I LOVE the theme and I got the Lion Knights, but man..these prices are CRAZY. At least throw in more figures with the smaller sets if you’re planning to sell it for 200-300 USD
Correction: Wolfpack IS available through Pick-A-Brick. The problem, though, is that it's so popular that it typically sells out within days, and then it takes LEGO weeks to restock it.
@@npucentral5811 You're welcome. And man, it's such a pain. I've had a stack of parts set up in my cart for a while, and the Wolfpack torso keeps disappearing from it. Meaning I have to check if it's restocked and add it back in.
This print to demand thing is something Lego has been traditionally very bad at. This is similar to the sheep, who are always out of stock as well. They've been having issues for years. Every serious lego collector, or diorama builder needs a small flock of them. Some have 50 or more, or a whole shelf full of them.
I do think the future of LEGO Castle is bright... but I do hope that LEGO hears the fans and brings out "battle packs for LEGO Castle". To get battle packs for every theme at a reasonable price point would be so good. Battle packs and a range of Castle factions would be good for all ages and would be so fun to collect and increase the mission of play. (I'm looking forward to your next video).
i've grabbed a few of the ninjago Jay's battle pack in the hopes TLG gets the hint. 10 dollar set with 4 figs and some decent parts! can you imagine how that'd sell for castle?!?!
I wouldn't mind battle packs, but just ANY sets under 100 dollar would help. Also, there needs to be way more. I own all the current age Lego sets, I have multiples of the Creator 3 in 1 castle .. there is nothing for me to buy except 2nd hand Lego from Bricklink. They are litterally missing out on tons of money, as I know I'm one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Castle fans.
Well it goes for a lot of themes, but Castle is the most egregious. They basically don't have to take anything into consideration considering this theme is not IP based. They just need to make sets and lots of them and release full lines of sets at each pricepoint each year. It is very simple but they refuse to do it, despite the castle community being one of the absolute largest and popular ones.
Man would love to see a fantasy theme now. With something like Lego theres so much they could do with it. Would love to see Elves, Orcs, Skeletons, Trolls, Dwarves and maybe even some other things Lego designers create themselves. Would be special stuff to see it in the next few years 🤞
Overall I think you hit the nail on the head for the most important issues. Personally the army-building doesn't really interest me, but having reasonable prices for sought after minifigures is a MUST for every castle fan and sadly this is not the case at all. The only few armybuilding options is what the online PAB offers and maybe a rare torso piece in the Build-your-own-minifig bin at the Lego-store. A minifig should cost around 5 dollars if it has full accessories, considering the unique prints and parts that come with CMF's, we know Lego can produce them at this price easily. Maybe adding a horse or another larger animal could increase it to $7.50, but that is about the limit. Currently you can't even get any CMF that is remotely related to castle that was released prior to this year for that price. I'm a bigger fan of just getting parts off Bricklink and create my own, but even minifigure parts and accessories related to castle are very overpriced due to the insane artificial scarcity and massive demand. Lego does NOT do enough to meet the demand for these figures, they're not even remotely close either, they basically do nothing to prevent or counteract this, which is a gross oversight. Building castles is easy. There are lots of parts, you can get them for relatively cheap and there are many good options to customize and make your build unique. Filling it up with minifigs and animals though, is not easy. Lego should address this problem by making cheaper castle sets that fill the gap and meet that demand in a reasonable way.
I’m an adult buyer and one of those people they target for overly expensive sets. I agree with your take that they should focus on smaller cheaper sets. The Harry Potter line does a good mix of price ranges and probably overlaps a bit with castle. But the company does need to focus on bringing and keeping younger fans engaged and not always pricing them out of large scale and licensed sets.
Great video! I feel like there’s such a potential for a variety of cool minifigures and builds. But there’s just no great way to get enough desirable knights unless you’re spending a ton!! I’m still mad I missed the Raven Knights window. Would love to see them develop the theme more.
Lego doesn’t give a dam, castle is now for adults who had sets as kids and it’s sad because if they had some affordable battle packs and sets, it could get a whole new generation of castle fans who are young just as it got me as a kid. Now they can sell me 300-400 dollar sets but what about the kids no parent is going to buy their kid any sets like that but 10-60 parents will do.
True, but they know the kids are now into City, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Marvel. Oh and Ninjago. They’ve got their niche there. Everything else is for adults. They haven’t released any new theme for a while. I loved the Monster Fighter one.
@Hudpix16 kids are only not into it because it does not exist. It's been over ten years since they've had a castle theme besides lotr. Obviously ip themes usually sell reliably, but original ones can as well. If they hadn't made ninjago kids wouldn't be into lego ninjas.
@ I don’t know know my little cousin came over and saw some of my castle mocs as well as the 90th castle and he was astonished he played for hours and I mean hours but how is he ever going to get the chance if the sets aren’t affordable
Lego will be very reluctant to do kids castle again after that last Kingdoms and Nexoknights disaster where they sabotaged themselves. They had Castle running well, then decided to replace it with Kingdoms which was not a good choice, those sets sat gathering dust on shelves. So they replaced it with Nexoknights...which was even more hated. I cannot see them being in any rush to do kids castle so soon after those tragedies that did not sell...but maybe bricklink castle selling so well might just make them consider it.
@@npucentral5811 Someone on a tour of the Lego factory asked why no medieval? The answer: ninja sells worldwide, castle sells in Europe and North America.
Well i guess when they release a castle theme the bricklink sets could be less in favor. Or on the other hand, they fear that they could not match the uniqueness of the bricklink ones.
@@npucentral5811 Yeah. And try being a Bionicle fan... I enjoyed Gen 2's sets, but they butchered it in the name of mass appeal, forgetting what made Gen 1 so successful. Times have changed but not in the way Lego and these major companies believe. There is still value and high demand for creative, new, original stories breaking from the same tired, for-the-brainrot-masses tropes regurgitated in every piece of modern media.
Seems like they are filling in some of the "variety of factions void" with the Bricklink Designer program. Series 1 had Black Falcon, Series 3 had Forestmen, and Series 6 has Wolfpack. I could see them continually expanding the home bases of the factions in the BD program, and I hope they do! However, I agree on all points. I just don't see anything changing as long as HP is licensed.
The current marketing policy has basically split lego in two groups. There is kids lego which features the cheaper sets and the creative play you described this is your city, friends, ninjago, dreamz and some of your licenced stuff like disney and minecraft that have slightly higher prices. Then you have your adult level where they have realised that the sky is the limit price wise this is where they have decided to put all the nostalgia themes like classic space, pirates, vikings and unfortunately in your case classic castle where they know they can get away with a $200 to $400 set every 2 years or so. Themes like architecture and art have been moved over here as well and no small to mid sized sets are going to turn up in these themes outside of things like promos. Lego is always doing a lot of market research so they could revisit this policy in the future but as it stands you wont be seeing a $20 castle set in store.
At least, we can try to signal our need for army builders by supporting specific LEGO Ideas projects. There are a few MOCs that would be perfect if we'll manage to secure 10k votes for them and if we'll put pressure on LEGO by pushing through doors and windows asking them to choose a given project in the next Review stage. Just look at: -Troll's Troop Transporter by Robsmediayt -Fantasy Role Play Minifigure Stands by Taohe Netrus -Yellow Castle Lookout by Campanelle -Wolfpack Swamp by NickleB1066 -The Trebuchet Siege Camp by brickinger_ -Preparing for Siege by FangTom bricks Some of those projects are really unique and LEGO never created similar set. Especially, the second and the fifth ones. Someday, LEGO has to let some Castle project pass, right?
in europe (germany especialy) they do face competition (bluebrixx and kiddicraft) that very much do follow your ideas... will be fun watching how this plays out... for exampel kiddicraft has castle themed battlepacks at 12€ with 5 figures each (orcs / humans) 4 sets of small building with 2-4 figures ranging from 15 to 30€ a orc-door-knocker with 5 more orcs at 27€ and a castle with 8 figures at 120€... where you to get all sets containing orcs you'd get 17 orcs (each unique by print) and if you get more battlepacks you could swap printet arms legs heads torsos to get more... downside heads / headgear is propriatary bluebrixx has battlepacks at 18€ with 8 figures each plus 1 horse but the ratio of basic soldier to higher tier warriors is a little off at the soldiers pack (how relevant the civilians are for you is up to you)
Above all, it should be mentioned that Bluebrixx also offers authentic castles like the ones that actually exist in Germany. Hohenzollern, Neuschwanstein, Eltz, as well as German cathedrals, e.g. Mainz, Cologne, Ulm. Plus the absolutely brilliant Blaustein Castle, which is still being expanded and will currently contain well over 50,000 parts, just the castle complex. Not counting all the small town houses of the crafts, - not only inns and blacksmiths, but also quartermasters, charcoal burners, bell founders, glassworks, fishermen, etc. And now they have also announced a modular mediavel monastery complex modeled on Maulbronn Monastery, Blaubronn.
