Are there too many licensed LEGO themes?

[Renny The Spaceman]

29 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

Also to add to your point: Don't you think LEGO Classic Space and other themes would be just as boring after having run for 30 years or whatever? It's all about the right dose. A re-imagined Space Cruiser every now and then can be a great thing, but I'm 100 % certain people would complain about all other sets just like they complain about Star Wars if LEGO still produced 50 Blacktron, Space, Aquanauts and so on every year. It's simply a matter of perspective.

Mylenium

I agree, I've never asked for that though, again this isn't an argument for what I've said, you're arguing against points you've made up. I don't think old themes should go on forever, I know nothing is designed to.

32 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

That same argument could be made for Shakespeare's works or German Classics from Goethe and a gigazillion other works. Likewise you could cite works from prolific writers like Jules Verne, Kippling, Rice Burroughs, Asimov, Herbert and what have you. They all reference their own works back and forth and the reason they do it is because it is/ was popular with people and sold. This is really nothing new. The only point that could be argued is that in modern days we talk about it more and in much shorter cycles and everything proliferates at lightning speed. 

Once again, not what I've said, I'm not talking about references, that completely irrelevant to the topic of LEGO themes. Arguing the value of inspiration from is more an argument for original themes because they play of classic movies and genres while doing their own thing. And of course if we wanna talk about modern movies it's still not a valid comparison.

Of course with all these classic literary works there wasn't a company that bought the rights to them all and made a legacy sequel to king Lear without Shakespeare where Juliette and Othello and a puppeteered corpse of the original actor for Prospero came out of a portal and just said famous lines from theor plays again. Inspiration used to be people take older works and put them in new contexts and formats. Now it's spending millions on trying to exactly recreate every element of how it used to be in that original.

A valid comparison to the way literary works inspire future works would be Raiders, it's inspired by classic adventure serials and makes allusions to various ones but tells it's own original story with that. Hell,look at Star Wars! Before it was a thing and spending millions on evil deepfake tech George wanted to do a Flash Gordon movie, only when turned down did he opt to do his own space opera. If he did that there'd be less risk going into the film, he wouldn't have had to bank on toy sales being good to get paid, there'd be an inbuilt audience. In the short term a way better idea, but then you never get Star Wars, everything that all the SW fans here loves about that franchise never get made, because they played it safe with an IP.

 

You know I'm worried I've not conveyed myself well here because you seem smart but you're consistently responding to arguments I didn't make which makes me feel like it's something on my end. I hope this is clearer but I might stop responding soon because I'm struggling to see what I'm not conveying here.

[Mylenium]

8 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

I hope this is clearer but I might stop responding soon because I'm struggling to see what I'm not conveying here.

Well, you (like some others) are arguing the "art for art's sake" point and there's no merit to it from where I sit. I think I understand you quite well, but most points are simply not how this stuff works. I know it sounds arrogant and perhaps I'm just a jaded graphics and 3D artist who has seen too much nonsense go down in this bussinens, but it seems to me you are trying to draw a distinction where there is none. Copying stuff is just as valid as "being inspired" as well as coming up with your completely own creation. And this can happen on all levels from high-class to the lowest dumps of the creative industries. Not trying to sound too philosophical here, but that is the normal evolution of art in all its forms. "Doing its own thing" is just an ideal outcome of many possibilities from one point of view, but not necessarily in an absolute way. And if you look at the concept of "convergent evolution" in biology, different starting points can still lead to the same results. It stands to reason that even LEGO Classic Space inspired by 1960s and 1970s sci-fi works would eventually have morphed into something more resembling stuff from Star Wars, Bladerunner, Dune and so on once the designers drew inspiration from them or any other modern works that came after that. Art isn't standing still and there is a mutual pollination. Hence I think your arguments are flawed from the ground up. You are looking for something static and persistent, trying to freeze these evolutionary processes. And I've rambled on about "creativity" and the business side already. Again, I think you are looking for something that doesn't exist and merely try to rationalize your own way of wishing things were different.

