Too much vehicle focus?

[crossmr]

Maybe vehicles are just really easy, but do the official lines just have way too much vehicle focus?

I just took a gander through the official lego site catalog and of the current city line, it's like 1 main building for the theme and then half a dozen different vehicle sets. Does lego have something against mid-size or auxiliary buildings? We can make our own, but it would be nice to have some officially designed ones to fit with existing stuff.

[lightningtiger]

The Lego City is mainly targeted at children who play with cars and trucks, plus like playing cops and robbers......it's pretty old school thinking though.

We as AFOL's are trying to change their mind on this issue.

[Robert8]

They increase playability.

But I agree that sometimes it's just too much.

[LAKAbricks]

As an AFOL who has never been too crazy about cars, I agree. I also miss the good ol' days when LEGO Town included at least one residential building as well as a police station and a fire station (!), as well as other buildings. That being said, the last five years or so we have actually seen quite a number of buildings in LEGO CIty, though mainly pizzerias and bike shops not least because of City Corner/Town Square/City Square. Some of the buildings might need a refurbishment/MOD to function as a regular city building. E.g. 60009 Helicopter Arrest could easily work as an auto repair shop.

Otherwise we have to turn to Creator which gives us more buildings, even a couple per year. And so far, no police or fire station (except for the now Classic modular Fire Brigade).

[crossmr]

Yeah some of the buildings I've seen have not really been "playable" buildings in terms of city stuff. Like the fire set that has the burned out building, or the small shack in one of the bayou arrest scenes or that kind of thing. Creator has the 3 in 1, which I guess if you bought 3, you have 3 houses at least. The modular buildings I don't count as those aren't really fitting in price wise to the rest of the stuff. My daughter liked the Coast guard theme, which we have most of. The helicopter with the lift is her favorite, but building wise I've been supplementing with Oxford's city/Sweet line.I'd like to see Lego have some more playable affordable building stuff. Houses, service shops, and the like.

[Still Raindrop]

I just wish that the vehicles were done a little differently. They still often use the wheels that stick out too much for small cars, for example. The colors are also frustrating, since most cars are red, yellow, or white, and the base pieces are usually dark bluish gray. Even when they make the occasional differently-colored car, like they did this year, they tend to use things like white roofs still.

So, I suppose all that is to say that it's not the fact that there are lots of vehicles that bothers me--it's that, for cars at least, things get repetitive. I kind of like that Creator is the main source of new buildings, actually, so I don't mind as much that City is mostly vehicles.

(I also wouldn't say no to a theme of minifigure-scaled classic cars).

[Legotom]

There are a LOT of vehicles. But regrettably the users of this four are NOT the target audience of Lego City. U.S. Buying these sets is a nice bonus as far as TLG is concerned. The main audience is boys age 5-10 or so, and they want lots of vehicles, and lots of fire and police. It has changed a lot since the early 90s when I was that age and there were loads of civilan buildings. But as has been said the creator line now sells houses, several different ones a year. And these are minifigure size and can fit in with the city theme.

It is interesting though to compare City to Friends. Heart lake city has loads of cool buildings and things. Different target audience. I know people argue that city should have this, and friends is unnecessary or sexist, but TLG is now the most successful toy company in the world, and have very very good market research. And that seems to be what people (or at least the people who buy the most Lego, kids) want.

[crossmr]

My daughter has only one Friends set that has the new figure in it. It was one of the small animal sets. I got her a couple of the other small animal sets, that just had animals. She sort of likes the figure, but it gets played with the least. At first she seemed to like it a lot but when she realized she couldn't put them in the car, or sit them on the horse, or that kind of thing it has started sitting on the shelf while she plays with other figures. There are some interesting sets in it, we just can't get over the figures. I know it's an old complaint at this point, but really..what were they thinking?

If anyone is interested, I could upload the instructions for this one: http://imgur.com/a/4z4pd my daughter loves it, and it should be more or less rebrickable in Lego.

