[BirdOPrey5]

OK I think the issue is that this needs to be in the navbar so a specific forum won't really be available, I want to seed it with the forum id's I need to check.

Also I have it on global_start, not sure if there is a better hook...

I don'r care about locked or not, just "new" or "old"

Integrating your code and my needs I get:

include('includes/functions_forumlist.php'); 
global $vbulletin, $lastpostarray;
// call fetch_last_post_array() first to get last post info for forums
if (!is_array($lastpostarray))
{
	fetch_last_post_array(-1);
}


// setthe appropriate forum id
$forumck = 4;
$forumxx = 4;

$lastpostinfo = (empty($lastpostarray[4]) ? array() : $vbulletin->forumcache["$lastpostarray[4]"]);

$sico = fetch_forum_lightbulb($forumck, $lastpostinfo, $forumxx);
eval('$template_hook[navbar_buttons_left] .= "' ."<td>" .$sico.  "</td>" . '";');

This still produces "old" and only "old" for output.

I'm thinking the issue might be in $forumxx (in your code it was just $forum) - what type of info is in this variable? From my looking at the code I thought it was simply the forumid of the forum I'm checking on, but that should be the same as $forumid ($forumck in my code) so that doesn't make too much sense to me.