Aanchir

Neat theory, but really there's no reason to assume that the people who have been making decisions about constraction are the same people who have wanted it gone all along. I've never seen anything to support the generalization that "the powers that be", broadly speaking, never liked it — after all, the former CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp had pretty high praise for it. "There are those in LEGO" could be referring to a handful of people, even people who had no involvement with the theme themselves. There's no reason to leap to assuming that it's a widespread consensus among the company's highest level decision makers. The cry from constraction fans always seems to be more sets, more new parts, more recolors, bigger marketing budgets, etc. But it's not at all a foregone conclusion that bigger investments would yield a better return on those investments. You don't have to hate Bionicle to make decisions based on what you think is best for the company. And what's best for the company doesn't always align with what fans of one specific brand or category want to see. Don't forget, most AFOLs hated Bionicle when it first came out, so let's not pretend that the LEGO Group's own market insights are always going to line up with what we as AFOLs want to see, let alone that the latter is more prescient than the former.

Personally I think if you want to attach a big animal like Rowan to a chariot, it’s probably better to use something flexible like chains than a rigid harness like this. And to attach them closer to where the saddle is.

I very much agree that a keep adds a lot to a castle! I am working on one for mine with a bedchamber, dining room, and kitchen. Thank you everyone for the feedback on my MOC! I agree if I wanted to design this for a $100–$150 price point I’d be using a lot more single-piece wall panels and columns (in fact, I could reduce each tower’s piece count by over 64 parts)! One reason I didn’t was since as a MOC I hope to maybe build in real life, my pieces are limited to what’s already released and the 2x2x5 quarter cylinder panel still only comes in three colors, and 1x4x5 castle wall panels only come in one of those colors (Spring Yellowish Green)! Not only is such a licheny color a lot brighter than a lot of Castle fans seem to prefer, it’d also be hard not to make it feel too much like the Goblin King’s Fortress from LEGO Elves. I might try making a separate simplified version though since the current WIP is approaching 1600 parts!

Thanks! Though working on this, I'm also realizing something I never really thought about before with regard to the 2013 King's Castle — it must have been quite a feat for the designer to fit winches for both a portcullis and a drawbridge in the same gatehouse. I'm having a dickens of a time figuring out if there's a good way to do that with mine. Were there any older castle sets that had winches for both of those things?

I think the only Castle 2013 set that directly resembled a Kingdoms set was the main King's Castle, and it seemed that it did that both to retain compatibility and to keep the archetypical attributes kids expect (grey walls, throne room, etc). I do think that they could make a similar castle more unique within those constraints, but I also feel like the decision to keep it similar to the previous castle, whether effective in the long run or not, was a purposeful decision. Gold Getaway had similar subject matter to previous prison carriage sets, but I don't feel like it felt like an identical design to any I remembered (certainly not to the most recent, Prison Carriage Rescue, which was extremely small and insubstantial). The ruins it included made use of the fairly new angled bricks and uneven colors to give it a crumbling look, something more advanced than I was used to seeing in Castle sets. The Gatehouse Raid was the first gatehouse set I since at least the year 2000 designed specifically to function as an expansion to the main castle. It also used detailed techniques for the sloped roofs and no big panel or frame elements, which set it apart from the smaller and simpler Kingdoms sets Outpost Attack and Escape from the Dragon's Prison. Dragon Mountain again used uneven colors and textures to create the impression of an evil tower built atop the ruins of a much older castle, a look I don't think we've seen before or since. I think it was also the first set to include a landing pad/"nest" for a dragon. Not an exceptionally complex build, but not a formulaic design either. Even Forest Ambush, simple as it was, was fairly unique with its tiny forest hideout and falling tree function. Overall I would describe the 2013 sets as formulaic concepts, but not recycled designs. Side note, I have been working on a Castle MOC on LDD lately. Still in the early stages, but would anyone here like a castle like this? Or are the color, textures, etc. still too unrealistic or the layout too formulaic? note: if this were a set it'd be MUCH more expensive than any of the recent King's Castles. I believe this WIP that I screencapped this morning was already close to 800 pieces on its own.

