Aanchir

I dunno, I thought its wing-flapping function was a lot of fun. I wouldn't mind either getting as a set or MOCing a re-imagined Ultra Dragon, though, given how beautifully some of the other builds from that year (Destiny's Bounty and Ultra Sonic Raider) have been re-imagined, and how much Ninjago dragon design has advanced since then.

The thing is, from a sales perspective, "making things enticing" ISN'T an issue they're having with City. City thrives on rehashes. Police stations weren't always a yearly fixture in City, they became one because they tend to be some of the best-selling sets. If Castle is to be any bigger than it was in 2013, it needs to be able to appeal to kids who weren't old enough to be playing with Castle sets when the 2010 and 2013 Castle waves came out, and who consequently aren't likely to care much if LEGO had a similar set six or more years ago. Also, generally, when LEGO keeps revisiting certain ideas over and over again, it's usually because they continue to test better with kids than other, less conventional ideas. Amusingly, this was actually brought up in reference to Ninjago's development (particularly the spinners) on pages 276–277 of Brick by Brick: "'The best way to rank a theme is to see if kids keep talking about it,' said Nonneman*. 'If they keep coming up with stories about how they'd play in the world you're showing them, you know you're onto something big.'" …"The ninja theme elicited waves of stories from kids, but not enough to convince the team that the concept, by itself, would propel the line to its sales target of 10 percent of the company's revenue. To clear that bar, the team would have to come up with an element that would give it 'schoolyard currency,' as Schou** put it. 'We needed something that was competitive and cool. Something the kids would talk about at school.' In fact, the Ninjago concept team's goal — left unstated to upper management — was for the toy to be so popular it would be banned from schools." …"'When we tested the spinners with kids, they almost blew the roof off the place,' Legernes*** continued. 'They were so excited they started screaming. The moderator told us we were sitting on a treasure. She'd never seen such a strong response to a test.'" *marketing director Henrik Nonneman **senior vice president Poul Schou ***creative director Erik Legernes

Hey now, I love sword-slinging heroes and villains… after all, my three favorite themes are Bionicle, Elves, and Ninjago. Region-exclusive lines are something LEGO has done before (Dark Forest, Roboforce, and the original Aquaraiders were exclusive to the Americas as far as I know), but they haven't done as much of that in a while. And in those cases, those region-exclusive lines were smaller than globally released Castle and Space themes, not larger. After all, why invest as much in developing a theme that will generate smaller returns? The most recent attempts at major region-exclusive lines I can think of (i.e. more than individual minifigures series or promotional products) were Dino Attack (intended as an American-only release, but then re-imagined as Dino 2010 for the rest of the world) and Vikings (originally intended as a Europe-only release but then released in America as well). Again, though, these each launched with about five sets each, and were short-lived. At that point I'm not sure there's really any advantage a region-exclusive theme offers over even a small-scale global theme like Kingdoms, Castle 2013, or Pirates 2015. Worth noting that my comments on regional interest aren't referring only to some Europe vs. US divide. Lately LEGO's been very interested in expanding their presence in Asia. I'm not really in-tune enough with Asian cultures enough to really know what sorts of brands and genres are popular with kids there, though. They certainly haven't so far. Between Disney, Elves, Nexo Knights, Minecraft, etc. there have been quite a few castles in sets lately, even if they aren't branded as "LEGO Castle".

