LEGO Ninjago 2018

[Lucarex]

3 minutes ago, makoy said:

I think he meant the opposite. You could say that Castle had been Ninjago'ed and that didn't work.

I will fully support if Ninjago leans more towards the classic Castle / Ninja to explore more medieval influence and themes.

Yeah I knew that hence the overly dramatic/sarcastic *gasp* 

[Digger of Bricks]

7 hours ago, GarmaFan said:

But, how could LEGO possibly survive without.. vehicles?!

Oh there wouldn't be a lack of vehicles, not at all understandably, only that they'd be more ClockPunk/DaVinci-like in their nature instead, conceptually relying on steam/rocket/clockwork propulsion.

11 minutes ago, Lucarex said:

Are you suggesting that Ninjago should be......*gasp*......NexoKnighted? 

How so? Nexo Knights, if anything, was more heavy on the Cyberpunk than the medieval than Ninjago ever was.

[Lucarex]

Digger, just replied above you...

Being serious though, I agree a reboot and redirection is needed. And I'd love to see more medieval sets along the lines of the Airjitzu Temple.

[Aanchir]

I don't think Ninjago would particularly benefit from any kind of shift away from the anachronistic fantasy flavor that's served it so well for so many years. Sure, that might make it more appealing to classic Castle fans, but there's no reason to think the lack of widespread appeal with that audience has had any meaningful impact on how successful it's been. Even among AFOLs, a lot of the excitement I saw for the LEGO Ninjago Movie sets specifically surrounded things like the cyberpunk styling of Ninjago City or the intensely futuristic mechs. And I think the theme's versatility, with plenty of room for more traditional design cues as well as more modern/futuristic ones, has been one of its strengths.

[Sr1847]

One of the things that makes Ninjago unique is the concept of Ninja being in more modern setting (more futuristic that in real life considering they robots and we don’t have robots in that scale just yet) and it helps with the whole superhero craze going on right now because it shows that the ninja are modern day Superheroes (I will argue that until the day I die). While I love the old medieval architecture Ninjago is great just the way it is

Edited June 20, 2018 by Sr1847

[GarmaFan]

A new take on Ninjago would be nice at some point, unfortunate that it probably wouldn't last as long.

[shadefoundry]

Since it hasn't been posted just yet, Jang's started reviewing this new wave of sets:

Honestly I've gotta say I'm pretty underwhelmed by this dragon. It just feels like a worse version of the Green Dragon Mech from the movie sets. I think its the neck and head that really kill it for me, they just don't seem to match the flow of the rest of the build. I do love how the spider looking guy is called Daddy No Legs though.

Side note I'm absolutely loving the mad-max feel that this season's villains have. They're aesthetically similar enough to the sky-pirates' steampunk-esque (or is it more deisel-punk this season?) vehicles that I'll likely pick up at least a few of their sets.

[Exetrius]

Ninjago is still very popular, no doubt! From personal experience: I see kids here in the stores run to the Ninjago section first and whenever you take a MOC to a convention that is just the slightest bit asian-ish or has ninja's, there's one thing they will all scream: Ninjago!

To get a little more into actual numbers: have a look at how searches for "ninjago" measure up to "lego" and "lego star wars" in Google trends, worldwide:https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01 2018-06-20&q=ninjago,lego city,lego.

At roughly any given time since 2011, the ratio for queries "lego" and "ninjago" has been 10:1 or lower. That should be a fair indication of the theme's popularity.
Side note: play around for a bit to see how interest in various lego themes differs per country, interesting! 

 

 

I have to say I don't see much good coming from a reboot. Story reboot = immediate loss of loyal fanbase. And I'm still a bit upset by the style reboot that came forth from TLNM, I hope the figure designs will over time regain the serious, quite refined and realistic tone they had with the Elemental robes, Zukin, Deepstone and Hands of Time. As long as Ninjago stays a stable source of traditional/fantasy oriental parts and prints, some dragons and some temples, I'm totally fine with it.

