Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Wolfpack]

No, it shows that lego can put higher prices for sets with lower supply. Blacksmith was popular as people bought more copies and that is why there are still many left on the market. The low price is because of bigger supply than BDP sets, not because of low demand. They could have easily sold out Blacksmith through BDP witn no new parts and no marketing and it would be selling for 250 today, but it would be worse for fans, that is my point.

[danth]

5 minutes ago, Wolfpack said:

No, it shows that lego can put higher prices for sets with lower supply. Blacksmith was popular as people bought more copies and that is why there are still many left on the market.

Yep. This is a pretty well established concept in collecting communities. Popular toys sell well, then more get made, then those sell too, and a bunch end up in the eventually supply.

[Dolor]

I hope this is not true...

[Paul B Technic]

TLG almost needs to have two seperate "lines":
- Classic sets that suit those who want this building experiance. I recently built 42218 and this was almost as simple as one piece per page :( I miss the older building guides and process that required some thinking.... One the technic side, this needs to be about the features, not the looks.
- The "new" way, where it is more about the looks and having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use.

The above won't ever happen, but I can only hope.

[MAB]

5 minutes ago, Paul B Technic said:

TLG almost needs to have two seperate "lines":
- Classic sets that suit those who want this building experiance. I recently built 42218 and this was almost as simple as one piece per page :( I miss the older building guides and process that required some thinking.... One the technic side, this needs to be about the features, not the looks.
- The "new" way, where it is more about the looks and having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use.

The above won't ever happen, but I can only hope.

Alternatively they could do "for adults" and "for children". Which is essentially what they do through the pricing structure.

I totally disagree with your analysis of the new way as "having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use". The majority of modern parts can be used in more than one way.

[danth]

I'd like to see a Lego Sci-Fi Cinematic Universe. 

Just make a damn movie (or series) with Space, Bionicle, Rock Raiders/Power Miners, Exo Force, Chima, Nexo Knights, and whatever else makes sense. Go crazy with delving into the existing lore. Have fun, and make lots of sets. 

[Wolfpack]

10 hours ago, MAB said:

I totally disagree with your analysis of the new way as "having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use". The majority of modern parts can be used in more than one way.

How many uses does a part like this have and in how many themes it can be used?

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=7994#T=P&C=21

or this

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=35818&in=S

or this

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=37704&in=S

There were basically no such parts in the old days.

[MAB]

11 minutes ago, Wolfpack said:

How many uses does a part like this have and in how many themes it can be used?

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=7994#T=P&C=21

or this

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=35818&in=S

or this

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=37704&in=S

There were basically no such parts in the old days.

I don't really see what point you are trying to make.

The HP Snitch appears in 14 sets and is often combined with 100s or 1000s of other basic parts. If you want to complain about the large Vader helmet, then complain also about all the Bionicle parts that are single use and wipe out the history of Bionicle. The football trophy, again it is one part in a set of almost 3000.

One part in a set of thousands of parts does not mean modern sets are just a bunch of specialized parts with no other use. You might not be able to understand it, but LEGO clearly understands that small details help sell sets especially in today's market when consumers want more realism and just a few tiny details can help them sell 1000s of basic parts. This was also the same reason they started decorating torsos and faces for minifigures. Plain ones were OK but printing it to make it clear it is a fireman or a knight heavily restricts its use but makes it more enjoyable for the user. It is the same with things like the Darth Vader minifigure helmet, without that there would probably be no Star Wars. Yet think how many basic parts LEGO have sold in the last 25+ years because of Star Wars sets and how many other things those parts have been used to build. 

Any modern set can be used to build more than just the intended model. Just like vintage sets. 

And as to your claim there were no specialised parts in the past, why do you not recognize parts such as monorail track and motors, train tracks and other associated parts like the steam train drive rod holder (in my mind as I bought one last week), various Homemaker parts, and so on. 

 

[Wolfpack]

I understand all that and I already explained that monorail track parts were usable for at least three themes! It could be also useful for mines in Western, Jungle etc.

I was also not a fan of bionicle for exact that reason.

I never said that modern sets are just a bunch of specialized parts with no other use. I just showed that lego produces more specialised parts than before. There used to be 1000 different parts and you could build anything. Now there are what, six or ten thousand, many of them like those up there. Especially the minifigures, there used to be generic people and knights and spacemen, now there are hundreds of modified heads and helmets that have a single use only.

[vizzitor]

26 minutes ago, MAB said:

And as to your claim there were no specialised parts in the past, why do you not recognize parts such as monorail track and motors, train tracks and other associated parts like the steam train drive rod holder (in my mind as I bought one last week), various Homemaker parts, and so on. 