Both of your videos are smart and cogent. New subscriber here! As someone who grew up with the original yellow castle and who has the Lion Knights' Castle on display, this one hits home. Lego in general keeps shifting towards being an adult, high-end luxury collectible versus a toy designed to spark play and imagination, and while that's made for some great sets for adults to build and display, a lot has been lost, too. It's worth mentioning as a side note that both Funwhole and BlueBrixx have medieval lines, too, though neither fully addresses the issues you put forth here. That said, the Funwhole sets at least have the virtue of being way cheaper than Lego's medieval sets but of equal quality.
Wow thank you so much! This comment really made my day and has invigorated a lot of energy in me to keep creating content. I agree full heartedly with your comment. Stay tuned for more videos!
The 600lbs gorilla in the room needs to be addressed: Harry Potter. While Castle AFOLs may not see an overlap, I suspect that LEGO’s market research shows the two scratch the same itch among kids, but with Harry Potter selling better. So as long as LEGO has the Harry Potter licence, the company is unlikely to have much of a kid-focused Castle line with sets at different price points.
I don't purchase LEGO sets anymore, but I sometimes peruse the toy aisle for the sake of nostalgia. In my opinion, the golden era for castle was the late '80s and early '90s. The turning point was probably the Dragon Masters sets; while they had some good new pieces, particularly with the wizard figures, some of the bits and sets were overwrought and didn't match the previous aesthetic (such as the helms, halberds, etc.). The new sets remind me of the problem with Games Workshop, whose newer miniatures are technically well executed but have an inferior aesthetic when compared to older miniatures and/or the newer miniatures are overwrought with detail. The older sets were better designed, used simpler parts, but were affordable for children. The Black Falcon's Fortress is still the GOAT.
I always appreciate hearing from those who grew up with the older castle. I personally grew up with the Fantasy era so in my mind that's when castle was best
I clicked, fully ready to defend my favourite theme in comments... But no, I agree with these criticisms. It's close to impossible to populate your displays on a budget, and there is distinct lack of variety. I love Medieval marketplace for being a marketplace, civilian oriented castle sets were always amazing, but that's partially because they were rare. During Fantasy era it was relatively easy to gather small garnisons for each faction by simply buying sets without need to double or triple buy same one. And if you wanted to, there were cheap options. Remember impulse buys? Now single CMF figure costs as much as minifig WITH accessories and small build used to cost back then. Those small and medium sets were the lifeblood of castle theme, big fortresses or places of interest were only crown jewels. Creating army organically was so fun back in the day. Especially since even if you were collecting one army, sets usually came with opposing faction too, so you would have something to create conflict or fun. And yes, I know that Market and Castle came with wolfpack and forestmen respectively, but that doesn't even really matter too much, as even regular adult collector won't be getting multiple of these, so even with pick-a-brick, you will end up with army going against two dudes without any vehicle or siege weapon, or even fortification. So at this point, why even making factions and not make bland, neutral soldiers without any emblems? Yeah, we need proper castle theme. And I would prefer it to be fanasy era, as dwarves, skeletons and orcs offered so much variety to me in terms of aesthetics... But even going with humans only, if we were to introduce more than two factions and avoid locking them wuth titles of good and bad guys, I'll be happy too
Not only do I think you're spot on with a lot of these issues, but that this problem expands across lego as a whole. I think city is the only set I still see as an adult from when I was a kid. Even the castle stuff you see today is from their icons stuff for a quick nostalgia cash grab. They're mostly trying to bank on license titles like star wards or marvel with a few of their own long running ones like ninjago or city or friends. And then the rest is all sculpture building. It's like you said, it feels like the 'play' aspect has been taken away.
Drawbridge defense looks like an awesome first set to get. I feel the recent D&D themed Lego are tempting me back stronger than ever but price really is where the rubber meets the road. I have to stop and ask myself, "Am I buying this because I want it, or because I couldn't afford it as a child"? If I could send these sets back to my childhood self, I'd buy 100 sets.
Nice content. Glad to see some reflexion and analysis, and not just listing, unboxing and other automatic content :) 100% agreed. I'm the new target because I can afford the new 400€ castle (and i will soon), but I won't buy all the sets (blacksmith + market village + majisto + town square + forest hideout is too much for me !). However, I'm also disappointed by the "non-playability" of the sets. I don't like having built sets accumulating dust on a shelf. I want to tell stories, I want my son (3 years old) to play with me soon, and these sets don't inspire me much. The "lots of small sets" strategy was also a great way of proving us with many small stories ideas.
I agree. My biggest problem, aesthetically, is NO ROUND TOWERS! Even the $400 set has blocky, square walls. Also, BORING GRAY CASTLE WALLS! The first castle set was yellow, then we got nothing but gray and black forever. How about white, since most Medieval castles were whitewashed, or even green or red? I make all my custom castles in light tan, WITH ROUND TOWERS.
Totally agree, my wallet is usually bleeding when it sees a new Castle set released. An additional problem is that the sets are exclusive to Lego and some few partners, so you cannot even hope for a nice discount. I havn't gotten the 10305 yet because I am not willing to buy it for that price. That being said, I really like the new sets and I am pretty happy that Lego is reusing old factions rather than introducing a new one. The reason is that at least I can intergrate the modernized falcons and crusaders in my collection of classic castle sets easily to create a nice population, while I am afraid that the introduction of a new faction might not come with enough minifigures to build up a nice army. Look at the awesome new Orcs in Barad'Dur for example. As you set, dear Goldfyre, good luck trying to build an army. Why is there no Orc-battlepack for Lord of the Rings? Are we supposed to buy Barad'Dur multiple times to create an Orc-army? Tbh, I don't see Lego changing the way they approach castle. So far, the strategy seemed to work to release big expensive sets for adult Castle fans, though I hope they eventually do. I guess I am happy though that we got these sets in the first place. At least it is better than no castles at all, like the time between 2014 (I guess) and when the Ideas Medieval Blacksmith got released. Those were dark years for castle fans 🤣
Fair points... play vs. display is a big one. I'm that older Lego fan who appreciates all of the realism, but I'm reminding myself to give ground (er bricks?) when my 6 year old is making his own fantasy world and crazy builds.
I admit I'm not that familiar, but just looking at these sets on screen, it seems like many have too many details that look nice but add a lot more pieces and thus let them charge more for them. I grew up with Lego in the 90s. My big castle was my pride and joy that I got a lot of use out of.
It will ultimately hurt the castle theme, since the young children crowd is pushed out of the market. That market will be the next generation to buy the expensive sets as well.
Lego being a toy company and wanting to be profitable the main question may be: "what's the market for castle sets for younger builders?" and how much cross-over for the more expensive sets is there for younger builders? or put another way how many of the AFOL targeted Medieval sets are being bought by parents for their children? I would (as an adult) be really interested in any (castle) sets that come out - I'm probably not unique and Lego knows that so if they add a few hundred pieces to a set and charges $300-500 they make a lot more per set. It's unfortunate but probably reality...
I agree, having bought a lot of second hand sets from the ‘80s and ‘90s (gets quite expensive too), next to some amazing Bricklink Forestmen sets and the newest castles (two Creator ones even), I can’t say any of these would be really accessible to kids. Most of the LEGO sets I got back when I was a kid myself came from aunts and uncles at birthdays. Today those are barely affordable, often starting at €8 to €10 with just a few choices. You quickly end up with the more expensive ones over €20 as next tier. And none of those LEGO sets are castle themed. :/ It would be nice if they gave the small sets more attention. Oh well. At least my kids will have a lot of castle sets to play with since I got so many as a kid and can’t help myself if I see gorgeous new ones. :)
Remember that 2004 was 20 years ago.... take the prices of sets from 20 years ago, adjust for inflation and also look at piece count and Lego in some cases is actually _less_ expensive - overall though, I do agree - the "buy in price" for a "toy" still seems too high but also remember that in most cases young people aren't buying with their "own" money it's their parent's wallet that is funding the hobby.