Could be a matter of how much global reach that interest in Castle has… most of those brands are decidedly less well-known in the US than LEGO is (some toy stores carry Playmobil and Schleich, but far fewer department stores or bookstores do). That said, I don't think it's at all implausible that there's enough demand out there to support some type of traditional Castle theme, just not necessarily on the scale of the big themes like Ninjago, Friends, or City (which have had years to prove they can support dozens of sets on a yearly basis). I mean, as I've pointed out before, there have been loads of sets containing things like castles and dragons lately, even if not always in boy-targeted, traditional-minifigure-based medieval fantasy themes. And if LEGO really thought that Castle sets weren't cool anymore, why would they have bothered making their 2016 "big bang" theme Castle-inspired on any level? It's not as though some abstract loyalty to their classic themes overrides their desire to make money. The idea that Nexo Knights was somehow motivated by a sense that kids no longer cared about Castles implies that LEGO felt some pressing need to take something that's not cool anymore and MAKE it cool, whereas in reality the LEGO Group's development strategy for almost all themes is to start with elements kids are already known to like and understand. LEGO certainly didn't create Ninjago based on some weird idea that kids didn't care about ninjas, or Chima based on the idea that kids didn't care about ferocious animals.

Big and/or pre-assembled animals like cows, horses, bears, and monkeys are expensive and offer little in the way of a building experience. LEGO doesn't just relegate them mostly to bigger sets to make those sets sell better, they do it because the big sets have enough cheaper bricks to offset the cost and add enough building to balance them out. Even the LEGO City "fun at the…" people pack sets have an unusually low piece count and limited building experience for their price due to their large number of uniquely printed and pre-assembled bricks — just imagine that applied to animal pieces that are even bigger, share molds and prints with fewer sets, and involve less actual building. Plus, people already complain about some LEGO animals being "Playmobil-ish" — how do you think they'd feel about animal packs analogous to the collectible minifigures that involved NO building? The Friends animal packs were a great resource for getting animals, but they were also invariably small, single-piece animals (most of the molds for which also appeared in other sets) coupled with 30–45 other bricks. Even then, like minifigures or mini-dolls, the animals seemed to eat up more of the budget than similar-sized bricks might, given that the animal packs had lower piece counts than the similarly priced and packaged Mixels sets.

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=44359pb01&idColor=1#T=C&C=1 from https://brickset.com/sets/7775-1/Aquabase-Invasion

Where pop culture plays a big role, though, is in keeping these things exciting beyond the preschool age range. Disney movies do an OK job of that, for what it's worth, but then again, Disney is already its own theme, and one that Castle builders seem largely disinterested in. The original Castle theme's longevity is not nearly such an anomaly when you recognize that it was broken down into MANY product lines. You claim it ended in 1998, but when you're already considering all those disparate Castle brands part of the same overarching theme, there's no reason Knights' Kingdom I could not be considered part of that same lineage (and Knights' Kingdom II, as well, though there was a break in between, possibly to avoid competition with the then brand-new Harry Potter sets). If they're not, it will probably have more to do with the way fandoms congregate online than anything else. Already the fandoms for newer brands like LEGO Ninjago tend to be more concentrated on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram than on forums. But I also think you severely underestimate the lasting appeal of story-driven brands. Look at how active the Transformers fandom is online. Or the Star Wars fandom (heck, Star Wars has been a LEGO theme for about 20 years itself and shows no signs of declining in popularity). Or the Marvel Comics fandom. Stories have a way of curating a passionate fanbase, and that kind of passion isn't something people simply forget as they get older. In my case, Bionicle will always be one of my most profound childhood LEGO experiences.

I think it's probably a fairly even split, to be honest? LEGO is an expensive toy; if people just wanted Star Wars memorabilia and didn't care whether or not it was LEGO there would be plenty of MUCH cheaper options, many of which are also more authentic to the source material since they don't have that extra layer of blocky abstraction. The "LEGO-ness" gives such products a unique sense of novelty and a unique play experience that sets them apart from other Star Wars toys. Same goes for other brands based on existing source material like LEGO Architecture or LEGO Super Heroes, or even arguably brands based on generic subject matter like City or Castle. Even if the person buying isn't at all interested in LEGO sets outside their preferred theme, the unique appeal that LEGO introduces to their favorite subject matter is still likely to be a major motivating factor in that person's purchases. Otherwise, there would be many less expensive and more authentic toys they could opt for instead.

