Aanchir

There's certainly a lot of new parts that have come out since Power Miners that could be well-suited to an underground adventure theme: the 2x2x3 drill piece from Nexo Knights the 4x4x2 space wheel from Nexo Knights the 2x3 rocky "claw" piece from Nexo Knights (and any number of other rocky elements from the second year sets) the rock/nugget/ore piece from this year's City Mining sets the new saw piece from this year's City Arctic sets. the the rubber friction insert pieces from the Fortrex, Boost, etc. the rocky armor add-on piece from Hero Factory And so on. I do hope if we get another underground theme it has more girls than either Rock Raiders or Power Miners had. I think the lack of female miners was Power Miners' biggest failing.

I actually kind of like how it is now, with all the even numbered axles available in either black or red and all the odd numbered ones available in yellow or grey. It makes it much easier to avoid confusing axles when building a set (since colors in any given set don't repeat until there's a difference of four studs in length), and as far as MOCing goes it offers more options than if one color were the universal standard for each size. Also, when building a MOC, sticking to a system like that (red-grey-black-yellow-red-grey-black-yellow or the like) can make it easier to keep track of where I've used two shorter axles and where I've used one longer axle.

Your MOCs are always so cool and creative! I love the unique shaping here and also the bright, highly contrasting colors! The bumpy texture of the lava is also a great detail!

Light Reddish Violet is a pretty common-sense name as I see it, following more or less the same naming rules as many other colors in the LEGO palette. It's two shades lighter than Bright Reddish Violet, just as Light Yellowish Orange is two shades lighter than Bright Yellowish Orange or Light Bluish Green is two shades lighter than Bright Bluish Green. Easy-peasy! Additionally, a lot of color names that are common sense in English might not be in Danish or vice-versa. In general, I prefer LEGO color names by virtue of them not referring to totally different colors by the same name. Copper's the most egregious here. BrickLink's "Copper" refers to the official colors 139 Copper, 176 Red Flip/Flop, 189 Reddish Gold, 300 Copper, Drum Lacquered, and 346 Copper Metallic, all of which are easy to tell apart with the naked eye. 300 Copper, Drum Lacquered isn't even a "pearl" color like the others.

I don't think Ninjago would particularly benefit from any kind of shift away from the anachronistic fantasy flavor that's served it so well for so many years. Sure, that might make it more appealing to classic Castle fans, but there's no reason to think the lack of widespread appeal with that audience has had any meaningful impact on how successful it's been. Even among AFOLs, a lot of the excitement I saw for the LEGO Ninjago Movie sets specifically surrounded things like the cyberpunk styling of Ninjago City or the intensely futuristic mechs. And I think the theme's versatility, with plenty of room for more traditional design cues as well as more modern/futuristic ones, has been one of its strengths.

If it does last two more years, then we'll soon be hitting the point at which Ninjago will have lasted longer than Pirates and Bionicle did before their first multi-year hiatuses. That will be interesting, for sure. I'm with you in thinking that Ninjago doesn't seem to be on the verge of ending. It's still wildly popular, and even if the show hasn't been getting the viewers it used to that might just mean we're approaching the point where it has to move from Cartoon Network to a service like Netflix (as DreamWorks Dragons already did three or four years ago). And even if the current show ends, no reason to think LEGO Ninjago would end with it unless the sets stop selling well also. For all we know they might just bring whatever story arc they're on to a close and start fresh with a reboot or sequel series of some kind.

What makes you think that? As far as I can tell from the trailer this movie seems to be setting up for some strong themes about how gender and age differences shape the LEGO play experience, and retain the core concept of Emmet's world as a reflection of the human play experiences and conflicts between Finn and his family. Everything from the villain Sweet Mayhem to the "Sis-tar system" hints at the idea of a "clash of cultures" representing Finn's jaded adolescent world and the impending stagnation of his "dark ages" being interrupted by contact with his sister's play world beyond the basement.

It's just six molds, which is not too unusual for a wave of six sets. Elves got six new molds this year and it has just seven sets; Unikitty also has about seven new molds across its seven sets. The six Bionicle Stars sets in 2010 also got six new molds, and dinosaur themes routinely get ten or more new molds across waves of fewer than ten sets.

