The Classic (Unlicensed) Themes - What's the Big Deal, Anyway?

[Karalora]

15 minutes ago, icm said:

Like I said above, adult Castle, Space, and Pirates fans have been eating good with one-offs, licensed sets, BDP, and PAB. But there aren't a lot of concessions for kids, and that's a problem.

This is an excellent point (your post is overall full of excellent points). But I suspect that many nostalgic AFOLs appeal to "the kids" in their arguments when the kids they're really thinking of are themselves (both when they were young, and the internal part of them that is still young). Ultimately, I think a lot of the distaste for modern licensed themes is that the people experiencing said distaste don't have an emotional investment in those IPs, at least insofar as LEGO is concerned, and the classic themes they do have an emotional investment in are scarcely to be found anymore, and they don't feel heard.

And that's okay. Despite how it sometimes seems in internet debate, personal preference is perfectly adequate for holding an opinion. You don't need to whip out graphs or try to compare "creativity" as if it were a fluid that can be measured in a graduated cylinder.

[icm]

14 hours ago, Mylenium said:

That we can agree on. It's so glaringly obvious in the Jurassic World theme. There's no good reason for dinosaurs to be tied to any IP other than the built-in marketing and then wait years for new movies to come out just so you can do another dino species.

Ironically, it was only by tying dinosaurs to the JW license that Lego was able to get enough creative traction and enough persistence in the marketplace to make a dinosaur theme evergreen. There's no good reason for dinosaurs to be tied to any IP other than the built-in marketing ... but that's a very powerful practical reason that has allowed us to get new dinosaur sets and species every year, even when there's no new movie coming out. The JW theme has even managed to sneak in some zany, wacky in-house virtually unlicensed dinosaur sets via the Legends of Isla Nublar subtheme, which takes its material from cartoon shorts produced by Lego itself.

5 hours ago, MAB said:

We need them [Millennium Falcon remakes] as often as new people come into the hobby and want one, or existing fans want an upgrade of what they already have.

The same can be said of grey and blue spaceships, or grey castles with the same figures again and again. They become stale and if not enough people want them, LEGO move on. That was a problem for Castle just over a decade ago. LEGO did a red roof castle then a blue one. And people hated the blue, and Castle for kids soon disappeared. 

I am bored of yet another new colour for Classic Space minifigures, but if they keep exciting people and so keep selling, I can understand why LEGO keep making them. 

Well said. If you pay attention to Reddit or Rebrickable, you'll see they're full of people making new MOCs or makeshift parts-bin versions of Star Wars ships that Lego no longer makes. As long as there are people who want a certain ship and can't get it on shelves, that's a reason to make a new version of it. Just because I have every playscale X-wing ever made doesn't mean that a new fan shouldn't have the opportunity to get a playscale X-wing. And as for gray and blue spaceships, when I was a kid I saw a picture of the Galaxy Explorer in an old Lego book and I was just gobsmacked by how cool it was. I wondered why Lego didn't make sets like that anymore. And I waited twenty years, and finally they made a new Galaxy Explorer. So there's a very good reason for the remake cycle, even if it can get stale.

[Wolfpack]

8 minutes ago, icm said:

I've been guilty of this myself, but I agree. AFOL insistence on returning to old-school throwback Classic Space, Blacktron, or 1989-era Pirates is ironic, because building remakes of old sets from those eras is, in spirit, very little different than a remake of a Star Wars set. At this point, the classic subthemes are in some ways their own IPs that must be adhered to in ways that limit blank-slate creativity.

Well, I am not sure that is completely true. It is something you are constantly trying to plant us for discreditation. Me and I believe a lot of other fans prefer original sets to remakes. But there are no new sets. There are no sets for Raven Knights, no sets for Kraken Knights, no sets for Serpent Knights, no sets for Griffin knights... And even the old themes, it is not like everyhing was already done. Wolfpack for instance had three sets, a tower, a carriage and a rock, while Star Wars had what 1000 sets? Three hundred times more. If Star Wars fans can get 57 xy-fighters, surely we can get I do not know one boat?

We would love new non-licenced themes, but there are no new themes. No roman theme, no ancient greek theme, no Egypt theme, no Europa theme etc. Or something else completely, you know, surprise us like with Vikings or Adventurers back in the day. They will make another 1000 Star Wars sets before another historic theme.

[icm]

2 hours ago, Karalora said:

I didn't get into LEGO until the mid to late 2000s, so I didn't find this to be the case at all, at least with Castle. The waves I was there for--Fantasy Era and Kingdoms--had very clearly defined good guys (Crown Knights, dwarves, Lion Knights) vs. bad guys (skeletons, trolls, Dragon Knights), using cultural standards of color and imagery to draw the distinctions. I suppose, absent a detailed narrative explaining the nefarious deeds of the baddies and heroic deeds of the goodies, we were all free to suppose differently, but this would have flown in the face of TLG's intentions every bit as much as imagining that the Galactic Empire is good and the Rebellion is bad.

And maybe this means the 2000-2010s Castle lines weren't actually "classic" in the sense meant by nostalgic AFOLs. But if that's the case, then I have to ask what all the requirements are to make a theme "classic."

