Future Castle Sets?

[zoth33]

17 hours ago, Lego David said:

Then again, LEGO always seems to try to hide their failures... The official LEGO twitter account said the exact same thing when they were asked about how well the Bionicle reboot performed:

And of course, most people who are familiar with Bionicle probably know what actually happened with it, how it was pulled from shelves after only two years, despite the promise of at least a three year run at the NYCC 2014 event where Bionicle's return was first announced. 

I think the same could be said about something like Nexo Knights... The line was clearly intended to last for a least little longer, as proven by all the concept art it had (which featured various new monsters that never appeared in set form). But NK ended very abruptly in 2018 with a final wave that was clearly just thrown together at the last moment. 

Nexo Knights and Bionicle were pulled early for some reason by Lego.  Whether they tell us or not we may never know.  But they must have had their reasons.  I'm just hoping for some kind of castle theme within the next few years.  If it were mixed with fantasy elements that would be great but at this point I would take just a generic castle theme.  

[Aanchir]

18 hours ago, Lego David said:

Then again, LEGO always seems to try to hide their failures... The official LEGO twitter account said the exact same thing when they were asked about how well the Bionicle reboot performed:

I mean, an official account responding to a direct question with an evasive (but probably still truthful) PR statement is a lot different from a designer telling a baldfaced lie in response to a random tweet that wasn't addressed to the company or anybody working there.

Furthermore, the details shared by Tommy Andreasen make it clear that even the cancelled 2018 season of the Nexo Knights TV show was intended to be the theme's conclusion. As such, if the sets did end up getting cut short at all, it would've only been by half a year or so. Same goes for his movie pitch which would've tied in with the final year of Legends of Chima sets.

Yes, concept art exists for a multitude of unused Nexo Knights monsters, just like how concept art exists for a multitude of unused Ninjago characters and vehicles or Legends of Chima animal tribes or Space Police 3 aliens. That's how concept art works. Concept artists knowingly come up with far more concepts then they will ever end up using, because the purpose of that part of the design process is to create a broad slate of options which can then be narrowed down to whatever seems to best suit suit to the final story or product line.

So the reason we didn't get dragon people or skeleton demons or poison trolls or all that other stuff that showed up in the back of the Nexo Knights character encyclopedia isn't that they were intended for some hypothetical cancelled waves — it's because the designers ended up deciding to use lava monsters, stone monsters, and tech vampires for the theme's three-year arc instead of those other options.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Aanchir

[Lego David]

4 hours ago, Aanchir said:

I mean, an official account responding to a direct question with an evasive (but probably still truthful) PR statement is a lot different from a designer telling a baldfaced lie in response to a random tweet that wasn't addressed to the company or anybody working there.

I agree, but my point still stands. The LEGO Group (or the people working in it) may hide some of the details regarding how well a theme ended up performing. There may be some truth to what they say, but in the grand scheme of things, those themes were probably still cut short due to disappointing sales or other factors like that. 

[Aanchir]

12 hours ago, Lego David said:

I agree, but my point still stands. The LEGO Group (or the people working in it) may hide some of the details regarding how well a theme ended up performing. There may be some truth to what they say, but in the grand scheme of things, those themes were probably still cut short due to disappointing sales or other factors like that. 

It's possible! But then, the same could potentially be true for any number of discontinued themes, including other "big bang" themes and other Castle and Space themes/subthemes that had similarly brief lifespans. My point is that nothing about Nexo Knights' performance seems to have been at all out of the ordinary. Clearly, it didn't perform badly enough to discourage LEGO from investing in other sci-fi/fantasy mashup themes like Hidden Side and Monkie Kid. So why would it discourage them any more from investing in other medieval-inspired themes?

