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I think the themes presented in Friends definitely has a place in Lego. I just find it troubling that Lego has chosen to market one theme towards girls, and umteen other themes to boys. If you take a look at some of the current Creator sets, like the treehouse, beach house, and cottage, these sets only include a male minifigure. The only "house" type set that has both a male and a female is the family house. I've said before that my stepdaughter loves Ninjago. Her favorite character is Jay, but she always "pretends" to be Nya while playing. Lego has been becoming more character driven in their themes, I think there's room for Lego to put a few more strong female characters in their toys. Cars, fire and police are a great example. Lego City has become the "cops and robbers" theme for the most part. That's fine, but where are the female police officers? Female race car drivers? Emma's sports car hardly counts, lets compare apples to apples here. I talked to a female friend at work today who is also another Lego addict. She played with the Space themes in the 80's and 90's, but said she felt like she "didn't belong in the club." She always felt like she was playing with "boys toys." By simply taking their current themes, and giving females a more prominent role, I think it could help reduce this gender gap.

Why do you consider it flawed? The article links to another one about the Friend's set in question. The news van comes decked out with lipstick, a hair brush, perfume, and a smart phone. There's a small sticker that shows the news story about said cake. Comes off just a tad sexist in my opinion.

I know, I'm sorry if my tone came off wrong. I wasn't criticizing your comments, just saying that even if toys sell well, I think we have a duty to criticize how that toy affects the way our children see the world. Toys can really affect a kid's first impressions of how the world works. Stuff like this interests me now that I'm a new parent. I've read some research that suggests that gender-based marketing is a wash. If Friends sells well, I wonder if it's because girls want them, or do parents buy them for their daughters because it's "Lego for girls." Or are girls set up at an early age to think a certain way, that they get the pink Lego while their brother gets Ninjago? My Little Pony is interesting. It's clearly marketed towards girls, yet there are many boys who play with it.

Yes it does. To be fair, star wars is fantasy. I know it it's a gray area, but it's not like Lego is producing real world tanks, and I don't think they ever will. Says who? My stepson plays with My Little Pony. My stepdaughter is obsessed with Lego Ninjago. I know these are just two examples, but the female children in my life don't really like the pink aisle in the toy store. This is true, but as a customer I have the right to comment on how they run their business. There are sexists undertones in some of the Friends sets, and I don't think that's sending the right message to our daughters.

Interesting read. I really haven't looked at the Friends line too closely, but I'm kind of disturbed by how they describe the set in the article. The box says that the reporter needs to look her best in front of the camera, the "big" story is about a cake, and then she's going to talk about the weather? That's a very stereotypical and highly sexist view of female news anchors. I have no problem with pink toys in general, and I like the fact that Lego has added shades of pink to the brick color palette. I just find it sad that companies feel like they need to make toys pastel and princess-y in order to appeal to girls. Thankfully we still have Creator, which is the closest thing we have today to those universal building sets. Link to the article: http://www.womenyous...-something-say/ ** mods, I guess I ran over the character limit for the title of this post, I just copied the title from the article. please edit as it looks a little strange since it got cut off

They might get a nasty visit from a Lego rep. That whole display is probably provided by TLC, and I don't think they'd be too keen on it being used to sell a competitor's product.

My first minifig, along with my first set ever... the 6872 Lunar Patrol Craft! He's in surprisingly good shape, the only classic spacemen that have their logo rubbed off are the white and red ones. His helmet is a bit chewed, I had a tendancy to put those space helmets in my mouth for some reason. I had lots of fun swooshing him around the house in his patrol craft. He was happy when he got his ground crew to help him out, 6926 Mobile Recovery Vehicle, my 2nd set ever!

I keep them in a file cabinet, arranged by theme. This brings up one of my annoyances with "modern" lego, 2,3, sometimes 4 instruction books per set. They are starting to take up too much space! I wish Lego would go back to the old way of presenting instructions, with a significant amount of pieces used in each step, instead of 2 or 3 per step and requiring all of these books.

