Lego David

Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

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1 hour ago, Feuer Zug said:

I agree Friends is definitely more well rounded than City. Monkey Kid may have some neat designs, but the cost is way up there. They need to build sets that aren't all big ticket items. The £10 / €10 / $10 - £30 / €30 / $30 range is barren for Monkie Kid.

City is dominated by police and to a lesser extent fire. Their recent expansion past that is nice, but they need to stop cramming the new road plates down our throat. The roads are jacking the prices up too high.

Ninjago will remain as is. It's LEGO's non-licensed money machine. What do you think could replace it? A re-run of Chima? Ooh, maybe Jack Stone or Galidor. Because it bloody well won't be Bionicle.

Sure, Lego is either overpriced or ridiculously overpriced. And of course it would be great to get some smaller Monkie Kid Sets, but i was talking more about the design of the sets. Maybe i should have made that more clear. It is just my personal opinion, but i think the Monkie Kid sets are much better designed and much more interesting than today's Ninjago. You are right, Ninjago is a cash cow and will never end but imo it should end to make room for new action themes that tell new stories. Hidden Side was a good start with interesting sets and characters. Not talking about the app...

Same with Friends. The sets look much better designed and more interesting than everything city is doing. Sorry, it's hard to express what i want to say in english :laugh: The recent farm sets, sure they look cute, but they have not much to do with a farm...

Just my unpopular opinions :laugh:

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8 hours ago, Lira_Bricks said:

Lego City is getting better though. They released farm, stunts, a grocery shop, wildlife,... Sure it is not "City", but otherwise lego would have to rebrand the theme as "Lego World". Maybe they should have scrapped the "City" from "Lego World City" back in 2004 instead of scrapping the "World" part ;p

It always surprises me when the accuracy of the City theme's name comes up in conversation — it's true, a lot of stuff in the theme is set outside of "city limits", but the same was true of many LEGO Town sets I grew up with in the 90s: Rocky River Retreat, Gator Landing, Outback Airstrip, Deep Reef Refuge, Moon Walker, etc.

And in fact, the Town theme was ITSELF named City (or rather, the equivalent in the local language) in a number of countries: "Ciudad" in Spain, "Cidade" in Portugal, "Città" in Italy, "Město" in the Czech Republic, "Város" in Hungary, etc.

In the grand scheme of things, I think theme names like "City" and "Town" are better thought of as brand names than descriptions of their contents — same as how the Castle theme includes lots of medieval/fantasy stuff other than castles (such as boats, ships, rural village scenes, and forest/wilderness scenes).
 

Anyway, as for the relative QUALITY of the City theme… I'm of two minds. I definitely DO prefer LEGO Friends in a lot of respects, make no mistake about that, but I don't feel like that's an indication of "how far LEGO City has fallen" or anything like that. Rather, a lot of the things LEGO Friends succeeds at are things that I feel Town/City sets have ALWAYS struggled with (similar to some of the reasons I preferred LEGO Elves over pretty much all prior incarnations of LEGO Castle).

I agree that the City theme is showing gradual improvement in many of those areas, even if it hasn't "caught up with" the Friends theme. I mean, until last year, no Town/City sets had EVER included a school, school bus, grocery store, or observatory! Hospitals, shops, restaurants, parks, and houses are also starting to show up more than in the City theme's past (though the theme will still need quite a few more houses to even begin to compare to the early years of the Town theme, let alone to the Friends theme). This image still impresses me quite a bit by showing just how robust a city layout can be created with just sets from the first half of this year!

There are also a few areas where I think that the Friends theme still falls short of the City theme. Chief among these is the new road system, which helps in providing varied opportunities to combine sets into a unified layout.  Frankly, I kind of wish LEGO would release road plate packs as part of a separate theme like Xtra, and market it as a supplement to ANY theme that you might want paved roads in.

LEGO Friends is also not without its share of "blind spots" in terms of portraying the stuff you might find in a real city. At no point in its ten-year history has it had any construction, police, firefighting, bank, post office, or train sets — the closest it's had to any of those are the abandoned firehouse that the protagonists converted into the Friendship House, the elevated train from Heartlake City Resort, and the parcel service truck and shop from Heartlake Gift Delivery. Likewise, it took until this year for the Friends theme to get any sort of garbage/recycling truck. As far as I can recall, no Friends sets have even included traffic lights.

All in all, if the contents of these themes were reversed, I'm sure City fans would have just as many gripes about these "blind spots" as they do about those the City theme currently has. Perhaps even more so, as I can't say I've ever heard many complaints about the City theme's lack of sets focused on some of the subjects the Friends theme has had in ample supply over the years, like swimming pools, hair salons, or veterinary clinics!

