What can LEGO do now?

Comments

• LegobrandonCP CanadaMember Posts: 1,917

  October 2013

  I'm starting to get less and less interested in the regular themes, but rather focusing my interest on the larger exclusives.

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• CCC UKMember Posts: 20,523

  October 2013

  All this ... http://www.brickset.com/browse/years/?Page=1&year=2013
  
  and there's not anything in there that they like?
  
  If that's the case, then get a creative bucket and get designing.
  
  > No new Pirates, the Castle theme is just a warmed-over theme
  
  I don't really understand what that means. Do you think pirates would be done any different to castle if there were new pirates sets?
  

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• Aanchir United StatesMember Posts: 2,998

  October 2013

  In my opinion, LEGO is doing just fine with their current offerings. Ninjago is one of my favorite themes, and it has made me pleased as punch to see how many Ninjago T-shirts are on department store shelves and on kids I see around town. It used to be that only the licensed themes like Star Wars and Batman got those levels of exposure, but Ninjago has challenged that status quo. The sets have been consistently impressive, and the story media has been tremendously exciting even for me as an adult.
  
  Chima is making a valiant effort to follow in Ninjago's footsteps (how successful it is will remain to be seen, but it certainly hasn't caught on to the same degree). Still, its sets have a lovely balance of brick-sculpture and exciting play features.
  
  LEGO City is also doing remarkably well. LEGO City Undercover was a heavily-promoted and favorably-reviewed title for the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS, and it is remarkable to see just how well TT Games did at crafting an iconic LEGO game with compelling characters, even without an existing franchise or storyline to rely on as a backbone. As far as sets are concerned, I'm always impressed to see what LEGO City has to offer, and for the past few years the designers have done a remarkable job incorporating as much building and play value into LEGO City as you would get in a sci-fi or action theme. I don't expect to see kids wearing Chase McCain T-shirts everywhere in the near future, but certainly LEGO City is more than just "baseline" LEGO.
  
  LEGO Friends has also performed phenomenally, and stands out from the crowd with its emphasis on complete and harmoniously-furnished interiors. This year's #41015 Dolphin Cruiser is a masterpiece that I hope to acquire at some point. My younger brother has #41005 Heartlake High, which is another lovely design.
  
  One of my personal favorite themes, Hero Factory, has been diminishing a bit as far as story media is concerned, but it's continued to deliver fantastic action figure set designs. I have had so much fun with #44009 Dragon Bolt that I can't bear to take him apart, though many of my other sets have been disassembled for MOCing resources. I spend a lot of time building with Hero Factory parts. The new building system is as therapeutic as it is versatile.
  
  And the basic brick buckets that the general public myopically thinks of as "regular LEGO" are still around, and still offering lots of play value. #10662 and #10664 both offer plenty of that kind of play for people of all ages who are tired of character-driven sets and want to enjoy LEGO purely as a creative medium.
  
  If you want non-character-driven sets but don't want to reduce building opportunities to basic multicolored bricks, Master Builder Academy offers a fantastic experience that is as fun as it is informative. Each kit is designed to teach you LEGO building tips and tricks as well as challenge you creatively to build within a number of different genres. Unfortunately, it's still exclusive to the United States, but I hope we'll see that change fairly soon.
  
  And next year, LEGO is continuing to explore new ideas with the Mixels series of zany brick-built critters. I am very intrigued by their new joint pieces and can't wait until I can experiment with them both in real life and digitally. So it's not like LEGO is caught in a rut by any means. They're still finding new ways to surprise us, even with the financial success their current ongoing themes have had. So overall, I think LEGO is on a strong upward path, and I don't expect that to change in the foreseeable future.

  

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• AdeelZubair London, UKMember Posts: 2,702

  October 2013

  Lego Super Heroes is a must for me as I am a huge comic book movie fan as well as some superheroes e.g. Spider-Man.
  
  Modular Buildings are very appealing to me from day one but it takes time to save up for one, that's why I only have Pet Shop #10218 but now I will be adding the rest to my collection.
  
  Other sets do occasionally catch my eye but I do say away from City, Ninjago, Chima, TMNT as the builds and display value gets beaten by the Lego Exclusives by far :D

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• plasmodium UKMember Posts: 1,956

  October 2013 edited October 2013

  CCC said:

  
  I don't really understand what that means. Do you think pirates would be done any different to castle if there were new pirates sets?
  

  I think he means that Castle is just not very exciting at the moment - there is nothing new in their sets.
  If Pirates were released next year, even if their sets were very similar to the recent/old pirates, that would be ok, because there haven't been other pirates for what, 4 years? They would still be 'new'.

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• bellybutton290 Member Posts: 453

  October 2013 edited October 2013

  I have to agree that for me personally my interest in lego is waining due to rehashes in sw and overly populated sub themes in the city theme with the retread of emergency services every single year. On the plus side the exclusives are nearly always fantastic especially modulars and UCS and are nearly always improving (though the x-wing ucs rehash was a step back IMO good as it was) so they are holding my interest in the brick. This is just my personal position however and I firmly believe lego is far from standing still especially when you consider the friends line (largely untapped revenue source originally) is gaining popularity and with new SW films on the horizon in 2015 and beyond (including side films of solo and boba) the future looks good in that area. Let's not forget TLG recently went from number 3 to number 2 in the league table of toy company earnings so clearly they are progressing and that was only a year after climbing to 3rd, though mattel will take some beating for them to become the biggest and realistically won't happen.

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• SilentMode UKMember Posts: 586

  October 2013

  The only things I've been interested in this year are Friends and the Collectible Minifigures.

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• dougts Oregon, USAMember Posts: 4,110

  October 2013

  I have to agree with the OP a bit in regards to 2014. Outside of the exclusives, there isn't much catching my interest at this point. SW looks really weak, City is more of the same old, Ninjago/Chima is too kid-oriented, and there doesn't appear to be any new one-off themes that I might like, as there has been over each of the past several years (AC, GS, MF, Dino, etc)
  
  Maybe the mid-year wave will be better, but thus far 2014 looks like a money saving year for me - except the extra I'll be shelling out on full-price exclusives of course

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