Web Video / LEGO Rewind

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to LEGO Rewind, where we take another look at old retired LEGO themes!

"Hey guys, today I want to try out something new, as a side thing to go along with my game reviews: welcome to Nick on Aqua Magna's LEGO Rewind. Despite whatever impressions including "Aqua Magna" in my username might give people, BIONICLE is not the only LEGO theme I like, and I felt like showing my appreciation for a few of LEGO's many other themes, the ones that have really clicked with me. Some of these will be themes I collected while others will be before my time that I later discovered and wanted to introduce the next generation to."

LEGO Rewind is a series of YouTube videos by graphic novelist and video game reviewer Nicholas Anderson (username "Nick on Planet Ripple", formerly "Nick on Aqua Magna"). As something of a Video Review Show mixed with a guerrilla Documentary series, Nick reviews various LEGO themes, specifically (but not exclusively) focusing on retired cult classics (as well as any spiritual successors) analyzing their concepts, design elements, story, and impact on LEGO's history and fandom.

LEGO Rewind originally ran from August 2017 to December 2019. The original run series is divided into three 13-episode seasons, with the season finales recapping his thoughts on prior episodes as well as correcting any errors or missed details. In addition, there's also a series of annual year in review episodes about various LEGO developments. Nick has also stated that he's open to the idea of a full-fledged fourth season should inspiration strike, and it appears it did just that, as he eventually launched a Patreon page to fund his entire body of work, with the highest-tier reward being a LEGO Rewind episode devoted to the theme of the Patron's choice.

The complete series is on this playlist.

Themes and subjects covered:
Note: Subjects marked with a caret (^) are or will be covered in greater detail in a later episode

Original run:

1. Ice Planet 2002
2. LEGO Life on Mars, LEGO Mars Mission^
3. Rock Raiders, LEGO Power Miners
4. Technic Star Wars figures, Slizers/Throwbots, RoboRiders, Cyber Slam/Competition
5. LEGO Adventurers, LEGO Pharaohs Quest
6. LEGO Studios, LEGO Spider-Man Trilogy
7. LEGO Alpha Team, LEGO Agents, LEGO Ultra Agents^
8. Galidor
9. LEGO Exo-Force
10. Duplo dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, LEGO Dino Attack/Dino 2010, LEGO Dino, LEGO Jurassic Park
11. LEGO Race, LEGO Racers, Tiny Turbos, LEGO Speed Racer, LEGO World Racers, LEGO Speed Champions
12. Aquazone, Divers, LEGO Aqua Raiders, LEGO Atlantis, Deep Sea Explorers
13. Season 1 recap
14. LEGO Vikings
15. UFO, Insectoids, LEGO Alien Conquest, LEGO Galaxy Squad^
16. Arctic (Town, City)
17. LEGO Sports
18. LEGO Trains
19. LEGO NASA, LEGO Discovery
20. Dragon Masters, Fright Knights, LEGO Monster Fighters, LEGO Scooby-Doo
21. Knights' Kingdom, Knights' Kingdom 2, Nexo Knights
22. LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO Spybotics, LEGO Boost
23. LEGO Western, LEGO The Lone Ranger
24. Girls' themes: Scala, Paradisa, Belville, Clickits, LEGO Friends, LEGO Elves, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
25. Blacktron, LEGO Space Police, Futuron, Blacktron 2, Space Police 2, M-Tron, Space Police 3
26. Seatron (unreleased), Season 2 recap
27. Hero Factory
28. LEGO Island Xtreme Stunts
29. Res-Q, Mega Bloks Dragons
30. LEGO Time Cruisers
31. LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars
32. LEGO Space round-up: Classic LEGO Space (as recreated by The LEGO Movie)^, Spyrius, Unitron, Exploriens, Roboforce, Mars Exploration
33. Fabuland, Legends of Chima
34. LEGO Pirates, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, Metalbeard from The LEGO Movie
35. Ninja, Ninjago, The LEGO Ninjago Movie
36. "Dank" themes round-up: Cybermaster, Znap, Extreme Team, Outback, Muji, LEGO McDonald's, LEGO Factory, LEGO Master Bulder Academy, LEGO SpongeBob SquarePants, LEGO Avatar: The Last Airbender, X-Pod, Mixels
