That isn’t exactly the case. Just because I have some criticisms against licenced themes doesn’t mean I hate them. Heck, I loved the Indiana Jones line, and I wouldn’t mind having it back (as long as it’s balanced with another original theme coming back). My problem with licenced themes is that they take over the original themes, which Is not acceptable in my opinion. If we have a few licences, but more original themes (like in the early 2000’s) I would not have any problem with them. Again,I don’t hate the licenced themes themselfs… I just hate that LEGO puts their trust into them rather then their originality… the thing that made this company what it is today.
This new wave of legacy sets was made to celebrate the 100th episode of the Ninjago TV Show, as a special event, not like in the case of Star Wars where almost the whole line is based on remaking sets that were made already. Also, remaking a set once it’s ok, but remaking it 6 times…
The funny thing about this statement is that it’s provably untrue that you simply have criticisms. From an outside perspective you have an almost unreasonable hate-on for Lego’s Licensed themes.
Also, the assertion that Originality is what made Lego what it is today… that’s provably false.
Originality (in this case, Bionicle) saved Lego, sure, but it certainly never made them the most money. Licensed themes have been the highest grossing for years (with maybe the exception of Ninjago) meaning that your vaunted Original Lines were actually what was killing Lego.
I don’t say this to be mean, I say it simply because we see an inordinate number of references to how terrible Licensed Lines are in the vast majority of your posts. You say something enough times and it starts to look less like criticism and more like hate.
As for the remake comments, sure, link two videos and claim that “All the fans think it’s terrible.” Yes, M&R and Jang had it on their lists of worst remakes in their opinion, BUT:
That wasn’t what was being disputed
There are comments on both those videos disagreeing with the contents.
Link videos all you want but there’s exaggerating to reinforce a point and then there’s blatantly making a false equivalency. This skews towards the latter, and it’s part of why I’m disinclined to agree with you where I otherwise hold similar views.
Also:
So… Like the Death Star, which was Remade once? I’ll grant you the Millenium Falcon has been remade a ton, but you also forget that it is iconic. And you also forget that Lego stops producing sets after a certain time, usually max two years (Or 4 full release seasons) which means that eventually, some kid is going to grow up wishing he could’ve had the Millenium Falcon, and now that he can afford it, it no longer exists in stores. Cue Lego’s well timed re-release.
Say what you will about the licensed themes “Killing Lego’s Creativity.” Personally I’d love to see more originality from them because Ninjago just isn’t my thing. HOWEVER to imply that they should stop what they are doing to go down that road isn’t just silly, it’s downright misguided.
Star Wars and Licensed themes kept Lego alive. Without them, they never would’ve had the money to make anything much less something original. And with that, I direct you once again to the Inika Builds.
EDIT: ADDITIONALLY I want to make a point about both the Falcon and the Police stations as you started the topic with:
The first Millennium Falcon set was released in 2000. The next, 2004, the next, 2007, then 2011, then 2015, then the new one to coincide with the Solo movie. That’s not that unreasonable for something like the Falcon. Don’t know if you’ve ever walked into a toy store or hobby shop before, but I don’t think any of them have ever NOT stocked a Millennium Falcon in SOME form ever since Star Wars became a pop culture hit. The fact that Lego isn’t releasing them MORE often is actually what you should be shocked by.
And as far as the Police Stations go, I have one simple question for you:
Do you live in a city? And if so, does your city have only one police station, or many? And there are more than one, do they all look the same?
You’re falling into the trap of forgetting that Lego is one of those things that goes on more or less forever. If you buy a police station now, It will go away next year, or two years, and then eventually be replaced with a new one so that the kids just getting into it will have something different than what everyone else has. It’s the exact same principle that keeps Apple making a new phone every year, and it works.
Because let’s face it, if the entire City Line never changed, you’d only buy one version of the set that you wanted and you’d never buy another one, then no one would buy it, then lego would be out of money and have to cancel the line or risk going under.
This topic in general is just pointless. No Lego sets are repetitive, there can’t just be one of every set. I find it odd how you show Star Wars, but then defend AGAINST Bionicle being ‘repetitive’. I feel like this is just a jab at how much you hate licensed themes for no good reasons.
I would have not included The Lego City police stations if it were for that.
Ok, the Bionicle sets were indeed repetitive, when all 6 sets are exactly the same with just different colors, masks and weapons, and some were just remakes of other sets I am looking at you Bohrok Kal but generally in each year we got something new. Either under the sea, in the air, on other islands or planets… each year had something new to offer.