In general, despite it being my childhood, I feel like the late 90s and early 2000s were a pretty weak time for LEGO designs in general, and a lot of the core theme concepts back then have been greatly improved by a second pass (like Rock Raiders to Power Miners, Insectoids to Galaxy Squad, UFO to Alien Conquest, Arctic to the Arctic subtheme of City, Alpha Team to Agents, etc). So I definitely think the same could be said for Imperial Armada. The big question I think is whether kids would relate to the concept as well as the usual pirates or soldiers. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have had a few portrayals of the Spanish navy and Spanish privateers, but at least in the US I don't think the Spanish navy is as ubiquitous in pop culture as broader concepts like knights and ninjas and pirates. Then again, the theme is called "Pirates", and I think the pirate faction is always going to be center stage, so maybe the familiarity of the foes they're facing might not be so important… I wouldn't be TOO surprised if the next take on Pirates were to take some cues from the Imperial Armada for its antagonists, seeing as they've already revisited both the redcoats and bluecoats. @Lord Brickington, I'm curious about the description of Imperial Armada as "story based sets". There were definitely supplemental story tidbits like short comics and character bios attached to them in the magazines, but that was the way things were for pretty much all themes back then. I don't remember any Imperial Armada inspired story media as extensive as the comics and picture books from early in the Pirates theme's lifespan. The sets themselves were not especially story-driven.

Given my taste for designing LEGO characters, creatures, etc (especially using Bionicle parts) I would probably design robots. Considering how many LEGO robot designs there were even in the Classic Space era, there's probably a lot of demand for robot designers in LEGO Space!

I don't feel as though there's anything about the mini-doll design that implies a lack of elbows. I don't stop having elbows if I keep my arms straight; they're just fixed at a different angle than they would be if I kept them bent. Not all minifigures are yellow, but likewise not all minifigures have articulated legs. I was describing the traits of what I would call a typical minifigure… someone like https://brickset.com/minifigs/cty843/, for example. If you think licensed minifigures are more typical then I suppose you can cross that trait off the list.

I understand that, but I think it's kind of creatively limiting to think of bricks as the only appropriate art medium for showing your love of LEGO. Like, among My Little Pony and Transformers fan artists you often see toy customization, but also music, comics, animations, digital and traditional drawings and paintings, animations, plushies, cosplay, and sculpture that doesn't involve the toys as a medium. In the LEGO community, you get some of that type of stuff, but compared to MOCs it tends to be very rare. Music is the example that I find especially striking when comparing an event like BronyCon with one like BrickFair. There's hardly ever any music at BrickFair, and when there is it's usually not LEGO-related. At Brony-Con, they have an entire multi-night concert series of primarily fan-created music, not to mention songs being a component of many of the panels and events, and a frequent crowd activity when waiting in lines. I know there are plenty of AFOLs out there who are musically talented, so it's surprising to me that those parts of their lives (music + LEGO) so rarely intersect. One example I can think of that didn't occur to me before was the Symphony of Construction telephone game, in which artists created music inspired by MOCs inspired by other music inspired by other MOCs, and on and on down the line. There was some great stuff generated there that really proved how LEGO can inspire forms of creativity we don't ordinarily associate with the bricks themselves!

The Ninjago songs from The Fold are of the "by LEGO/used in advertising" sort, but they would certainly qualify as a proper band IMO. To date they've released 19 original Ninjago songs plus six additional remixes of the Ninjago theme song, "The Weekend Whip". But besides Ed Sheeran's LEGO House, I can't think of any songs about or referencing LEGO that were not created for use in official LEGO media or a LEGO promotional campaign. Not even much stuff created by other AFOLs. I'm frequently struck by the scarcity of any sort of LEGO-inspired fan works not using LEGO itself as a medium, something that really sets us AFOLs apart from other fandoms which routinely generate all kinds of fan art, fan fiction, fan music, cosplay, and so on. In this respect AFOLs tend to feel like more of a hobbyist community like model train or rocketry enthusiasts than like the more multifaceted fan communities that have sprung up around things like My Little Pony, Transformers, Steven Universe, or Star Trek. I certainly would like to see that change. As much as I enjoy showing off my LEGO creations and seeing other people's at LEGO fan conventions, after having attended BronyCon for the past three years I would love to see more of that type of festivity at LEGO fan conventions.