37. LEGO Castle round-up: Lion Knights, Black Falcons, Crusaders, Black Knights, Forestmen, Wolfpack, Royal Knights, Dark Forest, Castle (2007), Kingdoms
38. Vintage LEGO: Automatic Binding Bricks, Homemaker, Minitalia, Modulex, Dacta/Education, Hobby Set, Model Team
39. Season 3 recap, Jack Stone/4 Juniors, Hidden Side^
40. BIONICLE, BIONICLE (2015)

New run:

41. 2020 in review: Sets with brick-built skull decorations, the return of LEGO Mindstorms, design upgrade for LEGO Speed Champions, LEGO Dots, return of Deep Sea Explorers, Technic V-22 Osprey controversy, end of Hidden Side, LEGO Super Mario, Monkie Kid TV series season 1, plans to re-review earlier LEGO Rewind subjects
42. LEGO Rewind
43. LEGO Galaxy Squad
44. LEGO Ultra Agents
45. 2021 in review: New LEGO City road pieces and City Stuntz sets, re-scaling of LEGO Star Wars sets, Ideas Medieval Blacksmith and Creator Medieval Castle, introduction of Luigi into LEGO Super Mario, Everyone is Awesome, LEGO Eternals, success of Monkie Kid year 2, Seasonal recap, 90th Anniversary Fan Ballot controversy, BIONICLE Toa Hagah canon contest, LEGO VIDIYO
46. Dragon figures and builds
47. Technic (sponsored by TheIdiot^TM)
48. The craziest year in LEGO history (sponsored by Maniac 4 Bricks)
49. 2022 in review: New clip-and-bar module system, Creator Viking Ship and the Midgard Serpent, LEGO Mythica, continued success of Monkie Kid, end of Ninjago TV series and introduction of Ninjago CORE, LEGO Icons Optimus Prime, LEGO Ideas Sonic the Hedgehog, LEGO Toy Story, LEGO Avatar: The Way of Water, general LEGO price hike, 90th Anniversary sets and accompanying gift-with-purchase sets, BIONICLE Tahu and Takua, upcoming LEGO Rewind episode #50
50. Classic LEGO Space
51. LEGO Mars Mission
52. LEGO Batman, The LEGO Batman Movie (sponsored by Porter Ortiz)
53. 2023 in review: Manic Miners, retirement of trans-neon orange and trans-neon green, Arctic/Divers-themed LEGO City sets, LEGO Friends: the Next Chapter, LEGO 2K Drive, LEGO Dreamzzz, Ninjago: Dragons Rising, Duck Bricks appearing on LEGO Masters and visiting Christian Faber, switch to paper-based polybags, LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog

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Tropes:

• Accentuate the Negative: Averted. Nick is fairly even-tempered, and while he doesn't withhold any of his criticisms, he has mostly positive things to say about the subjects of his review. About the closest to caustic he's ever gotten were his initial thoughts on Mars Mission. When reviewing Jack Stone, Nick admitted he probably would have been a lot more scathing had he tackled it early on, but is now a lot more willing to commend it for at least trying to act as a younger kid's entry point into traditional LEGO, flawed as the execution may have been.
• Actionized Sequel: Nick has noted (with much dismay) that whereas older LEGO Space themes had an emphasis on exploration and a decent balance of heroic, villainous, and civilian factions, whereas newer ones focus solely on generic good guy humans fighting off villainous aliens.
  Nick: We'll see LEGO Space themes again someday, and maybe it will be amazing, maybe it will blow us away like never before, but personally, I hope they don't fall back on the same Cliché conflict between humans and evil aliens again. I understand if people who grew up with these later combat-driven themes like it that way and don't see any issue with it, but I just find it limiting, inward-looking, not very imaginative. I want to see how see how grand and overwhelming and mysterious space can be, just going out there for the sake of it again, the joy of exploring other realms and meeting other races! You can say it isn't LEGO's job to inspire us that way, but they had no trouble doing it before, so I don't know what's changed aside from maybe us.
