Looking back at 2010, what do you think of last year's lego sets?

Here are my thoughts. I buy sets mostly for parts and minifigs. So my views are biased towards that way.

Themes:

Atlantis: The new and most promoted theme. A solid theme with both giant monsters and vehicles. I like the monsters a lot more than the vehicles. The minifigs are wonderful. I own most of the sets because they are on sale so often.

Castle: I'm more a fan of fantasy. The historical theme is a bit boring to me. Some of the traditional castle parts are revamped, which is nice imo.

City: Not a big fan of city sets. But public transport station is a great part pack.

Creator: Normally I buy a lot for parts, but this year the sets seem a bit expensive.

Harry Potter: I missed the earlier waves, but I'm not really a HP fan either. The minifigs are great, can be used for both castle and city setting. The burrow and the castle have some good parts in large quantity.

Hero factory: The new bionicle. I usually buy these for cool parts to use in sci fi moc. But last years' aren't as appealing to me, except for meltdown's nuclear containers. I want more of those.

Power miner: Only 4 sets, but the miner's new silver outfit is very cool and fitting.

Prince of Persia: My personal favorite theme of the year. We got tons of new mold like camel, ostrich, half arch, quarter dome. On top of that we got a new color, medium nougat? whatever its name. Minifigs are nice too.

Space Police 3: Only 5 sets. Not the most interesting. Although the undercover cruiser's transforming mechanism is a nice surprise to me.

Star Wars: Not a star wars fan, didn't care too much.

Toy Story: Probably the most promoted license theme. I didn't like the minifigs that much, since they don't really fit into other themes, with a few exception. Still an interesting theme. Got tons of no-fig sets on ebay for cheap.

World Racers: Looks like another one wave action theme. Not the most interesting, but for some reason I have most of the sets. I guess they go on sale often.

Edit: And how can I forget Collectible Minifigs. These little evil packets changed the way we shop. I have yet to see so much anger from AFOLs until these came out. Brilliant move by TLG.

Edited February 8, 201114 yr by lisqr

Here we go:

-The Licensed sets were the highlight of the year for me. TS and PoP were both amazing. HP was okay, as the sets and new part selection is great, but I'm not too fond.

-SW was okay, but I've seen, much better years. Overall, lacklustre

-Castle was really good. I too was getting sick of fantasy themes, so the two human factions was refreshing.

-Action themes were okay too. The 2010 waves of both PM and SP were worse than the first waves, but they were still good. Atlantis was a nice theme, but I thought it lacked "soul," if you know what I mean. They were good sets, it's just that you can't really keep them together for long. World Racers was a great concept, but I think they could've advertised it better and put more thought into the sets. It's sad to see it go after one wave, as it would've been interesting to see more sets.

-City was quite boring to be honest, save the Farm theme, which I would love to see continue.

-Creator had some good sets, as always (especially the fighter jet) but unfortunately they went up in price for some odd reason.

-I was sad to see Bionicle go, but Hero Factory is a somewhat suitable replacement. I think Lego needed to change the story, as kids these days like robots more than legendary/mythical plots

All in all, 2010 was an imbalanced year IMO. Some sets (Licensed themes) were amazing, whereas the evergreen themes keep getting more and more <insert that tiresome argument> with humongous and redundant pieces, dragging down the piece count, and decreasing the build time.

Here's my opinion on the themes of 2010:

Atlantis: None of the vehicles impressed me, but I made sure to collect enough of the sets to get one of every sea creature minifigure (except the Portal Emperor-type figure). The 2011 Atlantis sets are more attractive for features beyond minifigure-collecting.

Castle: I collected many of the oldest castle sets, and in recent years, I may only pick up a few of the smallest ones just for the minifigures. This may be the first Castle theme in 20 years that I decided to collect every set. The King's Castle was unimpressive at first, but after seeing one assembled on display in a local toy shop, I had to have it, making it only my fourth castle ever.

City: I personally love City sets, and 2010 was an excellent year for civilian vehicles and structures. 2011 is looking slightly promising too due to the Bank and Money Transfer. Otherwise, I was glad to see 2010 City deviate from Police, Hospital, Fire, and Coastguard.

Creator: This may be the first year that I didn't buy a single Creator set. None impressed me.