For what it's worth, when I played with Space or Castle or Pirates or Western sets as a kid, many of the characters DID have names, by way of the LEGO Mania Magazines (and in some cases, even the names of the sets). Not every background knight or pirate was named, and of course I later learned that the character names people grew up with in other countries were sometimes totally different, but Majisto, Captain Redbeard, King Kahuka, Thresher, Scavenger Sam, Ann Droid, Alpha Draconis, Basil the Bat Lord, Willa the Witch, and so on figured into my stories, as did whatever backstories or character traits they were given in official material. Of course, I also did stuff not prescribed in "official" media, like turning my pirates and Aquasharks into mermaids. And I've seen kids build similarly creative stories with Ninjago sets and characters. The existence of an official story is not a mandate for kids to act out those stories exactly, let alone a prohibition on creating their own stories. I also think this definition of evergreen falls into question when you consider some post-2000 Space and Castle themes that had not only named characters but, for their time, pretty detailed stories (Life on Mars and Knights' Kingdom II in particular). Are you saying if LEGO brought out a theme like those it would still leave a gaping void? Heck, what if they literally brought back Classic Space and Blacktron but tied them to a Jim Spaceborn TV show? After all, back in the 80s LEGO did discuss plans for a Jim Spaceborn TV series, video game, and animated series! The lack of LEGO-branded TV shows, movies, and video games back then was more a matter of what LEGO was confident in their ability to do at that time than a sense that themes derived some advantage from not having those things. Only the first paragraph about endless Hollywood sequels was directed at you specifically. The rest was more directed at the idea expressed by other members (here and elsewhere) that LEGO Star Wars has gone on too long or is getting old. I apologize if that wasn't 100% clear. For what it's worth, though, I don't really think themes like City, Kingdoms, or Pirates based on a simplified version of OUR world are that much more original than themes based on another company's fictional world. Of the evergreen play themes of the 80s and 90s, only LEGO Space regularly conjured entire worlds and the people and technology that existed in them the way Aquazone or Elves or Ninjago or Nexo Knights do. Those are the themes that I think could most accurately be described as "original".

Whenever I read comments like this I can't help but think about how many people made similar jokes about other movie series like Jaws and Rambo. This has never been purely a Disney thing, this is what Hollywood does with successful IPs, and they've had that reputation for many decades. All in all, as long as kids continue to love Star Wars, then Star Wars toys will continue to sell. And what's this about a theme going for "too long"? For an eight or nine year old LEGO fan it isn't going to make a huge difference whether their favorite theme has been around ten, twenty, or thirty years. Also, I don't think many of the AFOLs in this thread would be complaining if LEGO kept LEGO Castle or Space running uninterrupted since they began and released updated versions of the most popular sets every five or six years. What's the sense in saying a 20-year-old theme you don't like has been going "too long" and asking LEGO to bring back themes that have been floating around with only a few brief interruptions for ten to twenty years longer?

I think "some of the worst price to part ratios" is an odd generalization to make. The Mistika Makuta certainly didn't have a very good price per piece (nor had the Phantoka Makuta before them), but the Mistika Toa Nuva had pretty good price per piece — better, certainly, than many Glatorian and Glatorian Legends, let alone the Vahki. Tahu in particular deserves special acclaim for having the second-highest piece count of any canister set (after Toa Mahri Kongu), which gave him a better price per piece than the original Toa Nuva, Bohrok, Toa Hordika, Visorak, Piraka, Toa Inika, and even most of the Toa Mata.

Well, not quite the same boat, since they probably have more insights into the specific reasons for the present lack of Space themes, whereas we can merely speculate. I don't think it's a huge reach to say the return of new Star Wars movies beginning in 2015 was one factor, but possibly not the only factor. Maybe they found that all their other sci-fi-leaning themes were cannibalizing demand for Space sets specifically and wanted to stick with the themes kids responded better to. Maybe they've been testing new Space concepts every year or two this whole time and kids for some reason or another aren't responding as well to them as to other concepts that LEGO's chosen to develop. Maybe the LEGO Movie Sequel is planned to be as spacey as that one "space action musical" quote has led people to believe and LEGO didn't want to steal its thunder with a smaller Space theme so soon before when the movie was originally planned to launch. Maybe they actually have some kind of Space theme already in the pipeline and have just been holding off on launching it until Nexo Knights ended. Suffice to say the designers who work on Space products aren't kept in the dark about this kind of thing by their higher ups. So if they are in fact bothered by the lack of current space themes (and who's to say they are? Perhaps the other themes they work on are just as rewarding for them), it's probably tempered by that understanding.