Edited by Aanchir

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I hate most of the City police and fire sets released in recent years, very badly designed and even ugly. The only set I have got is 60316 released this year, I am not very happy with it though.

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23 hours ago, ks6349 said:

I hate most of the City police and fire sets released in recent years, very badly designed and even ugly. The only set I have got is 60316 released this year, I am not very happy with it though.

I actually agree with this! I think I'll stick to older sets. A lot of the new sets for 2023 are kinda lame. The Great Vehicles are the only City sets they seemed to have actually put effort into. 

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35 minutes ago, Poodabricks said:

I actually agree with this! I think I'll stick to older sets. A lot of the new sets for 2023 are kinda lame. The Great Vehicles are the only City sets they seemed to have actually put effort into. 

I'm happy with most of the trucks which are to be released in early 2023.

But the mini fire station and the police station are still garbage

 

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City is a younger kids theme. A lot of the sets are for ages 5/6/7, and so of course the designs are simplified compared to sets for older kids. Adults have their own City, in the Modulars. I imagine LEGO research shows teens are not playing with City now there is more mature choices for them in other themes and so they concentrate the City theme towards younger kids.

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  • Unpopular opinion: The golden age of Lego Space and Castle that AFOLS wish Lego would bring back was nowhere near as good as modern vehicle and castle themes like Chima, Nexo Knights, Ninjago, Monkie Kid, Lightyear etc. The older builds were much more blocky and unsophisticated compared to what's possible with modern Lego. We don't need to demand that Lego restores these themes to satisfy our nostalgia when the CMFs, Special Themes and Bricklink have Black Falcons, Classic Spacemen, Forestmen, Lion Knights etc

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10 minutes ago, Killian said:
  • Unpopular opinion: The golden age of Lego Space and Castle that AFOLS wish Lego would bring back was nowhere near as good as modern vehicle and castle themes like Chima, Nexo Knights, Ninjago, Monkie Kid, Lightyear etc. The older builds were much more blocky and unsophisticated compared to what's possible with modern Lego. We don't need to demand that Lego restores these themes to satisfy our nostalgia when the CMFs, Special Themes and Bricklink have Black Falcons, Classic Spacemen, Forestmen, Lion Knights etc

You missed off Elves!

With the nostalgia part, I totally agree that modern LEGO is preferable to 1980s LEGO when it comes to choice of parts. The thing I typically miss though are theme specific printed parts including minifigure parts. It wouldn't bother me too much if there was never a Classic Castle (or other vintage Castle) theme again, if they did updated versions of the torsos (some of which they have done), forestmen hats and some other helmets some other way. I think many Classic Space MOCers are similar, if they have the printed logo parts, some decent coloured windshields and a decent selection of coloured outfits.

 

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56 minutes ago, Killian said:
  • Unpopular opinion: The golden age of Lego Space and Castle that AFOLS wish Lego would bring back was nowhere near as good as modern vehicle and castle themes like Chima, Nexo Knights, Ninjago, Monkie Kid, Lightyear etc. The older builds were much more blocky and unsophisticated compared to what's possible with modern Lego. We don't need to demand that Lego restores these themes to satisfy our nostalgia when the CMFs, Special Themes and Bricklink have Black Falcons, Classic Spacemen, Forestmen, Lion Knights etc

As a fan of Classic Space and Castle, I agree that if those themes are brought back, it should be with updated build techniques and modern parts. The new Galaxy Explorer and Lion Knight's Castle show how to do it. I don't think I've heard anyone complain about those sets using modern build techniques. In other words, fans of Classic Space and Castle like the subject matter of the originals, not the dated parts selection/build techniques.

As for old sets not being as good as modern sets, I don't know. Depends on the set. Almost everyone agrees that the Black Knight's Castle is the best castle of all time (before Lion Knight's Castle), beating every other castle from this century. And I think many old Space designs stand the test of time and look cooler than, say, most Star Wars designs. I would gladly take a modern version of these over another X-Wing or Sand Crawler:

6932-1.jpg6989-1.jpg

Monkie Kid is probably the closest we have to these now, and Nexo Knights before that. The problem with those, for me, are:

1) the design weirdness; I don't really want my space ships to be built out of clouds, nor do I like the style of medieval/sci-fi fusion used in Nexo Knights and

2) SO MANY STICKERS. No stickers in Classic sets (with very few exceptions).

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13 hours ago, MAB said:

City is a younger kids theme. A lot of the sets are for ages 5/6/7, and so of course the designs are simplified compared to sets for older kids. Adults have their own City, in the Modulars. I imagine LEGO research shows teens are not playing with City now there is more mature choices for them in other themes and so they concentrate the City theme towards younger kids.

