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

[Karalora]

7 hours 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? 

We have this thread because I, the OP (hi!) was curious about the "secret sauce" that made Classic themes preferred, and modern licensed themes not preferred, by many AFOLs who have been in the hobby a long time. The common refrain of "creativity/imagination" strikes me as not the whole story, because I can't tell what's stopping an experienced MOCer from exercising creativity and imagination with the pile of bricks in a licensed set the same way they would an unlicensed one, and if minifigs are the sticking point, BAM towers and CMFs waves are bounteous.

I accept that the rest of the story could be as simple as "I miss what I grew up with," but I hope not, because there's not much conversation to be had there.

I'm sorry if any of the ensuing discussion--from myself or anyone else--feels like an attack. I sure don't intend it that way.

[Karalora]

3 hours ago, Paul B Technic said:

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.

I'm curious as to why you think so. What makes 2026 parts less conducive to creativity?

[Paul B Technic]

1 hour ago, Karalora said:

I'm curious as to why you think so. What makes 2026 parts less conducive to creativity?

Because the parts are less generic and more designed for a specific purpose, this makes using them for other purposes harder. 

[Karalora]

2 minutes ago, Paul B Technic said:

Because the parts are less generic and more designed for a specific purpose, this makes using them for other purposes harder. 

Can you provide any specific examples?

[JesseNight]

20 hours ago, MAB said:

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.

I honestly did the same when building stuff as you describe here, and yes my stuff often looked like crap too. There were only 6 colors at the time, and even then there was never enough of a single color in my collection to make a build look good. And adding unicorn vomit under the hood was an idea I never came up with myself 

I never experienced the times before the minifig. My prime time was the mid 80s up to the early 90s. That means minifigs existed, but their identity was very limited compared to now: same smiley face and only limited amounts of torsos and colors. For some reason, the minifig just never appealed to me as a toy to play with, it felt way too limited compared to slightly larger Kenner action figures with better body proportions and knee joints. I only ever used minifigs on display pieces.

8 hours ago, Karalora said:

We have this thread because I, the OP (hi!) was curious about the "secret sauce" that made Classic themes preferred, and modern licensed themes not preferred, by many AFOLs who have been in the hobby a long time. The common refrain of "creativity/imagination" strikes me as not the whole story, because I can't tell what's stopping an experienced MOCer from exercising creativity and imagination with the pile of bricks in a licensed set the same way they would an unlicensed one...

I think opinions on this matter are easily influenced by our own nostalgic feelings towards the sets and themes we grew up with. While there may be exceptions, I think those will often have a special place in our hearts. I know that's definitely the case for me.
And let's not forget the sets we drooled over as kids that we would never have, and that may finally have become within reach as an AFOL with a job.

[MAB]

11 hours ago, Paul B Technic said:

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.

I think the opposite. The 1990s tub would produce a bigger build because modern parts are definitely smaller but there are many creative ways modern parts can be used. Obviously you still need a decent supply of larger bricks but in a collection of 10000 parts that should not be an issue.

[JesseNight]

7 hours ago, Karalora said:

Can you provide any specific examples?

I recognize the trend of what Paul is saying. This has been happening a lot longer, not just now.
For example, take this cockpit piece they introduced in 1992 (used in spaceships and possibly airplanes):

As 1 piece, it has only 1 purpose that I can think of.
Now if we look at spaceships in the years before, some had similar shaped fronts that were built out of smaller inverted wedge(s), layers of plates, and at least 4 small 2-studs wide panels. Obviously plates and panels can be used in a great many things. There's plenty more examples. Personally in this case, I see no need (and more disadvantage) to turning what used to be built into this single piece.

2 minutes ago, MAB said:

I think the opposite. The 1990s tub would produce a bigger build because modern parts are definitely smaller but there are many creative ways modern parts can be used. Obviously you still need a decent supply of larger bricks but in a collection of 10000 parts that should not be an issue.

I think those modern small pieces would allow for a much greater level of detail, that's for sure!

[danth]

18 hours ago, Karalora said:

The common refrain of "creativity/imagination" strikes me as not the whole story, because I can't tell what's stopping an experienced MOCer from exercising creativity and imagination with the pile of bricks in a licensed set the same way they would an unlicensed one, and if minifigs are the sticking point, BAM towers and CMFs waves are bounteous.

