Doddsino

I'm looking forward to an Aquasharks X Wing.

Yeah, I was super excited to get those as a kid, and they're still some of my favorite sets. But it's not like I could transfer Flatfoot's head to like a Town firefighter and make him a sympathetic looking character. No one is going to buy pizza if he's the guy behind the counter. And I don't want his ugly mug to be near the NASA flight command base.

He's one of my favorite actors growing up and he can do whatever he wants, but does he even need the paychecks at this point? He's probably got 9 figures in the bank already. Oh and as far as Transformers go...I haven't seen it yet, but I was a big Beast Wars fan when that series was getting no attention. But no Rattrap? I get why Depth Charge (my favorite Maximal) wouldn't be in it...but where's the mouse with the mouth?!

I guess I just never took much stock in the fact they were smiling, but if someone looked 'bad' then it was hard for me to justify making them good. Even as a kid, I liked 'twists' and such, and when I got the Wild West sets, you had the three main bad guys going up against the cavalry of Ft. Legoredo, and in order to more even the score, I would make the white hatted deputy as a mole. Over time, I just made him the main bad guy because the others were just so uninteresting to play with. I have no problem with Lego changing things up, but completely stopping the smileys was disappointing.

I'm guessing they're only using colors that were present in classic Mickey Mouse (red shorts, yellow shoes, black and white body).

I never knew Redbeard's first name was Roger.

With Super Mario RPG being rereleased soon, I wonder if the usage of those characters moving forward might lead to them getting Lego versions made. A Lego Mallow would have blown my 11 year old mind back in 1996.

Man, it's been a week and a half since I saw this and I already forgot almost everything about it. Just long slogs of empty action broken up by soulless dialogue to further the plot and unfunny quips. Not a single frame of this movie is beautiful to look at. Say what you will about any of the original trilogy or even Crystal Skulls, there's points where you could pause the movie and it would look like a photo from an art gallery. Just great framing and unique design. Indy staring at the fertility idol, Indy running from the boulder, Indy staring down the snake, Indy on the rope bridge threatening Mola Ram, Indy fighting with Mola Ram over the sachel, Indy punching the Nazi on the tank, etc. The new movie had none of that unfortunately, not a single moment that made me think this is something fresh or unique.

Yeah, this was always an issue with Town in general. Most sets came with the standard smiley faces or the black sunglasses. Every so often they would put the smiley with the simple mustache, or the smiley with simple eyebrows later...but most figures did look very similar, and the only hair pieces were the standard hair that was either black or brown. In all honesty, I always felt like Lego was pretty cheap when trying to change it up. I remember when the Star Wars sets came out and the standard hair was shown in blonde and gray colors...which felt so fresh at the time. Nowadays, they have dozens of different hair in every imaginable color, but the selection in the 90's was dire. Heck, you had the ball cap in colors blue, white, red and black. When I saw a new figure wearing a green hat, I HAD to buy it. Going back to what I said about Lego being kind of complacent at the time, they were able to change up the classic smiley face in other themes. I mentioned Pirates, but when Ice Planet came out with the messy white hair face (aka the guy in my avatar), I thought that was super cool. Honestly, I always thought Lego could do many other variations of this kind of stuff, but they typically only did it with facial hair.

I like the classic smiley faces, or variations of such. When Lego started doing weird off-center smirks, it made the characters look like they had a stroke. It also stymied creativity. While never formally telling kids how to play with the themes, having some level of uniform pattern to their figures allowed for kids to choose how they wanted to play. When you start printing scowls and gritting frowns on your figures, you're essentially spelling it out for the kids that this character is bad or mean. As an example, 80's/90's Pirates had character to their faces, but many kids would choose to pretend to be the charming and adventurous Pirates avoiding the scrupulous and rigid Imperial Guards. Blacktron were the bad guys, but you could always act like they were the space Robin Hood to the Space Police's Sheriff of Nottingham. If I was an 8 year old kid, I'd probably be less inclined to add my own character to a minifigure who looks like he's on the verge of crapping his pants. Sometimes simple is better.

You are correct, apparently I can't count. To be fair, I was thinking about the Pirates set that came with the monkey, but that only came with 4 figures. There was a previous Pirates set that did have 5 figures though.

"Is that a jewel in your lap Mr. Thunder, or are you happy to see me?"

I've expressed this elsewhere, but when it comes to buying larger sets, specifically modulars...I'm fine with the set only coming with 5 or less Minifigures if it means it'll knock $50 or more off the price of the set. Or they could make the set a little bigger. Either way, Minifigures are the least of my interest when it comes to larger sets. Need Minifigures? How about just releasing those little 5 packs like they did back in the day. Don't waste the piece count on these.

Redcoats are what I was familiar with when I began buying Lego, but the Caribbean Clipper changed my opinion when I found that a few years later. Now I'm 100% bluecoats. That said, I like the redcoats too, and treat them as a separate entity, the same as the Armada and the Islanders. The redcoats were the British and the bluecoats were French. I could be 100% incorrect on this, as I'm an American. 😂 I enjoy all these factions, and it helps mix up play by giving you different directions you can take with the Pirates. I actually wish we got more. Give me the Dutch! Give me the Portuguese! Heck, give me the Ruskies!

