Lego Ideas 90th Anniversary Fan Vote

[Alexandrina]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

They appeared individually and not as opposition to white people

That's also true of the 1990s Western theme though 

[Fuppylodders]

18 hours ago, JintaiZ said:

I think a Classic Space pirate ship could work.  Not sure if Bionicle could be combined with any of these themes, though...

Careful, we already had space knights and we know how well that went down... 

[Scarilian]

10 hours ago, MAB said:

They appeared individually and not as opposition to white people.

Your remark speaks to a lack of familiarity with the original theme and potentially a desire to blame an aspect that never was a problem with the sets for why you think they cannot return. Nobody wants that, nobody is suggesting that and Lego have never done that and likely would never do that.

The Western theme never depicted Native Americans/Indians in opposition to any person either.

• The subtheme of Western, Indians, depicted them as facing threats of nature such as a boulder falling but the primary threat to them was depicted as Snakes, which were the main threat in six of the eight sets.
• The subtheme of Western, Cowboys, depicted them as facing internal threats such as bandits.

Lego can easily adapt Native Americans/Indians again and the easiest method of them doing so is arguably the exact same way they did in the past, by depicting them as peaceful with no human conflicts in-tune with nature with the only threats being environmental or perhaps a natural threat such as an animal.

36 minutes ago, Fuppylodders said:

Careful, we already had space knights and we know how well that went down... 

Sadly, the people who want Castle back did not see Nexo Knights for what it was. Lego testing the waters on the popularity of Castle by combining it with another theme, in this case Space & Fantasy.

Nexo Knights which was Space + Castle + Fantasy failed, so Lego is wondering why that happened. They gave it a show, they gave it funding, they gave it marketting. They provided people with lots of Castle elements and varying adaptations of the classic castle design and yet it still underperformed.

So the best thing to do is split up the Castle segment on the poll to find out which parts of Castle resonate most with people to determine if the Castle aspects were not what people wanted from Castle - and what it found was people want Classic Castle, Forestmen, Imperials, Black Knights and Dragon Knights. Combine this with the potential popularity of the Lego Ideas Medieval Blacksmith and chances are the next Castle iteration will be Medieval inspired - perhaps with a touch more Fantasy/Nature.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Scarilian

[danth]

54 minutes ago, Scarilian said:

Nexo Knights which was Space + Castle + Fantasy failed, so Lego is wondering why that happened. They gave it a show, they gave it funding, they gave it marketting. They provided people with lots of Castle elements and varying adaptations of the classic castle design and yet it still underperformed.

I'm not sure what people mean by "failed." Almost every in-house Lego theme only sticks around for a few years. Ninjago is like the one exception.

And of course I don't mean very broad overarching themes like City or Space. I mean specific themes. Sometimes they're sub-themes like Volcano Explorers or Futuron. Sometimes they're standalone like Elves.

Just trying to prevent pedantic replies over semantics here...

[JintaiZ]

5 hours ago, Fuppylodders said:

Careful, we already had space knights and we know how well that went down... 

https://www.brothers-brick.com/2020/04/05/classic-space-pirates-is-a-win-win/

Edited January 30, 2021 by JintaiZ

[koalayummies]

@JintaiZ that is one of the greatest Lego creations I've ever seen.

[General Magma]

So Adventurers in 5th place... it's top 5, at least, but I was hoping it'd at least make it to the top 3. Ah well. Maybe they'll do a nod to it anyway, or perhaps one of the Ideas set based on Adventurers can renew hope in that regard for the theme's return.

22 hours ago, koalayummies said:

Hunting. Defense was really secondary.

Yes.

It was a joke folks, you may lay down the lecture books 

[koalayummies]

Well the responses were lacking in lolz but so be it.

[Roebuck]

12 hours ago, Scarilian said:

Lego can easily adapt Native Americans/Indians again and the easiest method of them doing so is arguably the exact same way they did in the past, by depicting them as peaceful with no human conflicts in-tune with nature with the only threats being environmental or perhaps a natural threat such as an animal.

