danny316p

That was fast! I had assumed the movie had done better in theatres than that...

<needless cynicism>Sure, we announce our preferred events on time... we totally forgot to post about BrickUniverse Raleigh at all...</needless cynicism> That'd be great! When are you planning on getting in? Are you good for hotel space and such?

Well, there's some music history in Nashville you probably should learn a little about... Although I know very little about eastern Tennessee. It's close to the western NC border, but that doesn't do that much for you...although Asheville's not a bad place to visit.

BFVA! Yay! BZP's not going anywhere. I have things to share, but none of them are fun...

Is this separate from keeping a round of the sets? Protip: These things are basically watertight and float very well. Use them to build something for convention boat races!

It does sound like a trip is in order. When should we go?

Were we talking about things that are likely? I thought we were talking about what we'd like to see.

Unfortunately, this is a trick question. Most of "my" early childhood DUPLO was actually on loan from relatives, who called for it back to loan to someone else. That was when I was...5, maybe? Since buying used LEGO was commonplace not long after that, I always had a few pieces mixed in with smaller pieces. I started buying my own buckets of used DUPLO before I was 9 (I can't recall exactly when), so the gap in my professional career is actually longer than the gap in my DUPLO-building career (clearly I've missed my true calling). That's before we get into things like building supplies versus set collecting...Sure, my Zoo and Shape Sorter are stored right now, but that's because they were put away as complete sets and other parts were used for MOCs.

That avoids the "creepy" and "cheap" complaints I mentioned earlier, but it's also a more modern imaging of the character. I guess it makes sense, if, you know, you're buying DUPLO stuff for kids young enough to be in the target age range for it.

Humanoid characters are boring. How about a CCBS Jabba the Hutt? Or anything from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_Star_Wars_species ...I'll also take Ewoks. That could be adorable.

It's really not about the set, it's about the pieces in quantity...I know I'll be buying in for this one.

Drome Racers wasn't well received by the public. I think that last racer I picked up might be the least I've ever paid for a set - it was in a "free or trash" bin. I guess we could try to get someone to pay me to take a set off their hands, so that set wouldn't have that distinction anymore... I find that I'm more interested in tools than games. I liked the Creator games. Digital Designer was pretty good. It would be nice if they made it easier to build larger Worlds, or even an entire Universe, so you could basically live your Life inside of the game...

I'd be more interested in pushing LEGO to license out some characters to manufacturers that make quality stuffed animals. Most of the plush toys we've gotten with LEGO branding so far have been very cheap quality-wise - sometimes with fabrics that feel downright scratchy. I forget who made the plush minifigures that were available at Toys R Us a few years back, but those were horrific (even though a similar design had been passably made for LEGOLAND before). Given that the European market has a few high-end manufacturers in that space, you'd think it would have been a no-brainer to license Ollie the Dragon (a long-running classic mascot of the LEGOLAND Parks) to a company like Steiff or Hermann that could make a top-notch version of the character for adult collectors - the European parks in particular could easily sell an iconic souvenir for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars each. It's not like LEGO doesn't aim sets at that demographic, or like LEGOLAND doesn't already carry licensed plush items from other toy manufacturers... I think LEGO has done OK with picking things to make into plush toys. I already mentioned Ollie, but we also can get the DUPLO rabbit (even if it is a creepy rendition of the character) and a healthy variety of Friends and DUPLO animals. What I'd really like to see added to the assortment (although it may be inevitable someday) is a few plush toys based on animals introduced in the Collectible Minifigure range - the teddy bear being an extremely obvious pick, but the penguins and Batman's lobster would be great too. I also feel a need to own (in as many forms as possible) the Bat-bear from the Batman movie. If they made the Elves dragons in plush form, I'd feel a need to own them all. I'd be curious about other more organic characters from LEGO's past...I know I've seen pictures of the Aquazone octopus in plush form before. The green Dragon Masters dragon could be fun. Fabuland would work well, as would Arctic polar bears, the DUPLO cow, the Chima animals, the minifig fish, the Homemaker baby, Captain Redbeard's parrot, the sharks, the various Divers marine animals, the Paradisa pony, the TDN module...then again, some of those probably wouldn't sell very well. I just found out that eBay has a LEGO plush section: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lego-plush?rmvSB=true

