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icm

Eurobricks Dukes
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Everything posted by icm

  1. icm
    Totally! Classic Pirates is better than licensed Pirates, because licensed Pirates tells you that the islanders are cannibals while it's totally your choice whether classic Islanders are cannibals or not!
  2. icm
    Even as a kid, it never occurred to me that the Islanders faction in the Pirates theme were cannibals. @Darth_Bane13, the idea might have occurred to you because there are cannibals in Pirates of the Caribbean, which you probably saw before you came across old Lego Pirates sets online. Lego Pirates predates the PotC movies by decades. Regardless, I'd just like to point out that just like Lego media hasn't dwelled on historical accounts of cannibalism in islander populations, it also hasn't dwelled on historical accounts of hangings and other executions by Age of Sail seafaring cultures. Remember, this is a fantasy land where King Kahuka and Captain Redbeard both have that same goofy classic Lego smile on their faces. Edit - I guess it was actually @Karalora that first brought up cannibals in the past few days of this thread? The Islanders are stereotypes to be sure, but I don't know why we suddenly started talking about whether or not they're cannibals.
  3. icm
    While we're musing about bringing old "historic" themes under the City umbrella, you could easily make a City set for an Old West tourist trap like Tombstone or Old Tucson, and a heritage railroad to go with it. There's your City Western theme!
  4. icm
    I think City Space 2024 has shown that the City label on any hypothetical City Castle or City Pirates doesn't actually have to mean anything, but for the sake of argument I'll say that one way to do City Pirates would be a maritime museum setting, like any of the old sailing ships docked by the quay in San Diego or like the museum berths of Constitution, Constellation, or Victory.
  5. icm
    @SpacePolice89 Well played!
  6. icm
    You may not remember it, but this was actually a fairly notable controversy in 2001. The Maori individuals who thought early Bionicle's use of Maori words and imagery was disrespectful were not "a few Karen complaints", and they weren't "white liberal women." It was an actual case of indigenous minorities taking offense at Lego's appropriation of their culture, and Lego made a good-faith effort to change in response. I mean, you can brush off anything this way if the only thing that matters is "kids having a fun toy." Edit - looking through your post history, you say you were born the year they switched the grays and browns. So, you don't remember the Bionicle controversy in 2001 because you weren't alive for it. Yes, please do imagine being offended over a Chinese toy line that turns, say, "American senior citizens" into little robots and has them constantly being threatened by giant robot bugs. You might be irked by it but laugh it off, or with a little more time and effort you might try and contact the Chinese toymaker and ask them to please call the little robots something different. I admit that's not a very effective way to transpose the Maori objections to "Tohunga" into a Western analogy, but maybe you can think of something different that you'd prefer to please not be made into a toy.
  7. icm
    The combiner feature of the Land Bounty is pretty cool, but I miss the verticality provided by the sails in the old version, as well as the interior space behind the seats. I think I'll pass on the new version and see if I can get a good price on a used copy of the original. Of course, I should have done that a long time ago before the Bricklink inventory of half-price copies without minifigures was gone.
  8. icm
    Thanks for the contemporary link to the article about Bionicle. Here's a link to a website about him today: https://www.climateone.org/people/maui-solomon
  9. icm
    In a conversation like this, anyone should be prepared to back up a claim in either direction. I think the cross-theme Space push in 2024 was originally intended to capitalize on public interest in Artemis 2. That mission was originally scheduled to fly in 2024, two years after the uncrewed Artemis 1 test launch in 2022. It was delayed by two years to make sure the heat shield was safe to fly on, after the Artemis 1 heat shield suffered unexpected damage during reentry. I expect Lego got the financial returns they wanted out of the 2024 Space sets, but they weren't going to rush out another big Space wave in 2026 to accommodate NASA delays. So they kept the Icons version of the Artemis rocket on sale, made a smaller Technic version for 2026, and pushed ahead with the many other sets otherwise planned for this year. It's been a banger of a year so far, in my opinion.