City may be made for children (I put that in bold for a reason), but there are still LOTS of town builders - like myself - who depend on City sets (primarily the vehicles, people packs and sometimes the buidings) to complement their cities. Some town builders even make their cities from City sets and Creator 3in1 as they don't have enough money for modulars or they just don't want those in their town. So even though City is made primarily for people under 12, I think City still has a good enough AFOL following to at least keep the school and grocery store around a bit longer - just to name a few. 

Edited by Poodabricks

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23 minutes ago, Poodabricks said:

but there are still LOTS of town builders

Define LOTS :pir-laugh:

I also believe that there are LOTS of town builders, but I do have the impression that there are GAZILLION :pir-wink: individuals (moms, dads, grandparents, and so on and so forth) that buy CITY sets for the younger among us.

As GAZILLION >> LOTS, TLG = City as is. They care about the money :pir-huzzah2:.

Label_1:
Let MakeMoney$ = "And after that about more money"
PRINT MakeMoney$
IF GAZILLION > LOTS GOTO Label_1
END

Instructor: Oh, that is very bad programming! You have created an infinite loop.

Beavis: Yeah, I know, it's kinda cool. Uhhh Huhuhu Huhuhu ...

Best,
Thorsten

 

Edited by Toastie

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29 minutes ago, Poodabricks said:

City may be made for children (I put that in bold for a reason), but there are still LOTS of town builders - like myself - who depend on City sets (primarily the vehicles, people packs and sometimes the buidings) to complement their cities. Some town builders even make their cities from City sets and Creator 3in1 as they don't have enough money for modulars or they just don't want those in their town. So even though City is made primarily for people under 12, I think City still has a good enough AFOL following to at least keep the school and grocery store around a bit longer - just to name a few. 

Yes, they are primarily for children so it seems a bit odd for adults to say they are ugly, badly designed and lame when some kids, especially at the lower end of the age group they are aimed at, need simple builds. Even more so when there are plenty of good looking sets with interesting building techniques aimed at adults.

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Can't people with very specific needs buy the instructions of MOC's and the parts from sites like Brick Owl or Brick Link? Or look at instructions of other brands that use the same system as Lego? Or build them together with other people that have the same need because then you can combine your talents to make the perfect set that fits your needs?

I really don't get the anger some people have at 5+-sets...

 

Also, lots of buildings related to police or the fire department are just regular buildings, in red, with a logo of the service slapped on it. Same thing with the vehicles:

  1. build a regular car with red bricks;
  2. make a fire-sticker and paste it on the front;
  3. put a firefighter in it;
  4. ???
  5. profit!

---

If they bring back a space-theme with spaceships, I really hope it is not again a "humans=good;aliens=bad". And especially not like Mars Mission, where they invade a planet and take the aliens hostage in those weird tubes.

Edited by Lira_Bricks
Include part about space theme

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11 hours ago, MAB said:

Yes, they are primarily for children so it seems a bit odd for adults to say they are ugly, badly designed and lame when some kids, especially at the lower end of the age group they are aimed at, need simple builds. Even more so when there are plenty of good looking sets with interesting building techniques aimed at adults.

 

1 hour ago, Lira_Bricks said:

Can't people with very specific needs buy the instructions of MOC's and the parts from sites like Brick Owl or Brick Link? Or look at instructions of other brands that use the same system as Lego? Or build them together with other people that have the same need because then you can combine your talents to make the perfect set that fits your needs?

I really don't get the anger some people have at 5+-sets...

 

Also, lots of buildings related to police or the fire department are just regular buildings, in red, with a logo of the service slapped on it. Same thing with the vehicles:

  1. build a regular car with red bricks;
  2. make a fire-sticker and paste it on the front;
  3. put a firefighter in it;
  4. ???
  5. profit!

---

If they bring back a space-theme with spaceships, I really hope it is not again a "humans=good;aliens=bad". And especially not like Mars Mission, where they invade a planet and take the aliens hostage in those weird tubes.

The Lego community as a whole can be somewhat flawed in those regards. The thing is, there was a time in life where Lego actually put blood, sweat and tears into their City sets. But that's only because there weren't many options for town builders during that time. Back in the late 2000s, you just had your City buildings and the various houses from Creator (GOD, I miss those days) and people just seem to want that to return, but its not going to return. I don't think people hate City, it's just that we prefer City sets like the ones from the late 2000s and pieces of the 2010s. In that case, they could just go to Bricklink or Ebay and buy so older City sets if that's what they want. But like you said, with the modulars, Chinese New Year (the buildings in those are useful too), Creator 3in1 and the various buildings we get from Friends (those are good for town builders too) and other useful town builder products that are sold, Lego probably saw fit to simplify City as to not have so many buildings and focus on simple building instead. 

