Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Chmashdehjare]

6 hours ago, Carrera124 said:

I know that this is a very unpopular opinion, but I'd like TLC to go back to studded technic sets and 4w city cars & trucks.

Oh man, this! I got into Technic in the 8880 and 8480 era. This new Technic stuff yields some beautiful models that I enjoy building and playing with (hmm, I’m 57. Let’s say inspecting and examine instead of playing!) but most of the time when I’m building them I have no idea what I’m building. Just built 42040 Fire Plane (yes, I’m a little behind) and had a blast. I suspect that nothing short of a saw will ever get this model back to its component pieces, and most of the build I was pretty convinced I wouldn’t be able to come up with something similar with the beam and pin Technic techniques.

This is a limitation on me I recognize. And studded Technic won’t come back, but I have been doing more System building lately because it is more understandable to me.  
 

[Stuartn]

9 hours ago, Trekkie99 said:

agree, and such inevitability means they should've never bought bricklink in the first place, kicking customs from their home.

However with what you said in mind, that's probably one of the reason Lego bought Bricklink in a broader sense. When something unofficial becomes so popular that it might be mistaken as something official to the uneducated, that's a problem waiting to happen. What if say a security breach happens at Bricklink and victims blame Lego? "Oh it's not a buisness you own? Well maybe you should have told people that or had that buisness do a better job of letting people know that! I WANNA SPEAK TO THE MANAGAER!!!" If it was with something like that in mind and not to yeet some customs from having a popular place to sell that Lego bought Bricklink them I'm fine with it. 

I don't use third party parts, but I have nothing against them. For every custom train wheel, clone trooper minifigure and realistic gun accessory in a moc, there are hundreds if not thousands of official Lego pieces being used by the creator. Custom parts take skill to use and if anything would drive up Lego sales, because custom parts on their own aren't very useful.

I suppose Lego wouldn't want custom parts on Bricklink for the above reasons and as it is a very fine line between a useful accessory (which most third party parts are anyway) and a clone part. They have to balance removing competition from clone parts (which I don't begrudge them doing) and not impacting sales of custom products that enhance their product and their sales. I suppose their approach is just to suppress anything that resembles their product.

I don't have an issue with not displaying custom parts in a the Bricklink catalogue (they are Lego compatible, not Lego parts), and they have the right to only sell and promote their product, but surely if a product can be demonstrated that it is safe they could be allowed on individual sellers, provided that they do not attempt to emulate a Lego part and actually fill a role that Lego cannot, such as train curves bigger than R40. I would imagine that a company the size of TLG could come up with some form of legal protection to clear themselves of liability. As for weapons, I suppose that is in line with company values (that said, a 2016 city set (853570) did have a gun in it!).

7 hours ago, Carrera124 said:

I know that this is a very unpopular opinion, but I'd like TLC to go back to studded technic sets and 4w city cars & trucks.

I wouldn't say 4w cars are an unpopular opinion. Probably not the majority opibnion, but you're not alone there. I prefer 4w cars too. Many city sets this year have 4w cars.

[ProfSrlojohn]

On 1/12/2021 at 4:50 PM, Alexandrina said:

Might that indicate that Lego plan to introduce the 1x5 plate and brick in the near future? It seems silly to me that they've never delved into that size, since while 5 is an odd number it's no less rare as a dimension for Lego structures than 3 - and 1x3 has been around for decades.

 

Anyway, to contribute an unpopular opinion: I'm disappointed that baseplates seem to be on the way out. I'm young enough that my childhood was just a few years removed from the era of having a small baseplate in most sets, but baseplates weren't unheard of. I used to look at the catalogues with all the cool raised baseplates in themes like Alpha Team and Adventurers, and later still Indiana Jones, and long to be able to afford them. Alas, I never seemed to be able to save up enough for a big set before it was discontinued (throughout my childhood the biggest set I ever had - aside from a copy of the 2010 Fire Station I won in a competition - was the 2006 X-Wing). I've basically quadrupled my collection of baseplates in less than a year just through buying old job-lots and vintage Paradisa sets - the modern day equivalent of which would have been built on two or three smaller plates and not been as cool.

