danth

Yep. Sorry for saying it in a way that was easy to interpret the way you did. On re-reading it, I see why...more my fault than yours. I guess I was trying to say, unlicensed fans aren't eating good right now, and license fans are, so it feels like punching up to say "I hope your dumb license get canceled." Star Wars fans can laugh at me all the way to the Lego store, no matter what I say. I would love to be in a situation where Lego was making awesome unlicensed Space sets that SW fans savaged online.

I really didn't mean that at all. It's a hypothetical, like you said, about what I would do, not about you. You were saying that I want other people's beloved themes to be canceled, and that I would gloat about it if it happened. That, to me, would be an a-holey thing to do. So I was saying, no, I would not be the a-hole that you said I would be.

No, not again. I did that pages ago! 😁 And by attack surely you meant "explained the perceived shortcomings of Star Wars sets from a Space fan's perspective so as to justify his preference".

Huh, I wasn't saying that at all. We have new brick built dinos. We have new brick built big figures in Mario and Wicked sets. The brick built sails in the Creator Pirate ship are pretty new. There are brick built wings in a brand new Creator Dragon set. Is it that weird for Lego fans to want to build things out of bricks?

You want to play Uno Reverso? Fine, let's play. Imagine that Lego has been making glorious unlicensed Space sets for 30 years. No stickers, awesome colored windscreens, radical and different spaceship designs every year. Along with Pirates, Castle, you name it. And every few years, Lego throws Star Wars and Marvel fans a few bones, maybe an Icons set here and there. And so some license fans start a thread to lament the dearth of licensed sets. You think I'm going to go into that thread like some sort of a-hole to tell them to shut the eff up? I'm going to be way too busy building unlicensed Lego sets to do that. And since I'm not a TLG cheerleader, why not just let them vent? I'm not a monster.

JFC, really? Yes, because status quo warriors can't let a single lament stand without invoking everything from classic literature to convergent evolution to argue that nobody has the right to think it was more fun when we had Western, Space, Castle, and Pirate themes all at the same time.

The status quo warriors always invoke this argument. It's a sort of logical nihilism. There are no distinctions, everything is the same, therefore preferences are inherently invalid, and so, of course, the status quo stands. Maybe they identify as a TLG stockholder who hates actually building Lego sets?

A rare, perfect comment. Bravo. I love that you're invoking Shakespeare to defend applause breaks in Marvel movies. This thread is going places.

Oh. I remember the other thing I wanted to mention. Nostalgia. You know what's just as fair as calling someone's preferences for unlicensed themes of the past "nostalgia"? Saying that people who like new sets are just status quo warriors. People who are blinded by novelty. People who like every stupid new thing. There have been 47 years of minifig themes. By whatever criteria you have, what are the odds that the year you're in, is the best year? And what do you call wanting to buy X-Wings and Millenium Falcons? Those designs are literally older than minifig themes! How is that not nostalgia? The last Harry Potter movie came out almost 15 years ago and they're still making sets from those. Apparently, nostalgia sells. But if it sells licensed sets, then mum's the word.

To me it means they're going after a smaller, much older and more fanatical customer base for Star Wars sets.

Yes, I was including that one in "new trilogies".

I don't know if we can really say that for sure. Take Star Wars. Most people admit the new trilogies sucked. And how many more sets of the same things do people need? Star Wars fatigue is real. It's possible that sales of Star Wars sets aren't what they used to be. But what is Lego going to do? Cancel the license? No way. You can't let someone else get it, even if it's not a hot seller right now. What if the next Star Wars trilogy ends up being actually good? I think Lego is stuck with the SW license, even if it has lackluster sales for years. What they would do instead is cut back on production, and maybe make their own sci-fi space sets.

Just because a theme was discontinued as planned after two years doesn't mean it "didn't sell" Just because a set was retired doesn't mean it "didn't sell" Just because you saw a set marked down in price at the store doesn't mean it "didn't sell" I swear, people offer up these turds of thought like they deserve a Nobel prize in logic. Lego actually plans theme and set lifetimes. And sometimes, stores just need to clear out stock.