Twenty-plus years ago when Eurobricks was new, "Classic" meant "what I grew up with when I was young and the world was new", which for the online AFOLs of the time was the earliest Space and Castle sets before the development of subthemes. Those eventually became codified as what we know as Classic Space and Classic Castle. It's been astonishing for me to see Mars Mission and even early Ninjago referred to as "classic" by the newest online AFOLs, but that just serves to illustrate that "Classic" never really meant anything but "the sets I had when I was a kid" and never really will. Someday, CS'24 will be a classic Space theme and Eevee will be classic Lego Pokemon, instead of just "adult-focused Gen 1 nostalgia slop", as some of the more cynical online AFOLs will call it.

2 hours ago, Autumn said:

You could see TLG as an artist who used to make original creations that you loved (and still do) but now they mostly just do remakes and covers of other artists' work. They had their own universe, lore and world building, now there's hardly any of that. You would buy Lego for Lego themes and stories, now you buy Lego for their version of someone else's. There will always be some nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses, of course, but original themes made Lego, Lego for me before Star Wars came along.

Yep, that's the core of the problem. As much as I defend the creativity and versatility of licensed sets (especially in this thread), I agree that so much licensing has severely diluted Lego's brand identity. Lego used to be able to stand by itself as itself, but now it's mostly a vehicle for licensing. And that's a shame. We desperately need a vibrant stable of in-house unlicensed themes (especially ones that align with classic categories) to have Lego be Lego, you know. Bring back Space, Pirates, Castle, Western! But don't get rid of licensed themes to do it. There should be room for both in the portfolio.

36 minutes ago, Wolfpack said:

In the old days the set would be named just Mill VIllage and such scenarios would be presented on the back of the box or in the Idea book and kids would wonder what can happen or why did it happen.

In the nineties it would be have a totally awesome name too. Modern set names optimized for internet search are so boring. Ninjago seems like the last bastion of awesome set names, but even its set names today are far more basic and descriptive than things like "Dawn of Iron Doom" from a decade ago. Of course, the name of the set is by far the least consequential thing about it as far as playability goes, so that's not a huge loss.

[icm]

15 minutes ago, Wolfpack said:

Well, I am not sure that is completely true. It is something you are constantly trying to plant us for discreditation. Me and I believe a lot of other fans prefer original sets to remakes. But there are no new sets. There are no sets for Raven Knights, no sets for Kraken Knights, no sets for Serpent Knights, no sets for Griffin knights... And even the old themes, it is not like everyhing was already done. Wolfpack for instance had three sets, a tower, a carriage and a rock, while Star Wars had what 1000 sets? Three hundred times more. If Star Wars fans can get 57 xy-fighters, surely we can get I do not know one boat?

We would love new non-licenced themes, but there are no new themes. No roman theme, no ancient greek theme, no Egypt theme, no Europa theme etc. Or something else completely, you know, surprise us like with Vikings or Adventurers back in the day. They will make another 1000 Star Wars sets before another historic theme.

Yeah, it's a real shame there aren't a lot of new unlicensed themes, or any continuing classic unlicensed themes besides Town->City. No disagreement there. I'd like to see a vibrant modern Castle playtheme with Raven/Kraken/Serpent/Griffin knights as much as you would. I just don't like to complain about and tear down the themes we are getting in order to get them. I want to make the tent bigger, not kick anyone out of the big tent.

BTW, the proper comparison wouldn't be between the Wolfpack subtheme and the entire Star Wars theme. The proper comparison would be between the entire unlicensed Castle theme plus all unlicensed Castle-adjacent sets in other themes, and the entire licensed Star Wars theme plus all licensed Star Wars sets in other themes (ie Brickheadz). So maybe 300+ Castle sets to 1000+ Star Wars sets. That's still a big difference, but it's a factor of three, not three hundred! If we're complaining about how small certain subthemes are and you say Wolfpack only got three sets, I can counter that Skeleton Crew only got one set.

[danth]

Respectfully...this is a terrible thread. 

"Hey, people who like this thing I don't care about. Let us put you on trial, where you will be asked to justify liking the thing you like, and justify why you don't instead accept some different thing you don't like -- an insane question literally asked of nobody else. Then when you explain yourselves in full, we'll ignore most of what you said to focus only on what we think are your weakest justifications, and explain why you're wrong,."

7 hours ago, MAB said:

We need them as often as new people come into the hobby and want one, or existing fans want an upgrade of what they already have.

Who's we? I certainly don't need it. And why do we "need "it? Why don't we "need" a new TMNT Battle Wagon every few years? Or a new Tron Lightcycle? Why is it only Star Wars that "needs" this treatment? And don't talk about what sells, because that's a different question entirely. 

Wouldn't it make more sense to "need" non-licensed Castle/Pirate/Space sets every few years to show kids there's more than just movies and licenses and that they can build their own worlds without explicit storylines?

7 hours ago, MAB said:

The same can be said of grey and blue spaceships, or grey castles with the same figures again and again.

This is such a huge false equivalence. There's not a single non-licensed spaceship or castle design that got released again and again. The Galaxy Explorer and Renegade took 35+ years to get their second set. And of course Space sets got totally different designs and color schemes every year. 

Edited March 16 by danth

[Karalora]

1 hour ago, danth said:

Respectfully...this is a terrible thread.

And yet here you are participating in it. Can't be all bad, can it?

  

1 hour ago, danth said:

"Hey, people who like this thing I don't care about. Let us put you on trial, where you will be asked to justify liking the thing you like, and justify why you don't instead accept some different thing you don't like -- an insane question literally asked of nobody else. Then when you explain yourselves in full, we'll ignore most of what you said to focus only on what we think are your weakest justifications, and explain why you're wrong,."

 

This is a bad-faith interpretation of both the OP and the ensuing discussion. Not cool, dude.

