space of any building since Pet Shop. The main reason for this seems to be that most corner buildings either have only two floors, big gaps in the upper floors that overlook lower ones, or both. This is the first in quite some time that has three floors that are all close to the full size of the ground floor. Even many of the mid-street buildings like Parisian Restaurant, Downtown Diner, and Detective’s Office have floors with very uneven amounts of indoor space (side note, I remember when Parisian Restaurant was the building people complained about being too short and having too little interior space for its price). In issue 31 of HispaBrick Magazine, Jamie Berard actually explained the reason for shifting towards more multi-purpose buildings, which surprisingly enough is… us! Early on it was satisfying enough to most buyers for the buildings to surpass the ones that appeared in official sets. But later on, after many MOCists had great success designing their own custom buildings, Jamie felt like it became much more difficult to make really common subjects like banks, police stations, fire stations, etc. in a way that would still be surprising to AFOLs and wouldn't strike us as having already been equaled or surpassed by previous MOCs. Adding a second business gives the set as a whole a way to still feel conceptuall unique, particularly if the businesses can be connected narratively/thematically as well as physically as in the case of Detective's Office and Brick Bank.

Well, it’d almost certainly be at least $170 even without any more parts than Parisian Restaurant simply due to currency inflation. But I agree the additional $30 price hike is surprising, considering that past buildings usually only got a small, permanent price hike due to inflation or a large, temporary price hike due to being deluxe-sized anniversary sets. This doesn’t appear to be either. Nor is it an across the board price hike on 2019 sets like we might see if the reason for the price hike were costs or business decisions not specific to this set, because the prices reported for the new Ninjago sets seem totally reasonable, sometimes even more so than we’ve come to expect with past waves. Has anybody seen the set’s net weight listed anywhere so we can compare that with past buildings as well? I’m wondering if maybe this set might have bigger parts on average than past buildings due to lacking some stuff that would have included large volumes of small parts like interior floor tiles, and so having proportionally more bigger parts like wall bricks, staircases, and floor plates in its inventory compared to sets like the Brick Bank and Downtown Diner. But even then, I doubt that alone would wholly account for such a sharp increase in price…

That may be so, but that doesn't somehow mean that AFOL perspectives on the Modular Buildings neatly align with their overall popularity. Many AFOLs were pretty unimpressed about the Palace Cinema… …even though according to Brickset, it's the second most widely owned of the Modular Buildings by Brickset users (and even then, I imagine Brickset users skew more towards members of the organized AFOL community than the wider community of adult LEGO fans who aren't affiliated with any LUGs or fansites). The Fire Brigade also got a fair amount of criticism for a lot of the same things as this set (not detailed enough, not revolutionary enough, not enough interior, too American-looking, won't fit in with the previous buildings, too small/oddly proportioned, etc)… …and it went on to far outsell the first three Modular Buildings! As Jamie Berard stated in his interview from the latest issue of HispaBrick Magazine, first impressions on AFOL fansites can often can be a misleading indication of how well a Modular Building will be received in the long run: …And to be honest, this is to be expected when fans spend so many months speculating on and dreaming up what would make an ideal future modular, even though the bigger objective for the designers is always to find something that surprises people and defies expectations. If fans can anticipate how a model will look based on how previous sets and MOCs have looked, that means the designers have not succeeding at creating something fans haven't seen before or couldn't dream up on their own. Basing our expectations on what's come before is a great way to keep speculation from veering into outrageous and impractical ideas, but basing the designs themselves on what's come before is a great way to make a new set feel like "more of the same" both to people who already bought and enjoyed the previous buildings, and people who weren't excited for them to begin with and are still waiting on something that will have some "hook" for them that the other sets lacked.

I think they kind of do… it's just a matter of the kid audience for building toys being bigger and so typically getting more sets/themes targeted at them than at an adult audience. Plus, adults aren't as monolithic in our interests as we like to imagine — just look at how divisive Technic sets can be even among us AFOLs! Certainly many of the things some of us want to see in sets don't happen because they don't appeal to or aren't appropriate for kids. But that doesn't necessarily mean that if those types of sets were aimed at adults, they would appeal as strongly to as many of us as stuff like the Creator Expert Modular Buildings or Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series. Even among adults with similar general interests, a LEGO Space or Castle fan of my generation might have very different wishes than a LEGO Space or Castle fan born 20 years earlier. And some adults might prefer sets that are specifically tailored to an adult building level, while others might prefer sets they can more easily enjoy together with less LEGO-savvy kids, siblings, and spouses. But LEGO has known for some time that adults are a viable market and has designed plenty of their sets and themes accordingly. In 2018 alone they launched seven new sets for ages 16+, three new sets for ages 14+, and eight new sets for ages 12+. And if anything, the number of adult-targeted sets has been increasing over the past five to ten years. Plus, even most of the licenses they acquire for their more kid-targeted themes tend to be based on brands that date back two decades or more so that parents and kids alike can relate to them.