I suspect that the largest obstacle driving people away is when they come here and see people ranting about how they think things are dying. I'd like to hear more about how (specifically) people think BZP should be "restructured" or "rebranded". I feel like I'm hearing complaints saying that we should do things that we've already been doing. Perhaps people in this thread are thinking more about specific subforums that are less active, and not focusing on the newer things we've announced on the front page? Or maybe some of us are ignoring or forgetting about things we're not personally involved in? As a BioniLUG member, convention circuit participant, regular convention attendee, regular draft participant, and news reporter here, I feel like BZPower is doing a ton of interesting things outside of forums already. We're one of the (if not the absolute) most advertised LEGO fan websites at LEGO conventions. I know we've been discussing more LEGO things outside of Bionicle, and even toys outside of LEGO. My impression is that some of our regulars (like myself) need to be kept from getting too far away from the Bionicle community stuff that's been this site's bread-and-butter over the years.

Age out? That isn't a thing. I, for one, would love to see LEGO make a 2 hour movie about how people who believe that are wrong about the sophisticated interlocking brick system. Don't tell me that there's a maximum age on the box! That's only a suggestion!

On opposite coasts? I'd love to hear an example to prove me wrong, but I think no group in the US has attempted that sort of range. Now, in smaller countries where the two coasts aren't that far apart, it may have been done... On second thought, re-reading that, I only said "clear across a country". That was dumb - there was one year GFLUG did a train show in Tampa, Florida the weekend before Brickworld Chicago. You'd think I'd remember that south-to-north stunt since I was there at both shows as a member of that LUG. Still, that's the short way across the US...the east coast and west coast are much farther apart. We do (somewhat) take requests if you'd like to see us do a show somewhere else. We tend to repeat the same big conventions and events near the bulk of the group, but BioniLUG has done Brickworld Chicago, BrickUniverse Dallas, and BrickFete Toronto before too - we get invited to way more events than really make sense as a group, but we're more likely to consider a location if we know we have other BZPers or BioniLUG members interested in hanging out there. It's new this year. I hope it goes well! It's a theme with some serious potential. When we do BrickFair New Jersey around Halloween, we also encourage people to dress up, with decent results.

I'd say the lenticular mosaic project was a highlight for many of us...but I guess those of us involved aren't the ones most active on the forums.

I wonder what they'll do with all of our feedback about things they obviously weren't looking for when they wrote the survey.

I'm under the impression that these would work with any sort of bottle caps.

I think people who only see BZPower stuff online forget how big and successful BZP has been in recent years. After Bionicle was discontinued (the first time), things like the Convention Circuit program and BioniLUG popped up - both of which are beasts of their own that show no signs of dying out any time soon. We might be a fairly quiet online community, but all of the in-person stuff we've branched out into has been doing well. I'll also reiterate what Aanchir said about other forums dying out - ignoring the social media cesspools, this is one of the more active places to discuss LEGO these days.

I figure we're lucky if the people at WB who write these things actually know about Bionicle. The teases we've had so far could easily be entirely from people at LEGO giving their input into stories that were already written by people outside of the company. We'll probably never know what portion of these movies comes from each of the given companies that work together to make the movies happen...

Don't mind me then, I'm an ignorant kid who pretty much only knows the Arrow-verse version. That, and the Smallville version, which I'm sure isn't any more faithful to the comics.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I don't see what makes a front page review take more effort than a blog review (besides that I might word things more lightly).

About a minute after posting this, I realized I'd been staring at multiple Power Rangers the whole time and didn't realize they weren't part of the crowd. I may still be exhausted from the trip.

To provide background on how a new theme impacts an existing one: occasionally, LEGO changes (or scraps) product plans based on not wanting to compete with themselves. Note how we never get a nice red Creator house while there's a red City fire station on the shelves. This sort of thing is often written into contracts for licensed themes - for example, we didn't have any space themes for a few years when Star Wars first came out, and Castle was put on hiatus for the first waves of Lord of the Rings.