Deathleech

This is something that still bugs me to this day. Lego should have just made two identical Undead Soldiers and did a different print for the King. That way they could have had one additional print available to change the Mordor Orcs around. Instead we get nearly the same Orc in 7 different sets. The Goblin King Battle set did the same thing. They gave us three different goblins in that set yet they are never used again.

Honestly, Lego should have done this from the start. It would have been a much better sales model to follow than the one they went with. The only problem would have been figuring out how to release some of the molded creatures. Wave one could have the Fellowship members plus some other supporting good guys and main bad guys. I'm thinking as well as the nine Fellowship members it could have an Elven Soldier, a Rohan Soldier, Eomer, and Eowyn, . If a wave has 16 characters that would leave three spots left for bad guys. Fill it with a Uruk-hai Orc, Saruman, and the Witch King (with black hood AND crown). The big set could have been Helm's Deep plus 2 wall sets with it for $200 and include a few Uruk-hai, a berserker, Lurtz, Theoden, some Rohan and elven soldiers, and more. Wave two could have been Sauron, an Easterling, A Mordor Orc, a Moria Orc, Golem, a Gondor Soldier, Faramir, Elrond, Ranger of Ithilien, Haradrim, Arwen, Haldir, the Mouth of Sauron, King of the Undead, Undead Soldier, and Gothmog. The big set there could be Minas Tirith for $250 which would have some Gondor soldiers, Mordor Orcs, Denethor, and more. This way collector's and children alike could get pretty much all the important characters and then some that we got in the fest two wave, but we wouldn't have all the lackluster sets with them. We would get all the main characters we are missing too like Sauron, the Witch King, and Eowyn. People who want to army build would be free to do so while kids could pick up the entire Fellowship for relatively cheap.

Rinvendell didn't have a chance at being made. It was absolutely gigantic, easily $200+, and a much smaller version has already been made by Lego. Lothlorien on the other hand seemed like it might have had the possibility. Sure it was also too big, but if Lego scaled it back a bit it would have been perfect. It also didn't have any new molds required. I disagree. Most people want the minifigures and aren't nearly as interested in the builds. The locations in LotR don't really lend themselves that well to being made into Lego sets since they are either massive fortresses or huge outdoor environments. The minifigures also require a lot of new molds. For these reasons I think something similar to how the Simpsons was handled would be the perfect model to follow. Give us a few waves of CMFs and then one big $200+ set to go along with each wave. Of course at this point it's pretty mute. I don't see Lego coming back to the LotR license ever.

They would have to do the main characters again, but they could easily skip some of the more obscure secondary characters that they have already released. We really don't need another version (or one in the first place) of the Mouth of Sauron, Haldir, Arwen, etc. Sure they are nice to have, but they aren't essential. Those spots could be filled with characters like Eowyn and the Witch King. I would hope Lego would improve the previous designs. All the hobbits with flesh feet would be a good start and reason enough for me to re-buy all of them. Gandalf with a better hair mold and Legolas with hair that can accommodate a quiver would get me to buy those characters again as well. That just leaves Gimli and Aragorn from the main Fellowship. As for the actual sets they could fairly easily pick different locations that we never got the first time around. They might have to re-do some of the main locations like Helm's Deep, but they could do Edoras, Amon-hen, Osgiliath, etc. and include some of the main characters in those sets. Heck, even re-doing Helm's Deep but improving the design would probably get enough people to buy the new version. Look at Star Wars and how they constantly are offering the same vehicles but just change them around a bit.