Mylenium

[danth]

3 hours ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

It got stupid long ago, this thread is an endless back and forth of:

"They should bring back the way they did LEGO when I was a kid" immediately followed by "You're nostalgia blind, unlike me who grew up with LEGO licences and want them for everything I'm nostalgic about." "It's more creative by my arbitrary standards!" "But it makes them more money!"

This entire thing is circular. 

A rare, perfect comment. Bravo.

1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

That same argument could be made for Shakespeare's works or German Classics from Goethe and a gigazillion other works. Likewise you could cite works from prolific writers like Jules Verne, Kippling, Rice Burroughs, Asimov, Herbert and what have you.

I love that you're invoking Shakespeare to defend applause breaks in Marvel movies. This thread is going places.

[icm]

46 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

Once again, not what I've said, I'm not talking about references, that completely irrelevant to the topic of LEGO themes. Arguing the value of inspiration from is more an argument for original themes because they play of classic movies and genres while doing their own thing. And of course if we wanna talk about modern movies it's still not a valid comparison.

Of course with all these classic literary works there wasn't a company that bought the rights to them all and made a legacy sequel to king Lear without Shakespeare where Juliette and Othello and a puppeteered corpse of the original actor for Prospero came out of a portal and just said famous lines from theor plays again. Inspiration used to be people take older works and put them in new contexts and formats. Now it's spending millions on trying to exactly recreate every element of how it used to be in that original.

How are cultural references completely irrelevant to the topic of Lego themes? That line makes no sense.

You clearly haven't paid much attention to how many times Dracula, Ben-Hur, The Maltese Falcon, and other works were remade in the early film era - nor to how many unauthorized sequels used to be made to famous literary works. Ever heard of Edison's Conquest of Mars? That's a famous unauthorized "legacy" sequel to The War of the Worlds. Heck, this goes back even farther. The only reason Miguel Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, Part II is because some copycat had already written an unauthorized sequel that was selling like hotcakes in seventeenth-century Spain. Remakes and grotesquely disrespectful sequels have been a thing for centuries.

4 hours ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

It got stupid long ago, this thread is an endless back and forth of:

"They should bring back the way they did LEGO when I was a kid" immediately followed by "You're nostalgia blind, unlike me who grew up with LEGO licences and want them for everything I'm nostalgic about." "It's more creative by my arbitrary standards!" "But it makes them more money!"

This entire thing is circular. 

Yes, these threads always are. They get very tiresome because they're always exactly the same.

[Renny The Spaceman]

1 minute ago, Mylenium said:

Well, you (like some others) are arguing the "art for art's sake" point and there's no merit to it from where I sit. I think I understand you quite well, but most points are simply not how this stuff works. I know it sounds arrogant and perhaps I'm just a jaded graphics and 3D artist who has seen too much nonsense go down in this bussinens, but it seems to me you are trying to draw a distinction where there is none. Copying stuff is just as valid as "being inspired" as well as coming up with your completely own creation. And this can happen on all levels from high-class to the lowest dumps of the creative industries. Not trying to sound too philosophical here, but that is the normal evolution of art in all its forms. "Doing its own thing" is just an ideal outcome of many possibilities from one point of view, but not necessarily in an absolute way. And if you look at the concept of "convergent evolution" in biology, different starting points can still lead to the same results. It stands to reason that even LEGO Classic Space inspired by 1960s and 1970s sci-fi works would eventually have morphed into something more resembling stuff from Star Wars, Bladerunner, Dune and so on once the designers drew inspiration from them or any other modern works that came after that. Art isn't standing still and there is a mutual pollination. Hence I think your arguments are flawed from the ground up. You are looking for something static and persistent, trying to freeze these evolutionary processes. And I've rambled on about "creativity" and the business side already. Again, I think you are looking for something that doesn't exist and merely try to rationalize your own way of wishing things were different.

