BrickG

Anyone else think they should up the amount of votes required so we stop getting reviews with a ridiculous amount of projects? I don't even look at the reviews until the results anymore! Make the vote count like 20k or something.

I'm surprised if this is true. Wouldn't think the set would sell well enough for a second version but I've been wrong a lot before :P. I welcome the new set if it's actually happening.

LEGO is too complex. There's too many kinds of pieces in too many colors. Some pieces are just unecessary and can do what they need to do using other pieces. Also it takes too long to organise them. I feel like you can take half the pieces that exist away from LEGO and end up with sets that are just as good. Possibly more like 90%+ of the unique elements... Another opinion is that LEGO building will never be good in video games. Again, it's too complex and there's too many pieces to go through when building something. Everything has names that are ridiculous and just finding the piece you're thinking about it too difficult. I'm comparing LEGO building in video games to other building video games like Minecraft where you just stack what's 90% cubes together, and yet you can still have a ton of fun and it's much more approachable (and can still get crazy in-depth). LEGO in the video game realm is just unapproachable. Another opinion tied to LEGO complexity is that Minifigures don't have the same rules apply to them when it comes to complexity. Minifigures have TONS of different elements from different weapons to heads to whatever, and that's good. Characters should be treated differently then building and deserve whatever characterization is appropriate when it comes to unique molds and pieces.

wat? "Stealing" lol

I expected to like these a bit more. But yeah, road runner is just bad (should have been a unique sculpt like animals), and the female characters are ones I literally forgot existed. But come to think of it I guess Looney Tunes has like zero good/memorable female characters (I wouldn't call the granny one people exactly want a toy of lol).

I buy like two sets a year now and this was one. It's about half done. The figures are pretty darned good. I can see why they went with long legs for Pooh which might have been just to help Piglet be smaller? Or just a cost thing rather than having the medium legs (what do you call those new stubby ones?).

Disney and Marvel are doing very good with the Marvel TV shows. Wanda Vision was pretty good, up there with the best Marvel TV shows (basically Daredevil and Jessica Jones, which are all considerably better than Agents of Shield and Iron Fist). Falcon and the Winter Soldier is two episodes in and looking strong. This is the kind of development these characters lacked in the movies, specifically Falcon, Wanda, and Vision who are very much side characters in the movies. It's good to see them get high quality TV shows that continue their stories. Marvel can't seem to do wrong. Well, not as wrong as other companies... they've had a few stinker TV shows and some of the movies are incredibly average (and others great). Disney handling Marvel is going well. Disney handling Lucas Arts on the other hand is producing stuff that is, I'd say too kid specific for a franchise that started out as something for everyone.

I've gotta double post. It's too terrible not to. Watched the latest episode. SPOILERS So Discovery is now basically a city ship? What the heck was with that Turbolift scene? WHAT? Is it a Tardis now? WHAT!? WHAT IS GOING ON!? This ship is 1000x bigger on the inside apparently because there were hundreds of turbolifts (being USED? or something...) in the ship an an absolutely MASSIVE room that couldn't hardly fit in a Borg Cube. WAHT!? Oh god the level of stupid has gotten to a peak I didn't think possible. They just write what they want and don't care about anything. Also, on a more minor but still incredibly stupid note. The scene where it's a 1000 year old ship, the USS Discovery, vs the ENTIRE Federation Fleet in their HQ and Discovery seemed to be WINNING?! WHAT!? That was before the threat of the "pesticide bombs" too when EVERY OTHER SHIP in the place that has 1000 years of better tech (I know Discovery was retrofit, but a retrofit can only go so far and wouldn't make it 100x more powerful than their modern ships!) and they seemed to be LOSING. Those ships couldn't take out one little retrofit 1000 year old ship. WHAT!? What's going on? I swear with 100% honesty, a teenager with a high school level of creative writing can write better than this. This is as bad as Star Wars Episode 8. It's an absolute travesty. The writers should feel infinite shame.