I actually like it, this is exactly what a promo figure should be. It's a figure that wouldn't really be possible to put in any other set, it has nice printing, and it also fits in with the Bag-End set. The only thing I don't like about it is the fact that there is no leg printing. The robe doesn't really look right without it. have we ever had printing on the short legs before Does anyone know that how Gamestop deals with returns? If I preorder this game to get the figure, would they let me return the sealed game? Would they make me return the figure as well? I don't really play console games, and my kids are too young for it.

I don't think anyone actually hates Lego for making a business decision. I think we're all just hobbyists and fans that are concerned over the direction the company seems to be going in. It's been noted in several industries, not just toys, that when you take production into a low wage country, quality does tend to go down. It may not happen right away, but I think we have enough evidence to be skeptical over the quality control that occurs at these low wage facilities. On top of that, there are the ethical issues, borderline slave labor, possibilities of poisonous chemicals getting into the toys, etc. These are very real concerns. We're used to Lego being an expensive toy, we know that it costs more because it is a quality product. I think most people would pay more knowing that their new Lego set is guaranteed safe, and produced ethically.

I've never owned a comic in my life, but I do have an appreciation for the art form and for super heroes in general. I recently picked up the Power Armor Lex set. You really can't beat it. Two iconic super heroes, Lex Luther, and a really nice looking power armor build for $20.

Don't ever give up the hobby My storage solution is constantly evolving. I originally had my bricks sorted by color. But, given the fact that I collect mostly castle, lord of the rings, hobbit, and star wars, my bins of brown, black, gray, and white were overflowing. Now I have tiles of all sizes separated in their own bin, 1x1 and 1x2 plates in their own bin, 1x2 and 1x1 bricks in their own bin, everything else still sorted by color. Your sorting system will change as you acquire more bricks. Your system doesn't have to be perfect, as long as you can find whatever brick you're looking for relatively easily, you're fine.

Those are probably actual Uruk-hai, as opposed to "Mordor orcs," which is why they are using that type of armor. Sauron bred Uruk-hai first, Saruman just used them exclusively for his army. He most likely improved them too, making them stronger.

Let's assume that no one currently holds an action figure license for Lord of the Rings. That doesn't meant that Lego can just start selling minifigures separately, they would still have to buy the action figure license, along with the construction toy license to do both. It probably wasn't profitable to buy both types of licenses, hence they only hold the construction toy one. As to why Lego hasn't produces Star Wars style battlepacks for the Middle Earth themes, there's either something in the license terms preventing it, or they simply didn't want to make them. I'm leaning towards the former.

Black Knights and the Forestmen. Can't really separate the two in my mind. These are the only two castle factions I ever had as a kid, and my forestment were always stealing treasure from the corrupt Black Knights. Hours of fun :) I love all of those early castle factions, I wish I had more of those sets.

If they have more of the tiles that you need, they should send them to you at their expense. If they don't have them, then a refund would be the correct way to resolve the issue. Yes, they should have pulled the order and made sure they have the bricks before even invoicing you, but most of the sellers are hobbyists who do this in their spare time, and mistakes happen. I would perhaps leave a neutral feedback stating your situation, it would give the seller incentive to improve. I reserve negative feedback for sellers who never send items, buyers who don't pay, etc. Of course, if the seller sends you the missing bricks, leave positive feedback since they went the extra step to get you the missing parts.

I don't think it's meant to sell the extended version of LotR, since it's been out for a long time now. Mouth of Sauron does appear in the Lego Lord of the Rings video game, so this could be some sort of cross promotion.

Off topic, why are you so angry and patronizing in your posts? All I did was offer some suggestions as to why Lego chose to do what they did with LotR. You really need to settle down, these are just toys. Perhaps the cost of doing a new print is relatively cheap. I don't believe new molds were made for the small goblins, I seem to remember the head pieces being used elsewhere, but I could be wrong on that.