Harry Potter: Too many repeated concepts from the original HP sets I own, so my only purchase was The Burrow.

Hero factory: I only got Meltdown because the color scheme and concept seemed interesting. Plus, I especially liked those canisters of radioactive waste.

Power miner: Again, I only purchased the cheapest set, mostly for the silver-clad minifigure. The overall designs of the sets were not of interest.

Prince of Persia: This was definitely among my favorite themes, and like Castle, I have attempted to collect all of them.

Space Police 3: Undercover Cruiser is my favorite, but I'm tempted to get the Lunar Limo sometime soon. Before this, I already collected

Star Wars: At this point, I only collect the Star Wars Battlepacks for minifgures.

Toy Story: As much as I love Toy Story, the pricing of the sets kept me away. Only the bare minimum purchases were made to acquire most of my favorite characters. I'm still missing Jessie and Bullseye, though.

World Racers: This theme grew on me over time, but I only collected the polybag sets and Snake Canyon for the figures and the motorcycles for my city.

Iv'e collected the complete theme of Prince of Presia - I enjoyed that to bits-

The New Castle series "Kingdoms" Glad to see it with two minifig factions- looking forward to the new sets of 2011.

Harry Potter only missing the Castle- will buy that in the nearest future (never colleted it before and glad to see it back- I think this version of the castle may be the best).

Not to fond of the Atlantis series exept for the "City of Atlantis", love this set! I might buy a couple extra, just for all the great parts!

I Also love the lego games, nothing like playing Creationary with a couple of friends on a saturday night!

Other than that, I haven't seen anything special, that I felt was striking.

Hmmm... this should be fun.

My favorite theme in 2010 was probably Space Police III. It took the already-great designs of 2009 and kicked them up a notch. It was sad not to see it last, and I feel I may be building SPIII MOCs for a while to come.

Atlantis got off to a great start with some beautiful and streamlined sets, many of which boasted impressive action features. The creative architecture of the few buildings blew my mind, and the submarines were creatively designed. It also boasted the introduction of Transparent Bright Green, a color that has a lot of potential and which was much-needed as an alternative to the darker Transparent Green or the bright and yellowish Transparent Fluorescent Green.

Power Miners, a theme I had been really into in 2009, didn't do so well in 2010. I had no problem with the color scheme, which basically just swapped bright blue for bright orange and silver for glow-in-the-dark/white. But Lavatraz, which should have been the flagship set, was really underwhelming, organizing the exciting color scheme in a chaotic and unattractive way. I still wish I had picked up the Claw Catcher, though-- perhaps it was a mistake to have taken my other Power Miners sets home, since that really reduced my incentive to get that set and MOC with the parts.

The Disney licenses were interesting, but never really appealed to me. Prince of Persia had amazing architecture and great colors, including the new color Medium Nougat. I still don't think this new color has realized its full potential, but it's been used tastefully for several of the collectible minifigures and (more recently) for the German Shepherds in the 2011 Police theme. Toy Story was an OK theme, and it introduced some useful minifigure parts that I hope LEGO uses again. At the same time, though, it included a lot of specialized figure molds that will probably never be used again. The set designs were cool, but didn't have the same "wow" factor as those in some other licensed themes, like Indiana Jones or the aforementioned Prince of Persia. Even if the set designs were more appealing, I can't say for sure that I'd have bought the sets-- I'm not much of a buyer of licensed themes.

Harry Potter was a licensed theme I could really get into. While the prices were such that I still don't have many sets (in fact, all I have currently is Hogwarts Castle), it appealed to my sense of nostalgia and my love of great minifigure designs.

BIONICLE was not outstanding, but the set designs were still admirable. They were made to resemble past characters, and the effort did not go to waste. I suppose Front deserves much of the credit for that, as he helped engineer some of the parts that made this nostalgia trip possible.

Ben 10: Alien Force was another license that didn't really catch my eye. But I loved the part designs, and how their smooth aesthetic fit in with regular LEGO more than the complex and intricate BIONICLE part designs ever had. Hero Factory, BIONICLE's replacement, continued this trend, with a smooth, refined aesthetic that I couldn't help but love. Still, the Hero Factory sets of 2010 were underwhelming, and I was not drawn into the theme until this year when the newer and much more versatile building system was implemented.