I want native american sets as much as the next one, they came out during my dark age, but I have still bougth them all since I like the theme and sets a lot. However from what I understand (to be clear; no exspert by any means) the sets are a hodgepodge of different tribes and in this day and age that may not be so easy to pull of as it was over 20 year ago 
In addition I do not see the agrumant that a posible cowboy set in ideas should stop a native american set from particepaiting in this competision

12 hours ago, Scarilian said:

So the best thing to do is split up the Castle segment on the poll to find out which parts of Castle resonate most with people to determine if the Castle aspects were not what people wanted from Castle - and what it found was people want Classic Castle, Forestmen, Imperials, Black Knights and Dragon Knights.

It could be, something is definitely of with the way they made the poll and I would be surprised if no one of all the Lego employees that handled it did not see the problem. They have not said exactly how they will determine the winner either, so maybe they add up all the different people that have voted for castle and give us a castle set with the most popular fractions
BTW imperials is a pirate fraction  Unfortunately I think that a lot of people that voted for classic castle do not actually want a yellow castle, but thought it was a umbrella category for older castle sets

[MAB]

13 hours ago, Scarilian said:

Your remark speaks to a lack of familiarity with the original theme and potentially a desire to blame an aspect that never was a problem with the sets for why you think they cannot return. Nobody wants that, nobody is suggesting that and Lego have never done that and likely would never do that.

 

I am completely familiar with the theme. Yes, individual sets were sold as "Indians" only in a set. But those sets were sold side by side on the shelves next to sets with the same branding containing soldiers in a fort?

And lego also sold this multiset kit...

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=K6762-1&viewItemType=S

Edited January 31, 2021 by MAB

[Alexandrina]

The soldiers in Fort Legoredo are definitely being pitched up against Flatfoot Thomson and his bandit crew. In any case, potential issues aren't inherent to a Western theme even if they were present before, so that should not be a factor in precluding Western sets from ever making a return 

[MAB]

So why are there soldiers in the same theme at the same time as the Native Americans? There is some reason the two groups are in the same theme, so how do they interact? Sure, LEGO didn't explicitly show conflict between them but there is a reason that soldiers are there and why they have a fort.

[Weil]

I think everyone agrees the consumer gets to decide how they interact.  Also, strictly in lego terms, the soldiers had a fort before the native americans existed.

It seems people just disagree on whether its problematic today if they're readily able to be used as opponents.

[Alexandrina]

4 hours ago, MAB said:

So why are there soldiers in the same theme at the same time as the Native Americans? There is some reason the two groups are in the same theme, so how do they interact?

Why do they need to interact? They're in the same theme because they're both subsets of the Western genre. They use design cues from Old West history and Western films, and aesthetically are linked. They're also temporally linked and spatially linked - it doesn't make sense to release them under different umbrellas. I don't see that as any different to, say, police and fire existing in the Town/City theme, or the various stables and seaside sets from Paradisa belonging to the same umbrella. These groups don't have to interact - but let's not pretend people wouldn't wonder what was going on if Lego decided their fire sets needed to belong under a Fire banner rather than the City banner. That doesn't mean your fire fighters need to deal with a fire at the police station, or the riding club needs to take a daytrip to the beach.

[MAB]

45 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

Why do they need to interact? They're in the same theme because they're both subsets of the Western genre. They use design cues from Old West history and Western films, and aesthetically are linked. They're also temporally linked and spatially linked - it doesn't make sense to release them under different umbrellas. I don't see that as any different to, say, police and fire existing in the Town/City theme, or the various stables and seaside sets from Paradisa belonging to the same umbrella. These groups don't have to interact - but let's not pretend people wouldn't wonder what was going on if Lego decided their fire sets needed to belong under a Fire banner rather than the City banner. That doesn't mean your fire fighters need to deal with a fire at the police station, or the riding club needs to take a daytrip to the beach.

This thread is about a SINGLE set to represent a theme to represent LEGO history. So the point is that either they have to interact in the set or either Indians or Cowboys are left out, that is these are different themes.

[Alexandrina]

58 minutes ago, MAB said:

This thread is about a SINGLE set to represent a theme to represent LEGO history. So the point is that either they have to interact in the set or either Indians or Cowboys are left out, that is these are different themes.

That's no different from Town being under a single umbrella in the vote (which it was). Had Town been the winner, they probably wouldn't have made a hybrid set with police and fire and hospital and a pizza parlour and a marina and everything else that falls under the Town umbrella. They'd have picked one - maybe two - of those things, and the rest would have missed out.