[valon]

i have read through quite a few post on this topic and have noticed that nobody mentioned that the current ninjago theme is essantally a castle theme. it has a castle ( sort of ) as well as orcs and wizards it only does not have knights but is basically a castle theme beside that

[JintaiZ]

8 hours ago, valon said:

i have read through quite a few post on this topic and have noticed that nobody mentioned that the current ninjago theme is essantally a castle theme. it has a castle ( sort of ) as well as orcs and wizards it only does not have knights but is basically a castle theme beside that

I do think Ninjago is kind of a Castle theme. However, I believe it's inspired by ninjas rather than Castles...

On 12/6/2020 at 12:49 PM, Aanchir said:

So why would it discourage them any more from investing in other medieval-inspired themes?

I think they're still trying about the Medieval themes, as the Blacksmith was approved in the Ideas review. However, it's really unlikely that another Castle would pass the review now...

[valon]

well the current theme looks like the fantasy castle bad guys, but the good guys are ninjas yes, on the blacksmith, does anybody known when it is releasing ?

also, lego with nexo knights wanted to combine the 2 classic themes castle and space, but it did not work for either theme (  although i liked nexo knights, it was not good castle theme ) if lego wants to combine 2 classic themes, i think that a castle pirates theme would be cool and work well

Edited December 8, 2020 by valon

[zoth33]

3 hours ago, valon said:

well the current theme looks like the fantasy castle bad guys, but the good guys are ninjas yes, on the blacksmith, does anybody known when it is releasing ?

also, lego with nexo knights wanted to combine the 2 classic themes castle and space, but it did not work for either theme (  although i liked nexo knights, it was not good castle theme ) if lego wants to combine 2 classic themes, i think that a castle pirates theme would be cool and work well

A castle/pirates crossover would be great if done right.  Especially with a evil faction pirate ship and castle.  If they did it in a fantasy setting too that would be great to come up with some kind of interesting evil creatures.  They could do Sea Elves as the good faction and use some of the great Elvish architecture used in fantasy novels and Elvish ships have a nice elegance to them.  Just an idea I've had floating in my head for a while now.  I'm working on making a Sea Elf Island, trying to see what colors I want to use at this point.  

[valon]

actaully a lego knockoff did that. the enlighten brand made a theme called war of glory, wich had knights and dwarves fighting elvles. they had same strange nexo knight style vechiles, but same cool normal castle sets 

Edited December 8, 2020 by valon

[Lion King]

My post here may be off a topic of my idea sounds crazy.... 

Anyways, I noticed that the 90’s theme “Time Cruisers”. I never heard of that theme when I was VERY young at that moment but it didn’t look like it was interesting with anything historic sets in it. It may be good to revive that theme by adding some castles, pirate ships, Ice Age, dinosaurs, feudal Japanese castle/village, Viking Age, American Revolution, Italian Renaissance, and so on... Time travelers visit medieval castle to save king or queen from evil time travelers who plots the fall of the kingdom in evil knights’ hand. Just like Timeless tv show (too bad it was not renewed...)

Of course, we do have Marty McFly’s time machine car from Lego Ideas. But I think the revived Time Cruisers may sound interesting in differnet historic ways. 

[valon]

that is a good idea and it is on world builder, on world builder it is called time cruiser neo. If anybody wants a castle or pirate theme world builder is the best way to get it done

[Lion King]

4 hours ago, valon said:

that is a good idea and it is on world builder, on world builder it is called time cruiser neo. If anybody wants a castle or pirate theme world builder is the best way to get it done

Right on! Time Cruisers don’t have much historical eras to explore in 90s. Of course there were pirate and castle themes in that decades so time machine was used to travel throughout the time. I think the revised Time Cursiers sets would have a lot of new pieces/molds, including castle, pirate ships. We do have dinsoaurs and Ice Age creatures (saber-toothed cat and woolly mammoth). 

Okay, I apologize if this post is way off the topic... I don’t know/can’t figure how to create a thread on my end. 

Back to the castle topic, folks!