Kingdoms was introduced as the new Castle theme, and brought something that people had long been begging for: human-versus-human conflicts. And yet, from the posts I've seen in the Board Games thread, people are already bored of Kingdoms, and some are even hoping for the upcoming Heroica games to become a full theme and replace Kingdoms. It disappoints me a bit, because Kingdoms takes a new and different look at medieval life than Fantasy-Era Castle did, featuring more realistic castles and more authentic factions. On the other hand, looking back, the Castle themes I've invested in over the years tend to be the less-realistic stuff as well-- themes like Fright Knights, Dragon Masters, and Knights' Kingdom II. So I guess it's no surprise that I have not made any plans to invest in Kingdoms sets.

City had some beautiful sets. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the Fire subtheme in my opinion, besides something it shared with the Flight subtheme: the introduction of some gorgeous new helicopter parts. These have been incessantly criticized as "<insert that tiresome argument>", just because they are large, but in my opinion they are the ideal alternative to the even larger and more hated 8-wide plane parts. Their slopes are more compatible with other LEGO parts, their contours are perfect for diverse applications (including, as next year's sets demonstrate, small speedboats), and they manage this without being pointlessly blocky. Other noteworthy sets in the City theme included the LEGO truck and its sister the Toys 'R' Us truck, two beautiful sets. The LEGO truck appeals to my sense of nostalgia, the Toys 'R' Us truck to my love of sets and MOCs that replicate real life, and both to my love of meta-references in LEGO sets. The tiny LEGO boxes in both sets are wonderful additions.

The farm subtheme had a sparse offering in 2010, but introduced the LEGO pig, a wonderful mold. I personally think almost all LEGO animals should have printed eyes, for more consistency with the LEGO horse and standard LEGO minifigure. I wonder when we might get a new version of the LEGO monkey... I feel it's a little overdue.

Trains sets were gorgeous. The Train Station feels wonderfully compatible with any LEGO city, the Passenger Train manages to create the appearance of a sleek high-speed train without the use of specialized or <insert that tiresome argument> parts, and the Cargo Train is a detailed set that allows for countless fun and exciting scenes. In the field of non-rail transit, the Public Transport Station is a great addition to any LEGO city, with beautifully detailed vehicles and lovely landmarks.

Hard to judge the LEGO games because almost none of the 2010 LEGO games are out in the U.S. From my experience, they're great fun, and I'm hoping the LEGO microfig makes its way to mainstream LEGO themes as an infant.

The collectible minifigures were a great addition to LEGO's diverse catalog. They allowed the creation of minifigures who didn't fit in any existing themes, and demonstrated the merits of Chinese production with their introduction of printing on the sides of the legs and painting on various parts. A lot of people complain about quality, but so far mine are all as good a quality as I could ever demand. The design quality, for that matter, never came into question.

There were some cool Creator sets, but I've never really bought Creator sets. I've become quite a fan of the Creator website, though, which has excellent designer interviews, blogs, and videos. With that, let me segue into the web updates in 2010, which made the site much more attractive and fun-to-visit, as well as the update to LEGO Digital Designer 4.0, which has been great fun.

Technic was cool as usual, but didn't really appeal to me or my wallet. Same applies to Star Wars, although some of the sets were really phenomenal. I keep wishing I had gotten Luke's Landspeeder, although it's still available at many stores I go to so maybe it might someday end up on clearance.

Racers took the "unfolding racetrack" gimmick from the previous year and made it a little more exciting with various jumps and other action scenes. But the Tiny Turbos line in general still doesn't greatly appeal to me.

Lastly, World Racers was an interesting one-wave theme with some creative and complex set designs. Didn't really get my attention, though, since I was already investing heavily in Atlantis and Space Police III.

LEGO exclusive sets were all gorgeous, and I'm still hoping maybe one day I can get the Shuttle Adventure.

Overall, 2010 was an exciting year for LEGO, and really helped me make the transition back into general AFOLdom after many years with BIONICLE as my chief focus. With Hero Factory coming back into my interest zone, I'm sure I'll have to balance my interests once again to keep my budget manageable. But it definitely won't supercede System sets anytime soon.

2010 was full of cool stuff, but sadly I wasn't able to go after all of it, at least not right away...