[Sr1847]

18 hours ago, GarmaFan said:

I don't know if I'd say wildly popular, at one point yeah considering it came back and got a movie, but I guess there's not really anyway to judge that beyond LEGO's annual sales. Popularity-wise, I think Ninjago peaked in 2012. Fanbase is pretty small online, but I guess kids like it? Probably also more popular worldwide than the US? The half a million views on average Season 8 got in the US are a bit alarming, can't imagine pretending it doesn't exist unless a new season has come out and never having re-runs helped, but nothing else that premiers around that time did very well either, so that isn't necessarily Ninjago's fault. 

According to Decoded, yeah.

The issue with the episodes is that other countries like Australia get them earlier than the US so it doesn’t get the views to get an earlier release date because according to CN the viewership doesn’t show a demand for it. Also the show can’t prove there is a demand for the show if it gets a late release date

[GarmaFan]

1 hour ago, Sr1847 said:

The issue with the episodes is that other countries like Australia get them earlier than the US so it doesn’t get the views to get an earlier release date because according to CN the viewership doesn’t show a demand for it. Also the show can’t prove there is a demand for the show if it gets a late release date

Well, it's a vicious cycle then. Maybe moving to Netflix would be best.

Edited June 20, 2018 by GarmaFan

[Sr1847]

4 hours ago, GarmaFan said:

Well, it's a vicious cycle then. Maybe moving to Netflix would be best.

If it did move to Netflix everybody could enjoy it at the exact same time too

[Digger of Bricks]

7 hours ago, shadefoundry said:

Side note I'm absolutely loving the mad-max feel that this season's villains have. They're aesthetically similar enough to the sky-pirates' steampunk-esque (or is it more deisel-punk this season?) vehicles that I'll likely pick up at least a few of their sets.

Honestly, I think they're best described as simply being Post-Apocalyptic, though I suppose you could describe them as Dieselpunk if you were to use that term very loosely. In my opinion, Dieselpunk should be almost exclusively reserved for anything with more of an alternate historical World War II vibe.

[obsidianheart]

22 minutes ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Honestly, I think they're best described as simply being Post-Apocalyptic, though I suppose you could describe them as Dieselpunk if you were to use that term very loosely. In my opinion, Dieselpunk should be almost exclusively reserved for anything with more of an alternate historical World War II vibe.

I don't keep up with the teevee show, who caused the apocalypse?

[Fenghuang0296]

2 minutes ago, obsidianheart said:

I don't keep up with the teevee show, who caused the apocalypse?

Your loss. 

But there wasn't actually an apocalypse; the core four and Wu all got trapped in an alternate dimension and are coming into cònflict with the Dragon Hunters, who seem to be a race of scavengers that never established a society if their own and have been relying on the leavings of the ONI. Also their entire culture is based around imprisoning dragons and taking advantage of their elemental abilities. 

Though, cosdering how Ninjago looks under Harumi and Garmadon's reign, 'no apocalypse' might be a bit of a foregone conclusion. 

[Peppermint_M]

Guys, pure TV talk is for the dedicated thread in LEGO Media and Gaming, thanks.

As for more sets? Ninjago is an "evergreen" theme now to TLG. The success means they are going to keep releasing sets as certainly as City. I don't follow the TV series, but the formula of bikes/cars/mecha/dragons could survive reboots or Next Generation-ing any plot-line.

[Digger of Bricks]

9 hours ago, obsidianheart said:

I don't keep up with the teevee show, who caused the apocalypse?

I don't at all keep up with it myself either (never watched it in fact), I was more commenting on the villians' overall aesthetics from superficial first impressions.

[shadefoundry]

11 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Honestly, I think they're best described as simply being Post-Apocalyptic, though I suppose you could describe them as Dieselpunk if you were to use that term very loosely. In my opinion, Dieselpunk should be almost exclusively reserved for anything with more of an alternate historical World War II vibe.

