Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Dolor]

Let's hope Dreamzzz will end NOW and we get maybe Agent related theme or something interesting. The with has personality. Dreamzzz does not know what it is.

[Wolfpack]

4 hours ago, MAB said:

It is fairly clear that you just don't like licensed themes and also that you don't like that other people enjoy licensed themes. That is your problem, not their problem and definitely not LEGO's problem. You have to accept that LEGO make products for other people to enjoy and that, in doing so, they might make products that you don't enjoy. If you cannot find something that you enjoy out of their now vast product range then that is your problem, not theirs. Because there are plenty of people that are buying their modern sets. Some because they enjoy one or more of the licensed themes, some because they enjoy one or more of the unlicensed themes, and some because they enjoy both unlicensed and licensed. LEGO can easily afford to lose stubborn past consumers that don't like their current sets and insist on them being the same as they were decades ago and refuse to buy if they are not.

With such strawmen arguments you tell more about yourself then about me.

It is funny how you can enjoy that I cannot enjoy and how I should not even be a consumer because I expressed some unpopular opinions (all backed by stats) about the direction of the company in the thread intended just for that. Basically your only "argument" is: What you like is wrong and if you do not like what we do, get lost.

[MAB]

4 hours ago, icm said:

• New parts designed for licenses are not license-locked and get wide uses in other themes, 

It depends what they are but when it comes to new parts designed for licensed themes, I sometimes prefer them to be detailed to really represent the thing they are meant to be and have them license-locked ather than for LEGO to generalise the part so it doesn't necessarily represent exactly what it is meant to be as well as it could just so it can be used in other themes. There are so many new parts made these days, especially for minifigure hair, headgear and accessories that having some of them licensed-locked when detail is important  doesn't matter.

I'm not a big Doctor Who fan, for example, but I'm glad they did the sonic screwdriver to look like it should and only used it in Doctor Who sets rather than make a new unidentifiable long thing just so it could be used as some other long thing in another theme.  Whereas something like Hobbit hair or Luke's hair and of course the lightsaber hilt, they look good enough in a form that can be used for other themes. But if they had done C-3PO as a standard printed head or Chewbacca as a printed standard head with long hair, they'd look terrible.

29 minutes ago, Wolfpack said:

With such strawmen arguments you tell more about yourself then about me.

It is funny how you can enjoy that I cannot enjoy and how I should not even be a consumer because I expressed some unpopular opinions (all backed by stats) about the direction of the company in the thread intended just for that. Basically your only "argument" is: What you like is wrong and if you do not like what we do, get lost.

Fake stats. And yes, I do now enjoy that you cannot enjoy LEGO. 

Edited March 20 by MAB

[icm]

6 minutes ago, MAB said:

It depends what they are but when it comes to new parts designed for licensed themes, I sometimes prefer them to be detailed to really represent the thing they are meant to be and have them license-locked ather than for LEGO to generalise the part so it doesn't necessarily represent exactly what it is meant to be as well as it could just so it can be used in other themes. There are so many new parts made these days, especially for minifigure hair, headgear and accessories that having some of them licensed-locked when detail is important  doesn't matter.

I'm not a big Doctor Who fan, for example, but I'm glad they did the sonic screwdriver to look like it should and only used it in Doctor Who sets rather than make a new unidentifiable long thing just so it could be used as some other long thing in another theme.  Whereas something like Hobbit hair or Luke's hair and of course the lightsaber hilt, they look good enough in a form that can be used for other themes. But if they had done C-3PO as a standard printed head or Chewbacca as a printed standard head with long hair, they'd look terrible.

