vexorian

Well, if we go theme count, licenses are clearly the minority. But what about set by set? According to brickset, in 2010 we have 6 Ben 10 sets. 6 PoP, and 15 toy story. I am not really counting SW, because that set is a given, we all now it is successful and LEGO would not ever stop making sets of them. We have then 27 licensed sets from licenses that are not clear how succesful will be. Well, in fact PoP was a terrible, terrible movie that bombed in theaters so I don't think many people are really interested in those sets for the license. Rather I guess FOLs will want the sets for the piece and animal selection. The bad news for them is that if TLG would have gone for an Middle-Eastern theme, these sets would have been far less expensive. Then we have Ben 10. I think these guys can manage to be somehow succesful, as much as I hate those sets due to their incredibly low (design quality * piece count) / (price) ratio. But I don't really have any idea how successful or not these things will be. Nevertheless, 6 sets a year is hardly significant, it sounds more like a market experiment if you ask. Then we have Toy Story. I think the movie will be a success among kids and parents and thus this was probably a good bet. Plus it gives us AFOLs a variety of pieces in colors and shapes that is interesting. Well, to conclude I don't think there are currently many licensed themes. Of the four licensed themes this year, two are indeed dubious, but LEGO were aware of it and thus they have only made 6 sets for each of them. The other two licenses do have plenty of sets. But both starwars and toy story are solid franchises imho.

Toy Story 3. Great one. First time I actually like a movie played on a 3d theater room. That's right, of all the movies that were released in digital 3D so far, toy story 3 is the only one I like, great stuff eh?

More spyrius droid ambiguity: I have one catalog in which an Ice planet chief is helping a spyrius droid escape from ice. Yes, mechs were not perfected until recently. Even so, what's just wrong about Roboforce is that it is a regression in mecha quality. The theme came in 1997, but the designs are worse than stuff that was already. Somehow even this guy looks better, and he is from 10 years before Roboforce:

Though I do remember at least a report of limiting series 1 buys per costumer in an American store in this same thread, it should be somewhere in the 1000 pages that came before this one.

I don't get why is that such a sacred standard. It does not really do anything good for a theme to have all the sets in that year to use the same color scheme. If anything, it reduces the variety of sci-fi pieces that will be available that year. Consider classic space, the color scheme really varies among sets and it is great. Specific to spyrius, doour tanks and planes use the same color scheme? I don't know it just sounds unlikely that every ship in a whole planet will use the same color scheme. Which takes us to the extreme case of life on mars. I know a lot of people dislike the amount of color differences. But it actually makes sense. The humans were a lot more of a single organization, a spac agency that arrived to mars. The martians on the other hand were actually living on that planet. Even now all our construction vehicles use yellow while most of our planes use white, in the martians' case it is clear that they gave their vehicles different colors depending of the role they had just like we humans do in our planet.

Spyrius weren't truly evil, just spies. Saucers and "mechs" used different color themes but saucers were consistent (all saucers have more red than black and trans blue canopies + "lights". Mechs were consistent with each other two (trans green lights with red canopies and more black than red (Well, only one mech had a canopy so we will never know). muahaha. In defense of insectoids. Although the designs were so-so. The minifigs are in many ways UFO done right. The impressions are far less and those figs looked awesome really. Life on mars.- I don't think it was that bad. My brother had the blue mech and I got the red mech and they were both great designs for their time. Consider this was the first line to have successful legged mechs. I should scratch my statement about UFO. Although designs had too many large pieces that can only work in them and there was too much exaggeration with printed pieces, the figs looked nice and the warp wing fighter was truly great, I actually forgot how great it was. So I will say roboforce. When you consider this theme came long after spyrius you really get to wonder why the robots look worse than classic space robots in design. Plus the color scheme was not great.

I was gone in dark ages in 2003 so I had no idea what you were talking about. So I am posting these pics so that other people in my position don't have to do it: If I was around at those times I would have instantly turned into a hater, here's way: * You can't dissasshemble them. * They are inconsistent in size with real minifigs. * They look like a Playmobil and a LEGO minifigs' bastard child. * They have ears, now that's just wrong. * They obey to a trend to have less stylish stuff and more pseudo-real stuff. I really hate that trend, it is great the theme died.

lol in my case The closest LEGO store is possibly 4767 kilometers away. I wouldn't mind traveling for three hours :).

