Devsan

Does seem odd they would end Monkie Kid so soon after adding it to the LEGOLAND in Shanghai. But suppose could be the old situation of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

Part of it is also... some styles have moved on and what was once goofy might not be so to the next generation. Certainly I can't imagine people who grew up with or in the wake of say Naruto finding a broccoli hair cut goofy on a ninja. Part of it is we are facing that old Simpson scene: "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me..." To be clear I also overall prefer more simple, tame minifigs. I'm very much including myself in the quote. but then I was never very plugged into pop culture, so at least in my case you can likely strike the "I used to be with it" part...

And the reality is if Lego were to do some kind of space or castle theme today, it would get most of that treatment. A show with specific characters, sets made at least partly to recreate specific conflicts and themes ect. We live in a multimedia world, that how you advertise for better or worse. Even City has a lot more story than it used to. Its just its cartoon and such are not as popular so that its filled with not named individuals with distinct personalities personalities in place is easier to ignore. Though we've been watching the dominoes fall towards more per-defined story telling since... at least when Castle and Space got factions in the mid 80's or so give or take a few years in either direction.

I do find it slightly amusing seeing going to bat for the old raised base plates deployed on the side of older Legos. I recall running into more than a few older Lego fans back in the day who HATED raised base plates as Lego going downhill and making things seem bigger well skimping on bricks.

Okay to touch on something I do think gets folded into the discussion sometimes, but is also its own thing. Namely the changes to how Lego sets are designed and made. Because there is something that reflects change sometimes part of championing classics can be part of why someone might do so. Older sets clearly use the older building approach. But,obviously any classic theme can be and has through Creator lines and the like, been done with the newer building approach. Now also we do seem to have some people who define what counts as modern vs classic differently. Basically some older folks put the cut off around late 90’s to the 2000’s with City jr and that strange Bionical stuff, where others put those periods as firmly in classic. So for this I’m counting around say the 2010’s or so as roughly when the modern period started to emerge. And if you haven’t guessed when I’m talking about modern building approach vs older ones I’m talking about the increase of SNOT building vs more ‘classic’ stacking building. Bottom to top with brick as your bread and butter and plates as helpers and a handful of panels for where you need things to slid against each other or want some printed or sticker based decoration. This shift can also I think can for some, not all add to the feeling that Lego is about super specific parts over bread and butter building parts. Because in a set you’re more likely to have more brackets than bricks. The reality of course is in SNOT building brackets and the like have largely replaced bricks as the bread and butter of building. Now, putting aside how the use of SNOT effects appearance, where there is maybe, possibly a connection to other issues is how it could effect rebuilding and making your own little creations form sets. Now I don’t even know if people and kids doing less of that is even a thing. And if it is, no clue if this is in fact a contributing factor or not. But I do see how it might be. SNOT, I think we can agree is much more complicated than just building up. Which is why historically, despite the idea being used since the 60’s it was mostly in official sets small flourishes. But now they have much clearer instructions so guiding a person through the steps is very doable. Were it might fall though is in getting people to understand it enough to do their own thing. Again SNOT is complicated compared to building up the old fashioned way. So maybe, possibly, people do walk away from modern Lego sets feeling “man I made this complicated thing! But no way could I ever figure out how to make my own thing with those pieces.” Also maybe related is the greater use of small pieces making taking something apart building it into something new and then building it back to yet a third thing or its main build too much of a hassle. But also as noted maybe its just having more Lego sets and SNOT has nothing to do with it.

I don't that lines up with issue either way. Heck a lot of licensed themes are from the buyer's youth. Well Star Wars can do adult stuff like Andor, that's not what Lego Star Wars is remotely channeling, it channeling the simple pulp adventure stuff form people's childhoods. Same Harry Potter, and even LoTR. As for sculpting/modeling being a GUWM thing... WHAT? Both people who like classic themes and those who like licensed themes stuff build MOC. This division seems utterly unsupported by any real facts.