For whatever reason Lego seemed to really shy away from army builders with their LotR and Hobbit lines, and maybe it was justified. I always see tons of Star Wars army builders warming shelves. It seems like with their Middle Earth license, Lego wanted to focus more on the characters than army building. Especially when it came to the good guys. I mean think about it, of all the good armies they could have included, Lego only gave us a single Rohan soldier, 2 Lake-town Guards, and several Mirkwood Elves. The ladder two were antagonist at certain parts in the film. The Rohan Soldier was probably just thrown in so you didn't get two named characters when buying an army builder set (which would have hurt multi purchase appeal). Lego also probably wanted a few good guys to battle the Uruk-hai so the set was decent as a stand alone. Lego had PLENTY of opportunities to include soldiers in their sets. We could have gotten dwarven Ironhill soldiers in the Bo5A set, Gondor Soldiers in the Black Gate set, etc. Lego made a conscious decision NOT to include them though. My gut tells me it's because the sets were already packed full of named characters. We had 13 dwarves from Thorin's company alone, plus Dain. We had 9 Fellowship members, plus several other named humans and elves like Elrond, Eomer, etc. That doesn't leave a lot of room to focus on the armies. The bad guys obviously got a lot more in the way of army building with their orcs since there are so few named bad guys who play large roles in the films.

There seem to be a few issues with LotR sets getting approved on Ideas. First off, not a single LotR set hitting 10,000 supporters has been under $100. Every single set is $100+. This poses a problem right off the bat considering every approved Ideas set is in the mid-price range of $30-70. The next issue is Lego already owns (or did own) the LotR license. Every Idea set that gets approved is either an original idea or a license Lego doesn't currently own. There have been countless Star Wars sets that reach 10,000 support yet not a single one has been made through Ideas. Lastly all the licensed Ideas that have been recently approved have something big going for them. The Big Bang Theory is the number one comedy on tv. Ghostbusters and Back to the Future were celebrating anniversaries, and Ghostbusters has a new movie coming out. Doctor Who has a huge following and tv shows. LotR (and the Hobbit) havn't had any movies or other media released in over a year now. With all this in mind, I think it's easy to see why no LotR sets pass review on Ideas. They are too big/expensive, have no media tie ins, and Lego already owned the license. On top of that most LotR sets would also require new molds to do them proper justice which is another thing Lego doesn't do for Ideas sets. I would LOVE to see a smaller set pass review, but honestly none of the Balrog or smaller sets really look that interesting on Ideas. I would be interested in seeing how well a really good $40-80 Balrog or Osgiliath set could do. Unfortunately a lot of them on the site look like they were quickly thrown together or like a younger child made them. They just lack the polish and presentation the bigger $100+ Ideas have.

Seriously. If you buy one of every Force Awakens set, you will have 5 Crew members and 5 Stormtroopers (+1 captain). Why do we have as many crew as normal Stormtroopers? The BP should have had 1 crew member with two helmet options, 2 normal Stormtroopers, and then the one "heavy" version. Heck, they could have even thrown in a Tie Fighter Pilot instead. As is, 2 Crew members in the battle pack seems like over kill.

I am loving this design and eagerly await it being made available. One question though, is this the same color the finished product will be? The silver seems fairly bright. I think a darker gray, almost a gunmetal color would work better and be closer to the films.

Welcome back, dark ages. I guess i will be saving tons of money now.

Does D&D have enough appeal to kids though? I know Hasbro tried it with their Kre-o line and I thought it failed pretty miserably? Obviously Kre-o isn't the same as Lego, but ya. LotR also didn't seem to do that well. It seems any of the more adult oriented medieval fantasy based stuff with Lego just doesn't perform that well. It makes sense they would go with something like Nexo Knights this time around.

I thought we had a statistic from awhile back that showed only 5-10% of all Lego sales are from AFOLs? If that's true, it's no wonder Lego doesn't cater to us. Even if we made up a larger percent, say 25-30% they would still try to appeal mostly to KFOLs. You have to remember that almost every kid (or every other, or at the very least every third) probably loves Lego and gets a few sets a year. How many parents are into Lego though? One out of every ten? Every twenty? More? And of those, how many actually spend the vast amounts of money buying every set or multiples of every set? I'm sure the number is very small. I know I haven't spent a dime on Lego since the last Hobbit wave. Sure I bought quite a few of the better sets and army builders, and triples of everything in the Hobbit and LotR lines, but that was all I bought Lego wise (other than a few random sets like Ghostbusters and TBBT) over the five years since coming out of my Dark Ages. That's not to say Lego can't throw us a bone. They should strive to make sets that appeal to BOTH AFOL and KFOLs.