Yeah, it's really a case-by-case judgment call whether a part designed for a licensed theme should be bespoke to the source material or a little abstracted for wider use. The Golden Snitch and sonic screwdriver are minifig accessories that benefit from the bespoke treatment, as are most character heads and sandwich boards, but sometimes I feel like bespoke animated character heads are too widely used. As a rule of thumb, I think it's better to start with a more abstracted design with wider application that can be produced without an IP lock, and then dial it in closer to the source material if necessary. The Golden Snitch accessory is a lot more fun and a lot better looking than the 1x1 round plate used before, so in that case the bespoke accessory is a good move. But I'm glad that lightsaber hilts, astromech heads and bodies, battle droid bodies and arms, Mjolnir hammers, Captain America shields, etc, were kept abstracted and in-system so that they could be used elsewhere, because all of those parts I just listed have been very useful in a lot of other themes.

13 minutes ago, MAB said:

Fake stats.

I'm gratified that @Wolfpack took the time to link not one but two statistical analyses of part specialization and lifespan over the decades, but I'm going to have to take some time to pore over the methodology before I take the conclusions at face value.

[MAB]

10 hours ago, icm said:

I'm gratified that @Wolfpack took the time to link not one but two statistical analyses of part specialization and lifespan over the decades, but I'm going to have to take some time to pore over the methodology before I take the conclusions at face value.

For me, there is no point when the claim that LEGO only produces two unlicensed themes keeps getting repeated. 

Part reuse also doesn't matter to me, as a specialised part is still a specialised part. The Roman shield is a specialised part. That was introduced in 2012, repeated a few years later in a licensed set, then reused in an unlicensed set as late as 2025. It has longevity in use and breadth as it has been used in four themes (in four sets in total). But is no less a specialised design than a snitch or Vader's helmet.

[Wolfpack]

And for me it maters. It can be used in Romans, Castle, Greeks, Ninjago, even superheroes etc. I love that! It is what I want lego to be.

I really do not undestand what is wrong with me expressing that.

[JesseNight]

12 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

It is funny how you can enjoy that I cannot enjoy and how I should not even be a consumer because I expressed some unpopular opinions (all backed by stats) about the direction of the company in the thread intended just for that. Basically your only "argument" is: What you like is wrong and if you do not like what we do, get lost.

Aside from stating what we do or do not enjoy, there's honestly not much point in endlessly discussing it or defending our personal taste. Taste is very subjective in the end.
The final solution is simple. Buy what you like, ignore what you don't like.

I admit being in the camp not liking licensed sets and longing for more in-house creative themes like in my youth. I am in fact very happy that we did get a few remakes of old sets in the past few years. And most were very good ones at that (like the Galaxy Explorer). That's more than many businesses would do for their nostalgic fans.
 

39 minutes ago, Wolfpack said:

And for me it maters. It can be used in Romans, Castle, Greeks, Ninjago, even superheroes etc. I love that! It is what I want lego to be.

I really do not undestand what is wrong with me expressing that.

Nothing wrong with that, just don't overdo it. There's no right and wrong here, only different taste and opinions.
And if you want new themes that don't exist... there's always the option to try making one and submit it to Ideas.

[danth]

16 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

It is funny how you can enjoy that I cannot enjoy and how I should not even be a consumer because I expressed some unpopular opinions (all backed by stats) about the direction of the company in the thread intended just for that. Basically your only "argument" is: What you like is wrong and if you do not like what we do, get lost.

There are "status quo warriors" on this website who will pathologically defend "the way it is now". If you so much as hint as preferring classic themes, they will argue with you mercilessly, and generally use tired, fallacious arguments, and accuse you of "being trapped in nostalgia" while defending the repeated release of sets based on 40 year old designs/movies. When you go a few rounds with these people, defending your preferences from their dismissals, you'll be accused of "whining" or "going on and on," when they are the ones who can't stop, who can't let you have your opinion.

They project, assuming our preference for sets not tainted and burdened by attachment to terrible movies, is driven by something like their mindless acceptance of the status quo. "It must just be nostalgia." 

16 hours ago, MAB said:

Fake stats. And yes, I do now enjoy that you cannot enjoy LEGO. 