Why does the crew tell her to say yes? Nobody knows. Because nobody knows the crew because of their joke level character development. So we just have to trust that they'd do that? With the crew it's all about "Tell", don't "Show". The writers need to SHOW that it's believable. The writers don't show anything, they just tell. That's why it's terribad writing that I honestly think a fan can do better. The problem with telling and not showing is that it makes stuff completely unbelievable. It IS bad writing. Tilly has shown nothing that makes her deserving of being commander over the others. Just that they smile and nod at the idea which isn't showing at all but telling. Picard had similar issues (though not as bad) with the telling of Picard's new attitudes and characteristics. You're meant to believe these changes can happen in the like 30 years since we last saw him. He does well with children. He tells people he loves them. He's got real attachments. People complained because none of this was shown, just told. Legit complain. I was lucky enough to be able to headcanon that so I didn't mind it (I minded other things in the show). Picard on the LAST episode of TNG started going to the Poker games. Picard let himself start to form attachments and that was his character arc and it took until the last episode to HINT at it. You see it a bit more in the movies where he's a bit more casual. Data dying could easily affect him especially after he let his guard down, where in earlier TNG seasons he handled it professionally (though was still upset) when he thought Data died, but since he didn't let his guard down it wasn't as haunting. Anyways, I'm just saying showing is NEEDED. You shouldn't rely on the trust involved in "telling" and shouldn't rely on "headcanon". The telling isn't a plot hole. Maybe there's things behind the scenes that make everyone on Discovery think Tilly is a great choice. But we've not been shown. And what we've been shown is entirely lacking. Bad writing (dear god I think I've adapted some Trump mannurisms... god no...). The only reason there's no Discovery crew that were good picks is because we basically know nothing about them. The show isn't about them. Maybe someone would have logically been a better choice but even they would not have SHOWN it. So they might have had a similar problem to Tilly. But the one thing they have is rank and an opportunity to get to know them. We know Tilly pretty well and nothing says she has what it takes. I have no doubt they'll try to show us Tilly has what it takes but it hasn't happened yet. So it seems forced. This is reaching Star Wars episode 8/9 and Game of Thrones last season levels of absurdity where a fan could do better. The art is good though! XD EDIT: Complaint 1007: Why do all the badguys hesitate on killing anyone (always under orders not to) then the goodguys just vaporize them? The amount of times these people have been caught and could just be shot is outstounding. Also why do the badguys always feel a need to go into punching range with their guns when holding prisoners? Just stun them from across the room dude? Okay those aren't Star Trek specific lol. I'm just sick of those tropes.

I think half my posts here are about negative reviews for Star Trek or Star Wars. Oh well! This season demonstrates that most of the weaknesses of Discovery will never be addressed. Stuff from how they make everything a speech and pump the emotions up to 10 which makes nothing actually emotional, to the complete and utter lack of character development for anyone who isn't in the top 3. At least Georgiou is gone. She was a terrible "it feels gooood to be so baaad" horrible trope of a character. The sad thing is she's probably getting that spin-off. Might as well spin-off Jar Jar. Blablabla. Some of the lore is decent. They're legit trying to match canon as much as they can by backpeddling the Klingon designs and stuff. 1000 years in the future also lacks imagination. So the transporters are faster and in your combadge, the ships have floating nacelles, holographic technology everywhere. You'd think the show was 100 years in the future. I mean the Star Trek story writers always talked about how moving Star Trek forward was REALLY hard and that's why they went with Enterprise, a prequel. This show shows why it's really hard. Star Trek was already really imaginative with the future and it's tech (for the time). This one... it takes everything and barely elevates it. I don't know why they're still using Quantum or even Photon Torpedoes. I don't know why they're still having fist fights. I don't know why the future of Star Trek, which is already a story of the future, lacks any feeling of it being very "futurey" compared to 1000 years or whatever earlier. Well, I do know why, it's because it's freakin' really hard to write it, and hard to write it in a really Star Treky way where it seems plausible and sciencey and sufficiently ahead of the Star Trek we know. And why in the world doesn't the future Federation give more support to the USS Discovery? You'd think they'd send more than 1 child (who they didn't send) to act as an officer on the ship to help them climatise and stuff. They still are surprised by technology they find, that's because apparently NOBODY has filled them in and there's NOBODY they've put on their ship to help. Remember Saru's second in command issue? It went to Tilly despite that being the stupidest decision in the world. Might as well take NOG from fresh out of the achademy and make him commander. RIDICULOUS and STUPID. Lazy and dumb writing. Unbelievable. But IGNORING THAT... there was a golden opportunity to bring in someone new from this new century. Someone who could help ground the crew in this new time and help out with tech advice and all that future stuff. Saru would find new missions and the second in command would act as a time-translator and make sure they're not missing anything due to the fact that they're so outdated. Perfect opportunity, squandered for the absulote trash writing that Tilly is somehow worthy of being a commander. Maybe they based it entirely off of her Mirror Universe counterpart? No idea... Should also have support characters from this century seeded through the ship... Well I have 1000 complaints. I might say good things for a change. The art is pretty good. The acting is good (ignoring the lack of anything that isn't meant to be profound). It's not the actor's fault the story is garbage. The special effects in the last episode were REALLY good for a "TV show". Uh, I think that's it.