Perhaps the lack of Star Wars style battle packs are a product of the LotR license. Lego may not be allowed to produce them, or there may be some sort of brick to figure ratio they need to hit. I know polybags seem to break this rule, but there could be an exception for these as they are "promotional" in nature. Also, Lego has historically been very careful when it comes to violence in their sets. Perhaps sets like Gandalf Arrives are made to give parents a non-violent option, as most of the sets involve some sort of conflict. Same goes for Council of Elrond. Many people think this set is a big WTF, but it's one of the few non-violent sets in the line, and gives parents options. As for the lack of Gondor in the Black Gate set, Lego seems to have shelved the supposed 3rd wave indefinitely, which would most likely be Gondor heavy. Hence, they aren't going to use up resources creating a Gondor solider minifig for this set when there's a chance it won't be used in future sets. The pirate ship is indeed one of the stranger sets in the line. However, it's a cool looking set and I'm sure the kids like it, which was Lego's reasoning behind producing it. I don't believe there are any ship sets available right now other than that one. Goblin King Battle had to include some exclusive minifigs with unique prints to sell the set. Although it looks better built than it does on the box, it's still a rather boring set. As I've said before, I would have rather seen just the throne section of this set made into a $40 set, and have a larger Bag-End be the flagship. I don't think Lego would make a large set like that without any kind of conflict or play feature though.

Your point doesn't really invalidate mine. Who's going to army build? AFOLs. What percentage of sales do AFOLs make up? About 5%. Most parents are going to buy Uruk Hai Army for their kid exactly one time. Unfortunately for army builders, Lego must cater to their core demographic who probably prefers a lot of named characters, with a handful of bad guys for them to fight. I'm an AFOL, and I'd love to have everything, great location sets and some army builders. But Lego doesn't view their business that way, and I can understand that. If their license was different, they could and probably would sell battle packs like they did in Kingdoms, but they can't. Darth Caedus seemed to think that everything should be a battle pack, at the expense of removing lower priced sets from very important scenes in the movie. I don't agree with that.

I think that's why I liked the monorail so much. I'm a Detroit resident and liked riding the Detroit People Mover as a kid. It's a lot less impressive as an adult The futuron monorail, however, still brings me joy.

I think the flaw here is assuming everyone army builds. I think the vast majority of Lego buyers don't army build, and only buy a set once. Lego can't make every set an army builder at the expense of weakening the entire line. Gandalf arrives is a great little set, and it reminds of of some of the simple peasant carts that would be available in the castle lines from the 80's. It also pairs well with the Bag-End set. Riddles for the Rings is indeed a big blob of gray bricks, but there's a lot of that going on in the LotR/Hobbit theme just because of the locations everything takes place in. You have caves, mines, castles, all of which end up having large amounts of gray. Again, I like this set, it makes a very nice little display piece, and seeing as it's arguably the most important scene in the entire saga, I'm glad they included it. If I were to make one suggestion on it, I think it would have been better if they had built Gollum's cave instead of the big rock, but you can easily build that with the bricks included. The wizard duel is a great little set, again something that looks great as a display and is also an iconic scene from the book. Not everyone can afford a $200 Orthanc set, so I'm glad they gave fans a way to get Saruman in a low cost set.

I'm not too knowledgeable about the current power function technology, but I'm assuming that Lego still produces some sort of motor that could be used to power a monorail? I think the problem back then was that they had a special motor for the monorail, a few different types of motors for the trains, etc. If everything ran off of the same basic system, it would cut that cost way down. Where did you read about their research with regards to kids and the monorail? I'd be interested in reading about it. I was 6 years old when I got the futuron monorail, and I absolutely loved it. The main problem was the lack of track in the box, you could only make a basic oval. Once I got the track expansion I had a lot more fun with the set. Perhaps there's a large enough AFOL and teen market where a monorail would be more profitable now? I know I'd buy one if it was produced.

Last time I contacted them about a missing piece, they got back with me within a couple of business days, and I had the parts in a couple of weeks.

Good read, thanks! I got excited when I hard that the guys from "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" were involved with this movie. "Cloudy" and it's sequel are really well done, and entertaining for both kids and adults, and I expect the Lego movie will be just as good, if not better.