[edit]fixed link something was wrong with it

Edited July 12, 2015 by crossmr

[Ardelon]

I too am put off by vehicles crowding out buildings. Even when I was a kid, I wasnt really a car fan and I preferred buildings, where much more stories and stuff could happen. I guess that TLGs market research says that kids like I was are in the minority. But I do agree with Iaka above that it seems to be getting better. Lets hope the trend continues.

[Venunder]

I think the answer to this is that TLG are expecting people to buy a combination of City, Creator, and Friends series sets to build the towns and villages that we want.

Rather than people only buying City sets.

But having said that.... I think there are too many vehicles and particularly helicopters, police and fire vehicles in the City Theme.

In reality here in the UK most cities have maybe one or two helicopters flying over them each week. Not 5 or 6 each day. Most towns probably see a helicopter once per month or less.

Police and Fire vehicles are probably outnumbered by the number of ambulances or paramedic response cars on the roads each day.

Try and find a policeman when you want one......almost impossible sometimes.

I have yet to see a burglar or thief who wears the Lego uniform. :)

[THERIZE]

As an AFOL who has never been too crazy about cars, I agree. I also miss the good ol' days when LEGO Town included at least one residential building as well as a police station and a fire station (!), as well as other buildings. That being said, the last five years or so we have actually seen quite a number of buildings in LEGO CIty, though mainly pizzerias and bike shops

who doesn't want pizza?! Everybody loves pizzas!

[Agent 86]

I'd like to see more buildings of all shapes and sizes and purposes, but I understand why Lego make so many vehicles.

Even as child, I rarely had enough pocket money for anything except a vehicle, so I had a bunch of vehicles, but very few buildings. I had so many planes, helicopters, etc for my airport that I could barely fit them all on the runway!

I hope that Lego does make more Creator buildings like the Bike Shop and Café. They could even do one which came with three different "signs" for police, fire and hospital.

[Chilis]

With a massive Lego collection in my own childhood back in the 80s I remember I missed more buildings. Not only the police- and firestations. Thankfully TLG have launched the modular series the past years and added more buildings to the town/layout. (It`s never too late ;o))

[LukeWarmTea]

Friends has a fantastic range of playable buildings - Creator houses are great, but for a KFOL I'd go with a Friends set. You can fit your hand in better! Plus all the accessories make it a whole play experience.

My KFOL is a tom boy and has always wanted "boy sets" but, looking at what gets played with VS deconstructed, we don't have any City sets left entirely intact. The tow truck lasted a bit, and ambulance, but everything else is kaput! I blame the small 'mini build' style, you get bits and bobs (plus a vehicle) instead of a structure. Compare that to Heartlake High (sans basketball hoop!) Olivia's House and Sunshine Ranch. Sure they're been modified, but they are still standing!

[Brick Car]

l (as a car fanatic) like the vehicle focus of the group but there are buildings in the creator and archutecture theme(non for minifig in the latest).

[Vindicare]

Definitely overboard with the vehicles. My biggest gripe with vehicles at the moment is with 60097 City Square. It really didn't need to come with a helicopter or flatbed tow truck. We've gotten more than enough of both in just the last few years. I could even do with the tram, as I have 8404 Public Transport Station. All those unneccessary vehicles do is drive up the already high price.

[ilikeboomerang1]

I actually think it was good to include the NEWS helicopter. The last one, I think was a Town Jr. set, so it's always good for me to get something not like that.

[BlockLogo]

I'm fine with getting the buildings from other themes like Creator and to a lesser extend Friends and Juniors, and I wouldn't mind the vehicle focus in City if they were done a little better. Especially the huge, wide tires that are being used nowadays look pretty poor. It's not too bad on the bigger 6-wides, but on the small 4-wide cars they just stick out so much and look pretty bad.

I think the amount and quality of Creator buildings is fine. City has been around for 10 years and it's always been this way, a police station and/or fire station every year, and one or two other larger structures like farm/garage/mine/train station/hospital/construction site per year. Though I guess this last year the focus in most of those bigger sets was more on vehicles and less on buidlings, like the swamp police precinct hardly had any structure but included three vehicles and a piece of play-featured terrain, and the same for the crooks hideout, demolition site, deep sea base, etc.