My son (who's a young adult) is interested in mainly Star Wars, ICONS, and IDEAS sets - he really likes old System Old West themed sets but castle and medieval sets he could take or leave.
I have 2 theories: 1. Either Lego thinks people wouldn't buy as many of the big sets if they had options for smaller amounts (but they somehow miss the people like me who would not only stock up on the huge castle 5 times, but maybe on the others - and god only knows how many battlepacks) 2. LEGO is waiting for the big sets to sell, then they MIGHT make battlepacks or something similar - alongside a smaller LEGO Castle line - but they would be missing out on the synergy., Not really sure what they are thinking. I am sure that I wouldn't be the only one to buy more LEGO if they made it "fit together" - like they did with the City Space this year (Galaxy explorer into the City Space line went really well for me - and now the continuation + Blacktron is hyping me up even further. I do hope they see the success of this crossbreeding, and do a castle line while they have LOTR , DnD and Dreamzz sets - and I heard a rumor that they MIGHT do NEXO knights in Ninjago sometime soon.
Yeah, I just hope they do some fantasy castle sets. Funwhole also uses higher quality parts than Lego, the latter of which is actively degrading their part quality for the sake of profit. Brands like Funwhole, who produce much less and thus require higher margins on their products, really put into perspective how absurdly overpriced Lego is. If Funwhole and CADA can sell the equivalent of a Medieval Blacksmith for half the price, then Lego can afford to sell the same product at a third of the price they charge while still enjoying high margins. Lego is just extremely greedy-comically so.
@@PlazDreamweaver Yeah - I remember the shift when I first began seeing Lego being manufactured in China, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Malaysia - their manufacturing and distribution expenses clearly went down dramatically, yet their prices remained high, and continued to climb... there wasn't much competition, so they could pretty much do what they wanted... I think that last post pandemic price jump combined with the exploitive pricing of the collector/investor's market created a demand/opportunity.
The German Company Kiddi Craft will also release a Medival/Fantasy Theme by end of the year, in style of the 80s/90s Lego Sets. The New Sets from Phatasy are also great.
The way castle went in the 2000s, I have no interest in kids sets. But, as you rightly point out, the current sets are beyond the reach of most children. While I agree there should be a broader range including more affordable sets, I just don't see how the two extremes can be reconciled.
Something you should have added is that the lego castle stuff can also be found in 3 for 10$ lego byof stations in lego stores. Now granted this is something only exclusive to lego stores or are exclusive to places where you can find legos as rhe main products but you can find knight torsos with rhe factions, shields, swords, bows, quivers, shields, helmets, and so on. For lego stores its 3 minifigures. (1 head, torso,legs,accessory, hat/hair/helmet per Minifigure) For 10$
I do really miss the smaller stand alone sets that earlier castle themes saw, like just give me a little watchtower or a 20$ wagon, etc. also where are the cool siege engines and small terrain builds. Give me a small rock that a forestmen or Wolfpack can hide in or stash treasure for 13 bucks and I’ll buy it.
Never pay full price for LEGO. I just bought the NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle for more than 40% off the retail price. $120 US. The retail price is $220. It was only released 3 months ago, so if you can wait 3 months then you will save a lot of money.
Battlepacks... This is what we need. Honestly tho, I'm sure Lego has the metrics on what themes are worth producing. The manufacturing capacity has a limited bandwidth, and castle and pirates might not perform as well as the fans think they are. But c'mon, gimme some castle battle packs!!!!
I think lego might be pleasantly surprised with our community's tenacity for purchasing battle packs! We're basically begging them to take our money :)
Seeing those prices of the cmf figures actually pissed me off. Its absurd thst people can get away with charging that much money for a minifigure that came out a year ago. I guess im not getting a vampire knight then
Definitely need cheaper sets. I'm an adult collector and love the large display sets but I'd also like a new castle theme with a full range of sets. The lack of variety is frustrating. Profits over creativity and accessibility is eventually going to kill the theme completely
yes, as a 15 years old boy you are totaly true. i have like 9 friends and all of us say that thay have thouse problems. i had grown with the 2012 series and is very worryng the direction in wich thr mrdieval them is goind to. thanks for your work and sorry for my english
Lego has a whole line of modular sets but we can’t get one combination of modules to create a castle? I agree the only available sets are expensive as well
Since I'm exclusively building MOCs for fun display purposes as an adult, I don't care about the play features anymore. I exclusively buy fake AliExpress minifigures because these are like 9/10 of Lego's minifig quality. Even the face prints look amazing nowadays. It's wonderful for pieces like the single shoulderpad, some weapons and rare cmfs. They literally offer 20 Raven Knights for 20$ and not a single person would be able to make out the difference between a real 40$ knight when they're posed in a moc. Some even look better and have more variety, like these crazy Lord of the Rings customs everyone uses, Lego never even made simple Gondor footsoldiers or knights, or easy-to-get orcs. One orc costs like 15$ and you want like 100 of them lol, no
For your army building problem, you could try to make a ''Medieval Chess'' set go across Lego Idea and/or whatever the Bricklink program is called. You might pique the interest of adult Lego fans and if you succeed, you'll have a 32 minifig set split in two factions. It would be more expensive than buying a bunch of battle packs but you would get more minifig diversity. Plus, you get to choose the factions. Also, to distinguish your chess set from past official Lego chess sets, you could include MORE than just two factions in the box and only keep one chess board. Thus, you would end up with a better price to minifig ratio.
The current adults who are the target of the set were growing up having or wanting the big lego castle sets back in the day therefore lego can and will charge more for the sets because adults will buy it. In general lego sets for kids are now much smaller and cheaper ( per set ) and looking how poorly lego did before coming up with 18+ sets is kinda the right decision businesswise
I'm gonna be so for real, this is why I don't think it makes sense for castle fans to be lego purists. KOs, altbricks, and custom builds. Lots of kid friendly stuff, cheaper, new and novel as well as price acceptable KOs :p
Hot take, but I think LEGO itself has become too "set-oriented." The fact that most parts and factions to build castles and armies are available on the PAB is more important to me than having smaller sets. Yes, there are CMF aftermarket price issues, but it is impossible to avoid those unless LEGO just avoids making them entirely.
I am living in turkey. I can’t buy sets because its very very expensive in Turkey. Also Turkish economy is not good. I wish LEGO release more medieval theme things. 🙏🏻
I feel you address a lot of good points which apply not only to LEGO Castle, but across the entirety of LEGO. All of the various LEGO internal themes Space, Castle, Pirate, and more (with the exception of the City and Ninjago themes) are all suffering from a lack of development and attention from LEGO. It is obvious they WANT to support them as they keep releasing them as subthemes, specialty stand alone sets, or GWPs, but continue to not release them as their own lines of sets again. I believe the cause of this problem lays outside of all of these themes though. Plainly stated, the licensed themes like Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, and various Disney movie/series promotional tie-ins are simply too profitable. There is a finite number of new sets LEGO can physically release each year. They only have so many set designers, and so many factories to produce LEGO bricks. Add to that the finite nature of their customer base who can only afford so many sets per year and you can see that by the time LEGO has satisfied the market for new licensed sets, it doesn't leave a huge amount of resources for everything else. If every LEGO fan were to get their personal wish lists fulfilled for new LEGO lines, the LEGO Group would need to double or triple their manufacturing output and of course this would require three times as many customers as well. These numbers simply don't exist yet.
In my opinion, the lego forge and two black falcons knights set was a missed opportunity. The set is great, looks great, but the dimensions are wrong. If you put it next to the new lions castle, the top of the forge's roof is as high as the highest tower in the castle. The price wasn't the lowest either, but above all Lego stopped the further production of Lego Castle for half a year. They should take more builds from lego designs rebrickable
you are spot on with this video. dont know what to say, unfortunately it really looks like Lego ist just becoming more and more greedy, their sales and marketing team is out of touch with their fans and ordinary consumers. a 400 dollar set, but no smaller ones for kids? simply crapp
Good Video, but the reality is ...Lego has no interest in Castle and Lego has no interests in cheap play sets for children. Even the 3-1 Creator Castle is being discontinued. Thankfully, there are alternatives such as Bluebrixx, which now offer better sets at better prices!