This is truly nasty. 

4 hours ago, JesseNight said:

just don't overdo it.

Please tell that to the people dogpiling him for daring to have an opinion that isn't "Everything is perfect the way it is now."

[Paul B Technic]

I found this today on FaceBook, which makes a lot of sense and does not paint a good picture for the future...
By https://www.facebook.com/andytgeezer?__cft__[0]=AZa79moYgYDNdocuZWy8NOJqvhDgD0Vp8ueINOx8JmfPxlNHQEI_-J99_-BuW78puAGKO13-rNz_xgltBd7iRalQ5erjjv8lAUaCPq4jvb6ea9DlRvKOTTMiC_zoUqNr68M52hrsgID-aQjekMEXCnOchBsFGoYOFIXhVxIaEk81kqoyu-dAWiF3cFRPorT26QYQsxurM6vPbPh62VvRbWuAOogPRzM_6kBFHSOoGoFMpQ&__tn__=-UC*F

Has LEGO turned its back on curiosity?

Following my last two posts on FIRST LEGO League I've been thinking a lot about what I have always loved about LEGO and why what they're doing right now that makes me so uneasy and I finally put my finger on it.

There's a much bigger thing happening here than LEGO losing interest in robotics.

The more I look at the direction LEGO has taken over the past few years, the more it feels like the company has been slowly shifting away from encouraging active curiosity and more towards passive consumption.

For many of us, and for a huge number of engineers I’ve spoken to, LEGO lit a fire in us.

It spoke to us and became our language giving form to the ideas in our head. If we could envisage mechanisms, linkages, ridiculous contraptions, LEGO could actually bring them to life. You could see it working. You could feel how it moved.

There’s something magical about that.
Watching gears turn. Understanding cause and effect. Tweaking something and seeing the result. For some young people, like me, that moment casts a spell they never quite recover from, and it sets them on a path towards engineering.

But I’m starting to worry those experiences are becoming harder to find if you're a LEGO fan.

These days I often hear kids saying, "I've built this set and that set" rather than “I invented this from random parts" and from experience I find that children who only build from the instructions in sets really struggle to create anything new.

Anyone can follow instructions.

That’s not the same as thinking.

By training children to follow steps, not to solve problems, we are creating a generation of consumers.

To become a creator you really have to take things apart, to see how it works, improve and put it back together again differently.

But LEGO don't make many kits like this any more, but instead are selling a lot more high tag, licensed partnerships instead. Think Star Wars, Marvel, Disney.

The thing about these partnerships is they come with very distinctive characters, logos and IP. The last thing that these companies want you to do with their characters is put them in some other universe outside of their control, (which most creative imaginative play ends up doing) so most of these sets only come with a single set of instructions and you're not encouraged to take them apart and put them with anything else.

When you look at the Technic range over the last few years, instead of highly mechanical, complex models, it's been a steady stream of licensed race cars. Bugatti, Maclaren, Ferrari. All cars and all licensed IP.

And again each model usually had instructions for only one model. They don't want you turning their beautiful car into a helicopter with a BMW logo on it, the company just want you to make their vehicle and admire it.

There's a picture on the box and that's what they want you to make.

But that's the problem. It’s not just about what they’re selling.

It’s about what they’re encouraging.

By moving towards models where you build only one thing and are only shown a single way to put the bricks together, LEGO is creating a generation of consumers rather than nurturing the creators of the future.

This is no doubt great for the bottom line, but as parents and Educators we should be concerned.

[MAB]

10 hours ago, Paul B Technic said:

To become a creator you really have to take things apart, to see how it works, improve and put it back together again differently.

But LEGO don't make many kits like this any more, but instead are selling a lot more high tag, licensed partnerships instead. Think Star Wars, Marvel, Disney.