• April Fools' Day:
  • Nick's 8th episode at first appears to be the long-awaited review of Exo-Force... only to trail off into a review of the highly controversial Galidor toys instead. The kicker being that the review has a Framing Device, being set an Alternate Timeline.
  • The 29th starts as an otherwise average review of the Res-Q line... only for Nick to run out of things to say after about a minute. He spends another minute stuggling to come up with more to say about the line, until a Ominous Visual Glitch briefly turns this into a Mega Bloks review show! The Alternate Timeline Framing Device is used yet again, with the narrator instead being Eljay Johnson from Pandemic Panda.
  • The 42nd episode at first starts as a review of the obscure Little Robots sets, and than appears to retread the prior April Fools gimmicks, glitching out into a "Kre-O Rewind" episode hosted by Nate's Minifigs... only for that to glitch out five seconds later into a Warts and All review of LEGO Rewind itself by My Brick Opinions, once again using the Alternate Timeline Framing Device as Brick Memories.
• Art Evolution: One subject that frequently comes up is how LEGO's aesthetic has evolved over the years, particularly in the early Turn of the Millennium which saw the retirement of several older molds in favor of newer ones that allow certain models to have more of a curvature.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: invoked Nick theorizes that LEGO's Augmented Reality-based themes only lasting about a year each is due to them consisting off a toy-line and an app dependent on each other to get the full experience — the average consumer of one wouldn't want to be forced to get the other. He finds that the actual sets are well-designed and enjoyable in their own right, but the confusing box-art and rather un-engaging AR integration ultimately bogs down their potential mass appeal.
• Audience Participation: Of a sort; Nick will often use the comments section to gather further tidbits of information (and corrections of any factual errors) for use in the seasonal recaps.
• Bias Steamroller: Downplayed in regards to licensed LEGO themes. He doesn't hate them — in fact he's fond of quite a few and can easily see the demand for them (he'd personally jump at the chance to license Planet Ripple sets) — and appreciates how they contributed to LEGO's Art Evolution throughout the Turn of the Millennium. Still, they give him far less to say then LEGO's original themes; those come with their own concepts, designs, and lore that he finds deserving of more attention, whereas licensed themes just have to be accurate to a pre-established world that's already well-known.invoked Not to mention they potentially discourage LEGO from coming up with their own ideas — why would consumers bother with Johnny Thunder when they could get Indiana Jones? — and the licensing fees add to LEGO's hefty-enough price tags.
  • He elaborates further in "LEGO Batman", pointing out how the theme had the fortunate timing to debut just as LEGO was shaking off its invoked Audience-Alienating Era, and benefited from the aforementioned Art Evolution — rough, yet daring, with an elegant simplicity. It helps that, while there's plenty of sets dedicated towards specific incarnations, the Batman IP is open to reinterpretation, with The LEGO Batman Movie sets providing some wildly creative takes on the Dark Knight and his Rogues Gallery that he's come to appreciate. He also likes the LEGO Sonic sets for capturing the feel of the games rather than the lavish 1-to-1 recreations seen in other licensed themes, while adding a few additional nods to the Sonic Adventure era and other such deep cuts to show a genuine passion for the IP.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: How Nick describes the World-Healing Wave at the end of Legends of Chima:
  Nick: Life returns to the land! The zombies get their bodies back! And even your farts stop stinking!^note A Smelly Skunk gains the ability to produce pleasant odors
• Black Comedy Burst:
  • The first thing Nick notices in the Castle revival? A particularly gruesome-looking siege cart.
  Nick: Yeesh, now that's a man-kabob waiting to happen...
  • When praising the new coral color:
  Nick: Those coral pieces are lovely. (Displays image of bleached coral) Now, when the real coral reefs are all dead, we'll still have these!
• Book Ends: At the very end of the original final episode, the entire series completely rewinds to the very beginning.
• Christmas Episode: The "LEGO Batman" episode was released on Christmas Eve, which Nick likens to Batman Returns being set during Christmas.
• Color Motif: Nick frequently discusses the various color schemes worn by certain characters and factions and how they contribute to the overall feel of their sets.
