The recent New York Toy Fair has been super exciting event where LEGO revealed most of the new sets and themes that will be coming out later this year. We have covered most of the new sets already (see: 2015 LEGO sets – New York Toy Fair Report), but as the article was getting too long there were some sets and themes I did not include, especially since were already covered in the previous London and German Toy Fair reports (links at the end of this post). However for the sake of completeness I thought to add the coverage from the New York Toy Fair on those as well in the form of a couple of preview videos, so let’s take a look! In the previous New York Toy Fair report I have used the preview summaries from YouTube member just2good as I felt he did a good overall view on all of the new sets and themes. For more details I also recommend watching the video coverage from the BrickShow as they filmed all of the new sets at the toy fair. Pictures have also been added to the Brickset database, so you might want to check out those as well.
➡ 2015 LEGO NINJAGO SETS: The next season of LEGO Ninjago is titled “Shadows of Ronin” with the badguys being ghost-like creatures. Also, there are new spinner sets with spinners that can fly! The upcoming sets are as follows: #70733 LEGO Ninjago Blaster Bike, #70734 LEGO Ninjago Master Wu Dragon, #70735 LEGO Ninjago Ronin R.E.X., #70736 LEGO Ninjago Attack of the Morro Dragon, #70737 LEGO Ninjago Titan Mech Battle, #70738 LEGO Ninjago Final Flight of Destiny’s Bounty. And here is the list of the spinners: #70739 LEGO Ninjago Airjitzu Kai Flyer, #70740 LEGO Ninjago Airjitzu Jay Flyer, #70741 LEGO Ninjago Airjitzu Cole Flyer, #70742 LEGO Ninjago Airjitzu Zane Flyer, #70743 LEGO Ninjago Airjitzu Morro Flyer, #70744 LEGO Ninjago Airjitzu Wrayth Flyer. ➡ 2015 LEGO LEGENDS OF CHIMA SETS: There are a few more LEGO Legends of Chima Fire vs. Ice sets released later this year: #70225 LEGO Chima Bladvic’s Rumble Bear, #70226 LEGO Chima Mammoth’s Frozen Stronghold, #70227 LEGO Chima King Crominus’ Rescue. I
n the video-preview below YouTube member just2good talks about both the LEGO Ninjago and the LEGO Legends of Chima sets in more detail. ➡ 2015 LEGO ULTRA AGENTS SETS: LEGO Ultra Agents has been one of the best non-licensed themes of recent times with excellent looking sets and great play-features. The theme is obviously successful too as this is going to be the third wave of sets! Also, as we have discussed previously, LEGO Ultra Agents expands into digital games via app-bricks that are included in all of the sets. Here is the list of upcoming sets: #70171 LEGO Ultra Agents Ultrasonic Showdown, #70172 LEGO Ultra Agents AntiMatter’s Portal Hideout, #70173 LEGO Ultra Agents Ocean HQ. ➡ 2015 LEGO FRIENDS SETS: LEGO Friends will have a major sub-theme this summer with a pop-start theme. For some reason just2good only covered a few of the upcoming sets in the video, but you can see the rest in the previous German Toy Fair report. These are the sets highlighted in the video-preview: #41098 LEGO Friends Emma’s Tourist Kiosk, #41099 LEGO Friends Heartlake Skate Park, #41100 LEGO Friends Heartlake Private Jet, #41101 LEGO Friends Heartlake Grand Hotel.
