Just want to give my two cents after being out of the loop for some years, not following news but still seeing what's in the store and all that:
It feels like they keep pushing in the wrong directions, repeating mistakes. It's very clear in the newest batch of pirate sets.
Ghost pirates did not do well and now they have half sea monster pirates which won't do any better I imagine. Especially not with clickies not having their brown eyes any more.
What's with the coloured eyes? It looks creepy and weird, it does not work for playmobil. Also again a big pirate ship without a cabin. Last time they tried it, they released old reliable yet again pretty quick afterwards.
On the other hand they are getting better at the stuff exclusive to the webstore, having a lot of the victorian sets there and keeping a good amount of the steck buildings around too.
Clearly they know it sells, so my best hopes would be in them doing more rereleases there. Good move to put clickies in with those houses and making it a whole box like an official set.
But the stuff in the regular book... I guess I don't look at much beyond the historic themes since that's what personally interests me but they seem to keep pushing that novelmore hard. Is it really selling that well? I miss the medieval line. Seems they have gone through several batches of Novelmore now and I hate it when they push named characters like that, with weird eyes.
I feel like they need to go back to basics, do something like they did about 12 or so years ago when they brought back a solid medieval theme with the yellow lions and red falcons after the odd dragon knights stuff, and brought in a very solid run of pirates too with the treasure island after the ghost pirates stuff.
They could always draw more inspiration from Spain or Italy for a new Medieval batch, to have it still be a bit different.
And I think it was such a good move back then with the treasure island giving the pirates kind of a subtheme within it with the coins. Only problem was that the island was crazy big, I never got it but got everything else of the batch. Looks great but hard to place and store. But they could go with a new subtheme to give it identity and make it stand out.
I'd go with bringing back the Spanish soldiers and give them a galleon filled with treasure, providing the first big soldier ship in the theme and a target for the pirates.
Who'd still have a smaller ship and could get a nice new island more like the System X one that's easier to store. Maybe with a nice hut that's also a bit of a tavern.