I've always been a filmmaker - that's what really got me into Lego, and it's what has sustained my interest and prompted my emergence from a second Dark Age a few years ago. For me, baseplates are a godsend. When it comes to making a film set, 16x16 is not big enough - you'd have to be shooting a super-macro shot for that to cover the whole frame. In a world without baseplates, the first step in building a film set is fabricating a base out of larger plates (and let's face it, most people don't have a huge supply of 16x16 plates in the same colour, so we're likely talking 8x8 or smaller). Alternatively, plonk down a 32x32 or even 48x48 baseplate and you're there. I got away with a lot of barebones film sets by sticking a couple of trees and BURPS on a baseplate and sticking a blue background for the sky. Even now coming back into making my films, it's far easier to do my test shots on a baseplate than a behemoth of joined plates.

I would argue, also, that baseplates are useful for sets with any number of minifigures larger than have a designated place in the set (by which I mean, say, a Star Wars ship with one seat in the cockpit but two minifigures). What do you do with the extra figures and tiny side builds? In my case it seems to be "balance them on a flat surface for their few months' display life, hoping they don't fall off and get carried by the dog to who knows where". Much easier to plonk them on the baseplate, where at least you know they're secure.

FINALLY! Someone gets the Baseplate appeal.

[benderisgreat]

Ok here my unpopular opinion: LEGO lost their way and is consistently making dumb decisions as company.

First let’s talk quality control: it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. For example they still don’t bother trying to solve issues like printing quality of white color on dark plastic ( look no further than terrible Mercy minifig head). This problem existed for at least 8-9 years still isn’t solved. So some minifigs look pale as vampires, and some super tanned.

Then there’s quality in licensed series like Marvel: reusing headprints that don’t even look like the actor sometimes same face for 2 characters from same universe ( Ant-man and Spider-Man).

Also they skimp on leg printing whenever they can in licensed sets! By 2012 leg print was becoming a norm for minifig, but luxury. Now it’s luxury not a norm! And don’t try saying “it’s expansive to print legs!”, it clearly makes minifigs look batter.

They also have very bad community communication. They almost never listen to genuine fan feedback. Like It took 2 years of active online campaign for them to make 501st battlepack! This is something fans wanted them to make for a long time. Basically saying “here’s my money take it”. Hasbro has way better community communication, like surveys what people want to see them release in future.

LEGO doesn’t have any way for us as fans to give them feedback like which set we want to see in next Star Wars wave for example. Like they could easily have 1 set in licensed line per year be fan voted! By not doing this, they are basically saying we don’t care about your opinions and don’t need your money.

Phew, that’s was a long one. I just hope LEGO can improve in the future that’s all.

[Lego David]

59 minutes ago, benderisgreat said:

They also have very bad community communication. They almost never listen to genuine fan feedback. Like It took 2 years of active online campaign for them to make 501st battlepack! This is something fans wanted them to make for a long time. Basically saying “here’s my money take it”. Hasbro has way better community communication, like surveys what people want to see them release in future.

LEGO doesn’t have any way for us as fans to give them feedback like which set we want to see in next Star Wars wave for example. Like they could easily have 1 set in licensed line per year be fan voted! By not doing this, they are basically saying we don’t care about your opinions and don’t need your money.

I couldn't agree more. They really seem to be pushing the "adult market" with stuff like the 18+ line of sets, but it seems to me that they do that without properly understanding what people would actually want to see as 18+ sets. On top of that, even when they do polls asking people what they want (such as the LEGO 90th anniversary poll) they still screw things up with a lot of stupid decisions, like splitting Classic themes into subthemes, and thus preventing them from winning. 

[benderisgreat]

29 minutes ago, Lego David said:

I couldn't agree more. They really seem to be pushing the "adult market" with stuff like the 18+ line of sets, but it seems to me that they do that without properly understanding what people would actually want to see as 18+ sets. On top of that, even when they do polls asking people what they want (such as the LEGO 90th anniversary poll) they still screw things up with a lot of stupid decisions, like splitting Classic themes into subthemes, and thus preventing them from winning. 

Yep, the are very out of touch with fan community. The whole 501st battlepack is the embodiment of why they’re outdated and wrong. They weren’t listening for 2 years, and when they finally gave in and made it, it was best selling set SW of 2021. I mean you literally couldn’t find it on release, and it’s still difficult to find it now. It was enormous success for them, so hopefully they will learn from this precedent and improve in future, but honestly I have a lot of doubts about this.

[The Stud]

I wouldn’t say “Lego has lost their way” but I do think they make some pretty bad decisions. They’re not infallible and they do tend to be pretty out of touch when it comes to the internet and fan feedback. Still, I believe that they’re a more ethical company than most.

[Alexandrina]

11 hours ago, benderisgreat said:

reusing headprints that don’t even look like the actor sometimes same face for 2 characters from same universe ( Ant-man and Spider-Man).

