Star Wars VS In-House Space: Which do you think is better and why?

[Lego David]

In my opinion, in-house Space themes will always be better than Star Wars, because of the following reasons:

1. Star Wars space ships are so bland and colorless. Most of them have colors consisting mostly of very dark colors (grey, most of the times), with few exceptions. In-house Space themes, on the other hand, have beautiful color combinations, which makes them a lot more visually appealing to me  than Star Wars.

2. Star Wars just keeps recycling designs and almost never offers something new. With In-House Space, every new theme offered something completely new and unique.

3. LEGO has full creative liberty over in-house Space, while with Star Wars, they always need to make it as accurate to the films as possible. With In-House Space, LEGO can do whatever crazy creative new idea they have.

Despite all this, though, Star Wars still is more popular.

What is your opinion? Which do you personally prefer and why?

[Digger of Bricks]

22 minutes ago, Lego David said:

What is your opinion? Which do you personally prefer and why?

Even if you posted this over at the LEGO Star Wars subforum, the turnout to this discussion topic would be very biased either way... 

Anyways, you're likely familiar already with my own preferences, so I needn't state it...  ...good points though I'll say; obvious, but worth stating. 

[Lego David]

2 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Even if you posted this over at the LEGO Star Wars subforum, the turnout to this discussion topic would be very biased either way... 

I obviously know your preference, but if you gave your own two cents as to why you think one is better than the other, I would still highly appreciate.

[TeriXeri]

In-house space.

I don't collect Star Wars, or Licensed at all.

For me, In-house Space themes up to around the year 2000 have a big nostalgia factor, and I do prefer those designs over the more rounder ones (for example Space Police 3)

I don't mind those large studded surfaces or very angled designs.

I especially love those neon colored cockpits and parts, which is a big reason why I liked Nexo Knights neon orange so much.

The new 2020 Sith TIE Fighter actually looks very nice, but when I see that set, I also think what of what LEGO could do with the freedom of using such triangle plates on in-house ships more in the shape of a Galactic Mediator, Deep Freeze Defender or Exploriens Starship :

As for Recent ships in such style, Benny's Spaceship certainly also looks very nice but that set just came out during my dark ages and I tend to not go back to "old" sets if they are off the market.

Edited December 14, 2019 by TeriXeri

[icm]

3 hours ago, Lego David said:

In my opinion, in-house Space themes will always be better than Star Wars, because of the following reasons:

1. Star Wars space ships are so bland and colorless. Most of them have colors consisting mostly of very dark colors (grey, most of the times), with few exceptions. In-house Space themes, on the other hand, have beautiful color combinations, which makes them a lot more visually appealing to me  than Star Wars.

2. Star Wars just keeps recycling designs and almost never offers something new. With In-House Space, every new theme offered something completely new and unique.

3. LEGO has full creative liberty over in-house Space, while with Star Wars, they always need to make it as accurate to the films as possible. With In-House Space, LEGO can do whatever crazy creative new idea they have.

Despite all this, though, Star Wars still is more popular.

What is your opinion? Which do you personally prefer and why?

I personally prefer Star Wars, but I can appreciate the perspectives of people who prefer in-house Space themes.  Please forgive the wordiness - I'm just thinking out loud here, so to speak.

TLDR: I prefer Star Wars to in-house Space, but I don't like to say that either is better than the other because there is no objective measure of "good, better, best."

Why I preferred Star Wars as a kid:

First and foremost, perhaps, the reason why I prefer Star Wars is because it came out at the perfect time for me.  I was six years old and just beginning to appreciate Lego and Star Wars, so when the Star Wars sets were first released I didn't know it was strange or unusual in any way.  In contrast, I wasn't really aware of Lego Space as a thing.  From my perspective when I was growing up, then, Lego and Star Wars always went together perfectly naturally, and Space was the unusual interloper.  The Space subthemes that were released just before Star Wars, which were still in the catalogs in my earliest years of Lego awareness, were UFO, Insectoids, Exploriens, and Robo Force, and then later the first Space subtheme released after Star Wars was Life on Mars. 

