JesseNight

I never owned any Ice Planet but it's the last Space theme that I found really cool (no pun intended). I'd love to still get my hands on a Deep Freeze Defender... But sadly most second hand offers have suffered a lot from discoloration.

Re-releasing old sets exactly as they were probably doesn't work indeed. It might for a small audience of AFOL with nostalgic desire for them (myself included), but not enough to make it profitable. I've said it before and I'm saying it again, I think they hit it just right with the modern Galaxy Explorer. I definitely love the looks of the King's Castle too but its price range just isn't for everybody.

I love how detailed the 10497 Galaxy Explorer interior was too. But I'm not complaining with all of the old stuff either, as long as it's somewhat okay. Like an operating console or tile with buttons in the right place, and seating for the crew. That's one beef I had especially with SP2. I felt interior was lacking big time, especially on the big ship (like why is that center section's computer on the floor of all places?).

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.

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.

That's impressive! And I think the studded look works better in this case, to capture the rough look. To think it's actually still a small worm... we've seen them have a spice harvester for breakfast

That might be, Time Cruisers was just a few years after my childhood Lego days, and indeed I do not remember seeing a lot of Technic parts in non-Technic themes at the time. Not to mention Technic liftarms (very commonly used nowadays) weren't a thing yet, it was just bricks with holes back then (in the days of Super Car 8880).

Ahh I understand now yeah. I think it was possible to make sturdy mechs at the time, albeit at the cost of looks. As in being willing to go Technic for the base structure. But yeah it would have been more limited than today for sure.

Lots of stuff was simpler for sure. I just don't remember fragility being an issue with official sets that I owned, aside from the occasional sticking out antennae coming off. There are even a few things I feel they did better back then (like modular spaceships using technic pins rather than clips like they did on the Blacktron Cruiser). But maybe that's just a bad example, I don't know if they applied that on more official sets that weren't gwp.

True that it's more, I wasn't even all that familiar with it so I looked it up. I can appreciate what they trying to do, just the link with ninjas makes little sense to me as I would see ninjas as stealth warriors striking from the shadows, not as pilots of large mech vehicles. I guess more and more crossovers and mixes have been made to create new stuff. For me Time Cruisers in the mid 90s already felt weird but at least it still felt creative. I guess the older themes were just more straight forward and appealing to me, like Town, Castles, Pirates, Space (Classic til Ice Planet). Licensed themes somehow don't appeal to me at all. I like Star Wars (the classics and prequels up to Rogue One), but in Lego I never found it interesting enough to buy. Perhaps bc I was always more interested in building larger scenes that should be correct, which would simply get really expensive really fast. So I rather do that in themes where I can use my creative freedom more and don't find myself limited by the need to get more pricy licensed minifigs or even rare ones.

I am not a fan of modifying pieces. To me the art of Lego building was to be creative and find solutions with what we have. Otherwise what's the point of using Lego? Also I enjoy the time spent on building, so I don't need time savers on the part I see as the most fun. But that's just how I feel about it, I'm not frowning upon people who do (unless it's very rare parts). Makes sense for Lego HQ to do it bc they do introduce new parts with new sets after all from these experiences.

A lot of SW stuff is probably going to adults yeah. Think about people who buy lots of sets just to gather a Storm Trooper army? Or a Rebel base? Or who want that minifig that only comes with a specific set? That's the thing with these themes, people collect and buy entire sets just for that missing piece of minifig. Ninjas were popular 30+ years ago for sure. Think Ninja Turtles, Shinobi games, stuff like that. The issue I would have with it in Lego is that the entire point of ninja action figures was to make them agile enough to do certain moves... something that's certainly not possible with Lego. I don't dislike Ninjago but it doesn't appeal to me either and I doubt it would have when I was a kid. I still think "what kids like has changed" is a real thing (not in a bad way). Didn't your parents ever show you what they used to play with? And didn't you (at young age) feel like this isn't my thing, we have so much cooler stuff now? Well today's kids feel the same about stuff from our youth. As for what's "cool", it's much like fashion. It changes all the time and most people follow the mass.

Absolutely, that's probably what I miss most. I have very little interest in most IPs (probably unlike majority of the younger folks) and I value creativity and originality... something these old themes surely had. And ftr, reboots of old themes isn't originality in my book either unless they really up the value while respecting the style (once again, gotta point at the Galaxy Explorer for doing that right imho). Feels like creativity and originality are suffering nowadays and I'm not just talking about Lego here, it's happening everywhere.

@mon-o-mat Now we're talking, that looks great! Hope to see more pics of that one in the future! Btw did Lego really abandon the canopies using a hinge to open, or is it just not visible?

I don't know how familiar you are with Lego websites, because there are some great tools out there that helped me a lot doing similar things. Bricklink has a "Wanted List" feature where you can store a list like that on your account, and easily check the available market for a good deal on all of it. Rebrickable makes it easy to find sets and check their entire inventory. Bricklink can do that too, just found it more conveniently shown on RB