Toy Fair 2017: Nexo Knights

[Hapori Tohu]

Today we're moving on to LEGO Nexo Knights in our ever-continuing Toy Fair 2017 coverage. The sci-fi and fantasy mashup has made it to its second year and has a variety of sets out now and in August to appease its fans. With lots of new bad guys, our heroes will need all new vehicles to save the day and protect the kingdom. Let take a look at what we're getting!

 

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[Aanchir]

Um, Axl's Rumble Maker was definitely on display… you guys tweeted about it yourselves from the event.

 

I'm really loving some of the new brick-built monsters like the Heligoyle, the Stone Colossus, the rolling tower that comes with Knighton Castle, and the ADORABLE monster steed that comes with Aaron's Rock Climber. The limited posability of the Stone Colossus makes sense to me, having built similar-sized monsters in the past that struggled to hold their weight. Sometimes when you get up to that kind of size, less is more. It's cool to learn about its wing function, since other sites' reports from Toy Fair haven't really called attention to it. The prison cells in its legs are also pretty clever, and I love the crown/parapet on its head made from forbidden powers!

 

There are also some pretty brilliant new monster minifigures coming up, like Lord Krakenskull, the Harpy (which uses a recolor of Skyra's hair from LEGO Elves), and General Garg. The "Stone Clay" and "Stone Queen Halbert" minifigures make me wonder where the story is heading. Maybe Jestro and Monstrox gain the ability to turn our heroes into stone? The new color schemes for the bots (with grey shoulders and brightly-colored helmets) are also really neat. I'm really glad that this year we get both Queen Halbert in her golden battle armor and King Halbert in his regal blue robes and crown, but a bit disappointed that Ava doesn't get a new outfit this year (Robin doesn't either, but he already had two or three different outfits last year).

 

The Battle Suits are a lot of fun, and my brother and I have already bought Clay's, Axl's, and Aaron's, with plans to pick up the other two. It's awesome that the knights can now go toe-to-toe with some of the bigger monsters, and I love that their heads basically act as the battle suits' heads, visually giving the squat little minifigures more heroic proportions. It's something I've dabbled in on LEGO Digital Designer but the new cockpit pieces enclose a minifigure much more tightly and efficiently than anything I could come up with using more basic bricks.

 

I'm not quite as psyched about many of the knight vehicles this year as I was about last year's. Clay's Falcon Fighter Blaster and Macy's Bot Drop Dragon are pretty brilliant, but I feel like a lot of the others fail to evoke the the animal motifs or medieval motifs that characterized many of the best Nexo Knights vehicles of 2016. Aaron, Axl, and Lance's new vehicles just sort of feel like generic sci-fi vehicles to me — really good ones, mind you, but without a real unifying concept to situate them in this theme. Maybe I'll warm up to them once I pick one up and can try out their functions (which in some cases are a bit tough to decipher) or the combination gimmick with the battle suits.

 

The castle is definitely the crown jewel of the summer wave. It's a really elegant blend of a traditional castle and a futuristic sci-fi base. Also, much like the Elves theme, it far surpasses most traditional LEGO castles in how livable it is inside. It doesn't have a kitchen or bathromm, but it does have seven beds for the seven main characters (though oddly, none for the king and queen) and even a dining room! Also, the idea of Merlok getting uploaded into a robo-wizard body is pretty sweet! Also, it comes with Hamletta! I NEVER expected to see her in a set!

 

Thanks so much for the detailed coverage!

Edited February 22, 2017 by Aanchir