 

...and medieval helmets, crowns, swords,  horse barding, saddles, airtanks, minifig hair, torsos, doors, those 3D baseplates so many are nostalgic for, Fabuland characters and lots of various Fabuland parts...

Edited March 19 by vizzitor
more examples

[Wolfpack]

Exaclty! The same baseplate could have been used for space, pirates, castle and underwater. The helmets, swords and others were used for different factions and subthemes and are mostly still used today after 30 or 40 years! The saddles were used for castle, western, Europa, Paradisa etc. Minifig hair were generic enough for anything. Those were the parts!

[BrickBob Studpants]

11 hours ago, danth said:

I'd like to see a Lego Sci-Fi Cinematic Universe. 

Just make a damn movie (or series) with Space, Bionicle, Rock Raiders/Power Miners, Exo Force, Chima, Nexo Knights, and whatever else makes sense. Go crazy with delving into the existing lore. Have fun, and make lots of sets. 

If even a flipping Ninjago movie underperformed, what chance would movies based on themes from the late 90s/early 2000s stand?

[icm]

8 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

How many uses does a part like this have and in how many themes it can be used?

[FIFA trophy minifig accessory, helmet from 2018 CCBS Darth Vader, Golden Snitch minifig accessory]

There were basically no such parts in the old days.

Ok, so now we're narrowing down what your complaints are about. You're mainly objecting to bespoke licensed minifig accessories, rather than the broader variety of parts in the modern parts catalog, and you're choosing not to highlight the many highly bespoke unlicensed minifig accessories in themes like Chima, Ninjago, or Dreamzzz.

Yes, the FIFA trophy for minifigs is an extremely bespoke specialized part that wouldn't have been made in the old-school era.

CCBS has been abandoned for eight years now, and for the past several years Lego action figures have been made out of basic Lego that unquestionably feels like Lego: bricks, plates, slopes, brackets, etc. This has been done in large-scale buildable figures that are comparable to medium-sized mech builds, and in small-scale character mechs.

That's not to say that there were no such parts like the CCBS Darth Vader helmet in the old days. Remember Scala? Belville? The less said about My Dad/Christian With Gifts, the better ....

Yes, the Golden Snitch minifig accessory is an extremely bespoke specialized part that wouldn't have been made in the old-school era.

6 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

I understand all that and I already explained that monorail track parts were usable for at least three themes! It could be also useful for mines in Western, Jungle etc.

I was also not a fan of bionicle for exact that reason.

I never said that modern sets are just a bunch of specialized parts with no other use. I just showed that lego produces more specialised parts than before. There used to be 1000 different parts and you could build anything. Now there are what, six or ten thousand, many of them like those up there. Especially the minifigures, there used to be generic people and knights and spacemen, now there are hundreds of modified heads and helmets that have a single use only.

Monotrail track parts were only used in two themes. The prototype Seatron monorail is just that: a prototype that doesn't count as an actual use for this discussion. Your argument that they could also be useful for mines in Western, Jungle, etc, goes both ways: that is precisely what we are trying to say can be done with modern parts. So, you either accept that the monorail track parts were huge and virtually useless for anything besides Space monorails and they don't help your argument for old-school parts versatility being better than modern parts versatility, or you accept that modern parts are equally versatile in a wide variety of themes.

As a kid in the main age range that Bionicle was intended for, I never had enough imagination or enough Bionicle parts to do much creative building with them, but many other kids did. There's a huge Bionicle moccing community out there doing truly astonishing things with parts that always struck me, when I was a kid, as being ridiculously specialized. It just takes a little bit of imagination to see the potential in an accessory as being something that other characters can use besides the named character that originated the accessory, or to see a core torso part as a platform for creative building, etc. Besides in that era Lego sets were using Bionicle parts wherever they could. I never thought it looked very good or worked very well to have a random Bionicle part on a building or on a race car, but some people did.

Yes, Lego produces more part types overall than ever before. Therefore, it produces more specialized part types than ever before. As a proportion of the total parts library produced in a year, I'm not convinced that today's specialized parts are more prevalent than they were in the old-school era. If there used to be 1000 different parts and you could build anything, now there are six or ten thousand different parts and you can build anything even more than ever before. Do you not see how your arguments go both ways? You can build far more subjects in a far wider variety of applications with modern parts than you could in the old-school era.

There are still plenty of generic heads and generic people. Not so many knights and spacemen, except on Pick A Brick.

