Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

[CP5670]

The anti violence thing was never really taken seriously by the set designers though, especially with space sets. They even said later on that the ships had weapons in their minds (and in the minds of kids who played with the sets), even though they were not allowed to call them that. Some sets like 6940 are obviously SW inspired.

[SpacePolice89]

8 hours ago, CP5670 said:

The anti violence thing was never really taken seriously by the set designers though, especially with space sets. They even said later on that the ships had weapons in their minds (and in the minds of kids who played with the sets), even though they were not allowed to call them that. Some sets like 6940 are obviously SW inspired.

Yes, all that is true but I was referring to their policy towards external licenses at the time. They were not interested in them due to company policy until the late 90s. The article I linked in my previous post highlights the process that changed that.

Edited April 14 by SpacePolice89

[JesseNight]

9 hours ago, CP5670 said:

The anti violence thing was never really taken seriously by the set designers though, especially with space sets. They even said later on that the ships had weapons in their minds (and in the minds of kids who played with the sets), even though they were not allowed to call them that. Some sets like 6940 are obviously SW inspired.

The thing with violence is usually that it only applies to realistic weaponry (like the guns from Pirates) and not so much to fictional weapons (sci-fi laser blasters). I've seen the same thing happening to TV shows for younger audience, realistic guns had to be censored but fictional alien laser shooting things were all just fine.

Lego used to have a strict policy against weapons and violence decades ago. But that started going out the window in the 80s already with Castles knights had swords, and Pirates had guns and cannons.
I'm still with the voters against the licensed themes really... Originality felt so much better.
And for MODs & MOCs, I don't feel as bad "improving" an original space ship than a Star Wars X-Wing, with all its rules of what it's supposed to look like. It creates high expectations, and everyone aims at getting as close to the movie version as possible, rather than going all out on creativity.

[MAB]

12 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I believe not. Before the late 90s Lego was opposed to licensed themes, especially themes that contained the word war. This is from an article about the origins of Lego Star Wars

 

I don't believe they were opposed to licensed themes. LEGO had already done loads of licensed sets from the 1950s onwards. There are plenty of Shell and Esso sets showing they were willing to use licenses where they thought it was appropriate. They missed the boat with Star Wars first time around, but then that was really when toy tie ins took off and many of the big manufacturers missed it. It wouldn't surprise if they didn't want to partner with Star Wars in the 80s as they would have been the minor partner and I really doubt if their SW toys would have sold anywhere near as well as screen accurate toys at the time.

[SpacePolice89]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

I don't believe they were opposed to licensed themes. LEGO had already done loads of licensed sets from the 1950s onwards. There are plenty of Shell and Esso sets showing they were willing to use licenses where they thought it was appropriate. They missed the boat with Star Wars first time around, but then that was really when toy tie ins took off and many of the big manufacturers missed it. It wouldn't surprise if they didn't want to partner with Star Wars in the 80s as they would have been the minor partner and I really doubt if their SW toys would have sold anywhere near as well as screen accurate toys at the time.

Licensed themes as we know them today didn't exist before Lego Star Wars. It was because of their policy. This is not my opinion just information that is available. I recommend the article I linked earlier because it explains a lot how they changed their views regarding licensed themed in the late 90s.

"For them, the very idea of LEGO Star Wars came into conflict with the company’s anti-violence stance and a tradition of developing ideas in-house"

Edited April 14 by SpacePolice89

[JesseNight]

I think real life businesses appearing as a sponsor in regular Town isn't exactly the same as an entire theme based on a licensed property from a movie.

[sporadic]

4 hours ago, JesseNight said:

I think real life businesses appearing as a sponsor in regular Town isn't exactly the same as an entire theme based on a licensed property from a movie.

I also think that in the early days, partnering with petroleum producers was a no brainer for LEGO.  They likely had deals to get their petrochemicals more cheaply from the providers if they included a side promotion.  Don't quote me on that, because it's entirely speculation, but it seems very likely to me.

The licensing back in the day always seemed to have a synergy component like that, not just a "This Cool Thing but in LEGO!" feel.  Ie, when they made McDonald's sets, it was because of Happy Meals containing the toys, so there's benefit to both companies.  The more "we pay you so we can make products with your IP" is, in my opinion, a very different beast.