Part of the problem is knights generally wear helmets so the facial print and different hair might be covered up in a number of sets they appear in. Lego could give them each distinct new helm molds, but just changing the colors is cheaper for them.

I responded to and addressed BrickJagger twice. I hardly would say that's beating him into submission and I never was rude. Every other post I made (a whole two more) were in response to other forum members' comments. They kept saying BrickJagger's initial post only hinted at the 2016 Castle theme being like Fantasy Era, I pointed out he said it was "a lot like it" so that wasn't really true. Regardless it's not like it was 2 full pages of people asking for a PM As for it being important? I think it kind of is. If the manager has any future info I want to know how credible it will be. I was really looking forward to something similar to Fantasy Era (as were many others), so I am kind of disappointed about what this theme actually seems to be shaping up to.

I'm not trying to paint you in a bad light. I defended you early on and said I believe that you really got the info from a manager rather than making it up like SOME people I was simply responding to the comment that the manager wasn't too far off. I disagree with that. This theme doesn't sound anything like what was originally reported. Of course we still have yet to see any pictures so who knows.

Actually, yes it was. Taken right from Brickjagger's very first post in this thread: I highlighted and underlined the part about FE for emphasis. In that very first post he mentioned it was "a LOT like Castle from a few years ago", not that it was just "kind of" or "similar" like it. What exactly makes it a lot like FE though? That it has at least one fantasy element, or one fantasy faction with the rock/lava monsters? If that's the case the 2013 Castle theme was "a lot like" the Fright Knights because both had at least one dragon in the theme. Nothing else about those themes, or Nexo Knights and FE, are very similar beyond the obvious though. I think color coded knights are pretty much a given at this point. I might be (and hope) I am wrong... but if we have 5 main characters Lego loves to use colors to help differentiate and distinguish them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see them all having their own specific color. Let's just hope we don't get bright or pastel colors this time around and we get something a littler darker instead. As for lava monsters, they could fit into fantasy and have plenty of times before. They just aren't your more traditional stuff like dragons, orcs, dwarves, undead, and elves. Lego's FE seemed to stick more to the traditional fantasy, we didn't see any satyrs, kobolds, centaurs, griffons, etc. Basically all the more obscure stuff. Seems like a pretty insignificant reason to compare them though, don't you think? Why compare Nexo Knights to FE just because it's human's vs monsters when literally nothing else is the same between the two themes (besides the obvious of being Castle-inspired)? Power Miners had rock monsters, should we say Nexo Knights is "a lot like" Power Miners because both have rock monsters? A much better, and more accurate description, based on what we know so far would have been it's Ninjago meets Castle. Sorry if it seems like I am hung up on this point, but I kind of am. To me, it seems like Brickjagger got some very vague info that has evolved into something else entirely by now. At first it was supposed to be a lot like FE, then have some aspects of Castle 2013, then some slight Steampunk influence. I understand the info was first reported from a manager quite awhile ago so it obviously will evolve as more info is leaked or he probably didn't have a ton of insider info himself, but the initial report was pretty vague to begin with. That's why I don't get why people were so quick to disregard BrickJagger's initial post. It literally didn't have any concrete, precise info, and since the OP the info has changed quite a bit. In fact, most of the original info could be guessed just based on Lego's past. I can pretty much guarantee Lego will come out with City sets in 2016 and some of them will have police in them. I don't have any insider info, I just know this because it's what Lego does EVERY year. Lego was due up for a new Castle theme so that's not surprising. However, the one piece of actual info we got about it being a lot like FE seems to be WAY off the mark.