Do Lego heads really need to look like the actor for licensed properties? Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion of my own, but generic-ish heads - with all the key features of the character they're representing, but not a facsimile of the actor's face - have always been the more useful option imo. Lego's bricks are eminently reusable, in all sorts of contexts. With that in mind, something like the classic Qui-Gon Jinn head is spot on: in context with Jedi robes and the brown hair, it's unmistakeably Qui-Gon. Stick the head on, say, a Futuron minifigure and it doesn't look like Liam Neeson LARPING as Futuron. Even ten years ago generic heads were not only the norm but pretty well expected - and only the biggest characters from licensed properties tended to get unique heads. I don't recall people having an issue with it at the time, and I don't see how it's different now.

I can probably spin this off into an unpopular opinion of my own offering: yellow heads should have stayed, even in licensed sets. Having the disconnect is infuriating - you have torsos with flesh printing that don't go with yellow heads, and torsos with yellow printing that don't go with flesh heads. Some of my favourite minifigure head designs are fleshies - Geonosis Padmé, for instance - but my most-used licensed head is still the 2002-era Lucius Malfoy smirk, because that one goes with all the yellow heads in my collection.

[MAB]

14 hours ago, benderisgreat said:

 

They also have very bad community communication. They almost never listen to genuine fan feedback. Like It took 2 years of active online campaign for them to make 501st battlepack! This is something fans wanted them to make for a long time. Basically saying “here’s my money take it”. Hasbro has way better community communication, like surveys what people want to see them release in future.

LEGO doesn’t have any way for us as fans to give them feedback like which set we want to see in next Star Wars wave for example. Like they could easily have 1 set in licensed line per year be fan voted! By not doing this, they are basically saying we don’t care about your opinions and don’t need your money.

What is a genuine fan?

Most sets take a couple of years from design table to retail shelves, so LEGO may well have listened to those fans and acted quite quickly.

[benderisgreat]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

What is a genuine fan?

Most sets take a couple of years from design table to retail shelves, so LEGO may well have listened to those fans and acted quite quickly.

I think you misread it, I mean genuine feedback from fans.

And if LEGO did start design process right away, why not tell the fans something like: “Thanks for your feedback, we see that a lot of our fans really want to see 501st battlepack as a set, so we are happy to announce that due to your requests we are working on this set. We will have more info to share closer to sets release”. 

Instead it looks like they were deaf to this immense support for a set, and they caved in last minute, cause they were tired of reading we want 501st on every social media.

10 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

Do Lego heads really need to look like the actor for licensed properties? Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion of my own, but generic-ish heads - with all the key features of the character they're representing, but not a facsimile of the actor's face - have always been the more useful option imo. Lego's bricks are eminently reusable, in all sorts of contexts. With that in mind, something like the classic Qui-Gon Jinn head is spot on: in context with Jedi robes and the brown hair, it's unmistakeably Qui-Gon. Stick the head on, say, a Futuron minifigure and it doesn't look like Liam Neeson LARPING as Futuron. Even ten years ago generic heads were not only the norm but pretty well expected - and only the biggest characters from licensed properties tended to get unique heads. I don't recall people having an issue with it at the time, and I don't see how it's different now.

I can probably spin this off into an unpopular opinion of my own offering: yellow heads should have stayed, even in licensed sets. Having the disconnect is infuriating - you have torsos with flesh printing that don't go with yellow heads, and torsos with yellow printing that don't go with flesh heads. Some of my favourite minifigure head designs are fleshies - Geonosis Padmé, for instance - but my most-used licensed head is still the 2002-era Lucius Malfoy smirk, because that one goes with all the yellow heads in my collection.

To me it’s really important, but I guess not everyone thinks the same, which is fine.

I think head print should resemble the actor it portrays. And think about it from designers perspective, do you really think they don’t care and just put any head they can? No LEGO tries to save a few $ and restricts them from making more accurate new prints. 
 

As far as yellow head for licensed themes go, I can’t agree, as older Sw and HP figs looks so bad with yellow faces. Honestly when LEGO first introduced flesh heads, I thought they would faze out yellow heads from non licensed themes to match. But it is what it is.

[MAB]

So what is genuine feedback from fans? A kid saying they should make some weird thing they want is no different to an adult saying they want something. Surely all feedback from their fans is genuine.

[Aanchir]

23 hours ago, benderisgreat said:

And if LEGO did start design process right away, why not tell the fans something like: “Thanks for your feedback, we see that a lot of our fans really want to see 501st battlepack as a set, so we are happy to announce that due to your requests we are working on this set. We will have more info to share closer to sets release”.