The thing is, the "creativity/imagination" thing is only one item in @SpacePolice89's original list, and I think it's a huge red herring, but unfortunately it's what everyone has glommed on to. Probably because it's the easiest to attack. Hence the description of this thread as an exercise in strawmanning. 

Regardless, if you don't think fans of Classic themes are making amazing MOCs with modern parts, a trip to Flickr can easily disabuse you of that notion. If you want to see some more mediocre MOCs, check my signature. We're doing it. 

But, frankly, MOCing is hard, and sometimes not fun. There are probably a handful of people on Earth that can make MOCs that are as beautiful, structurally sound, and functional as Icons sets like the new Galaxy Explorer and Lion Knight's Castle. Parts for MOCs are expensive, way more than $.10 a piece, especially if you're not in Europe (which has much better Bricklink stores). And you either have to have the parts in a sorted collection beforehand, or use Studio which has it's own learning curve and difficulties. 

So, in no way does MOCing replace being able to buy a build a set. Sets are cheaper, easier, less stressful, and designed by teams of professionals with access to resources that MOCers don't have.

Edited March 17 by danth

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, danth said:

But, frankly, MOCing is hard, and sometimes not fun. There are probably a handful of people on Earth that can make MOCs that are as beautiful, structurally sound, and functional as Icons sets like the new Galaxy Explorer and Lion Knight's Castle.

True.

MOCing includes so much more though. My own creations never ever even try to get anywhere close to such beauties. My own creations shine - only for me, because I can't do better. Or don't want to; having decided, on my own, to not wanting to go further. Not now, but maybe tomorrow? Or even in a minute? I simply enjoy the creation of my build, the process, the fun, the frustration, the challenge, the tries, the dismantling, the start from scratch, the notes I take, the joy when "making it". And when not, taking in the lessons learned. "Making it" is meeting my ever lowered goals, when starting out too high. And vice versa: When it flows, better than expected, raising the bar. My bar that is. I have so many.

Just my view on my MOCing.

All the best
Thorsten     

Edited March 17 by Toastie

[Johnny1360]

7 minutes ago, Toastie said:

True.

MOCing includes so much more though. My own creations never ever even try to get anywhere close to such beauties. My own creations shine - only for me, because I can't do better. Or don't want to; having decided, on my own, to not wanting to go further. Not now, but maybe tomorrow? Or even in a minute? I simply enjoy the creation of my build, the process, the fun, the frustration, the challenge, the tries, the dismantling, the start from scratch, the notes I take, the joy when "making it". And when not, taking in the lessons learned. "Making it" is meeting my ever lowered goals, when starting out too high. And vice versa: When it flows, better than expected, raising the bar. My bar that is. I have so many.

Just my view on my MOCing.

All the best
Thorsten     

This rings true for me as well and while I do have a well sorted collection to build from, I often just free build with a bin of clearance priced sets. For example, I have a bin with 4 or 5 HP sets that don't necessarily appeal to me but were on clearance, making them substantially less expensive. Nobody would look at these creations and even think of Harry Potter.

[icm]

19 hours ago, Paul B Technic said:

Because the parts are less generic and more designed for a specific purpose, this makes using them for other purposes harder. 

No, I'd go so far as to say this is objectively wrong.

Modern parts are designed for elemental shapes but not so much for specific purposes. A curved slope or wedge is designed to be a circular arc of a certain radius, or a slope of a certain angle, to fit into the Lego system. A bracket or modified brick is designed to accomplish a function of changing the stud direction in a way that cannot be accomplished with existing bricks. But the purpose or application of the brick is theme-agnostic. Modern parts can be used to build shapes in any thematic application you please, whether that's a spaceship, a castle, a pirate ship, a panda bear, or a Nightmare Shark Ship. Sure, the building process is more complex than simple brick-stacking, but it's incredibly versatile and can be used to build nearly anything.