Cool! Very clean.

I admit, repeating a few space ship designs is better than repeating just one.

What I meant was literal repetition. According to Brickset, there have been 15 minifig scale or larger X-Wing sets. That's not counting microfighter or 4+ sets (with minifigs but not true minifig scale), which would bring the total to 19. And 12 Jedi Starfighters, not counting Interceptors. Space sets had no repetition like that, except for possibly the Aerial Intruder being an almost recolor of the Stardefender 200.

Apologies, but this will be meandering because this is a complex topic. I personally think there are too many licensed sets. Mainly because I don't like them. And I would just buy non-licensed sets and ignore the licensed sets, but they don't make the non-licensed themes I like anymore, and the ones they do make have things I don't like about licensed sets. And, as we all know, but some of us lie about, licensed sets prevent similar non-licensed sets from existing. Lego employees have admitted that the Star Wars license prevented Space themes; see my signature if you want the proof. Anyway, let's take Star Wars as an example. As people have pointed out, it's the same boring gray space ships over and over. Maybe that wouldn't be true if the Star Wars universe wasn't creatively bankrupt, but it is. Sure, there are some yellow or blue Prequel space ships but they're still repetitive and I don't like those designs. But also, I just don't like Star Wars. Except for the 40+ year old originals, the movies suck. I don't want to buy sets from bad movies, or from ancient movies. And neither do kids. Sure, the TLG cheerleaders like to pretend that every generation of kid needs a new X Wing Lego set, but they don't. Kids aren't into Star Wars. It's their old nerdy dads who want to buy those sets. And it's really sad because how many X-Wings do you need collecting dust, or even worse, sitting in a box? Because let's face it, adult collectors buy a lot of the SW sets and don't even build them. Oh, and no, fire trucks are not as repetitive as X-Wings. Fire fighting vehicles have been radically different from year to year, whereas an X-Wing is a particular ship. Still, I'll occasionally buy a licensed set if it's particularly good and cheap, and I have money burning a hole in my pocket, or if I like the parts, but I generally find no use for the minifigures. If the minifig is obviously a recognizable character, I don't really want to use it. For instance, I like some of the super hero car sets, but if I get them, I'll toss the superheroes or villain minifigs in a bin. I just want a normal, generic driver. I also don't like super specific minifigs in non-licensed themes, for instance some of the Monkie Kid minifigs are too weird to be generally useful. Another HUGE problem with licensed sets are STICKERS. When you're trying to match a particular paint job or detail on a particular design, sometimes you have to resort to a print or a sticker, and Lego is too cheap to do prints, or at least knows that license collectors don't really care and will buy regardless. Even with designs that could be approximated with parts, Lego will often resort to just lazy tiles or smooth curves with stickers slapped on top. And that particular style of "tile/curve with stickers slapped on" has infected even non-licensed themes like Monkie Kid. And I hate it. For non-licensed sets, where Lego can create whatever design they want, they could just use generic prints and textured bricks (grills or whatever), but they resort to stickers almost like an addiction now. Not to say that stickers didn't exist before licensed sets, but I managed to have an entire childhood of Lego sets that had almost no stickers. So something has changed. Anyway, with regards to creativity. I will just say that we went from having every box from every main theme having "back of the box" builds, to none of them having those. And from no sets having named minifigs with known stories, to almost all sets having named characters with known stories (barring City and Creator and whatever else I'm forgetting). Each set challenged you to build other things without instructions. You had to make up identities and stories for old sets. You still can with new sets, but you don't have to. I think it's disingenuous to pretend that isn't a significant change with regards to creative play. People have pointed out, most modern non-licensed themes have named characters with known stories. Yep. That's true. I prefer themes like City without all that, personally. At least with Friends you can just ignore the names and stories. For Ninjago it's a little harder. If you have a green ninja piloting a mech, you have to ask yourself, what series of events led to this? Monkie Kid is even harder to explain. Why is a pig chef on the moon? Some things make little sense outside of the official story. I think this segues into something that was brought up earlier. Unlicensed themes are too weird now. WTF is Dreamzzz anyway? It's mechs, but also monsters, but also elves and hot air balloons. Why can't we just have something normal? I think Ninjago is mostly okay in this regard, mainly because we're used to sci-fi ninjas thanks to things like Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers or anime. It's a genre most people are familiar with. But Dreamzzz is just weird. I'd say Nexo Knights was also a little too wacky as well. You can do sci-fi and fantasy mixed, but I don't think it quite nailed the execution. And lastly, I'll just say I don't care about Lego's profits. At all. Why would I? I'm a Lego fan, not a TLG stockholder. I would love it if they lost the Star Wars license. Then maybe they'd have to shrink, and make up for lost branding with increased quality. Like space sets with bold colors and no stickers. If Cobi and Mega and Funwhole can make sets with no stickers and better PPP, then maybe Lego could too, if they were forced. And before someone asks, yes, I do like the new City Space sets. They shouldn't be City sets, because they have freaking aliens, and they should have bolder colors. But they are largely the kind of set Lego should make more of.