There are many great competitors against Lego now.. pehaps if everyone would start migrating away from Lego to the other brands, perhaps Lego will get the message that theyre plastic bricks isnt gold
People throw around the word anti-consumer too easily. Everyone always wants to play the victim card. Were Lego collectors anti-producer when they refused to buy the Castle battle packs until they were marked down 50%+? They don't sell it because they used to sell it and we didn't buy enough of them. They had to mark down everything from Joust to all The Hobbit sets, just to get rid of the inventory... Then we bought them all up and the price skyrocketed. Doesn't that mean they were worth full price to consumers? But we wouldn't pay that to Lego, we know they have to drop the inventory eventually.
Good video, I agree with most of the points except the lack of new factions. As for me, it is not a big issue as there are a lot of existing ones. They cover standard western knights, Robin Hood style forestmen, robbers, common fantasy races such as dwarfs, elves, orcs. Where to expand, what new factions could they bring? If they take inspiration from history but from other regions (like medieval Muslims, Byzantine empire, Rus), some people could be offended because of incorrect representation of their culture and history or it could even seen as something political. And if they make some generic western knights, people could see it as another repaint af an old faction
They are too expensive for children. I bought them - Lion Knights and Blacksmith's workshop - still unboxed. They should release lots of five figure packs like in the 80s/90s. No way you can sensibly build a battle scene or play with the few figures you get in each set. I was surprised by how much the Tournament Knight (Raven Knight) is selling for! I have two - wanted the new sword at the time. Maybe I should sell. Have two full sets of the new DnD figs (one for myself and one for my nephew) but had to buy like 60 boxes to get them. I gave most of the duplicates out as Halloween treats.
If you are comfortable parting with the raven knights it's not a bad idea to sell. Especially if you plan on using the money to get more DnD figures. Pro tip if you're having trouble with duplicates you can actually scan the QR code on each box to show which figure is inside.
@@npucentral5811 Yes, I scanned them, but they are not available in my town so had to order lots - in several batches as they are limited on the Lego site to 24 or something like that. Scanned after ordering them to make sure my nephew got a full set for a kinda Halloween 'calendar' I made him. Used Jake's Brick Scanner;-). I will actually consider selling the Raven Knights - good idea to re-invest! Crazy how much these are going for! Just checked e-bay!
It is sad that Lego do not release reasonably priced sets in this line that children could buy with their pocket money as I did when little. Feel sorry for children looking at these amazing sets that they - or most of - their family can't afford. Lego is letting itself down here: you could at least have a few cheaper castle sets to let children feel they are part of it.
I have nostalgia for Ninjago :( I'm thinking of making a video about how Ninjago's longevity has disincentivized Lego to experiment with more original themes. Does that sound like something interest?
@@npucentral5811 I was thinking the same thing recently as well. Ninjago is current LEGO's longest-running action-adventure theme... and because of that, it keeps any other action-adventure themes like Chima, Nexo Knights, and it seems like Dreamzzz next year from succeeding. It does seem with the Source Dragons being the ultimate power, Ninjago may be coming to a close. And I'm excited to see what new theme LEGO comes up with! (Personally I think a Power Miners reboot would be awesome)
@@npucentral5811 Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Even Monkey Kid and Dreamzzz are reskins of Ninjago. Ninjago is dead to me and has been since season 2. The only Ninjago time Ninjago was good, imo, was during seasons 0 and 1.
Price: does not count, for Lego is in general extremely expensive. The licenced sets have the worst value for the money. Armies: the problem is that this is no regular theme and one ones which came out were nostalgy for adults fans which can afford these sets. CMF: again it's not for kids, it's for adult fans New factions: again, it's to win over adults with the nostalgia of their childhood, and thus new factions make no sense. Too adults oriented: he simply fails to get it One Set was Lego Icons, the other from Lego Ideas, one creator etc. pp. There is currently NO castle theme - most unfortunately. These sets are for adults and from other themes as stand alones. How awesome would be to have Vikings (the village from Ideas or older Sets like the viking ship) vs Alfred the Great (Great Castle with some Mocs). The Danelaw, the Great Heathen army...for instance - but no. Ninjago is what kids go for today. Knights, pirates or western were big themes back in the day, but today it is Ninjago, or licenced themes like Star Wars (instead of space) or Harry Potter.
Yeah, an actually line of Castle would be so nice. My kids love the D&D figs! All the current Castle and LOTR sets would be great to own but I can't just drop almost 2k on them. I would scoop up more reasonable sets immediately.
I think buildings are too big, the scale is off. Just look at the medieval blacksmith and lion knight fortres. is almost half of the castle. I would love it if Lego would make some small peasent homes to make a real village or city. The medival sqare is nice but i would like a hole village or city built with some smaller houses. this also fills the smaller set market.
If you're a kid that's into castle and lego, then it sucks. The $100 castle is outstanding and very fairly priced (even more so when adjusted for inflation and frequent sales that drop it to $80). I think you can make a strong case for viking village as well. But yeah, after that, there's nothing. Everything castle is AFOL focused. That said, the claim you make at 1:48 is a bold claim. What evidence do you have to support this claim? Is there a large enough market to support smaller castle sets? There are certainly a lot of sets and themes directed at children and that are much more affodable than the adult focused sets (Blacksmith, Lion Knight Castle, Town Square, etc). I fear the sad truth is that perhaps lego castle has lost out to other themes like harry potter, star wars, marvel, city, ninja, and others. The lego market for kid directed sets is pretty saturated.
Good question. I would argue that the claim made at 1:48 could be supported by the fact these sets fetch a decent price on the aftermarket which could be indicative of demand. I would say considering the fact that there hasn't been an official castle theme since 2015 the market demand for a theme has slowly built up overtime. Also to your point about Harry Potter and other themes I'd argue that previous castle themes have been able to exist just fine with those other themes so I don't think things would dramatically change.
There is only one problem: It's too expensive. I can buy a laptop instead of big Lego set. And there's no way too compere those technologies. Lego is just a simple plastic. No offence. Even more. I could buy a running car for the money on some Lego sets. Sic as F***.
Medieval Blacksmith is the pinnacle of Castle theme, but even that set had its problems, which I fixed. Look, I’m the guy with all the answers, a real AHOL, Adult Habitué Of Lego, not a fan. I don’t agree with any of your reasons. Lego’s reliance on crappy, dull, medium stone grey brick is disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves.
yup yup yup yup and an especially big old fat yup
Thank you for the comment! Love your videos
Bruh
I LOVE the theme and I got the Lion Knights, but man..these prices are CRAZY. At least throw in more figures with the smaller sets if you’re planning to sell it for 200-300 USD
Being a castle fan means my wallet and I have a love hate relationship
Just buy bluebrixx sets
Minifigs are ugly but the buildings are awesome
Correction: Wolfpack IS available through Pick-A-Brick. The problem, though, is that it's so popular that it typically sells out within days, and then it takes LEGO weeks to restock it.
Oh I didn't even realize that. Every time I go on to look for it, it's never there. That makes more sense now. Thanks!
@@npucentral5811 You're welcome. And man, it's such a pain. I've had a stack of parts set up in my cart for a while, and the Wolfpack torso keeps disappearing from it. Meaning I have to check if it's restocked and add it back in.
@@npucentral5811 I just ordered but was limited to a max of 20.
This print to demand thing is something Lego has been traditionally very bad at. This is similar to the sheep, who are always out of stock as well. They've been having issues for years. Every serious lego collector, or diorama builder needs a small flock of them. Some have 50 or more, or a whole shelf full of them.
Bricklink scalpers
I do think the future of LEGO Castle is bright... but I do hope that LEGO hears the fans and brings out "battle packs for LEGO Castle". To get battle packs for every theme at a reasonable price point would be so good. Battle packs and a range of Castle factions would be good for all ages and would be so fun to collect and increase the mission of play. (I'm looking forward to your next video).
i've grabbed a few of the ninjago Jay's battle pack in the hopes TLG gets the hint. 10 dollar set with 4 figs and some decent parts! can you imagine how that'd sell for castle?!?!
I wouldn't mind battle packs, but just ANY sets under 100 dollar would help. Also, there needs to be way more. I own all the current age Lego sets, I have multiples of the Creator 3 in 1 castle .. there is nothing for me to buy except 2nd hand Lego from Bricklink. They are litterally missing out on tons of money, as I know I'm one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Castle fans.
What’s the point of battle packs though if we can use PAB?
@@DDawg-qo2yd I think the general idea is that it is cheaper, but the most important thing is introducing new minifigs that are not yet on PAB.
They neglect the Castle theme while making crap Horizon sets that kids are not going to be into.
They're so out of touch.
The most important problem is the very small number of sets released !