• Competing Product Potshot: "The Craziest Year in Lego History" unearths a commercial for "Tente", Hasbro's earliest foray into building blocks, which touted special pieces that gave its models a more true-to-life appearance compared to LEGO, which at the time was limited to a more "bricky" aesthetic. When the commercial ends, Nick promptly invoked dismisses "all that single-use plastic garbage".
• Contested Sequel:invoked This is how Nick originally felt about Mars Mission compared to Life on Mars, at first considering it a nadir of homogenization and lack of personality. He even admits that it marks the first time he's ever gotten buyer's remorse from a LEGO set. He did end up softening his opinion on the theme later on, admiring the spiffy set design and surprising nuance detailed in the likes LEGO Battles and Cryst Alien Conflict, though he's still a bit more partial to Life on Mars
• Deliberate VHS Quality: Seen in the show's intros and outro.
• Downer Ending: "That's a downer note to end on!", as he puts it:
  • The "Discovery/NASA" episode ends on Nick commenting on the tendency for space programs to suffer budget cuts as the Sci Fi Ghetto invoked makes Real Life space exploration seem less appealing to the common man.
  • The Knights' Kingdom" episode ends on Nick commenting about the current lack of Castle and Constraction in LEGO's oeuvre, wondering what it says about his generation that grew up with all those things.
• Discontinuity Nod: The "Dragons" episode briefly starts with a clip of Mega Blox's Dragons theme before Nick settles the confusion and insists "You'll never see an episode about those!" Not outside of April Fools' Day...
• Distinctive Appearances: One of the thing Nick praises about the first and third years of Exo-Force, Legends of Chima, post-movie Ninjago, several waves of BIONICLE, and Galaxy Squad.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The show's first intro displayed LEGO's "cascading bricks" animation before rewinding as if on a VHS tape. Episode 5 formally discontinued this intro for a shorter original one using an ocean graphic that would eventually form the basis for the intro for all of his channel's videos.
• Extra-Long Episode: Most episodes run for an average of 10 minutes (give or take about three), with a few entering the 15-20 minute ballpark. The seasonal recaps tend to reach a half-hour and a few minutes. Of course, they all pale in comparison to the BIONICLE episode, which clocks in at an hour and 19 minutes long, a similar runtime to the franchise's Direct to Video invoked movies!
• Fair for Its Day:invoked Something Nick notes in LEGO's depiction of Native Americans in his "Western" video: on one hand, the advertising for their sets was... pretty cringe-worthy, but on the other hand, the line never fell into the all-too-easy trap of depicting The Savage Indian.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • The timeline seen in the Galidor review is one where, instead of failing miserably, the line became the rousing success LEGO had hoped for, leading the company to fully commit to this direction and eventually abandon building toys altogether. Other causalities of this timeline include Hasbro and Mattel merging, BIONICLE only lasting until 2005, and Nick never finding the inspiration needed to become a graphic novelist.
  • The timeline from the Res-Q episode is one where LEGO never acquired the rights to produce Star Wars sets, and as a result didn't survive its infamous Audience-Alienating Era. Mega Bloks then rose to power as the dominant force in the building toy industry, due to its grittier aesthetics standing out in a market glutted by shoddy knockoff products. Since LEGO didn't last long enough to develop BIONICLE (with only Voo-Doo Heads concept art remaining), Nick is just a run-of-the-mill Sonic the Hedgehog YouTuber, and "Mega Rewind" (on which this episode is #49) is hosted by Eljay Johnson, who seems to have some Wistful Amnesia of the timeline that actually did come to pass.
  • The timeline seen in LEGO Rewind REWIND is one where Nick himself died tragically in a freak Sharpie accident shortly after completing Season 2, leaving Season 3 as a sad case of What Could Have Been. Also, a giant meteor will destroy the Earth in one year.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • Due to the Time Cruisers line having only seven sets, Nick devotes most of the episode to reviewing the tie-in comics. Likewise, the Ultra Agents episode focuses on its tie-in media due to the sets being covered well enough in their prior mention.
