Aanchir

You're definitely not the first person to raise those concerns. It's interesting, for every "there's not enough good sets these days" complaints I see, I have easily seen just as many "there are TOO MANY good sets these days and I can't afford them all/can't choose between them". That said, this summer I did semi-frequently visit stores and end up buying nothing, but it's less due to being paralyzed by choice and more due to planning out most of my big purchases months in advance and saving them for when there's a deal that compels me to take the plunge (like the LEGO tote bag offer a couple months ago). The number of sets my brother and I have bought this summer alone is far from insubstantial… three Elves sets, seven Ninjago Movie sets, a Friends set, three Creator sets, a Super Hero Girls set… I'm not even sure that's everything. And there are still a few Nexo Knights sets tentatively on my wish list for the rest of the year.

I still have some Agents MOCs together that I built in '08 or '09, but it's not because they're super special to me or anything. Just never wound up needing to reuse the pieces.

If they were to do that it would probably have to be for a separate promotion, as I can't see Toys 'R' Us having more than one pack a week for Bricktober regardless of its contents.

This is a gorgeous MOC, my friend! Rare to see a lot of amazing Duplo MOCs in this community. But yeah, I think Lyi has a point about the complexity. A kid who's ready to follow the instructions and build something this elaborate is probably ready for Juniors in the very least, and possibly other System themes like City as well. Because of this I don't know if Duplo sets will ever get any more complex than https://brickset.com/sets/4785-1/Black-Castle.

I wouldn't say that the one-year licenses have replaced other one-year themes, just because even back in the years you describe there were no shortage of one-year licenses. Prince of Persia, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lone Ranger… and if you're counting Atlantis, which got a smaller second wave, as a one year theme, you might as well throw in Cars and Harry Potter, which each got a two-year run during that same period. Beyond that, the 2013 Castle and 2015 Pirates waves could arguably be considered "one-and-done" themes in hindsight, and as you mentioned there was also Galaxy Squad in 2013 and Ultra Agents in 2014–2015. For that matter, why not throw in The LEGO Movie as a 2014 example? It was much bigger and more heavily marketed than other themes you mention, but it had a similar release schedule. I don't think themes like this have been gone nearly long enough to read any kind of trend into it, and chances are the only reason we didn't have one last year or this year is because of The LEGO Ninjago Movie (originally scheduled for 2016) and The LEGO Batman Movie taking their place. You say that as if Chima was cut short somehow, instead of having a fairly healthy three-year run? It definitely got smaller and had some sets cancelled by the end, but it still had a somewhat substantial final year, and it's not like it was ever expected to be evergreen. I also don't think that as a community our purchasing decisions have very much impact on how well themes that aren't aimed at us in the first place end up lasting. Maybe a bit more impact in the case of those of us who are parents, but even then, AFOLs make up a pretty small slice of the KFOL parent demographic. If every AFOL were to abruptly stop buying Ninjago or City or Friends sets, then it'd probably mean fewer D2C sets like Temple of Airjitzu or Ninjago City, but it wouldn't be the death knell for the theme as a whole by any stretch of the imagination. The only themes the AFOL community could really stand any chance of killing are themes that are aimed at an older audience to begin with such as Ideas, Architecture, Mindstorms, BrickHeadz, Creator Expert, etc.

I saw these on Brickly and they're fantastic! I love the creative mashup of 50s imagery in an sci-fi "human body" setting. It definitely stands out from any previous LEGO themes, although the convertible somewhat calls to mind Space Police III with its sci-fi re-imaginings of cars and trucks. I can tell you had a lot of fun naming the sets, too! Some of the play features are really brilliant, particularly the pop-up shooters on the convertible and the conveyor belt in the factory. It's really impressive how you took a purist approach to the design of the sets and minifigures. The colorful branches take on a whole new meaning as networks of cells, as do the flowers as spore-like ammo. And your WBC and germ forces have some really striking and coherent designs and costumes, despite being pieced together from figs from so many different themes! I agree with Lyi, though — these would almost certainly be relegated to Action/Adventure Themes forum if they were real sets! That's just the way things seem to work here on Eurobricks most of the time… if a theme overtly blends more than one genre/concept and isn't licensed or set in space, that's where it winds up. While this wave of sets you've dreamed up is more than strong enough to stand on its own, it does get my imagination racing to wonder what direction the sets and story might go in if a theme like this were to get a second wave…