I am pretty sure he mentioned it being similar to the Fantasy Era theme at least a few times. It doesn't sound anything "like" the Castle theme from a few years ago with trolls and dwarves though. It sounds more like KKII, or really Castle done in an adventure, Ninjago style. I mean at this point we pretty much know it is going to center around five main good characters who will most likely all be represented by a different color? FE didn't have that at all, it was mostly generic human troops and dwarves vs trolls and undead. There also is the steam punk or sci fi element, which wasn't presented in FE at all besides one or two huge machines the dwarves and trolls had. It would be like saying the 2013 Castle theme is similar to the Vikings theme because both have dragons. While that is technically true, that's pretty much where the similarities stop. The statement couldn't be further from the truth. When I think fantasy era, I think traditional orcs/trolls/goblins, undead, dwarves, knights, and elves (being added in). While it's true lava monsters are technically fantasy, I don't think they were what any of us were really expecting nor are they similar to the FE we got a few years back which was more traditional medieval creatures. More importantly than all of this though, there was absolutely no mention of it being centered around 5 main good characters and more an action theme like Ninjago. That seems like it's kind of a big deal to miss considering that's going to be one of the main points of the theme? If I were describing Nexo Knights, based on what we currently know, I would describe it as an action adventure Castle theme with hints of sci-fi and following a similar formula to Ninjago. I definitely wouldn't relate it to FE Castle.

Ehh, no offense but I totally disagree. Based on the logo and info we have heard, this line doesn't really sound anything like what your manager was originally describing. It was supposed to be an extremely similar follow up to Fantasy Era? Fantasy Era didn't have lava monsters or a group of named colored-coded knights like Ninjago though. FE also didn't have any steam punk or futuristic aspects. Literally nothing about Nexo Knights seems to resemble what you originally reported. I believe you heard it from a manager, but he didn't seem to have ANY real info himself other than a new Castle theme was coming in 2016, and that was pretty much expected by everyone anyways.

I dunno. It's a bit different then other licensed themes because Lego got the Ghostbusters one specifically for the Ideas set rather than vis versa like a lot of Ideas sets proposed for existing Lego licensed themes. I agree that the more LotR projects we can get to 10,000 votes though, the more likely Lego will be to give us something new for the range.

Unfortunately neither of those projects that made it into the next review stand much of a chance of being made into sets. Rivendell I can pretty much guarantee won't, it's just too massive. Lothlorien is also pretty big for an Idea's set. As of right now, the Caterham Super Seven and Adventure time projects look like the most likely candidates, with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man coming in a close third. That is, if it's piece count was reduced. The creator said he used lots of small pieces but Lego already has that license so the project has that going for it.

Don't forget "...and asking for info on other themes".

I have a Great Dane, but she is pretty well behaved now and never really chews anything she isn't supposed to. She sticks to her toys and bones. She never really chewed any of my Lego when she was younger, but then again I always had it up on shelves or is display cases that she couldn't reach. My table legs are another story... When I was younger my parent's dog would chew on Lego pieces I left on the floor or that dropped to the floor when I was building that I didn't notice until after the fact. Unless you are leaving your Lego on the floor, I can't imagine dogs really having easy access to them and being able to get a hold of them to chew...? Cats are another story, those damn ninjas can jump anywhere.

Or the Portal Gun getting a new mold. There's only one Portal set in Dimensions (so far) and it got a new mold, meanwhile there are 4 different LotR characters/sets in Dimensions and not a single new mold and barely new printing.

It could mean that, but when I see Nexo Knights my mind automatically thinks "next". Like they are the next line of soldier, or soldiers of the future which would make sense considering they are sci-fi inspired. Neither really, more spin/airjitzu. Anyways, the logo looks nice. I actually really like those sentinels and hope we get something very similar to that in Nexo Knights.

Not really sure why people are complaining about the value. It's $60 for 484 pieces... that comes out to be right around 12 cents per brick. That's not too far off from the golden 10 cents per piece, especially when you consider Lego had to get the license for (presumably) one set, and all the characters have their own unique prints. Of course in other countries it's higher.. but so is all Lego.

Thanks for the info so far! Do you have any idea if the five knights are all human? Could some be dwarves, or for instance the Robin character an elf? What about the bad guys? You mentioned some lava inspired villains, but what about the grunts/lackeys? Any clue what they are yet? Skeletons, orcs/trolls/goblins, robots... something else entirely?