Classics are always awesome. I wasn't into castle back then, but now I wish I were.

Those were the days

Castle was a favourite theme of many, back in the day, but...

Would a reïntroduction sell these days? Would it be more successful than Nexo Knights?

This and the space themes <3

Love it. A new castle theme is always welcome. Had to buy Playmobil for my kids, cause Lego has no knights on the shelf!

The Black Falcon knight had the red torso? Woah, what topsy turvy world is this? everyone knows the Falcons dress in blue!

I'm remember the day I got this as a child. From a little independent toy shop in Barnard Castle, Durham. Couldn't wait to get back to the holiday caravan and rip the box open. Open all my boxes carefully now :-D

Love these classic Knights more then ever, way better then Kingdoms

This was my first ever castle set, back in ‘84.
And still one of my all time favourites.
Classic castle at its best.

Simplicity.

One of the first sets I remember. I still have most of the parts.

Those horses have mad crazy eyes! Are those an early mould? All mine just have printed eyes.

@bananaworld: Hard to say if traditional Castle themes would be more successful than Nexo Knights. The previous few incarnations of Castle (Fantasy Era, Kingdoms, and the 2013 Castle reboot) didn't appear to be as successful as Nexo Knights, and according to designer Mark Stafford, kids were more excited for Nexo Knights than more traditional Castle during concept testing.

And contrary to many AFOLs' preconceived notions, Nexo Knights DID surpass its sales targets. Remember, sightings of wave after wave of sets lingering on store shelves usually mean that the earlier waves of those sets sold well enough for the stores to continue stocking future waves in large quantities (even at the risk of winding up with unsold stock), whereas stores rarely bother continuing to stock large quantities of sets from themes that didn't sell well in the first place.

But of course, most themes are neither expected nor intended to achieve the same sort of success as "big bang" themes that have enough oomph to justify huge design, marketing, and media expenses, and those kinds of sales targets certainly aren't LEGO's benchmark for whether any given theme is worth creating.

I doubt it will be very long until the next incarnation of LEGO Castle. Since 2000, Castle has pretty reliably been re-imagined/re-invented every three or four years, so if that continues then a new version of Castle is probably already in development for summer 2019 or 2020. Nexo Knights and Elves, two of the recent themes most closely related to LEGO Castle in their subject matter, are also both out of the picture as of next year.

While some have expressed concern about the Harry Potter theme potentially being in conflict, there isn't really much precedent for that being an issue (Knights Kingdom II, Fantasy Era, and Kingdoms all launched the same year as new Harry Potter movies and accompanying licensed sets, while the 2013 Castle reboot launched the same year as a new Hobbit movie and wave of sets).

And it's obvious that LEGO is still totally aware that kids love castles and dragons and carriages and witches and wizards and knights and all those sorts of things. There's been plenty of sets featuring such subject matter across a broad range of themes over the past several years, including Nexo Knights, Elves, Ninjago, Classic, Creator, Juniors, Duplo, Minifigures, Disney, Harry Potter, Minecraft, Angry Birds, The Hobbit, etc.

If anything, I suspect the motivation for Nexo Knights (and also, to an extent, Ultra Agents) wasn't "hey, kids don't like [theme X] anymore, let's try and change that by adding sci-fi action". Honestly, when LEGO is trying to design a potential hit, they're not going to start the process off with an ingredient they think kids DON'T like. It's not as though LEGO Ninjago came about because LEGO thought kids didn't care about ninjas to begin with.

Rather, I think the thought process was something closer to "hey, there's new Star Wars movies coming out soon — instead of launching a new LEGO Space IP that will have to compete for attention against one of the most ubiquitous and heavily marketed brands on the planet, why don't we take a shot with some of those future-spy and future-castle proposals we thought up years ago but passed over in favor of more traditional space stuff?"

Nostalgia.

"Remember, sightings of wave after wave of sets lingering on store shelves usually mean that the earlier waves of those sets sold well enough for the stores to continue stocking future waves in large quantities (even at the risk of winding up with unsold stock)"

Or it means that the sets just didn't sell well because nobody wanted them. The initial line of NK sets were lining the shelves where I live for years (hell, a couple of months ago I was in a department store and they had one of the big lava-monster sets at a heavy discount. I didn't pick it up).

Sometimes the, "It's for kids!" line just makes me tilt my head. Someone should've told the kids that.