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Is LEGO entering a Dark Age - or am I?

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Personally I think LEGO has been on the uprise since the late 2000s when they pulled themselves out of that weak spot they were in. Now in the last RECENT years the themes haven't appealed to me much - Super Heroes, Nexo Knights, Ninjago, etc - but if I was a kid I'd probably think they were super cool. Like a lot of AFOL here I like to create historical LEGO and with Pirates III leaving shelves in 2015 (kicking myself for not grabbing anything then!) and Castle effectively combining with Space for Nexo Knights that's going on strong for a third year now, it can feel a bit lacking in variety that appeals to me. But I just subside by getting what I like secondhand, and some of the new stuff has had great boons. Super Heroes has provided a PLETHORA of diverse faces in fleshie colors which has allowed me to create characters that even 5 years ago wouldn't have been possible. Star Wars is as strong as always too and I've loved them ever since it started back in 1999. I do hope LEGO retires Ninjago and Nexo Knights sooner than later so new stuff can take their place, because boy do I miss me a traditional Space/Castle line, but I wouldn't call this a dark age.

 

Edit: I think the real funny thing is if the damn Disney/Friends/Elves line didn't use those darn Mini Dolls, I'd probably be most interested in them right now! SO many unique parts in unusual colors always makes me giddy and I love minidoll hairs and accesories.... just hate that they're otherwise not really customizeable like minifigs are. Or compatible with minifigs. Gaaaah!

Edited by CappnRob

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2 hours ago, anothergol said:

but did they ask for those sets? (or were they gifts?)

 

Ha - good question! The boat (coast guard) and plane (recent blue passenger plane) were bought for them by their parents at their request. 

 

The two trains they have (60051 passenger train and 60052 cargo train) were bought for them by me for Christmas after I saw them playing with a few of my train sets. I must admit I was also shamelessly trying to get them into Lego trains but they do genuinely seem to enjoy them.

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4 hours ago, CappnRob said:

I do hope LEGO retires Ninjago and Nexo Knights sooner than later

with a movie just out, I really can't imagine Ninjago going.

I'm not into Ninjago, haven't seen the movie but I hate the show as much as I hate that horrible 3D & the backgrounds that don't look Lego at all (is it really that much harder to animate like Lego movies?), BUT
-I can imagine kids being into it. When I was a kid, my minifigs were often ninja's (using the black hoods from the Castle theme). But then again.. ninja's were a thing in the 80's.
-it recently gave us 2 of the best sets, with Ninjago city & the boat. Regardless of the show, they're pretty amazing.

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Yeah the boat is delightful (and not gimmicky too) and the city corner blew my mind. Still, Ninjago is like 7 years old now, its kinda nuts how long its endured lol.

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On 10/23/2017 at 8:29 AM, anothergol said:

It's really when those licenses were around that Lego should have tried their luck with that horrible Nexo Knights. Because yeah, LOTR was pretty much a castle theme, and a good one. And today there's nothing remotely close to a castle theme.

What about Elves? Despite having different figures, as far as builds are concerned you're making a lot of the same type of stuff you'd see in a traditional Castle theme, and often with a much greater level of detail. I can understand Castle fans not liking it for one reason or another, but "nothing remotely close" is probably overstating things — even without touching on the number of castle-ish builds in other themes like Disney, Minecraft, and Ninjago.

In general, I think the hate for Nexo Knights remains overblown. It's not likely to stick around beyond next year, the way I see it, and other classic themes like Space and Pirates have been through much longer hiatuses than that (and in the case of Pirates, with far fewer themes exploring similar subject matter in the intervening time). I'm not saying there shouldn't be any sense of longing or disappointment, but the way so many Castle fans talk about it you'd think LEGO had put out a press release with the headline "Sorry, AFOLs, the classic themes are never coming back".

As for the City theme's popularity, some of it comes down to age range. City and Friends are aimed at a young-ish 5+ age group that's still fascinated with the world around them. Familiarity appeals to them, and the opportunity to shrink that familiar world down to a smaller scale and manipulate it to their liking satisfies most of the need they have for imagination or novelty. Honestly, that kind of familiarity is "boring" to a fan of themes like Castle, Pirates, or Space the same way that those other classic themes might be "boring" to fans of Ninjago or Nexo Knights, which take one step further away from the familiarity of the real world by juxtaposing familiar tropes and ideas in ways they wouldn't ordinarily go together in real life or traditional storytelling genres.