Edited March 16 by Karalora

[icm]

1 hour ago, danth said:

Respectfully...this is a terrible thread.

It's a perennial topic that will continue coming up until such time as we get new evergreen Space, Castle, and Pirate themes! 

[danth]

1 hour ago, Karalora said:

This is a bad-faith interpretation of both the OP and the ensuing discussion. Not cool, dude.

It's a good faith interpretation, and what I described is already happening. It happens every time this comes up. 

Although a bunch of replies were posted while I was typing and I haven't read them yet. Not saying nothing good can come of the discussion, but the whole point of the topic is insulting, IMO, and many of the responses seem to be meant to attack the reasoning of fans of classic themes instead of trying understanding them.

[Lego David]

I would like to preface this by saying that I am much younger than many of the people in this thread. Unlike some of the others here, I did not grow up with any of the themes of the "Classic Era", but rather, I was part of the late 2000s early 2010s generation, which included such themes as Bionicle, Hero Factory, Mars Mission, Power Miners, Agents, Space Police, Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest, and so on. So my perspective on this particular topic will be very different than that of those who grew up with the themes of the 1990s. But, despite that, I still feel that I can relate to and sympathize with those older AFOLs, because the same spirit that was present in LEGO themes in the 1990s was still alive and well in the 2000s and early 2010s; although I did not grow up with any of the themes of the Classical Era, so strictly speaking I have no nostalgic connection with those, I still really admire and love those sets, and even went back and purchased some of them (I managed to get some of the smaller M-Tron and Futuron sets). 

With that out of the way, I would like to explain where I personally think the difference lies. For me, original LEGO themes did not feel like they were just extended merchandise meant to prop up another existing popular IP; instead, they felt like an entire new world in of themselves. Original themes to me, were not just selling you toys; they were selling you an entire new world, an entire new story, and an entire new experience; similar to what you would get from those popular IPs themselves, only through the medium of bricks rather than of a movie or a TV show. Growing up with those themes, I grew attached to the worlds and characters in those themes just as much as those growing up with Star Wars do with the worlds and characters in that franchise. The characters in Bionicle, for instance, were my own heroes, similar to how someone growing up with Star Wars, theirs might be Luke Skywalker or so on. And you can see this clearly reflected in the older original themes as well: To the generation of the late 1990s and early 2000s, their hero was probably Johnny Thunder; to those of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was probably Captain Redbeard. 

LEGO used to thrive on creating their own unique worlds. They did not need to be propped up by the power of an existing IP, they already had their own worlds and stories! And that is precisely what drew me to LEGO. Because for me, I wasn't looking to buy toys based on an IP that already exists; I was looking for a new story, world, and experience that I wouldn't get elsewhere. That's why I found myself so drawn to themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory in particular, because of how unique they were; nobody was offering any experience quite like them anywhere else.

Now, onto the sets themselves: I have to be honest, Original Themes simply offer much better value for money, play value, and more creative designs. With licensed themes, the designers are forced to just accurately recreate the designs of the originals from the IPs, with no room to experiment by themselves, otherwise, people will not by the sets, because they are not accurate to the source material. When given full room to be creative and experiment, that is where LEGO truly shines. Restricting LEGO to just recreations of existing models, at that point LEGO no longer feels like a toy, but like a model (this is clearly shown nowdays in the 18+ sets). Whereas with original themes, you often got amazing creative color schemes, epic functions and play features, all at much better and affordable prices than most licensed sets. 

This creative process is clearly reflected also in the way those original designs frequently inspire far more MOCs from people than most licensed themes do. In my experience, most fans of licensed themes just like to get those sets as display models, but rarely if ever make their own MOCs out of them. Whereas literally search up MOCs based off any of the original themes, and you'll get tons of pictures, many of them built years, sometimes even decades after those sets came out! It still amazes me how many MOCs people still make to this day based on themes like Ice Planet 2002, Blacktron, and so on. Yet I don't personally see nearly as many MOCs based off Harry Potter, or DC or Marvel Super Heroes, and the ones that are made, again, tend to just be bigger recreations of existing scenes and vehicles from their respective IPs. This to me clearly speaks to the superiority in terms of creativity that Original Themes offer. 

Nowdays, with their excessive emphasis on Licensed Themes and 18+ sets, it feels like LEGO has sold their soul for profit. They no longer care about creativity and putting out products that will inspire creativity, they just care about putting out whatever will make the most profit the quickest. And in the process, they have turned LEGO from a medium for creativity, into an expensive collector's item that now exists only to be built once and then left on display on a shelf to gather dust. 

Edited March 16 by Lego David

[JesseNight]

16 hours ago, MAB said:

The same can be said of grey and blue spaceships, or grey castles with the same figures again and again.

I am bored of yet another new colour for Classic Space minifigures, but if they keep exciting people and so keep selling, I can understand why LEGO keep making them. 

That's probably why after Classic Space, they created factions and the new themes started feeling fresher.
We had Classic Space for almost a decade, then we got Futuron in 1987 with a clear signature color palette and a new minifig in various colors. Same with themes that followed in the years after. Spaceship designs didn't remain the same either, but each theme stayed true to itself. SP1 and MT got the taller canopies. BT2 got those dome like cockpits. Designs did evolve.
 

14 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

Classic themes have a very loose story and most of the characters are not named or defined. Anyone can choose what is happening, who is good, who is bad, it is even possible noone is, it is all about imagination. For instance Black Monarch Castle. Who is he? Why is the castle named after him? What is his goal? Who is he allied with? This is what I like, not some scene and characters from the movie or a book.