Truth be told, I've always been kind of a dour kid and a party pooper (please note I am NOT trying, in this post, to be a "party pooper" for anyone with different ideas about Space and Star Wars), so the bright neon colors and zany shapes of those other themes never appealed to me anyway, and I was never into giant robots either.  I don't recall if I ever explicitly made the connection at the time, but I think subconsciously I also shunned the UFO and Insectoids themes because they reminded me of things on TV and in the movies that really creeped me out.  The bug monster, other aliens, and all sorts of other things about "Men in Black" were really scary at the ages of five, six, and seven, as were the Borg from "Star Trek."  They gave me recurring nightmares for months and I would run away screaming (sometimes out loud, sometimes inside) if anyone around me even mentioned them, which of course led to their frequent use as a tease by my dad and my siblings.  In contrast, I really liked the Star Wars movies: the swashbuckling derring-do, the kind and strong and wise mentor figures of Ben and Yoda, the rad little sports car (hovering, of course) that Luke had, the starfighter battles that were deliberately conceived of as something akin to World War II airplane carrier battles in space .... and I loved airplanes, and still do.  So at the formative age when I got into Lego, there were some strong positive reasons to like Star Wars, and some strong negative reasons to not like in-house Space. 

I should also mention here that my very first large "Lego sets" were a large Mega Bloks bucket of basic bricks with a Space theme and a large Mega Bloks star cruiser.  The star cruiser was awful - it relied on enormous specialized parts that were later nearly impossible to use in my own builds; it was fragile, shaky, and utterly impossible to swoosh; the colors were ugly; and it looked like a Borg ship with a crew of creepy robots.  But I could tell that it used those colors and all those special parts because it was trying to compete with the Lego Space sets of the same time frame (1997-1998).  By contrast, the basic bricks and slopes in the other bucket found years of use in makeshift Star Wars builds: X-wings, A-wings, Y-wings, TIE fighters, and finally in a "W-wing" that I still have today.  So that early Mega Bloks experience gave more reason to semi-instinctively prefer Star Wars from the very beginning.  I could build passable ships in that theme from the start, while Space (or its counterpart at another firm) only gave me useless parts that were good for nothing.  The only Space set I was interested in as a very young kid just getting into Lego was the Warp Wing Fighter, and that only because it resembled an X-wing.

Later on, when I started to become aware of the internet at the age of nine or ten, I discovered Brickset and, later, Eurobricks and FBTB and Brickshelf.  Many hours I spent as a kid browsing those sites, not logged into any of them.  I knew that there was an adult fan community that made all these fantastic models, and I wanted to do that too.  I knew that many adult fans loved Classic Space, but I wasn't sure why.  In the early years of Lego on the web, most of the best creations were Star Wars models anyway.  It's well known that the 1999 release brought a lot of new adults into the hobby, and they enthusiastically shared their improved X-wings, etc., online.  Meanwhile, builds in other themes by even the best builders seemed to me as a kid to be hobbled somehow, and lacking a certain elegance possessed by the Star Wars builds.  (In my opinion, it's only really been in the last 3-5 years that the parts have been available for really satisfying neo-Classic Space builds.)  When browsing Brickset, the only old Space sets that caught my eye with clean, elegant lines comparable to Star Wars were the 1978-79 sets ... before long, Space was dominated by the sorts of huge specialized pieces, clashing colors, and jarring, chaotic angles that I hated in the Mega Bloks cruiser. 

It was easy to conclude, at the time, that nobody in the adult fan community really liked any of the other Space sets and didn't miss them, so I wasn't alone in not liking them either.  Now, I recognize (imagine?) that nostalgia cycles tend to begin after a period of about 10-15 years and peak at 25-30 years, so the relatively high incidence of Classic Space nostalgia on the early Lego web, low incidence of later Space nostalgia, and high incidence of Star Wars enthusiasm were due to a unique set of historical factors rather than to any true sense in which kids of the appropriate age liked Classic Space "better" than any of the other lines.  The children who grew up with later Space subthemes weren't participating on the web yet, and Star Wars was Big News again, and the children who grew up with Classic Space also grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy in theaters, so there was a double helping of Star Wars and Classic Space enthusiasm due to that connection.  So that's another reason why, as a young child interested in Lego and Star Wars, I sort of "imprinted" on Lego Star Wars rather than Lego Space.

