2017 is almost finished, so I thought I’d take a moment to look back at what has happened this year, in a quick month by month format, including what sets and news we’ve seen come out of Billund, followed by a quick look back at 2017 from BricktasticBlog’s perspective – a reflection on 2017 as a whole.
Firstly though, I need to thank you all. Without you reading, sharing and talking about these posts both here and on Facebook, this website wouldn’t exist. This year has been a massive year for the website and I can’t thank you enough. I’m having so much fun with this!
Let’s start at the best starting place – January. We got an opening date for the Dreamworld LEGO Store, LEGO BOOST was announced and we got the first official images of the new LEGO BrickHeadz theme. I am still a huge fan of the BrickHeadz – they’re small, easy to build and look very cute on a shelf. I’ve written a couple of reviews – one for the Marvel characters and one for DC, and I’ve got another four to open from Series 1, so I’m looking forward to that!
February means one thing in the LEGO world – the New York Toy Fair. There were so many sets being displayed for the first time, including the first wave of The LEGO Batman Movie, Series 17 of the Collectible Minifigures, and the announcement of 71042 The Silent Mary. We also had the trailer for The LEGO Ninjago Movie! I only just saw it in the last week and I was very impressed.
March saw Women of NASA get the tick of approval from LEGO Ideas and the LEGO Life app released in Australia. Through LEGO Rebrick we had a chance to win every single modular building ever released, and the official announcement of 75144 UCS Snowspeeder. A big month!
Well, we thought March was big. April was bigger. Not only did we get detailed photos of the Series 17 minifigures, but LEGO Ideas changed it’s rules for projects based on active licenses and we got not one but two official announcements on big new sets. There was 10257 Carousel and 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V. These sets, especially the Saturn V have been incredibly popular, and the Saturn V is still quite hard to get your hands on. I’ve reviewed it and it is absolutely brilliant.
The month of May contains one of my favourite days of the year – Star Wars Day, but it also brought the official details of 21137 Mountain Cave – the biggest Minecraft set released to date. There were other things of course, but these were my two favourites.
I remember June being choc full of new set goodness, mostly related to the sets coming from The LEGO Ninjago Movie. We got official box art for all of the sets, including 70620 Ninjago City and 70618 Destiny’s Bounty,as well as the collectible Minifigures. I only just built the Destiny’s Bounty this weekend and I’m very excited to write the review. The other sets that we got official information for was 10258 London Bus and 21310 Old Fishing Store. I’ve also recently build the Old Fishing Store and am in the middle of writing a review for that, so keep your eyes peeled!
July seemed like a bit of a slower month for LEGO news, which was a good thing, as I was very busy becoming a new Dad! It was a brilliant moment and one that I will never ever forget. Our daughter is a very happy and smiley little girl and we couldn’t be happier. In the future she’ll hopefully be helping me out with some DUPLO and Juniors reviews.
We got back into some set announcements in August with 10259 Winter Village Station and the mother of all sets, 75192 Millenium Falcon. This one almost broke the internet! The LEGO Group also appointed a new CEO and LEGO Ideas announced two new sets to come to the theme – Voltron and Ship In A Bottle. The last one I’m very excited about!
September was another quieter month, with one piece of news and one new release announcement covered on the site, among other things. The LEGO Group’s mid-year profits were down from what they were anticipating and 70922 The Joker Manor was released.
There were still more big announcements in October. This year has been the year of massive new sets and massive re-releases. We had the official announcement of 21312 Women of NASA, some official images for the 2018 sets and the official announcement of the re-release of the Taj Mahal.
November usually means new Modular month, so we got details about the gorgeous 10260 Downtown Diner (which incidentally has now got a Designer Video, although it’s very different to what we’re used to), and Tron Legacy Light Cycle was announced as coming to the LEGO Ideas theme as an official set.
And finally, there’s December. It’s all three Advent Calendars – City, Friends and Star Wars, but also the return of blue baseplates and a win for TLG in court! A great way to round out the year.
As far as the blog itself is concerned, it’s been a massive year! The biggest item of news was becoming a Recognised LEGO Fan Media site. This was hugely exciting and an absolute honour to become a LEGO Ambassador. It’s fantastic to be connected with other Ambassadors from around the world, get some excellent support for competitions and have first hand information for new releases. I’m really looking forward to what next year brings!
In March, I was busy giving the entire site a redesign and moving it to a new content management system. I am very happy with the decision and it’s become so much easier to create the site as I had envisioned at the start. The site was also approved as a LEGO Affiliate site. You’ll notice that some links look a little different as it links you to the LEGO Shop Online. If you click one of these links and buy a set (or anything from the site, I’ll get a tiny little commission, which will help me keep this site running.
Also during March, I wrote a history of girl centred sets from LEGO and a bit more about Homemaker after coming into possession of a few of these unique sets. The write-up has been very popular and it’s something I’m immensely proud of.
This year I started the Builder Spotlight series and have so far interviewed eight different builders from around the world, with more to come. This has been very enjoyable! Being able to explore these builders and their works in depth has been inspiring for me, and hopefully you too!
I’ve also been able to run two LEGO supported worldwide competitions, which I never would have been able to do without the RLFM status. It’s very exciting. The Re-Theme Challenge and the Household Items Challenge were brilliant fun to run and I’ve got plans to do some more in 2018, so stick around!
All in all, I’ve written 126 posts in 2017, which is pretty reasonable. It’s been a busy year and next year is set to be even busier! Of that 125, 33 of them have been set reviews. I’m hoping to write more next year, as I really enjoy them, but they do take a while to put together!
I covered a fair few different themes this year. BrickHeadz were a clear winner though, with eight sets over two reviews. I’ll try to get a bit more diversity next year, but for me the difficulty is being able to afford the sets when they come out. I’m often a bit behind with releases, which for me isn’t too much of a problem, but for you it might be frustrating. If so, I’m sorry and I’ll try harder next year.
I’m also very glad that the traffic has had a good increase since the first half of the year, almost doubling the numbers. I’ve lost access to my statistics from the old site, but this one should be a good measurement. From next year we’ll be able to tell the difference over the year. For the last few months of the year though, the stats have been sitting at over 5000 views each month, so I’m extremely happy and grateful! I never expected the site to be this popular, so thank you all very much.
That’s it! Thanks very much for coming on this journey with me so far. I’m really looking forward to what 2018 brings!
What’s been your standout LEGO related news or release for 2017?