[Lego David]

5 hours ago, valon said:

actaully a lego knockoff did that. the enlighten brand made a theme called war of glory, wich had knights and dwarves fighting elvles. they had same strange nexo knight style vechiles, but same cool normal castle sets 

Ok, I have never been the type of guy that buys LEGO knockoffs, but those sets are seriously tempting. I mean just look at them, they look AMAZING! Much more interesting than the themes LEGO currently has on the market to be honest. 

[valon]

i agree they are really cool, also most of the sets are 10/15 to 20 dollars i have pirate sets from enlighten and the bricks are the same quality of lego, the minifigures for pirates have weird faces, but otherwise they are good. I think that a pirate/castle/sort of ninjago theme like this would have been better then nexo knights even though i liked it but not as a castle theme. here are the links if you want to buy them ( i have not found the castles, but all the other sets are cheap ) 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000611118252.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000014.11.7bc63608In6g55&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.14976.193124.0&scm_id=1007.14976.193124.0&scm-url=1007.14976.193124.0&pvid=7e018c95-e5b0-4a77-bb5b-28980e5908c6&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.14976.193124.0,pvid:7e018c95-e5b0-4a77-bb5b-28980e5908c6,tpp_buckets:668%230%23131923%2377_668%23808%234094%23294_668%23888%233325%2313_4976%230%23193124%2312_4976%232711%237538%23849_4976%233104%239653%238_4976%234052%2321623%2386_4976%233141%239887%234_668%232846%238110%23381_668%232717%237566%23844_668%231000022185%231000066059%230_668%233422%2315392%23423_4452%230%23189847%230_4452%233474%2315675%23158_4452%233098%239599%23641_4452%233564%2316062%23582

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000611100899.html?spm=2114.12010615.8148356.51.44fc5e45bDV4Tp

 

[Aanchir]

15 hours ago, zoth33 said:

A castle/pirates crossover would be great if done right.  Especially with a evil faction pirate ship and castle.  If they did it in a fantasy setting too that would be great to come up with some kind of interesting evil creatures.  They could do Sea Elves as the good faction and use some of the great Elvish architecture used in fantasy novels and Elvish ships have a nice elegance to them.  Just an idea I've had floating in my head for a while now.  I'm working on making a Sea Elf Island, trying to see what colors I want to use at this point.   

That does sound interesting — but truth be told, reading this just further reinforces how much I miss the LEGO Elves theme, which was brimming with these sorts of elegant and otherworldly fantasy design cues. The same can be said for some of those Enlighten pics since they lift a lot of the aesthetics and building techniques for their elf faction directly from LEGO Elves sets like Naida's Epic Adventure Ship or the Elvendale School of Dragons. I dunno if anybody else in this thread feels the same way — after all, it certainly didn't meet a lot of Castle fans' criteria for a "real" Castle theme — but I'm not sure any other Castle theme to date has ever managed to craft a world that felt quite as vast, evocative, and full of new wonders just begging to be discovered as the Land of Elvendale.

For my part, I don't know I can realistically expect any castle theme to resonate with me on the same level that LEGO Elves did — it'd certainly have to be a considerable departure from previous Castle themes in order to do so. But comments like make me hopeful that there might be some room for that kind of magical, adventurous world-building in whatever comes next.

[valon]

47 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

That does sound interesting — but truth be told, reading this just further reinforces how much I miss the LEGO Elves theme, which was brimming with these sorts of elegant and otherworldly fantasy design cues. The same can be said for some of those Enlighten pics since they lift a lot of the aesthetics and building techniques for their elf faction directly from LEGO Elves sets like Naida's Epic Adventure Ship or the Elvendale School of Dragons. I dunno if anybody else in this thread feels the same way — after all, it certainly didn't meet a lot of Castle fans' criteria for a "real" Castle theme — but I'm not sure any other Castle theme to date has ever managed to craft a world that felt quite as vast, evocative, and full of new wonders just begging to be discovered as the Land of Elvendale.