The classic-era parts library had many large specialized parts that were designed for specific purposes and, as a result, were made of compound shapes that were incredibly hard to use for anything besides their intended purpose. Try using a raised baseplate with ramp as anything but a raised baseplate with ramp, a Big Ugly Rock Piece as anything but a Big Ugly Rock Piece, or an Adventurers rope bridge as anything but a big molded rope bridge. The classic era mostly relied on these large specialized parts to make shapes that couldn't be made with the basic bricks, plates, slopes, and brackets of the day, instead of building those shapes from scratch (versatile, smaller, parts) like is the general practice today. That made it easy to build big ships and castles fast for play, which would in turn make it easier to just sit down and build something fun from a vintage bucket of parts than from a modern bucket of parts, which is probably what you were trying to get at when you said a tub from 1990 with 10,000 random parts would produce more interesting and creative builds than a tub from 2025 with 10,000 random parts.

Edited March 17 by icm

[danth]

5 minutes ago, icm said:

Modern parts are designed for elemental shapes but not for specific purposes.

The classic-era parts library had many large specialized parts that were designed for specific purposes

I think this is just entirely your bias. You're cherry picking and then broadly applying your findings across entire eras. 

They still make big ugly rock pieces. This one is only a couple years old. There are also new little rock pieces that you can't really use for anything else. Try using this relatively new stair case as something else. 

I think there's a trend towards smaller pieces, which has upsides. I'd rather build a bridge then have it be one piece. But when building something large like a castle on a hill, using only small bricks instead of panels and BURPS seems tedious. Could be just me though. 

[icm]

2 minutes ago, danth said:

I think this is just entirely your bias. You're cherry picking and then broadly applying your findings across entire eras. 

They still make big ugly rock pieces. This one is only a couple years old. There are also new little rock pieces that you can't really use for anything else. Try using this relatively new stair case as something else. 

I think there's a trend towards smaller pieces, which has upsides. I'd rather build a bridge then have it be one piece. But when building something large like a castle on a hill, using only small bricks instead of panels and BURPS seems tedious. Could be just me though. 

It's not entirely my bias. Part and set designers have often talked in interviews about how they usually try to come up with a lot of uses for a part before approving it for production, and New Elementary does a good job examining new parts to show how they fit into the system. But I'm certainly not going to take the time to analyze this statistically.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, Johnny1360 said:

This rings true for me as well and while I do have a well sorted collection to build from, I often just free build with a bin of clearance priced sets. For example, I have a bin with 4 or 5 HP sets that don't necessarily appeal to me but were on clearance, making them substantially less expensive. Nobody would look at these creations and even think of Harry Potter.

Same here. Most of my Castle and LOTR builds are Star Wars sets with about 25% Harry Potter and sometimes Marvel.  They aren't Star Wars parts, they are LEGO parts. The bonus is the figures (and specific printed parts) are in such demand that once sold the bricks are close to free.

I don't care if people like my builds or whether they match up to those of people that do it for a living. I like mine as I like building them myself rather than following instructions. I'm more interested in the MO than the C. It is good to learn from other builds but even better to put it to use yourself.

My best recent Castle purchase was a second hand Daily Bugle. Missing all the figures and the taxi and about 20% of the build, but just £10. I already sold all the windows for more than that, so have loads of lovely grey bricks and a lot of tiles for flooring.

Edited March 17 by MAB

[Autumn]

On 3/16/2026 at 12:27 PM, MAB said:

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.

No? Lego space evolved over twenty years up until the late 90s, from Classic Space, Blacktron, M-tron, Spyrius, UFO, Insectoids. Even offshoots like Rock Raiders or Aquazone. Nobody's saying they have to only do Classic space. I'd love to see what a proper modern space theme similar to Ninjago or Dreamzz even. Be adventurous! Give us some starships, fighters, stations, crawlers, and bases with cool designs and play features! Visit colourful planets or stars! City Space is far too tame and plays it too safe. There's so much they could do outside the constraints of licensing with all the parts, colours and techniques that have been developed since then.

And you're right, Lego should evolve, because they've been churning out Star Wars for nearly thirty years now.

How about another analogy? You like a film director who once made some of your favourite movies and classics from a place of passion. Every one was unique and took told a different story with captivating characters. Now they do souless cinematic multiiverse movies and tv for Disney because that's where the money is. Maybe you'll get lucky to still see a decent original movie from them once a decade.