Your post didn't offend me by any means. My rant about people dismissing newer themes as "childish" was not directed strictly at you, but rather at a lot of the more general comments I see about today's themes (like Robert8's initial reply in this topic). I think suggesting there was "something for pretty much everyone" back in the day is overstating things a lot. I mean, for starters, there's the whole issue of what was there for girls. Obviously there's no reason girls COULDN'T play with the themes back then, but for the most part they weren't, because in one way or another those themes weren't pressing the right buttons for them. Genre-wise, 2009 also didn't really have any superhero-themed sets, or any video game themed sets, or any dinosaur-themed sets, or any princess-themed sets, or any ninja-themed sets. The classic themes are great in their own right and it's no fluke that they're so beloved, but they aren't all-encompassing by any stretch of the imagination. Generally speaking, doesn't the fact that LEGO is selling so many more sets than they were in 2009 seem to imply that they're reaching a wider audience than they were back then? I know there are certainly factors to that besides the variety of sets they offer, such as marketing campaigns and international expansion, but even so, I don't get the sense that LEGO fans of any age are becoming less numerous or less diverse in their interests.

BrickHeadz is just an experiment. If it doesn't do well then they can retire it, but it would be stupid to never try things like that at all. It's hardly the first time LEGO has tried to blend their classic building toys with other types of product. I mean, you could just as easily say that Trains are a market LEGO never needed to get into. it's pretty evident they're just jumping on the coat tails of Lionel. Or Technic is a market LEGO never needed to get into. It's pretty evident they're just jumping on the coat tails of Meccano. But LEGO wouldn't be where they are today if they didn't take risks, and as risks go, BrickHeadz are a remarkably small one (low consumer entry point, zero new molds, and entirely based on themes that are already firmly established). As for the DC Super Hero Girls, is that specific theme necessary? Maybe not. Are more girl-oriented themes necessary in general? Almost certainly. Ideally, girl-oriented themes should offer just as much variety as more boy-oriented ones. No reason to act as if three is the limit, particularly when none of those remaining three (Friends, Disney, Elves) veer into sci-fi territory to the degree that Super Hero Girls does. Having an intermediate line like Juniors in between Duplo and the System play themes is nothing new. Juniors is to kids today what Fabuland was to kids in the 80s. It's a great way to recruit LEGO fans earlier than a typical play theme would be able to do otherwise. Also, I don't exactly get your point about there being too many modulars out? For the most part, the modulars have been coming out at a fairly consistent pace of one a year, so the only way you'd have any fewer at one time is if they retired sooner, and wouldn't a smaller window of availability make it harder for people to keep up? I can understand the frustration when it comes to other types of high-priced that don't come out on such a strict schedule, but with one-a-year sets like the modulars, the more of them remain available, the easier they become to collect.

By Castle standards the latest few versions of the King's Castle have been reasonably parts-intensive. I'd love a LEGO castle that's as intricate as sets like 41180, 70323, or 70617, but I'm not sure I can see that happening unless the next Castle theme has a higher recommended age range than previous Castle themes. In the meantime, Elves and Nexo Knights continue to do a much better job delivering livable castles than Castle sets ever have… Knighton Castle has beds for Robin, Ava, and all five knights, plus a small dining room, and even the much smaller Goblin King's Fortress has a foyer, study, and bedroom. I hope that the next iteration of Castle will follow suit. If a theme as flashy, aggressive, and play-feature-heavy as Nexo Knights can include the kind of "creature comforts" that make a castle feel like more than just a big ol' wall, then surely a more conventional castle can at least include a bedchamber or banquet table?

I don't think it's "wrong" to not like a theme. I think it's "wrong" to make up silly excuses for why a modern theme aimed at ages 7+ (like Ninjago, Elves, or Nexo Knights) is somehow "more childish" than a classic theme aimed at the same age range or younger (like City, Castle, or Pirates). It's a profoundly lazy way to dismissing themes you don't like by making them sound frivolous or unsophisticated, and you'd think AFOLs would know better than to resort to that sort of rhetoric given how easy it is for people outside the community to dismiss our entire hobby in those same terms. We should all be big enough to admit when we don't like a theme without making it sound like it's beneath our dignity or insinuating that the stuff we DO like is more grown-up or mature somehow. I mean, really, how are smiley-faced spacemen in color coded onesies with a big, cartoony planet logo on the front any more "grown up" than ninjas with shiny gold weapons fighting spooky snake monsters? Just because the people who enjoyed the classic themes have grown up does not make liking those themes any more of a grown-up thing than liking more recent stuff. It's that double standard that bothers me — the idea that older kid-targeted themes or brands are perfectly acceptable for grown-ups to enjoy, but they'd be debasing themselves to enjoy anything newer, even if it's targeted at the same age range as the old stuff. Your comment about LEGO "producing less and less sets that can appeal to kids and adults alike" further exemplifies this. I'm an adult and Ninjago and Elves are among my all-time favorite themes. Given the amount of enthusiasm and discussion of those themes on sites like this one, I hardly think I'm alone in that. How many adults does it take to like a theme or product before it qualifies as something that "can appeal to kids and adults alike"?