If only I wanted figs from series 2 as much as I want the figs from series 1. There's no fig in series 2 that's really interesting for my intentions. I just wish my retailer is somehow immune to shortage and somehow manages to have them in October when they order the 2010 stuff o_O.

Hmnn blockiness is doomed to extinction and I say good riddance. Space ships must look like space ships and I think that SP3 has shown that such thing is possible without harming the build experience (if anything it enriches it). Even the best neo-classic-space MOCs avoid the blockiness. The sets of old were good but if those designs were released in this year, they just wouldn't sell. Space had to evolve. Edit: And well LEGO had tried to stop looking blocky ever since SP1. At least, the light system ship I own really did its best to avoid it. Also, take the mtron helicopter ship (Oh doesn't it look more like a helicopter than a space ship, hmnn) A lot of the shape comes from those "door" parts and the canopi rather than bricks.

I don't get it, are you talking about cutting stickers, or using them on pieces they were not designated to be with? Cause if you are talking about using the stickers with no modification on the parts they are designated for then I don't think how could that not qualify as purist. If you are talking about putting LEGO decals on minifig torsos/legs/heads then I can't see how anyone would call himself a purist if he did that...

Hmnn, I can't answer this one by just giving a single sub-theme. Consider spyrius: It introduced the droid fig prints which were then used in robotron and exploriens and you got to accept that's a great looking droid :). Then we have the fact that even the small ship: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6835-1 had a nice design and tight cockpit. Then there are the cute giant robots. I myself ended up getting one guard and two recon robots. But do not forget : The large saucer and its drop vehicle function! OMG (not to mention the claw). Unfortunately, they didn't have a flag ship and the base was just an average base (although hidden nuclear missile was nice) (Ok, go and call it a satellite). There's also Ice planet: magnets done right. The rather complete base. But most importantly, the deep freeze defender! That is really one hell of a ship! In fact, you could transform it into two large ships if needed. But ice planet is also strong in small sets: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6898-1 But well.. To be honest I was never a fan of the neon orange in the color scheme. Most importantly, Ice planet didn't have robots. And really, space was never about exploration or humans it was about robots! ( j/k ) - Seriously though, classic space had robots in every sizeable ship, why can't ice planet have them? They could have used them in dangerous icey situations. Honorable mentions go to blacktron 2. The minifigs were a regression from blacktron 1. But they had such cool things like the spheric cockpit :) and those canons/trust accessories in some figs, I always wanted a blacktron 2 set, but couldnt get any. If we cheat and consider spyrius and ice planet to be a single theme. Then they will win hands on. (Plus according to catalogs they interact and are enemies) so I am going to pick them both as the best theme.

The Galactic enforcer comes with an alien ship. Both the VX-falcon and the skull twins' ship are great. You Do not like the skull twins' and that's fair. But you are not LEGO's target. Kids love the fact that they will get two ships of two different factions in that set. More so, they will like both. Because they aren't locked into the belief that cars can't look futuristic. They will just love the fact they get a police space ship, two cool skull twins and a flying hot rod that can shoot projectiles at the good space ship. Unfortunately for AFOLs, LEGO will always give kids a priority, for better or worse. The villain ships look like cars with wings and trusts attached, and it is ridiculous but that's part of the appeal :). It is probably because that is one of the prevalent concepts in flying cars that there are right now. For example, the yellow car Anakin / Obie Wan drove in episode 2 is precisely a wheel-less car with wings and trusts attached :) I really have to disagree about two faction sets implying a reduction in design quality. The change was not only in space but almost in all system themes, and as usual with 'normal' sets, some sets with two factions are bad but some of them are really nice. You can use the same argument to dismiss all non-classic themes. "LEGO space was never about law enforcement, it was about exploration". "LEGO space wasn't about ice, it was about exploration in moon-like planets". "LEGO space wasn't about robots, it was about humans in space ships".

As a kid I grew up playing jewels like mortal kombat and doom (in which I didn't know the zombies were zombies, they looked like just soldiers to me). Piracy is the ruler in here so ratings are non-existent. I have not ever killed, smuggled, beaten, taken drugs, drank alcohol or anything. I do not have violent thoughts coming periodically to my mind. I mean really... And that's just video games. Actual toys with weapons and violent suggestions have been around for ages. Take classic LEGO castle, what do you think the axes and bows were going to be used for?