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7 hours ago, Aanchir said:

What about Elves?

I think it's not bad, but it doesn't try to hide its target. It's a bit too colorful and the architecture doesn't try to make sense. But yeah as a castle theme for girls, it works.

 

7 hours ago, Aanchir said:

As for the City theme's popularity, some of it comes down to age range. City and Friends are aimed at a young-ish 5+ age group that's still fascinated with the world around them. Familiarity appeals to them, and the opportunity to shrink that familiar world down to a smaller scale and manipulate it to their liking satisfies most of the need they have for imagination or novelty

Yeah perhaps. Although, ironically, Lego Technic is also about existing vehicles, and it's totally at the opposite in the age range.

I would love to like Technic, especially the robotics, but I find it equally boring, because too complex. It looks like another world of Lego that will never really merge with the other. I admire all the work in making engines work & all of that, I even think cool Technic MOCs rarely get the attention they deserve, but I don't know, it bores me. Perhaps because stuff made out of beams & colorful pins looks less good, or it's because it's always existing vehicles.

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Kids are incredibly impressionable. I'm pretty sure that they only like 2 things:

1. what someone else has
2. what someone else says is cool (that also includes products with media & other advertisements)

"I don't want peanut butter sandwiches for lunch any more. Timmy has honey on his!"

 

Actually, you know what, adults are like that too, except they'll also sometimes dislike something for those same reasons.

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On 10/23/2017 at 7:33 PM, anothergol said:

I hate the show as much as I hate that horrible 3D & the backgrounds that don't look Lego at all (is it really that much harder to animate like Lego movies?)

The budget for a TV show is always smaller than the one for a theatrical movie. They can't put the level of art style and animation that the lego movies have in the show because they don't have that many budget, and make the background non-lego is, of course, less expansive 

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7 hours ago, Ronan54 said:

The budget for a TV show is always smaller than the one for a theatrical movie. They can't put the level of art style and animation that the lego movies have in the show because they don't have that many budget, and make the background non-lego is, of course, less expansive 

It's still IMHO less time spent, because it's only time to build with fake bricks, but zero time modelling, texturing, etc. The only reason for existing shows to be less expensive is probably that you can easily find artists out of 3D schools that will easily fit in a team, whereas doing what was done in the movies required new talent & research. But now that Lego movies have proven not to be that much successful (anymore), it's talent (& tools) in the wild that'd better be used in shows (unless they're still making movies). In any case, tools & knowledge can still be recycled into shows.

Edited by anothergol

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1 hour ago, anothergol said:

It's still IMHO less time spent, because it's only time to build with fake bricks, but zero time modelling, texturing, etc. The only reason for existing shows to be less expensive is probably that you can easily find artists out of 3D schools that will easily fit in a team, whereas doing what was done in the movies required new talent & research. But now that Lego movies have proven not to be that much successful (anymore), it's talent (& tools) in the wild that'd better be used in shows (unless they're still making movies). In any case, tools & knowledge can still be recycled into shows.

The tools and talents that have been used in the lego shows aren't the same ones as in the movies. The animation studio for the lego movies is WAG (Warner Animation Group) while the animation studio for the Ninjago TV show was (for its first 10 seasons) Wil Film Aps and today is DHX Media. It is obvious that a small animation studio like Wil Film or DHX will have less budget than a masive one like WAG. In the other hand, the 3D animation is already very expansive (not for nothing most of the shows based on 3D animated movies that Disney produces are in 2D rather than in 3D) and make the graphics and backgrounds look like 100% lego bricks in the TV show would be a big risk for the studio

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I am glad I am not the only one who thinks so... Everytime I walk into a LEGO store, I just don't find anything appealing to me. That is why I stopped buying the new sets, and now I focus mostly on older ones.

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3 hours ago, midelburgo said:

I expect Lego will be sold to Disney any day now...

Hey, that is actually quite a big possibility... but let's hope it doesn't happen.

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Wow, there is much said in this post.

Several thoughts that come to my mind on the subject:

-          We the AFOLs are nothing but a little part of the LEGO market.