The thing about these partnerships is they come with very distinctive characters, logos and IP. The last thing that these companies want you to do with their characters is put them in some other universe outside of their control, (which most creative imaginative play ends up doing) so most of these sets only come with a single set of instructions and you're not encouraged to take them apart and put them with anything else.
 

The last point is equally true of unlicensed sets.

Although I disagree with their POV. I frequently take sets apart and redesign sections to be what I want rather than follow instructions, as do others. That is why we have the term MOD as opposed to MOC. I wonder if people that write stuff like this have ever visited forums like the Star Wars forum here or elsewhere or ever look at licensed MOCs online or at conventions. There are loads of creative people building what they want and not just following instructions.  They seem to have their own definition of what creativity is and deny anything and anyone that doesn't fit their definition.

[Dolor]

https://brickset.com/article/130655/the-lego-group-requests-your-feedback

Why so many Hard-Core fans are leaving lego... looking for other options...

[danth]

A new "Dollhouse Suitcase" Friends set has leaked. It has two new, ginormous dollhouse "halves" that interact with what appear to be new 2/3-brick-tall plates. 

I think it's a bit funny that some people were arguing that modern Lego has somehow "ascended beyond" large single use parts. And then Lego immediately cranks out new ones. Although with all the giant Jurassic Park dinosaur molds and things like Vidiyo boxes, I'm not sure why the argument was ever entertained. 

But also, if they can do giant dollhouse halves, I'm not sure why they can't do raised baseplates. Fundamentally the same thing. 

[icm]

Just off the top of my head I'd say that dollhouse is a lot more like the brick-shaped carrying cases and storage boxes (eg https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?O=60270-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0}, also see https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Gear/subtheme-Storage) that they've been doing for years than it is like a raised baseplate. Like those, it's a large carry case without any actual Lego connection points. The "rooms" in the house are 8x16 plates that slot onto shelves. So there's room for higher tolerances in the molds there. Raised baseplates need to have the same precise stud grids as any other part. Not fundamentally the same thing.

The 8x16x2/3 plates used in the dollhouse sets aren't new. They've been used for several years now in sets with low age ratings. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=2629#T=C

Edited 18 hours ago by icm

[danth]

1 hour ago, icm said:

Just off the top of my head I'd say that dollhouse is a lot more like the brick-shaped carrying cases and storage boxes (eg https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?O=60270-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0}, also see https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Gear/subtheme-Storage) that they've been doing for years than it is like a raised baseplate. Like those, it's a large carry case without any actual Lego connection points. The "rooms" in the house are 8x16 plates that slot onto shelves. So there's room for higher tolerances in the molds there. Raised baseplates need to have the same precise stud grids as any other part. Not fundamentally the same thing.

I think it's still fundamentally the same. You're building on a large raised structure. I don't think having studs matters -- there are studless base plates.

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=53588pb01&in=S

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=64649&in=S

A new raised base plate design could use the same idea as the dollhouse; slot those 8x16 plates into it, and build on them. 

1 hour ago, icm said:

The 8x16x2/3 plates used in the dollhouse sets aren't new. They've been used for several years now in sets with low age ratings. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=2629#T=C

Ah, thanks. I've seen those before. I couldn't see the indentations from the blurry leak pics, so I didn't recognize them. 

[icm]

The thing is, though, with the dollhouse you're not building on a large raised structure. You're slotting plates into tabs between dividers. In the way it's designed and probably in the way it's manufactured, the dollhouse carry case has a lot more in common with a sorting box (https://brickset.com/sets/5006974-1/Sorting-Box-Blue) than with a raised baseplate. I doubt the dollhouse carry case is manufactured in-house along with the rest of the set. It's probably a Gear item contracted to another company.

Edited 16 hours ago by icm

[Devsan]

I do find it slightly amusing seeing going to bat for the old raised base plates deployed on the side of older Legos. I recall running into more than a few older Lego fans back in the day who HATED raised base plates as Lego going downhill and making things seem bigger well skimping on bricks.