I did like UFO sets themselves, the warp wing fighter is my second favorite though, after the large UFO thing that was also a base. I took a look to the VX-falcon pics (I don't have it) , and honestly, the trust design alone makes it an above than average space ship.

I have collected many space sub-themes and I think SP3 is one of the best. Sure some sets are meh. But we have the galactic enforcer and the VPR raid. Those ships look amazing. And although there are some large pieces, they are helpful pieces and I think that considering inflation the part/price ratio is at least as good as old space themes if not better. I think the villain "cars" are really innovative because they look futuristic AND evil AND good. Including two factions in many sets is also very helpful and much better in retrospective for kids than the themes of old in which each theme had around 4 sets and they were separated by a whole year so it was not really that easy to play with both factions unless you were persistant and/or rich. I think M:Tron was an ok theme, but nothing really impressive. SP1 was nice but the color theme was meh. Blacktron are cool and all but they have had very few sets. SP2 was very cool and I loved the color scheme but it also had like 4 sets and nothing more... More so , with contenders such as UFO, roboforce and unitron, it is very hard to see SP3 as the worst theme. They are at least average. But quite honestly, it is one of the best space themes we've had. With actually-alien looking aliens. Such variety in ship designs and the fact it managed to make use of modern pieces but still have good builds and designs. UFO parts are freak large AND limited. It is really hard to use them at all in anything but the default sets. Bionicle is not a sci-fi sub-theme ... Over the years it had limited parts and also very useful parts. More so it is a completely different build than LEGO system. It is a matter of taste but many people can do MoCs of various kinds using Bionicle parts.

UFO. I liked the idea of the theme, I asked sets for Christmas, etc. But in comparison it is the worst sci-fi theme. The pieces were over-decorated. But what I really hated were the huge 1/4 of a disk pieces. Every ship was basically four of those with few system pieces inside. The wing pieces were also huge. It basically left few to construction. I did like the minifig accessories.

Was lucky, it came with an advert page that had an advert of: Which was the second.

Seeing how LDD prices work that may actually be a blessing in disguise.

Well, I won't decide for you but here's an extra bit of data : City sets will probably be around for a while and LEGO will keep making them. It would be a very fortunate event if space police continues in 2011, but to be honest chances are it is not and even if it does it will be its last year for sure. For a long term plan city may do better for you. I would never buy a city set over a space theme. But that's because I got into space but a lot of people prefer city.

I am more concerned about stickers being ubiquitous among the villains.

err, how many kids are actually dissappointed and crying for not finding these? Everybody seems to like the idea of LEGO receiving tons of complains from angry parents whereas it seems that it is only AFOLs who really want them as hard as that. Speaking of which, how much is this LEGO's fault and how much is it to do with AFOLs and resellers buying whole boxes / clearing out the figs they want using their barcodes?

You can get blue bohrok eyes for 2 US cents at bl :/

Everyone has different tastes, I prefer space police to pirates or action or any other of the recent system themes, but if it gets scrapped I am not going to go around asking for other themes to get cancelled so that space police comes back. I think that the idea with two antagonist factions is not going away, I also think it is very successful because LEGO seems to have begun doing it in almost every system theme besides city. I think that as a kid it is much better this way. Because both factions can last for many seasons instead of one faction dying out before the other. (This was very annoying to me as a kid because I could get plenty of space police 2 but no blacktron 2 due to the time I started getting into LEGO.). It also gives kids more chances to play when they get a large set... Space police 3 is a very fun theme and it has improved in 2010. Ship designs are cooler and the commando police men really do look better (and are more reminiscent of SP 1). That said I do not know if it is going to stay, I just hope that if SP3 is scrapped it is replaced with at least another space theme. To be honest, exploration themes are not as attractive to me as the more action-driven factions that began after blacktron appeared. I would root for a civilian vs. criminal menace theme or maybe a theme with two neutral factions that each have their good share of weapons, similar to what castle is doing right now.

I just found this folder at brickshelf. I am posting it because I really didn't understand scale and furno's color until I saw the pictures, so maybe it will help someone else. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=436295