EXACTLY!! And this goes for EVERY THEME as well as the lack of original, creative themes.
Well it goes for a lot of themes, but Castle is the most egregious. They basically don't have to take anything into consideration considering this theme is not IP based. They just need to make sets and lots of them and release full lines of sets at each pricepoint each year. It is very simple but they refuse to do it, despite the castle community being one of the absolute largest and popular ones.
Man would love to see a fantasy theme now. With something like Lego theres so much they could do with it. Would love to see Elves, Orcs, Skeletons, Trolls, Dwarves and maybe even some other things Lego designers create themselves. Would be special stuff to see it in the next few years 🤞
There’s always the newly reissued lord of the rings range, although they only seem to make very expensive sets 😕
@@migwella9086 that’s what lord of the rings is and the dnd sets
@@damiandeleon2724 The cheapest set of the mentioned is $359.99 lol… I’m talking about a real theme with sets in the $25-$120 range.
Overall I think you hit the nail on the head for the most important issues. Personally the army-building doesn't really interest me, but having reasonable prices for sought after minifigures is a MUST for every castle fan and sadly this is not the case at all. The only few armybuilding options is what the online PAB offers and maybe a rare torso piece in the Build-your-own-minifig bin at the Lego-store.
A minifig should cost around 5 dollars if it has full accessories, considering the unique prints and parts that come with CMF's, we know Lego can produce them at this price easily. Maybe adding a horse or another larger animal could increase it to $7.50, but that is about the limit. Currently you can't even get any CMF that is remotely related to castle that was released prior to this year for that price.
I'm a bigger fan of just getting parts off Bricklink and create my own, but even minifigure parts and accessories related to castle are very overpriced due to the insane artificial scarcity and massive demand. Lego does NOT do enough to meet the demand for these figures, they're not even remotely close either, they basically do nothing to prevent or counteract this, which is a gross oversight.
Building castles is easy. There are lots of parts, you can get them for relatively cheap and there are many good options to customize and make your build unique. Filling it up with minifigs and animals though, is not easy. Lego should address this problem by making cheaper castle sets that fill the gap and meet that demand in a reasonable way.
I’m an adult buyer and one of those people they target for overly expensive sets. I agree with your take that they should focus on smaller cheaper sets. The Harry Potter line does a good mix of price ranges and probably overlaps a bit with castle. But the company does need to focus on bringing and keeping younger fans engaged and not always pricing them out of large scale and licensed sets.
Great video! I feel like there’s such a potential for a variety of cool minifigures and builds. But there’s just no great way to get enough desirable knights unless you’re spending a ton!! I’m still mad I missed the Raven Knights window. Would love to see them develop the theme more.
I missed the Raven Knights Window too :( Hopefully they release more in the future!!!
If you're really set on getting them, there are raven knights on aliexpress that are identical to lego
@@JansenJones-t4yand a whole lot more as well if you don't mind not having letters on your studs
Lego doesn’t give a dam, castle is now for adults who had sets as kids and it’s sad because if they had some affordable battle packs and sets, it could get a whole new generation of castle fans who are young just as it got me as a kid. Now they can sell me 300-400 dollar sets but what about the kids no parent is going to buy their kid any sets like that but 10-60 parents will do.
True, but they know the kids are now into City, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Marvel. Oh and Ninjago. They’ve got their niche there. Everything else is for adults. They haven’t released any new theme for a while. I loved the Monster Fighter one.
@Hudpix16 kids are only not into it because it does not exist. It's been over ten years since they've had a castle theme besides lotr. Obviously ip themes usually sell reliably, but original ones can as well. If they hadn't made ninjago kids wouldn't be into lego ninjas.
@ I don’t know know my little cousin came over and saw some of my castle mocs as well as the 90th castle and he was astonished he played for hours and I mean hours but how is he ever going to get the chance if the sets aren’t affordable
Lego will be very reluctant to do kids castle again after that last Kingdoms and Nexoknights disaster where they sabotaged themselves. They had Castle running well, then decided to replace it with Kingdoms which was not a good choice, those sets sat gathering dust on shelves. So they replaced it with Nexoknights...which was even more hated. I cannot see them being in any rush to do kids castle so soon after those tragedies that did not sell...but maybe bricklink castle selling so well might just make them consider it.
Agreed, I really hope they reconsider releasing another line at some point though. It's been almost 10 years since the last proper one which is crazy!
@@npucentral5811 absolutley agree. LEGO nerfed their successful castle then said 'ok see castle doesn't sell'. I feel they did the same with pirates
@@npucentral5811 Someone on a tour of the Lego factory asked why no medieval? The answer: ninja sells worldwide, castle sells in Europe and North America.
Well i guess when they release a castle theme the bricklink sets could be less in favor. Or on the other hand, they fear that they could not match the uniqueness of the bricklink ones.
@@npucentral5811 Yeah. And try being a Bionicle fan... I enjoyed Gen 2's sets, but they butchered it in the name of mass appeal, forgetting what made Gen 1 so successful. Times have changed but not in the way Lego and these major companies believe. There is still value and high demand for creative, new, original stories breaking from the same tired, for-the-brainrot-masses tropes regurgitated in every piece of modern media.
Seems like they are filling in some of the "variety of factions void" with the Bricklink Designer program. Series 1 had Black Falcon, Series 3 had Forestmen, and Series 6 has Wolfpack. I could see them continually expanding the home bases of the factions in the BD program, and I hope they do! However, I agree on all points. I just don't see anything changing as long as HP is licensed.
Great point. Even the mushroom house I recently bought scratches a fantasy world itch.
The current marketing policy has basically split lego in two groups. There is kids lego which features the cheaper sets and the creative play you described this is your city, friends, ninjago, dreamz and some of your licenced stuff like disney and minecraft that have slightly higher prices. Then you have your adult level where they have realised that the sky is the limit price wise this is where they have decided to put all the nostalgia themes like classic space, pirates, vikings and unfortunately in your case classic castle where they know they can get away with a $200 to $400 set every 2 years or so. Themes like architecture and art have been moved over here as well and no small to mid sized sets are going to turn up in these themes outside of things like promos. Lego is always doing a lot of market research so they could revisit this policy in the future but as it stands you wont be seeing a $20 castle set in store.
At least, we can try to signal our need for army builders by supporting specific LEGO Ideas projects. There are a few MOCs that would be perfect if we'll manage to secure 10k votes for them and if we'll put pressure on LEGO by pushing through doors and windows asking them to choose a given project in the next Review stage.
Just look at:
-Troll's Troop Transporter by Robsmediayt
-Fantasy Role Play Minifigure Stands by Taohe Netrus
-Yellow Castle Lookout by Campanelle
-Wolfpack Swamp by NickleB1066
-The Trebuchet Siege Camp by brickinger_
-Preparing for Siege by FangTom bricks
Some of those projects are really unique and LEGO never created similar set. Especially, the second and the fifth ones. Someday, LEGO has to let some Castle project pass, right?
in europe (germany especialy) they do face competition (bluebrixx and kiddicraft) that very much do follow your ideas... will be fun watching how this plays out... for exampel kiddicraft has castle themed battlepacks at 12€ with 5 figures each (orcs / humans) 4 sets of small building with 2-4 figures ranging from 15 to 30€ a orc-door-knocker with 5 more orcs at 27€ and a castle with 8 figures at 120€... where you to get all sets containing orcs you'd get 17 orcs (each unique by print) and if you get more battlepacks you could swap printet arms legs heads torsos to get more... downside heads / headgear is propriatary
bluebrixx has battlepacks at 18€ with 8 figures each plus 1 horse but the ratio of basic soldier to higher tier warriors is a little off at the soldiers pack (how relevant the civilians are for you is up to you)
Wow this is really fascinating. Alternatives are not as prominent in the U.S. to the same degree. Interesting stuff, thanks for your comment!
Above all, it should be mentioned that Bluebrixx also offers authentic castles like the ones that actually exist in Germany. Hohenzollern, Neuschwanstein, Eltz, as well as German cathedrals, e.g. Mainz, Cologne, Ulm. Plus the absolutely brilliant Blaustein Castle, which is still being expanded and will currently contain well over 50,000 parts, just the castle complex. Not counting all the small town houses of the crafts, - not only inns and blacksmiths, but also quartermasters, charcoal burners, bell founders, glassworks, fishermen, etc. And now they have also announced a modular mediavel monastery complex modeled on Maulbronn Monastery, Blaubronn.