Weather you believe I am just a insane guy that bashes at Licensed themes for no reason, or you understand me, it’s up to you. There are people out there who agree with me, but nobody goes ahead to express that publicly…
Bionicle 2006-10 was pretty repetitive, excluding the Titans. The same build over and over again, with minor variation from year to year. Though honestly not enough to avoid being extremely repetitive in my eyes
Yes, but these were mostly ascetic changes while builds remained largely the same. Jaller and Hahli Mahri looked very different from Jaller and Hahli Inika, but the builds were pretty close to identical with just a few differences.
What defines “LEGO’s creativity” for me isn’t necessarily their own themes, but the engineering that goes into making a set and how it functions. LEGO has made great themes like BIONICLE and NInjaGo, but they’ve made some duds too. Chima and Nexo Knights? Bleh. In terms of just story, both of those themes fail hard, but they have some saving graces in terms of the good sets they introduced.
Nexo Knights is a prime example, as multiple sets had “hidden” functions that weren’t really advertised on the box. LEGO knew how to make a good set, but their story was lacking, so neither theme continued on past their initial three years. On the polar opposite side of this spectrum we have BIONICLE G1. The story was so engaging with fans, that they didn’t care if a wave of villain sets were literally the exact same thing with different colors. They wanted all six Rahkshi just because of how they fit into the amazing world LEGO had created. Skip to BIONICLE G2, we have the inverse. The sets were fantastic and unique from each other with hardly any repeating (the Protectors are the closest we get to clone sets, and even then they’re pretty unique from one another), but that story was not good. Old fans of BIONICLE didn’t care for it, and new fans… well, we didn’t get any new fans and that’s why it was canned a year and a half into it’s life cycle. The old fans weren’t enough to keep it afloat, even though many were able to buy every single set released.
This is where something like Star Wars comes in. LEGO doesn’t have to divert attention to telling a story, because it’s a licensed theme. LEGO can tell a story, but the results are either something dumb like Yoda Chronicles, or amazing like The Freemaker Adventures. It’s a mixed bag. LucasFilm will take care of the story, and LEGO can focus all their attention on making cool and interesting builds for iconic designs. Ironically, if we were to compare a wave of sets from BIONICLE and Star Wars from say… 2004, you’d find more uniqueness in that year’s wave of Star Wars sets than you would the Toa Metru or Vahki. While they get remade often, they’ve evolved with each and every iteration of the Falcon or X-Wing released. New features and build techniques are added to create a greater sense of joy to both the building process, AND the play process.
Sometimes there are downgrades, like the 2009 AAT to the 2015 AAT. However, the downgrade, while annoying for older fans, made the set cheaper and more obtainable for kids who missed out on the previous releases. Licensed themes aren’t always perfect, but neither are the original LEGO themes. If anything, the licensed themes give LEGO a cushion to fall back on whenever they make a dud theme that doesn’t meet sales expectations. With Harry Potter, MARVEL, and Star Wars movies being released so frequently now, they could release a BIONICLE G3, have it fail miserably, and not be in any danger of closing down.
NinjaGo is extremely lucky that it had a good writing team behind it and a TV show to boost popularity, because if it had to exist just by the merits of the sets without a story to back it up, it would’ve gone down the tubes long ago. But what made LEGO want to try their own stories in the first place…? Licensed themes. Some of LEGO’s greatest achievements have been birthed from not wanting to rely on Star Wars to save their bacon every year. You say that these big named themes are stifling creativity form LEGO by repeating sets? I say it’s the opposite. The licensed themes keep LEGO creative by pushing them to try their own things. They might not always be successes, but for every Nexo Knights or Chima, we get a Bonkle, NinjaGo, or LEGO Elves. That’s a pretty good track record, and it’s all thanks to that dreaded LEGO Star Wars.
There’s also the fact that licensed themes have the potential to bring in kids who might not care about LEGO without it, but we’ll ignore that for now
While I might be in a minority, I loved Chima. It was a great theme in my opinion. Nexo Knights had still a fun concept and a nice TV Show that entertained me, so I would not consider either of them bad. (To be honest, I might start collecting the Chima constraction sets…) While they might not be the best of LEGO, they do deserve respect, to be honest, like in the way Nick on planet ripple presented it in his Knight’s Kingdom rewind:
Skip to 11:05 to see his full review on the theme
I agree on the fact that licenced themes inspired somehow the original themes, but let’s be honest, most of the ideas were completely new. Bionicle, Chima, Ninjago, Nexo Knights they all are based on ideas that never existed before. There was never something like Bionicle, and there will never be again. As far as for G2, let’s be honest… Was it really a failure? No. I personally got into Bionicle trough G2. If there weren’t for it, I would have probably still been into only Hero Factory. Lots of fans returned to Bionicle due to G2. Lots of Bionicle YouTube channels started in the period G2 appeared. G2 was for me at least, a smart move. Yes, the story was nowhere near the level of the original, but I don’t think it was really that bad. Only the ending of the Journey to One was bad in my opinion. But, G1 itself didn’t have a proper ending either, so it’s not fair hating it for that.
