Lego David

Why all the hate for Legends of Chima?

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Legends of Chima was one of the first "Big Bang" themes, and it was originally intended to be Ninjago's successor, but due to the fact that Ninjago continued past it's planned three years, it resulted in both themes being released and competing against each other for sales and popularity. Of the two, Ninjago was obviously the winner, and Chima was left in the dust, being mostly disliked by most fans and even outright hated by some. 

Personally, I loved the theme back when it was on shelves, and got quite a few of the sets... and I am a fan of it even to this day. This may piss off a lot of people, but in retrospect, I actually like Chima a lot more than Ninjago. I loved the world building, and the animal-inspired vehicle sets are in my opinion a lot more interesting than the generic good guy vehicles that Ninjago keeps making every year. Even the TV Show, which wasn't very well received by most people, had the best looking 3D animation out of all of LEGO's TV Shows, as stated by Tommy Anderson himself on Twitter. And although the writing wasn't the best in the first year, the show did improve as time went on, and even managed to get a solid conclusion to the story, unlike something like say, Nexo Knights, which ended very abruptly and never got a proper ending. 

So I do want to know... why do so many people hate Legends of Chima? Was it the fact that it supposedly tried to replace Ninjago? Was it the TV Show? Was it the sets? I really want to know, because I never understood why this theme was so hated.

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Chima retired when I came back into LEGO, but now looking at it, I'm a big fan of the minifig sets, especially the locations (Lion Chi Temple / Outland Base / Croc Swamp Hideout), and small sets like Tribe Packs.

Overall, the theme looks very varied, with Constraction, Speedorz, Tribe Packs, Legend Beasts and a mix of vehicles and locations.

Speedorz look to have some nice builds as well, but look pretty expensive in terms of price/volume, and there were 26 different Speedorz sets.

I can see reasons of poor sales of some sets, when there could be a case of too many different sets at the same time, especially Speedorz, 2013 alone had 16 of them.

 

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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There were many different reasons. The fact that Lego obviously tried to replace Ninjago with Chima left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Ninjago fans.

Another big problems was the cartoon. It was unwatchable due to its terrible writing and voice acting. The world they created for it had potential, but chi was an obvious allegory for drugs which made the morals of the show questionable at best, and the story and concept felt too similar to Thundercats, which had a great reboot airing on Cartoon Network at the time. The two shows were competing with each other and some say that Chima was the reason why Thundercats got cancelled, probably due to cheaper production and higher potential to sell toys.

Some people simply didn't care for the aesthetics of the sets and preferred Ninjago or other themes.

Long story short, Chima managed to piss off Ninjago and Thundercats fans while not being able to gather enough fans of its own with its terrible, unoriginal TV show, questionable morals, and polarizing set designs.

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5 hours ago, Oky said:

terrible, unoriginal TV show, questionable morals, and polarizing set designs.

I highly disagree with everything stated here. The TV Show wasn't terrible... It had a weak start, but got better over time, and as I pointed out in my topic post, it did managed to get a solid conclusion to the story, unlike Nexo Knights. And the set designs were not polarizing in any way... I personally loved them, and so did a lot of other people. If anything, the Ninjago set designs are the ones which are actually polarizing. 

Nick on Planet Ripple does a pretty good job defending Chima and explaining why the theme is good in this video:

 

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37 minutes ago, Lego David said:

And the set designs were not polarizing in any way... I personally loved them, and so did a lot of other people.

... and many people clearly didn't. That's the definition of polarizing; you either love it or hate it. And you have to admit that the show had its flaws. Even Nick said it's junk. It's fine if you liked the theme, I'm just answering your question.

Personally, I was kinda indifferent about the theme. Some cool parts, but none of it really grabbed me enough to buy any.

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24 minutes ago, Oky said:

And you have to admit that the show had its flaws.

I agree that it had it's flaws, but it did have some good things about it as well. So it wasn't a completely horrible show. 

Edited by Lego David

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Personally, first and second series were really enjoyable and pretty good. Sure, the show might be a little hard to watch at first but I did eventually get invested into it, especially the arc in the Outlands and I do like how dark it went. The sets for both series looks really good too for its time. And as partly in Nick's video, I do love the worldbuilding for 2013 and 2014 1st half year.