For my part, I don't know I can realistically expect any castle theme to resonate with me on the same level that LEGO Elves did — it'd certainly have to be a considerable departure from previous Castle themes in order to do so. But comments like make me hopeful that there might be some room for that kind of magical, adventurous world-building in whatever comes next.

i agree, but i do not like the girl minifigures nor did i like elves as much as castle. Elves was a cool theme, the sets were good as were the dragons. I hope that lego makes a theme that is a combination of elves and castle ( with pirates to ) wich has castles with details and decoration. I am working on something like that for world builder, but am having a hard time building the castles and buildings ( i am terrible at building castles and mocs in general, i can only build forestman/wolfpack type builds and mansions ) i hope that even if my worldbuilder project fails ( wich it probably will ) that lego makes a castle theme soon, hopefully with elves type interiors and detail

[zoth33]

2 hours ago, Aanchir said:

That does sound interesting — but truth be told, reading this just further reinforces how much I miss the LEGO Elves theme, which was brimming with these sorts of elegant and otherworldly fantasy design cues. The same can be said for some of those Enlighten pics since they lift a lot of the aesthetics and building techniques for their elf faction directly from LEGO Elves sets like Naida's Epic Adventure Ship or the Elvendale School of Dragons. I dunno if anybody else in this thread feels the same way — after all, it certainly didn't meet a lot of Castle fans' criteria for a "real" Castle theme — but I'm not sure any other Castle theme to date has ever managed to craft a world that felt quite as vast, evocative, and full of new wonders just begging to be discovered as the Land of Elvendale.

For my part, I don't know I can realistically expect any castle theme to resonate with me on the same level that LEGO Elves did — it'd certainly have to be a considerable departure from previous Castle themes in order to do so. But comments like make me hopeful that there might be some room for that kind of magical, adventurous world-building in whatever comes next.

I also miss the Elves theme.  I picked up a lot of sets.  Although I don't really use minidolls I used their hair pieces on custom Moon Elf and Sea Elf figs I have made using minifigs.  I think the Elvendale Tree set is great, the tree is well designed.  Many of the dragons are great too.  My favorite is the goblin king dragon, the colors really work well together.  The buildings are designed well and have unique styles.  I'm really hoping that this Mythica rumor results in sets with fantastic creatures, buildings and figs.  

[valon]

i hope that mythica is a minifgure castle theme, but with elves like things such as mythical creatures an interiors and detailed builds. Also is the castle of allatok rumor true ? it looks fake, but i do not know

[Aanchir]

6 minutes ago, zoth33 said:

I also miss the Elves theme.  I picked up a lot of sets.  Although I don't really use minidolls I used their hair pieces on custom Moon Elf and Sea Elf figs I have made using minifigs.  I think the Elvendale Tree set is great, the tree is well designed.  Many of the dragons are great too.  My favorite is the goblin king dragon, the colors really work well together.  The buildings are designed well and have unique styles.  I'm really hoping that this Mythica rumor results in sets with fantastic creatures, buildings and figs.   

Dang, with all the exciting LEGO news there's been lately, I almost entirely forgot that we're still awaiting more news about just what LEGO Mythica might turn out to be! The description of that definitely sounded extremely promising if it ends up being more than just a LEGOLAND park expansion.

And truth be told, my hopes that it WILL be a brand that extends to more than just park attractions are certainly bolstered by how much more unique and ambitious it sounds than anything else that the LEGOLAND Parks have come up with in recent years, and how the branding suggests it being a LEGO Group IP rather than strictly a LEGOLAND one. Plus, with Hidden Side over, I feel like that leaves room for another original theme to take its place at some point this year. So fingers crossed for some promising news about that in the months to come…

[Mr. President]

On 12/8/2020 at 2:23 AM, valon said:

i have read through quite a few post on this topic and have noticed that nobody mentioned that the current ninjago theme is essantally a castle theme. it has a castle ( sort of ) as well as orcs and wizards it only does not have knights but is basically a castle theme beside that

Well, as you've no doubt heard elsewhere on this forum, the fantasy part "ruins it" for some people. I guess those ones haven't been happy with any Castle theme since 1995.