I'd even say there was no story to classic themes. Usually the scenes and sometimes a text balloon here and there in the yearly catalog would hint us what a faction was about. The rest was up to us.
Sure we can make up a new Star Wars story too, but good luck breaking completely free from the franchise's universe that we're so familiar with. Nothing wrong with that, just less challenging to our imagination.
 

14 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

They tried to do make the sets cheaper and were cutting corners left and right.

That's been done plenty of times, and I assume normal business practice.
I remember how disappointed I was with Space Police 2. They look amazing on the outside, but the inside had absolutely nothing to offer. Just look at the mothership: no seat for the pilot, center section was an empty space with 1 computer slope on the FLOOR!
 

13 hours ago, Autumn said:

You could see TLG as an artist who used to make original creations that you loved (and still do) but now they mostly just do remakes and covers of other artists' work.

I guess it's a problem of the time we live in. It's the exact same thing we see happening in the music and movie industry. Makes me wonder if our creativity is dying, or if we simply ran out of new stuff to make because we may just have done it all before...?
 

13 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

Please don't use that word (I've obfuscated it in my reply) @Wolfpack, it's offensive to Autistic people (among other groups) such as myself.

It's a bit offtopic but I am very curious... I am autistic myself and I've never heard of that word being offensive, nor do I interpret it as such. Thought that word was just an insult to people of lower intelligence, and many on the spectrum are in fact well above average.

Edited March 16 by JesseNight

[MAB]

10 hours ago, icm said:

I've been guilty of this myself, but I agree. AFOL insistence on returning to old-school throwback Classic Space, Blacktron, or 1989-era Pirates is ironic, because building remakes of old sets from those eras is, in spirit, very little different than a remake of a Star Wars set. At this point, the classic subthemes are in some ways their own IPs that must be adhered to in ways that limit blank-slate creativity.

Indeed. That is why modern kid-aimed themes are the Classic themes of today. Anyone wanting remakes of their favourite themes from 40 years ago is no more imaginative than someone wanting licensed sets of their favourite movie. I grew up on books, movies and stories based on fantasy, castles, 70s space movies, westerns etc and classic themes were an extension of that although at the time I was just becoming too old to enjoy them as a kid. I don't think they were particularly imaginative, they were based on what kids were used to and knew how to play with, it was just not licensed. They were a reflection of the time. Nothing has really changed. These days there are way more licensed toys and LEGO's output is a reflection of that. Some kids like licensed stuff and some don't. But when I have seen kids playing with LEGO one group is no more imaginative than the other. They tend to build a non-licensed set following the instructions and play with it in the same way they do with a licensed set. If something has wings, they swoosh it. If it has wheels, they push it along. They get clues how to play with something based on what it is, the box art, and so on. I thing the classic themes are actually quite realistic when compared to Nexo Knights or Dreamzzz, those two themes were way more imaginative than knights being knights in castles, pirates being pirates and spacemen in spaceships or on the moon.

And that doesn't mean children are not imaginative when they play out their own stories based on the licensed characters. Is there any difference when a kid role plays Luke Skywalker or Batman based on the character traits they know from movies or other media, vs role playing a generic pirate or forest dweller based on character traits after reading or watching media about Blackbeard or Robin Hood. Give the child a truly unknown character with no hint of a backstory and they have difficulty playing with it. 

I was born in 1970, so grew up without minifigs in my early years but had a few in the early 80s. To me LEGO was literally a bucketful of whatever I wanted as that is what I had, a bucket of plain bricks. Was I any more imaginative than kids 10 years younger or now when it came to what I built or the stories I played? Probably not, as I built things out of LEGO to play with alongside other existing toys that I knew how to play with. I'd build buildings that looked like railway buildings to play with my railway. I'd build spaceships for my Kenner SW figures. I'd build farms for my plastic animals. I saw building a space ship for Darth Vader no different to building a farm shed to keep my plastic cows in. Both use preconceived ideas about what I was playing with to role play a story.

[JesseNight]

23 minutes ago, MAB said:

Was I any more imaginative than kids 10 years younger or now when it came to what I built or the stories I played? Probably not, as I built things out of LEGO to play with alongside other existing toys that I knew how to play with.

I've definitely done things like that myself too, using LEGO to build stuff I was missing in my other toy lines. Because I used LEGO mostly for building and other toys for playing.

However... This was challenging to do. We had no help, no hand holding, we had our bucket of bricks and from there had to figure it out ourselves, at best having friends or parents offer some help or advice.
Nowadays kids go online and download instructions or videos that tell them how to build stuff brick by brick (and still complain it's too hard or too time consuming). But that's another story I guess. Kids/people nowadays are so focused on the destination (result), they forgot how to enjoy the journey. Just saying, we had no choice before but to rely on our imagination to get stuff done, and that is no longer the case unless we really choose to.

[MAB]

14 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

That is actually not true. Fantasy and Kingdoms were great themes and according to all I know and have information they also sold well. The problem with Castle 2013 was that it was crap. It offered nothing special and it was boring. They tried to do make the sets cheaper and were cutting corners left and right (just compare the parts and moulds to mentioned predesessor themes). And as I already said it is not about Castle or Pirates. It is about making imaginative, creative and diverse themes. Lego used to make new themes that lasted for a year or two and than something new again. It was a toy that was educational, that had no modern weapons, very limited conflict and that encouraged alternate builds and creativity. It is no more that. And it is not about me playing with it. I am not retarded, of course I can buy pieces and build whatever I want. It is about millions of kids, it is about buying gifts and the society we want to live in.