 

On 3/16/2026 at 12:37 AM, icm said:

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.

That is a good and more concise way of describing it and I share the same sentiment. I don't really have an inherent problem with licensing either. There can and should be space for both but the balance feels skewed towards licenses. I can still look at UCS models and be impressed, praise this, critique that.

  

On 3/15/2026 at 10:01 PM, Karalora said:

You know what? That's fair. I'm certainly not okay with the society-wide trend whereby children's (and everyone else's) imagination is funneled toward just remixing a handful of high-profile franchises owned by two or three giant media companies. Star Wars (the go-to example, it seems) would be huge with or without LEGO, but LEGO would suffer to some extent without the Star Wars license, and that leaves less room in the world for a science-fiction concept that isn't Star Wars, and I don't think that's healthy. Substitute whatever license and corresponding genre you like for the same argument. The world needs variety, and the more things are based directly on other things, the less variety there is.

This is how it seems with almost everything nowadays, yeah. It's all one big conglomerate with almost no room for independent or original ideas anymore. Just do what's always been done because it's been proven to make money. I can definitely agree that Lego wouldn't fare well without Star Wars. Even if Bionicle saved Lego, Star Wars keeps them afloat. I just wish they capitalised on that more outside of profits and staying in business and instead fund the creativity of more artists, designers and storytellers. Maybe they're just too big to do things how they used to with one-offs or subthemes. Nowadays it seems you need something that has longevity that will sustain popularity for years.

Edited March 18 by Autumn

[Karalora]

5 hours ago, danth said:

The thing is, the "creativity/imagination" thing is only one item in @SpacePolice89's original list, and I think it's a huge red herring, but unfortunately it's what everyone has glommed on to. Probably because it's the easiest to attack. Hence the description of this thread as an exercise in strawmanning. 

It's only one item on one person's list, but it's the one that seems to be brought up the most in discussions of this type.

[Devsan]

Some points are going to be a bit over the place since what we tend to call classic theme can span from the beginning of the Town theme in the 60s and at the latest it starts more in the late 70’s when more of the themes started to emerge and goes up to 2010’s or so. That’s a decent hunk of time! And the nature of the themes changed as one can imagine.

So for example open endedness. How open themes were shifted. It starts out with “Here’s some dudes in space… you do the rest,” To “Here’s some factions in castle, you figure out the rest,” by the time Pirates hit some mini-figures do have canon names and super loose and simple personalities and factions with canonical antagonistic relationships.

Themes get more specific, like Space Police are clearly police in space, Spyrius are clearly doing spy stuff. It still leans towards the open ended, but there is a lot more scaffolding. You get Aquazone stuff were clearly every going going after the crystals.

And then we hit the 2000’s and well most themes are still relatively loosely defined, all things considered, there’s no easy accuses to set moments players are expected to be recreating, Bionical is happening and is going all in on lore and story. Which has come to be how most mini-figure based themes of today operate. In that sense the in-hose theme and the out of house ones can involve a clear cross over in expected play-pattern. That of following the story and using toys to play through given moments, and do variation on the existing story moments.

Is this the death of pushing the person playing to be imaginative, or is it just providing even greater scaffolding to help them? I don’t have the expertise to say. Still I do understand feeling something is lost without those more open ended themes, outside of City still holding the flame.

As for other reasons, with older themes being mostly consigned to stuff like a single big set, that’s not going to be a great replacement for everyone. Even as adults not everyone can afford those big old ships and castles and such. Fuller waves with many sets also let the idea be fleshed out more. And means even if you can’t justify getting, say, the big Pirates ship maybe you can get like the small raft. You still get some Pirates themed things since you like Pirates and you don’t break the bank. Kind of gone now. I can easily get why that’s a bummer.

And finally there’s just the… feeling of everything undergoing homogenization as stuff like Fortnight, a lot of Magic, and others are pulling us into “instead of focusing on the own unique stuff, we’re going to pull on per-existing pop culture because that make number goes up” and the feeling we’re moving to the future of Ready Player One. Which I thought we mostly agreed was a very sad future.