Mylenium

I really don't think you do, I'm not looking for anything static because I'm not arguing about "creativity" because that's a broad nebulous term. Like this is a hard conversation because it's spun into two, one about LEGO and one about the state of the film industry and while there is an overlap there's a distinct difference between using AI to bring back dead actors and basing toys of old movies. 

Like I've not made any arguments that licences should stop, I've made jokes about it reminding me of the general Funko Pop culture going around but there is a fundamental difference between being inspired and just recreating an old thing, doesn't mean the second thing is without merit but I think it's silly to act like to act like there's no difference or because it makes most sense financially no-one be can honestly dislike it. 

Dial of Destiny is dependent on emotional attachment to the original films but most people who see raiders have never even watched the classic adventure serials that inspired it. There's a difference there that isn't innately better but fundamental to how the art is viewed. If an original LEGO theme had the almost a hundred quid grey baseplate with figures format it wouldn't survive 

[MAB]

4 minutes ago, icm said:

 

Yes, these threads always are. They get very tiresome because they're always exactly the same.

They may be similar, but the originals were definitely better in the past! Before they were licensed by Reddit.

[Renny The Spaceman]

4 minutes ago, icm said:

How are cultural references completely irrelevant to the topic of Lego themes? That line makes no sense.

You clearly haven't paid much attention to how many times Dracula, Ben-Hur, The Maltese Falcon, and other works were remade in the early film era - nor to how many unauthorized sequels used to be made to famous literary works. Ever heard of Edison's Conquest of Mars? That's a famous unauthorized "legacy" sequel to The War of the Worlds. Heck, this goes back even farther. The only reason Miguel Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, Part II is because some copycat had already written an unauthorized sequel that was selling like hotcakes in seventeenth-century Spain. Remakes and grotesquely disrespectful sequels have been a thing for centuries.

That's different still though. My point wasn't legally dubious sequels or remakes of stories, it's specifically the very modern thing where studios show of the IP catalogue they bought with applause breaks. There's always been degrees of dependency on other works in art, but this is a very modern thing. There are outlier exceptions I'm sure of it, there were westerns, disaster movies, zombie movies, superhero movies and so on before their periods of dominating the market.

11 minutes ago, danth said:

I love that you're invoking Shakespeare to defend applause breaks in Marvel movies. This thread is going places.

Yeah, it's definitely funny, might have to tap out soon. Far more interesting then the time loop from earlier though 

[danth]

1 minute ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

it's silly to act like to act like there's no difference

The status quo warriors always invoke this argument. It's a sort of logical nihilism. There are no distinctions, everything is the same, therefore preferences are inherently invalid, and so, of course, the status quo stands.

8 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

because it makes most sense financially no-one can honestly dislike it

Maybe they identify as a TLG stockholder who hates actually building Lego sets?

[icm]

5 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

That's different still though. My point wasn't legally dubious sequels or remakes of stories, it's specifically the very modern thing where studios show of the IP catalogue they bought with applause breaks. There's always been degrees of dependency on other works in art, but this is a very modern thing. There are outlier exceptions I'm sure of it, there were westerns, disaster movies, zombie movies, superhero movies and so on before their periods of dominating the market.

Is it a very modern thing?

Don Quixote, Part I is basically a thousand pages of "stupid comic-book fan does stupid things and makes a fool of himself." Don Quixote is so full of references to the popular culture of the time (the chivalric romances that Alonso Quijana reads so much of) that only the broad slapstick humor is comprehensible today without a long list of footnotes to explain this reference and that reference. And the applause breaks you're talking about ... those are called "beats." A "beat" is a brief pause for effect, and it's an important tool in all writing. I'm 100% sure that actors in the Globe Theate in the seventeenth century took applause breaks after delivering a line that skewers something relevant to the time, or something relevant to previous plays by Shakespeare or Jonson or what have you.

[danth]

4 minutes ago, icm said:

Is it a very modern thing?