 

[MAB]

17 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

Licensed themes as we know them today didn't exist before Lego Star Wars. It was because of their policy. This is not my opinion just information that is available. I recommend the article I linked earlier because it explains a lot how they changed their views regarding licensed themed in the late 90s.

"For them, the very idea of LEGO Star Wars came into conflict with the company’s anti-violence stance and a tradition of developing ideas in-house"

It wasn't because of their policy. It was because they didn't do any before. We simply don't know whether they had a formal policy of not having licensing deals. The fact that they were producing sets based on licenses indicates that they were open to using other companies' IP. Its true they had a tradition of developing in-house ideas, although many of those were based on external traditional stories or life. 

[SpacePolice89]

5 hours ago, MAB said:

It wasn't because of their policy. It was because they didn't do any before.

That's basically the same thing. If you do not make any licensed themes for 50 years and then suddenly starts to make several it is a policy change. Before 1999 they only had in-house ideas because they chose to do so. Peter Eio was the one who introduced Licensed themes. The opposition from the executives proves that they had a no license policy or at least a strong conviction that in-house themes was the preferred solution. Only after Eio convinced Kjeld Kirk Christiansen licensed themes could be made. The gas station and Maersk sets are completely different, they are not comparable to licensed themes.

 "In North America, Eio was seeing a boom in licensed toys, and recognized the LEGO Group was not involved in the business of making sets based off of films or TV shows. Eio harbored concerns that LEGO would be left behind if they didn’t take some measures to adapt to this growing market"

This has nothing to do with my personal opinions about licensed themes. It is just a fact that they were reluctant to make such themes before Peter Eio convinced Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to accept licensed themes. Godtfred Kirk Christiansen was involved in the company until 1993 and passed away in 1995. He was even reluctant to accept the skeleton and did so only after changes to its arms and I believe that he wouldn't have accepted licensed themes but this part is only speculation from my part.  

Edited April 15 by SpacePolice89

[danth]

I personally think Lego licensed sets didn't make much sense before Lego became a super popular thing unto itself.

When I was a kid, it made sense to make action figures and vehicle toys for movies. Or even licensed lunch boxes and sticker books or whatever. But to take an existing building toy and make movie licensed versions of it? Who needs Star Wars Lincoln Logs? Or Superman Playdoh? (Without googling it, I'm almost sure something like those do exist...)

But by 1999, the world adored Lego. Twenty years after the advent of minifigures, you had a whole generation of adults who grew up playing with Space, City, Castle, and other sets. It was a household name. And AFOLS were nerd adjacent. Lego-fying sci-fi and fantasy movies made sense. And by 1999 Lego had enough kinds of parts and colors to pull off modeling mostly whatever design a movie could throw at it.

Nowadays you see crossover everything though. There are TMNT He-Man figures (which I honestly am there for) and Star Wars Transformers because the world is a crazier place now.

 

[MAB]

5 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

That's basically the same thing.

 

It isn't the same thing. There is a big difference between not doing something and having a policy of not doing something. That is like saying LEGO had a policy of not making plastic toys for the first couple of decades of its existence. I really doubt they had a policy of not making plastic toys, it was more that they did something else (making wooden toys) until an opportunity arose that they took.