Both of your videos are smart and cogent. New subscriber here! As someone who grew up with the original yellow castle and who has the Lion Knights' Castle on display, this one hits home. Lego in general keeps shifting towards being an adult, high-end luxury collectible versus a toy designed to spark play and imagination, and while that's made for some great sets for adults to build and display, a lot has been lost, too. It's worth mentioning as a side note that both Funwhole and BlueBrixx have medieval lines, too, though neither fully addresses the issues you put forth here. That said, the Funwhole sets at least have the virtue of being way cheaper than Lego's medieval sets but of equal quality.
Wow thank you so much! This comment really made my day and has invigorated a lot of energy in me to keep creating content. I agree full heartedly with your comment. Stay tuned for more videos!
The 600lbs gorilla in the room needs to be addressed: Harry Potter. While Castle AFOLs may not see an overlap, I suspect that LEGO’s market research shows the two scratch the same itch among kids, but with Harry Potter selling better. So as long as LEGO has the Harry Potter licence, the company is unlikely to have much of a kid-focused Castle line with sets at different price points.
That's a really interesting point!
There's definitely some overlap but I doubt this plays a main roll considering how long the themes coexisted.
Would love to see Space and Castle return as permanent themes aimed for all audiences.
I don't purchase LEGO sets anymore, but I sometimes peruse the toy aisle for the sake of nostalgia. In my opinion, the golden era for castle was the late '80s and early '90s. The turning point was probably the Dragon Masters sets; while they had some good new pieces, particularly with the wizard figures, some of the bits and sets were overwrought and didn't match the previous aesthetic (such as the helms, halberds, etc.).
The new sets remind me of the problem with Games Workshop, whose newer miniatures are technically well executed but have an inferior aesthetic when compared to older miniatures and/or the newer miniatures are overwrought with detail. The older sets were better designed, used simpler parts, but were affordable for children. The Black Falcon's Fortress is still the GOAT.
I always appreciate hearing from those who grew up with the older castle. I personally grew up with the Fantasy era so in my mind that's when castle was best
I clicked, fully ready to defend my favourite theme in comments...
But no, I agree with these criticisms. It's close to impossible to populate your displays on a budget, and there is distinct lack of variety. I love Medieval marketplace for being a marketplace, civilian oriented castle sets were always amazing, but that's partially because they were rare. During Fantasy era it was relatively easy to gather small garnisons for each faction by simply buying sets without need to double or triple buy same one. And if you wanted to, there were cheap options. Remember impulse buys? Now single CMF figure costs as much as minifig WITH accessories and small build used to cost back then.
Those small and medium sets were the lifeblood of castle theme, big fortresses or places of interest were only crown jewels. Creating army organically was so fun back in the day. Especially since even if you were collecting one army, sets usually came with opposing faction too, so you would have something to create conflict or fun.
And yes, I know that Market and Castle came with wolfpack and forestmen respectively, but that doesn't even really matter too much, as even regular adult collector won't be getting multiple of these, so even with pick-a-brick, you will end up with army going against two dudes without any vehicle or siege weapon, or even fortification. So at this point, why even making factions and not make bland, neutral soldiers without any emblems?
Yeah, we need proper castle theme. And I would prefer it to be fanasy era, as dwarves, skeletons and orcs offered so much variety to me in terms of aesthetics...
But even going with humans only, if we were to introduce more than two factions and avoid locking them wuth titles of good and bad guys, I'll be happy too
Not only do I think you're spot on with a lot of these issues, but that this problem expands across lego as a whole. I think city is the only set I still see as an adult from when I was a kid. Even the castle stuff you see today is from their icons stuff for a quick nostalgia cash grab. They're mostly trying to bank on license titles like star wards or marvel with a few of their own long running ones like ninjago or city or friends. And then the rest is all sculpture building. It's like you said, it feels like the 'play' aspect has been taken away.
Awesome video. You are so right about All 5 points😎👑
Drawbridge defense looks like an awesome first set to get. I feel the recent D&D themed Lego are tempting me back stronger than ever but price really is where the rubber meets the road. I have to stop and ask myself, "Am I buying this because I want it, or because I couldn't afford it as a child"? If I could send these sets back to my childhood self, I'd buy 100 sets.
Nice content. Glad to see some reflexion and analysis, and not just listing, unboxing and other automatic content :) 100% agreed. I'm the new target because I can afford the new 400€ castle (and i will soon), but I won't buy all the sets (blacksmith + market village + majisto + town square + forest hideout is too much for me !). However, I'm also disappointed by the "non-playability" of the sets. I don't like having built sets accumulating dust on a shelf. I want to tell stories, I want my son (3 years old) to play with me soon, and these sets don't inspire me much. The "lots of small sets" strategy was also a great way of proving us with many small stories ideas.
I agree. My biggest problem, aesthetically, is NO ROUND TOWERS! Even the $400 set has blocky, square walls. Also, BORING GRAY CASTLE WALLS! The first castle set was yellow, then we got nothing but gray and black forever. How about white, since most Medieval castles were whitewashed, or even green or red? I make all my custom castles in light tan, WITH ROUND TOWERS.
Totally agree, my wallet is usually bleeding when it sees a new Castle set released. An additional problem is that the sets are exclusive to Lego and some few partners, so you cannot even hope for a nice discount. I havn't gotten the 10305 yet because I am not willing to buy it for that price. That being said, I really like the new sets and I am pretty happy that Lego is reusing old factions rather than introducing a new one. The reason is that at least I can intergrate the modernized falcons and crusaders in my collection of classic castle sets easily to create a nice population, while I am afraid that the introduction of a new faction might not come with enough minifigures to build up a nice army. Look at the awesome new Orcs in Barad'Dur for example. As you set, dear Goldfyre, good luck trying to build an army. Why is there no Orc-battlepack for Lord of the Rings? Are we supposed to buy Barad'Dur multiple times to create an Orc-army?
Tbh, I don't see Lego changing the way they approach castle. So far, the strategy seemed to work to release big expensive sets for adult Castle fans, though I hope they eventually do. I guess I am happy though that we got these sets in the first place. At least it is better than no castles at all, like the time between 2014 (I guess) and when the Ideas Medieval Blacksmith got released. Those were dark years for castle fans 🤣
Fair points... play vs. display is a big one. I'm that older Lego fan who appreciates all of the realism, but I'm reminding myself to give ground (er bricks?) when my 6 year old is making his own fantasy world and crazy builds.
I admit I'm not that familiar, but just looking at these sets on screen, it seems like many have too many details that look nice but add a lot more pieces and thus let them charge more for them.
I grew up with Lego in the 90s. My big castle was my pride and joy that I got a lot of use out of.
It will ultimately hurt the castle theme, since the young children crowd is pushed out of the market. That market will be the next generation to buy the expensive sets as well.
cmon kids nowadays play fortnite, and not lego
Lego being a toy company and wanting to be profitable the main question may be: "what's the market for castle sets for younger builders?" and how much cross-over for the more expensive sets is there for younger builders? or put another way how many of the AFOL targeted Medieval sets are being bought by parents for their children? I would (as an adult) be really interested in any (castle) sets that come out - I'm probably not unique and Lego knows that so if they add a few hundred pieces to a set and charges $300-500 they make a lot more per set. It's unfortunate but probably reality...
Really like your videos, I'm happy to see a new channel covering unique LEGO topics. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! Excited to make more!
I agree, having bought a lot of second hand sets from the ‘80s and ‘90s (gets quite expensive too), next to some amazing Bricklink Forestmen sets and the newest castles (two Creator ones even), I can’t say any of these would be really accessible to kids. Most of the LEGO sets I got back when I was a kid myself came from aunts and uncles at birthdays. Today those are barely affordable, often starting at €8 to €10 with just a few choices. You quickly end up with the more expensive ones over €20 as next tier. And none of those LEGO sets are castle themed. :/ It would be nice if they gave the small sets more attention.
Oh well. At least my kids will have a lot of castle sets to play with since I got so many as a kid and can’t help myself if I see gorgeous new ones. :)
Remember that 2004 was 20 years ago.... take the prices of sets from 20 years ago, adjust for inflation and also look at piece count and Lego in some cases is actually _less_ expensive - overall though, I do agree - the "buy in price" for a "toy" still seems too high but also remember that in most cases young people aren't buying with their "own" money it's their parent's wallet that is funding the hobby.
bro your first two lego sets were god tier. Fantasy era Castle is peak
My son (who's a young adult) is interested in mainly Star Wars, ICONS, and IDEAS sets - he really likes old System Old West themed sets but castle and medieval sets he could take or leave.