What Castle in 2013 showed was that if they keep doing the same thing in a similar way too frequently then it gets boring for those that already have it and if there are not enough new consumers buying it, it will be cut. Hence they should not do the same thing too frequently if the consumer base is small.

I agree the one year themes were great. They were something different, they were fresh, they came and then they went and another one came along. There was PQ where you could role play stories about adventurers in ancient worlds, Monster Fighters were you could role play monsters in spooky settings, AC and GS where you could role play sci-fi storylines. All stuff that was popular from books and movies so kids knew roughly what they were, just generic. 

LEGO are still doing these fairly short lived themes that last a year or two. They are just licensed. A set or two from that IP arrives, fans of that theme can build something they already know and like, they can be inspired to build more around the universe they are interested in, then LEGO moves to another IP to repeat it. Very little advertising is needed as there is a prebuilt fanbase, the sets often sell to people not curently buying LEGO,  and there is little risk as they do only a couple of sets across many IPs rather than repeatedly trying to get a whole new theme off the ground every year.  And the important thing, people want it.

I remember when the first BTTF set came out, then Ghostbusters, then the ET Dimensions set. All of those inspired me to build around the sets that they did. That is no less creative than someone building another non-licensed castle that looks like a generic castle or another non-licensed pirate ship that looks like a generic pirate ship. At the same time, I'd also build small 8x8 vignettes around every (unlicensed) CMF that came out. So I don't think the argument is licensed vs unlicensed but more giving people the parts (and often the minifigures) to inspire them to build something new.

Some properties do hang around too long for longer term fans. There is Star Wars. There is City. There is Ninjago. Why do they hang around? Because people buy them. Star Wars has shown it can coexist with one off sets from other franchises because they are distict and consumers know what they are. Other franchises can get a set or two and still sell without damaging sales. But now apply that to unlicensed.  Someone has an idea for unlicensed snake monsters, or sky pirates, or an ancient ship, or speeder bikes, or a whole city in one building, or mechs. What do they do, either create a whole new theme that needs advertising and at best will sell to existing LEGO fans, or stick those ideas into their long running good selling in-house theme. One off licensed sets will sell as they have a group of consumers ready. One off truly new themes are far less likely to work. So again, I don't think the problem is the number of licensed themes, or the number of licensed sets. I don't think the problem is LEGO not having ideas. I think the issue is where LEGO puts them, based on consumer behaviour - people tend to buy what they know.

[MAB]

27 minutes ago, JesseNight said:

I've definitely done things like that myself too, using LEGO to build stuff I was missing in my other toy lines. Because I used LEGO mostly for building and other toys for playing.

However... This was challenging to do. We had no help, no hand holding, we had our bucket of bricks and from there had to figure it out ourselves, at best having friends or parents offer some help or advice.
 

Maybe I should add. Mine would have loked like crap. Basic colours, basic big parts mainly 2x2 and 2x4 bricks. And if I didn't have enough parts for a roof, I'd take a piece of cereal box and fold it. No door? Card and sticky tape for the hinges. LEGO was just a toy alongside other toys. I think the minifigure changed that, turning LEGO into a self contained toy.

The minifigure (whether licensed or unlicensed), more than anything else tells you how to play with a set and what those parts with it should be assembled into even if you build something yourself. But once you remove the minifigures, there is little difference between licensed and unlicensed unbuilt sets. You need the figures to be Star Wars, but you also need the figures to be Pirates or Castle or Space, with very little crossover. I'm mainly a castle builder (Both Castle and LOTR and other IP). But I think I have bought more Star Wars (and possibly HP) sets than Castle over the years, as they provide a plentiful supply of grey, tan and white bricks and the figures often sell for a high percentage of the set price so the bricks are cheap or free (although not so much with HP now). They have been the best parts packs for me, supplemented by mainly CMF or latterly PAB figures to give the bricks context for what they will be built into.

Would I love a history theme like Greeks or Romans or Egyptian? Sure. But if they did a Gladiator (the movie) set with gladiators and Roman soldiers, or Troy, or Jason and the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans, or Cleopatra or, ... I'd buy those sets. And I'd build, play and display them in exactly the same way whether they were licensed or unlicensed. 

14 hours ago, Autumn said:

You could see TLG as an artist who used to make original creations that you loved (and still do) but now they mostly just do remakes and covers of other artists' work. They had their own universe, lore and world building, now there's hardly any of that. 

They still do make their own universe, lore and world building. About half of their sets are.

Using your artist analogy, do you want them to keep making the same stuff over and over copying what they did themselves when you first got into their work, or do you want them to change with the times and grow as a company as culture changes. Or using a music analogy, should they keep pumping out 80s style music because that is all they can do, whether kids today want it or not. Or should they evolve their style with time like many music artists that are successful over many decades do.

[MAB]

12 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

Well, I am not sure that is completely true. It is something you are constantly trying to plant us for discreditation. Me and I believe a lot of other fans prefer original sets to remakes. But there are no new sets. There are no sets for Raven Knights, no sets for Kraken Knights, no sets for Serpent Knights, no sets for Griffin knights... And even the old themes, it is not like everyhing was already done. Wolfpack for instance had three sets, a tower, a carriage and a rock, while Star Wars had what 1000 sets? Three hundred times more. If Star Wars fans can get 57 xy-fighters, surely we can get I do not know one boat?