I'm a bit hesitant to agree with this, because it can start to feel like gatekeeping (i.e. "you can be an adult who likes LEGO, but you're not a real AFOL unless you meet such-and-such criteria"). But I do agree that a lot of adults who buy and enjoy LEGO probably aren't active in the online AFOL community, and their interests don't necessarily line up with those who are.

When I was twelve I wanted the original Sandcrawler set, and the original Star Wars was already around 25 years old at that point. It helped that at that point it wasn't JUST from a 25-year-old movie… it had also been in other, newer Star Wars media like the video game Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, which was at that time still fairly recent. As a Star Wars fan I'd bought things like Star Wars cross section books that showed me the schematics of vehicles like the Sandcrawler. Plus, my parents had shown me the original Star Wars on videocassette when I was fairly young, so it didn't feel any newer or older than any other movie I watched on videocassette as a kid. Why should I have cared whether it came out in the 70s or 80s or even the early 90s? These days with things like Netflix, old stuff like that is even more accessible to kids than it was back then. And while it's true that AFOLs and TFOLs are the primary audience for things like the Ultimate Collector's Series sets or Creator Expert sets, those aren't produced or sold in anywhere NEAR the same numbers as kid-oriented themes like City or Friends or Ninjago.

I'm generally not as bothered by characters having the same clothes unless they also have the same face and/or hair; that's the big difference with the Sons of Garmadon wave. Also, the sky pirate foot soldiers from the battle pack also did have unique faces and torsos (much like Wooo and Howla from the Possession battle pack), not just unique hats.

I sort of feel like Forestmen would work better if they came partway into a theme's run, since a big part of their whole schtick is upsetting the status quo, so there needs to be something of status quo to upset. I do certainly think LEGO could do a great job with Forestmen if they brought them back since they've gotten pretty great at building trees. I definitely don't expect the next Castle theme to feel like Nexo Knights all over again, but it would be interesting to see whether any of the characteristics of Nexo Knights inform the approach of the next Castle theme. Say, the monsters, who ultimately felt more role-playing-game-inspired than Tolkien– or medieval-folklore-inspired (I mean, the theme's main villain first appeared in the story as a LITERAL Monster Manual from which all the lesser baddies sprung). There's been a lot of chatter about all the unused monster concepts from The Book of Monsters and the Nexo Knights Character Encyclopedia — it's totally possible some of those ideas could inspire new baddies in a more traditional Castle theme.

I've fallen behind on the series so for all I know it might feel like a natural story development (it does fit with Clay's established "orphan with a mysterious past" backstory), but I'm still a little bummed that Ava didn't go on to become Merlok's magical apprentice. I loved how well she and Merlok played off each other, with one being a wise old wizard who prefers traditional magic and the other being a young whiz kid who prefers modern technology, and the two having to learn to appreciate each other's strengths to support the knights. I would have loved to see Ava become some kind of technomage. Instead, she seems to have been left out of this year's sets entirely…

These look fantastic! I love brick-built animals. It has just enough specific shaping to feel lifelike and yet also enough "blockiness" to fit in with minifigures.

