As we have discussed previously (see links at the end of this post), there is a brand new LEGO theme coming next year called LEGO Elves. While the official release is not until March 2015, LEGO already put up the LEGO Elves website. There is not much yet besides a teaser video, but it does give us some insight into this new theme. So let’s take a look! 🙂
As you can see, the official LEGO Elves website is just one page right now that simply says (talking in typical elvish rhyme): “Stay tuned for the story, soon it is here! Believe and March will turn magic this year!” Then there is a teaser video that you can also watch below:
Interesting, isn’t it? The five characters on the picture and in the video above from left to right are Aira Whisperwind (elf girl representing air), Farran Leafshade (elf boy representing earth), Emily Jones (human girl), Naida Riverheart (elf girl representing water), and Azari Firedancer (elf girl representing fire). The story follows Emily Jones (the human girl) on her exciting journey through the magical world of Elvendale. It all starts at a mysterious door at her grandmother’s garden, that turns out to be a portal to the land of the Elves. The only way Emily can get back home is to find four keys, but she can only manage this with the help of her elven friends.
I’m pretty sure there is going to be further teasers coming between now and the official release to tell us more about the story, however it is not known at this point if the adventure will unfold through short videos at the official LEGO Elves website only, or will there also be a TV show. In any case, we know there are going to be six LEGO Elves sets released in March, which we discussed previously, but I will list them again below for your convenience. Also, notice that in the teaser-video there is a big castle in the background. It is very likely that this is an important location in the story (perhaps where Emily will need to take the keys), and will be another LEGO Elves sets released at a later date. 🙄
➡ #41071 LEGO Elves Aira’s Creative Workshop:
➡ #41072 LEGO Elves Naida’s Spa Secret:
➡ #41073 LEGO Elves Naida’s Epic Adventure Ship:
➡ #41074 LEGO Elves Azari and the Magical Bakery:
➡ #41075 LEGO Elves The Elves’ Treetop Hideaway:
➡ #41076 LEGO Elves Fairan and the Crystal Hollow:
So far I like everything about LEGO Elves. The sets are just lovely with all those fantastic new elements, sweet colors, and cute mini-dolls. It is a nice expansion of the LEGO Friends line into the realm of fantasy. I can see these sets becoming very popular with both young boys and girls, and of course adults too. LEGO Friends and LEGO Disney Princess (both using the mini-dolls instead of the regular minifigures) have been having very strong years, and looks like 2015 is going to be no exception. In addition to those two themes, now we will have LEGO Elves. Looks like LEGO finally found the right angle to appeal to girls who would otherwise not be into LEGO and construction toys. You can check out the currently available LEGO Friends and LEGO Disney Princess at the Online LEGO Shop.
What about you? How do you like LEGO Elves? Are you looking forward to this theme? And what do you think of the teaser-trailer? And the story? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
And you might also like to check out the following related posts:
- 2015 LEGO Elves – Pictures & Details!
- LEGO Jurassic World Sets Coming in 2015!
- 2015 LEGO Pirates Sets Pictures & Details!
- The LEGO Movie 2015 Sets Pictures!
- LEGO Ninjago 2015 Sets Pictures & More!
- LEGO Speed Champions Supercars in 2015
- 2015 LEGO Sets News & Rumors…
- 2015 LEGO Super Heroes & Villains
- LEGO BIONICLE Confirmed & Teaser-Video!
I was really liking Elves until I saw the teaser video. It happens to be in my least favorite kind of animation style. But that aside, I think the mini dolls look to un-human-ish, and don’t fully show the character’s character, if you know what I mean. It’s the same with Friends. Cute, smiling mini dolls, unknown to any other feeling besides happiness… that’s the problem with mini dolls, I think. With minifigs, you can swap the heads with almost any other minifig to get the expression you want. Here you get more smiles than anything else. 😕 Other than that, though, I like the sets, and may get one later if I have spare money after getting my top 2015 sets. 🙂
Good observations. Remember though that entire generations grew up with regular minifigs that could only smile. It is a fairly recent development that minifigs have all kinds of facial expressions. In my experience girls prefer social role-play in everyday situations instead of making up major conflicts with bloodied up and scuffy looking minifigs boys tend to like. 🙄
I have to be honest, I prefer the classic smiling minigure head. I’m thinking of replacing a lot of my minfigures with the classic head. Mostly women because they all look so angry all the time.
