Gryphon Ink

SO. DAMN. COOL.

What, nobody likes John Carter anymore? I'd LOVE to see some John Carter Lego, but I think it's highly unlikely that it will happen. The Hobbit would totally be my dream theme, but that doesn't seem likely to me either. It would probably cost TLG way too much money and conflict with Kingdoms or whatever the next Castle theme is going to be. I think out of the movies listed, the Lone Ranger is probably the most likely. But I'm also hopeful for a Batman revival. Not too interested in the Lone Ranger, as a movie or a Lego theme.

Expanded reply: at this point I think we're close to derailing the thread, but I would hate for anybody to be left with the impression that I've coerced, manipulated or brainwashed my girls into following my radical feminist agenda, so I have to respond to this in a little more detail... Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to open your argument by accusing people of manipulating and coercing their children. That's rather insulting. You are talking to a father who has spent thousands of hours playing Barbie and Littlest Pet Shop, braiding his daughters' hair, painting their toenails, buying them every Polly Pocket set available and dozens of books about the Rainbow Fairies, Disney Fairies and whatever other fairies are out there. I do not believe in coercing children or turning them into Mini-Mes, I believe in nurturing them. Yes, I have tried to encourage the things that I consider positive behavior. Do you know any decent parent who doesn't do this? But I haven't done it by forcing them to follow my agenda, or denied them the freedom to do the things that the other kids all do. If either one of them wants a toy or a book and I don't think it's completely out of line or totally worthless (and if I can afford it) I buy it for them. More often than not, I also play with the toys with them. My eldest daughter has accumulated six or seven Barbie and Barbie clones, and my younger one already has two of them. They also both have numerous puzzles, books, and Lego. Nobody in this house is forcing any kid to play with certain toys or conform to certain roles. All we have done is make sure they understand that all roles and all possibilities are open to them. Dude, I don't even have to think about this one: veterinary medicine and animal sciences. Overwhelmingly male until about 20 years ago, now majority female. Nine out of ten veterinary technicians, and probably at least two out of three veterinarians, are now women. Numerous animal control officers, zoo personnel, park rangers and biologists are women. With animals, a variety of vehicles and many different settings, this could easily equal the perennial Police theme in popularity amongst boys, girls and AFOLs. In fact, Lego have done several Duplo sets with zoo and vet themes. They just haven't moved it up to System yet. I've heard this song before. "Sorry, we really did want to support balanced gender roles, but we just can't put girls in action roles because it's not historically accurate." Goodness knows, historical accuracy has always been the main consideration in designing Lego themes. That's why all the Viking figures have horns on their helmets. That's why there are dragons in the Vikings line and multiple Castle lines, the pirate ships all have roughly the proportions of Captain Hook's ship, the castles are all designed with completely impractical fortifications and defense systems, and every lineup of knights contains weapons and armor from multiple historical periods spanning hundreds of years. And except for a few Viking purists, nobody much complains. Do you know why they don't complain? Because it's a toy, not a history book. Nobody expects it to be historically accurate. Even a geek like me! I'm super fond of complaining about how inaccurate things are. But that didn't stop me from buying the architecturally ridiculous Prison Tower Rescue, and it wouldn't stop me from buying the Queen Anne's Revenge set if I had enough money for it. AFOLs and parents buy historically inaccurate toys by the million every day of the year. For that matter, there are a number of ways that women could be represented in exciting, conflict-oriented themes without sacrificing historical accuracy. Historical examples include: the ladies of Sparta (yes, SPAAAAAAARTA!!!!!) who fought with their princess Arachidamia against Pyrrhus; the "Dahomey Amazons", a female regiment that numbered about 5000 soldiers - one third of the Dahomey army - and fought against the French Foreign Legion a the end of the 19th century; the Cimbrian women who fought as archers aiding their men against a Roman legion and continued to fight to the death after the men were slaughtered by Roman reinforcements; the Scythian women, who fought alongside their men to comprise about 20% of the total Scythian fighting force; the "Molly Pitchers", camp followers in the American Revolution who started out as water carriers and often ended up "manning" the cannons; Wild West heroines and outlaws including Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, Belle Starr and Laura Bullion; Boudica and her daughters; and probably many more that I've forgotten. The annals of the Roman Empire record case after case where the legions were sent out to crush some local tribe and found that the local women fought back in organized forces. Want pirates? We got'em. Obviously, the vast majority of pirates were always male. But history has many colorful examples of women who plundered the seven seas. Look up Alvid, Lady Mary Killigrew, Jacquotte Delahaye AKA "Back from the Dead Red", Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Rachel Wall; Queen Sayyidah who commanded the corsairs of the Western Mediterranean; "the Red Lady", an English pirate captain who played on men's prejudices by disguising herself as an "entertainer" so that they would invite her on board, where she would take off her dress to reveal pants, shirt and weapons; or Ching Shih, who assembled one of the most powerful pirate federations in Chinese history (She's actually represented in POTC!). With all these femme buccaneers, you'd think we could do better than having 1 (ONE!) 1 "Pirate Wench" in the entire 2009 Pirates line, after who knows how many years where the only females in the theme were Governor's Daughters and the like. In folklore, which obviously isn't always historically accurate but fits well with the very-loosely-historically-based tradition of the Castle theme, there are dozens of examples including the Amazons, the shieldmaidens of Scandinavian tradition (inspiration for the Valkyries and Eowyn), female Pictish warriors, and female monks who supposedly invented several varieties of martial arts and led peasant rebellions at various times throughout Asia. If you want to find archetypes of women who can reasonably exist alongside the heroic male minifigs in historical and action themes, the examples are there to be found, despite the significant male bias. Susan B. Anthony is not the only famous woman in history, or the most interesting one. Here's something we agree on. I love this idea.