Bionicle G1 was generally not very good at redesigning characters in a way that kept them looking familiar… the original Toa Nuva in 2002 arguably came closest to looking like their previous forms, and even then many of their masks were warped beyond recognition. LEGO didn't really get good at redesigning constraction characters in a way that made them decidedly recognizable until the 2012 Breakout series of Hero Factory. In that respect, I don't feel like the Mistika Toa Nuva's diversions from the characters' previous designs were vastly worse than what we'd come to expect. I actually was rather fond of the way the Phantoka and Mistika made heavy use of neutral colors with brighter accents, although I would have probably preferred if the Mistika had continued the Phantoka's trend of using Dark Stone Grey armor with brighter primary colors instead of silver armor with darker primary colors. I did feel like the Mistika Toa Nuva's masks and weapons, while not the worst designs on their own, were a little worse at maintaining continuity with their past masks and weapons than the Phantoka's. I did like the characters' use of details like wings and jets, though it didn't feel quite as varied the Phantoka's means of propulsion. The Mistika Makuta were nice and highly creative designs, and much more varied than the Phantoka Makuta — even though their insect-inspired designs and bright primary colors didn't radiate darkness and evil the way the bat-inspired designs and darker primary colors of the Phantoka Makuta did. It did kind of continue the parallel of blood in real-life animals being analogous to light in Bionicle characters, which kept things consistent even if in hindsight that parallel feels a bit obtuse. Overall, many of the Mistika's faults were just demonstrating faults that could describe Bionicle G1 (especially that period of it) more broadly. The Glatorian the next year understandably came as a breath of fresh air with their brighter and more varied color schemes, more distinctive weapons, and more varied body proportions. In hindsight I don't remember the Mistika very fondly other than how much artwork they and other later Bionicle characters inspired me to create. Perhaps I might have remembered them more fondly if they hadn't come AFTER the Phantoka and thus had to live up to not only my expectations of the Toa Nuva, but also my expectations of how exactly that year's redesigns could be expected to go down.

Is anybody else a little bit bothered that the less important SOG bikers don't have more varied designs? I have no problem with more generic sorts of villains reusing parts, but I can't help noticing that Nails and the non-Juniors version of Chopper Maroon use the EXACT same pieces aside from their legs (the Juniors set at least makes Chopper Maroon stand out a bit more by giving him a helmet instead of hair and a bandana), and Luke Cunningham and Skip Vicious are identical aside from their visors. In my opinion, it would have been better if the parts were mixed and matched a bit more so that these characters didn't feel so identical — for instance, if two figures have the same face and you don't intend for them to be the same character, don't give them the same hair, neck accessories, and torsos as well! Mind you, I realize this was a common thing among the ghosts from "Possession", since aside from neck accessories each of the lower-ranking Ghost Warriors and Ghost Ninja but the two in the battle packs had one of three designs. For some reason it didn't bother me so much there… maybe because their designs felt more generic and didn't have traits that seemed as distinctive to an individual as a red mohawk.

Another way the narrower dimensions of Technic beams help is if you're working with both Technic and System. As discussed on pages 11 and 12 of this document, when attached to a Technic brick, a part the width of a full-size brick will collide with a brick or plate above, potentially putting stress on builds (why this happens is explained on page 2 — the hole in a Technic brick is raised slightly from where it'd be on a typical SNOT brick so it can accommodate the studs underneath). But the narrower dimensions of Technic beams prevent such collisions. I imagine this was a deliberate consideration, since when the first Technic beams and half-beams came out, Technic was still primarily using bricks and not studless beams.

I think the chances of seeing things resembling Classic Space would be limited even without new Star Wars movies, since compared to medieval castles or pirate ships or fire stations which kids of most generations expect many of the same characteristics of, kids' visions of the future and space travel are rather fluid and change according to whatever vision happens to be in vogue at the time. The boxy robots, drably-colored rovers, and dart-shaped spacecraft of Classic Space don't really look too futuristic by today's standards, but a castle set like 6080 or 6085 would still feel about as authentically medieval to a kid today as to a kid in the 80s (aside from their lack of interior features like throne rooms). We have gotten some classic space throwback sets over the years, but those are generally one-offs where their dated aesthetic is part of the "lore", and consequently, part of their appeal. Whereas mainstream Space themes have almost always been designed according to what kids at the time think is cool and futuristic.