For all the claims that the mini-doll is just as unrealistic as the minifigure, there are very few particularly "unrealistic" aspects of mini-doll anatomy I can think of that don't also apply to the traditional minifigure. Things that make both minifigs and mini-dolls unrealistic: Oversized heads, feet, and hands Claw-shaped hands No ears, fingers, or toes No molded muscle definition Non-posable knees, elbows, ankles, and waists Additional things that make typical minifigs (but not mini-dolls) unrealistic: blocky foot, leg, and torso shapes oversized waist and hips short, stubby legs no nose, chin, sclerae, or irises torso contours printed rather than molded bright yellow skin Additional things that make typical mini-dolls (but not minifigs) unrealistic: Exaggeratedly large eyes Legs and hands don't move independently Kids and adults are the same height That's basically it?

Yeah, I think it's interesting to compare that with how a lot of AFOLs' idea of minifigures with more molded bodies begins with molded hourglass waistlines for women (like Arealight Customs' curved torsos)… yet one of the traits that sets the mini-doll apart from female minifigure graphics is in fact that their sides do not have much of an hourglass shape, and instead form a fairly straight vertical line from the hips upward for boys, women, and girls (the sides of the man-style torso are wider towards the top). I think if anything this reinforces that the mini-doll is designed based on what girls related best to, and not based on male expectations of what girls/women are supposed to look like. They only look extra-long or extra-tall if you're conditioned to expect the preposterously wide and stumpy proportions of the classic minifigure. Proportionally, the most unrealistic aspect of the mini-dolls are the traits they share with the minifigure for functional reasons — their exaggeratedly large hands, feet, and heads (the third of which makes up about 1/4 their total height). Aside from those things, neither their waists nor their arms nor their legs are unusually long or thin. If you shrink the head to a more typical real-life size like around 1/6 of the total height, their bodies do not look very tall or skinny at all — in fact, their bodies look a lot less skinny than the actual human women we frequently see in media and advertising: This is also why I crack up laughing any time I see people describe mini-dolls as Barbie-like. Barbie's proportions ARE exaggeratedly tall and skinny — she's typically about 8 heads high. The dwarfish 4-head-high proportions of the mini-doll are nowhere close!

I'm not sure it's really fair to blame Disney, considering long hiatuses like this between new Pirates waves have been the norm for the past 20 years. For all we know, the popularity of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies might have even been one of the things motivating LEGO to revive the theme back in 2009!

Since my last post here, I became aware of @Lt. de Martinet having created a pretty top-notch LEGO color cross-reference: http://ryanhowerter.net/colors.html It's a lot more comprehensive than Wikia's list and each color even links to an image of examples on Flickr.

Not disputing that Elves is aimed primarily at girls… just that I think you'd find that it's no more "extremely" aimed at girls than traditional castle is at boys. After all, do the dragons of Fantasy Era Castle not themselves have as much of an 'edgy and masculine' appearance as the dragons in Elves have a 'cutesy and feminine' appearance? (I'd also dispute "cutesy" a bit there; that certainly applies to the baby dragons, but I'd sooner describe the grown-up dragons and elemental creatures from the Elves theme as "majestic" or "elegant"). Of course to a boy who grew up primarily enjoying boy-targeted products, girl-targeted stuff of any sort will feel more extreme in its gendering than boy-targeted stuff, because they've been conditioned to believe that those boy-targeted colors, designs, etc. are the norm or baseline. But in practice even if certain sorts of "neutral" color schemes and subject matter could theoretically reach boys and girls equally, if they don't do so in practice then I think it's a mistake to confuse them for being truly gender neutral. If the targeting of girls with eye-popping floral colors like oranges and azures and pinks and purples is pervasive, the targeting of boys with intensely rich reds, blues, and greens and steely greys is just as much so. We've already seen "many people" accept a new type of figure with the mini-doll. It's just that those "many people" are primarily girls. I think if anything this further reinforces that the traditional minifigure has engendered a kind of loyalty among many boys and men that it lacks to the same extent in girls. And the idea of not wanting to "mess with success" with boys is a big factor in why the designers of LEGO Friends and the mini-doll, instead of trying to replace their successful existing slate of products with more gender-neutral ones, focused on creating new themes that could appeal to the huge audience that the minifigure and the themes that use it weren't reaching. That said, we have also seen LEGO design for the "boy-oriented" themes start to embrace some more feminine design characteristics. Ninjago and Nexo Knights, despite having extremely masculine-coded colors and a lot of very aggressive vehicle sets, have also done a pretty decent job giving some of their castles and other locations like Destiny's Bounty the kind of interior details and play features like places for people to eat and sleep that girls had called out previous Castle sets for lacking. Ninjago has devoted much more screen time and story development to characters like Nya and Pixal in recent seasons than it did towards the beginning of the show, and giving female characters increased prominence in the sets as well. This summer's Throne Room Showdown set exemplifies this, with four female characters driving the main conflict and Lloyd assuming the role of "damsel in distress". City has gotten better about showing women in all kinds of different jobs from environmental researchers to astronauts to truckers to construction workers. I hope to see this trend continue! So much of LEGO's success with girls has come from identifying their design and marketing teams' previous blind spots, which is bound to be a continuous learning process.

