TheMainBricker

Disney are more likely to issue licences for it now that there is a sequel and there will be current interest in the set. It moved away from being a random film from 30 years ago, to something more recent. Plus there'll be SJP and Bette Midler minifigures!

I noticed Lego have made a theme based off of the video game Lego Star Wars.

Eh? How come the Overwatch theme has been taken over by random set discussion? Themes now don't deserve their own threads?

Designed by, but the idea is not his, he was told to do the set. My personal issues are, that there is one man at the Lego group who is basically running it as his own personal MOC brand, with random ideas that don't necessarily translate to being great Lego ideas. I would highly doubt that these sets would see the light of day if another Lego employee suggested them. I know Lego can't please everyone, but there seems to be a growing issue that some ideas and themes never see the light of day (even with large fanbases behind them), but if he likes it (no matter how niche) there's a good chance it will be made into Lego. It's like a football team that makes questionable decisions, you can trace it back to the management, and a change of management can cause a major turnaround. Spice Girls is much more Lego friendly than a reality TV show (as the demographics for reality TV don't correlate with merchandise purchasers), but Lego Spice Girls is about 25 years too late (as all of the branded merchandise, like dolls etc came out in the 90s). People are questioning who is coming up with these random (and typically poorly received) sets, and there is a clear answer. But people seem to get offended. Lego Spice Girls, good idea, but 25 years too late.

What he wants, he gets. There seems to be a lot of undue influence from him.

This would appear to be another Matthew Ashton special, although I imagine this will do better than his last flop. But I do question whether this would sell better as individual sets, as people may bulk at the price of all five together. People may be more inclined to buy one a month for instance.

If you've worked for a commercial company, and they had an employee who had access to the higher echelons of the company and was able to keep giving presentations for his pet project to them you would know that he had preferential treatment and used his position to do that. Creator Expert was already a theme, and I don't believe Brickheadz was as original as that claim, Lego looked at Funko Pops and copied it. But again if the design is good enough it will gain traction within the company, you wouldn't have to give presentations and persuade people to do a set if people thought it was a good idea in the first place. It was a dreadful idea for a set, I'm sure if one of Netflix's other makeover shows was Legofied there would be a lot more criticism, but because it is "queer" people believe it shows diversity and inclusion. As someone who is not heterosexual I grow really tired of hearing from heterosexual people that this is what gay people want, apparently I have not been represented in Lego ever before, even though all non-licenced characters don't have a sexual orientation. I've never felt left out from Lego before, but the message coming from Lego themselves and heterosexual Lego fans is Queer Eye is for the gay fans and is something that they want. I do feel sorry if there are gay people who think that Queer Eye is part of the gay identity et al. There is so much more out there!

I find it particularly offensive if you think a set about badly dressed gay men from a trashy makeover show counts as representation of gay people. It's reducing people down to a stereotype, but I guess that's what straight people think of gay men. The thing is it wasn't just a typical designer, it was the vice president of design, who now rarely designs sets, a typically designer wouldn't have been force through an idea for a new licence like that. Did it attract new fans? No, it sold very poorly, and that was obvious from the start. Vidiyo gets a lot of hatred too, so the discussion is being had with other sets.

Well technically most of the sets would come from internal suggestions, although stuff like the Adidas trainer and Vidiyo came from corporate partners (Adidas and Universal Music), and Lego clearly look at MOCs too, so there isn't a hard and fast rule over what creates success. Sometimes Lego get it right, or like this set, badly wrong. But hearing about what happened with this set, I would argue that there was probably an abuse of power in that the designer, being Vice-President of Design, could gain access to discussions and people that other designers wouldn't get access to. We had initial reports (that turned out to be false) that Lego were approached by the Queer Eye production company to make a set, when it was actually the other way around. The Lego board weren't sold on the idea but the designer kept doing presentations to the board to get them to agree to the set, I doubt any other designer would get that privilege. If a designer has a strong-enough design and idea a lot of what happened with this set wouldn't be necessary. The fact that Lego then had to produce a PR pack informing LAN of what the series was and why the set existed shows it never got off on the right foot. Every non English website had never heard of the series. 2021 was a year of Lego flops, and this set is just another in that list.

Well let's face it the set was a massive flop, triple VIP points, reduced on Lego.com within 50 days of release, the decision by Lego to retire the set a year earlier than planned etc. Perhaps this may put an end to internal Lego employee lobbying for particular sets? I always said it was a niche set and had a ridiculous price point. As for the lawsuit, there can be no denying that the design of the Lego jacket is identical to that of the designer's, but the lawsuit probably stands with Netflix and less with Lego. But I find it ironic that he wants a cut of the profits, he'd be in line to make $1!