I imagine it was the same for licensed themes. In the 70s and 80s they didn't really need to do licenses as many toy manufacturers made their own toy ranges back then. There were far fewer licensed toys and kids tended to play fairly generically - cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, Robin Hood, pirates. There was no need to license that type of toy. Star Wars was a bit of a disrupter in the way it was merchandised, although not the first by any means. There were licensed Batman toys, Man from Uncle toys in the 60s, and TV series such as The Six Million Dollar Man had toys in the mid 70s etc but the merchandising really took off for SW but it didn't dominate the toy market. Remember Kenner was relatively small before they hit the big time with Star Wars. The big brands did not get involved early on. Kids were still used to playing generic storylines and with the big company's own toys. So I imagine that LEGO didn't do licensed themes in the 70-80-90s as they didn't need to do them and probably also because they were not ready to do them. That is, that they didn't not do them as they had a policy against doing them, but as the need / opportunity wasn't there. Part of the reason I think they weren't ready was as LEGO really wasn't very good at doing accurate creations pre-2000. Imagine trying to make SW ships using only 1980s bricks. I know what that was like, as I did that as a kid. They were terrible - red, yellow and blue and looked nothing like the screen versions. They would never had sold if they were on the shelves next to accurately shaped and coloured ships, and figures that looked like the characters. Movie based marketing really took off in the 80s and 90s, and LEGO were probably late to the game. I again reckon that was down to not being able to do characters in anywhere near enough detail to be able to do licensed products and partly just inertia, they did what they did and continued doing what they did as that is what they did. But once they had a much wider range of parts and colours and were able to start doing figure printing to look reasonable for licensed figures, and looking at the way movie and licensed based toy marketing was going, they decided the opportunity was there to start doing licenses. But none of that points to a policy of refusing to work with licenses.

 

Edited April 15 by MAB

[Murdoch17]

1 hour ago, danth said:

I personally think Lego licensed sets didn't make much sense before Lego became a super popular thing unto itself.

When I was a kid, it made sense to make action figures and vehicle toys for movies. Or even licensed lunch boxes and sticker books or whatever. But to take an existing building toy and make movie licensed versions of it? Who needs Star Wars Lincoln Logs? Or Superman Playdoh? (Without googling it, I'm almost sure something like those do exist...)

But by 1999, the world adored Lego. Twenty years after the advent of minifigures, you had a whole generation of adults who grew up playing with Space, City, Castle, and other sets. It was a household name. And AFOLS were nerd adjacent. Lego-fying sci-fi and fantasy movies made sense. And by 1999 Lego had enough kinds of parts and colors to pull off modeling mostly whatever design a movie could throw at it.

Nowadays you see crossover everything though. There are TMNT He-Man figures (which I honestly am there for) and Star Wars Transformers because the world is a crazier place now.

 

I wouldn't necessarily say the world adored Lego in the 1990's. (yes, it had fans, but not like now!) Remember, Lego made big news worldwide in 1997 by posting their first deficit, and sales had been declining for a while before that for several reasons. SW helped reverse that trend temporarily, until Bionicle came along and REALLY saved the company's bacon. There even was a serious offer from Mattel to buy Lego that was being given some careful thought right before Bionicle took off!

I don't doubt Star Wars got them the money to plug along until Bionicle came around to dig them out of that hole. Without Star Wars, we might never have gotten Bionicle, and then we might be talking on a Mattel-based forum right now!*

*These last two sentences are my opinion. I don't know if they're true, but it makes logical sense.

[Lion King]

I always love in-house themes as I grew up in early 2000s. After Star Wars theme introduced, Lego had a lot of themes, such as Town, Rock Raider, etc. But when Bionicle arrived, I got attracted to it so much.  I mean Bionicle IS an in-house theme. Reaching 20s, I didn’t know that Lego was having financial finance. Bionicle was the bunch of heroes that saved Lego! Hooray!  But I agree that if there was no Star Wars theme in time while there were many marketing failures, we won’t see Bionicle. Worse, we won’t see Lego - forever. I mean FOREVER. 

As of 2024, there are so many licensed themes (Marel, Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, etc). I feel…it’s unoriginal. But I love it when they introduce new parts so i don’t complain. 

[MAB]

.

Edited April 16 by MAB

[SpacePolice89]

A great set that could easily be reintroduced is the 375/6075 Yellow Castle, most pieces are still made and those that are not could easily be replaced with similar modern parts. Only one critical part needs a new mold and that is the visor. It would be so cool to see this iconic set on shelves again. What do you think about it?

 

[MAB]

14 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

A great set that could easily be reintroduced is the 375/6075 Yellow Castle, most pieces are still made and those that are not could easily be replaced with similar modern parts. Only one critical part needs a new mold and that is the visor. It would be so cool to see this iconic set on shelves again. What do you think about it?