I don't have it yet, but I think it's a good set. THAT SAID… if you're willing to wait you'll probably have the option of picking it up at a reduced price, much like last year's Volcano Lair set.

I mean, we currently have TWO themes with a heavy emphasis on brick-built dragons: Elves and Ninjago. They're not quite the same style as Dragon Lands, but I don't think we're lacking in choice in that respect. Overall, I don't see any reason to think LEGO is entering a "dark age" or anything like that. LEGO has loads of great non-licensed sets, even if a lot of stuffy old AFOLs tend to ignore them because they mistakenly think they're more "childish" than the simplistic, brightly-colored playsets they enjoyed as kids. LEGO is magnitudes more popular with girls than they ever were in the past. And the fact that the company has hit a slight bump in the road after basically a decade of steady growth doesn't somehow mean they've veered completely off the successful course they've been on for the past decade.

You seem to have an overly simplistic view of why LEGO's crisis in the early 2000s came about. Need I remind you that the theme that saved them from bankruptcy in 2003 wasn't one of their classic "staple themes", but rather Bionicle? And themes like Ninjago and Nexo Knights are in many ways designed specifically according to the lessons that LEGO learned back then about how to manage a successful theme. The book Brick by Brick, easily the most authoritative resource on how LEGO got into that mess and how they got out of it, devotes entire chapters to both Bionicle and Ninjago due to what incredible success stories they were. If you read that book you'll see that LEGO learned a lot more valuable lessons from their financial crisis than any nostalgia-crazed 80s fanatic who thinks success is as simple as "do more of the stuff I liked as a kid and stop trying new things".

Sets definitely have way more tiny detail pieces than they used to. However, I think that detail is usually for its own sake and for the sake of the building experience, not to "fool" people with high piece counts on small sets or anything like that. Like, just a few years ago it seemed like us AFOLs wanted LEGO to use more small pieces. Sets that used bigger pieces were condemned as "<insert that tiresome argument>", even if they had substantial brick-built detail elsewhere (like the Ninjago dragons) or used those big parts in ways that smaller parts would not have worked (like the counter-rotating drills from Power Miners). Nowadays, though, a lot of AFOLs seem to have a hard time accepting that LEGO would use smaller pieces for any reason other than to deceive us with disproportionately high piece counts — even though LEGO doesn't even put piece counts on the boxes in most of the countries where they operate! To be honest I have a hard time even believing that the average buyer thinks about price-per-piece the same way us AFOLs do, instead of just buying based on how much they like the model on the package. Goodness knows the increased amount of building hasn't shut up all the parents who still think today's sets have way less bricks than they used to and "only build one thing". If they do any comparison shopping it'll probably just be comparing the piece count labels of the sets on the shelf right now (i.e. "this set is twice as big as this one from the same wave" or "500 is a big number and I'm not sure my child is ready for that, but 200 sounds just fine"). Not comparing how the piece counts of today's sets stack up against sets from five to ten years ago or whether they meet some threshold for what price per piece is good or fair. Some parents even seem to think of high piece counts as a disadvantage, since their own main interaction with the bricks is having to find missing bricks or clean up messes. For those who do still feel like small pieces are a trick to make us AFOLs pay more for less, though, you can always compare set prices against their weight, which can give you a better sense of the actual volume of plastic you're getting. And in many cases that reveals that we are still getting a fair deal compared to the 90s! Like, according to BrickLink, the new Destiny's Bounty weighs more than ANY classic pirate ships, but as mentioned above, costs less than Black Seas Barracuda or Skull's Eye Schooner. The difference in piece count is much greater than the difference in weight due to all those tiny detail bricks, but regardless of which metric you use, you're still getting more LEGO for a lower price. The decision makes more sense in the context of what LEGO had been doing prior to this decision. Due to their long-running growth streak they had been taking on a LOT of new hires — in the year leading up to last year's interim result, they hired 3500 people, growing their workforce by a whopping 24%! And at least some of this was probably with the expectation that the cost of so many new hires would be offset by continued growth. Now that it turns out the growth HASN'T continued steadily, they've had to walk that back somewhat. Now, perhaps it would have been more responsible not to take on so many new employees in the first place, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

"Economic woes" is probably overstating things. Profits and revenues are still higher than they were at this point in 2014, it's just that at that point those numbers were growing and now they're not. As such LEGO can't keep running their business the same way they did when their profits were climbing year after year. I feel bad for the employees who will be laid off, but if LEGO was taking on a lot of new employees and expecting rising revenues to balance out the added costs, then I understand them having to dial back. For reference's sake, in their 2016 interim result they mentioned having hired 3500 new employees in the past year, growing their workforce by 24%! Whereas they're only now reducing their workforce by 8%. Hopefully the employees who lose their jobs this year will not have too much trouble finding stable and rewarding employment elsewhere.