Not to mention, they had no trouble splitting Castle and Space into numerous subthemes for the vote. If Western was excluded entirely because of potential issues around Native Americans' portrayal, why wouldn't Lego simply have listed the Cowboys subtheme and not included the Native American subtheme? At the end of the day sensitivity towards Native Americans doesn't fully explain the complete omission of Western from the vote - and given Western would almost certainly rank comfortably in the Top 30 if every theme and subtheme from before 2005 was included, it's therefore fair to speculate as to why it was left out.

[Lego David]

Regarding the debate about Native American portray in LEGO Western, Nick on Planet Ripple had a few things to say about it this video:

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Lego David

[Alexandrina]

Thanks for that video - it was an interesting watch. Still, I don't think he touched on why Lego should never do Western again. There was a lot about being respectful of what people are saying - which I 100% agree with - but nothing so much on what Western's failings were, or why those failings could never be corrected. In fact, he went straight from complimenting the sets (particularly the Native Americans sets) to saying that Lego should never touch Western again. There's also the fact that (as he says himself in the video) he was never especially sold on the sets to begin with, as well as letting his perceptions on the potential of the theme be coloured by the Lone Ranger releases - and at times he even seemed dismissive of the fact that Western might have a fanbase ("who was still asking for these sets?", he says, of the 2002 re-release).

[zoth33]

21 hours ago, Scarilian said:

Your remark speaks to a lack of familiarity with the original theme and potentially a desire to blame an aspect that never was a problem with the sets for why you think they cannot return. Nobody wants that, nobody is suggesting that and Lego have never done that and likely would never do that.

The Western theme never depicted Native Americans/Indians in opposition to any person either.

• The subtheme of Western, Indians, depicted them as facing threats of nature such as a boulder falling but the primary threat to them was depicted as Snakes, which were the main threat in six of the eight sets.
• The subtheme of Western, Cowboys, depicted them as facing internal threats such as bandits.

Lego can easily adapt Native Americans/Indians again and the easiest method of them doing so is arguably the exact same way they did in the past, by depicting them as peaceful with no human conflicts in-tune with nature with the only threats being environmental or perhaps a natural threat such as an animal.

Sadly, the people who want Castle back did not see Nexo Knights for what it was. Lego testing the waters on the popularity of Castle by combining it with another theme, in this case Space & Fantasy.

Nexo Knights which was Space + Castle + Fantasy failed, so Lego is wondering why that happened. They gave it a show, they gave it funding, they gave it marketting. They provided people with lots of Castle elements and varying adaptations of the classic castle design and yet it still underperformed.

So the best thing to do is split up the Castle segment on the poll to find out which parts of Castle resonate most with people to determine if the Castle aspects were not what people wanted from Castle - and what it found was people want Classic Castle, Forestmen, Imperials, Black Knights and Dragon Knights. Combine this with the potential popularity of the Lego Ideas Medieval Blacksmith and chances are the next Castle iteration will be Medieval inspired - perhaps with a touch more Fantasy/Nature.

I actually liked Nexo Knights and it had some very useful figs for my fantasy/castle world I am building.  I have several of the sets.  I don't know if Lego was testing the waters with that theme as if was fantasy/sci-fi.  I think they combined it fine and my youngest son liked the theme and the show, it may not have been appealing to the massed though and that could be why it failed as it did combine tech and castle type aesthetic in a interesting and a bit odd way, so maybe kids did not connect with it like they did with Ninjago.  But I think the fact that several castle/fantasy projects on ideas are getting to 10,000 votes should tell lego there is still a valuable market to explore.  

[MAB]

3 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

That's no different from Town being under a single umbrella in the vote (which it was). Had Town been the winner, they probably wouldn't have made a hybrid set with police and fire and hospital and a pizza parlour and a marina and everything else that falls under the Town umbrella. They'd have picked one - maybe two - of those things, and the rest would have missed out.

 

Right, and all Town subthemes could coexist in one set without any problems so they could have had a mix of any. Although that is not really anything exciting as they do this already in City, mixing up construction and shops, transport and so on. Whereas they cannot mix the two Western subthemes in one set without implicitly having an interaction between the two factions. Town also has a number of subthemes compared to two for Western. 