No, you misunderstand me. That wasn't my solution at all. That was just a rebuttal to the claim that children can't be convinced to play with toys they don't like. My "solution" to the whole thing was to let my kids choose what they wanted to play and be, within certain boundaries.

Yes, I absolutely do. So do the overwhelming majority of women that I've discussed this with. And I'll bet you can't find a single major study proving me wrong. It's not ridiculous, it's exactly what happens. I've seen it in myself, in my two daughters, in several friends' children, and in my experience as a daycare worker. Preschool-aged boys love to play with dolls, and girls at the same age love to play with cars and trucks and construction equipment. Go to any daycare where they let the kids play whatever they want, and you'll see it. I've seen three-year-old boys dress up in pink princess dresses and pretend to put on makeup. I've seen a two-year-old girl bash another kid over the head with a toy truck when they tried to take it away from her. Sooner or later, the boys' dads or uncles (it's almost always the men in the family) have hissy fits about them playing dress-up, and the TV teaches the girls that proper girls play with dolls instead of trucks, and that the girls who like to wear jeans and no makeup are "tomboys" (or worse!). What do you think "stigmatizing those that go outside gender roles" is, if not programming? Society rewards the kids that stay in the approved gender roles by praising them, and punishes the ones that don't by calling them strange or simply withholding praise. That IS programming. It's exactly how you train dogs. Call it "training" if you don't like the sound of the word "programming". It has the same effect. Of course you can. Reward them when they play with the "right" toy, and withhold your attention when they don't. Kids crave attention from their parents more than all the toys in the world. Kids will stand on a stool washing dishes with their parents if they get positive reinforcement (read: attention) for doing it. And by the way, boxes are loads of fun. Basic equipment at any proper daycare facility. While shoehorning wasn't really what I was talking about, is having a female knight any more "unusual" than having a wizard with a pet dragon in the supposedly non-fantasy knights' theme? Is a female pirate really less believable than a skeleton pirate or a cyborg with a heart problem who fights with four lightsabers?

I've been wanting this set since I first read your review, Brickster. I finally got it today, and it did not disappoint at all. I love the classic construction, and the hinged wall allows it to look complete standing on the shelf and be accessible for my kids to play with it. (My youngest informs me the minifig is named Bubba, by the way). The alternate builds are also really nice. If I had the money for it, I'd like to buy another couple of these and use the alternate models to build a whole riverside campground. I definitely want to buy one more when they go on clearance at the end of the year, because those dark red slopes are amazingly useful. But even at MSRP I think you get good value here. I do find the tree very strange, and really would have prefered to have a molded tree, or at least some leaf pieces. But I understand that this is the Creator philosophy, and those tooth pieces are useful for other things. The duck in one of the alternate builds uses the tooth pieces and is fabulously cute. Maybe I'll chop that tree down and raise me some ducks.

Thanks for confirming that. I thought I had seen Blackbeard's flag on a ship in that scene, but I wasn't about to go hunting for screenshots to confirm it. And you're right, that's probably the real reason they didn't use it this time. Still sucks, though.