Atlantis is a fun-looking theme, but so far I've gotten very little of it - my limited finances and my prioritization of certain other themes have shoved this one to the back burner for me. I do regret this, since it's full of fun elements and colors, and many of the sets do appear to have fun play features. With many sets from the early waves now being clearanced I think I'll go after more of this, though I don't think I can go after the whole line.

Everything true about Atlantis for me is equally true of Power Miners, but various sales and clearances have allowed me to get quite a bit more from this theme than from the other recent / current sci-fi action themes. I absolutely adore the touches in many of the sets hinting at the more mundane aspects of the PMs' existence (the vending machine in Lavatraz is full of win). The firey new lava-based rock monsters are fun, too, and I hope to eventually get at least enough PM sets to have a full set of all the monsters in all colors.

City is full of great stuff, and also zillions of police and firefighters. As with so many themes I'm still playing catch-up, working more on stuff from '09 than from '10, so I can't say too much about the 2010 sets, other than that the emphasis on cops and firefighters is making it easier on my wallet than it might've been. I do want some of the air travel sets, though, and a few cops and firefighters can't hurt...

The collectible minifigures are utterly fantastic, and just about the only new theme I've made a point of getting in its entirety as soon as each wave is released - of course, with this theme I have little choice if I want it all, since they just don't stay around very long. I've gotten at least two of every figure from Series 1 & 2 (and at least one of each from Series 3, so far), and many more than that of some of them, and wouldn't mind still more. Honestly, I just wish more people could get them more easily.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a terrific theme, and it's a shame the movie it's attached to didn't do better. I do have some somewhat mixed feelings about it, since Indiana Jones was apparently discontinued (or put on hiatus indefinitely) to make room for this theme (and I wouldn't be surprised if TLG itself wishes it had stuck with Indy for a while instead of launching this), but as long as Indy was put on hiatus, it's nice that its "replacement" is something that has proven so useful for adding to / expanding the Indy theme. Some of the many new elements PoP has introduced could just as easily have been designed for Indy, and many more are certainly handy for it. It also has some wonderful new colors and is entirely sticker-free - when's the last time an entire licensed theme was done without any stickers? Thanks to clearances (and the fact there just aren't many sets), I've actually had a pretty easy time getting all the sets, with duplicates of about half of them. I plan to get a few more, if circumstances permit...

Space Police (III) is automatically a theme that holds some interest for me simply by virtue of being a LEGO Space theme, but the police aspect turns me off a bit, to be honest. There are already far more than enough LEGO police in City alone without having them spill over into other themes, but at least the designs are interesting, and the aliens are great (even if the theme concept does arguably perpetuate the streak of LEGO xenophobia some perceive ). The touches referencing earlier eras in LEGO Space are very much appreciated (I'm getting misty-eyed right now just thinking about the statue). Still, though, it's low enough on my priority list that I'm getting only a few sets (trying to go after ones with interesting aliens I don't have yet, and then mostly when they're on sale / clearance).

I've always loved Star Wars, but it's a nightmare for someone without a huge amount of money to try to keep up with it all. I certainly intend to do my darndest to get at least all of the original trilogy stuff, but it's not easy. For me, 2010 in LEGO Star Wars is going to be remembered not so much for the new sets introduced as it is for the disappearance of the desperately-wanted UCS Millennium Falcon before I could get it, which is a colossal blow. I haven't yet gotten most of the 2010 sets; I'm still working on stuff from '07, '08 and '09. I'm also not sure how I feel about things like the new Boba Fett minifigure. I still love the theme overall, though, and am always trying to get more...

Toy Story, how I love thee! This is probably my favorite licensed LEGO theme drawn from a non-Lucasfilm property (and Pixar started as part of Lucasfilm, come to think of it...), with some charming set designs, parts in colors we don't usually see them in, and controversial spins on LEGO minifigures that I for one adore. The fact so many decorated elements are printed and not stickered is something of a delightful shock, too. Thanks to sales and clearances, I've actually managed to get nearly all the non-Duplo sets in the theme (everything except the Western Train Chase and the Buzz and Woody polybag promos, and do intend to get the train soon). I think it's a shame this theme won't be around indefinitely; Pixar's work in many ways complements LEGO's sensibilities extremely well, and I do look forward to the 'system' Cars sets.