Why I prefer Star Wars now:

As an adult who's been following the Lego community without a dark age for twenty years (though not without some gray years), I still prefer Star Wars, but I also appreciate many of the virtues of in-house Space sets and I understand the viewpoints of those who would prefer to see the Star Wars theme retired or interrupted to make room for in-house Space.  This may sound strange, but the main reason I like Star Wars as an adult is precisely because it does repeat set subjects so often.  I like it because of the rehashes.  I like to see how things grow and change and develop in time; how different people over the years approach the same problem or topic and contribute to its progression.  That's science; that's history; that's engineering.  How do we build on what has come before and make it better?  As a kid, I loved to read about the steady progression in development of piston-engined fighter aircraft through the Second World War; about the development of jet fighters from the Cold War through the present day; and about the development of airliners and ocean liners.  I would draw "engineering cutaways" of imaginary spaceships and write sci-fi stories about spaceships and space battles, and then I would return to those same spaceships and those same stories and redraw the cutaways and rewrite the stories as my knowledge of real airplanes and spaceships and space travel improved.  I would rebuild and re-design my makeshift Lego A-wings and Y-wings and X-wings and W-wings as my parts bin expanded and my knowledge of the source material improved, too. 

By its continuous presence over twenty years, Lego Star Wars provides that same comforting sense of continuity and progression.  I can track the changes in the Lego parts library and in Lego set design practices over the years by comparing subsequent releases of any given Star Wars spaceship or vehicle, and that's simply impossible in an apples-to-apples way for the twenty-year progression of in-house Space themes before Star Wars.  There were sets with broadly similar features in each subtheme (a large spaceship, a single-seat spaceship, a rover), but there's no "sequence of snapshots of Lego building" of a Galaxy Explorer the same way there is for an X-wing.    Likewise, the development in MOC X-wings on the web is a far better apples-to-apples record of the advancement in AFOL building techniques over the years than are the changes through time in the single-seat spaceships that AFOLs build without any constraints in subject.  I can appreciate new parts, colors, and techniques better when I see them used to solve a previous unsolvable problem in Lego construction, and that is most clearly seen when a new iteration of a Star Wars model fixes a flaw that has persisted through several previous generations.  By analogy, let me note that in mathematical theory constrained optimization is generally much harder than unconstrained optimization.  When working with pre-established source material like a Star Wars spaceship, Lego designers don't have to think so hard about what to build, so they can think harder about how to build it.  The constraints of the problem can force creative, innovative solutions to building problems because there's no way around them, whereas in a free build it's easy to just cancel a play feature or a shape feature and do something else, and nobody will be the wiser about it.  That's partly why so many D2C-class sets are licensed or otherwise based on familiar subjects, I think.  Besides their obvious brand appeal, they allow designers the freedom to experiment with structural techniques, detailing techniques, and mechanisms without worrying about whether they should actually be building something completely different.

That's the theory, anyway.  I recognize that the continuity of subject matter lets the Star Wars designers get away with some pretty lazy rehashes most of the time, with little to distinguish subsequent releases except in detail, and that it's perfectly reasonable for a longtime AFOL to dislike the theme because of that.  I also recognize that several set designers have talked about how much fun they have doing wacky, unexpected, things for in-house or semi-licensed themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, any of the Lego movies, Chima, or Space, and I haven't heard them say much about the joy of meeting the challenge of bringing increasingly small incremental improvements to Star Wars sets with increasingly complex techniques.  So please don't take anything I've said about the what vs the how in the previous paragraph as anything but speculation.