It's too much to ask them to do much of anything at the submission stage. It's a lot more complex than you might expect. They'd have to hire tons of people just to handle the submissions, of which there's thousands and thousands.

There's no chance you'll really see that IMO outside of comics/books/the new expanded universe. Dealing with fake-CGI luke would probably be both ineffective and horribly expensive.

The show continues to be... okay. *spoilers* I don't care for cameos. I really don't. They tend to add nothing except your ability to look at something and say "LOOK! It'S STAR WARS! THAT IS STAR WARS! I KNOW THAT! AMAZING!" Their strategy for getting the kid back was to freakin' just storm in and kill a few hundred Stormtroopers? There's absolutely ZERO tenseness. There's no risk. I'm 100% certain if I lived in that universe I could go in there and kill all the storm troopers and the emperor himself, myself. All you have to do is stand confidentely with zero cover and shoot a lot. Don't worry, they'll miss. Oh wait, they hit? Don't worrry, the Buscar makes him invulnerable so it doesn't matter. The show has zero character. The characters are all boring and stoic. The show has zero tenseness or risk. The show isn't as bad as the 7 or 8 (which at least had character though) but it's not that great either. The show has no heart, if you think baby Yoda and Mando's bond is heart you've fallen for the trick and now have to go buy baby yoda products, w00t materialism and capitalism has won by designing a character purely for merchandise! (Luke also looked god-awful with his horrible CGI face).

If I could get the characters minus all the fluff I'd maaaaybe consider buying a few. The character designs aren't bad are are pretty LEGO (but like everyone I'd prefer regular minifigures). The game looks like the sort of game I wouldn't even like when I was a kid. However I was an odd kid. Played D&D and stuff at 7 rather than lame games. :P

Sinterklaas stuff aside, I'm don't think just because you do something for a long time that it's any legit defense to keep doing it. Everything should be open to analysis and questioning and readdressing. Otherwise movement on things like woman's suffrage and equal rights in areas wouldn't have been addressed. Why give women a vote if they didn't have it ever in a country and we'd all been doing it that way through history? A common defense was "we've always done this" and since it can be used to defense both good and bad things it seems completely irrelevant to me. If yellow is the way to go for LEGO that's fine. Doesn't mean we can't readdress it every now and then. Maybe in 100 years after the "they actually have bright yellow skin" genetically engineered robot people start appearing LEGO might have to readdress it because everyone thinks the LEGO minifigures now represent them only. Or maybe in 10 years for whatever reason it doesn't work anymore. Or maybe it never stops working. IMO it's always fair to ask and historical usage is kind of irrelevant.

I'd say like 20% of my orders have something go wrong. I mean, it's Bricklink and random people so it's not like I don't expect it. However 99% of the time the issue was resolved. The most common thing is sending the wrong color. Some colors are really close. Other times I swear they need to sort their LEGO is a better lit room (I've gotten black things instead of brown pretty commonly). I've got sun damaged pieces before too. Whether it's the wrong color or damage they've all been replaced at the expense of the seller. There was only one time when I got the 60s or whatever style Batman. It was advertised as new but the cape seemed to have a bit of fraying (possibly just trying to get it into the little bag...). That one bothered me but I didn't do anything and I don't remember why (probably distracted by real life things). I'm pretty sure if I complained with a photo they'd probably have at least refunded me.