I have also changed the heads to classic smileys for all of my Classic Space MOCs. LEGO knows that the classic smileys are still very popular and they add them to various sets. For example in all of the Modular Buildings all of the minifigs have classic smiley faces. Also in all of the LEGO Master Builder Academy sets, and many of the other LEGO Creator sets classic smiley faces are the standard. 🙂
I like angry female minifigs better, though. Generally the women tend to look so made-up and flirty… Angry heads have more attitude.
The bakery is so cool
Yes, the bakery is very nice. Sweet colors and accessories too. 😛
All heads were all smiles from 1978 until 1989 when the Pirates theme appeared. In 1992, alternative heads started appearing in other themes, but the varied heads didn’t become the norm until 1994-1995.
Considering that the heads basically only has one emotion, respectively, anyway, a neutral smile might even have its advantage. I see toymaker Playmobil still basically keeps the same 70’s smiling face for almost all of their figures.
That’s a really good example with Playmobil.
Even the early new pirate heads still kept a classic smiley look to them, even if they weren’t specifically smiling. I am also a fan of the filled dot eyes.
Yeah, a lot of the early special heads had that, a smiling base with beards, sunglasses or lipstick etc…
That really is an odd complaint. Most toys only give you one facial expression per figure, be they girl’s dolls or ponies, or boy’s action figures. That doesn’t put Lego Minidolls at any kind of legitimate disadvantage. And what’s wrong with happiness anyway? What, you expect grimdark on toys targeted at girls?
I think the teaser is semi-better than the sets. The two bad things about it are that 1) the animation is bad (like a newbie trying to make a stopmotion, meaning gaps between the movements) and 2) everything shown in the trailer is not LEGO- just 2D animation with good-looking but non-LEGO characters and backgrounds. If I were judging this then I would say 6-7/10.
Bad animation. It might be a budget issue. “Limited animation” is more or less the norm nowadays for newly produced animation (for TV etc).
I see myself picking up a few of these for parts for sure. I’m not going to watch the video though. I saw a Mixels preview of the cartoon that ruined Mixels in my mind, don’t want the same thing to happen with this. XD
I can understand that. It is perfectly fine to enjoy a LEGO theme without the background story. In fact you can just make up your own or mix and match with other themes to your heart’s content. I like Elves and planning to get all of them, and I don’t really care about the story either.
Holy cow, cel animation! It’s becoming such a lost art these days that it seems like a treat to see it used. I think we’ve gotten pretty used to Lego animations being near literal interpretations of the toys (Bionicle, Hero Factory, Ninjago, Chima, Yoda Chronicles, even one-offs like Atlantis, Clutch Powers, Marvel Maximum Overload, Batman Beleauguered, and the eponymous Lego Movie).
I just looked up one of the Friends videos on Youtube, the characters look much more natural but are still reasonable matches for the actual minidolls (though with proper hands), with sets and props that are clearly built of Lego pieces. Only Mixels so far has strayed from that, with animation designs that are only just recognizable compared to the toys sets.
If the Elves teaser carries over into the full series (be it on Cartoon Network or just the web) it would represent a daring strategy to make this look like an original series that just happens to have Lego sets of it, rather than a series that is blatantly a Lego creation. Plus, a clear storyline, even if it is just a collection of plot coupons. I’m liking Elves more and more.
Wasn’t Galidor sort of in a similar vein, an animated series co-funded by Lego in an attempt to sell sets based on it?
It failed quite miserably, though, since Lego completely forgot its core concepts, where the sets could hardly even be combined with others of the same theme.