➡ 2015 LEGO ELVES SETS: We have talked about this new theme extensively before, with the first wave of sets coming out next month. The second wave will contain only two sets: #41077 LEGO Elves Aira’s Pegasus Sleigh, #41078 LEGO Elves Skyra’s Mysterious Sky Castle. ➡ 2015 LEGO CITY SETS: As we have discussed previously, LEGO City will have two major sub-themes this summer related to space and deep sea exploration, with some really nice sets in both. Here is a list of the upcoming sets: #60077 LEGO City Space Starter Set, #60078 LEGO City Utility Shuttle, #60079 LEGO City Training Jet Transporter, #60080 LEGO City Spaceport, #60090 LEGO City Deep Sea Scuba Scooter, #60091 LEGO City Deep Sea Starter Set, #60092 LEGO City Deep Sea Submarine, #60093 LEGO City Deep Sea Helicopter, #60095 LEGO City Deep Sea Exploration Vessel, #60097 LEGO City Square, #60099 LEGO City Advent Calendar. ➡ 2015 LEGO CREATOR SETS: LEGO Creator is usually not the theme that causes the most excitement, but they are full of great sets. T
his wave is especially very solid with three excellent sets: #31037 LEGO Creator Adventure Vehicles, #31038 LEGO Creator Changing Seasons, #31039 LEGO Creator Blue Power Jet. ➡ 2015 LEGO JUNIORS SETS: LEGO Juniors is a fairly new theme, but it quickly proved itself to be a major contended in peoples’ favorite theme category. Although originally intended for children who are transitioning over from LEGO DUPLO to regular LEGO, it have also caught the attention to adult LEGO fans due to their nice designs and beautifully printed parts. There are two new sets in this theme coming later in the year: #10682 LEGO Juniors Off Road Work, LEGO Juniors #10683 Family Home. In the video-preview below YouTube member just2good talks about all of the above mentioned sets and themes in more detail. So what do you think? How do you like the upcoming 2015 LEGO sets? Which ones are you looking forward to the most? Are you saving up for any of them? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below! A
nd in the meantime you can also check out the already released 2015 LEGO sets at the Online LEGO Shop. Can't read the text above?Try another text or an audio CAPTCHAText in the box:What's this?Chima 70145Chima SetsLego ChimaLegends ChimaLego LegendsAustin S WishlistSet WishlistWishlist 2014Lego ShopForwardLEGO Legends of Chima Maula Ice Mammoth Stomper 70145 $89.99 The Stomper is on the move with the CHI in its grasps. The icy bad guys from the Mammoth and Saber-tooth tribes must be stopped! Maula's Ice Mammoth Stomper contains ice blaster cannons, hidden flick missiles, and a weapon in its truck. It's a difficult foe to take down. But Worriz and Razar are up for the challenge as they chase the Stomper with the fire slider and their weapons. They must move fast before Mottrot launches the…LEGO is one of the most beloved brands on the planet. Its ability to remain popular for more than eighty years is a testament to the quality of the product and the strength of imagination it fosters in every generation.
To remain relevant in the last couple of decades is certainly attributable to its many licenses and partnerships with equally loved properties. Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Simpsons. This year has seen perhaps its biggest success so far with The LEGO Movie, a triumph of content marketing that has completely dominated the marketing world. Almost every media outlet and publisher including us (this is now my fourth article in a row about LEGO), produced content around The LEGO Movie, not just because it’s topical, but because there is so much love for the brand. It was incredibly apparent how every article written about it radiated with positivity and nostalgia. Graham Charlton covered LEGO’s online strategy back in 2012 and he felt that despite the many mentions of Lego on social media and the general affection for the brand, it didn't seem to interact with its audience as much as some other brands. Although there was much to admire about the way Lego used digital marketing at the time, with lots of great shareable content, a brand new ecommerce site and some excellent mobile apps, its official social accounts were seldom updated and failed to take advantage of the sheer amount of brand mentions on each channel.
Within two years, things are looking quite different. LEGO now runs social channels where it keeps a constant eye on the feeds and is super quick to engage and remain personal to its audience. It has also built a supportive and consistently imaginative community on its LEGO Ideas site. The point when LEGO got its marketing strategy dead-on is when it started treating adult and child one and the same. LEGO’s invitation to its audience is a catch-all policy: "hey come on in, we’re all the same here, we’re just a bunch of people who love LEGO". Let’s take a look at some examples of why everything is awesome in LEGO’s social world. This article comes at a topical point in LEGO’s social growth, as it has just this week entered the world of Vine and Instagram Video. Apparently two videos a week will be posted on its Vine and Instagram channels and also shared across The LEGO Group’s existing social channels. The videos will coincide with the launch of new LEGO Mixels range, but will also feature existing LEGO products.