I didn't come back to this thread until now and see that it has exploded a bit. Most of the discussion seems very civil and thanks for that (minus very few like the person who said I was racist for even bringing this up ). And for the people whose mind is blown that race has been brought up in a "raceless" world. I would just say relax. It's not the first thing or 1000th thing on people's minds probably. But I'll be honest and I never saw LEGO as raceless or otherwise. I didn't really think about it until a random thought while seeing what's happening in the US and thinking about LEGO at the same time :P. But when I was a kid I was pretty visually detailed oriented. When I was about 6 I wanted to dress up as one of my favorite characters for Halloween, Geordi LaForge (still the BEST Star Trek Character). I had a uniform, a crappy visor which even while 6 I was a bit upset that it didn't look more like the real thing, and being 6 I was a moron and also wanted to paint my skin darker. I was a 95% white kid, so pretty white lol. I just wanted to look a bit more like someone who I looked up to. My parents of course shut it down and told me why and gave me a bit of education about the history about blackface. Well, at least as much as a 5 year old can handle. I roughly understood why I couldn't look more like Geordi LaForge and went to school without accidentally appearing racist. The only reason I'm saying this is because, while I'm only a sample size of 1, I was at least aware of the colour differences when very young. Which would lead me to possibly think it's possible a few other kids think of it too. And if I didn't feel like I could look enough like Geordi LaForge at the age of 6, would that translate for some kids into representation of yellow figures? And I will emphasize that this is meant to just be a THOUGHT EXERCISE from me. I do not think yellow figures are racist. I don't think LEGO is racist. I don't think this is that important of an issue, if it's important at all. It might be a non-issue entirely. I'm simply putting forth something to think about and discuss. I don't have demands. I don't have a recommended course of action for LEGO. I'm just curious about the thoughts of others, and if yellow=everyone, for everyone. And if there will ever be a paradigm shift in some cultures that would make LEGO change their mind and act differently if every necessary. And I certainly didn't come in here to change minds or push an agenda but to just spark a conversation and think.

I'll keep it short and simple. Obviously this is inspired by the happenings in the US (my country of origin). LEGO has it's main line of sets all yellow. It's iconic. I wouldn't ever call it racist and this isn't exactly a top issue. But it is designed to be colorblind. They were designed to not adhere to any race or people so nobody felt left out. However the second they had to make a Lando minifigure they realized stretching the yellow into lighter skin tones was easy, but stretching it into darker tones was possibly too much of a stretch. This only mattered when representing real people with real races which wasn't the goal of the non-franchise lines. However it does potentially emphasize that the yellow, while designed to not let people feel left out, might not be the best option as it still might kind of subconsciously or consciously more represent certain skin tones over others. Plus I'm not sure it's effective to begin with. There's the argument that not having clearer representation in the minifigures might not be as healthy or helpful to begin with. There are many arguments against colorblindness including the thought that refusing to acknowledge it can make it easier for people to not notice or ignore manifestations of racism and discrimination. Essentially potentially leading to ignorance and apathy and stuff. I'll keep this brief too as there's plenty of thoughts and articles and stuff out there that is all about why colorblindness can be bad. The point is maybe there's a better way to go about it and maybe yellow'izing the figures isn't the best way possible when it comes to the kids. OBVIOUSLY this isn't all on LEGO. Racism is a deep problem with it's roots in many MANY places (not saying one is LEGO). This is just me "theorycrafting" about the most efficient and logical manner of communication of skintones in a children's toy. And every little bit helps. And at the end of the day I just think the yellow'izing isn't really the answer. I think acknowledging other races in a productive and intelligent manner is just... better. If I ask myself "could LEGO do better when it comes to representation?" I can't help but think "yeah, probably". If I think of any future kids I may have I'd kind of rather them play with minifigures that are all colours and not just a generic "humanoids, ala the TV show Community, be it much cuter". (Though simple solution, go for the franchise sets ;p). That said I also recognize it's a minefield. Have a classic cops and robbers set? I guess they'd have to stray away from "predefined" minifigure combinations. So you might encourage kids to put whatever available skin tones on whatever minifigures how they want. Have a set with just a 1 cop and 1 robber? Do you provide 1 light skin tone and 1 dark? 2 light? 2 dark? How do you display this on the box? Obviously if the robber is dark... that might not be well received. But then you can't just make all the robbers white. Don't want to accidentally depict discrimination in a quest to be more inclusive! There'd have to be a whole lot of rules and I'm not sure all scenarios even have an answer! Will there be a time that the world outgrows the LEGO "colorblind" mindset? Or does nobody care? Does the yellow really leave nobody feeling left out? Is it such a tiny issue in the crazy 2020 world that you wonder why I'd bring it up? Blablabla. I'm just thinking out loud. :)