I… uh… don't remember saying anything even slightly close to that? Like, is that in reference to Fabuland, because I thought the last conversation I had with you on that subject was pointing out that Fabuland was around the same building level as later stuff like Jack Stone/Juniors/4+. But I don't remember ever trying to argue that kids no longer like cute animal toys. Heck, I still have plenty of stuffed animals and usually bring one with me most places so I have something to hug if I start to feel stressed/depressed/anxious. If anything, I'm MORE in favor of cute and cuddly looking LEGO stuff like the LEGO Friends/Elves critters than many other AFOLs are. But I apologize for not being good at keeping my thoughts more concise. I know the walls of text are something I have a problem with and it's not something I'm proud of. Usually it's because I'm worried if I don't clarify everything enough that people will get the wrong idea about what I'm saying… but then, if that's what happened with whatever that conversation you're referring to was, then I guess any attempts I must have made to clarify didn't really help any and just made me sound preachy/obstinate. Sorry about that… That kind of all-or-nothing reductivism isn't very helpful. There's plenty of middle ground between "category so popular that it deserves a full wave of sets every year" and "category so unpopular that there's no point to investing in it at all". "A few new big train sets every few years" is well within that middle ground. Like I said in my previous post: there's demand for trains, just not as much of it as there is for other stuff LEGO already invests more in. And it's not like having fewer train sets would create more demand for "more lucrative things". Even the most popular themes and subthemes usually get about as many sets per year as LEGO expects the market to bear.

I think as a train enthusiast it's probably not hard to spot all the problems with a set like Emerald Night, but I remember it being popular even with AFOLs who don't really pay attention to the world of trains outside of LEGO. On Brickset it is both highly rated by reviewers and highly sought after. And let's face it — it's not as though AFOLs who collect other sets inspired by real-life historical subject matter like castles and pirate ships are super concerned about whether they are realistic in every possible respect. Some of the most beloved sets in those themes take enormous creative liberties from their real historical counterparts. The bigger concern generally tends to be whether they are in line with the generalized picture of those subjects that people have in their heads, based on exposure to those subjects in both real life and fiction/pop culture. Nobody says train sets don't sell, but they most certainly don't sell at the same rate to either kids or adults as things like modular buildings or City police stations that LEGO is able to sell a new installment of each year. In fact, they seem to make a purposeful effort to keep City train sets available far longer than most other City sets since they wouldn't be able to sell in nearly those same numbers over just a one to two year period. Of course, a lot of that is definitely due to costs. A complete train set with tracks, controllers, and motors is extremely pricy even by usual LEGO standards, and always has been. At $150, the (rightfully!) beloved Metroliner was only slightly cheaper than this year's similar-priced passenger train before adjusting for inflation. Making that adjustment brings that up to $275.89, 72% higher than the latest passenger train set… and that's still without the $42 Transformer and Speed Regulator set that you needed to make it run! As much as the costs of LEGO train sets have decreased, they are still far more expensive than most other City sets, as well as most sets in other popular themes like Friends, Ninjago, Classic, and Creator. Even so, when comparing even a more modestly-priced, AFOL-targeted train set like Horizon Express versus even slightly more expensive and somewhat more divisive sets from around the same time like Fairground Mixer and Palace Cinema, far more Brickset users own the latter sets than the former. And it's not as though LEGO designers like Mark Stafford (1|2|3|4|5), who are themselves AFOLs from the same generation as many LEGO train fans, have had any incentive to lie to us AFOLs about the popularity of train sets (both in terms of kid testing responses and sales) being limited. It'd be one thing if they were saying that kind of thing about sets they don't make at all or ones they never made, but why would a company try to negatively spin the popularity of product categories that were such a big source of childhood enjoyment for so many of their older fans? Let alone ones that, even if few in number, are still an almost constant part of their portfolio? Multi-set use for a handful of sets over a 20 year period is a really low bar to clear compared to the actual requirements LEGO generally puts on new molds and on the budgets for individual sets these days. One of the big problems for LEGO in the 90s and 2000s was their number of colors, molds, and elements expanding out of control, often without those costs being adequately accounted for in the price of the sets. So since then, LEGO's Design Lab has become MUCH stricter. You would not be able to get away with saying that the mold ought to be able to pay for itself within a 20 year period. How are going to guarantee that the demand you anticipate for such sets in the next 20 years, and the design standards you created the mold based on, will even be the same across that whole span of time? It's totally possible that demand for train sets could decline even further at any point in the future, or that some change in audience expectations, toy industry regulations, or advances in technology might require completely re-imagining the design of LEGO train tracks or wheels, potentially rendering parts designed to work with existing train wheels obsolete. So to get a new mold approved by Design Lab, you'd need to show them evidence that it will have versatile enough, extensive enough, and necessary enough uses to pay for itself in the short term. Granted, there are some molds that ARE used only in one or two sets, like the heads of the Star Wars buildable figures or some minifigure parts and accessories for licensed themes. But these can reduce their costs somewhat by using molds that aren't designed with the kind of resilience required for extensive, long-term, multi-set use in the first place. And even then, the set's price point and quantity produced/sold are still required to absorb the additional costs of those new molds… which is part of the reason for such sets often having a poor value for money compared to sets that stick to more traditional parts or new parts that are shared with numerous other sets and themes. I think the causality is a bit backwards there — based on what we've heard from LEGO, how much impact retailers have on LEGO's product decisions, and the fact that in the past some of these retailers DID carry LEGO train sets more extensively, it seems more likely to me that train sets aren't in those stores as often because they weren't popular enough for those retailers to continue stocking them. Even ignoring the relative popularity of trains as a category compared to stuff like police or fire or Ninjago or Star Wars sets, a lot of shoppers at stores like Target and Walmart go there specifically looking for low prices, so stuff as expensive as LEGO trains isn't as well-tailored to that market segment as lower-priced sets that take up less shelf space and are within more people's budgets. Stores like LEGO Brand Stores or Toys 'R' Us tend to have more success high-end LEGO sets in general, because as specialized retailers they have better insight into how to sell them, and also they are better at attracting collectors and parents who are more comfortable spending a little more than they might elsewhere if they know they're getting a quality product and a satisfying, toy-enthusiast-targeted shopping experience.