And then came the Ice and Fire chapter...At first, some of the 2014 2nd HY sets seems really cool and first two episodes were quite exciting as they do have a dark tone to it. But eventually (and combined with how much Ice and Fire stuff I've already seen in Bionicle and Ninjago), it got really stale pretty fast, most things felt uninteresting by then. I stopped looking forward to the next episode and instead just watched on to just see how the story ends. While the first season have a lot of creative episodes, this chapter is mostly just warfare and minor shenanigans. With the high episode count for seeing ice and fire all the way, it was just boring.

Then there's 2015's wave, by then I felt this chapter has gone on for too long. Sure, some of the sets does look good in a way and there are character that needs to be covered got covered but at that point, with more ice and fire themed vehicles, the sets didn't really excite me and I overall just stopped caring about the theme as I got hooked to other theme such as Ultra Agents, and Ninjago's Tournament of Elements.

Maybe if Lego decided to take another approach while still retaining the fantasy jungle spirit instead of Ice and Fire, would it be more interesting? While I'm not sure on the public perception on that, it's just my two cents on the theme. I wasn't part of the hate but I do want to bring this point onto the table as I won't be surprised it tanked due to staleness at the end.

Edited by JJ Tong (zfogshooterz)

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Is this about the media or the sets?

If you have to focus on the cartoon, I will happily move this thread to the appropriate location.

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3 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

Is this about the media or the sets?

This is about the series as a whole, both the media and the sets. So, I'm pretty sure it's okay if the thread remained here. 

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I'm pretty sure if the focus drifts to the show alone, it would go into Media. 

Some of us consumers purchase a product without any influence or contact with associated media, so I don't judge a set or theme on the plotline of a cartoon that squarely aimed itself at children. 

The constraction figures were weird. The game was fun enough with flywheels but I couldn't make sense of the cards. The armour and banners were my favourite parts of the theme.

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I honestly always really enjoyed the sets. I was in a dark age for most of Chima’s run and only got some of the early stuff in 2013 early on, but there was some great stuff later and just a couple of months ago I managed to get a used copy of the Flying Phoenix Fire Temple for a great price on eBay, which I’ve expanded and installed in my city as a ‘church’. The Order of the Phoenix is a completely different thing in my city. :P As someone who’s too young to have been around for any earlier takes on Fire Vs. Ice, I didn’t find it at all tired. Granted, there’s nothing particularly special about most of the Ice builds (though the Sabre-Tank that came with the Phoenix Fire Temple does have a nice play feature), but I do like the Fire aesthetic. I think the Temple’s going to be part of my city for quite a while to come.

 

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I actually enjoyed the theme.  My kids enjoyed the show and sets.  The show was obviously aimed at children and isn't meant to appease us adults.  But I really enjoyed the figs and some of the sets were fun to build.  I use a lot of the figs in my fantasy castle builds.  I actually am still looking to buy more of the wolves to increase an army I am making.  The armor and wing pieces were great.  I liked the spider and bat figs too.  The phoenix build was really good.  I actually really liked the fire and ice theme part as it produced some of the best figs and prints.  

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I think i don’t own anything Ninjago. I do own a few Chima sets. Little sets. For the sake of the minifigs. The scorpions looked like Predator and the Ape family, and the Bear tribe were such good designs. The thing i hated the most were the torso-prints. Always that blue circle. That made them pretty useless for figbarfs. 
I didn’t watch the tv series. I never watch lego tv series :-/

i think Chima gave us also some pretty cool pieces. Flames, wings, bodygear, stuff like that. 
 

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I have nothing bad to say about Chima, other than the beaver figure. That was an abomination. 

Edited by williejm
Typo.

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12 hours ago, williejm said:

I have nothing bad to say about Chima, other than the beaver figure. That was an abomination. 

Yes that was pretty bad.  They could've done a different mold.  I forgot about the beaver tribe.  