@x105Black, it's kind of surprising to me that you think Elves is at the "extreme girl end" of the spectrum. It's always seemed to me like a theme with a lot of cross-gender appeal, what with having plenty of things boys and girls alike get excited about like dragons, fantasy vehicles, magic, adventure, and epic good vs. evil conflicts, not to mention having a gender-mixed main cast. I've heard from many parents whose boys love LEGO Elves, as well as from many male AFOLs who enjoy the theme. Ultimately, I think this is a trap many people fall into — assuming things that are largely preferred by boys (like classic LEGO themes, classic movie franchises like Star Wars or Ghostbusters, etc) are still at least mostly gender-neutral in their appeal, whereas anything that's preferred even a bit more by girls than by boys is firmly in "girls only/no boys allowed" territory. Whereas really, you look at many classic Castle sets and they have very little design that caters overtly to the tastes of girls. They skimp on the kinds of beautiful or playable details that themes like Friends or Elves embrace to the point of barely having anything inside besides places to throw prisoners or clip weapons — often, not even a throne room, let alone places for their inhabitants to eat or sleep. Until the 90s there were hardly even any animals in Castle sets besides horses. Very few characters had any recognizably feminine characteristics to their dress or appearance. Very few activities besides fighting are depicted or implied. Etc. I suspect if LEGO DID actually make their classic themes "gender-neutral", a lot of fans of their traditional incarnations would be flummoxed by how vastly different the gender neuttral versions are than the themes they knew and loved as kids. Certainly it's a mistake to assume that an ideally gender-neutral theme would even continue to use the traditional (boy-preferred) minifigure, considering that's one of the things that LEGO found was decisively alienating a large number of girls. And anyhow, I don't see how you can complain about the mini-doll's worst drawback being a lack of customization potential when you're quite vocal about your preference for molded LEGO animals, dragons, and monsters over their much more varied, more customizable, and usually better articulated brick-built counterparts. Clearly, in that instance, you've decided that the molded LEGO creatures' smoother, more lifelike aesthetics are worth the sacrifices in posability and customizability. Can you really not understand how a lot of kids might feel the same way about their molded LEGO people? @Digger of Bricks I think it really depends on what sort of customizability you're talking about. With the mini-doll, it's much easier to mix and match the parts to create totally new characters, but harder to swap individual body parts for parts that aren't designed to be part of a figure. Whereas with a bigfig, you can give Thanos or Red Hulk or Bane a robotic hook or an octopus tentacle or a machine gun for a hand/arm, but short of non-purist customization you're going to have a much harder time making them no longer look like Thanos or Red Hulk or Bane, because most of the characters' most identifying characteristics are molded into the torso assembly.

I think this is probably pretty realistic. One the recent molds I'm hoping to see more use of in the next Castle theme is this one. It's been used very effectively in LEGO Elves already, and combines really nicely with the existing 1x4x5 wall panels to create a look that's a bit less sharp and angular than the octagonal castle towers we've been seeing for years now. And yet, it doesn't result in such a big, featureless space as the 4x4x6 quarter cylinder panels that Harry Potter has been using since the early 2000s. It would also be neat to see bigfigs in Castle again. The last time Castle had them was Fantasy Era in 2009, back before some of today's bigfig standards were even established. Even Nexo Knights didn't really incorporate bigfigs, instead opting for brick-built figures (not that I mind those). Axl was pretty much only "half-bigfig" — he used a standard minifigure head, legs, and even torso, his torso piece just was pre-assembled with a body extension that attached where the neck and arms of a normal minifigure go, and bigger arms were attached to that in turn. As for types of bigfig, It could be cool to see some actual giants (as opposed to trolls), though I understand that some people might not like those so much since they tend to be more associated with "fairy tales" than Tolkien-esque or Arthurian legends. Brick-built dragons and monsters are always fun and would certainly help motivate ME to buy new Castle sets, though I know some people here prefer molded ones. In any case, the new smaller dragon wing mold from LEGO Elves or the Thestral wing mold from LEGO Harry Potter could potentially be useful for either brick-built OR molded dragons. I also agree the writing's on the wall for Elves, as much as I'd like for it to continue! Maybe the story wrapping up will be a good opportunity for me to get off my butt and actually work on finishing some of the LEGO Elves MOC and story ideas I've been stockpiling. I want to try making a mermaid castle certainly. My brother bought a big ol' bag of mini-doll parts one year at BrickFair if I ever wanted to try my hand at customizing new Elves outfits or character designs.