I was actually really hesitant to even put that down as a suggestion, because I don't like the Mouse House at all. I hate what they did with every classic children's book they've ever touched, I hate their gender bias and many other biases that feature in so many of their movies. I hate the way they do business, annihilating their superior competitors by buying them out (Pixar) or buying the distribution rights (Ghibli) instead of improving their own offerings. And yes, that kind of alliance would really put the squeeze on Lego's non-licensed themes. Maybe a healthier alternative would be for TLG to develop a fairytale theme. Personally, I'd like to put the fantasy back in the Castle theme, but a lot of AFOLs seem to hate that idea, and I can sort of understand their perspective. So I'd like to see a full-blown fantasy theme alongside the Kingdoms sets. Rapunzel's tower and an elven hollow hill, goblin mines and unicorns and fairy circles. Disney have made movies from a lot of these old stories, but they don't own the rights to the concepts. I think this could be a pretty cool theme.

Maybe I'm just too much of a geek. When I see stuff that I know is inaccurate, it annoys me. It totally ruins my suspension of disbelief. When I hear Han Solo talking about the Falcon making "point five past lightspeed", I can't help laughing at the fact that it would take him decades to travel from one system to the next. When I see a guy in an action movie firing a handgun fifty times without reloading, it makes it that much harder to take the movie seriously. It's just the way I'm wired. POTC is basically a series of fantastic impossibilities from start to finish, even before you get into the supernatural stuff. I enjoy it (I've got all the movies on DVD, and watch them pretty regularly), but in every movie there are a couple of scenes that just make me groan because they are so stupid it makes it really hard to keep going. In Blackbeard's case, it's just the fact that he was such an interesting character in reality, it seems really cheap to throw in things like an unimaginative made-up flag. His real flag was awesome, unique and full of symbolic meaning. The POTC version is just a skull. And no, it doesn't bother me that they made him a zombie.

This topic is the original Holy War of sci-fi fandom. I've seen it come up at every convention, in every Web community, in bars and on playgrounds. It's NEVER over. And the answer is, obviously, Trek. (Actually, it's B5, but out of the choices offered it's Trek.)

One thing that annoys me on the QAR, aside from the fifty bazillion skulls and the unseaworthy stern - why in Beelzebub's name did they have to make up a new flag for him? Historically, we really don't know much about Blackbeard. We don't know what his ship really looked like, or how many people he killed. We don't know if he was a zombie or a ninja. Etcetera, etc. But we DO know what his flag looked like. He designed it, and it looked like this:

I'm getting more and more hyped for several of these sets. Fortunately for my wallet, the QAR really doesn't appeal to me - I hate that cartoon stern a little bit more every time I see a new picture of it - but the London Escape and Whitecap Bay are screaming at me to buy them. I think both of them will be nice for Kingdoms mods. Cannibal Escape looks great for minifigs and assorted parts, and Isla de la Muerta is a cute little set that I'm hoping won't cost more than $20.

Well, assuming that TLG actually wanted to do this - which I think is a false assumption - they could... Change the ratio of male to female minifigs, and stop short-changing the females in the background stories. Put the women in a much higher number of sets, so they don't only come in one of the most expensive sets in a theme. Let them have guns or bows like the men have, and don't only put them in stories where they need to be rescued. Make sure there is at least one theme each year where a woman is the actual leader of the team, and don't think "well, if a woman is the leader there don't need to be any other females in the group, right?" Because that's a cheat. Design a wider variety of "civilian" elements in the existing themes. The City line needs hospitals, parks, shops, zoos, veterinarians, skate parks, school buses, houses, and more farms. The Castle theme needs taverns, healers, weavers, stables, witches. With civilian elements, it's a lot easier to add sets that fit with existing female stereotypes. You can use a wider variety of colors, add more animals, and have more power roles for women. The AFOL crowd would love it, too. Change the advertising. Don't only show boys playing with Lego. Instead of having just the "WIN!" boy on the back of the instruction booklets, have a boy and a girl. Yes, I know that all toy advertising is designed with one specific gender in mind. It's still stupid, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's change the world, shall we? Do some street-level marketing that showcases female Lego creators, whether they're adult women or teenaged girls. Get some women demonstrating Lego building in stores, meeting with Girl Scout troops, coordinating Lego days at summer camps. The last one I suggest with some hesitation, because I don't like Disney much, but here's a thought anyway: use the Disney connection to create Lego themes based on "girls' movies." Simultaneously, pay for some decent product placement in those same movies. Disney and Pixar OWN girls' entertainment, whether it's movies or TV shows or books or video games. If Disney ever decided to go against the existing gender stereotypes, believe me, the existing gender stereotypes would change in five years. If Disney and Lego teamed up to change the stereotypes, they would be changed before you could blink. These companies are just that big. I doubt that the companies will ever do that, because both companies are quite conservative and not interested in facilitating positive social change. But they CAN team up to sell more toys and make money. A while back, somebody talked about a "Classic Disney" Lego theme featuring sets from all the movies. Something like that would make tons of money and bring in a lot of girls. Who here wouldn't buy some Lilo and Stitch Lego sets? Or the treehouse from Enchanted? Sets from the Nightmare Before Christmas? The Little Mermaid Atlantean palace? How about Incredibles sets?