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I guess it's most likely I could be in the minority on this then. I will have to admit that I do get what Lego were trying to do, with (mostly) exploring animals of the Ice Age which are kinda nice. The Phoenix, Tigers and leopards were alright to me. Maybe I would've been mostly fine with it if the fire and Ice stopped there (though even that much fire and Ice will still bother me)? I don't know honestly.

What bothered me most with the sets would be fire-souped up vehicles of the animals of the first series like King Crominus' Rescue, Cragger's Fire Striker, Eris Fire Eagle Flyer or Laval's Fire Lion. At that point I think it fully sealed the deal that this is just feels like this theme became a fire vs ice theme and nothing more. Not to mention Bladvic's Rumble Bear too. It just bothered me that we get have some form of the bear tribe and it's fire-souped up...

I can't help but to think what if instead of Fire and Ice, we get to explore the vast lands beyond Chima and Outlands. Go even more prehistoric and say, introduce the dinosaurs where each species is a unique tribe and explore new and savage cultures and legends. And...this would also make it possible to introduce old tribes like the bears without everything being deep-fried or deep-freezed.

Just my thoughts here again.

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It was hated for being, largely, everything bad about thunder cats, with few of the redeeming qualities, a bad tv show that managed to alienate fans of both the (at the time) current thundercats and ninjago, being seen as a lackluster attempt to replace both without understanding what made either good.

the show was awful, with grating voices, unlikable characters, botched drug allegories, inconsistent tone, and a predictable story (oh, the conflict of the season is over, but the villains throw the chi away to where the NEW villains are, rinse-repeat)

the sets on the other hand, start off great. Then they keep going. And going. And going. With similar parts and homogenous designs for each tribe. I get that the gimmick is “the vehicles look like the animal!” But man it got old, especially once the garish orange fire add-ons got introduced. Oh you have 7 vehicles shaped like a lion already? How about MORE OF THAT, but with WORSE COLORS. While the builds are solid on their own, it just felt like wave after wave of very similar vehicles with very similar minifigs. 
 

while similar problems would crop up in themes like nexo knights (similar colors and unfitting accents in some waves) or ninjago (repetitive themes for some story arcs), chima got hit with it essentially right out of the gate, not giving people the time or motivation to get invested in the characters or story to a point where they could look past those things.

As 1 dimensional as the characters of nexo could be, they were decently voiced, had good, if standard, plots to react to, and each had a distinct personality, without introducing so many characters you can’t keep track of. As repetitive as ninjago could be at its worst, by the time it hit That point the Characters were fleshed out enough that a whole season could get by on how the focus character is dealing with that problem/villain differently than other characters (contrast the tournament of elements to skybound, both have a quirky antagonist crew picking off the ninja one by one, but since one focused on Kai and one on jay, they ended up very different, one deconstructing the “designated main character” tropes, and one focused on “what happens if you break the comic relief character”

 

chima on the other hand came out of the gate with a TON of characters all vying for attention, starting off with a betrayal plot that doesn’t work because we don’t KNOW the characters yet. It felt bloated and weird, as if there were missing chapters to the story, and again, I can’t get over the voices, watching More than a few episodes of the show At a time gave me headaches. 
 

tldr, and sorry about the wall of text:
Add together too many characters to actually care about starting out, botched morals, pissing off multiple potential fan groups by releasing at a bad time, repetitive builds with garish gimmick-overdosed “fire and ice” add ons later, and you get legends of chima. A series who’s good ideas were constantly buried under strange missteps and a combination of all the major problems LEGO themes face at once.

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I loved the theme(and show) as well. The vehicles were all quite creative & the minifigs are fantastic. The huge array of factions was impressive. Sadly I missed out on a lot of the sets as I only bought most of the first wave. Other themes took priority. But I still enjoyed the other sets & do regret not getting at least some of them. 

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On 7/19/2020 at 7:04 PM, Lego David said:

So I do want to know... why do so many people hate Legends of Chima? Was it the fact that it supposedly tried to replace Ninjago? Was it the TV Show? Was it the sets? I really want to know, because I never understood why this theme was so hated

Well it's all together. Chima was also a reason the Thundercats' reboot ended. So it's not just the Ninjago fans who disliked it.