[Wolfpack]

8 hours ago, icm said:

It's not entirely my bias. Part and set designers have often talked in interviews about how they usually try to come up with a lot of uses for a part before approving it for production, and New Elementary does a good job examining new parts to show how they fit into the system. But I'm certainly not going to take the time to analyze this statistically.

This was even more true in 1990. The designers had a rule that each piece should have been useful for more themes and they had to present a planned use for at least ten years.

8 hours ago, danth said:

I think this is just entirely your bias. You're cherry picking and then broadly applying your findings across entire eras. 

They still make big ugly rock pieces. This one is only a couple years old. There are also new little rock pieces that you can't really use for anything else. Try using this relatively new stair case as something else.

There were no ugly rock pieces in 1990!

[MAB]

7 hours ago, Autumn said:

This is how it seems with almost everything nowadays, yeah. It's all one big conglomerate with almost no room for independent or original ideas anymore. 

LEGO is a conglomerate too. They make bricks but they also run entertainment centres, they license their name for other entertainment venues, they co-produce movies and TV, they own various educational websites, they run retail stores, they run a secondary market website, they are involved in F1 Academy, they license their name and intellectual property for many products covering clothes, stationery,  homewares, ...

Their "independent ideas" are just part of the marketing of their brand. They make sets based on Warner Bros movies, but Warner make movies based on LEGO's properties. LEGO has chosen to be part of that system, and that is probably part of the reason they now promote a few big in-house IPs rather than many smaller, short-lived ones. And look what it has done to their popularity and finances. There is room for original ideas, so long as that idea can become one of those big in-house IPs. In that sense, it is difficult to call them unlicensed as LEGO is looking to license them to other companies.

[Mylenium]

I'm to lazy to read everything that has accumulated the last three days, but suffice it to say that some comments regarding classic themes, creativity and so on do not feel very founded in reality. It seems we're still debating nostalgia mostly.

1 hour ago, MAB said:

LEGO has chosen to be part of that system, and that is probably part of the reason they now promote a few big in-house IPs rather than many smaller, short-lived ones. And look what it has done to their popularity and finances. There is room for original ideas, so long as that idea can become one of those big in-house IPs. In that sense, it is difficult to call them unlicensed as LEGO is looking to license them to other companies.

There is some truth to that, but I would not agree that they're hellbent on only fostering big IPs that then can become money printing licenses. In fact I can't think of much aside from Ninjago that would have a meaningful cultural or financial impact in that regard. All too often they're victims of their own ineptitude and fail at promoting new themes even in their own little bubble world. I guess that could be a point in itself. LEGO's reliance on existing IPs has evolved to a point where they're really dependent in an almost unhealthy way. They couldn't sell half as much without licenses and all the Classic Space revivals in the world couldn't generate even a fraction of that revenue...

Mylenium

[danth]

12 hours ago, Autumn said:

No? Lego space evolved over twenty years up until the late 90s, from Classic Space, Blacktron, M-tron, Spyrius, UFO, Insectoids. Even offshoots like Rock Raiders or Aquazone. Nobody's saying they have to only do Classic space. I'd love to see what a proper modern space theme similar to Ninjago or Dreamzz even. Be adventurous! Give us some starships, fighters, stations, crawlers, and bases with cool designs and play features! Visit colourful planets or stars! City Space is far too tame and plays it too safe. There's so much they could do outside the constraints of licensing with all the parts, colours and techniques that have been developed since then.

And you're right, Lego should evolve, because they've been churning out Star Wars for nearly thirty years now.

How about another analogy? You like a film director who once made some of your favourite movies and classics from a place of passion. Every one was unique and took told a different story with captivating characters. Now they do souless cinematic multiiverse movies and tv for Disney because that's where the money is. Maybe you'll get lucky to still see a decent original movie from them once a decade.

This is a great response!

Which is why it was ignored be the person you were talking to. You need to make weaker arguments if you want the classic-bashers to respond. 

3 hours ago, Mylenium said:

some comments regarding classic themes, creativity and so on do not feel very founded in reality. It seems we're still debating nostalgia mostly.

It's all nostalgia! Star Wars -- from the 1970's. Harry Potter? From the 90s, with the last movie made 15 years ago. Jurassic Park? 1993.