  10. icm
    As @danth has said so many times, classic themed Creator sets. It would be nice to have a Creator castle, a Creator pirate ship, and a small to medium sized Creator castle set and pirate set on shelves at all times, if it's not viable for whatever reason to produce full waves of either theme. Also, a rotation of Icons throwback sets at a slightly higher, but still accessible, price point. Or maybe I'll say this: Icons and Ideas seem to have budget structures that allow them to do themed one-offs pretty well at relatively high price points. It would be nice if there was another theme with a cost structure set up to do themed one-offs at relatively low price points, as regular retail sets (not just as gwps). Maybe you do a little Ice Planet spaceship one quarter and a little Vikings boat the next quarter.
  11. icm
    Sorry, I didn't realize my wording there would be confusing. There hasn't been a BDP remake of Fort Legoredo, but there have been several Wild West BDP sets. https://brickset.com/sets/tag-Wild-West/theme-BrickLink
  12. icm
    For example, there have been several big Wild West sets through BDP, and they're all about cowboys, miners, robbers, townspeople. It would be nice to get some smaller playsets of the same subjects. The Fort Legoredo set had the cowboy, cavalry, and bandit factions but it didn't have any Indians. There shouldn't be any compelling reason to avoid a Fort Legoredo remake with the same cast of characters. Yeah, like @danth said, that's not really fair play in this conversation. Not cool.
  13. icm
    That sounds like a claim that should be fact-checked. I don't have time to fact-check that claim right now, but perhaps you'd care to provide some sources?
  14. icm
    When I was a kid, the builds I was most envious of on Brickshelf were the minifig-scale military airplanes, especially the ones by Ralph Savelsberg. So, for me as an adult, the aviation and space-related sets like the Concorde, Boeing 747 space shuttle transporter, and DC-3 are the kinds of things that I've wanted ever since I was a kid. Same goes for the Tintin rocket. I guess you could say Lego is catering pretty well to the 1990s kid in me right now, except that the 1990s kid in me wants more Adventurers sets. But I was never super into in 1990s Space, 1990s Aquazone, etc. So I guess you could say that, from the perspective of a lot of you folks, I'm the problem Sorry about that!
  15. icm
    To be fair, they seem to try hard to put interesting mechanisms in the game console replica sets. There's as much interesting Technic in the NES box and TV set, in the Pac-Man console, in the set of Mario riding Yoshi, or in the Nintendo Question Mark Block as there is in a lot of sets in the Technic theme.
  16. icm
    I agree with this. A single CMF or some Easter Egg references doesn't count as a revival of an old theme or faction. You need minifigures in the context of a playset that could pass as a modernized version of an old set, or something very similar.
  17. icm
    0. These are very cold takes within this thread. 1. Blame game, pointing fingers, meh. 2. Yeah, BDP is great, but all the other changes to Bricklink since the takeover have clearly had Big Corporate interests at heart rather than hobbyist concerns. Seems like Lego would be perfectly capable of doing a BDP-like program without having bought Bricklink if it really wanted to. 3. Again, an ice-cold take within this thread. 4. Yeah, it was pretty cringe when some exec said they wanted to be a lifestyle brand. Also, the rebrand from Creator Expert to 18+ and then to Icons did start in 2020, like you said. At the time I thought it was a meaningless change in marketing to go from "Creator Expert" to "18+", but in hindsight it has been a pretty big change and the size and frequency of D2Cs has dramatically increased. I'm not complaining about that in principle, since there have been a lot of smashing good dream-come-true D2Cs since then, but now there's too many for me to keep up with. I believe Mike Psiaki said in 2018 or 2019 that they wanted to limit the number of Modular-style buildings and big Creator Expert-style vehicles to one a year because they didn't want fans of those lines to feel like they couldn't afford to keep up, but that philosophy has clearly gone out the window. This year alone there are already four Icons-style vehicles and one yet to be unveiled.
  18. icm
    The 8x8 ring plate seems pretty specialized at first glance, but its application is pretty easy to understand. Without it, it's pretty hard to reinforce radius-4 stacked-macaroni cylinders without disrupting the curve. An 8x8 ring will make horizontal reinforcement easy. Question is, how often does one build a radius-4 stacked-macaroni cylinder? 4x8 tile is nice to add to the expanding family of large tiles. Does Cobi have a 4x8 tile already? It can be fun to see what shenanigans designers get up to when brainstorming prototype elements or using prototype elements in sketch models. Cut, saw, hack, glue, paint, 3d print, clay sculpt, etc. All sorts of things purist moc builders stay away from. The common element there is that avoiding modifying parts for purist mocs keeps purist mocs theoretically reproducible by other builders, and Lego designers diy-ing new parts is all ultimately in pursuit of something that will be reproducible because it's mass-produced. Non-purist mocs with diy-modified parts are made in pursuit of cool results, but rarely with the intention that other people be able to make the same thing.