 

Would a Raven Knights castle be so different to a castle for Lion Knights, Wolfpack, Kraken Knights, Serpent Knights, Boar Knights, Black Falcons, Evil Knights, ... Colours will be different,  banners and flags will be different. The Kraken Knights will probably be near the sea. But otherwise a castle is pretty much a castle and existing LEGO instructions can show you how to build a castle if you need help. Their carts and wagons will be pretty much the same and instructions for those exist. For someone that is imaginative, especially if they want alternate builds without instructions, surely they can imagine what they want each castle to look like and build it from their imagination rather than be told by a LEGO designer what style they should be building. So if someone wants a Kraken castle to look like a normal castle, that is fine. And if someone else wants a castle in the shape of a giant squad, that is also fine. Yet if LEGO tells you it is one or the other then they have told you what it looks like in the same way that a license shows you what a particular spaceship looks like. Of course you can adapt it outside of the universe that LEGO has designed, just like a fan of a license can make their own fan fiction or create their own imagined scenes.

As to the boat, why can't you use one of the many they have done in unlicensed (or licensed) themes? 

[Lego David]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

They were a reflection of the time. Nothing has really changed. These days there are way more licensed toys and LEGO's output is a reflection of that

I wholeheartedly disagree. While you may be right to point out how times have changed since the 1980s, have they really changed so much since the early 2010s, when we were still getting plenty of original Castle, Pirates and Space themes? I was a kid of that era, and I loved those themes just as much as the older people loved the versions of those themes that came out in the 1980s and 1990s. I personally loved Kingdoms and Castle 2013 and would have loved to get more sets from lines like that as a kid. But after 2013 those lines completely disappeared without a trace, and without any clear reason as to why they couldn't have continued. 

More often then not, it isn't that Castles cannot be popular among modern kids. Ninjas were not particularly popular in the early 2011s when Ninjago came out, nor are they particularly popular today, yet here we are, with Ninjago still running. It's that LEGO actually bothered to create a proper story for Ninjago in the form of a well written TV show with compelling characters, engaging world building, and interesting plots, and now the kids who watch that show want to buy all the sets. LEGO could have done the exact same thing with Castle, or Pirates, or Space, but they chose not to, not because those concepts don't have potential to be just as popular, but because LEGO are too comfortable in their own current success to actually want to bother with taking any risks. It's the same reason Disney declined so much in quality in terms of their movies, and now all they do is sequels and love action remakes of their old classics; It's because they are now a greedy corporation that only cares about profit and not about actually innovating and being creative. 

[Wolfpack]

13 hours ago, danth said:

Respectfully...this is a terrible thread. 

"Hey, people who like this thing I don't care about. Let us put you on trial, where you will be asked to justify liking the thing you like, and justify why you don't instead accept some different thing you don't like -- an insane question literally asked of nobody else. Then when you explain yourselves in full, we'll ignore most of what you said to focus only on what we think are your weakest justifications, and explain why you're wrong,."

Well written. This is the exact impression I got from this debate. We explained numerous times what we like and why we like it and still they are trying to force us to instead accept some different thing we do not like.

3 hours ago, MAB said:

Someone has an idea for unlicensed snake monsters, or sky pirates, or an ancient ship, or speeder bikes, or a whole city in one building, or mechs. What do they do, either create a whole new theme that needs advertising...

Yes that is exactly what I want and what I like! I want to see what they will come up with. I want to see the marketing, the advertising. I want to see the name of the theme, I want to see the logo, I want to see the designs, the colour scheme and of course I want to see what the minifigures will look like. I want to say Wow, this is such a fantastic creative idea by the design team.

And yes, I think Raven Knights Castle would be different from a Kraken Knights Castle. It would certainly be more different than one XY Star Wars thing from another XY Star Wars things from a few years ago. And even if they would magically be similar, it would still be something created by "my favourite artist" and not by Marvel or Disney. I do not care for their characters, I do not care for their stories. I do no want to pay more for the licence I do not care for and I do not want to support them. If I would care I would buy movies or books.

The question why I cannot make a Wolfpack boat myself is dishonest (Of course I can and I did). It is like asking Star Wars fans Why can't you use a bucket of nonlicenced grey bricks and build whatever you want? The debate is not about anyones ability to build stuff, but about what lego is offering to the kids and fans. With your logic we do not need licenced or nonlicenced or any themes at all. Lets just have lego selling only buckets of bricks and then the people use Rebricable for the things they like.

 

[danth]

On 3/15/2026 at 1:33 AM, Mylenium said:

The irony clearly is that people are willing to tie themselves to a certain style just because it's "classic" while objecting to other themes.

Sounds like you basically just said "it's hypocritical to like one thing while not liking some other thing." That's a wild take.

Are Star Wars fans hypocrites for not demanding the return of Classic Space? How dare they "tie themselves" to Star Wars while "objecting" to Classic Space, right?

16 hours ago, icm said:

I've been guilty of this myself, but I agree. AFOL insistence on returning to old-school throwback Classic Space, Blacktron, or 1989-era Pirates is ironic, because building remakes of old sets from those eras is, in spirit, very little different than a remake of a Star Wars set. At this point, the classic subthemes are in some ways their own IPs that must be adhered to in ways that limit blank-slate creativity.

So which AFOLs "insisted" on returning to old-school throwbacks? Lego decided to do those sets for their 90th anniversary. Fans of Classic themes bought them because we hadn't had Castle/Sci-Fi space themes for near a decade. 