The Wild West sets certainly stand out among my childhood memories… I particularly remember trying to make a Western film using my LEGO Studios and Wild West sets. I wasn't as drawn to the sets with the Indians, though. All in all, I don't think Western sets have ever been popular enough to become a year-after-year staple like Space, Castle, and Bionicle were at various points in the past. Even in my childhood in the 90s, kids simply didn't play cowboys and indians to the degree they once did, and even in the world of film the Western genre has largely been supplanted by the superhero genre. 19th century, too, would almost certainly be too niche to become an evergreen product, because not a lot of kids have a strong foundational knowledge of this time period and even fewer have a genuine passion for it the way they might for knights or ninjas or superheroes or astronauts. There's no such thing as sets that would make every child happy, any more than sets that would make every adult happy, but when it comes to making as many kids happy as possible, current themes like City, Friends, and Ninjago certainly aren't doing a bad job. Friends in particular deserves special credit for appealing to a demographic of kids that no other theme has succeeded in reaching to that same degree. Those three were part of the Bricks & More theme, which nowadays is branded as LEGO Classic (before it was Bricks & More, though, it did go by a number of other names including Creator).

Oh yeah, absolutely nothing wrong with that idea. I was more talking about why we don't see the same kind of crazy variety in play themes as we see in Creator. Even with Creator sets that have similar subjects like cars and trucks, they can depict it at wildly different scales. That's a much trickier proposition for play themes, where the sets are generally expected to inhabit the same "world".I actually wouldn't be surprised to see Creator continue to expand its subject matter. Last year's space shuttle set was a real departure from the 3-in-1 sets the theme had done before, this year's roller coaster even more so! And it's had medieval fantasy flavored sets before like the various 3-in-1 dragons, so a castle wouldn't be too much of a stretch. That said, I think such sets would probably have mixed reception among AFOLs, since they probably wouldn't be a great source of new pieces or minifigures.

Agreed, I was about to bring this up. With City there's also a certain degree of unity that goes beyond its setting. After all, the Friends theme is also modern day but typically covers much different categories of interests and play patterns from City. Most City sets have an emphasis on action play, vehicle play, and grown-up career role play. Friends, on the other hand, has a lot more lifestyle play, animal play, and school-age child/teenager role play. Creator may be a lot less unified than City or Castle in its subject matter, but that's because unlike City, Castle, Star Wars, or Ninjago, it is a creative construction theme, not a play theme. Like other creative construction themes like Classic, Technic, and Mindstorms, Creator's identity is defined not by its role-play and storytelling cues, but by its building style. And this distinction is not a newfangled phenomenon — back in the 80s, the category of themes we now call play themes were identified by their LEGOLAND branding, which Technic, Basic, and Advanced Basic sets lacked.

Except it's NOT best described as an "internal license" because that's a ridiculous term you made up. Some of the traits you describe that set Ninjago apart from other themes are accurate, but those are what define it as an intellectual property. They don't somehow make it "licensed". Furthermore, when I was a kid, I would desire sets for the characters, even when those characters didn't have detailed backstories and the like. For example, in Pirates, characters like Captain Redbeard, King Kahuka, and the unnamed Imperial Guard commander and pirate lady stood out from the rest. In Castle, the Royal King (who was, in fact, named in some regions), Majisto the wizard, Basil the Bat Lord, and Willa the Witch were unique enough to be specifically sought after in a way that generic knights and peasants were not. So even absent a structured storyline, these more defined characters were both present and highly desirable in many of the traditional play themes. There are definitely themes that are more open-ended and themes that are more structured. But from my perspective these exist on a multi-dimensional spectrum that you can break down into separate categories at any number of points. For instance, between themes with named characters (like Adventurers, Friends, and Ninjago) and themes without named characters (like Classic Castle and Speed Champions). Or between themes set in a stylized version of the real world (like City, Friends, and Pirates) or themes set in wholly invented fantasy worlds (like Aquazone, Ice Planet 2002, and Nexo Knights). You are specifically choosing to break them down between themes that are fully realized IPs and themes that are not, which is as valid a line to draw as any. But to define all IP-based themes as "licensed" is misleading and disregards the very real differences between in-house and licensed IPs, as well as the non-negligible similarities between in-house IPs and other in-house themes. I feel like on a lot of levels this is a very adult sort of perspective. When I wanted robot sets as a kid, for example, I got Spyrius and Roboforce sets from LEGO Space as well as, eventually, Technic and Mindstorms sets. Something like Bionicle geared specifically towards building highly-articulated humanoid robots would have probably appealed to me a lot more, but it didn't exist yet, and I wasn't going to disavow anything short of that ideal because I was a kid and I was still testing the waters, figuring out just what sorts of builds appealed to me. I also loved fantasy-oriented subjects. In LEGO Castle in the 90s, that stuff was still pretty scarce! A ghost here, a dragon there, a wizard elsewhere. There wasn't, at that time, a "high fantasy" theme like Elves or Bionicle or Fantasy-Era Castle, set in a world where magical and otherworldly elements were everywhere you turned. But I didn't swear off LEGO because of this — I bought the sets that I felt came closest to the types of subjects I enjoyed. Once you're an adult and can look back on the sum of your interests and experiences it's a lot easier to "rule out" what kinds of things won't appeal to you. But as a kid exploring new things, even things that might not fully scratch that itch you're trying to get at, is a part of that learning experience.

