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I’ve been thinking about bionicle coming back. Then I hear they’re bringing back pirates. LEGO seems very hard to convince to bring back things people want…Are there other things they’ve brought back that I’m forgetting?
The most obvious one would be Ninjago.
I would speculate that with both Ninjago and Bionicle, the motivation for bringing them back is that their replacement series – Chima and Hero Factory respectively – didn’t sell as well as their predecessors.
I don’t know if I’d say they brought back Pirates as much as the pirate theme is something they just like to do periodically.
The last new Ninjago sets were released in January 2013 and that was supposed to officially end the series. There’s a whole crapload of sets scheduled for 2015 but they didn’t make the January catalog.
Again I’m speculating here, but – the Ninjago TV series was a huge ratings success (my nephews loved it and I watched several episodes with them, even tho they were just a big ad for the sets); and the announcement that Ninjago will return after all came not all that long after the announcement that the Chima TV series ratings were a disappointment (I don’t know if it rebounded or not). Which seems like not a coincidence to me. Chima’s still having a long run though, at 2-2/3 years it’s as long as any series I’ve seen since really paying attention again in the early 2000s.
The other one they brought back is ‘Agents’. I thought the original 2008 Agents were OK, but I know from reading blogs n whatnot that a lot of fans consider it one Lego’s all-time best series, so that may have been a factor in creating Ultra-Agents.
Batman went away for a while and the sets got ridiculously expensive. In 2009, a used 2006 batcave set would sell for three times its original new price. Batman II started in 2011.
Btw, I totally ate it on my Ninjago post and nobody called me out on it – more evidence that you guys never read my posts. I completely forgot about the 2014 sets, even though I have almost all of them, I thought of it a couple weeks ago when I cashed in my Amazon rewards points for one of the summer sets. So everything I said is true about it going away and coming back, but the gap was only from May 2013 to Dec 2013, hence Josh’s question ‘Ninjago went away?’ makes a lot more sense now. I thought some of the 2014 sets seemed half-baked and given Lego’s supposed lead time on set design, I’ve always wondered if the January 2014 sets were quickly repurposed from another series already in development, esp since after the initial release there were only 2 more sets for the remainder of the year, but we’re still getting a full slate in 2015.
Aaah, the original Batcave was the first real set I ever got my oldest nephew. If I’d known they were gonna become worth so much I would’ve picked up some extras, they may be expensive now, but during their original run it was easy to find them on clearance Clarence.
Yeah Ninjago is back pretty big. Given the 10′ wide display at TRU. I really have to give them credit for marketing on the 2015 sets. Many more sets are out. a lot of smaller, cheaper sets. And they’ve got the theme back to the ‘mythical’ side instead of trying to make it cyberpunk. It is nice to see them going back to what made the line popular. And the ‘Tournament of Elements’ story line in the new episodes offer MUCH improved writing over the disjointed ‘Rebooted’ series.
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