I think we AFOLs tend to seriously overstate the importance of big AFOL-targeted exclusives, both in our celebration of them and our criticisms of them. It's true, there were not 800-dollar sets 20 years ago. However, in the overall portfolio of LEGO products, big exclusives like that are basically a blip, and the vast majority of sets are about as affordably priced as ever. Also, while I will respect your request not to bring up price per piece, I do think inflation has to be considered. Just looking at some prices of beloved classic sets: 6285 Black Seas Barracuda cost $110 in 1989, or over $218 in today's money 6399 Airport Shuttle cost $140 in 1990, or over $263 in today's money 4558 Metroliner cost $149 in 1991, or over $269 in today's money 4563 Load and Haul Railroad cost $120 in 1991, or over $216 in today's money 6286 Skull's Eye Schooner cost $126.50 in 1993, or over $215 in today's money Compared to these kid-targeted sets from the late 80s and early 90s, the prices for today's priciest kid-targeted sets like Destiny's Bounty or First Order Star Destroyer, and even some AFOL-targeted exclusives like the Carousel, UCS Snowspeeder, and Silent Mary, are actually pretty tame. There are more of these bigger sets than there used to be, but there are more sets at low- and mid-range price points as well. I also feel like there are plenty of small and mid-range sets these days with quality designs. Consider 31064, 41183, 41311, 60151, 70353, 70611, 70623, and 70911. They're all fairly detailed and complex builds at a relatively modest $30 price point. I wouldn't call them "cheapo" by any stretch of the imagination.

I've had a good experience with Flickr for all kinds of photo hosting (art, MOCs, reviews).

This is a question I muse on from time to time, that's obviously highly subjective. Is there a certain point at which a theme becomes a classic? For instance, when did people start thinking of Pirates as a classic? It's a much younger theme than Town, Castle, or Space. When it first came out, did people already consider its 11-year-old predecessors "classic"? If so, would Western be considered a classic today? What about Aquazone, or Adventurers, or Bionicle? Some people like to think of there being a firm cutoff date that separates classic from non-classic themes. How do you decide on such a date, though? Most changes to the LEGO system are gradual, not abrupt. So you could say that a theme has to have come out before 1990 to be considered classic, but that obfuscates the fact that sets in 1989 would generally have more in common with ones from 1994 or 1996 than ones from 1979. Others might suggest that a theme has to have a stable presence for a certain number of years to be considered a classic, rather than a certain age. But in that case, Western (which only ran for two years) is right out, and Bionicle, which had a nine-year consecutive run before a four-year hiatus and two-year revival, would be even more of a classic than Pirates, which only got new sets for around eight years straight before a decade-long hiatus interrupted only by "LEGO Legends" re-releases of previous sets. Still others suggest there are specific qualities of classic themes that separate them from more modern ones, like a lack of named characters or a structured story. But then, Pirates had named characters and written story media from the get-go, as did Fabuland, yet many people still consider them classics. Is a TV show or video game really fundamentally different than a comic book or picture book, or are they just different forms of the same idea? Is it just age, then? Or some combination of factors? Will themes like Ninjago or Friends one day be considered classics, if they continue for long enough or just age with time? Share your thoughts!

I mean, all three of them at some point. Maybe not urgently or all at the same time, though. Modern themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and Elves are very very good and I largely prefer them to the classic stuff, but I think these classics should all be brought back in some capacity every now and then, if only to see how the current generation responds to them and how they can be improved with modern parts and building techniques.

The first two years had Lava and Stone Monsters. Maybe the third year could be Meteor Monsters? It would be thematically consistent…

It's in her bio from the LEGO Ninjago Movie website: http://www.legoninjagomovie.com/characters

I feel like the ElectroMech might have been a store exclusive but I can't find anything to back that up right now.

It's a very useful piece. And thankfully not a particularly rare one now that this year's Park Street Townhouse has been released with ten of them! If anybody's curious about other details of the build, I just uploaded an LDD model of PAIGE. Some of the interior "filler" parts may vary slightly from the physical model, and each of the revolver pieces on the fingertips should be replaced with this piece which is not available in LDD, but otherwise it should give you a good overview of her design.

Nice! I definitely see the resemblance and it's neat to know that's no coincidence. I have to applaud LEGO for that choice since it's fairly rare for them to reach out to non-Danish animation studios for their TV or streaming content.

The animation looks quite nice in my eyes. Curious what studio's in charge of that. LIke Lyi, I'm surprised that they're implementing not one but two new art styles this year (one for the webisodes, one for Netflix), but I can't say I dislike either of them. Earlier today, Kotaku shared both an alternate/extended cut of the first trailer and a second, totally new trailer. Wonder if anybody will try to MOC the expanded version of the Goblin King's Fortress as it appears in this series.