On 7/19/2020 at 7:04 PM, Lego David said:

I loved the world building, and the animal-inspired vehicle sets are in my opinion a lot more interesting than the generic good guy vehicles that Ninjago keeps making every year

How was Chima any different? It was basically Ninjago only with animals that walk on two legs, and with drugs of course. And while the sets were good themselves, the concept quickly became old. As repetitive as Ninjago's sets can be (bikes, just bikes), there was always variety in terms of motifs (cyberpunk, jungle, wasteland, etc).

On 7/19/2020 at 7:04 PM, Lego David said:

Even the TV Show, which wasn't very well received by most people, had the best looking 3D animation out of all of LEGO's TV Shows, as stated by Tommy Anderson himself on Twitter

Well I agree, the animation and music were really good, probably the only thing that I would call good about the show. But the direction sucks, with weird editing, odd camera choices and other things (we have to see the beginning of episode 1 twice). The voices in the original dub are just so annoying and exhausting. At the rewatch I actually wanted to see the orignal dub, but after the first episodes I switched to the German dub, who is miles better.

On 7/19/2020 at 7:04 PM, Lego David said:

And although the writing wasn't the best in the first year, the show did improve as time went on, and even managed to get a solid conclusion to the story, unlike something like say, Nexo Knights, which ended very abruptly and never got a proper ending.

Well yeah, it got better, but only better, and better doesn't mean good. And at the end of the day, most of the story is just not well-written or very entertaining. With bland, annoying and forgetable characters like Laval with little to no character development. Our characters also lacked motivation. The ravens and wolves are on the side of the crocodiles because they are evil, and the gorillas and eagles are on the side of the lions because they are good. Same goes to the later factions. The tone was also inconsistent (Cragger's henchmen being silly in the background of a battle). And I don't even want to start talking about comedy, because at best it's as bad as Ninjago's comedy.

Season one is just plain boring, repetitive and lame (the racing episodes, gosh). With the second, they didn't seem to know what to do with it. And while season three is better, it's mediocre average at best.  Chima is not even bad in the sense of "it's so bad, it's good" bad, like the Donkey Kong Country Cartoon, Power Rangers or Batman with Adam West. But Chima is so bad, that it's just bad.

So Chima is hated because of: bad writing, bad characters, bad voice acting, repetitive set motifs that don't appeal to everyone and the killing of Ninjago's and Thundercats at the time.

Also, Nexo Knights was originally supposed to have a final season, but that one has been canceled. If I'm not mistaken, the story was told to the end in the app game. 

 

 

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I don't hate it per say but I'm not fond of it either. Especially when you consider that the Thundercats reboot bit the dust because of it. 

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20 minutes ago, LOTR34 said:

I don't hate it per say but I'm not fond of it either. Especially when you consider that the Thundercats reboot bit the dust because of it. 

Even though Thundercats got yet another reboot last year in 2020, funny enough. 

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2 hours ago, Lego David said:

Even though Thundercats got yet another reboot last year in 2020, funny enough. 

We don't speak about that abomination,lest we sully the original reboot.

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I liked Chima, probably because I loved Fabuland as a child and it's kind of close to that theme with the anthro animals. I bought a lot of the sets, mainly for the Minifigs.

While a lot of episodes of the series were uninteresting, I liked the bigger story arcs and the fact it had a progressing story line with an actual conclusion which was sadly lacking in Nexo Knights. It was cool that it had a crossover with Ninjago too.

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The main reason I disliked the theme is the fact that I'm allergic to furry/anthro stuff. I just can't help it the very concept of ripped animal people strikes me as bizarre and repulsive. Even as a kid I used to be somewhat disturbed by shows like "Biker Mice from Mars", and now I routinely block furry artists on deviantart with the help of a handy browser extension. Besides, Chima was meant to replace my then-favorite Ninjago as the new "big bang theme", and probably contributed to the 2013 "final battle" wave of Ninago being kind of lackluster. Or so I think at least.

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With all due respect, while I agree with most of the points made here about the show, how was chi a drug allegory? It's been a while since I've seen the show and must have missed that.

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