I have 2 theories:
1. Either Lego thinks people wouldn't buy as many of the big sets if they had options for smaller amounts (but they somehow miss the people like me who would not only stock up on the huge castle 5 times, but maybe on the others - and god only knows how many battlepacks)
2. LEGO is waiting for the big sets to sell, then they MIGHT make battlepacks or something similar - alongside a smaller LEGO Castle line - but they would be missing out on the synergy., Not really sure what they are thinking. I am sure that I wouldn't be the only one to buy more LEGO if they made it "fit together" - like they did with the City Space this year (Galaxy explorer into the City Space line went really well for me - and now the continuation + Blacktron is hyping me up even further. I do hope they see the success of this crossbreeding, and do a castle line while they have LOTR , DnD and Dreamzz sets - and I heard a rumor that they MIGHT do NEXO knights in Ninjago sometime soon.
Both these are excellent theories!
The Medieval FunWhole line is fantastic, and affordable... like really affordable...
Yeah, I just hope they do some fantasy castle sets. Funwhole also uses higher quality parts than Lego, the latter of which is actively degrading their part quality for the sake of profit.
Brands like Funwhole, who produce much less and thus require higher margins on their products, really put into perspective how absurdly overpriced Lego is. If Funwhole and CADA can sell the equivalent of a Medieval Blacksmith for half the price, then Lego can afford to sell the same product at a third of the price they charge while still enjoying high margins. Lego is just extremely greedy-comically so.
@@PlazDreamweaver Yeah - I remember the shift when I first began seeing Lego being manufactured in China, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Malaysia - their manufacturing and distribution expenses clearly went down dramatically, yet their prices remained high, and continued to climb... there wasn't much competition, so they could pretty much do what they wanted... I think that last post pandemic price jump combined with the exploitive pricing of the collector/investor's market created a demand/opportunity.
The German Company Kiddi Craft will also release a Medival/Fantasy Theme by end of the year, in style of the 80s/90s Lego Sets. The New Sets from Phatasy are also great.
Great video! I agree with all of the points
The way castle went in the 2000s, I have no interest in kids sets. But, as you rightly point out, the current sets are beyond the reach of most children. While I agree there should be a broader range including more affordable sets, I just don't see how the two extremes can be reconciled.
Something you should have added is that the lego castle stuff can also be found in 3 for 10$ lego byof stations in lego stores. Now granted this is something only exclusive to lego stores or are exclusive to places where you can find legos as rhe main products but you can find knight torsos with rhe factions, shields, swords, bows, quivers, shields, helmets, and so on. For lego stores its 3 minifigures. (1 head, torso,legs,accessory, hat/hair/helmet per Minifigure) For 10$
Good point! They also had those exclusive chainmail torsos for a while that are now super expensive from that.
These prices are absolute madness. I was always loyal to lego but i'm not prepared to pay this much for brandstamping. Unaccesable
I do really miss the smaller stand alone sets that earlier castle themes saw, like just give me a little watchtower or a 20$ wagon, etc. also where are the cool siege engines and small terrain builds. Give me a small rock that a forestmen or Wolfpack can hide in or stash treasure for 13 bucks and I’ll buy it.
Fire video, excited for more type shit
Great vid, i just got the trolls mountain fortress today off ebay! Cant wait to build it
It's a great one!
Never pay full price for LEGO. I just bought the NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle for more than 40% off the retail price. $120 US. The retail price is $220. It was only released 3 months ago, so if you can wait 3 months then you will save a lot of money.
Battlepacks... This is what we need. Honestly tho, I'm sure Lego has the metrics on what themes are worth producing. The manufacturing capacity has a limited bandwidth, and castle and pirates might not perform as well as the fans think they are.
But c'mon, gimme some castle battle packs!!!!
I think lego might be pleasantly surprised with our community's tenacity for purchasing battle packs! We're basically begging them to take our money :)
Seeing those prices of the cmf figures actually pissed me off. Its absurd thst people can get away with charging that much money for a minifigure that came out a year ago. I guess im not getting a vampire knight then
Definitely need cheaper sets. I'm an adult collector and love the large display sets but I'd also like a new castle theme with a full range of sets. The lack of variety is frustrating. Profits over creativity and accessibility is eventually going to kill the theme completely
yes, as a 15 years old boy you are totaly true. i have like 9 friends and all of us say that thay have thouse problems. i had grown with the 2012 series and is very worryng the direction in wich thr mrdieval them is goind to. thanks for your work and sorry for my english
Lego has a whole line of modular sets but we can’t get one combination of modules to create a castle? I agree the only available sets are expensive as well
Castle Modules sounds like a really cool idea
Since I'm exclusively building MOCs for fun display purposes as an adult, I don't care about the play features anymore. I exclusively buy fake AliExpress minifigures because these are like 9/10 of Lego's minifig quality. Even the face prints look amazing nowadays. It's wonderful for pieces like the single shoulderpad, some weapons and rare cmfs. They literally offer 20 Raven Knights for 20$ and not a single person would be able to make out the difference between a real 40$ knight when they're posed in a moc. Some even look better and have more variety, like these crazy Lord of the Rings customs everyone uses, Lego never even made simple Gondor footsoldiers or knights, or easy-to-get orcs. One orc costs like 15$ and you want like 100 of them lol, no
For your army building problem, you could try to make a ''Medieval Chess'' set go across Lego Idea and/or whatever the Bricklink program is called.
You might pique the interest of adult Lego fans and if you succeed, you'll have a 32 minifig set split in two factions. It would be more expensive than buying a bunch of battle packs but you would get more minifig diversity.
Plus, you get to choose the factions.
Also, to distinguish your chess set from past official Lego chess sets, you could include MORE than just two factions in the box and only keep one chess board. Thus, you would end up with a better price to minifig ratio.
Crazy convoluted idea but I love it! Might have to give it a shot!
The current adults who are the target of the set were growing up having or wanting the big lego castle sets back in the day therefore lego can and will charge more for the sets because adults will buy it. In general lego sets for kids are now much smaller and cheaper ( per set ) and looking how poorly lego did before coming up with 18+ sets is kinda the right decision businesswise
I'm gonna be so for real, this is why I don't think it makes sense for castle fans to be lego purists. KOs, altbricks, and custom builds. Lots of kid friendly stuff, cheaper, new and novel as well as price acceptable KOs :p
Hot take, but I think LEGO itself has become too "set-oriented." The fact that most parts and factions to build castles and armies are available on the PAB is more important to me than having smaller sets. Yes, there are CMF aftermarket price issues, but it is impossible to avoid those unless LEGO just avoids making them entirely.
I am living in turkey. I can’t buy sets because its very very expensive in Turkey. Also Turkish economy is not good. I wish LEGO release more medieval theme things. 🙏🏻
I feel you address a lot of good points which apply not only to LEGO Castle, but across the entirety of LEGO. All of the various LEGO internal themes Space, Castle, Pirate, and more (with the exception of the City and Ninjago themes) are all suffering from a lack of development and attention from LEGO. It is obvious they WANT to support them as they keep releasing them as subthemes, specialty stand alone sets, or GWPs, but continue to not release them as their own lines of sets again. I believe the cause of this problem lays outside of all of these themes though.
Plainly stated, the licensed themes like Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, and various Disney movie/series promotional tie-ins are simply too profitable. There is a finite number of new sets LEGO can physically release each year. They only have so many set designers, and so many factories to produce LEGO bricks. Add to that the finite nature of their customer base who can only afford so many sets per year and you can see that by the time LEGO has satisfied the market for new licensed sets, it doesn't leave a huge amount of resources for everything else. If every LEGO fan were to get their personal wish lists fulfilled for new LEGO lines, the LEGO Group would need to double or triple their manufacturing output and of course this would require three times as many customers as well. These numbers simply don't exist yet.
That's the problem with a system where profit is king.
In my opinion, the lego forge and two black falcons knights set was a missed opportunity. The set is great, looks great, but the dimensions are wrong. If you put it next to the new lions castle, the top of the forge's roof is as high as the highest tower in the castle. The price wasn't the lowest either, but above all Lego stopped the further production of Lego Castle for half a year. They should take more builds from lego designs rebrickable
It's interesting how a lot of the Bricklink Designer Program sets recently have been fan designed Castle models too
you are spot on with this video. dont know what to say, unfortunately it really looks like Lego ist just becoming more and more greedy, their sales and marketing team is out of touch with their fans and ordinary consumers. a 400 dollar set, but no smaller ones for kids? simply crapp
I have 25 Dragon Paladins
Good Video, but the reality is ...Lego has no interest in Castle and Lego has no interests in cheap play sets for children. Even the 3-1 Creator Castle is being discontinued. Thankfully, there are alternatives such as Bluebrixx, which now offer better sets at better prices!