I can think of several good reasons they wouldn't make an announcement like that:

• First of all, it helps them to be secretive about that stuff so they're not just giving other toy companies a free head start on coming up with competing products (like, say, giving Hasbro time to develop a new pack of 501st Legion action figures in hopes of beating the LEGO equivalent onto shelves).
   
• Second, announcing sets closer to release is better marketing, since it helps keep the set fresh in fans' minds up until it's available for them to purchase, rather than fans quickly running out of stuff to discuss about it. Whereas announcing sets long before they're available just pulls attention AWAY from the ones that are already out and available to purchase, and even can motivate fans to buy FEWER sets in order to save up for stuff that won't be available for months or years.
   
• Third, announcing a set before specific details like prices, pictures, and features are firmly decided can potentially result in fans' hopes becoming inflated during the run-up to the set release, creating discontent if the eventual reveal falls short of the ideal version fans have already begun to picture in their heads. This already happens to some extent in discussion of LEGO Ideas sets, which LEGO has to be uncharacteristically open about, since fans are involved in the selection process and have inevitably already seen the initial "sketch models" in the form of the projects themselves.
   
• Fourth, companies like Disney/Lucasfilm often prefer to have a say in when their licensing partners make new product announcements, even when it DOESN'T include stuff related to future movies or shows. Disney in particular often likes highly desirable toys related to their brands to be announced either events that get major press coverage, like Toy Fair or Comic Con style events, or even their OWN brand-specific events like Star Wars Celebration and D23. For LEGO to maintain licensing partnerships with other companies, they have to be cooperative about keeping secrets on behalf of those companies.
   
• And fifth — when people on social media are talking so much about their desire for a particular LEGO Star Wars set, why would it benefit LEGO to shut that chatter down early? It's practically free word-of-mouth marketing. And again, letting the demands and memes and petitions and so forth continue until closer to the time of release ensures that those discussions keep the idea of a 501st Legion battle pack at the top of fans minds right up until those fans have the option to spend money on the product itself.

[Man with beard]

On 1/22/2021 at 11:53 PM, benderisgreat said:

Ok here my unpopular opinion: LEGO lost their way and is consistently making dumb decisions as company.

First let’s talk quality control: it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. For example they still don’t bother trying to solve issues like printing quality of white color on dark plastic ( look no further than terrible Mercy minifig head). This problem existed for at least 8-9 years still isn’t solved. So some minifigs look pale as vampires, and some super tanned.

They can't be consistently entirely dumb and also consistently very profitable. The Lego Group exists to make money, and they're clearly doing a lot of smart things because they are making a lot of money. I definitely agree about the quality control though. The company motto is "only the best is good enough", and if they can't deliver the best, maybe they are losing their way.

 

[Man with beard]

On 1/23/2021 at 11:58 AM, Alexandrina said:

I can probably spin this off into an unpopular opinion of my own offering: yellow heads should have stayed, even in licensed sets. Having the disconnect is infuriating - you have torsos with flesh printing that don't go with yellow heads, and torsos with yellow printing that don't go with flesh heads. Some of my favourite minifigure head designs are fleshies - Geonosis Padmé, for instance - but my most-used licensed head is still the 2002-era Lucius Malfoy smirk, because that one goes with all the yellow heads in my collection.

I definitely agree it was a bad decision. It makes the licensed themes (a huge portion of Lego's product range) incompatible with the rest of the Lego universe, which just isn't Lego-like! I doubt that the problem will be solved anytime soon though, as for Lego to fix it they would have to admit that yellow is and has always been more representative of white skin than other skin colors... 

[Flak Maniak]

On 1/23/2021 at 2:58 PM, Alexandrina said:

I can probably spin this off into an unpopular opinion of my own offering: yellow heads should have stayed, even in licensed sets. Having the disconnect is infuriating - you have torsos with flesh printing that don't go with yellow heads, and torsos with yellow printing that don't go with flesh heads. Some of my favourite minifigure head designs are fleshies - Geonosis Padmé, for instance - but my most-used licensed head is still the 2002-era Lucius Malfoy smirk, because that one goes with all the yellow heads in my collection.

What are you gonna do about The Lando Problem, though? If you'd have depicted Lando with a yellow minifgure head... Then you're braver than I.