The mini-doll has more compatibility than System than you give it credit for, I feel like. A lot of mini-doll hair has two 1.5mm accessory holes, as opposed to just one or none at all on most traditional minifigure hair, and a 3.2mm bar can attach to the underside of the torsos, giving them about as much connectivity as standard minifigure torsos have. A 1x1 brick or plate can also attach to the legs at a 45 degree angle, useful if for instance you wanted to have a gown hanging from a clothes rack. That said, I don't feel as though the lack of non-figure uses for mini-dolls plays much role in the opinion of most AFOLs who dislike the mini-doll. I've encountered many AFOLs who are perfectly willing to accept "bigfigs" like the Hulk or Thanos despite their much more extreme specialization and limited connectivity, yet refuse to allow mini-dolls into their collection. I don't feel like printed noses would be anywhere near as effective at making the mini-doll feel relatable and lifelike as molded noses are. And I don't know why you've had any trouble fitting headgear on the mini-dolls considering the nose doesn't actually stick any further forward than the front edge of the forehead. To put it a less tongue twistery way, the nose of the mini-doll doesn't stick out from the front, the eyes, mouth, and chin stick in.

Frankly, even a lot of kids playing with traditional minifigures usually just sort of hop or float them around. Nobody EXCEPT a person making a brickfilm is actually going to actually animate the legs into a full walk cycle for every stride a minifigure takes. Furthermore, the fast-paced nature of the LEGO movies creates a lot of opportunities for this sort of simplified movement — there are many, many scenes in these movies where characters leap wildly from place to place rather than walking or running "normally".

It's uncertain if Elves is continuing, Nexo Knights is basically confirmed not to be, Jurassic World is one of those licenses that doesn't typically get sets in non-movie years, and The LEGO Batman Movie and LEGO Ninjago Movie lines will probably be finished next year as well (unless LEGO continues to release Ninjago City expansions alongside the summer Ninjago sets). That's a lot of themes leaving or potentially leaving the picture. Themes like City, Star Wars, Super Heroes, Ninjago, Minecraft, and Minifigures are nothing new and were likely to stick around regardless of what new themes were on the table. It's unclear how many new sets Overwatch will have, let alone how many of those will be folded into existing themes like BrickHeadz or Minifigures. For all we know it could just be a "minifigures series + D2C" thing like the Simpsons series + Simpsons House in 2014 or Disney series + Disney castle in 2016 (though, I'd expect BrickHeadz regardless, now that those are a thing that exists). The LEGO Movie 2 is a big deal for sure and will get lots of sets, but both The LEGO Batman Movie and LEGO Ninjago Movie came out the same year as the retail launch of BrickHeadz and DC Super Hero Girls, which were not particularly small themes! In general, I would be VERY surprised if we've already heard about all the new 2019 themes when we're not even halfway through 2018. It's still anyone's guess what sort of themes we might have yet to hear about, but I don't think it's realistic to think Overwatch and The LEGO Movie 2 would preclude any other new product lines.

The name certainly has a vaguely African sound and she's voiced by Tiffany Haddish, so an African-inspired queen would be my expectation. Whether she would be representing a more history-based society (for example, Egyptian or Ethiopian) or a more "Afro-futurist" society like Wakanda is anyone's guess. Either way, any sets based on that setting would probably have some sort of playful twist since that was the norm in The LEGO Movie and will probably be the case this time as well.

I'd be patient. We've still seen very little of the new movie and I suspect there's a lot more stuff we haven't seen than stuff we have. One of the latest synopses I've read suggests that the space adventure portion of the movie will encompass visits to multiple planets, and there's no telling what sorts of scenery to expect on those planets. Also at least two characters have been announced who didn't show up in the trailer, even if neither of their names (Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi and Ice Cream Cone) gives me a traditional castle vibe. There are probably many, many more characters and potential sets waiting to be revealed.