6 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

Exaclty! The same baseplate could have been used for space, pirates, castle and underwater. The helmets, swords and others were used for different factions and subthemes and are mostly still used today after 30 or 40 years! The saddles were used for castle, western, Europa, Paradisa etc. Minifig hair were generic enough for anything. Those were the parts!

Europa was never released, so it doesn't count as an actual use for this discussion - only a potential use.

The old, narrow range of minifig hairstyles was generic enough for anything within a narrow Eurocentric cultural context. The modern range of minifig hairstyles certainly can't match the actual range of hairstyles worn by everybody all over the world, but it at least gestures toward broader cultural representation.

The saddles were used in Castle, Western, Paradisa, etc ... wherever there was a need for a horse with a saddle. That's an extremely specialized part used in an extremely specialized application that appears in a variety of cultural contexts, since many cultures around the world use and have used horses! But you never saw the saddle part being used for anything but a saddle for a horse! It's emphatically not a good example of having less specialized pieces in the old-school era than in the modern era.

The same raised baseplate mold was used for themes as distinct as Space, Pirates, and Castle [edit: not Aquazone], but it required dramatically different prints to work for those contexts. There was no such thing as a basic, unprinted raised baseplate that didn't have a specialized theme suggested for the build by a print. Would you have been happy to use the raised baseplate from 6983 Ice Station Odyssey (Space, Ice Planet 2002, 1993) as the moccing base for a castle, or the raised baseplate from 6276 Eldorado Fortress (Pirates, 1989) as the moccing base for a space station? I would not have been happy about that if I had those as a kid.

Also, the basic bricks, slopes, and plates used in the facsimile of a raised baseplate in the modern Icons remake of the Eldorado Fortress can immediately be used in a wide variety of things, because they're such basic, common parts!

Some helmets, swords, and other minifig accessories made in the modern era are used for a variety of factions, themes, and subthemes and are still in use after what is now decades, others aren't. Exactly the same thing can be said about helmets, swords, and other minifig accessories from the old-school era. Any broad claim of systematically wider use, versatility, or longevity of old-school minifig headgear and accessories compared to modern minifig headgear and accessories should be supported by statistics. I don't have time to run a statistical analysis of this topic, do you?

Edited March 19 by icm

[danth]

5 hours ago, BrickBob Studpants said:

If even a flipping Ninjago movie underperformed, what chance would movies based on themes from the late 90s/early 2000s stand?

Hey man, the first Lego movie and the Lego Batman movie did okay. I don't think Ninjago (pink ninjas spinning like Beyblades?) is that accessible to, like, normal adults. But normy sci-fi is usually pretty popular. 

Or they could make a Netflix series or something. I don't care. As long as it's cool and we get sets out of it. 😀

[danth]

1 hour ago, icm said:

Monotrail track parts were only used in two themes.

Futuron, Unitron, and City. 

Also, for what it's worth, Lego has new monorail tracks as of this year. 

[icm]

Space, Space, and Town. The new monorail tracks look cool, let's hope we get them in some cool retail set instead of having them be exclusive to non-retail Education sets.

Edited March 19 by icm

[danth]

You implied that Seatron (a Space prototype) would count as another theme if it wasn't just a prototype.

1 hour ago, icm said:

The prototype Seatron monorail is just that: a prototype that doesn't count as an actual use for this discussion.

Anyway, I notice you didn't respond about the new 2026 monorail parts. How do you think they factor in to this conversation?

I'm blind, sorry. Or maybe it was the edited part and I never saw it. 

Edited March 19 by danth

[Murdoch17]

55 minutes ago, danth said:

Hey man, the first Lego movie and the Lego Batman movie did okay. I don't think Ninjago (pink ninjas spinning like Beyblades?) is that accessible to, like, normal adults. But normy sci-fi is usually pretty popular. 

Or they could make a Netflix series or something. I don't care. As long as it's cool and we get sets out of it. 😀

I was an adult when Ninjago came out and I liked it, so am I not "Normal" by your measuring stick? And as an aside: there is no pink ninja besides a one-TV-show-episode gag about washing red with white clothes. Also, @icm did respond about new monorail parts in the post directly above your latest one.

Edited March 19 by Murdoch17

[icm]

2 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

Also, @icm did respond about new monorail parts in the post directly above your latest one.

True that. We'll have to wait and see how the new monorail parts are used. I've been quite impressed by how much the roller coaster parts have been used since they were introduced in 2017. What at first seemed like a family of extremely specialized parts with very limited use has been applied to a wide variety of contexts besides carts on rails, and the basic carts on rails have been used in a lot of things besides the two big Icons roller coasters.