[MGCJerry]

Definitely agree on the vehicles vs buildings, but I kind of understand why. Even as a kid, I'd love buildings but they were mostly always outside our price range and even then lacked the necessary amenities and were too small for my play. My smallest houses were at least 192 sq studs (8 wide by 24 long 'mobile home'). Because of this, any vehicles I built were large and had living quarters 'built-in' in the vehicle. This caused me to build very FEW large vehicles and tiny cities/towns (4 baseplats).

Very few sets survived beyond a couple months. My mom usually got fairly upset when I broke down a model and added it to my collection. I tend to keep sets together as an adult, but even then I cannot get passed the minimally playable buildings. The modular buildings seem a lot more functional to me but I don't own or have built any.

Edited August 12, 2015 by MGCJerry

[Naijel]

As an AFOL who has never been too crazy about cars, I agree. I also miss the good ol' days when LEGO Town included at least one residential building as well as a police station and a fire station (!), as well as other buildings. That being said, the last five years or so we have actually seen quite a number of buildings in LEGO CIty, though mainly pizzerias and bike shops not least because of City Corner/Town Square/City Square. Some of the buildings might need a refurbishment/MOD to function as a regular city building. E.g. 60009 Helicopter Arrest could easily work as an auto repair shop.

Otherwise we have to turn to Creator which gives us more buildings, even a couple per year. And so far, no police or fire station (except for the now Classic modular Fire Brigade).

I for one am SO sick of seeing one pizzeria after another. Friends have a little one now. I mean I know pizza is well suited to a 2x2 round tile but enough already! Bike shops too. They've been doing both of these over and over for decades. I understand and like nostalgia but it's ridiculous.

There were plenty of auto repair themed sets when I was young but they seem rarer these days. Same with gas/petrol stations.

[Arctic_Ace]

I think there are way too many vehicles in LEGO City. And where do all those minifigures live if there are not a lot of buildings or houses?

[GallardoLU]

the problem, (and maybe its been brought up already) is that City theme is also sub themed; Police, Fire, Rescue, camping, boating, and so on. so for Police and Fire, buildings are hard to incorporate without going big, but that is taken by the police station or fire stations. rescue too has that issue with hospitals taking the large set its hard to fit a home rescue into the yearly line. Then there is the outdoors sub themes, these have almost no buildings at all, and wind up being various vehicles and landscape components. what we need is a "Business" theme (Lego City Business, that actually sounds pretty good to me) this could easily be an assortment of sets ranging from lemonade stands to full stores, and all things in between. it wouldn't be hard to keep the theme rolling for a few years either with the large variance in specialty shops that could be done.

now... that all said I'm a car guy, and I rarely buy sets that don't connect with that some how, so short of tune shops or auto parts stores I probably wouldn't be buying much from this proposed theme.

[robbzy88]

I'm a big car guy in real life, Being an ex-mechanic I can appreciate vehicles more than most people, But I do share the feeling alot of people have here, The wheels sticking out on cars looks silly and very childish especially when put near a modular building for example as they appear more grown up and dare I say true to life.

However and I've felt this since coming back from my dark ages there are far too many vehicles and not enough buildings that would perfectly accompany them.

[LAKAbricks]

I think there are way too many vehicles in LEGO City. And where do all those minifigures live if there are not a lot of buildings or houses?

In the pizzeria of the 7641 City Corner there is an empty attic/loft which I have MOD'ed into a small flat. It solves the housing problem for at least one minifig, though hundreds of other minifigs are waiting for a home. I have other plans of this kind for other buildings, and furthermore I am going to MOC some buildings with homes too.

[TheLegoPerson9]

Like others who posted, I am too a car guy and I love it when they put out a great set with good vehicles in it. However, I do thing some buildings should be part of the City theme. Maybe nothing TOO big like the Police/Fire Station, but decently sized and decently prized. Although, I would imagine any building in the City like would be more focused on the playing side because of the general target audience for the theme.