[MAB]

On 1/25/2021 at 7:49 AM, Man with beard said:

I definitely agree it was a bad decision. It makes the licensed themes (a huge portion of Lego's product range) incompatible with the rest of the Lego universe, which just isn't Lego-like! I doubt that the problem will be solved anytime soon though, as for Lego to fix it they would have to admit that yellow is and has always been more representative of white skin than other skin colors... 

It doesn't. As shown in The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Movie 2, yellow skin characters and fleshie characters and minifigs and minidolls, respectively, can inhabit the same LEGO universe.

[Alexandrina]

59 minutes ago, Flak Maniak said:

What are you gonna do about The Lando Problem, though? If you'd have depicted Lando with a yellow minifgure head... Then you're braver than I.

I don't see why Lando couldn't have been released with a yellow head - in fact, I suspect if Lego had gone down that route they'd have saved a bit of money, since based on the printing style they were going for at the time the old standard grin with pointy moustache face  (3626bp03) would have done just nicely - I believe that particular print was still in the regular circulation in 2003. Lego had never felt the need to use colours other than yellow for the heads of human characters in non-licensed properties, even those who would presumably have been an ethnicity other than white (the Indians from the latter-day Western range, for example), and in more recent times they've managed to incorporate a variety of ethnicities into in-house sets without resorting to coloured heads. This is in keeping with their philosophy of yellow not being equal to white.

Going back to Lando, the key things a minifigure of his Cloud City appearance are the moustache and the cape. I don't have a Lando minifigure in front of me to confirm, but I suspect that if you traded out the brown hands on the 2003 fig for yellow, and swapped the head for either 3626bp03 or another moustached print, you'd get a figure that is still recognisably Lando. It's only through our present day lens, from a world where Lego use reddish brown heads for black characters, that the idea of them using a yellow head seems strange.

[Flak Maniak]

Huh, for some reason I thought the original Lando DID use that particular print, just on a brown head. At any rate, I will commend your boldness; I'd like to peer into the alternate timeline where Lando was yellow. I'm not sure that would fly in 2020, even if they'd been doing it since 2003! (And, well, frankly I'm not sure their current all-yellow-in-original-themes policy is tenable either, but we'll see on that one; certainly I like yellow minifigures and think that it's good if we keep getting yellow ones.)

Oh, and side note, definitely it was strange that in light of the current policy, The Lego Movie depicted Abe Lincoln as yellow; surely he should have been fleshy, for, if they'd depicted, say, Frederick Douglass in The Lego Movie, he wouldn't have been yellow! (Except in your cut, I realize. Perhaps they can get you to direct The Lego Movie 3!)

Edited January 27, 2021 by Flak Maniak

[1974]

59 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

Lego had never felt the need to use colours other than yellow for the heads of human characters in non-licensed properties, even those who would presumably have been an ethnicity other than white (the Indians from the latter-day Western range, for example), and in more recent times they've managed to incorporate a variety of ethnicities into in-house sets without resorting to coloured heads. This is in keeping with their philosophy of yellow not being equal to white.

'Cept TLG did in fact make redheaded Indians. If OG Lando was not brown, TLG might be accused of yellow-washing and all hell would have broken loose

Cheers,

Ole

[Grover]

12 minutes ago, 1974 said:

'Cept TLG did in fact make redheaded Indians. If OG Lando was not brown, TLG might be accused of yellow-washing and all hell would have broken loose

Cheers,

Ole

Case in point.

[Peppermint_M]

They tried in the past to "represent" race in yellow figures with some of the minifigures from basketball. It did not look good.

[Lira_Bricks]

30 minutes ago, Peppermint_M said:

They tried in the past to "represent" race in yellow figures with some of the minifigures from basketball. It did not look good.

What do you mean?

[GalacticTremor]

Stickers have never been good and never will be good. I don't even apply them. I stopped doing that 10 years ago.

Printed bricks should be kept to a minimum.

I hate the sheer quantity of head face designs. Just give me a smile.

Star wars is getting boring.

Get rid of the blind bag minifigures.

Lastly and I know this will be unpopular. I am not a fan of over detailed, over constructed MOCs. Some people get way too carried away with the detail.

[koalayummies]

32 minutes ago, GalacticTremor said:

Lastly and I know this will be unpopular. I am not a fan of over detailed, over constructed MOCs. Some people get way too carried away with the detail.

Too detailed? What next, you going to say Mozart used too many notes? ROFL.

[BenderBrau]

6 hours ago, koalayummies said:

Too detailed? What next, you going to say Mozart used too many notes? ROFL.

Not too many, but exactly as many as one can add on top of the core melody. And, as impressive as it is, it's not always necessary, but professionals do it anyway just because they can.