I wouldn't say this is as great a limitation as you make it out to be with Hero Factory/Bionicle G2. I've seen plenty of MOCs wearing Hero Factory and Bionicle G2 masks that don't resemble the characters they originate from, just as I've seen original characters wearing G1 masks that at first glance feel like "Oh hey it's a Jaller/Whenua/Kopaka revamp". Perhaps Bionicle G1 did a better job training people not to innately associate mask X with character X, at least in the early years when each mask came in a broad spectrum of colors, but making the character as a whole stand out has always been up to the creativity of the builder. I also wouldn't say the less consistent character designs of G1 characters can be wholly justified by their masks being interchangeable. The Toa Metru are a standout example. Their masks were ostensibly supposed to be different forms of the ones they had as Turaga and as Toa Hordika, but the similarities were about as subtle as the similarities between the masks of the Toa Nuva and Phantoka/Mistika. The Toa Metru and Toa Hordika's color schemes and proportions also didn't particularly resemble the ones we'd previously associated with them as Turaga. The Toa Nuva were better about keeping characters' proportions and color schemes reasonably consistent, but as far as masks went, the Akaku Nuva and Pakari Nuva more closely resembled the Hau in shape than the masks they were ostensibly based on. By comparison, even without factoring in color, it's generally a lot easier to look at the G2 Masks of Power and pinpoint which Toa Mata mask and which Unity Mask of Power relates to them. Especially for a media-driven theme, making sure character designs are recognizable is one of the basics of character design, unless their identity is supposed to be a secret from the viewer.

Hmmm… I have to admit, entering this topic I was hoping to see something cute and charming. Instead this MOC just feels… cynical. And "This action figure is meant to illustrate the sorry state in which the child and teen entertainment industry is finding itself in our age." What age might that be? There's nothing about this MOC that feels particularly evocative of today's kids or the entertainment directed at them — even the name, "Barbinator", mashes up an iconic toy of the 50s and an iconic film of the 80s. Is it supposed to be decrying violence in media? Sexuality in media? Neither of those are new phenomena, and I don't feel blending those two influences into one MOC strengthens its ability to make a statement on either. I also feel like the janky proportions don't really work in this figure's favor. The body is too long relative to the "human" leg — quite the opposite of the long-legged proportions you'd expect a Barbie doll or similar toy — and the proportions of the robot leg are completely different from the human one, with the hip joint bizarrely placed over a module and a half below the crotch and the knee joint nearly level with the human leg's ankle joint. NPU for the face, hair, and pockets, and I'm sorry I don't have much more positive to say about this.

I'm hoping this is sarcasm… after all, a great number of LEGO designers not only like Space fans, they are Space fans! Furthermore, just because you as a Space fan feel neglected by the current lineup doesn't mean that Space fans as a bloc all feel the same way you do. After all, many sets from recent themes like Nexo Knights, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Ultra Agents sets are heavily sci-fi influenced and could easily pass for Space sets if you put them on a generic lunar backdrop and changed out the characters for generic astronauts. And references to Classic Space can be found in LEGO themes ranging from Nexo Knights to City to Friends.

A lot of parents download apps for their kids to play with on THEIR smartphones/tablets… kids not owning phones or tablets themselves is not a deal-breaker. Also, I didn't have a phone until I was a teenager, but I did have Internet and video games when I was growing up in the late 90s, and it made me MORE interested in LEGO, not less. After all, I could suddenly play games and read comics involving my favorite LEGO characters, build cool stuff from the non-LEGO video games I enjoyed, download both official and unofficial building instructions for alternate models, look at MOCs/art/stories other LEGO fans had created, follow LEGO news updates from LEGO.com and unofficial LEGO fansites, etc. These days with as many official and unofficial LEGO videos on YouTube, Netflix, etc. as there are (stuff I couldn't have dreamed of back in the 90s), I imagine tech-savvy kids have even more online connections to keep them engaged with LEGO as a hobby/interest.

