Welcome to Wonder Woman’s dorm room. Lego’s girl-focused Friends line, which replaces the traditional minifigures with something closer to tiny plastic dolls, can rub certain collectors the wrong way. Making the tiny plastic dolls DC Comics characters, as Lego is doing with six new DC Super Hero Girls sets, certainly helps. I’m a big fan of the DC Super Hero Girls line, which takes popular characters from the comic books and places them in a kid-friendly high school setting. It’s a gateway drug into comic fandom for a whole new audience, and by that I mean my Monster High-collecting wife. Just your average high school. In terms of retail placement and marketing targets, it’s a girls line, so Lego’s six new sets, three launching next month and three in January, are part of the Friends line, along with my beloved Lego Elves. Part of me appreciates the irony of these characters in this setting, especially considering recent developments in the lives of Wonder Woman and portrayal of characters like Harley Quinn and Batgirl in live-action and animation.
Buying it for the Batjet. The first three sets, due out on November 27 in North America with a global launch in January, include the amazing Batgirl’s Batjet set ($24.99), Harley Quinn to the Rescue ($29.99) and the large Super Hero High School set ($79.99), featuring Supergirl, Poison Ivy and Lena Luthor. On January 1 the series goes worldwide, with three new sets dropping in North America as well. The final three are Wonder Woman Dorm Room ($19.99), which includes an invisible motorcycle, Bumblebee Helicopter ($14.99) and Lashina Tank ($14.99). I have no idea who Lashina is, but at that point I’ll have bought the rest of these so I might as well collect the whole set of sets. Why do the flying characters always get flying machines? Each of the sets come with tiny buildable crystal creatures called Kryptomites, which sound like they’re going to ruin Supergirl’s day in a big way. Note the inclusion of Krypto in the Lashina set. He’s bound to make Supergirl’s day much better.
So the Friends line and its spin-offs continue to stand by their weird plastic dolls. Between the DC iconography and the use of unique color/part combinations, the Super Hero Girls line is likely to be a hit with collectors and fans of the property alike.On Saturday afternoon, I had the lovely opportunity to join GeekMom Jackie on a walkthrough of the LEGO booth. Attending my first Toy Fair, I had no expectations of what I’d get to do. However, as one of “those LEGO families,” seeing the new and upcoming sets was one of my top goals. Below we have three or four different videos mainly because several areas were totally under embargo. No video or photo were allowed in those areas. Our first stop on the tour were the new Brick Headz. LEGO announced some new Pirates of the Caribbean-themed Brick Headz on Saturday morning. In addition, we saw some of the new 3-in-1 Creator sets. The Moana set is pretty fantastic. The tattoo detail on Maui is amazing. LEGO has really done a lot of work on this set to make sure that they got it right.
They’re bringing out over thirty new sets from the original City series. We also had a preview of next year’s advent calendar coming out in September. The all new jungle set comes with some active females as well as some cool animals. With the new Ninjago movie coming out this year, LEGO is bringing back some of our favorite characters and sets. In addition, we got a first look at the new Adventure Time set and the other two exciting LEGO Ideas sets coming out this year. There’s a new Guggenheim Architecture set this year as well. As someone who’s a huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan, I loved the new imagining of that building. In addition, the new LEGO Boost line is a great way to start kids aged 8-12 on programming. In here, you can see some really pre-release video of how they work. The app is still in development but seems to be particularly easy. Based on Spark programming cards, it’s entirely picture based. By gamifying the process, kids not only learn the language of coding step by step, but the way in which they level up, learn, and earn more advanced language for the robot is phenomenal and engaging.
We were also treated to a preview of some new Star Wars LEGO sets coming out later this year. My personal favorite is the LEGO Star Wars advent calendar. Every year, this particular advent set sells out. In our house, this has become a holiday tradition. Looking at the Santa hat wearing BB-8 figure, I knew immediately that this would be one of the sets that we’d have to make sure to pre-order if possible. We were also treated to a preview of the upcoming Next Knights. My kid asked for these for Christmas and has been loving them ever since. The new ones look not only cool but like fun builds. LEGO is also coming out with small sets of separate shields that can help kids add super charged aspects to the characters which combines with the app. They also revealed some new Elves sets that had a cool new pieces, including a revision slide piece. Also, and for those of you following along with the GeekMom thrill of the DC Superhero Girls, we had a preview of the new DC Superhero Girls themed set.
This is just amazing. I don’t even care if my kid wants it, I know that I’m probably going to be buying it for myself. In fact, it will go really well with the Batman LEGO that my kid just got for his birthday. The best part of the high school is that there are specifically no stairs because, of course, all the superheroes fly. Next we were treated to a preview of the Marvel sets that are coming out in March and June. Meanwhile, as I’m out drooling over the Kamala Khan figure, my husband was at home buying the same set. Out in March, this is a set that any Ms. Marvel fans should be looking forward to coming in the next few weeks. Our last step on the tour was a look at the Friends sets. Despite the uproar that came out with these sets, LEGO has done really well with them. The LEGO Friends roller coaster won Toy of the Year on Friday night, proving that the sets are not only popular but incredibly well designed. This year is the fifth year of the mini doll platform. The catamaran will be out later this year and was one of the representative’s favorites because it’s just a lot of fun.