-          Today Kids’ tastes differ a lot of ours: we belong to different generations, or even historical/social periods!

-          Our classic-styled themes (Pirates, Classic Castle, Space, Wild West…) won’t come back in the short term nor the middle term.

-          LEGO is also an expression of the mainstream hobbies and topics of today: it goes along with the current movies, cartoons, videogames, and sci-fi stuff that is so successful right now.

So, being honest I don’t like Ninjago, the licenses, Nexo Knights, etc. I’m not interested in 80% of Lego products (except City and something more) but I can understand perfectly the reasons because I don’t like them.

I keep on my classic stuff and that’s all. Probably a short Pirates/Castle/West wave will come in the following years, like they did in 2009, 2010, 2013, 2015… That will be amazing news, I will be so happy and buy some sets, but we can’t expect more than that.

And look, this is not a pessimistic post. It’s just common sense and adaptation to reality.

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2 hours ago, Captain Fortune said:

Wow, there is much said in this post.

Several thoughts that come to my mind on the subject:

-          We the AFOLs are nothing but a little part of the LEGO market.

-          Today Kids’ tastes differ a lot of ours: we belong to different generations, or even historical/social periods!

-          Our classic-styled themes (Pirates, Classic Castle, Space, Wild West…) won’t come back in the short term nor the middle term.

-          LEGO is also an expression of the mainstream hobbies and topics of today: it goes along with the current movies, cartoons, videogames, and sci-fi stuff that is so successful right now.

So, being honest I don’t like Ninjago, the licenses, Nexo Knights, etc. I’m not interested in 80% of Lego products (except City and something more) but I can understand perfectly the reasons because I don’t like them.

I keep on my classic stuff and that’s all. Probably a short Pirates/Castle/West wave will come in the following years, like they did in 2009, 2010, 2013, 2015… That will be amazing news, I will be so happy and buy some sets, but we can’t expect more than that.

And look, this is not a pessimistic post. It’s just common sense and adaptation to reality.

Exactly. I originally did not like Ninjago, but it has grown on me in the past two or three years because the sets are just really good and cool, and the pieces are pretty useful in various other themes. I can guess one of my favorite themes, Exo-Force, was similar for adults at that time.

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Interestingly, things have taken quite a turn since I created this topic. 2019 has been my most expensive LEGO year so far - and I haven't even bought all the sets I want yet.

There's been some really strong offerings from Creator, Hidden Side, Harry Potter, Ideas, CMF and even a couple of Friends sets I couldn't resist.

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On 10/23/2017 at 8:29 AM, anothergol said:

If you had asked me what defines Lego when I was a kid, 30 years ago, I would have said castles & spaceships. And today, both have disappeared.

I would have said the same thing as a kid, and I miss both tremendously. But then again I might be in the minority because I love getting sets from my favorite licences and it does go a long, long way to making up for it.

Also, I've said this before when it comes up, but I like the EXACT same types of sets now as I did when I was a kid, so the fact that I'm an AFOL now really has no baring on whether my opinion should or should not be valued by Lego.

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I am still really selective on what themes to collect since coming back into LEGO since 2016.

While I was hyped at the start for Hidden Side, now eventually decided to skip it and wait out some other themes in the future.

Nexo Knights is what brought me back in 2016 since 2000, and I got most of that theme's sets/books/magazines, so another Castle theme is high on my list (not Harry Potter however).

3-in-1 buildings, City people packs and some other various sets still can be very interesting as well.

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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On 9/15/2019 at 2:05 AM, Gomek said:

I would have said the same thing as a kid, and I miss both tremendously. But then again I might be in the minority because I love getting sets from my favorite licences and it does go a long, long way to making up for it.

Also, I've said this before when it comes up, but I like the EXACT same types of sets now as I did when I was a kid, so the fact that I'm an AFOL now really has no baring on whether my opinion should or should not be valued by Lego.

The interesting thing is that if you had asked a kid 10 years prior to that, they would have said houses, or simple vehicles. Asked of a new adult now, they would probably say Bionicle.

Personally, I think that it is great that lego constantly evolves its product, albeit often revisting the same generic themes over and over just updating each time. If they were still doing classic castle and classic space as their major lines, they would be a very niche company.

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