A lot of people with an axe to grind against classic themes (not saying you) like to use weaponized nostalgia only against classic themes, while ignoring that it applies to licensed themes the just as well. 

[MAB]

4 hours ago, Mylenium said:

There is some truth to that, but I would not agree that they're hellbent on only fostering big IPs that then can become money printing licenses. In fact I can't think of much aside from Ninjago that would have a meaningful cultural or financial impact in that regard. All too often they're victims of their own ineptitude and fail at promoting new themes even in their own little bubble world. I guess that could be a point in itself. LEGO's reliance on existing IPs has evolved to a point where they're really dependent in an almost unhealthy way. They couldn't sell half as much without licenses and all the Classic Space revivals in the world couldn't generate even a fraction of that revenue...

 

There are loads of products where LEGO has licensed City designs to another company to produce notebooks and pencils, curtains, bedcovers, lampshades, rugs, clothes, pyjamas, etc. for sale outside of their own retail space. 

To sell a load of non-LEGO merchandise based on the themes, I imagine the theme has to be really popular (like Ninjago or City). I doubt that other companies would be interested in making non-LEGO products for the equivalent of Galaxy Squad or Pharoah's Quest when they know it is going to be a small theme that lasts a year or two.  And to be a big long running theme, I guess they need a lot of diversity in the sets and storylines in the theme. Something like Castle, Pirates or Classic Space might work for a few episodes of a TV show to get it wider know but soon become boring as they are quite narrow in scope. 

As to LEGO's reliance on existing IPs, one person's unhealthy is another person's healthy. If LEGO make more money from doing it and the other company makes more money from doing it, it is a healthy relationship for them. It is positive for the people that like that IP. If the other property suddenly becomes toxic, LEGO has enough other relationships that it will presumably survive just fine. The big partner - Disney - itself is fairly kid friendly in its output so is unlikely to be a problem. There was that campaign with Shell that caused the anti-LEGO Greenpeace adverts but LEGO managed to make it look like they were the good guys ending the partnership (although they just let it end normally and didn't renew it). And they now produce even more racing cars covered in oil company logos than before!

 

[danth]

51 minutes ago, MAB said:

To sell a load of non-LEGO merchandise based on the themes, I imagine the theme has to be really popular (like Ninjago or City). I doubt that other companies would be interested in making non-LEGO products for the equivalent of Galaxy Squad or Pharoah's Quest when they know it is going to be a small theme that lasts a year or two.

One thing I'll point out is that Lego has recently (in the last few years) sold (or licensed) Classic Space plushies, Classic Space flashlight keychains, Classic Space puzzles (multiple), Classic Space gift wrap and stationary (at Target), and now has a Space Coaster ride at their theme parks featuring Classic Space and other Space themes. 

They're also selling an upscaled Classic Space minifigure and using new colors of Classic Space minifigs to sell other sets like the Vending Machine.

So Lego knows the selling power and iconic popularity of their own classic themes, especially the Classic Space minifig, but for some reason really doesn't want to sell them in Space sets other than the Galaxy Explorer.

8 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

There were no ugly rock pieces in 1990!

Good point!

Edited March 18 by danth

[Murdoch17]

2 hours ago, danth said:

It's all nostalgia! Star Wars -- from the 1970's. Harry Potter? From the 90s, with the last movie made 15 years ago. Jurassic Park? 1993.

A lot of people with an axe to grind against classic themes (not saying you) like to use weaponized nostalgia only against classic themes, while ignoring that it applies to licensed themes the just as well. 

Last I checked, they're still making new Star Wars stuff (Mando movie coming out in May, and tv shows galore!), and the same goes for Jurassic Park / World, while HP is getting a new upcoming TV show reboot and has spin off movies as well. Also, the HP films started in 2001. (The books are a bit older, but Lego is not licensing those.)

Just saying!

Edited March 18 by Murdoch17

[icm]

9 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

This was even more true in 1990. The designers had a rule that each piece should have been useful for more themes and they had to present a planned use for at least ten years.

Was it? The proliferation of large special pieces accelerating in the 1990s into the 2000s nearly ruined the company. I'm not going to take the time to do a census of the parts, but I doubt that most of the large specialized pieces introduced in the 1990s were used over a ten-year span.