I was never a huge fan of the Aquaraiders or Hydronauts, but those two little sets are pretty awesome. The Aquanauts cockpit is pretty cool too, reminds me of a throwback to Futuron or something. I don't mind the others, but they're kinda similar to existing sets. Nonetheless, I like them all.

Love the duckies!

I know this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but I'd like a parking garage. Namely, it would probably be a little bigger than most sets, but a little more open. You can add a couple small shops near the bottom to keep it slightly unique. I'd probably have it roughly 3 stories, add some stuff like vending machines and an elevator amongst a few other things, but the goal is to keep it simple.

Man, Kylo Ren really did a number on him.

Speaking as someone who was a kid at the height of when Indiana Jones was popular, I assure you that the fandom of Indiana Jones in 2008 wasn't even close to what it was in 1989. I'm glad you liked the movie, but Indiana Jones at one time was equally as popular as Star Wars.

Wildly racist? What do you mean? You mean the scene in Pankot Palace where they're eating the animals? I thought that was quite obvious there to show that there was something weird about this place. I mean, the village Indians didn't eat baby snakes and monkey brains. And who was the annoying sidekick? Short Round? He's awesome. Way better than Mac or Bumblin' Marcus in Last Crusade. If you're referring to Willie...I like her too. At least she has a character and an arc. As far as needlessly violent. I'm okay with that. I don't go into an Indiana Jones movie to watch sanitized action. If I wanted that, I'll take that from just any other action franchise from the last 30 years. Give me blood and guts. Give me Indiana Jones blowing a guy's brains out after he's screaming while he's on fire. Oh wait...that was Raiders! Last Crusade was a fine finish to the original trilogy, but it was a very safe movie. It took no risks and borrowed HEAVILY from the structure of Raiders. Sean Connery was fine, but most of the movie seems to prefer wacky comedy over action, something that Crystal Skulls continued to do. I prefer my comedy in Indiana Jones to come from stuff like Jones hitting a innocent pedestrian with a truck, sharing a laugh with a Nazi before booting him out of the truck.

Yeah, Lego really dodged a bullet by not making sets for this awful movie. I'm kind of amazed it got made to begin with. Unlike a Star Wars audience that universally is acclaimed by all ages, Indiana Jones hasn't achieved the same kind of treatment since at least the 90's. Most of the audience for this movie is going to be people in their 30's or older, because I doubt anyone who was introduced to the series through Crystal Skulls was going to be on board. And I say this as a hardcore Indiana Jones fan, most kids today do not care about Indiana Jones. On top of that, the series never needed to come back after Crusade, which by far has the best ending for the character. Hardly anyone liked Crystal Skulls, and I've only heard mildly faint praise for this movie, one person told me this was better than Temple of Doom, which I immediately knew they weren't to be trusted with their opinion. And as much as I love Harrison Ford, he's the problem with the franchise. No one wants to see an 80 year old Indiana Jones. When I was a kid, I WANTED to be Indiana Jones, I could care less about his character (this was why Crusade was my least favorite as a kid), I just wanted to be super adventure man. No kid is watching Dial of Destiny and envisioning themselves as an 80 year old man. Still, I think there is a future for Lego Indy. I would love to see maybe a couple more sets targeted towards adults. I would love to see a high piece Pankot Palace in all it's glory, but I doubt that'll ever happen.

Absolutely gorgeous!

Not going to lie, I almost want to get that Pac Man arcade. The amount of small parts is almost made up for with some of the more innovative things they did with it. I agree that the price is a little steep, but I'm almost willing to overlook it since I think this will probably be regretful if I pass on it.

I think the key word in my original post was "seem". With Castle as an example, they moved to Ninjas briefly, and I remember when they came back with the Lions Knights in 2000, the little changes that has happened over the last couple years just didn't aesthetically fit for me. Even worse was Space when they had the Rock Raiders, which felt like a mishmash of garbage. Obviously every product needs to grow and evolve, but each line does feel separate depending how much of an advancement took place. I think most collectors have an idea of what pleases them visually, and any drastic jump from that is going to lead to disinterest. I grew up in the age of Futuron, M-Tron, Ice Planet, etc. I'm not going to display them next to UFO and treat it as the same thing, even if that's what they were going for.

They've been mostly dead after 1997... That's the last year of classic Pirates and Wild West. You also started seeing drastic changes with Space and Castle. Aquazone was also slightly changed. In 1998, Space was the Insectroids which felt very far removed from other themes. Castle had Ninjas, which while somewhat cool, didn't really fit together. Biggest change for me was them changing the standard designs on the Minifigure heads. After that, they would put out a theme for a couple years, then swap it for something else. While Town, Space and Castle have all continued on, the latter two don't really seem like a continuation.