Edited by Poodabricks

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13 minutes ago, Poodabricks said:

 

The Lego community as a whole can be somewhat flawed in those regards. The thing is, there was a time in life where Lego actually put blood, sweat and tears into their City sets. But that's only because there weren't many options for town builders during that time. Back in the late 2000s, you just had your City buildings and the various houses from Creator (GOD, I miss those days) and people just seem to want that to return, but its not going to return. I don't think people hate City, it's just that we prefer City sets like the ones from the late 2000s and pieces of the 2010s. In that case, they could just go to Bricklink or Ebay and buy so older City sets if that's what they want. But like you said, with the modulars, Chinese New Year (the buildings in those are useful too), Creator 3in1 and the various buildings we get from Friends (those are good for town builders too) and other useful town builder products that are sold, Lego probably saw fit to simplify City as to not have so many buildings and focus on simple building instead. 

Exactly, LEGO has changed dramatically in the past decade.  Adults are specifically catered for now. There are many builds suitable for older teens and adults. Younger kids should also have a theme they can enjoy. That is City.

You can still build the sets of the late 2000s, and use alternate colours for variation.

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Lego did very sly move with 2023 sets, most sets have same price point as always but they are decreasing these sets in size a pieces.

 

Im definitely double checking these new sets, good times are behind us.

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7 hours ago, MAB said:

Exactly, LEGO has changed dramatically in the past decade.  Adults are specifically catered for now. There are many builds suitable for older teens and adults. Younger kids should also have a theme they can enjoy. That is City.

You can still build the sets of the late 2000s, and use alternate colours for variation.

You sound like a valid point maker. I hope we can have more conversations in the future. I agree! Lego is evolved faaaaarrrr beyond a toy company. It feels more like a culture or a lifestyle now. I can now say for a fact that about 50% of the company - which is halfway - caters to not only adults, but teenagers as well. Heck, given the classic brick boxes, we can say that Lego even caters to the elderly. 

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1 hour ago, Ondra said:

Lego did very sly move with 2023 sets, most sets have same price point as always but they are decreasing these sets in size a pieces.

 

Im definitely double checking these new sets, good times are behind us.

They also reduce the size of the pieces, so sometimes part counts can be maintained but there are more 1x1s than in the past. Sneaky!

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2 hours ago, Poodabricks said:

 we can say that Lego even caters to the elderly. 

Until they turn 100 years old. 

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On 12/17/2022 at 4:43 AM, danth said:

Almost everyone agrees that the Black Knight's Castle is the best castle of all time (before Lion Knight's Castle)

Less than half of the people agreed that the Black Knight's Castle was the best castle of all time (before Lion Knight's Castle).

That said you could argue it shows that modern building techniques would improve previous castles if you assume that the almost 80% of people in that "'survey" voted the Lion Knight's Castle the best due to the modern techniques. Although it could also be due to its size, its minifig count, people wanting to show that people want new castles, many other reasons.

Completely agree with your take on castle needing modern techniques and modern bricks.

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58 minutes ago, timemail said:

Less than half of the people agreed that the Black Knight's Castle was the best castle of all time (before Lion Knight's Castle).

Bad choice of words. I meant that Black Knight's Castle overwhelming won, with 4x the votes of each of the other 3 castles that tied for second. Getting 40% of the vote when there are 17 entries is an absolute blow out. That's as close as "everyone agrees" that you'll ever get.

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10 hours ago, MAB said:

They also reduce the size of the pieces, so sometimes part counts can be maintained but there are more 1x1s than in the past. Sneaky!

Like Tie Bomber, thats kinda small sets but they fit somewhere 623 pieces. At least minifigures are good.

 

Or beach van from March 2023, that sets cost 59 euros but its only aroun 500 pieces . Thats crazy for creator set..

 

Im happy that I bought this year many sets at reduced price, but I think i miss 2023 completely.

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My opinion, lego is loosing with big car replicas.

Cobi has given 1:12 scale across whole category. Lego? Scale varies and thats bad.

Cobi has basic cars, that milions drives everyday and that is for me good thing.

Price and given parts all also very interesting towards cobi. And no stickers!

 

Mind my curiousity, but I pull trigger when I saw our czech cars in 1:12. Definitely game changer for me.

https://www.cobishop.cz/product/stavebnice-cobi/skoda-auto/automobil-skoda-octavia-rs-cobi-24343---/977

Edited by Ondra

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The pictures on the box of LEGO sets, are just ideas/suggestions of what you can build with the bricks inside. It's funny but when I look at a LEGO set, considering purchase, I always look to see what parts are in the set first, are they elements I would like to have or even use, then I check out the build. I very much enjoy both but the contents are more important than the the models, color, build technique, size, function, looks, realism or accuracy.

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