I've said many, many, many times that I think the whole exaggerated dichotomy between girls' and boys' interests and tastes is a completely made-up, self-fulfilling prophecy. Girls do not have to like pink. It's not an intrinsically feminine color. Actually, pink was generally considered a "boys' color" until the beginning of the 20th Century. It was associated with manliness and blood. Look it up! Likewise, there's nothing inherently masculine about building toys. There is no reason to think that girls who are introduced to building toys wouldn't be interested in doing the same things with them as boys if society didn't teach them a bunch of stupid false values telling them that "girls don't do that". The reason girls like dressing up and putting on makeup more than boys do, is that we teach them to. Many, many little boys like to put on their mom's makeup and jewelry. And no little girl ever thinks anything about it. It's the adults who tell them, "no, no, boys don't do that." And no, it's not up to the parents exclusively. With my first daughter, I did everything in my power to keep her away from the frilly pink Barbie Disney Fairy Mermaid Princess garbage. Unfortunately, our children don't grow up in a vacuum. From age zero onward, everything and everyone in her environment tried to push pink at her. I raised her without TV. She saw TV at other kids' houses. I dressed her in jeans with colorful patches, bright T-shirts with animals on them, all sorts of colorful but gender-neutral clothing she could roughhouse and play outdoors in. People gave her frilly pink dresses for Christmas. I raised her without Barbie. Her best friend had seven Barbies and gave her one. We'd stop for McDonald's on a road trip. "Girl toy or boy toy?" Boy toy = neat little Lego Batman toy. Girl toy = some pink or purple Littlest Pet Shop creature. Everyone we knew (except for my mother, an old-school feminist who understood EXACTLY what we were trying to do) thought we were weird and unfair for doing what we were doing. My good friends told me "stop worrying about it, one Barbie doll never killed anyone." It's impossible to keep society's ideals from growing girls. Don't blame parents. Blame parents and daycare workers and schools and TV and toy companies and fast food chains and everything. Blame yourself if, shopping for a niece's birthday present, you ever skipped over the Lego aisle or the bookstore and opted for some Hannah Montana trash or a set of hair accessories because you assumed her parents wouldn't want her to get Lego or books. But our efforts weren't entirely for naught. For a couple of years, my girl had to have every girly thing her friends had. She was all about the fairies, Barbies, Disney Princesses and pink glitter. She's nine now. She loves to read. She's pretty much over Barbie and Disney. She'll never be over the princesses. She loves Harry Potter and Eragon and Star Wars and Miyazaki movies. She still dances around singing Taylor Swift songs, and wears glittery things and acts all girly. She plays with her Nintendo DS and she plays with Lego, whether it's the pink tub that I bought her at the height of the Barbie phase, or Kingdoms sets with Star Wars and POP minifigs. One day, it's all tales of treachery and epic battles with her, and the Lion Knight Princess is in charge of everything. Another day, it will be about the girls on the farm, and how difficult it is to take care of pigs, and how the Prince of Persia is being a real jerk to Tamina. My second daughter is building a Duplo city at this very moment. How do you get girls to play with Lego? You buy them Lego. You show them how to build some cool things, and set them loose. And you don't tell them girls don't play Lego.

You have a good point there, and the Falcon *is* one of my all-time favorite SF ships. But you do need to keep in mind that Trek ships, for the most part, belong to the government/military, and in the military you just don't let your ship/tank/weapon get all weathered and beaten up. As a former tank driver I spent hundreds of hours cleaning, tidying and repairing my tank after every maneuver. We had inspections ALL THE TIME, and we'd get punished for a single bolt that wasn't tightened or grease nipple that hadn't been greased. Loose equipment? Dusty ammunition? Scorch marks on your paint job? Not on your life. Look how clean and sleek the Empire's ships are. Not every ship in SW looks like the Falcon. And doesn't every character who sees the Falcon in the movies comment on what a piece of junk it seems to be? Regarding the design itself, this again goes back to military design philosophy. You don't leave cables and fuel lines exposed on a warship. You put them behind some armor, and you make that armor as sleek as possible.