Sometimes I wonder if the 1980s were really all that different from today outside the sphere of LEGO. After all, LEGO was not nearly the toy industry leader back in the 80s that they are today. Looking at kids' interests through a wider lens, the 80s were when a lot of the big merchandise-driven media brands got their start, and to this day a lot of those same brands like Transformers, My Little Pony, Star Wars, etc. remain major players within that space. In fact, it's pretty easy to draw connections between the LEGO themes that feel weird and new and different in recent years (Ninjago, Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights, etc) and non-LEGO toys and cartoons of the 80s (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thundercats, Visionaries, etc). Arguably the LEGO Group remains pretty conservative among toymakers in this regard… much like Castle, Pirates, and Space in the 80s, a lot of today's themes draw on trends and sources of inspiration that easily go back two or three decades. This makes it especially bewildering when the argument is made that today's newfangled themes will never be as successful as the classics as long as parents hold the purse strings… Ninjago or Nexo Knights might not be familiar names to a lot of today's parents, but they're ultimately no weirder than the stuff many of them grew up enjoying. A 40-year-old father of an eight-year-old kid would've been born around 1978 and might have grown up watching 80s cartoons like Voltron, Transformers, He-Man, and BraveStarr. Frankly, the fact that some of the cartoons and toy lines of that era took off like they did demonstrates that even THAT generation's parents were willing to permit their children to enjoy things that seemed weird or unfamiliar.

Great points @BrickJagger. To be honest, the parallels to Knights' Kingdom II run even deeper than I'd considered. Thinking about it now, both KK2 and Nexo Knights were launched a few years after short-lived Castle themes that were generally considered underwhelming by the AFOL community. One wonders if AFOLs would have assumed so quickly that LEGO had given up on traditional Castle in either case if it weren't for that context.

This is still complete and utter nonsense. Calling Ninjago licensed is like calling Fabuland licensed. Like Bionicle or Fabuland, the Ninjago story and characters are primarily created according to the needs of the sets, not the other way around. Sometimes new sets and figures are inspired by the theme's history, which includes past story elements, but these are usually just continuity nods like the many that appeared in Space Police III, not cases of the designers giving up creative control to the media development teams. Also, most Castle and Pirates sets have not been aimed at the same age range as Ninjago and Nexo Knights sets, but rather the target age range for LEGO City, which has managed to remain one of the most reliably successful themes for over a decade despite having scarcely any named or defined characters. So even if the 2013 and 2015 incarnations of those themes were not successful, I don't think that somehow proves kids won't enjoy a theme without a character-driven story. I figure we'd be most likely to see a few BrickHeadz and Disney Princess sets inspired by the original animated movies (like we saw alongside the live-action Beauty and the Beast), but not necessarily anything more than that. Disney's live-action remakes are usually not as toyetic as the original animated versions.