There are many great competitors against Lego now.. pehaps if everyone would start migrating away from Lego to the other brands, perhaps Lego will get the message that theyre plastic bricks isnt gold
Great discussion. The last point is cross sets. Lego became to much detailed, and and it lost the dynamic vibe and it is less creative
People throw around the word anti-consumer too easily. Everyone always wants to play the victim card.
Were Lego collectors anti-producer when they refused to buy the Castle battle packs until they were marked down 50%+? They don't sell it because they used to sell it and we didn't buy enough of them.
They had to mark down everything from Joust to all The Hobbit sets, just to get rid of the inventory... Then we bought them all up and the price skyrocketed. Doesn't that mean they were worth full price to consumers? But we wouldn't pay that to Lego, we know they have to drop the inventory eventually.
Good video, I agree with most of the points except the lack of new factions. As for me, it is not a big issue as there are a lot of existing ones. They cover standard western knights, Robin Hood style forestmen, robbers, common fantasy races such as dwarfs, elves, orcs. Where to expand, what new factions could they bring? If they take inspiration from history but from other regions (like medieval Muslims, Byzantine empire, Rus), some people could be offended because of incorrect representation of their culture and history or it could even seen as something political. And if they make some generic western knights, people could see it as another repaint af an old faction
They need to get away from all the licensed BS and go back to limited run themes.
They are too expensive for children. I bought them - Lion Knights and Blacksmith's workshop - still unboxed. They should release lots of five figure packs like in the 80s/90s. No way you can sensibly build a battle scene or play with the few figures you get in each set. I was surprised by how much the Tournament Knight (Raven Knight) is selling for! I have two - wanted the new sword at the time. Maybe I should sell. Have two full sets of the new DnD figs (one for myself and one for my nephew) but had to buy like 60 boxes to get them. I gave most of the duplicates out as Halloween treats.
If you are comfortable parting with the raven knights it's not a bad idea to sell. Especially if you plan on using the money to get more DnD figures. Pro tip if you're having trouble with duplicates you can actually scan the QR code on each box to show which figure is inside.
@@npucentral5811 Yes, I scanned them, but they are not available in my town so had to order lots - in several batches as they are limited on the Lego site to 24 or something like that. Scanned after ordering them to make sure my nephew got a full set for a kinda Halloween 'calendar' I made him. Used Jake's Brick Scanner;-). I will actually consider selling the Raven Knights - good idea to re-invest! Crazy how much these are going for! Just checked e-bay!
It is sad that Lego do not release reasonably priced sets in this line that children could buy with their pocket money as I did when little. Feel sorry for children looking at these amazing sets that they - or most of - their family can't afford. Lego is letting itself down here: you could at least have a few cheaper castle sets to let children feel they are part of it.
Good takes
This makes me glad that im into off brand. I got a kreo castle at dg once.
unfortunately a lot of these issues apply to Lego as a whole, not just medieval theme.
The lion's castle is very boring looking. Just all grey. Buying 2 boxes of creator castle and building some alternate builds is the best options.
Spot on my man..... lego is uber greedy these days
Whats this price thing? That was an issue in the 80s when i had to beg my parents but theyre passed on and i make six figures.
Me watching this video( 4:00 )with 10 unopened dragonborn paladin boxes under my bed:
ooopssss… 🫥
Where is the map from at 4:13?
Replace Ninjago with a new original Castle theme. Problem solved.
I have nostalgia for Ninjago :( I'm thinking of making a video about how Ninjago's longevity has disincentivized Lego to experiment with more original themes. Does that sound like something interest?
@@npucentral5811 I was thinking the same thing recently as well. Ninjago is current LEGO's longest-running action-adventure theme... and because of that, it keeps any other action-adventure themes like Chima, Nexo Knights, and it seems like Dreamzzz next year from succeeding.
It does seem with the Source Dragons being the ultimate power, Ninjago may be coming to a close. And I'm excited to see what new theme LEGO comes up with!
(Personally I think a Power Miners reboot would be awesome)
@@npucentral5811 Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Even Monkey Kid and Dreamzzz are reskins of Ninjago. Ninjago is dead to me and has been since season 2. The only Ninjago time Ninjago was good, imo, was during seasons 0 and 1.
Price: does not count, for Lego is in general extremely expensive. The licenced sets have the worst value for the money.
Armies: the problem is that this is no regular theme and one ones which came out were nostalgy for adults fans which can afford these sets.
CMF: again it's not for kids, it's for adult fans
New factions: again, it's to win over adults with the nostalgia of their childhood, and thus new factions make no sense.
Too adults oriented: he simply fails to get it
One Set was Lego Icons, the other from Lego Ideas, one creator etc. pp.
There is currently NO castle theme - most unfortunately. These sets are for adults and from other themes as stand alones.
How awesome would be to have Vikings (the village from Ideas or older Sets like the viking ship) vs Alfred the Great (Great Castle with some Mocs). The Danelaw, the Great Heathen army...for instance - but no.
Ninjago is what kids go for today. Knights, pirates or western were big themes back in the day, but today it is Ninjago, or licenced themes like Star Wars (instead of space) or Harry Potter.
yup I would really like to not save up for two years just to afford one Lego castle set
Yeah, an actually line of Castle would be so nice. My kids love the D&D figs! All the current Castle and LOTR sets would be great to own but I can't just drop almost 2k on them. I would scoop up more reasonable sets immediately.
That 3 and 1Castle was down all the way to $60 at Target and Amazon has it $20 off.
Ngl might have to snag another copy if that's the case
Great video!
Price… price is the problem.
Pirates fans say hello!
Uh Wolfpack is purchasable
Fans who know what they are doing will use an app to see which minifig they are going to get before they purchase an individual minifig pack 😐
wolfpack you can buy Pick and brick
Just got the medieval castle (1426 pieces) for only 63.99
I heard it's been going on really good sales. I am on the lookout!
I think buildings are too big, the scale is off. Just look at the medieval blacksmith and lion knight fortres. is almost half of the castle. I would love it if Lego would make some small peasent homes to make a real village or city. The medival sqare is nice but i would like a hole village or city built with some smaller houses. this also fills the smaller set market.
So Castle/Medieval fans have it bas, eh? Good thing you’re not into Pirates then.
If you're a kid that's into castle and lego, then it sucks. The $100 castle is outstanding and very fairly priced (even more so when adjusted for inflation and frequent sales that drop it to $80). I think you can make a strong case for viking village as well. But yeah, after that, there's nothing. Everything castle is AFOL focused. That said, the claim you make at 1:48 is a bold claim. What evidence do you have to support this claim? Is there a large enough market to support smaller castle sets? There are certainly a lot of sets and themes directed at children and that are much more affodable than the adult focused sets (Blacksmith, Lion Knight Castle, Town Square, etc). I fear the sad truth is that perhaps lego castle has lost out to other themes like harry potter, star wars, marvel, city, ninja, and others. The lego market for kid directed sets is pretty saturated.
Good question. I would argue that the claim made at 1:48 could be supported by the fact these sets fetch a decent price on the aftermarket which could be indicative of demand. I would say considering the fact that there hasn't been an official castle theme since 2015 the market demand for a theme has slowly built up overtime. Also to your point about Harry Potter and other themes I'd argue that previous castle themes have been able to exist just fine with those other themes so I don't think things would dramatically change.
4:13 vikings are dead..
"Might be" anticonsumer lol
Don't want to give away the answer at the start :)
There is only one problem: It's too expensive. I can buy a laptop instead of big Lego set. And there's no way too compere those technologies. Lego is just a simple plastic. No offence. Even more. I could buy a running car for the money on some Lego sets. Sic as F***.
True, I agree
Medieval Blacksmith is the pinnacle of Castle theme, but even that set had its problems, which I fixed. Look, I’m the guy with all the answers, a real AHOL, Adult Habitué Of Lego, not a fan.
I don’t agree with any of your reasons.
Lego’s reliance on crappy, dull, medium stone grey brick is disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves.
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lego is only going to get more adult and less kid going forward why would they not want to make money
Im like marvel ❤