Edited January 31, 2021 by MAB

[Alexandrina]

That goes back to the question of who was asking for Lego to incorporate all the subthemes of Western together. Sometimes a girl just wants her updated Fort Legoredo! 

[Man with beard]

5 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

Why do they need to interact? They're in the same theme because they're both subsets of the Western genre. They use design cues from Old West history and Western films, and aesthetically are linked. They're also temporally linked and spatially linked - it doesn't make sense to release them under different umbrellas. I don't see that as any different to, say, police and fire existing in the Town/City theme, or the various stables and seaside sets from Paradisa belonging to the same umbrella. These groups don't have to interact - but let's not pretend people wouldn't wonder what was going on if Lego decided their fire sets needed to belong under a Fire banner rather than the City banner. That doesn't mean your fire fighters need to deal with a fire at the police station, or the riding club needs to take a daytrip to the beach.

On 1/30/2021 at 11:00 AM, Scarilian said:

Lego can easily adapt Native Americans/Indians again and the easiest method of them doing so is arguably the exact same way they did in the past, by depicting them as peaceful with no human conflicts in-tune with nature with the only threats being environmental or perhaps a natural threat such as an animal.

I would love to see a Western theme with non-violent sets. The problem is, Lego doesn't do any of their original themes that way anymore except City. In the old days, Lego themes (Space, Castle, Pirates) featured multiple different factions of humans, but many sets only had one faction represented in each set. That way, each individual product could be in alignment with Lego's no-violence founding principles; the fighting would only start if a child combined two sets. Multiple factions in one box became more common in the 90's (Pirates, Cowboys/Soldiers/Bandits), but they still used the technique of one faction per set for the Indians subtheme.

Of course, I'm quite sure that all the way back to the 80's, most kids who had both would make their Blacktrons fight their Classic Space guys. And nowadays, Lego acknowledges that kids want to make their minifigs fight each other.  in this 2009 New York Times article, a Lego spokesperson says, “we think kids really want to have this good-against-evil play; they want this fighting against each other.” This is why every recent original Lego theme features two conflicting factions in every set and at least one faction is nearly always non-human. The only recent examples of original Lego themes with human vs. human conflict-in-a-box I can think of are Ultra Agents, Kingdoms, and the Castle and Pirates reboots.

Of course, Lego is very hypocritical about all of this and features plenty of human vs. human violence in their licensed themes, but my point is this: I believe, based on the way Lego currently does their original themes, that if Lego brings back Western as a play theme there will be conflict in every set, and Indians will not appear.

Personally, I don't think Lego has any plans to do Western again any time soon, and I believe that is why it didn't appear in the poll. That is speculation of course, but I think Western has a lot of things going against it. It would feature human vs. human violence that could be more problematic than that of Castle or Pirates. It could be decried for racist depictions if Indians did appear, and could be decried for erasure if Indians didn't appear. The soldiers would probably have to go too, when you stop to consider why the soldiers are stationed in the West in the first place; post-civil war, the US Army was mostly in the West to confine Indians to the reservations. And Western probably has very limited appeal to kids. I've wished for years to see realistic depictions of many historical eras in original Lego themes, like 19th century America, early modern Europe, or the Ancient world. We haven't gotten coverage of any of these outside of Collectible Minifigs any time recently, and I won't be surprised if we never do. None of these themes would have universal appeal, they could be too boring for kids if there were only peaceful sets, and the violence might be a problem for Lego if conflict were included. Human vs. monster fantasy themes just seem to work better for Lego these days.

On 1/26/2021 at 2:31 PM, Lord-Vorahk said:

If it were up to me, there'd be an entire theme for the anniversary, I'd try to hit all the big ones, and Bionicle would be one of them. Of course it would. Supposedly it made up 40% of Lego's profits in 2003, and it ran for a decade in its original form, with a community that remains active and producing content to this day.

I agree that it seems odd to have all this hullabaloo over one set. A line of anniversary sets would be great! 

Do you know of a source for that 40% number? I often see it said online that Bionicle saved the Lego Group and I've been trying to track down whether that's really true or not.

Edited January 31, 2021 by Man with beard
Grammar

[Alexandrina]

20 minutes ago, Man with beard said:

It would feature human vs. human violence that could be more problematic than that of Castle or Pirates.