Great piece, pranas! To me, this really captures the hyperdeformed chibi ideal. I want to put it in my pocket and take it home and cuddle it!

Another thing that might be affecting TLG's actions here is the fact that in most legal systems, if you do not take routine actions to protect intellectual property, your position is considerably weakened when and if you have to take someone to court. In other words, if TLG don't stand on their right to keep these images protected now, their case will be much weaker if they ever need to send out actual cease and desist orders, or take a clone company to court for duplicating a set design.

I'm generally against making multiple sequels (everybody saw my comments on SW, right?) but to be fair, I think the Matrix has tons of possibilities for stories. Not only did they make the Animatrix with tons of side stories in the universe, but back in the day there were also a bunch of online comics written by top-flight authors like Neil Gaiman and, well, Neil Gaiman is the only one I remember offhand, but they were good ones. They may have closed off a lot of possible story avenues with the way they ended Revolutions, but I'm sure they can come up with more. At the end of Reloaded, there was rampant speculation about a third layer of reality, and we know that there have been other iterations of the Matrix and Neo. There are also numerous rogue elements within the machine society - Smith and the Merovingian were only two that cropped up in the movies. I really think there are lots of ways that another pair of sequels could be made without being a blatant money grab. This article does sound pretty dodgy, though. Even if it's true that Keanu met with the Wachowskis and they discussed possible sequels, in the Hollywood world that's a far cry from actually signalling an upcoming production.

I like it a lot. Looks true to the SP3 theme. Well, I still have no idea what "Raid VPR" is supposed to stand for, but military designations generally describe what the vehicle does, with "sexiness" a secondary consideration. This looks like some kind of SWAT rapid-response craft, with the heavy weaponry, and it has a bit of an insectile look, so how about something like "Mantis VRF" (for Versatile Response Fighter) or "Sting VRF"?

It doesn't seem like it would ever see a serious increase in price, as it has no really rare parts and no minifigs. But I haven't been building Lego for long, and I might not have a full grasp on what makes certain sets become valuable.

I'd love to see a high-quality version of the Governor's house from the first movie. It would go so nicely with sets like Diagon Alley and MMV. Very much doubt that TLG have any plans to make it, though. My second dream set would be Tia Dalma's shack mixed with some of the river exterior. An awesome, spooky set with potential for really cool accessories in the shack. Tia Dalma is probably my second favorite POTC character, and this set would HAVE to have a monkey in it. I don't have a monkey yet, much less an undead monkey! Not to argue too much, but I think Sao Feng's bathhouse would actually be a pretty cool set. We don't have much Chinese-styled architecture in the Legoverse, and this would be an opportunity to get pieces that don't show up much. Playability would be pretty high if they did it right, as you've got swords being launched through the floor, exploding walls and other action features. Not to mention a Chow Yun Fat minifig, which would rank right up there with Indiana Jones and the Squid Warrior in coolness.

Awesome news! I didn't really like Revolutions the first time I saw it, but I love the Matrix universe, and there are so many more stories to be told there...

I doubt it for a couple of reasons: first, there is not yet any confirmed appearance of the Pearl in OST, and in fact the Sunset which is the "real" Pearl has been redressed as the QAR since before shooting began - meaning that if the Pearl appears at all in OST, it will probably be a short cameo courtesy of digital manipulation, and not a full action scene. And second, I suspect that on a set that is central to the entire movie series, they will prefer to make it "universal" with elements from multiple movies. Something along the lines of the latest Hagrid's Hut set that had elements from Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban.

That looks amazing! Great work. You are definitely going to need some super-fertilizer for the trees, though. As everyone else pointed out, the AT-AT is just a little bit too short. But there are trees on Endor that are twice as tall as the landing platform, as seen in this shot:

To anyone who feels insulted on behalf of Star Wars because of my "synopsis", please understand: the Star Wars movies, all six of them, are THE go-to family movies in my house. ROTJ is playing at this very minute, with my entire family gathered around the tube. We watched ESB three days ago, and ANH last week. This family lives and breathes by the Jedi code, and most of us toss around Yoda quotes in every situation. That is all.