Although Elves is a complete in-house theme, and Galidor seems to be initially based on a license…
WHAT? I thought that was 2-D computer animation! :O
Håkan: Oh yes! Galidor! That was a live action series, actually, and the toys didn’t bear much of a resemblance to Lego. Given Bionicle, you might say they were ahead of their time, but even Bionicle started out being based on Technic pieces. The Bionicle forerunners Throwbots and Roboriders were explicitly Technic.
NinjagoRules: It doesn’t really look like it. It’s definitely not cel shaded 3D CGI. It might be 2D flash animation like a lot of things are these days (including MLP:FIM), but it doesn’t really look like that either. It really does look like genuine traditional drawn animation, though I’m sure that’s all done in computers these days too rather than on physical cels.
🙂 Thanks!
But why would LEGO want to use cel animation? I’ve heard that its really expensive compared to computer animation, except limited cel animation.
I have trouble understanding what attracted Lego to Galidor in the first place. The series never ever seems to have been very popular, and it might just have been a bad hunch that the limb-switching gimmick would work well in Lego. Lego co-funded the TV series, so they seem to have had rather high hopes for it.
The Ben 10 sets weren’t great either, although set design was slightly better, but first and foremost, the franchise had a much higher appeal to begin with.
Given the rather plain and undescriptive name, just Elves, I wouldn’t think there would be a TV show. Personally I’m not much of a fan of the concept, and certainly not of minidolls, but I do like some of the pieces here, especially the purple leaves… I’m a sucker for anything purple! 😉
LOL! I love purple too! In fact I’m wearing a purple hoodie, a purple T-shirt and a purple scarf right now! 😛
I’m starting to get into purple, myself, but it’s harder to find good clothes when you’re 6’6″ (and lack a job).
Gosh, you are tall! 😛
I sometimes wear all purple, which generally gets a few comments! So does my Ninjago T-shirt, haha!
Someone once remarked to me that it was funny how most people are just like, Oh I like blue best, or, Yellow’s my favorite, or whatever, but people who’s favorite color is purple don’t just like it but half their stuff is purple too! Which I’ve found pretty true! At least, a good proportion of what I own is purple!
Totally agree! Purple rules! 😛
Oh my…gosh!
I Am back I am so happy…also Elves looks a bit like a rip-off in my mind (No offense) like Mixels. Well happy to be back
MERRY CHRISTMAS 🙂
Elves don’t do a thing for me and these have a particularly female POV of the most saccharine, limiting, My-Little-Pony variety ::says the mom who would never buy her daughters any My Little Ponies::
I would so much rather they revived the Fabuland approach to junior age kids. So much more universal and great non-sexist or race-specific pretend possibilities.
Yes, the revival of Fabuland would be sweet. They kind of went that direction with Chima, but then they put that whole conflict twist on it. 😐
I almost appreciate Fabuland more now when I get older. I’m not sure if this is considered “cursing in church”, but I think Mega Bloks went in a similar direction on their Smurfs and Hello Kitty sets, which was pretty OK.
I actually think My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic could lead to pretty nice sets (as we’ve seen some fans put out propositions for), but since the license is owned by Hasbro, we’d need to hope for a Kre-O theme.
My dad had some Fabuland sets that my sister inherited as I didn’t like them when I was a kid. I also like Fabuland now much more as an adult. It’s weird how adults have such inaccurate ideas about what kids like. I wanted realistic sets, not talking animals living in la-la-land.
That’s such an interesting perspective! I know I absolutely was very attracted to them when I was buying them for my girls but they tell me they have happy memories of them as well.
Wish we could find more of the pieces… I know I bought at least a few sets but odd pieces is all we can find. We do, however, have most all of the Duplo house sets but my grandson moved through those and lost interest pretty fast.
At 4 he’s doing regular Lego sets now but I think he could have good fun with Fabuland if it were a choice.
Yeah, now I also wish I have some Fabuland sets, but there are so expensive on the secondary market, and my sister won’t give them to me. There are some real sweet pieces in those sets. I wrote an article about Fabuland a while back, that I think you might like: http://thebrickblogger.com/2014/01/lego-fabuland-the-charm-is-still-alive/