Alright a few thoughts so likely to break this up. But first absolutely the advent things once associated with coming up with their own distinct things becoming more focusing on licensing out is in the air and push back and worry that it represents pop culture is losing the ability to imagine new things and just replicate the same old things over and over and over. The big one I have some knowledge of is Magic The Gathering. Which has its own story lines, set fantasy vibe ect, and now major sets are you Ninja Turtles. Way more fuss has been raised there I think than in the Lego community given Lego doesn’t have as much a set vibe, or if you want to argue the licensed stuff is out of step you have to go back to like the 70’s and 80’s. Lego has embraced a lot more action and violence that lines up with most licensed stuff for awhile now. And of course with Lego you can avoid the licensed stuff by just not buying it, were with the necessity of another player in MTG, if you like the classic flavor of MTG but your possible opponents all don’t care and load up on Transformers, Spongebob and The Office cards, too bad, you either have to deal with the death of the flavor, or not play MTG. Anyways, I think there are often a few things that can get caught up in the talk around the Classic themes. One of course is just matters of taste. If you like pirate stuff or castle stuff, or Lego’s often more vibrant approach to space than Star Wars then you would likely want more of it than just one big set every so often. One can like Science Fiction and not like Star Wars for example. You’re looking at a living example! Or just like the idea of Lego coming up with more in house themes that have things like a setting than leaning on old established IPs from others. Or the prefer the aesthetics, be they color choices or even building approach and how that influences looks. At a certain point more rounded and curved plates came into use and combine that with a shift to more SNOT construction over building up from bricks leads to a different aesthetic. One can just prefer one aesthetic to another. Nothing really to debate there I would think. Now I think there are other opinions that cross over with the classic themes ‘debate’ that play into it, but I’ll have to get to those later.

I think the specialized pieces is more its own subject that doesn't line up neatly with classic themes one way or the other. BRUPS were birthed in 92, same year as pirates! Tons of specialized pieces came from around 97 to 2005ish? During which classic themes were around, but also classic themes were around before and after that period as well.

Some points are going to be a bit over the place since what we tend to call classic theme can span from the beginning of the Town theme in the 60s and at the latest it starts more in the late 70’s when more of the themes started to emerge and goes up to 2010’s or so. That’s a decent hunk of time! And the nature of the themes changed as one can imagine. So for example open endedness. How open themes were shifted. It starts out with “Here’s some dudes in space… you do the rest,” To “Here’s some factions in castle, you figure out the rest,” by the time Pirates hit some mini-figures do have canon names and super loose and simple personalities and factions with canonical antagonistic relationships. Themes get more specific, like Space Police are clearly police in space, Spyrius are clearly doing spy stuff. It still leans towards the open ended, but there is a lot more scaffolding. You get Aquazone stuff were clearly every going going after the crystals. And then we hit the 2000’s and well most themes are still relatively loosely defined, all things considered, there’s no easy accuses to set moments players are expected to be recreating, Bionical is happening and is going all in on lore and story. Which has come to be how most mini-figure based themes of today operate. In that sense the in-hose theme and the out of house ones can involve a clear cross over in expected play-pattern. That of following the story and using toys to play through given moments, and do variation on the existing story moments. Is this the death of pushing the person playing to be imaginative, or is it just providing even greater scaffolding to help them? I don’t have the expertise to say. Still I do understand feeling something is lost without those more open ended themes, outside of City still holding the flame. As for other reasons, with older themes being mostly consigned to stuff like a single big set, that’s not going to be a great replacement for everyone. Even as adults not everyone can afford those big old ships and castles and such. Fuller waves with many sets also let the idea be fleshed out more. And means even if you can’t justify getting, say, the big Pirates ship maybe you can get like the small raft. You still get some Pirates themed things since you like Pirates and you don’t break the bank. Kind of gone now. I can easily get why that’s a bummer. And finally there’s just the… feeling of everything undergoing homogenization as stuff like Fortnight, a lot of Magic, and others are pulling us into “instead of focusing on the own unique stuff, we’re going to pull on per-existing pop culture because that make number goes up” and the feeling we’re moving to the future of Ready Player One. Which I thought we mostly agreed was a very sad future.