Don Quixote, Part I 

JFC, really?

24 minutes ago, icm said:

Yes, these threads always are. They get very tiresome because they're always exactly the same.

Yes, because status quo warriors can't let a single lament stand without invoking everything from classic literature to convergent evolution to argue that nobody has the right to think it was more fun when we had Western, Space, Castle, and Pirate themes all at the same time.

[icm]

Hey, we've had five years of a theme inspired by Journey to the West. That came out about twenty years before the Quixote. Don't tell me Quixote is too old to talk about in a conversation about Lego.

[Renny The Spaceman]

3 minutes ago, icm said:

Is it a very modern thing?

Don Quixote, Part I is basically a thousand pages of "stupid comic-book fan does stupid things and makes a fool of himself." Don Quixote is so full of references to the popular culture of the time (the chivalric romances that Alonso Quijana reads so much of) that only the broad slapstick humor is comprehensible today without a long list of footnotes to explain this reference and that reference. And the applause breaks you're talking about ... those are called "beats." A "beat" is a brief pause for effect, and it's an important tool in all writing. I'm 100% sure that actors in the Globe Theate in the seventeenth century took applause breaks after delivering a line that skewers something relevant to the time, or something relevant to previous plays by Shakespeare or Jonson or what have you.

Cmon, you can't be arguing that "there are applause breaks in plays therefore they're fine in movies" they are different mediums, there's a fundamental difference in how they work. Namely one of them involves a live audience and how the actors play off them is a key facet of it. 

Also, obviously, once again a comedic work having relevant humour based on the society it was made and released in is fundamentally different from the IP dickwagging of modern films. There's a difference between a writer choosing to make their work play off existing works and a corporate checklist of IPs to advertise that they all own from buying numerous companies. I hate being rude but if you're gonna be so condescending please actually read what the people talking to you are saying beforehand.

This isn't even tangentially related to LEGO anymore, I think I've gotta stop here it's dumb

[icm]

4 minutes ago, danth said:

Yes, because status quo warriors can't let a single lament stand without invoking everything from classic literature to convergent evolution to argue that nobody has the right to think it was more fun when we had Western, Space, Castle, and Pirate themes all at the same time.

Meanwhile, status-quo haters can't let a single reply stand without invoking everything they can think of to argue that nobody has the right to think there's some pretty fun stuff right now. Seriously, when have I ever attacked Western, Space, Castle, or Pirates as much as you attack Star Wars? Your arguments against Star Wars can almost always be summarized as "it's so boring, repetitive, and old that I can't understand why anybody can possibly like it - and by the way, I hate the movies. Therefore we should cancel the theme, effective yesterday." Seems to me like you're the one who most consistently says the theme that you don't like should be canceled, so nobody can have it. I'm all for everybody enjoying the things they like. I wish we had more Western, Space, Castle, and Pirates. I don't go around gloating that we don't have much of them anymore, the way you would gloat if Star Wars was canceled.

2 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

Cmon, you can't be arguing that "there are applause breaks in plays therefore they're fine in movies" they are different mediums, there's a fundamental difference in how they work. Namely one of them involves a live audience and how the actors play off them is a key facet of it. 

Also, obviously, once again a comedic work having relevant humour based on the society it was made and released in is fundamentally different from the IP dickwagging of modern films. There's a difference between a writer choosing to make their work play off existing works and a corporate checklist of IPs to advertise that they all own from buying numerous companies. I hate being rude but if you're gonna be so condescending please actually read what the people talking to you are saying beforehand.

This isn't even tangentially related to LEGO anymore, I think I've gotta stop here it's dumb

Obviously, this is tangentially related to Lego, or we wouldn't be talking about it.

But sure, let's stop.

[Renny The Spaceman]

9 minutes ago, icm said:

Obviously, this is tangentially related to Lego, or we wouldn't be talking about it.

But sure, let's stop.

I think it started there but there's too much separation now to really consider it relevant.