I really don't see how this is a necessity. Cavalry hunting Native Americans down? Absolutely wouldn't fly, and I'd hope Lego would be smart enough not to do something so tasteless. But cavalry versus marauding bandits? There's nothing stopping a Western theme aping the aesthetics of the Old West and the stock tropes of cowboy films such as Shane. Back to the Future III did it, as did Westworld (at least the two episodes I saw), and neither were filled with horrendous depictions of Native Americans or high degrees of violence beyond the pale of what Lego do. Cavalry/sheriff/cowboys against bandits is quite literally just your run-of-the-mill City police range transported 150 years into the past - very much in keeping with the precedent established by City (and Pirates, in their law-keeping soldiers versus unruly pirates theme). Castle, admittedly, is different - because generally speaking there's no universally accepted "bad guys" in the Castle context that don't lean into story archetypes, and so the various factions are generally a hodge-podge of different groups on a relatively even footing.

It feels like Western - being only a two-year theme - doesn't have the same embedded place as a classic Lego theme, and thus doesn't get excused for the same things that Town and Pirates do, because there's not the same acceptance of it as a vintage theme. It's not dissimilar to how minor inconsistencies in the original Star Wars trilogy are handwaved away as nitpicky while errors of the same degree of egregiousness in the sequel trilogy are held up as examples of how bad a job Abrams/Johnson did.

[Lego David]

41 minutes ago, Man with beard said:

Do you know of a source for that 40% number? I often see it said online that Bionicle saved the Lego Group and I've been trying to track down whether that's really true or not.

It's from the book Brick by Brick, by David C. Robertson. According to that book, Bionicle was making 40% of the total sales in 2003, and 100% of the profits. In other words, while other licensed brands like Star Wars and Harry Potter were also selling well, those themes were not really making any profits because of the expensive license fee LEGO had to pay in order to maintain those IPs. Bionicle, on the other hand, because it was an in-house LEGO theme, it was much cheaper to maintain, and thus it was the only LEGO line that was actually profitable at the time. 

Because of that, Bionicle takes full credit for keeping The LEGO Group afloat during their worst financial period. A lot of AFOLs seem to be completely unaware of that, but it's true. Without Bionicle, there wouldn't have been any LEGO Group 90th anniversary. 

[Man with beard]

34 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

I really don't see how this is a necessity. Cavalry hunting Native Americans down? Absolutely wouldn't fly, and I'd hope Lego would be smart enough not to do something so tasteless. But cavalry versus marauding bandits? There's nothing stopping a Western theme aping the aesthetics of the Old West and the stock tropes of cowboy films such as Shane.

That's why I said could be more problematic . Based on Lego's products over the last thirty years or so, for it to be an entire play theme marketed to boys, conflict would be featured. And for the last twenty years, Lego has strongly tended to portray conflict between humans and monsters. It's hard to say what forms of violence Lego finds acceptable since they aren't consistent about it. A few points to consider, though:

First, the weaponry would be more modern and destructive than knight or pirate weapons.

Second, soldiers would probably be cut because, as I said, their primary role in the West in the late 19th century was to fight Indians.

Third, as America tries to deal with its past, some might decry any depiction of the 19th century West as inappropriate for a toy line. Many consider the pioneers to be complicit in genocide.

Overall, I think that based on Lego's recent history, realistic historical themes without fantasy elements are very unlikely to happen for a number of reasons, of which violence is only one. Personally, I interpret the most recent very short-lived reboots of Pirates and Castle as Lego testing the waters to see whether there is really as much demand for those themes as the AFOLs say there is. Based on how small those themes were, I'm guessing the demand wasn't there. Shane is a great movie, but it's from the 50's.

Given how much Lego loves police sets, I think you're right that sheriff vs. cattle rustlers/stagecoach robbers is the mostly likely form for a non-licensed Western theme. I certainly hope we get one some day!

12 minutes ago, Lego David said:

It's from the book Brick by Brick, by David C. Robertson. According to that book, Bionicle was making 40% of the total sales in 2003, and 100% of the profits.

That's amazing! I need to read that book. I also see people online say that Star Wars saved Lego, which apparently isn't true.