You guys are seriously arguing that fans of Classic themes are hypocrites for liking/buying what they like. And not what they don't like. 

This thread is insane. 

Edited March 16 by danth

[icm]

1 hour ago, Wolfpack said:

Well written. This is the exact impression I got from this debate. We explained numerous times what we like and why we like it and still they are trying to force us to instead accept some different thing we do not like.

Yes that is exactly what I want and what I like! I want to see what they will come up with. I want to see the marketing, the advertising. I want to see the name of the theme, I want to see the logo, I want to see the designs, the colour scheme and of course I want to see what the minifigures will look like. I want to say Wow, this is such a fantastic creative idea by the design team.

And yes, I think Raven Knights Castle would be different from a Kraken Knights Castle. It would certainly be more different than one XY Star Wars thing from another XY Star Wars things from a few years ago. And even if they would magically be similar, it would still be something created by "my favourite artist" and not by Marvel or Disney. I do not care for their characters, I do not care for their stories. I do no want to pay more for the licence I do not care for and I do not want to support them. If I would care I would buy movies or books.

The question why I cannot make a Wolfpack boat myself is dishonest (Of course I can and I did). It is like asking Star Wars fans Why can't you use a bucket of nonlicenced grey bricks and build whatever you want? The debate is not about anyones ability to build stuff, but about what lego is offering to the kids and fans. With your logic we do not need licenced or nonlicenced or any themes at all. Lets just have lego selling only buckets of bricks and then the people use Rebricable for the things they like.

I'm not trying to force you to accept anything you don't like. I'm just saying that your reasoned answers to the OP's question in the first post don't draw as sharp a distinction between classic, unlicensed themes and modern, licensed sets and hybrid themes as you think they do. I'm fully onboard the train of wanting more creative, in-house, unlicensed themes and the revival of evergreen in-house Space, Castle, and Pirates themes. I just don't like it when people take that as a foundation to dish on the sets and themes available today and depreciate the very real creativity, craft, and care that real people put into making licensed themes. Far too often these threads devolve into mere license-bashing and unlicense-glazing, and that's a real disservice to the creatives at Lego and to the many very real people who, yes, got into Lego due to licenses and primarily engage with licensed sets. That's what I'm trying to counter.

Edited March 16 by icm

[danth]

25 minutes ago, icm said:

I'm not trying to force you to accept anything you don't like. I'm just saying that your reasoned answers to the OP's question in the first post don't draw as sharp a distinction between classic, unlicensed themes and modern, licensed sets and hybrid themes as you think they do. I'm fully onboard the train of wanting more creative, in-house, unlicensed themes and the revival of evergreen in-house Space, Castle, and Pirates themes. I just don't like it when people take that as a foundation to dish on the sets and themes available today and depreciate the very real creativity, craft, and care that real people put into making licensed themes. Far too often these threads devolve into mere license-bashing and unlicense-glazing, and that's a real disservice to the creatives at Lego and to the many very real people who, yes, got into Lego due to licenses and primarily engage with licensed sets. That's what I'm trying to counter.

So why do we even have this thread when we're just going to tell people that their reasons aren't good enough, and interpret their praise for sets they like as personal attacks against modern Lego employees/fans? 

And also I have to quote this again:

25 minutes ago, icm said:

Far too often these threads devolve into mere license-bashing and unlicense-glazing

YOU GUYS LITERALLY MADE A THREAD ASKING US WHY WE LIKE CLASSIC THEMES.

Edited March 16 by danth

[icm]

7 hours ago, Lego David said:

For me, original LEGO themes did not feel like they were just extended merchandise meant to prop up another existing popular IP; instead, they felt like an entire new world in of themselves. Original themes to me, were not just selling you toys; they were selling you an entire new world, an entire new story, and an entire new experience; similar to what you would get from those popular IPs themselves, only through the medium of bricks rather than of a movie or a TV show. Growing up with those themes, I grew attached to the worlds and characters in those themes just as much as those growing up with Star Wars do with the worlds and characters in that franchise. The characters in Bionicle, for instance, were my own heroes, similar to how someone growing up with Star Wars, theirs might be Luke Skywalker or so on. And you can see this clearly reflected in the older original themes as well: To the generation of the late 1990s and early 2000s, their hero was probably Johnny Thunder; to those of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was probably Captain Redbeard. 

LEGO used to thrive on creating their own unique worlds. They did not need to be propped up by the power of an existing IP, they already had their own worlds and stories! And that is precisely what drew me to LEGO. Because for me, I wasn't looking to buy toys based on an IP that already exists; I was looking for a new story, world, and experience that I wouldn't get elsewhere. That's why I found myself so drawn to themes like Bionicle and Hero Factory in particular, because of how unique they were; nobody was offering any experience quite like them anywhere else.

Now, onto the sets themselves: I have to be honest, Original Themes simply offer much better value for money, play value, and more creative designs. With licensed themes, the designers are forced to just accurately recreate the designs of the originals from the IPs, with no room to experiment by themselves, otherwise, people will not by the sets, because they are not accurate to the source material. When given full room to be creative and experiment, that is where LEGO truly shines. Restricting LEGO to just recreations of existing models, at that point LEGO no longer feels like a toy, but like a model (this is clearly shown nowdays in the 18+ sets). Whereas with original themes, you often got amazing creative color schemes, epic functions and play features, all at much better and affordable prices than most licensed sets. 