Now, for the licenses, I would not say it’s bad for LEGO to have licences. It’s a good thing, as long as It’s balanced with other original themes. If LEGO was like 50% original and 50% licenced, it would be perfect. But sadly, this won’t happen any time soon, with so many movies coming up each year, they have no reason to make anymore original themes, and that is the bad part in my opinion. Also, let’s be honest… the biggest LEGO failures were from licenced themes (aka Prince of Persia and the Lone Ranger)… So I would suggest they be careful what products they licence, before releasing another almost trash line like Angry Birds.
In the end, while licenced themes are good (at least most of them), I want LEGO to counter-balance the massive blockbuster movies that come up each year, with original themes. Really, who would be hurt if we had LEGO Space back? Even if the sets end up not selling well like in the case of G2, it’s still going to remain a memorable line. That will be pretty much all I had to say.
BIONICLE was heavily inspired by Maori culture so much so there were lawsuits over it.
Chima takes Chi from Eastern mythologies and gives it to anthropomorphic animals. Kung Fu Panda did this, and it wasn’t original even when they did it.
NinjaGo is just Ninjas that spin but in a fantasy world mixed with modern stuff.
Nexo Knights is just classic Knights but with sci-fi elements thrown in.
Of course LEGO took these sometimes vague concepts like spinning Ninjas or Maori robots and made them their own, but to say that they’re 100% original with no influences is just wrong.
Mmm… yes. I’m very fond of G2, probably more so than a lot of people here. The overall experience of having it back was amazing and something I’ll remember fondly forever, but…
It was cancelled halfway through it’s promised life span. At NYCC 2014 it was stated that there was a plan for 3 years, like any new LEGO theme. While I’m still of the belief that it did indeed sell well, obviously it didn’t sell well enough to warrant the factory space it was taking up when another more potentially profitable theme, probably the LEGO Batman Movie, could have it.
Of course it brought in new fans and brought back old fans. I for one was not a part of the online BIONICLE community until the G2 announcement was looming even though I was a fan of G1, and I’m very glad to be here. From a creative standpoint, I’ll agree it wasn’t a failure. The big draw to LEGO is that while you can build by the instructions, ultimately you can do whatever your imagination desires with your bricks or CCBS. It’s the creativity at it’s heart that makes LEGO more desirable over something like action figures or puzzles. G2 had a bad story, either from the way it was presented (like in 2015, there wasn’t enough) or from just bad, unfortunately rushed writing (JtO in general). However, that’s opened up creative possibilities for the fans. With the “outline” of official G2, fans can take that and bend it and mold it how they see fit. There’s continuation projects and retelling projects I’m totally not plugging myself here that go far more in depth than any official G2 media was able to. In some ways, it’s opened the door for more creativity than even G1. From that standpoint, it was 100% a success, just not in the most conventional way.
As a product, as a toyline designed to make money, however, it was indeed a failure. They marketed it poorly, which didn’t bring in a new influx of fans they were hoping for, which limited their buyer-base to mostly older G1 fans that were in-the-know, which meant less money. On top of that, the story had huge problems that, while it opens up creative avenues for old fans, meant that potential new fans either couldn’t get into the story because of the lack of character development, or thumbed their noses at it entirely and stuck with what they already knew- NinjaGo or another toyline, LEGO or otherwise. Fantastic toys weren’t enough to save it, unfortunately. Add in the changing landscape of how kids play nowadays, you’ve got a recipe for failure.
That’s also the only way LEGO will look at it, which means trouble if we’re ever to see the theme again.
@prentice1215 thank you for your time you put into writing this posts. I really appreciate. But we are kinda going off-topic, so I suppose we should return to the main point of this topic.
Ok, while “repetitive” sets might be good, there is something repetitive about LEGO that isn’t the best… Their Video Games.
While they are all very good, they are just all the same, unfortunately. They all have a unique theme and some bonus features the other of them don’t have, but they are all practically the same similar in the way of the Bionicle clone sets: they are all the same but they are all unique in some way.
Almost all the Lego Games made by TT Games since 2005’s Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, all the Lego Games have been the same. As much as I like them, I want them to try something new more often like they did with Lego Worlds. That is probably one of my favourite LEGO Games… I hope TT Games considers this…
Is that a bad thing though? Formulas in games or other forms of media that succeed are generally good things, whilst the licensed Lego games follow the rough plots of their source media, Lego is capable of distinguishing them enough even though they have similar if not identical mechanics.