  • The "Dragons" episode is the first not to focus on any specific LEGO themes, instead examining LEGO's approach to designing dragons across various themes over the years.
  • "The Craziest Year in Lego History" doesn't even focus on a specific theme or topic, instead looking over LEGO's history to find the year that contains the most turning points, wild experiments, and other such deviations from LEGO's traditions, briefly revisiting a few topics previously covered in earlier episodes and dredging up a few more obscure ones.
• Fun with Acronyms: Big Ugly Rock Pieces, or Burps for short.
• Girl-Show Ghetto:invoked Naturally discussed in-depth in his "Girl themes" episode.
• Grand Finale: Nick pulls out all the stops for the original final episode, reviewing that long-requested favorite of many, including himself: BIONICLE.
• Growing with the Audience: Nick praises the "next generation" approach by Ninjago: Dragons Rising, reflective of the Ninjago franchise itself beginning to span generations.
• Halloween Episode: Episode #20 focuses on several "spooky" themes.
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: The invoked memes about the Chi from Legends of Chima are certainly not lost on Nick.
  Nick:...It powers their vehicles, their defenses, their gear, basically everything in society, and some tribes are willing to go to war with others for more of it. Things get weird what the characters use Chi on themselves though. I mean these animals really love the stuff. "Can't get enough of that wonderful Chi!" It makes them all hyper and just totes up for anything, dude! Apparently, you can overdose, and its especially dangerous... to let minors use it! Uh, you wanna say that again, LEGO? ... "This stuff'll make you one with nature, man!" Okay, look, these jokes are low-hanging fruit, but LEGO really was asking for it with the way they set this up! Characters behaving differently while under the influence, stuff like that, Chi in practice to basically be a drug, with comedic results.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: The original run relied almost entirely on clips and screen-grabs from official media, with the occasional fan MOC. Episodes from the new run are more likely include looks at Nick's own personal collection to better show off the subject at hand.
• Loophole Abuse: LEGO Rewind is ostensibly focused on "old retired LEGO themes", so how would Nick justify talking about Ninjago, LEGO's current biggest franchise? Well, it turns out that Ninjago was originally allotted the standard 2½ year run that most other themes were and are given ^note described by Nick as "the Fermi Paradox of LEGO", only to be Un-Cancelled by fan demand, so technically it was retired, even if only temporary.
• Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: Well, more like "Meet LEGO'S Early-Installment Weirdness; the "Classic LEGO Space" episode would see Nick getting his hands on a vintage 1979 Galaxy Explorer and marvel at the packaging's view-flap and the set's lack of SNOT builds or Technic integration, especially compared to the 2022 remake, or even Benny's Spaceship from 2014. Even so, the finished product manages to have a sturdy and well-designed structure.
• Meme Acknowledgement:
  • Why else would the thumbnail for the Aquazone episode have a picture of a crab holding a knife?
  • A BIONICLE-branded yo-yo briefly appears when Nick begins talking about the Piraka.
  • Nick's opinion of LEGO Dots: "I just think they're neat!"
  • Nick's coverage of LEGO VIDIYO opens with a facetious remark of "How do you do, fellow kids?"
  • When discussing LEGO Avatar: "And yes, I like the tall-figs, but If I Had a Nickel... for every time I've covered indigenous caricatures on this show (with realistic eyes and noses, no less), I'd have two nickels... which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."
• No Animals Were Harmed: On the Lighter and Softer approach taken by Dino:
  Nick: ...And they sure to include nets and nice, big, easy to see tranquilizer darts with nubs that don't even look sharp, just to make it super-clear to moral guardians that no actual dinosaurs were harmed in the making of these sets.
• Non-Indicative Name: Nick admits in his "Arctic" episode that the "Early Technic" episode is a bit of a misnomer, focusing more on early Constraction. This is because the Arctic theme extends into a few classic Technic sets, allowing him to touch up on early Technic proper. He would later release a proper Technic episode upon comparing notes with the episode's sponsor and thus having more to say about it. The video itself would later be renamed to "Technic {Constraction)".
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
  • On Hero Factory FM: "Yes, this was a thing".