On the creative freedom and fun colors open to in-house Space:

I'll grant that in-house Space themes are much more colorful than Star Wars, and that is a strong point in their favor.  I like bold, bright colors.  Too much gray is depressing.  I really like the gray-blue-trans yellow of early Classic Space and the white-trans dark blue of Space Police 3.  When used well, the black-yellow-trans yellow of Blacktron 1 and the red-black-trans neon green of M-Tron can be really neat too.  I've also seen some AFOL creations that make very good use of the black-blue-trans red of Space Police 1, the gray-black-trans dark green of Space Police 2, and the white-blue-trans neon orange of Ice Planet.  But as a kid I thought, and still generally today I think, that the colors of the older lines (and some newer ones, like Mars Mission) tend to clash more often than not.  For me, it's easy to ruin an otherwise promising line with a clashing color scheme.  In a reflection of my general aversion to risk in everyday life, in Lego sets I tend to prefer something in generally neutral colors with a few splashes of an accent color, couched in a relatively simple, clean design language, than something in much bolder colors that I don't like, in a chaotic design language that I don't like as much.  Of course, that's purely personal preference.  Many, perhaps most, people on this forum will always prefer the bolder, rarer colors.

As for the creative freedom afforded to in-house Space themes, certainly in-house Space and action/adventure themes are often bursting with creative mechanisms and features that can't be made to fit in Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Speed Champions.  A Millennium Falcon can't transform into a giant robot with a detachable ground base, because it's too busy being a Millennium Falcon.  But in many instances, the in-house Space or action/adventure sets with the most mechanical or detachable play features end up looking like, well, nothing more than the sum of those play features.  The play features require so much infrastructure that there's nothing left over in the budget to make the set look good, to my eyes.  For example, the Explorien Starship and the Interstellar Starfighter from 1997 and 1998 were both feature-rich flagships, but both sacrifice structural stability and a clear outer mold line for those features.  Similarly among the more recent lines, the Mars Mission, Space Police 3, and Galaxy Squad sets are bursting with features, but they end up mostly looking to me like random jumbles of parts.  I can't tell what they're supposed to be or even what they're supposed to do without looking closer, and so I lose the sense of verisimilitude that's so important to the way I played with Legos as a kid and continue to appreciate.  In short, I'd rather have something that looks good than something that plays well, and Star Wars is more reliable than in-house themes in that regard.  But that's just me.  The semi-licensed Lego Movie lines are better in that regard, because they get to be wild and fresh and fun, but the production designers at the movie studio help guide the models to have clear identities and purposes distinct from their sets of play features.

....

That's all I have to say for the moment, so I guess I better stop wasting time and get back to studying for finals.  Space is cool.  Star Wars is cool.  Finals ... not so much.
 

[Fenghuang0296]

. . . I opened this tab thinking it would be some kind of diorama of Star Wars ships fighting Blacktron or Classic Space or Space Police . . 

[dr_spock]

I have no preference to which one is better.   I enjoy both.

2 hours ago, Feng-huang0296 said:

. . . I opened this tab thinking it would be some kind of diorama of Star Wars ships fighting Blacktron or Classic Space or Space Police . . 

Ok, in-house may be winning here.

Day 053 of 365: Blacktron Pit Crew by dr_spock_888, on Flickr

 

[Digger of Bricks]

11 hours ago, Lego David said:

I obviously know your preference, but if you gave your own two cents as to why you think one is better than the other, I would still highly appreciate.

Well, my preference for original, in-house Space lines is actually based more in principle, as it's not so much about what themes past have given us, but what they are capable of giving us. As you had put it...

14 hours ago, Lego David said:

LEGO has full creative liberty over in-house Space, while with Star Wars, they always need to make it as accurate to the films as possible. With In-House Space, LEGO can do whatever crazy creative new idea they have.

So yeah, I pretty much know what to expect from LEGO Star Wars; and for the most part, it just doesn't offer much that's up my alley aesthetically-speaking. With in-house Space themes though, I can actually hope and expect to see something that just could be closer to my likening... 

[Toastie]

22 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Ok, in-house may be winning here.

That one is so cool ... man. You're so blessed with creativeness - and building skills - and fantastic ideas. Really nice.

Yes, in house does not only win. It plays in another league - the LEGO league.