I think it was, in a way, since nobody wants bile or fuchsia, and the blue vote was split. What set was that?

Damn. It thought I called it for sure: the gold spaceman would absolutely win. But then they go and do something surprising, and pick two winners. Teal is Dark Turquoise on Bricklink right?

Apologies for this but I accidentally stumbled on this today and I HAD to post it. Another former Lego employee confirms the Star Wars meant Lego couldn't do Space themes. The following is a comment by Suzanne Eaton on a Bricknerd article about Rock Raiders. Here's the video where I learned about this, with some additional context.

Do any other leading brands use stickers? I think Lego is the only one.

Brick built sails are better than cloth sails on ships Brick built wings are better than vinyl wings on dragons Brick built dinosaurs are better than molded dinos Brick built big characters are better than "big figs"

Weird! Don't worry, I knew you were agreeing with me, something must have went wrong with my quote. No idea how that happened because I don't remember quoting anything manually. I'm going to manually fix the quote now though.

A "conspiracy theory" confirmed by actual Lego employees, all the evidence, and common sense. Also, don't blame me for responding when someone else brought this back up, and you called the obvious reality a "conspiracy theory". :D Time passes, things change, Lego decides over time to have less and less in-house themes competing with licensed. The situation in 2010 is different than today. Also Chima and Nexo nights were the in house continuation (or replacement) of Castle. And those did go away precisely when Harry Potter sets came back. And we haven't had a Castle-like theme since. Yay someone who actually gets it! But anyway. Don't anyone blame me for this discussion. It was over, and then someone decided to dredge it up again. :)

I didn't conveniently leave it out. I've addressed it a thousand times. Any regular on these boards has heard me talk about it so I try to keep it short and not repeat myself. But since you are twisting my arm... Space Police 3 was during the period between prequel movies and sequel movies. So it was okay have Space sets on shelves, but even then, Space Police 3 was technically Earth based. The planet Earth was literally on every box in the background. Mars Mission was of course on Mars and therefore in-Solar system. Alien Conquest was obviously on Earth. Galaxy squad is the only Space theme since the the first Lego SW sets to not be specifically in the Solar System. It was also the last ever non-City Space theme. Enough time had passed since Revenge of the Sith that they were legally allowed to do that again. And then the Sequel movies happened, so no more Space themes after that. Yep. Harry Potter also. I think the license agreements for those aren't as strict about competing in-house sets but I won't go into that. They literally did an entire generic sci-fi Space theme in 2024/2025. They just had to put it in City and stick to NASA style colors to not violate their license agreement. So Lego actually knows kids and adults want cool space themes.