 

 

The only thing good about reintroducing that set would be the number and variety of minifigs. They have just done a grey Creator castle. If they did something similar in yellow but with the existing factions done recently, I doubt it would sell too well. It is just a minifigure pack with a lot of yellow bricks.

[TeriXeri]

I think I'd rather see an updated variant of a black castle (Black Knights / Wolfpack / Royal Knights) before a classic yellow one.

Of course a yellow castle with crown knights would still be fun to see, but LEGO decided to put those parts in CMF instead , and thus far has not reused those (including the dark pink plume)

 

The parts from the 2022 Troubadour did get re-used however, including the torso and printed coins, so there's always a possibility for parts to get reused.

Right now at least there's a wolfpack torso in production , so perhaps that's a sign for more, at least while MTS will remain in production.

Edited April 18 by TeriXeri

[Lion King]

If 2025 would be a “Year of the Castle’, it would be great to have some remake of classic castle. I think Lion Knights’ Castle will be retired by end of this year? 

[MAB]

I think I'd prefer to see Kingdoms or Fantasy Era style and if not, some Black Knights and Wolfpack, maybe a bit more Forest or Dark Forest. Anything but Classic Castle. The heraldry was rather plain and I wouldn't have any use for more yellow.

[Lion King]

I don’tknow which dragon mold showed up in long-retired Castle themes but I do love to see a return of drago molds (updated) some days. I understand that it’s unlikely since Lego only do buildable dragons (see ones from Ninjago and Harry Potter themes).  But we had old dinosaur molds from the past and now we have modern dionsaur molds introduced in Jurassic World theme. Also, I love collecting molded creatures no matter if they are realistic, fantasy, sci-fi, or prehistoric . 

[Aanchir]

8 minutes ago, Lion King said:

I don’tknow which dragon mold showed up in long-retired Castle themes but I do love to see a return of drago molds (updated) some days. I understand that it’s unlikely since Lego only do buildable dragons (see ones from Ninjago and Harry Potter themes).  But we had old dinosaur molds from the past and now we have modern dionsaur molds introduced in Jurassic World theme. Also, I love collecting molded creatures no matter if they are realistic, fantasy, sci-fi, or prehistoric .  

I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility of molded dragons in the future. However, I think adult-targeted Castle sets are more likely to stick to mostly brick-built dragons for a more complex design and building experience, unless it's reusing creature molds from a theme with a younger target age.

[Lion King]

12 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility of molded dragons in the future. However, I think adult-targeted Castle sets are more likely to stick to mostly brick-built dragons for a more complex design and building experience, unless it's reusing creature molds from a theme with a younger target age.

Agreed. Given that Ninjago theme only target young audience, they continuing dragons out of pieces but they only make new molds (head, wings, etc) yet not the whollly molded dragons yet. 

[The Island Chronicles]

They reintroduced old characters such as Rocket Racer and Johnny Thunder. I think the pirate ship and 2015 city Square set had references to Pepper from Lego Island and Captain Redbeard. So I don't think it's impossible to re-release older sets. 

Edited April 20 by The Brick Boss

[Lion King]

On 4/20/2024 at 10:06 AM, The Brick Boss said:

They reintroduced old characters such as Rocket Racer and Johnny Thunder. I think the pirate ship and 2015 city Square set had references to Pepper from Lego Island and Captain Redbeard. So I don't think it's impossible to re-release older sets. 

In my honest opinion, it’s not likely that they would re-release old sets as exactly they were before. I welcome old sets being re-introduced in new style (new parts, new building techniques, new printing, etc) rather than nostalgia. 

Anyways, I wanna Pepper Roni and the Lego Island stuff!!

[Murdoch17]

On 4/20/2024 at 9:06 AM, The Brick Boss said:

They reintroduced old characters such as Rocket Racer and Johnny Thunder. I think the pirate ship and 2015 city Square set had references to Pepper from Lego Island and Captain Redbeard. So I don't think it's impossible to re-release older sets. 

They did as you suggest once before: LEGO Legends. It failed horribly and they swore 'never again'. Also, older sets have parts and systems (finger hinges anybody?) that no longer exist or are now considered out of system. It isn't gonna happen, sorry.