  • The "Technic" episode was sponsored on Patreon by someone who goes by "the Idiot", so naturally Nick has to clarify that it is indeed their name.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Nick's bit about Hidden Side's invoked Audience-Alienating Premise is illustrated with a scenario of one such woman complaining about the app, complete with the all-too traditional demand to speak with the manager.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The subject of the "Dragons" episode looks at the many dragons that were a fixture of various LEGO themes, ranging from solid figures to immense custom builds.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story and Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game:invoked Variant: When comparing Rock Raiders to Power Miners, Nick notes that the former has a far more engaging story and characters and a more memorable color scheme, but the sets are held back by the "juniorized" set design of LEGO's Audience-Alienating Era. The latter, meanwhile, has far more involved and creative set designs, even though the characters aren't as interesting.
• Police Are Useless: Nick is somewhat bemused by how the civil services seen in Jack Stone accomplish absolutely nothing other than cheering Jack on.
  Nick: They're so hopelessly inept, this whole world would crumble like a soggy pancake without him!
• Political Overcorrectness: Nick shoots this mentality down in his "Western" video.
  Nick: And before anyone jumps on me for being "overly sensitive" or "PC", let me stop you right there, because you're using the term "political correctness"... incorrectly. The origin and proper usage of the term refers to a narrative that denies objective reality to uphold the status quo. Say, if a leader of a country can see the truth of things and says "yeah, I don't care what's factually correct, because that doesn't help me keep power. Tell the rabble what helps me politically! It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be correct... for me!" Some of you might know this already, but I don't think enough people do, and some people who cry about "PC police" and "virtue signaling" do intend it that way, be only to the extent that they think their outdated or messed-up attitudes are the objective reality, and it is in fact those who confront them or try to challenge the status quo who are the weirdos, the deviants denying the true natural order of things and should just leave well enough alone. But the culture isn't becoming hypersensitive, its just wisening up as hard truths become ever-clearer instead of willfully ignoring them like we always have. This shouldn't even be political to say, but enough about that.
  
  That's the thing about culture: things don't suddenly become weird overnight. Some things... have always been weird, and if you're used to ignoring the voices that have said as much since day one, and were just now listening to them, that doesn't mean it just now started being a problem! Maybe for some of you, but not for the people who are already being affected the whole time. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!
• Real Men Wear Pink: Nick does admit to finding Paradisa's aesthetics very appealing. He also admits that he would be very eager to invest in the brick-built dragons from the Elves sets... were he a bit more secure in his masculinity. ^note He would later get his hands on a few for the "Dragons" episode
  Nick: Look at me, fulfilling stereotypes...
  • Come the 2023 recap, and Nick finds that the Friends sets, with their vibrant colors, and mini-dolls necessitating a slight increase in size and detail, manage to do the town setting better than the concurrent City theme, which focuses more on cops 'n' robbers and the like.
• Preemptive "Shut Up": "And yes, their (Blacktron) symbol is an upside-down TriForce, you can stop pointing it out in the comments."
• Recycled In Space: Several commenters have noted that the format of these videos is evocative of RebelTaxi, specifically due to the commercials played at the end of each video.
• Shout-Out:
  • Much like other YouTubers, Nick will use music from several video games and other sources as the BGM for his videos. A mostly complete list is here.
  • In his Rock Raiders episode, Nick brings up Bennett the Sage's quote about how the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism and the Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty applies to Science Fiction.
  • In the same video, he mentions The Core when discussing Power Miners' last wave.
  • The voice gives Turbo in the Early Technic episode is cut from the same cloth as Boomhauer.
  • The "Statue of Liberty Cannon" scene from Mobile Fighter G Gundam appears in the Exo-Force episode.
  • In the Arctic episode, Nick notes that the original wave's premise (hunting for frozen alien samples) is dangerously close to The Thing.
  • When discussing how he'd like to have seen a Scooby-Dooby Doors themed set in the "Halloween Special" episode, Nick pulls up relevant clips from "ScoobyNatural" and The Scooby-Doo Project.
  • Nick plays a snippet of George Carlin's bit about flamethrowers in the Knights' Kingdom episode.