That's fair, either way the cobbled-together feel that the villain sets have this year is very appealing imo. That alone makes them far more intriguing to me as a consumer than the last few waves were.

Edited June 21, 2018 by shadefoundry

[Shroffy123]

I'm impressed with this upcoming wave. The weapons and armour help fill the castle void 

[x105Black]

On 6/20/2018 at 7:31 AM, makoy said:

I think he meant the opposite. You could say that Castle had been Ninjago'ed and that didn't work.

I will fully support if Ninjago leans more towards the classic Castle / Ninja to explore more medieval influence and themes.

True.

And so would I.  But it will never happen.

[Fenghuang0296]

40 minutes ago, x105Black said:

True.

And so would I.  But it will never happen.

To be fair, the Temple of Resurrection was pretty medieval. Take it out of the biker gang context (and remove Mr. E and Chopper Maroon) and you could easily see it as a standard Japanese-style Temple from a couple of thousand years ago. 

[makoy]

3 hours ago, x105Black said:

True.

And so would I.  But it will never happen.

I blame Horny Potter. 

2 hours ago, Feng-huang0296 said:

To be fair, the Temple of Resurrection was pretty medieval. Take it out of the biker gang context (and remove Mr. E and Chopper Maroon) and you could easily see it as a standard Japanese-style Temple from a couple of thousand years ago. 

I get what you mean -- but with the time-travel/dimension factor in Ninjago, the designers can do better than that.

 

[BrickJagger]

On 6/20/2018 at 3:58 PM, Exetrius said:

To get a little more into actual numbers: have a look at how searches for "ninjago" measure up to "lego" and "lego star wars" in Google trends, worldwide:https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01 2018-06-20&q=ninjago,lego city,lego.

At roughly any given time since 2011, the ratio for queries "lego" and "ninjago" has been 10:1 or lower. That should be a fair indication of the theme's popularity.
Side note: play around for a bit to see how interest in various lego themes differs per country, interesting! 

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01 2018-06-20&q=ninjago

This is just Ninjago by itself. What I gather from this is that it has been declining in interest ever since the wildly popular "Ghosts" wave. As you can see, the marketing push and the sheer number of sets associated with TLNM bumped it up again, but the film did not do well as interest has actually dipped to lower levels than it was before, despite two full new storylines since then. It's pretty clear than TLNM is the anomaly in this chart.

Ninjago is currently evergreen, that's absolutely true. However, I would imagine that Lego thought the same about Bionicle for a long time. Ninjago will more than likely end someday, I would imagine that they would wrap it up after 2020 or so to make it an even ten years.

[Exetrius]

14 hours ago, BrickJagger said:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01 2018-06-20&q=ninjago

This is just Ninjago by itself. What I gather from this is that it has been declining in interest ever since the wildly popular "Ghosts" wave. As you can see, the marketing push and the sheer number of sets associated with TLNM bumped it up again, but the film did not do well as interest has actually dipped to lower levels than it was before, despite two full new storylines since then. It's pretty clear than TLNM is the anomaly in this chart.

Ninjago is currently evergreen, that's absolutely true. However, I would imagine that Lego thought the same about Bionicle for a long time. Ninjago will more than likely end someday, I would imagine that they would wrap it up after 2020 or so to make it an even ten years.

I do see the decline, but searches for "lego" on the whole show a similar trend. While might be true that an increasingly harder media push is needed to maintain the level of popularity, we cannot rule out developments in the way of how the target audience uses other services to browse Ninjago stuff.

But, I don't fear the target audience will lose interest in the near future, even if it may not be as evergreen as City.

[Falconfan1414]

70630 is called ice temple. It’s apparently coming this year!

Edited June 25, 2018 by Falconfan1414

[Dardanel]

3 hours ago, Falconfan1414 said:

70630 is called ice temple. It’s apparently coming this year!

I've noticed quite a bit of noise about this set on social media. Is there a source? Any additional info?