FrightFlight

This is a bleak group of sets if I'm honest. There's usually at least one set that'll hook me each wave but this one and the last had none. The most I can hope for here is that the Ford Anglia will finally be able to seat two passengers next to each other. We haven't had that basic feature of a car since 2011!

Is there any hope for a Durmstrang Ship remake at this point? We've somehow not gotten a figure of Igor Karkaroff in the modern waves yet and I want to hope that's because they have the ship in mind for a future release.

I feel like there are holes in Lego's market coverage, though I obviously don't have the data they have to back up their choices on what sets they do and don't make. The big gap for me is more affordable "playhouse" type sets that aren't just 6 stud wide afterthoughts next to two vehicles in the city line. You get a lot of excellently made buildings of all sorts of utility in the Friends line, but almost none for City. There's the creator line and the modular buildings, but those are either limited by their design or are expensive and not really things one can "play" with or regularly pose figures in. Even classic town was better than modern City in this regard.

Lego is a toy designed for children though? Sure, those 18+ sets have a fancy presentation box and a few extra black bricks to put the scenes on a nice display stand, but it's still a toy. Adults need to get over themselves about being immature or else we'll keep seeing these 500 dollar dust collectors continue to fly onto shelves. I used leg printing as an example, but what I'm more speaking to as well is the over-reliance on stickers, face prints being reused for dozens of characters who don't resemble one another and so on. I didn't want to use the term "normie" in my original reply, but yeah that was sort of what I was talking about. Your dichotomy of adult Lego fans is a little inaccurate in my opinion. The way I see it there's really two main types of adult fans. The AFOLs, who often have a deep knowledge of Lego and regularly purchase sets of all types. And the "normies", adults who don't really understand Lego and instead see it more as a buildable Funko Pop for them to show their media brand loyalty. Now obviously not everyone falls neatly into these categories, but they're the opposite ends of the spectrum of adult Lego fans in my eyes.

Since I'm here though, here's my potentially unpopular Lego take: The part budget excuse is embarrassing and I'm really surprised a lot of fans let Lego slip right on by with it. You're trying to tell me that Lego can do hundreds of separate prints and molds for Friends but can't do leg printing for characters in their premium hundreds of dollar sets? It doesn't make any sense. It isn't like in the early 2000's where Lego couldn't afford the crazy branches of colors and parts they had, they're making record profits.

Lego kind of has to do the whole bland, sleek black box look if they want them to sell well to their target demographic. Most non-Lego enthusiast adults are (and forgive me for being a bit mean here,) very averse to more colorful, playful box designs as mentioned already by @Lyichir It's not a Lego problem, it's a real problem that a lot of your average adults just don't have a lively bone in their body.

So are these sets spilling out into some stores now? Should we start keeping an eye out on shelves?

While I worry that Harry Potter will end up falling into the trap of other evergreen themes and redoing the same few sets over and over, that hasn't quite happened yet. We're still getting scenes/locations they've not covered yet or haven't covered since 2005. If anything Lego needs to do something besides Luke's Landspeeder for Star Wars. Aren't there like 100 of those now?

I'm really surprised they didn't go ahead and cancel the Nazi plane too considering the pilot is pretty much 100% accurate for the time period's attire.

Looks spectacular! Do wish it was just a playset though, boulder's small track and a lack of traps from the original set is a bit of a letdown.

Awesome stuff! Glad you're taking the effort to archive all this, it's important work!

No normal, average person cares that some movie released decades ago can be seen as insensitive in some ways. Would the ToD set really be the thing to sink Lego?

What about the pictures are "unfortunate"? The whole Indiana wave looks pretty unpolished from the leaks, but I don't see how the Temple of Doom set in particular is anywhere more offensive than the other ones. I even find the Kali mech statue thing kinda cool.

I really hope they're cancelling it because of some fatal flaw like in the Wall-E set. Have we been given any specifics yet? If it's for the "cultural insensitivity", then my lord I am sick and tired of Lego. Dwindling quality and catering to people who rarely even buy Lego anyway.

Looks wonderful! Really hoping we get more coverage of TAS from Lego someday.