  • In the same video, he wishes to see Shadiversity discuss the castle designs in Knights' Kingdom 2's concept art.
  • When praising Nexo Knights' use of Meta Mecha, Nick proclaims "I loved it in Gurren Lagann, I loved it in Ninja Steel, and I love it here!"
  • In the Mindstorms episode, Nick describes Vern as "this adorable Johnny-5-looking fellow".
  • The topic of Native Americans in his "Western" episode brings up a clip from the relevant episode of Malcolm in the Middle.
  • When discussing the Girl-Show Ghettoinvoked in the "Girl Themes" episode, Nick starts out by bringing up the situation behind the cancellation of Young Justice (2010). Later, in his Season 2 recap, Nick admits the situation wasn't exactly as the rumors claimed, but his overall point still stands. The episode also concludes with the famous Big "SHUT UP!" from Kindergarten Cop in response to the annoying LEGO Scala commercial.
  • Nick compares the M-Tron faction to the Thunderbirds, and the 3rd Space Police to Starship Troopers.
  • Nick notices a character looking strikingly similar to Vsauce in the Time Cruisers comics.
    Nick: "Is that Vsauce? I knew he was a time traveler."
  • When discussing Unitron:
    Nick: I could make another Transformers reference here (flashes image of Unicron), but eh, whatever.
  • Nick brings up the inevitable comparison to Thunder Cats 2011 in his Legends of Chima episode, and takes a moment to gush about the episode "Song of the Petalars".
  • When talking about just how Ninjago has its finger in most of LEGO's Action-Adventure ideas, Nick hopes that any future original themes "aren't lost in the shadow of this colossus." There's also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it image of Shrek mixed with Lloyd Garmadon!
  • This side video about the potential threat of COPPA name-drops Jobby the Hong as one of the many toy reviewers that could be negatively impacted by YouTube's policy change.
  • In the "Vintage LEGO" episode, Nick compares a LEGO car suddenly bursting from the screen in an old commercial to a Chest Burster, as illustrated by Spaceballs. There's also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to The Dark Crystal.
  • In his Season 3 wrap-up, Nick notices LEGO Minifigures that are dead ringer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Blight, the Ultimate Warrior, Jacksepticeye, Ashly Burch, and Niko.
  • The BIONICLE episode uses a few clips from Reviving Bionicle to illustrate the the line's fandom.
  • In the Ultra Agents episode, Nick describes AntiMatter as "an even more insidious Mr. Glass."
  • Nick likens the dragons built using the EVO system to something out of Panzer Dragoon.
  • Nick describes the "function-over-form" aesthetic implied by the sets used by the LEGO Technic Guys as "a Red Green sort of place" ^note even though he can't help but notice that such design ethos would leave its pilots Exposed to the Elements in the sets' Arctic setting.
  • In the 2022 recap, Nick notices several official LEGO mecha that homage Mazinger Z, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, GaoGaiGar, and even Neon Genesis Evangelion. When talking about the Ideas Sonic set, Nick mentions Sonic's oher successes that year, such as Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Prime, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, as well as Sonic-inspired platformers such as Freedom Planet 2 and Spark the Electric Jester 3.
  • In the Mars Mission rewind, Nick notes that the subtle Animal Motifs for the humans' fleet reminds him of Halo, while the ETX Alien Inflitrator's tripod configuration subtly evokes War of the Worlds.
  • In the LEGO Batman episode, Nick is bemused by "The Penguin's penguins packing pistols like Feathers McGraw!" He also mentions, in response to the many deep cuts seen in The LEGO Batman Movie, wanting to see a big-fig of Big Riddle from Batman Forever.
  • In the 2023 recap, Nick can't help but notice the Imperium from Dragons Rising expying the same-named faction from Warhammer 40,000.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Nick notes that the two pseudo-Castle themes that ran concurrently, Nexo Knights and Elves, each deliver on one half of what fans expect from Castle sets: Nexo Knights (being the boys' theme) focuses more on battlements and militia, whereas Elves (being the girls' theme) focuses more on domiciles and daily living.
