Anything on any new 2014 themes?

LostInTranslation

@klatu003
"There's no place like Middle Earth, there's no place like Middle Earth, there's no place like Middle Earth..."

:-)

tamamahm

CircleK said:

I was surprised LotR got a 2nd wave honestly, not to mention a d2c set. I don't know the numbers - just my own personal observation that came from a lot of time spent in a lot of Lego aisles: The sets were aimed at kids, but the kids weren't interested. They were too busy drooling over Ninjago, Monster Fighters, Superheroes, and Star Wars.

The LotR sets went nowhere in my neck of the woods other than the clearance racks and The Hobbit theme isn't doing any better.

Yeah. I predicted this a long while back.
There is a mismatch between content and audience. This is not the first time Lego has made that mistake. There simply is not a huge LOTR fan base in the typical school. With AFOLs, sure. Compare this to the HP license, where every kid in grade school knows who HP is, and what Hogwarts is.

If I look at my older daughter who has read LOTR, some sets appealed to her, but between the Hobbit and LOTR, the only sets of interest were
Mines of Moria
Weathertop
BagEnd
The set with Elrond/Arwyn

Of those, there was really only one set she was desperate to have.

If I look at my younger son, the one set he likes, was described as a hot mess above,which was the Goblin King. As the post above stated, he wAs really too busy drooling over lines like Ninjago or Galaxy Squad.

Now LEGO has two lines of really the same theme that the 9 and under crowd pretty much ignore, that does not hit the AFOL want, and that the target age of 10+ is only mildly interested in.

Basically if the line goes, I will not be surprised, but it is a shame. The lack of Galadriel and Eowyn is also just bad. I would rather have seen them focus on just the Hobbit, and instead put out 3-5 very large special editions LOTR sets targeted at AFOLs.

klatu003

@tamamahm Which was your daughter's must have? Yes, I can see that Goblin King would appeal to boys, for exactly the reasons that it doesn't appeal to me. Did he also like the ship?

Maybe TLG will hear our pleading and produce some UCS LoTR? First step -everyone who wants more must go buy a #10237 Tower of Orthanc to prove our serious AFOL intent.

meyerc13

Even though the Tower of Orthanc is nice, I just don't have room to display or store it. Now, had that been a modular Prancing Pony, I'd be all over it.

One unfortunate mistake that I think LEGO made was highlighting some of the worst CGI in the movies in their sets. Cave Troll, Wargs, Goblin King, all three of those scenes made me feel like I was watching a movie because the CGI wasn't convincing enough. Compare Gollum to any of those three and you'll see what I mean. So for me, all three of those sets were undesirable just because those are my three least favorite parts of the films. I'm guessing I'm not alone in that, those seem to be the least popular sets overall. Why they chose to do the Cave Troll scene instead of the Balrog I'll never understand.

tamamahm

@klatu003
Her must have was Mines of Moria. That was top of her Christmas list last year. That was top because it was in the first wave, and it looked cool. It had a bunch of details, and she felt she could use Legolas's hair for a female elf.

The problem is that first wave really didn't capture her interest, so the line just didn't become a must have line. Plus, there were plenty of sets that were just non-interest sets for her. Because of that the remainder became ones that were nice, but didn't match the passion of that first set. I would say her second line of sets were Mirkwood (forgot to mention) and Council of Elrond, simply because both had female characters. Weathertop I think I had more interest in, but she enjoyed the build. BagEnd was cool looking (my fav from the line), but again, the theme had lost her a bit by this point.

For my son, he has absolutely no interest in the ship. He may not be the standard 'boy' model, though. He did love Ninjago, but has no interest in super hero, Star Wars. He wants sets with lots of cool hidden features. There was not a single line out this year that was a must have line. Galaxy Squad came the closest, but still failed in that. It had grown on him as the year progressed, though. This year was more about single must have sets.

TLR Mine
Jabba/Rancor (his first Star Wars request)
Galactic Titan
Goblin King

klatu003

@tamamahm I completely understand your daughter's desire for female figures. The minifigs are our way of entering the scene. In my modular building setup the #10197 female firefighter gets to drive the truck! #4440 Rhonda the Ranger often rides on the back of the bear to check out what is happening in other builds. [Mr Klatu named her Rhonda. LOL]

I get your son's picks too (except Galactic Titan - don't know that one) -love the way pushing on the TNT explodes the wall in TLR Mine. Hidden places in each, sounds like he is not vehicle-centric like most boys - or what I call WTW (wheels treads & wings)

Well, guess this has become rather off topic for New in 2014...

tamamahm

Exactly. He is much less about wheels, and far more about how a set looks like from an imaginary play viewpoint. Monster Fighter Vampyre Castle... Another one top on his list. Although, he did like Ninjago...

Galactic Titan is the large $99.99 set from Galaxy Squad. Nice set with a two-part vehicle, creature, another little build. Lots of play value.

Not too off topic, because really this was what I was hoping to find for 2014... Any new line that hits his interests and play style. Based on my girls' interests and my son's interest...I often struggle.

icey117

Bumblepants said:

Well it is probably too early to rule out LotR completely...

I'm pretty sure TLC considers the HOBBIT/LOTR's theme as one... not with LOGO, but they are not far from having the same target group. Seen this way we're up at the 4th wave now... if we get a another HOBBIT this summer - we're at 5 waves. Unless these sets doesn't sell well, TLC will consider the market saturated.