As of today, LEGO’s Vine channel is two days old, has 69 followers and has posted one Vine. It’s a beautifully animated and scored piece that clearly looks like it has a higher budget than a lot of other equally large global brands. Keeping it to a normal desk environment helps to bring it down to Earth though. LEGO has run a great Instagram channel since November 2013 and last week it uploaded its first Instagram video. Again there’s a bit of budget thrown behind this, with some high quality production values. It’s also clear that the same agency (1000heads) is responsible for both Vine and Instagram efforts. It’s interesting that LEGO has waited this long to enter the social video world. LEGO has certainly been creating its own animated content for quite some time, both uploaded on to YouTube and released on home video. Much of its content though is slick, computer generated animation rather than the lo-fi, DIY charm of stop-motion. There’s a definite shift in style between the above video and The LEGO Movie’s quasi stop-motion style.
Apart from perhaps the lighting and the wealth of Hollywood actors, there’s no reason why you can’t recreate the movements of this animation at home. And that’s probably why it’s taken so long for LEGO to enter Vine and Instagram Video. The channels are notable for the huge amount of quality stop motion animation available. Users have also been making their own brilliant animated Vines, Instagrams and YouTube videos using LEGO sets for years. Even branded partners have been making brilliant Instagram videos ahead of LEGO itself. Here LEGO teamed up with DK Books and helped drive social growth with these videos used to promote the launch of its Minifigure Year by Year book. No wonder LEGO is being incredibly careful in its first forays onto these channels. There’s already a heck of a lot of great content already out there and it would be a rare miscalculation if LEGO didn’t at least match the best of them. Although as The LEGO Movie has shown, nobody does LEGO’s content marketing better than LEGO itself, so we can be sure that great things are going to come from this.
As I mentioned above, LEGO has a huge amount of video content already and uploads it on a regular basis through a vast amount of channels. Each range of sets has its own channel and specific content, whether its Technic, City, Chima or Friends. The content ranges from web exclusive mini-episodes, adverts and music videos. I particularly like the series of videos called Micro Square. These are ‘how-to’ tutorials, a format that does incredibly well on YouTube, that teach users how to build micro-scale models. Perhaps also tapping into the Minecraft craze too. Adding to this content marketing mix are existing YouTube stars like EvanTubeHD whose time-lapse build of a Star Wars Rancor Pit has had nearly 7m views. As Mike Zeederberg from Zuni points out “it's a master class of content marketing, customer engagement and monetisation, all built around a really good product.” Last year The LEGO Movie Twitter account helped build early anticipation for a film that wouldn’t be released for another seven months.
The account showed huge levels of engagement and regularly shared follower’s photographs in a fan of the week showcase. Congrats to Kristine, the creator of these awesome lemon-flavored LEGO cake pops, and our new #LEGOFanoftheWeek! — The LEGO Movie (@TheLEGOMovie) September 6, 2013 New #LEGOFanoftheWeek Adam got his whole family to dress up as LEGO bricks for Halloween! — The LEGO Movie (@TheLEGOMovie) August 26, 2013 The LEGO Group itself has also upped its game considerably since our original article in 2012. LEGO responds with little delay to positive mentions. @cityandclaire @this_is_chrisc Congrats to you both! It's great timing for our new Trevi Fountain set. — The LEGO Group (@LEGO_Group) June 3, 2014 It also recognizes that although it may not have been set up as such, branded Twitter accounts often attract customer service enquiries. Operating in a public space means that enquiring consumers will see this as an opportunity to communicate with you, especially if other customer service channels are harder to find.
The best brands on Twitter react quickly and helpfully to all enquiries, even if there’s a separate social customer service channels set up elsewhere. LEGO understands this very well. On most days there are at least 10 responses to customer queries and complaints, all dealt with calmly and quickly. The LEGO Group excels at Twitter. Using it in equal parts for content marketing, engagement, customer service and broadcasting. It's a pleasure to follow. Lego Ideas began as Cuusoo, a Japanese partner of The Lego Group that began working together in 2008 to produce community developed ideas for Lego sets which, if gaining more than 10,000 votes, will be forwarded to the heads of Lego for possible development. The scheme was launched worldwide in 2011 and has so far been responsible for eight successful products, including this Ghostbusters set: The crowdsourcing of creative design is a fantastic way to engage with your customers. Who couldn’t possibly say that one of their dream jobs is to become a designer for Lego?