Best
Thorsten  

[hagridshut]

On 12/14/2019 at 6:31 AM, Lego David said:

Despite all this, though, Star Wars still is more popular.

What is your opinion? Which do you personally prefer and why?

I prefer in-house Space themes, but I do buy some Star Wars sets.

 

Quote

In my opinion, in-house Space themes will always be better than Star Wars, because of the following reasons:

1. Star Wars space ships are so bland and colorless. Most of them have colors consisting mostly of very dark colors (grey, most of the times), with few exceptions. In-house Space themes, on the other hand, have beautiful color combinations, which makes them a lot more visually appealing to me  than Star Wars.

Agreed here.  The colors of in-house space themes are saturated and are very eye catching.  The use of transparent colored canopies is much more appealing than the transparent clear or smoke gray typically found in Star Wars sets. 

 

Quote

2. Star Wars just keeps recycling designs and almost never offers something new. With In-House Space, every new theme offered something completely new and unique.

My collection has few Star Wars sets, but the ones I buy are designs that differ from the usual array of X-Wings, Y-Wings, and TIE fighters.  I own no X-Wings or TIE fighters, but I do have a U-Wing (from the 2016 Rogue One film).  The swing-wing mechanism gives the model a unique dual-personality, because the ship looks vastly different depending on whether the wings are swept forward or backwards.  I also own Anakin's Starfighter from the Clone Wars series.  The profile of the ship actually reminds me a bit of the 918/924/928 series from Classic Space, and the color scheme has a nice bright yellow that contrasts with dark gray.  I added some dark blue pieces to give the ship a color scheme that matches the Unitron minifigs.  

 

Quote

3. LEGO has full creative liberty over in-house Space, while with Star Wars, they always need to make it as accurate to the films as possible. With In-House Space, LEGO can do whatever crazy creative new idea they have.

I also very much enjoy the crazy and random ideas that result in the in-house space themes.  

Emmet's Rescue Rocket (from TLM2) and Space Police Drop Ship (from The Lego Movie) are 2 recent examples of in-house spaceships in my collection that I bought because they were different and creative.  

I am a Star Wars fan, particularly of the Original Trilogy, Clone Wars animated series, and Rebels animated series, but I prefer Lego's in-house designs to their Star Wars offerings, and my collection reflects that.  I only buy Lego Star Wars sets that have nice color schemes and/or designs that haven't been rehashed multiple times over the past 20 years.  

[millenniumf]

I think that Star Wars is a win for me over in-house. Even when I was a kid, I had a preference toward Star Wars over the in-house space themes, because that was what I was a fan of already. I collected a bunch of themes, but whenever I built a MOC it would be the X-wing, or the Millennium Falcon, or when I got enough parts to do it, an Imperial Star Destroyer. Multicolor, of course. :P I thought the in-house Space themes were cool, of course. But I always hated the colored canopies. I imagined myself trying to use them as a minifigure, and it always made my head hurt because why would you want to look out a window that was colored at all, especially in your command center or cockpit? When the first Star Wars kits came out, they used smoked clear cockpit canopies, which I didn't really like as well as I would have liked clear, but it was a step in the right direction. 

Also, I think it's a tad unfair to Star Wars to claim that they're all gray blobs with little in the way of color variation. Naboo Starfighters are yellow and chrome, Republic ships are crimson, Separatist ships are blue, many "scum and villainy" ships are green... there is a LOT of variety in Star Wars as far as color pallet goes. 

As far as creativity in design goes, I don't think Lego ever really had compelling designs for any of its in-house Space line. Most of the time, they went with mundane rocketships or flying saucers, and while they started to branch out in the 90's, I don't think their design work has ever had anything that truly "grabbed" me, even when I was a kid. I think if they were to do another in-house line, they should REALLY consider hiring someone like Chris Foss or Doug Chiang to design the line and make something that's really wild and cool, with the design coming first and the Lego components coming second. Or heck, find someone on Brickshelf that has obvious creative talent in terms of coming up with cool ship design and hire them to make some compelling designs. 