But yeah, stopping is good 

[danth]

15 minutes ago, icm said:

Seriously, when have I ever attacked Western, Space, Castle, or Pirates as much as you attack Star Wars?

You want to play Uno Reverso? Fine, let's play.

Imagine that Lego has been making glorious unlicensed Space sets for 30 years. No stickers, awesome colored windscreens, radical and different spaceship designs every year. Along with Pirates, Castle, you name it.

And every few years, Lego throws Star Wars and Marvel fans a few bones, maybe an Icons set here and there. And so some license fans start a thread to lament the dearth of licensed sets.

You think I'm going to go into that thread like some sort of a-hole to tell them to shut the eff up? I'm going to be way too busy building unlicensed Lego sets to do that. And since I'm not a TLG cheerleader, why not just let them vent? I'm not a monster.

Edited April 11 by danth

[Mandalorianknight]

10 hours ago, MAB said:

We have more unlicensed sets now than in the 80s and 90s. So the increase in licensed output is not at the expense of unlicensed as there is more of it. It is just that LEGO has changed direction for the unlicensed output. I find it a little strange that some people complain that LEGO is not creative / imaginative as in the past, when their current unlicensed output is way more creative than the stereotypical castle, pirates and to some extent space. If anything their output is too imaginative for these people.

The first part is a fair point but I think you're missing what people mean when they talk about creativity with the older themes.

The older space and castle themes that only had a loose outline of faction descriptions and had few if any named characters, much less a concrete storyline, encouraged creativity in kids to tell stories and come up with their own characters, something that's not necessarily as prominent with all the licensed and story themes. Sure, kids still make their own scenarios, but the incentive to make up your own characters isn't as strong when everything's laid out for you. It's company side storytelling vs consumer side storytelling.

 

Edit: Jeez I don't think I even needed to make my turtle monologue joke this thread is crazy enough as it is. Danth's attacking star wars again, people aren't understanding Renny's writing style is semi satirical and have actually gotten him to make serious posts, etc.

Edited April 11 by Mandalorianknight

[danth]

4 minutes ago, Mandalorianknight said:

Danth's attacking star wars again

No, not again. I did that pages ago! 😁

And by attack surely you meant "explained the perceived shortcomings of Star Wars sets from a Space fan's perspective so as to justify his preference".

[icm]

29 minutes ago, danth said:

You want to play Uno Reverso? Fine, let's play.

Imagine that Lego has been making glorious unlicensed Space sets for 30 years. No stickers, awesome colored windscreens, radical and different spaceship designs every year. Along with Pirates, Castle, you name it.

And every few years, Lego throws Star Wars and Marvel fans a few bones, maybe an Icons set here and there. And so some license fans start a thread to lament the dearth of licensed sets.

You think I'm going to go into that thread like some sort of a-hole to tell them to shut the eff up? I'm going to be way too busy building unlicensed Lego sets to do that. And since I'm not a TLG cheerleader, why not just let them vent? I'm not a monster.

Two things.

One: This is a counterfactual scenario. I generally don't believe it's worthwhile to engage deeply with counterfactual scenarios, because there are too many variables. I prefer to engage with things as they are. But, briefly, I imagine I would behave pretty much as I do now with respect to several intellectual properties and entire genres of build that I wish Lego would do, but they don't (Thunderbirds, Tintin, many kinds of real-world aircraft, and others). I'd be a little disappointed, but I wouldn't waste a lot of time thinking about it. I certainly wouldn't light up the forums saying that theme X has run its course and deserves to be canceled to make room for what I would rather have. But I'll take your word for it about what you would be doing.

Two: I'm not going to take it personally, since this is an anonymous internet forum, but I believe you just called me an a-hole, someone who profanely cusses people out, a TLG cheerleader, and a monster. Let's not do personal insults. If you're going to do that, I'm checking out of this conversation.

