Friends 2021 - Rumours & Discussion

[Klaus-Dieter]

Thank you all very much for the information!

I really like it that Lego built the School, the Grand Hotel and the Beach Front that way that the side walls go completely to the back, that there are so many details inside and the exterior archtitecture is very elaborated and different! This way, these buildings match very well with City and Creator houses.

[Soupperson1]

The Friends advent calendar has been revealed along with the others in that Japanese catalog! It comes with micro versions of all five girls.

[karrit]

Unless the other builds in the calendar are interesting it will be a pass for me.  No interest in amassing the micro dolls.  Guess I can download the instructions to replicate whatever interesting builds they put in.

[TeriXeri]

I wonder if 2022 will be a special year because it will be the 10th anniversary of Friends/Minidolls (11th year).

 

The main thing that might be expected to have a re-release would probably be Olivia's House.

Edited June 26, 2021 by TeriXeri

[Lyichir]

Personally I love the look of the advent calendar—it's like what the main characters looked like as itty bitty kids! How cute is that? I would have gone gaga for something like that in the Elves theme after the webisodes first featured a flashback to when they were snub-nosed youngsters.

On 6/26/2021 at 6:42 PM, TeriXeri said:

I wonder if 2022 will be a special year because it will be the 10th anniversary of Friends/Minidolls (11th year).

 

The main thing that might be expected to have a re-release would probably be Olivia's House.

That's a good question! I'm not really expecting straight rereleases, but a new version of Olivia's House could certainly be a neat idea, especially since Olivia and her parents are some of the characters whose appearances and roles changed most post-reboot.

It would be amazing if Friends could also potentially get its first D2C set to celebrate the anniversary. Maybe something like some of the bigger City sets or 2008's Town Plan, with a couple of buildings, a central "town square" (perhaps with a statue or similar monument celebrating the theme's anniversary), and definitely all five Friends characters (it's amazing that this many years in there I think the upcoming Advent Calendar is still the first set to include all five of them).

As a "constraction" fan, there's also a part of me that's been wanting Lego to try something with brick-built "fashion dolls" for a while (something more versatile and based more around standard parts and building techniques than the old Belville/Scala dolls). It'd be a challenge to get right (much harder than the recent Minecraft "bigfigs" that have the benefit of working with blocky characters), but maybe next year could be the year that the Friends theme could try branching out into that hugely unexplored market!

[teljesnegyzet]

Hm... 10th anniversary of Friends... that must mean golden minidolls!

[White Phoenix of the Crown]

6 minutes ago, teljesnegyzet said:

Hm... 10th anniversary of Friends... that must mean golden minidolls! 

I doubt.

[teljesnegyzet]

2 minutes ago, Samus Aran said:

I doubt.

I mean LEGO recently used golden minifigs in both Ninjago and Harry Potter anniversary sets.

[Maple]

14 hours ago, teljesnegyzet said:

Hm... 10th anniversary of Friends... that must mean golden minidolls!

That would be awesome. I could easily see LEGO redoing some of the first year sets, like Harry Potter this year and NinjaGo last. The first year sets were ROUGH. Damn were there some awful colors used.

[TeriXeri]

1 hour ago, Maple said:

That would be awesome. I could easily see LEGO redoing some of the first year sets.

The main "new" one of Year 1 would be Olivia's House.

Some other sets from the first couple years actually re-released fairly recently in some form, large ones being the School , Hotel , Pool , Beach House, Shopping Mall, and multiple horse sets, even up to the Vet subtheme from 2015.

 

Wouldn't surprise me if 2022 brought the Pop Star theme back, or at least 1 of the sets like the Bus or Pop Star House.

 

Even better would be if LEGO would introduce a new in-house minidoll theme, at this point it's been a while since Elves ended.

Edited June 29, 2021 by TeriXeri

[Maple]

4 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

The main "new" one of Year 1 would be Olivia's House.

Even better would be if LEGO would introduce a new in-house minidoll theme, at this point it's been a while since Elves ended.

You are right. I just went through the first several years and that's the only set that NEEDS to be redone.

I've been hoping for a minidoll Space theme, just because Elves was so great I think a space theme would be great.