[MAB]

Star Wars. Because any in-house Space theme will be criticised for not being Classic Space and will probably sell badly, along with complaints that it is all about war and not exploration.

[Toastie]

8 hours ago, MAB said:

Star Wars. Because any in-house Space theme will be criticised for not being Classic Space and will probably sell badly, along with complaints that it is all about war and not exploration.

What? You really like Star Wars better because of that? Because Star Wars sells better? And there will be complaints for in-house? I don't get this.

Star Wars is nothing more than war - on a very simple "black folks vs white folks" plot. Make that color political. The "white" storm troopers are just complete idiots and get slaughtered by really large numbers. The good folks are wearing for sure no black clothes, so we don't get confused. And the - Impire - wears black or very dark clothes - so again, we don't have to think too much. And then it is: An Impire and The Rebels. And of course that sells. It sells in fiction, as it does in reality.

But that was not the question: What do you like better? Maybe creativity-wise? Go nuts on what the bricks can do? As is >space<? Will that really be Star Wars?

Best
Thorsten

 

[Vindicare]

I’m equally a fan of both. The last time in house & SW fought for shelf space, I went nuts with both, Alien Conquest & Galaxy Squad. It’s not quite right to criticize SW for repeat ships...as it’s those ships that sell. They do plenty of different ships(and colors) year in & year out. It’s just that everyone focuses on the popular ships because, again, they are the ones that sell best. 

[The Brick Boss]

Nostalgia for me. That's probably why I do Town Jr. Launch Command and City space instead of Star Wars. 

[Magic Edutainer]

Why Star Wars is more popular than "normal space" ... Hmm that is a tough one ...

[Tariq j]

On 12/14/2019 at 11:31 AM, Lego David said:

 

3. LEGO has full creative liberty over in-house Space, while with Star Wars, they always need to make it as accurate to the films as possible. With In-House Space, LEGO can do whatever crazy creative new idea they have.

 

I don’t see this as a bad thing though. Even though LEGO do adhere to the films when it comes to the sets, kids will still create their own adventures and storylines with the sets and minifigures. They won’t just strictly stick to acting out the film’s storyline. 

I would have to say Star Wars but there have been some good offerings from the in house themes like Space Police. 

 

 

[Professor Thaum]

On 12/14/2019 at 3:54 PM, TeriXeri said:

In-house space.

I don't collect Star Wars, or Licensed at all.

 

I couldn't have put it better myself

Licensed are not lego for me

[Fuppylodders]

I do really like the ep 1-6 star wars vehicles and ships, their designs are original and lend well to lego, whatever scale they end up being done in. I love all the TIE ships and always have. Love the X-wing lego models, the huge MF (even though I've still yet to build mine!) and the Republic gunships, at-te walkers, at-at... TLG are doing such great things the more time goes on with them! 

 

 

That being said... I have barely any of the classic space ships... I currently still have the large explorien ship pictured a few posts up, have the 2 large spyrian robots and flying saucer, and currently am struggling not to give in and buy a space police 2 mediator. Its only the price for what is 330-odd parts that is getting me, even though its actually rather big (big plates ), it's quite a dated design, which is fair. Unfortunately none of my ice planet, blacktron nor m-tron stuff survived staying with me through my dark years, although I only had the smaller sets from them. 

Classic space wins it for me hands down. The colours are always so enticing and radiant, even the black and trans luminous green work well, as does the red/black and trans dark blue. I love the mix or trans orange, blue and white for the ice planet. The designs of all their ships were exceptional for their time and soooo different, such imagination went into them. 

I would just absolutely love to see what they could do now for a big spaceship with all the parts and techniques if they were to make a brand new in-house space theme (bennys ship is great in its own right, and I'm glad I got it, but it pertains to the original classic space ship style. I want to see a clean slate design!) I'd gladly drop £150 on one without thought if the size/piece count were there to back up the price. 

[hagridshut]

On 12/16/2019 at 12:50 PM, millenniumf said:

it always made my head hurt because why would you want to look out a window that was colored at all, especially in your command center or cockpit? When the first Star Wars kits came out, they used smoked clear cockpit canopies, which I didn't really like as well as I would have liked clear, but it was a step in the right direction. 