Anyway, now that more LEGO 2019 pics are coming in there's a lot more cool new parts to talk about! There's a new Warm Gold 3x3x2 curved fence/railing piece with the same ornamental wrought-iron pattern as Design ID 19121 in sets 41161 and 41162 from the Disney theme (also a really cool new build for the magic carpet using the wavy panel from Joker Manor and the tassels from LEGO Ninjago, but that's a little more Aladdin-specific). Also in those same two sets plus 70828 from The LEGO Movie 2 theme, there's a new 1x6x6 arch piece with 1x1x1 cutouts in the upper corners. Perhaps this might seem a bit overspecialized but I get the sense that it's more versatile than it might seem at first glance. Not only does its LEGO Movie 2 use take advantage of the corner cutouts to make it work as an interior support in a way a regular 1x6x2 semicircular arch couldn't, but in some of the Disney sets it looks as though it has the kind of notches in the tiled bottom portion that would allow it to be compatible with the same range of window and prison bar elements elements as Design ID 28327, Design ID 60596, etc. 70827 from The LEGO Movie 2 includes lots of delightful spiky bits recolored in Reddish Brown, including the sword/scythe blade parts with clips from Fantasy Era. And while very sci-fi leaning, 70834 and 70836 from The LEGO Movie 2 have lots of tasty nautical elements as well as metallic and earth tone elements, as we've come to expect of sets featuring Metalbeard. The latter also has another steampunk/post-apoc looking fellow with a neat new spiked single shoulder pad element in Titanium Metallic. Not strictly medieval-oriented, but just generally useful for more functional builds: the back-of-box pics for 70828 (same LEGO Movie 2 set mentioned above) and 70670 from LEGO Ninjago show off circular plates with gear teeth in 4x4, 6x6, and 8x8 sizes. As both sets demonstrate, this is a great way to add gear-driven turntable functions like revolving walls, rotating floors, etc without having to conceal bulkier Technic gear functions in the floors or ceilings. In 70828 the 8x8 version of these gears and several other parts are in the new color Vibrant Coral, which doesn't currently appear in any medieval-specific parts but could have some potential uses for creative MOCists. The Ninjago Spinjitzu sets have a new co-injected tornado piece as the main spinner element, but it is pretty basic and very System-compatible, with four handles around the upper perimeter and a 2x2 circular base. It could be useful as more general sorts of magical effects for use by wizards and monsters. The sets revealed so far include it in eight elemental color combinations: Bright Red and Tr. Bright Orange (Fire) Bright Blue and Tr. Flu. Green (Lightning) White and Tr. Light Blue (Ice) Bright Orange and Tr. Brown (Earth) Dark Azur and Transparent w/ Glitter (Water) Warm Gold and Transparent (Light/Creation) Warm Gold and Tr. Bright Green (Energy) Black and Tr. Bright Bluish Violet (Darkness/Destruction) Those spinner sets also generally have a way better price per piece than any past spinners or fliers, none of the pieces are highly specialized functional elements like propellers/launchers/ripcords/protective domes, and most of their accessories come in sets of four. So these could have much more value as parts packs for some of their more interesting weapon, and accessory pieces (ninja hoods, dragon-shaped sword hilts, snake heads, lightning bolts, katanas, Elves vine/magic pieces, teapots, flames, etc) even for people who don't ordinarily collect Ninjago sets or build Ninjago MOCs. Even the ninja minifigures have much more traditional looking ninja robes this time around with no highly conspicuous logos or fancy armor, just some tasteful gold dragon patterns. The Ninjago set 70680 has the Ninjago weapon pack introduced this summer, Design ID 37341, in a useful new color (Warm Gold). It also has a set of samurai armor for Nya and some training equipment and scenery in fairly subdued colors. The Ninjago set 70670 (mentioned above in reference to the new gear pieces) has a nice big monastery scene with all six ninja, Master Wu, a skeleton, more training equipment, and a really beautiful, traditional-looking Asian temple/monastery courtyard. Most of the other new Ninjago sets consist of more theme-specific vehicle or dragon builds that I know many historic builders don't care for, but I'm including a link for anyone who might want to look at the sorts of parts and minifigures they include, such as the redesigned Skulkin, Serpentine, Stone Army, and Overlord minifigures (ten total), which might be especially enticing for people who have built fantasy armies using parts from any of those factions' earlier appearances and want to add some more variety. The Skulkin and Stone Army minifigures also include two new molds: a new Skulkin General head, which is now a standardized design that can fit a wider range of minifigure headgear than even Wyplash's head from the original 2011 sets, and a new shoulder armor piece that's a little less over-the-top than previous examples and doesn't cover up the front or back of the torso (possibly making it easier to combine with other neck accessories).