The delay of the set was due to the delay of the game (and those statements about it being about the allegations look particularly hollow now as most of those people responsible will go). Takeovers like this have an effect on release dates etc. So I don't think it is related to the packaging, just the release date of the game.

So people going on about Microsoft reassessing their relationship thinking it meant about ditching Activision, when in fact it was about Microsoft buying the entire company, obviously this would force Sony to reassess the relationship. As always never believe corporate PR about morality, always follow the money.

Or how about you create a separate thread?

The rumour seems a bit too basic (based off of two existing sets) to be real. Probably someone else having a go at fake rumours, and no doubt there'll be another fake one in the next few days. I can't see them doing licenced minifigures in a theme that has yellow minifigures. Licences (outside of Dimensions) set on their own, not inside of another theme (unless you count Ideas).

To be fair Brick Fanatics never used to post rumours on their site, but have recently started to do so. As a website that gets review sets from Lego, you would think that they'd only post rumours about sets and themes they know are likely to come out. I think Brick Fanatics has become a bit click-baity in just reporting any rumour that comes up on Instagram.

There is absolutely nothing abhorrent about JKR and her supposed behaviour. She has expressed an opinion, that many have deliberately misinterpreted. The opinion is not illegal, and it is an opinion that when said by a man goes unnoticed. Many believe that the criticism of JKR is rooted in misogyny and having seen a number of responses I would have to agree. But this thread is purely about Activism Blizzard, and not Godwin's Law 2.0 (whereby someone must raise the topic of JKR). There is legal action against Acitivism Blizzard, so there is something tangible there. But so far the action from all companies is "we are reviewing it".

The fact that Lego haven't cancelled the set, only delayed it when they have good enough reason is evidence enough to show that delay is only really due to the delay of the game. There's no point in releasing a piece of merchandise for a product that has an unknown release date, it's not in their financial interests. We can talk about Sony and Microsoft saying that they're reviewing it, again they haven't actually done anything. For Sony, Microsoft and Lego it makes good PR, yet no real action has actually been taken.

Would be nice if there were some male scientists represented in Lego for once. There are currently no real-life male role models in Lego form for young boys. All for female representation, but currently it's a bit one sided. Charles Darwin or Alan Turing would make good Lego sets.

Well I see Lego's PR has worked, for Lego it's an easy excuse, when the fact is that Overwatch 2 has been delayed and Lego don't want to release any more sets long before the game/movie is released. They got burnt a few times with Covid due to delays with Black Widow, Minions etc. Better to release a set when the game is actually released.

Well Lego already did a model based off of the ship from a James Cameron film, so Avatar might be possible.

Hopefully it will be true this time. Lego in 2021 have given people a whole load of sets no one asked for. Hopefully 2022 they will start to do sets people have long requested.

I'm struggling with the supposed price for the AT-AT, seems even more expensive than everything before and doesn't appear to justify the price.

That's annoying, I just look at the pictures, don't click on the detail.

Looks good, a shame that it's still the black background, at the very least they could've put a sea background on the box for the set. Interesting that the iceberg is a GWP!

I think I like everyone else has been hoodwinked by Mr Ashton that this set exists as part of Lego's diversity drive. In another interview he makes it clear that Lego won't produce any other reality TV sets. All I really get from all of this is that Queer Eye is one of his favourite programmes (perhaps using a set as an excuse to meet the cast?), he persuaded Lego to make the set on the basis of "diversity and inclusion", and his justification to the public as to why he got one of his favourite TV shows made into an official set is because of "diversity and inclusion". It's not a good look when so many Ideas projects get rejected, that one man at company can just force his stuff through. As someone who is also LGB, I'm not buying the "unwelcoming when discussing representation" particularly as it was a gay Lego designer who raised it in the first place! In this other interview he admitted that the set is not going to be popular with Lego fans, but he expects "women" to buy it. Now I quote women because it such a generic group when you're discussing demographics (essentially half of the population). It just seems like a lame excuse. Women are the main demographic of reality TV, but it's typically they're likely to be mothers with young children, whose income when spent on toys would be for their children, not themselves (even if they did have an interest in merchandise of a TV show they casually watched). When I go on non-English Lego sites, no one has a clue as to what this set is, many Lego fans don't either, and then we're expecting non-Lego fans will be happy to stump $100 for this set? It's not going to sell well at all.