Presentation matters in story and how this show presents itself as a joke. Some of the stories are pretty good (I enjoyed that whole one where Anakin temporarily knows he turns into Vader and becomes evil, the Force Planet one). But it's a failure on their part that it's so unbelievably bad sometimes visually and story wise. And oh GOD are some of the episodes terrible on every single level. What I'm commenting mainly on is the same thing as before. There's good stuff. There's bad stuff. The quality is so all over the place IMO it takes away from the whole and basically actively helps continue the tradition of ruining Star Wars. If the best defense of a garbage show is "well, some of the episodes are GREAT" that's not much of a defense. The main thing I want is some CONSISTENCY. Star Wars has anything but and it really hurts it. Star Wars OT are my favorite movies. Scattered among the other forms of media some amazing stuff. Diamonds in the rough, and the rough is often pure garbage baby-level terrible stuff that I have to wonder about any adult individual who likes some of the worst of it. Or who doesn't look at the logical failures, even in-universe. The fact that I think Han Solo would be smart enough to shoot Maul's feet breaks everything. The fact that suiciding faster than light into a whole fleet and wondering why they don't do that again (besides an off comment on how it's 1 in a million) breaks Star Wars. The fact that Luke acts like an idiot breaks Star Wars. Clone Wars having totally different rules in it's universe breaks Star Wars. I miss the days when the biggest issue was dumb teddy bears. You can't have a franchise that used to exude a certain quality go unscathed after decades of mostly garbage is released for it. Star Wars doesn't make any sense within it's own universe and lore. Star Wars's quality ranges from total garbage to absolutely amazing. And any great stuff it has going on in modern times is plagued and hidden by the terrible crap that surrounds it. Star Wars is broken. *runs away*

Combat in The Clone Wars is just baby levels of terrible. What do I mean by that? I would legit complain about the stupid combat if I was anything older than a baby. "I can't hold them off much longer!" says Rex (was it him in the finale? Since they're all clones unlike some people I can't freakin' tell the difference and don't feel like I know any of them since I don't know which one it is at any given time!). As he, while standing still, shoots a lot of other clones. The whole army, missing him, a stationary target without any cover. It's RIDICULOUS levels of bad. At one point Darth Maul takes some sections of door/wall or something and uses it to block the enemy blaster shots. Pretty cool. But wait, why don't they SHOOT HIS LEGS!? Are they all THAT STUPID!? The Clone Wars might have had some cool episodes, but even in most of the decent ones (and the last arch wasn't bad) it's got irredeemably bad crap going on. This show was written by idiots. The cowboy hat guy who seems to control half of Star Wars these days is the worse thing to happen to Star Wars. "But wait, the Storm Troopers missed a lot in the Original Trilogy." - In episode IV they literally let them go. In V and VI they didn't actually miss too often and actually managed to capture the heroes (VI) and take their base (Hoth). It wasn't Han or Luke standing in the middle of an empty room shooting armies that can't hit them back. They always had cover. Leia got shot too! Meanwhile Ashoka in the finale got shot 3 TIMES! 3 TIMES! And literally nothing happened. WAHT!!?? I should stop. It's just SO STUPID.