CCC

^ They are distinct themes on S@H, so hopefully they are treated separately.

cardgenius

I will be devastated if they end it now. I really need the Witch King on his Fell Beast! And a Sauron minifigure would be nice too.

VBaskin2008

& Don't forget about the return of NinjaGo: The Masters Of Spinjitzu.

legodude

I am surprised, even as not a LOTR fan I thought the set designers were doing an excellent job, a lot of the sets looked appealing. I placed LOTR/Hobbit in terms of set design ahead of Star Wars and City for 2012. (Not counting Creator)
It had everything a standard castle theme should be about and include; adventure, exploration, treasure, multiple factions some are neutral, villages/homes, mines, forests, caves, castles, ships, towers and more. If only LEGO would do that with a standard castle theme!

I hope the next castle theme establishes at least 4 factions. Good, Bad, Neutral (Forestmen, Nobles), and Civilian.

Polynices

I take a longer view, thinking back to when I loved LEGO as a kid and loved the Hobbit and LotR as an older kid. I would never have imagined something as awesome as LotR LEGO and now I have it.

OTOH, even my 7-year-old has complained that there's no Balrog and no bridge at Khazad-dûm set. They definitely could mine the property for many more sets.

Aleydita

The "An Unexpected Gathering" set is how I managed to get the wife interested in Lego. She's a massive Tolkien fan and the movies reinvigorated her love of the whole LOTR franchise. But, though she loves the Bag End set, she's not drawn towards any of the others from the range. She gave the Tower a once over when we were at the Lego Shop but instead decided to get the Haunted House set from the Monster Fighters theme.

I personally love some of the LOTR/Hobbit sets but the Black Gate was a massive disappointment, as was dedicating a major product to the ship. There's so much more they could have done with this franchise that would have appealed to Lego fans and LOTR fans in equal measure; I for one hope it'll continue for a couple of years yet.

I'd love to see a return of the Pirates theme, my first ever 'big set' was the #6285 Barracuda. I remember being really annoyed that a couple of the small parts were missing, never even occurred to me to contact TLG for replacements. Despite this I went on to collect most of the smaller Pirate sets and even some of the City boats so I could set up modern-day Somali-type piracy operations. Oh to have that imagination back again.

just2good

You guys like bats? kmart.com/lego-legends-of-chima-8482-bat-strike/p-004W004700314003P?prdNo=10&blockNo=10&blockType=G10

TheOneVeyronian

^ Looks more like a weird gargoyle than a bat... :-P

But otherwise, I quite like it. The new wing pieces, I'm really liking them! :-)

FatMatt

Wonder if that is the same mold for the new Super Heroes Man Bat minifigure head piece.

Bumblepants

Not a fan of the purple/pink nose but I like the rest of him. Interesting the age suggestion goes up to 14, I thought these Speedorz things were aimed a bit lower.

ausone

Take out the wings and it looks like a Ferengi lol

TheOneVeyronian

^^ The age suggestion on 2013 Speedorz only went up to 12 (it was 6-12 btw). Now I wonder why they've changed the age range? The old one was more sensible imo. (I am 20 years old and I did buy some speedorz I admit - but only for minifigs, I maintain! :-P )

Also, very hard to tell from the pic, but the packaging looks improved tenfold over the 2013 Speedorz. The old packaging was extremely difficult to open neatly, so I for one welcome the (what looks like) new packaging :-)

2014 is looking like an expensive year for me already...

AFFOL_Shellz_Bellz

My granddaughters are into the Monster High things. Does anyone know if it's already licensed to another brick maker?

just2good

AFFOL_Shellz_Bellz said:

My granddaughters are into the Monster High things. Does anyone know if it's already licensed to another brick maker?

It's owned by Mattel, which tends to work with MegaBloks, and it's a competing toy company, so yeah, it ain't gonna happen.

Aanchir

TheOneVeyronian said:

^ Looks more like a weird gargoyle than a bat... :-P

But otherwise, I quite like it. The new wing pieces, I'm really liking them! :-)

That's actually what a lot of real-life bats look like. Freaky noses and all. They don't all resemble cute little mice with wings.

I notice he only has one hole for his eyes. It'd be hilarious to put that head piece on a plain black minifigure head so he looks like a bat with sunglasses... then again, we don't know that the LEGO Group won't be doing anything of that sort in sets next year!

The new bat wings are nice. They are a lot better for minifigures than the old dragon wings.

TheOneVeyronian

Aanchir said:

TheOneVeyronian said:

^ Looks more like a weird gargoyle than a bat... :-P

But otherwise, I quite like it. The new wing pieces, I'm really liking them! :-)

That's actually what a lot of real-life bats look like. Freaky noses and all. They don't all resemble cute little mice with wings.

I wasn't talking about the head itself when I wrote that. I was saying how the whole minifig (more the colour than anything really) looked like a gargoyle imo.

I also knew that a lot of bats had snout-like noses, I never thought they looked like mice with wings at all ;-)

The head definitely is bat-like though, but I'm not sure how many real species of bat have truly purple noses... :-)

But I will say I'm glad they made the new bat wings. I was afraid they'd use the arms and torso of the CMF Man-Bat, that wouldn't have worked well at all...