Mmm, LEGO castle has taken a turn this year. What you see here is a preliminary image of set #7946, the large flagship set for the castle range in 2010. Usually, when prelims are leaked from The LEGO Group, fans and collectors have a negative reaction to them. Often there is no justification for these negative comments as the pictures are often small, blurry and half covered by the TLG watermark. Not to mention that a preliminary design often contains certain elements that are 'stand-ins' and will not be found in the final design. The minifigures are sometimes not the final design either and sometimes use pieces found in other themes or even a liberal use of stickers to convey what the final design will look like. Stickering of figs never fails to spark huge arguments regarding whether or not TLG is (OMFG) going to start using stickers on all their figs and will ultimately go out of business because of it.

The images have been online for a couple of days now and only a few fan sites are comfortable discussing what they're seeing but insofar, the 2010 castle line up is getting pretty not bad reviews. Surprisingly.

My opinion is: I'm excited. There is less of a fantasy element to the theme, not that I don't like fantasy, I just prefer a more realistic element. The new line up harkens back to a day of my childhood where I used to play with my Star Wars action figures, Transformers and my LEGO castle sets.