• Spiritual Licensee: invoked Nick notes in "the Last LEGO Space Theme" that this was often LEGO's approach to designing their earlier themes (i.e. Classic Space to Star Trek, Adventurers to Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, Alpha Team and Agents to Mission: Impossible, etc.), and how they often afforded the designers more freedom to innovate and get creative.
• Stylistic Suck: Nick notes that certain elements from the LEGO Studios sets (such as the awkward-looking brick-built Velociraptors and the conspicuous support beam) add to the feel of the sets depicting a movie back-lot.
• Take That!:
  • In the Galidor episode, Nick jokes about "the cheekily-named Kek Powerizer, inspiring one of the Internet's oldest memes!"
  • Nick notes that the artwork for the Exo-Force characters sharply declined in quality in its 3rd year, trying to resemble something like Slayers, only to wind up looking like My Life Me.
  • On the dinosaurs in Dino Attack:
  Nick: if you ever wanted to see how 1998's Godzilla would've continued if all the babies didn't get destroyed at the end, basically this.
  • In the Island Xtreme Stunts episode, Nick reveals he isn't very fond of the LEGO Club mascot Max and "that dumb permanent smile!"
  • Nick speaks positively of Legends of Chima, just "not the show, that's junk!"
  • In the Ultra Agents episode, Nick briefly ponders the lives of Anti Matter's villains before their corruption by his Mirror Morality Machine, wondering if Sharks "worked at SeaWorld... No wait, that's already evil." He also wonders if the opposite would happen to someone who was already evil beforehand...
  Nick: Would Bezos start paying people and letting them use the bathroom if you portal'd him?
• Thanking the Viewer: Done in spectacular fashion in the last episode: several prominent LEGO and BIONICLE YouTubers (Eljay Johnson, MandR Productions, Brickitect, DTinaglia Studios, BrickTsar, just2good, Maniac4Bricks, JANGBricks, and Nick himself) come together to tell all the viewers that "you are LEGO Rewind".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: invoked
  • Nick feels that Ultra Agents deserved a much greater media presence, mostly for its inspired Rogues Gallery.
  • Nick feels that the Dreamzzz tie-in series doesn't do nearly as much as it could with the concept. One idea he spitballs is the Nightmares being a Non-Malicious Monster race that is forced to scare children for sustenance.
• Tough Act to Follow:invoked Nick notes that Legends of Chima had a huge uphill battle upon its debut that had a hand in its tepid reception; not only was it intended to succeed Ninjago, it also had the very unfortunate timing to come off the heels of Thunder Cats 2011.
• Very Special Episode:
  • The "Western" episode touches upon cultural sensitivity in regards to changing values, and political correctness. This follow-up video goes further into his thoughts on the matter.
  • The "Girl Themes" episode discusses the Girl-Show Ghetto and the segregation of boy and girl markets.invoked
• Vocal Evolution: Nick's delivery steadily grew sharper throughout the first season.
• Waxing Lyrical: Nick takes a line from the show's theme song (titled "the Weekend Whip") when talking about how Ninjago has cemented itself as LEGO's biggest franchise.invoked
  Nick: In all likelihood, it'll still be jumping, kicking, whipping around, spinning, and doing it again in 2029...
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • His discussion on "Space Police 3" naturally brings up the implications of the Space Police being entirely human and the criminals being entirely alien. Come the seasonal recap, and apparently LEGO did plan on having a equal spread of human and alien on both sides, but rumor has it that play-testers just assumed that Aliens Are Bastards. If nothing else, certain pieces of promo material do depict some civilian aliens.
  • Nick praises certain Mars Mission material for providing a more sympathetic portrayal of the alien forces, depicting them as having crash-landed on Mars and needing enough power crystals to escape. That said, other portrayals wind up depicting them as generic evil aliens, and Nick just can't ignore the harvested alien hooked up to the Crystal Reaper.

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Well, that's it for today. If you want to support my work, please check out my graphic novel series Planet Ripple. You can buy the books on Amazon or read an early draft of the first book for free! And for the BIONICLE fans in my audience, there's The Toa, my ultimate love letter to the original series. Links to everything in the description. Up next, it's something a little less likely to ruin anyone's lives. Toodles!