I feel like it varies. Even in real life there are many different sizes of car. Consider the cars of the 60s and 70s that were colloquially called “land yachts” due to their size: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_yacht_(automobile) In the United States, at least, a popular car model for police departments is the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, which is likewise a pretty big car in its own right: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Crown_Victoria_Police_Interceptor For comparison’s sake, a Crown Victoria is longer than and nearly as wide as a Ford Expedition full size SUV. I do feel as though in City, four studs wide is plenty suitable for mid-size, subcompact, and compact cars. As a bonus, reserving four stud chassis for smaller cars and using six stud wide chassis for larger cars means other types of small vehicles like ATVs/quad bikes, go-karts, golf carts, and dune buggies don’t tend to feel as oversized by comparison.

If LEGO starts noticing Star Wars fatigue, I think their first response will be less Star Wars stuff, rather than immediately putting more Space stuff out there. My feeling is that for right now, the popularity of LEGO Star Wars and licensed themes as a whole is still reasonably stable, probably more so than back during the Star Wars prequel trilogy years when LEGO wasn't as careful about making sure the emphasis on each of their bigger licenses stayed in sync with whether there were new movies out to keep them on people's radar. But I agree that the chance of a Space or Classic Space D2C/Creator Expert set happening and being successful (ideally, even enough to get follow-ups in subsequent years) would be a lot stronger today than it used to be, albeit for a different reason: ten years ago there were usually one or two big, expensive Star Wars exclusives per year but also somewhat less general interest in/demand for LEGO. Today interest for LEGO in general has grown, and LEGO's responded with more stuff targeted at both kids and AFOLs — yet the number of adult-targeted Star Wars exclusives per year has stayed pretty close to the same as ever. My post was more about how unlikely it'd be for LEGO to launch a whole theme or wave of sets geared specifically towards nostalgia for one 1980s LEGO theme/faction (ANY 1980s LEGO theme/faction), which I think would be way trickier than stand-alone sets. Even with sets geared towards less LEGO-specific forms of 80s nostalgia fuel (like Voltron, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, etc), LEGO usually doesn't release more than one or two new sets per year based on the same IP. To do much more than a few stand-alone sets would usually require some new "hook" to help kids relate to that brand in a more immediate, individual sense, like a movie sequel/reboot (as tends to be the impetus for themes like LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones) or media like The LEGO Movie and LEGO Dimensions that expressly ties stuff created decades before today's kids' time together with the kind of stuff many of them enjoy currently.

Maybe! The chance of Classic Space coming back as some kind of direct to consumer or gift with purchase exclusive, or even as a not-yet-announced LEGO Movie 2 set for the summer, is a lot more plausible than it coming back as a full theme. It'd be nice to see an sort of futuristic, non-licensed Space-themed direct to consumer set, since there's never been one before like there has been for castle or pirates. Probably because Star Wars has had UCS sets as exclusives nearly every year since LEGO really started doing D2C stuff, and so the market for exclusives in that space/sci-fi genre has been more consistently crowded than for medieval or pirate exclusives. But we have seen various other types of LEGO exclusive items (gift with purchase sets, lifestyle products, minifigure display cases, etc) that pay homage to Classic Space in one way or another. So no reason to think a big exclusive classic spaceship would be permanently out of the question.