[Soupperson1]

It’s strange there still hasn’t been official pictures of the advent calendar right? It was revealed in early June and it comes out in a month. :S

[LegoMyMamma]

A lot more images (more than other years) with *spoiler* of daily builds (for those who wish to not see ;-)

https://heartlaketimes.blogspot.com/2021/08/2021-lego-friends-advent-calendar.html

@Soupperson1 :-)

 

 

[Lyichir]

55 minutes ago, LegoMyMamma said:

A lot more images (more than other years) with *spoiler* of daily builds (for those who wish to not see ;-)

https://heartlaketimes.blogspot.com/2021/08/2021-lego-friends-advent-calendar.html

@Soupperson1 :-)

 

 

These are just so cute! I love the mini-Friends in their little holiday outfits!

Spoiler

The mini-builds are also great. My favorites are the little nutcracker and ballerina figurines!

 

[Gobias1234]

4 hours ago, LegoMyMamma said:

 

A lot more images (more than other years) with *spoiler* of daily builds (for those who wish to not see ;-)

https://heartlaketimes.blogspot.com/2021/08/2021-lego-friends-advent-calendar.html

@Soupperson1 :-)

 

 

This is the best Friends advent I can recall- great builds! Great figs! NOT A HAIRBRUSH IN SIGHT!

Thanks for sharing

[Robert8]

Great advent calendar

Lovely that all of them are kiddos

 

21 hours ago, Lyichir said:

These are just so cute! I love the mini-Friends in their little holiday outfits!

  Reveal hidden contents

The mini-builds are also great. My favorites are the little nutcracker and ballerina figurines!

 

Spoiler

Seeing that he comes with a wind-up key, I think it's more likely that he is meant to be the tin soldier

 

 

[Lyichir]

15 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

Great advent calendar

Lovely that all of them are kiddos

 

  Hide contents

Seeing that he comes with a wind-up key, I think it's more likely that he is meant to be the tin soldier

 

Oh, you're probably right! I sometimes mix up those two stories. It's a wonderful holiday reference nonetheless (especially since it's one I don't recall seeing in a seasonal Lego set before).

[Soupperson1]

The Friends Advent Calendar finally feels fresh again! I’m not sure if this is going to convince more people to buy it but there’s more substance to this one. Last year most of the builds were a lot smaller compared to the ones from the others and this year they really stepped up their game. The whisk, nutcracker (or toy soldier as @Robert8 suggested) and ballerina are stand out as amazing builds and nearly everything else looks nice. You get a lot of rarer pieces too like the pink controller, sand blue cat, Marshmellow mug, cat painting etc. The girls do have new faces! Yay! I was worried they wouldn’t. I wonder why Olivia doesn’t have glasses. I still think the hairpieces look off as done Andrea not being FYO. It’s also strange that all the outfits are Christmas themed limiting reuse for both play and for future sets.

[Lyichir]

8 hours ago, Soupperson1 said:

 I wonder why Olivia doesn’t have glasses.

As somebody with glasses, I didn't end up learning that I needed them until a couple years into school (I think second or third grade), so it doesn't seem that off to me for this younger Olivia to not have them yet! I also think the hairpieces aren't bad choices, feeling a little more "childlike" than the longer, more elaborately maintained hairdos the older Friends have (especially since some of those longer hair pieces would probably look quite out of scale on figs this size!)

[Soupperson1]

At this rate I think it’s very unlikely the Winter cubes are going to be released this year. It’s such a shame we never got to see even pictures of them! Especially since they were (and continue to be) listed on sites like Amazon and Walmart.

[teljesnegyzet]

On 8/4/2021 at 9:40 AM, Soupperson1 said:

I wonder why Olivia doesn’t have glasses.

Interestingly, she had glasses as a child in the animated series:

https://legofriends.fandom.com/wiki/Olivia?file=07SwimmingPhoto01HM.png

[Soupperson1]

These:

• 41695: tbd Friends 4+ Pet Clinic 2022

• 41697: tbd Friends Turtle Protection 2022

• 41700: tbd Friends New Camping 2022

• 41701: tbd Friends Street Food 2022

• 41702: tbd Friends Houseboat 2022

• 41703: tbd Friends Friendship Treehouse 2022

• 41704: tbd Friends Apartment Building 2022

• 41707: tbd Friends Mission Vehicle 2022 Power

Are being shared around. I believe the source is just the Ninjago wiki though which doesn’t scream credibility. If this is real I’m a bit disappointed there’s no sort of legacy sets. This feels very much like a regular wave beside the apartment building which I’ll admit is exiting.