Pokemon is a first party Nintendo franchise. They own Pokemon. They don't own the Pokemon Company. But the Pokemon Company manages the license and stuff. Nintendo is the only ones that own all the Pokemon trademarks. I mean if Creatures and the Pokemon company wanted to break off of Nintendo they could but they also couldn't use a lot of what makes Pokemon Pokemon. For example, Nintendo OWNS the name "Pikachu", the Pokemon Company or GameFreak or Creatures have their own influences. It's a complex mess. But at the end of the day it really means that while there's multiple fingers in this bowl it would basically be impossible for Pokemon to ever go anywhere else Nintendo isn't fine with. Nintendo could have stopped Pokemon Go if they wanted (but they're open to mobile stuff, and benefit from the success of Pokemon even when because of complex contracts they don't see direct $$$ from something like Pokemon Go). GameFreak, Creatures, and the Pokemon company could be called second or third party even. But Pokemon is first party. Nintendo owns enough of it. And it doesn't matter if a third party makes a 1st party game because that game will still be 1st party (look at Mario RPG and stuff). Oh no I went on a tangent... I think a Smash Bros style wave of stuff would be the best move. Not literally Smash Bros. But like, a Mario set, Pokemon, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc, all in the same wave. Well, the best move for me because I'm love that.

I don't know why I'm such a glutton for punishment. I'm watching the last season of clone wars. My opinion of clone wars is there's a few diamonds in the rough, but the rough is such poorly written crap that it doesn't matter. There are zero good episodes this season. It's all going towards a dumb direction with SPOILERS Darth Maul and Ashoka which we already know their ultimate fates, Darth Maul being killed years later by Obiwan and Ashoka clearly surviving into the Mandalorian. It wouldn't matter if we knew their fates if the story was good (like Better Call Saul!) but it's just trash. That cowboy hat wearing guy in charge of Star Wars is the worst thing to happen to Star Wars. /SPOILERS This is worse than the prequels. I've pretty much given up on Star Wars. It took me long enough. After 1999 with Episode I I should have just left. There's been a few good things (1 of every 20 episodes of Clone Wars, Episode 7 until 8 and 9 ruined it, blablabla) but the vast majority is worthless trash.

I played yeeeaaaars ago in the 90s and again in college in the 2000s. Still have some of my old cards back in my parent's house. Sadly, not quite old enough to be worth a lot. Right after all the first sets which are valued ridiculously. It's good. I have no time for it. I eventually left it mainly because it's a VERY pay to win kind of game. And I was a poor student. I couldn't keep up with people who were less skilled and simply had more money than me. I still feel the same about TCGs actually even though I have money now. I dislike how they're designed to phase out the older cards and keep you coming back spending ridiculous sums to keep up. It -was- fun though. And at least in high school most people also didn't have money but by college some did and it was just impossible. I did really well for someone who had 1-5% the cards other people had and won tournaments but overall a lot of the time I lost it was because I couldn't afford the right cards, or often any cards at all. I was that guy playing with really old cards while others had new ones from the new sets. Also I think MTG is an oooold game and there's better now. MTG is just big and will probably never die because it's good enough and has a huge following. For example I dislike MTG's mana system, and the fact that most high level games end up being a short race to the infinite combo or some ridiculous play. Some more modern TCGs have a better "mana" or resource system that doesn't sometimes rely on luck (we've all had those games where we just draw like no lands or mana cards), and also don't just become a ridiculous race to the ridiculous play that ends the game immediately. I mean, I'm guilty of those ridiculous plays. I had fun designing decks that would basically end the game in the weirdest and most unexpected ways possible (I had one deck that would make everything an artifact and also every turn return all artifacts to the enemy's hand, fun times. I mixed it up and made one for fun that did it to both players and just made it be a tie basically). But I'm not sure that makes for the best game design. I think I had the MOST fun in MTG when I was playing in High School and we were all dumb kids who barely knew how to play and would just slug monsters at each other and stuff. Felt more like an actual battle. Some modern TCGs focus on that kind of experience (with more strategy) than just that race to the infinite combo or giant 10000/10000 creature with trample/flying/whatever (it's been years, I can't remember) or whatever.

The $$$ invested in the designs of the movie minifigures really shows. They're still literally the best minifigures to hit LEGO. Probably will be the best ones until they have a reason to invest a lot in the designs again. Why they went back to some older models like the old poison ivy when the newer one was 10x better, we might never know.

Who knows if this will sell well, that ain't the point. I think the point a lot of us "haters" make is that this isn't at all for the majority of AFOLs. I know LEGO is designed for kids but much of it can be enjoyed by anyone of all ages. This seems more like it's halfway to Duplo. :P Hey, if it does well maybe we'll get good and more adultish sets. People are allowed to be disappointed in this.