Edited April 11 by icm

[danth]

Just now, icm said:

I'm not going to take it personally, since this is an anonymous internet forum, but I believe you just called me an a-hole, someone who profanely cusses people out, a TLG cheerleader, and a monster. Let's not do personal insults. If you're going to do that, I'm checking out of this conversation.

I really didn't mean that at all. It's a hypothetical, like you said, about what I would do, not about you. You were saying that I want other people's beloved themes to be canceled, and that I would gloat about it if it happened. That, to me, would be an a-holey thing to do. So I was saying, no, I would not be the a-hole that you said I would be.

[icm]

1 minute ago, danth said:

I really didn't mean that at all. It's a hypothetical, like you said, about what I would do, not about you. You were saying that I want other people's beloved themes to be canceled, and that I would gloat about it if it happened. That, to me, would be an a-holey thing to do. So I was saying, no, I would not be the a-hole that you said I would be.

Got it. Sorry for misunderstanding you, that's my fault. Shake hands?

[Renny The Spaceman]

17 minutes ago, Mandalorianknight said:

people aren't understanding Renny's writing style is semi satirical and have actually gotten him to make serious posts

That's when you know it's gone mad, when I can't keep taking the piss

[danth]

1 minute ago, icm said:

Got it. Sorry for misunderstanding you, that's my fault. Shake hands?

Yep. Sorry for saying it in a way that was easy to interpret the way you did. On re-reading it, I see why...more my fault than yours.

I guess I was trying to say, unlicensed fans aren't eating good right now, and license fans are, so it feels like punching up to say "I hope your dumb license get canceled." Star Wars fans can laugh at me all the way to the Lego store, no matter what I say. 

I would love to be in a situation where Lego was making awesome unlicensed Space sets that SW fans savaged online.

[icm]

No worries, no hard feelings! I'm sorry I got a little warm there too. I hope you know I really do respect you, like you, and value you as a member of the forum, even though there are some topics that we're consistently at loggerheads about :)

In a way, the persistent licensed/unlicensed debate is the broadest version of the kinds of debates we see in all the other forums. In the Star Wars forum it's all about how there are too many clone sets and not enough OT-adjacent this year and the past couple of years, after several years where there were too many OT-adjacent (and OT-derived, as in ST) sets and not enough clone sets. In the DC Super Heroes forum there's too much Batman, not enough Superman and Justice League. In other forums it's been about how there's too many castles and Western sets in BDP, and of those castle sets too many Lion Knights and not enough other factions, and so on. In every case, too much of this, not enough of that / not enough of this, too much of that. And so the pendulum swings to try to address every niche interest in turn, as there's not enough capacity to address them all at once. I must admit, it has been pretty rough seeing alt-brick brands pick up the old stalwart classic themes and run with them, when the resulting products still don't interest me and the reaction pushes Lego in directions I don't like. I hope we can get genuine Lego playthemes of the old classics soon, as big BDP and Icons sets every few years don't really fill the same role. 

In the meantime, I'm hoping the Horse Knight Castle is good!  

[JesseNight]

4 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Also to add to your point: Don't you think LEGO Classic Space and other themes would be just as boring after having run for 30 years or whatever? It's all about the right dose. A re-imagined Space Cruiser every now and then can be a great thing, but I'm 100 % certain people would complain about all other sets just like they complain about Star Wars if LEGO still produced 50 Blacktron, Space, Aquanauts and so on every year. It's simply a matter of perspective.

This is very true.
And that's also what the title of this topic suggests and my personal opinion... I don't mind licensed themes but I feel overdosed by the endless repetition of some of those.
If classic space and the following themes had persisted, I would have been bored within a few years of it too. But did I appreciate the recent Galaxy Explorer and Renegade releases? Absolutely.

[imposter]

I just realised 1 thing. Each Dreamzzz set counts 2. For example Gaming Controller Jet. I will make MOC from both models: jet and helicopter.2025 there are 3 sets I will buy BUT actually I need doubles all of them so TOTAL: 6 sets!