[Aanchir]

1 hour ago, Mr. President said:

Well, as you've no doubt heard elsewhere on this forum, the fantasy part "ruins it" for some people. I guess those ones haven't been happy with any Castle theme since 1995.

In some cases I'm sure you may be right, but I feel like a lot of Castle fans who don't care much for Ninjago just prefer themes that adhere strictly to "pre-modern" subject matter, regardless of how much of it is based in fantasy and how much is based in real-world history. A fan who feels like that would probably be totally okay with stuff like dragons, genies, ghosts, wizards, or magical weapons, but would draw the line at stuff like mechs, cars, jet planes, or motorcycles. Granted, many fans have this sort of preference still end up enjoying Ninjago sets — but they're a lot more selective in those purchasing decisions than if their interest in the theme extended to its modern and sci-fi elements as well.

And new story arcs or factions that LEGO Ninjago introduces fluctuate quite a bit between these different types of subject matter. The baddies the mid-2019 "Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitzu" sets don't really utilize any modern-looking or futuristic-looking technologies, nor did the various new factions in the mid-2020 "Master of the Mountain" sets. But the baddies from the early 2020 "Prime Empire" are much more cyberpunk-influenced, utilizing tech like lasers, neon lights, arcade machines, video game controllers, and hoverboards — things that people in medieval times would have had no frame of reference for.

[Lego David]

On 12/8/2020 at 10:37 PM, Aanchir said:

That does sound interesting — but truth be told, reading this just further reinforces how much I miss the LEGO Elves theme, which was brimming with these sorts of elegant and otherworldly fantasy design cues. The same can be said for some of those Enlighten pics since they lift a lot of the aesthetics and building techniques for their elf faction directly from LEGO Elves sets like Naida's Epic Adventure Ship or the Elvendale School of Dragons. I dunno if anybody else in this thread feels the same way — after all, it certainly didn't meet a lot of Castle fans' criteria for a "real" Castle theme — but I'm not sure any other Castle theme to date has ever managed to craft a world that felt quite as vast, evocative, and full of new wonders just begging to be discovered as the Land of Elvendale.

For my part, I don't know I can realistically expect any castle theme to resonate with me on the same level that LEGO Elves did — it'd certainly have to be a considerable departure from previous Castle themes in order to do so. But comments like make me hopeful that there might be some room for that kind of magical, adventurous world-building in whatever comes next.

I pretty much completely ignored the LEGO Elves theme when it was out, due to it being a "girl theme", and now I am feeling the pain of what I have missed out on. The sets have gotten incredibly expensive on the aftermarket, especially for a theme that only recently ended. I love pretty much everything about it, from the world, to the dragons, and even the characters. I even watched the Netflix series, and to my surprise, I quite enjoyed it. I am now desperatly trying to find some of the sets online for a reasoable price, which surprisngly enough, seems to be quite a hard task. 

If there is a lesson to be learned from this experince, it would have to be "Don't ever ignore anything of what LEGO puts out, because you might regret it later down the line". 

[valon]

i personally like fantasy castle as well as historcal and do not prefer one over the other. I think that people who only like on of the two, might prefer the one that they like less to nothing

[MAB]

28 minutes ago, valon said:

i personally like fantasy castle as well as historcal and do not prefer one over the other. I think that people who only like on of the two, might prefer the one that they like less to nothing

I doubt it. They would blame the theme for stopping what they want being produced.

For example:

Star Wars vs in-house space. Should fans of non-licensed space prefer Star Wars to nothing. You only need to look at the threads over many years complaining that Star Wars stops what they want being made, even though both themes are connected to space.

Nexo Knights vs Castle.  Should Castle fans prefer Nexo Knights to nothing. Again look at the threads complaining that NK is not Castle and is a waste of a theme.

 

If some fans only like historical and not fantasy, then they are not going to prefer fantasy to nothing, not when fantasy is stopping historical being made.

[valon]

but fantasy has historical elements so they should like part of it at least