And when considering the repetitive formula like this, is repetition necessarily bad? I’d say not if you own one lego game and progress to another like Lego starwars to Lego Harry potter like I did, it makes the games easier to understand in that regard. This may be more opinion based than objective but it makes sense.
While this is true you are also missing the very important fact that those games are not meant to be cool and interesting and new and adult in the same way most games are. Lego is primarily marketed to kids. Kids generally don’t care if the game is the same every time.
I shamelessly bought Lego Lord of the Rings and Lego The Hobbit in my late teens, in addition to the Lego Star Wars Games that I bought over the years when I was younger (READ: All of them). Simply speaking, the games are simple and appeal to their target demo: Kids. Why change a formula that’s working consistently year over year just because “It would be more original.”
There’s two things you seem to forget: One, that originality is not automatically good, and that Lego isn’t actually targeted at you anymore.
For the first point, take a look at plenty of IP’s that have failed over the years. Many were very original, many brought something totally new to the table that hadn’t been done before, and yet they all failed. The reason for this is simple: If you’re too out there with your ideas, they become difficult to market and therefore niche products. Marvel wasn’t made the juggernaut it is because of amazing characters, it got that way because of marketing. The characters and originality came later. (They literally just all punched Nazi’s and “Commies” back in the early days of Comics.)
For the second, there’s a very simple reality you’re starting to experience: Lego is primarily marketed to Kids under 14 years old. Now they have lines here or there that can appeal to older, but Lego’s primary demographic is absolutely pre-teens and younger. These kids generally don’t care about whether something is super original, more than they care if it’s cool or flashy. That is fine. However, when you’re talking about stuff like Lego it bears remembering that you aren’t the person they’re trying to sell to anymore, even if you’re in that age bracket. Especially if you’re in that age bracket and don’t care for their marketing/business model.
It’s just food for thought, generally. I have no personal issue with repetitive things because, frankly, It’s my job to make sure that if something works once, we keep doing it. Also, Its just smart marketing - changing the formula means risking money, and until you stop making money from the formula, there’s no sense in changing it. I’d rather live in a world WITH Lego repeating sets, than the world we almost got in 2000 where Lego no longer exists.
But every year there are new fans. Yeah maybe keeping each one around for a couple years would be a good idea but like @Toa_Vladin said, technology and parts are always changing and updating.
Flame Glider was the only design to be repeated, and I mentioned that in my post. Compare that with the 10 remakes that almost each Star Wars set gets. The 2015 Millenium Falcon is exactly the same as the 2011 one, except for some upgrades.
Obviously you can’t compare the newest Millennium Flacon with the oldest, but we can compare the newest with the previous model.
The reason there’s so many Millenium Falcons is that it’s an iconic vehicle in film history and with the amount of Star Wars media coming out nowadays, Lego is capitalizing on that popularity. It’s become especially prevalent recently due to the release of Solo last year, which showed off a new version of the falcon which had never been seen before. Looking at Brickset there’s been about 20 falcon related items released in the last 20 years of the theme, however, if you don’t include the two microfighters, the promotional polybags, and the merchandise, that’s down to only about 9 actual sets (about 1 every two years), which I would say isn’t too bad.
The same argument could be made for the Batmobile, which, going by similar criteria, has had an even higher release of about 14 sets over 13 years, with another one coming sometime later this year. The reason for this is most likely due to how prevalent superhero movies and tv shows have become in today’s society and Lego obviously wanted to capitalize off that. That’s why Lego DC and Marvel Super Heroes exist.
So in the end, the reason why there are so many Falcons (and Batmobiles) is due to the fact that these vehicles are iconic in their respective franchises. Also, due to how popular these franchises are at the moment, it seems in Lego’s best interest to make these icons into sets, so more people will want to buy them and, in turn, make Lego more money.
Ok… Guess I am not very good at making my points in a way that people would accept them… But BB202 is definitely better than me in doing so:
I really recomand watching the whole video if you have time, Eljay and BB had a very interesting discussion about the Topic.[quote=“BioKnight, post:36, topic:47758”]
The same argument could be made for the Batmobile,
[/quote]
While that might be the case with Star Wars, I really don’t think same applies here. We all know LEGO has a certain fatique for the specific character of Batman. Batmobiles are not as iconic as Millenium Falcons or whatever. Even Eljay admits it in the video I shared above.
That is further discussed here:
Ok, what is the problem with a Truck being the same but in a diferent color? Wasn’t this the case with all the Bionicle Clone sets?
The Millenium Falcons are arguably the same except for the Solo one.
Not sure about that. Sure, there’s mainly one design for the Falcon where’s there’s several versions of the Batmobile, but the idea of the car that Batman drives is probably every bit as iconic as the Falcon, no matter what design they happen to be using.