  19. icm
    Two wrongs don't make a right. We're not talking about pirate companies producing dupes of official Lego sets, or even of fly-by-night outfits mass-producing stolen MOCs. We're talking about legitimate competing brick brands that make and sell their own original kit designs, using parts libraries that contain parts of their own design that Lego does not, or did not, make. If part "X" originated with company "Y" several years ago and has been used by company "Y" (and maybe company "Z" too) in multiple kits over the years, it is not necessarily wrong for Lego to also start using that part in its own kits, as long as that part is not protected by law. What is wrong is for Lego to exploit that lack of protection by trying to protect that part itself, so that company "Y" is no longer allowed to use part "X" that it originated several years ago! That is corporate theft, plain and simple. How many wrongs make a right? It's not just two. Is it three? Four? How many times does the cycle of finger-pointing about corporate theft, finders keepers, etc, have to repeat before everyone just plays fair with each other? The answer is blowin' in the wind, I guess.
  20. icm
    Regardless of where various items are manufactured, it's clearly wrong for Lego to protect a part that it did not originate and that other brands have been using for years. It's wrong for Lego to take credit for that part and prevent other brands from using it. It's wrong for Lego to copycat other brands and then play the victim. Forget about the geopolitics for a moment. This is wrong.
  21. icm
    Looks like there's something for everybody here: A couple of late-antiquity/medieval/viking-styled buildable characters for folks who like that kind of warrior and buildable figure A pretty decent gray castle to fill with the faction of your choice, although you might want to buy two copies in order to have a back for it A big sailing ship with two gun decks, although the style is more of an early sailing ironclad than of an earlier pirate ship A modern city scene with a couple of small buildings and a motorcycle A buildable nonhuman character who is intended to look cute and comes out looking cursed A wintry forest hideout for a castle or fantasy scene I am so behind on ships. So many great ships to get, available now. I was able to snag the Temple Bounty without minifigures (I backfilled with minifigures from the 15th Anniversary Minifig Display instead) and I placed an order for the Fortuna, but I'm still missing: the Endurance the Black Pearl the Going Merry the River Steamboat the Maersk container ship Garp's Marine Battleship and the rumored Creator pirate ship coming later this year I'm so behind on a lot of things ... better not list them all
  22. icm
    Is it a good model of what it's supposed to be? Yes. Do I wish it was a regular 1965 Mustang without all the hooning mods? Also yes. Individual Speed Champions cars are now built at 8-wide, include a single minifigure, are priced at $30, and have several models in a single release wave. Individual Batmobiles are now built at 8-wide, include a single minifigure, are priced at $30, and have several models in a single release wave. Gee, the Speed Champions/Batmobiles convergence has finally happened.
  23. icm
    The thing is, though, with the dollhouse you're not building on a large raised structure. You're slotting plates into tabs between dividers. In the way it's designed and probably in the way it's manufactured, the dollhouse carry case has a lot more in common with a sorting box (https://brickset.com/sets/5006974-1/Sorting-Box-Blue) than with a raised baseplate. I doubt the dollhouse carry case is manufactured in-house along with the rest of the set. It's probably a Gear item contracted to another company.
  24. icm
    Just off the top of my head I'd say that dollhouse is a lot more like the brick-shaped carrying cases and storage boxes (eg https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?O=60270-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0}, also see https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Gear/subtheme-Storage) that they've been doing for years than it is like a raised baseplate. Like those, it's a large carry case without any actual Lego connection points. The "rooms" in the house are 8x16 plates that slot onto shelves. So there's room for higher tolerances in the molds there. Raised baseplates need to have the same precise stud grids as any other part. Not fundamentally the same thing. The 8x16x2/3 plates used in the dollhouse sets aren't new. They've been used for several years now in sets with low age ratings. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=2629#T=C
  25. icm
    Yeah, I agree with that. There were a few good spaceships and rovers in previous series when the Renegade windscreen and the Technic rover tires were available, but in the last couple of series there's only been the 1x3x3 trans yellow panel and the small trans yellow windscreen from the V-19 starfighter.
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