[Tariq j]

17 hours ago, danth said:

I'd like to see a Lego Sci-Fi Cinematic Universe. 

Just make a damn movie (or series) with Space, Bionicle, Rock Raiders/Power Miners, Exo Force, Chima, Nexo Knights, and whatever else makes sense. Go crazy with delving into the existing lore. Have fun, and make lots of sets. 

I don’t know about a film but I actually think a line of sets could be quite cool. Like you have a story where a bunch of universes get pulled into one or something like that and then you have different build that are a mash of various themes. 

[danth]

15 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

Also, @icm did respond about new monorail parts in the post directly above your latest one.

Yikes. I went blind, sorry. Thanks for pointing that out. 

Actually it may have been his edit that I didn't see. But I could also be blind. 

Edited March 19 by danth

[icm]

1 minute ago, Tariq j said:

I don’t know about a film but I actually think a line of sets could be quite cool. Like you have a story where a bunch of universes get pulled into one or something like that and then you have different build that are a mash of various themes. 

Aka The Lego Movie (2014)? and to a lesser extent the sequel (2019)

[danth]

4 minutes ago, icm said:

True that. We'll have to wait and see how the new monorail parts are used. I've been quite impressed by how much the roller coaster parts have been used since they were introduced in 2017. What at first seemed like a family of extremely specialized parts with very limited use has been applied to a wide variety of contexts besides carts on rails, and the basic carts on rails have been used in a lot of things besides the two big Icons roller coasters.

Do we have any reason to believe they will be fundamentally "more usable" than the old ones? As in, something you can see by comparing them to each other? 

5 minutes ago, Tariq j said:

I don’t know about a film but I actually think a line of sets could be quite cool. Like you have a story where a bunch of universes get pulled into one or something like that and then you have different build that are a mash of various themes. 

3 minutes ago, icm said:

Aka The Lego Movie (2014)? and to a lesser extent the sequel (2019)

Yeah pretty much, except those movies didn't seem to focus on existing lore that much if at all. And they had the weird outer story with the kid and his dad and sister. 

38 minutes ago, icm said:

The new monorail tracks look cool, let's hope we get them in some cool retail set instead of having them be exclusive to non-retail Education sets.

I either missed this because it was an edit, or maybe I went blind, but I'm surprised your first reaction isn't "Oh great, more new huge parts that will only be used in Space or City." And obviously Education. By looking at them, I don't see any obvious reason why they'd be more useful than the old. 

[MAB]

7 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

I understand all that and I already explained that monorail track parts were usable for at least three themes! It could be also useful for mines in Western, Jungle etc.

I was also not a fan of bionicle for exact that reason.

I never said that modern sets are just a bunch of specialized parts with no other use. I just showed that lego produces more specialised parts than before. There used to be 1000 different parts and you could build anything. Now there are what, six or ten thousand, many of them like those up there. Especially the minifigures, there used to be generic people and knights and spacemen, now there are hundreds of modified heads and helmets that have a single use only.

What does it matter how many themes they were used in. If they are used for the same reason in those themes, it is still the same reason and it is a specialised part. LEGO made canoes, ship sails, aerials,  and huge numbers of parts that were specialised. It doesn't matter how many times they are reused, if they are still used as a canoe, or ship sail or aerial they are a specialist part.

Classic Space and Castle minifigures are just as specialised as modern minifigures as they are printed to show what they are.

 

And look at the post I was responding to..

Classic sets that suit those who want this building experiance.

The "new" way, where it is more about the looks and having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use.

There is the clear implication there that new sets are not about the building process and are dominated by specialist parts that cannot be used outside of what they were designed for. I've built modern sets and MOCs with modern parts, and I enjoyed the building process.

Edited March 19 by MAB

[BrickBob Studpants]

I have a feeling some of you are a bit stuck in the past  It’s not the 80s or 90s anymore. Kids’ interests just aren’t the same anymore and generic themes that are so generic you can’t even tell the good and bad guys apart don’t cut it anymore. TLG is the number 1 toy brand today, not the quirky underdog it was 40 years ago  

AFOLs liked to point at Playmobile to prove that castle, pirates and the like could still be viable nowadays, but A) Playmobile have jumped on the license train too, even acquiring some of the same licenses, and B) they have been in a bad spot financially for years.

That said, I do wish they created a couple of new in-house themes. Not at the expense of the licensed themes, but Monkie Kid and Dreamzzz need good replacements!

Edited March 19 by BrickBob Studpants