I imagined that the canopies were colored because they had filters to prevent ultra bright light from stars or spaceship drive plumes from blinding pilots.  

Now, I wonder why  a SciFi spaceship would even need a cockpit or bridge canopy at all, because most of the piloting is done by computers.  External visuals can be gathered by camera and transmitted to a computer display inside a ship if the crew needs to see what is going on outside.  Many SciFi ships, like those from the 2003 Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse, do not appear to have any exterior windows at all on their command decks.  I think the 2003 Galactica had one big window on an observation deck for recreational viewing of the cosmos.

[millenniumf]

You'd need it in case of instrument failure or sensor failure. It would be sort of a backup for the primary means of visually guiding the spacecraft, there in case you need it, but not really used all that often. 

[pombe]

This is like asking if you prefer prime rib or rib eye steak.  They are both steaks, they are both delicious, and I enjoy them both just fine.

However, I would like to have the choice.

Also, with Star Wars, there needs to be some sort of minimum time between releases of the same thing.  Like...at least five years between Millenium Falcons (any variation) or something.  I think that would help keep Star Wars more fresh to me, as opposed to "oh, there's yet another x-wing...yay...".  There's an entire universe of fighters and starships, from Z-95 headhunters to T-16 skyhoppers to Carrack class light cruisers to Interdictor class star destroyers, but nope we get Slave I again.

[MAB]

On 12/23/2019 at 9:18 PM, Toastie said:

What? You really like Star Wars better because of that? Because Star Wars sells better? And there will be complaints for in-house? I don't get this.

 

I like Star Wars because it is Star Wars. I like some in-house space themes. But yes, if LEGO do another in-house space theme there will be loads of complaints that LEGO did it wrong and that what they should have done is re-do all the old classic space sets and that they have wasted a slot on pandering to modern kids' views of space and not a 1980s view of space. They have done it before - look at AC and GS. Both were in-house space themes. At the time they were both criticized.

10 hours ago, pombe said:

Also, with Star Wars, there needs to be some sort of minimum time between releases of the same thing.  Like...at least five years between Millenium Falcons (any variation) or something.  I think that would help keep Star Wars more fresh to me, as opposed to "oh, there's yet another x-wing...yay...".

What about the kid that wants a key ship like the Millenium Falcon? Should s/he have to wait five years as one was already made? In my view, there should probably be an X-wing and a MF on the shelves at all times.

[pombe]

5 hours ago, MAB said:

What about the kid that wants a key ship like the Millenium Falcon? Should s/he have to wait five years as one was already made? In my view, there should probably be an X-wing and a MF on the shelves at all times.

I understand the logic behind your question, but implementing it comes with costs.

It reduces the breath and diversity of the line, if they must produce a variation of the same iconic ship every year.  It discourages double dipping into the same line, since the kid will likely only want one Millenium Falcon which will always occupy a slot in the annual wave (with an x-wing and a TIE of some sort along with an AT-ST and maybe Slave I) and over time the line is more likely to run out of sets s/he wants.  It also prevents LEGO from putting out sets that may attract AFOL collectors, such as one of the other 18 pod racers from Episode I that hasn't been produced, the Outrider, or a Mon Calamari cruiser.  Overall it contributes to the staleness of the line and fatigue for LEGO Star Wars.

I get it, though.  It's the same reason why citizens of City have to pay exorbitant taxes to fund all the new police and fire stations they get every year (even the modulars and the winter village have fire stations!).  But it comes at the cost of having a postal center, a recycling center, or schools.

A compromise could be having the iconic sets every other year (or every three years), so that the rest of the line can be more diverse and the kids don't have to wait so long to see the set they want that they are missing.

[icm]

4 minutes ago, pombe said:

A compromise could be having the iconic sets every other year (or every three years), so that the rest of the line can be more diverse and the kids don't have to wait so long to see the set they want that they are missing.

I think that's the status quo, don't you?