His elbows are fixed at a 90-degree angle, but the entire lower arm can rotate on an axle. Elbows with jointed elbows could not work to swing a two-handed weapon — you can try it yourself if you have a spare gearbox. Having more resistance in the rotation of his hands and less in the rotation of his elbows would make him more likely to raise or lower both arms instead of simultaneously raising one and lowering the other.

Good review! For the question about why blue for Black Panther's outfit, I suspect that LEGO wanted to use metallic ink to really capture the glowiness of the outfit. They introduced a new metallic light blue ink last year but I don't think they have any metallic purple ink… maybe that's something they should think about introducing in the future, though!

This is polyethylene plastic they're describing, which is not a material they normally use for figures. It's used for parts that are already softer and more flexible than a typical LEGO brick like LEGO tree leaf/branch pieces, flower stems, etc. Also, the chemical composition of the plastic should not be substantially different; it's just a change in the processes and materials they use to create it.

Why would stud shooters limit kids' imagination? After all, I've never seen anybody say that about the firing cannons that have been in Pirates sets since the late 80s, and stud shooters are much easier to customize with other bricks or incorporate into MOCs than pirate cannons are. I also don't get the feeling that the classic crossbows are being phased out. They appeared in four sets just last year! In the first ten years of the crossbow mold's existence (1990–1999) there was only ONE year that it was used in more sets than that. Sure, it's possible that LEGO could phase it out at any time — but there's no more reason to assume that's happening now than there was at many different points in the past.

I could see stud shooters being used as some sort of magical weapon as we've seen them used in LEGO Elves, Nexo Knights, and Bionicle, but I wouldn't expect them to replace normal crossbows, by virtue of the fact that even kids would have a hard time interpreting studs as crossbow bolts. And I certainly wouldn't expect to see stud shooters replace catapults when including an actual catapult is just as easy and offers the same amount of play value. Even several baddies in Nexo Knights continued to use catapults, and that was a theme where factors like realism or historical accuracy hardly mattered at all. Launcher functions may be pretty much a given these days, but LEGO still has more than enough launcher styles at their disposal to choose whichever one is most appropriate for a given set. We've seen that in the latest Pirates wave, where the availability of stud shooters actually gave LEGO the option to use them as smaller mortars, as opposed to the silliness of putting full-size cannons on small dinghies like some classic Pirates sets did. Or in The Hobbit sets, where the spring-loaded ballista in Laketown made use of the relatively new 1x4 spring-loaded shooter, instead of having to use bigger and less authentic-looking ammunition like the ballistas in Vikings and Knights' Kingdom II.

With a stinger wouldn't it be a manticore? I guess that can be described as a chimera in the general sense, but not in the mythological sense. I came up with a simple mod for Rowan's mane that some people might prefer to make it look fluffier. I can't decide if I like it better this way or the way it is in the instructions, though. https://twitter.com/ScottBarnick/status/967537988514340865

City is still one of the top-selling LEGO themes. I doubt that LEGO would cancel it or even change its name unless they really thought its core audience of kids was growing tired of it, and clearly that hasn't happened yet. Furthermore, they wouldn't keep it off the shelves without a meaningful replacement for 5–10 years. The only time there's been years without some kind of Town/City product line was in the early 2000s when Jack Stone filled that niche, and it's well understood at this point that was a mistake on the LEGO Group's part. Just because you dislike the current state of the City line doesn't mean it's in any sort of dire straits that would require cancelling or rebranding it.

I mean, I'm sure some do. When I was a kid I greatly enjoyed the book "Castle" by David Macaulay, which was about how castles were built. And while I doubt many kids would name those specific words if you asked them their interests, that's not to say they wouldn't have a passion for building things like drawbridges or towers with crenelated battlements, which are the sort of thing I had in mind when I typed that. Medieval castles and their architecture are iconic even over here where we don't have any authentic examples for kids to marvel at.