This creative process is clearly reflected also in the way those original designs frequently inspire far more MOCs from people than most licensed themes do. In my experience, most fans of licensed themes just like to get those sets as display models, but rarely if ever make their own MOCs out of them. Whereas literally search up MOCs based off any of the original themes, and you'll get tons of pictures, many of them built years, sometimes even decades after those sets came out! It still amazes me how many MOCs people still make to this day based on themes like Ice Planet 2002, Blacktron, and so on. Yet I don't personally see nearly as many MOCs based off Harry Potter, or DC or Marvel Super Heroes, and the ones that are made, again, tend to just be bigger recreations of existing scenes and vehicles from their respective IPs. This to me clearly speaks to the superiority in terms of creativity that Original Themes offer. 

5 hours ago, MAB said:

Indeed. That is why modern kid-aimed themes are the Classic themes of today. Anyone wanting remakes of their favourite themes from 40 years ago is no more imaginative than someone wanting licensed sets of their favourite movie. I grew up on books, movies and stories based on fantasy, castles, 70s space movies, westerns etc and classic themes were an extension of that although at the time I was just becoming too old to enjoy them as a kid. I don't think they were particularly imaginative, they were based on what kids were used to and knew how to play with, it was just not licensed. They were a reflection of the time.

And that doesn't mean children are not imaginative when they play out their own stories based on the licensed characters. Is there any difference when a kid role plays Luke Skywalker or Batman based on the character traits they know from movies or other media, vs role playing a generic pirate or forest dweller based on character traits after reading or watching media about Blackbeard or Robin Hood. Give the child a truly unknown character with no hint of a backstory and they have difficulty playing with it. 

4 hours ago, MAB said:

The minifigure (whether licensed or unlicensed), more than anything else tells you how to play with a set and what those parts with it should be assembled into even if you build something yourself.

If you don't think there's a huge Star Wars moccing community out there, I don't think you've been paying attention. There's plenty of mocs in the Star Wars setting that aren't just recreations of vehicles and settings seen on screen.

Speaking from my own experience and perceptions, the difference in sets that can be made is primarily due to the presence or absence of a license. The difference in imaginative play is primarily due to the presence or absence of named characters, whether or not those characters are licensed.

I think this is best illustrated by the unlicensed Adventurers and licensed Indiana Jones themes. For instance, everyone knows Johnny Thunder is basically an Indiana Jones ripoff. The substantive difference between Adventurers and Indiana Jones is that a Lego Indiana Jones theme is basically restricted to a narrow range of movie scenes that don't have too much Nazi or Commie hardware in them, so the world of Lego Indiana Jones that can be portrayed in marketing feels narrow and constricted. Johnny Thunder isn't bound by those restrictions, so he can go anywhere in the world on a variety of larger adventures that draw on inspiration from more than just Indiana Jones. As a child with, frankly, not that great of an imagination for coming up with distinct characters and stories, that did make a difference in the variety of stories I was willing to play out with Johnny Thunder. However, I didn't do any figbashing with my Adventurers minifigs or any of my other named characters, for that matter. Johnny Thunder was still Johnny Thunder, Ogel was still Ogel, Makuta was still Makuta, Darth Vader was still Darth Vader. I certainly didn't restrict myself to just re-enacting Star Wars scenes with my Star Wars characters, but for me the unlicensed named characters were just as pre-set in who they were as the licensed characters were. It was only with unlicensed, un-named minifigs and sets from Town, Castle, and Space that I mixed and matched minifig parts and came up with my own characters and my own builds (though they weren't very imaginative: my main OC was named Bob and his best friend was Nobody). From that perspective, there's only ONE mainline play theme today with unlicensed, un-named minifigs and a near-complete lack of story-driven content, and that's City.

So yes, we absolutely need more unlicensed playthemes. I'd argue that they not only need to be unlicensed, they need to be not story-driven at all! But that's an even taller order in the age of the Big Bang theme model.

On 3/14/2026 at 1:47 AM, Wolfpack said:

Ideas, imaganation, stories

Licenced themes have nothing of that

10 minutes ago, danth said:

So why do we even have this thread when we're just going to tell people that their reasons aren't good enough, and interpret their praise for sets they like as personal attacks against modern Lego employees/fans? 

@danth, that's the kind of thing I'm trying to counter.

Licensed themes do have ideas, imagination, stories. The employees who work on licensed themes do put a lot of creativity into them.

We can talk about how much we need more unlicensed themes without making it an either/or thing and bashing licensed themes with blanket statements that are demonstrably untrue.

That's not to say there isn't a lot of room for legitimate criticism of Lego's portfolio and Lego's development processes, especially when it comes to things like Vidiyo or Smart Play. 

I just try to appreciate the good things today while acknowledging the bad, and I try to appreciate the good things of the past without overlooking the bad.

It seems to me that most of the time these kinds of threads end up overlooking the good today while overplaying the bad, and overplaying the good things of the past while overlooking the bad. That's what I mean by "mere license-bashing and unlicense-glazing".

[Wolfpack]

19 minutes ago, icm said:

@danth, that's the kind of thing I'm trying to counter.

Licensed themes do have ideas, imagination, stories.

Yes, they have. The ideas, imagination and stories of J.K Rowling and George Lucas.

[icm]

And a fair amount of ideas and imagination in how the sets are made, which deserves to be recognized and not dismissed out of hand.

Edited March 16 by icm

[Paul B Technic]

If you gave someone a large tub with 10000 pieces from 1990 and another tub with 10000 random pieces from 2026, I am sure the tub from 1990 would produce more interesting and creative builds.