The main reason I'd disagree with that is that we've seen with Nexo Knights that LEGO isn't afraid to have a second theme with various fantasy monsters as its baddies at the same time as Ninjago. And seeing as the only specific type of "bad guys" Ninjago has had in common with past Castle themes are skeletons and ghosts, I think LEGO could easily continue to come up with Castle baddies that wouldn't conflict with what they've already done in Ninjago. I think the centrality of dragons to Ninjago sets might be a bigger/more consistent way Ninjago sticks its toe into Castle's territory… and yet, even during Ninjago's run we've continued to see LEGO release dragons in various other themes, including Castle, Nexo Knights, Creator, Elves, The Hobbit, Minecraft, and even Hero Factory. Now, are there kids out there who get everything they'd ever want out of a Castle theme from Ninjago? Almost certainly! Because people who like Castle are bound to like it for loads of different reasons. For some kids, maybe cool dragons, monsters, and swordfights are really the biggest and most important parts of the Castle theme to them, and in that case Ninjago's got those things in spades. But there are probably other kids who are especially into wizards and knights on horseback and architecture of medieval Europe, and Ninjago doesn't have any of those things.

I've only seen through the first episode of Season 2, but it's pretty varied. A lot of the peasant/commoner characters like Axl's family do act accordingly, but there's also some characters who represent more modern-day tropes like Jurgen von Stroheim, the stereotypical auteur film director who first appears in the episode "The Golden Castle". And you still have, like, farms with livestock on them (hence Lance's animal friend, Hamletta, who he bonds with towards the end of Season 1 when monsters trap him in a pigsty). I think the Ninjago sets from the Hands of Time wave (first half 2018) may have been developed later than many other sets that year due to the release LEGO Ninjago Movie being pushed back a year from its original September 2016 date. I don't have a source on that, though, it's just a hunch. And I realize that doesn't explain why we haven't seen Copper Metallic in this year's sets. Sand Purple was nice, though I'm not sure if LEGO would reintroduce it now, given that they currently have not one but two lavender colors. If they were wanting to introduce another purple color I'd expect it to be something more like classic Bright Violet (Purple) that falls more in between Medium Lavender and Medium Lilac (Dark Purple).

A new Vikings theme would be AWESOME, and it wouldn't be surprising to me if LEGO did that at some point seeing as they're a Danish company. They might create a slightly different sort of conflict for it, of course, what with Ninjago being as dragon-heavy as it is, but I still wouldn't mind that. Sand Red and Sand Purple have been discontinued for years, and while they could make a surprise reappearance like teal did, I wouldn't count on it. Sand Green and Sand Yellow (Dark Tan) are still active, though. As is Medium Nougat, which we haven't seen much of in Castle despite it being a nice earthy color. Another color I'd love to see more of in the next Castle theme is Copper Metallic! We've only seen a bit of it in last year's Ninjago sets, but I hope and fully expect to see more of it in the years to come. A Castle theme would be a fun place for LEGO to introduce it for more standard building elements (similar to how they used Warm Gold in the last several Castle themes) rather than just figure accessories.

I don't think target age range really would have a huge impact on how muted the colors are. The colors for Fantasy Era were pretty muted in their own right, and those were aimed at more or less the same age range as subsequent Castle themes (5–12 for the smallest sets, 7–12 for the biggest sets, 12+ for MMV). Whereas Ninjago has generally had pretty bright colors despite being aimed at ages 7–14 for the smallest sets, 9–14 for the biggest,14+ for Temple of Airjitzu, and 16+ for Ninjago City. Even the steampunk-ish Sky Pirate sets that were primarily brown and black had conspicuous Bright Orange accents. That's not to say that LEGO wouldn't do more muted colors again or wouldn't bump up the target age range from other traditional castle themes, just that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of correlation there. Bright colors are eye-catching on a shelf for kids and adults of any age, just as kids and adults of any age can appreciate the touch of realism that colors like grey or black lend to stone walls. Personally, I would like to see at least a smattering of bright colors like in Kingdoms, since monochrome builds tend to bore me (part of why I'm no huge fan of Star Wars sets). But as much as I like sets like The Goblin King's Fortress for their eerie, otherworldly atmosphere, it's not as though I would object to grey walls on principle. Maybe we could get Sand Blue as part of a new color scheme? It's not a color we've seen used very often. I wouldn't want it to be the brightest part of a color scheme, but it could be used to add some variety, like the Sand Yellow foundations of 70404 or the occasional Sand Green brickwork of 9474. I know Nexo Knights used a lot of Sand Blue not long ago, but I think it could be used easily without looking particularly "Nexo".