Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Yperio_Bricks]

1 hour ago, Toastie said:

You know what? I simply don't care. So The Lego Gods said (or is there only one? TLG pretty much suggests that, as there are no TLGs), it needs to be Lego bricks or Lego sets I am playing with. I just don't care what a company in Denmark tells me to say ... furthermore, everybody in the family knows that I don't only play with Lego bricks, but also with Mould King bricks. Or who-the-hell-knows-where-BlueBrixx-get-their-bricks-from bricks. That would make it much more difficult to let folks here know, that I am going to play with ... all sorts of bricks. As I do also some bricking in the house and garden, that would cause total confusion. Just imagine, the look for me in the garden - and I am upstairs, missing the cake or something equally disastrous.

I don't care either. Sorry i triggered you. You can call your bricks all the names you want, be it in the house or garden

I just said that i call them Lego since i was i kid and that Legos sounds odd to me and i agreed with DrJimbo.

[Peppermint_M]

I think the Lando thing would have forever been a no-win situation. Keep the character figure yellow? That is bad, he is portrayed by a man of African Descent so you should have the right skin colour! Do use a "real" skin tone (as real as any LEGO fleshtone can be) like they did? That destroys the Neutral Yellow idea (or excuse), there has been much recent criticism of the old "Indian" figures from the wild west themes (again a product of their time. We cannot retcon history, only re-contextualise and admit our mistakes' learn from them and improve the future.)  and some of the quite alarming old Basketball figures. (Those are some bad choices in design, I mean, yeesh...)

I still prefer yellow figures. The people of the LEGO world are blocky and out or proportion to be true human analogues. The increase in fleshtones and their availability means there is more variety available, but I am just as happy to have a usefully printed head in Green, or red, or blue. 

[Toastie]

41 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

Sorry i triggered you.

Oh - no(!), you absolutely didn't!!! Please don't feel sorry - I simply like discussions like this - and I like to mess around .

All the best, and have a very nice evening!

Thorsten

 

[MAB]

8 hours ago, living_off_lego said:

example: harry potter is FULL of non people of color the only named person of color is Kingsly, in one set, every single other set, only has unnamed background characters lego even saw this,

This is simply not true. Professor Sinistra, Dean Thomas, the Patil sisters.

5 hours ago, danth said:

Funnily enough, when they finally made Lando Calrissian in 2003, he was released as a brown minifig in the same set as yellow Luke, Han, and Leia. So Lego was totally fine with yellow = white people and special colors for everyone else.

They weren't totally fine with it, because they changed it. If they were fine with it, they would not have made the change to light nougat. 

[danth]

7 minutes ago, MAB said:

They weren't totally fine with it, because they changed it. If they were fine with it, they would not have made the change to light nougat. 

Well, I mean they were fine enough with yellow meaning white people for the first three years of Star Wars sets, and then fine with yellow meaning white but not black for another year.

But yes, they obviously saw that it didn't really work. It's possible that they were transitioning to fleshie white people in 2003, since they had already started to make them in the Sports sets in 2003.

My main point is that they were forced to admit that yellow minifigs don't really work at representing everyone. But they were fine ignoring the issue while they could.

[living_off_lego]

4 hours ago, MAB said:

This is simply not true. Professor Sinistra, Dean Thomas, the Patil sisters.

They weren't totally fine with it, because they changed it. If they were fine with it, they would not have made the change to light nougat. 

sorry i meant to say in 2022, typing too fast has its limits!

Edited October 7, 2022 by living_off_lego

[living_off_lego]

4 hours ago, danth said:

Well, I mean they were fine enough with yellow meaning white people for the first three years of Star Wars sets, and then fine with yellow meaning white but not black for another year.

But yes, they obviously saw that it didn't really work. It's possible that they were transitioning to fleshie white people in 2003, since they had already started to make them in the Sports sets in 2003.

My main point is that they were forced to admit that yellow minifigs don't really work at representing everyone. But they were fine ignoring the issue while they could.

this is an amazing point and one that i wish i would have included!

imagine there had been an aisan charecter in the original trilogies, that played a massive roll, and lego was dead set on making a minifigure based on them, what do think lego would have done? would they keep them yellow, or is that to steryotypical and semi racist for the multi billion dollar company?  what would they have done? i want you to answer this queshtion, what would you do if a feature commonly known in your brand was actually racist towards a certain group, and you decided to feature a person from said group in your products? would you give in and shift the model? of your brand, or keep it as it is for the sake of consistency ?

lego strives to prove that yellow is the base color, but when they realised that its not, they prefered to change the rules instead of sticking with the consistency, why? becuase lego only cares about diversity if they know theyll catch slack for not having it 

[MAB]

3 hours ago, living_off_lego said:

lego strives to prove that yellow is the base color, but when they realised that its not, they prefered to change the rules instead of sticking with the consistency, why? becuase lego only cares about diversity if they know theyll catch slack for not having it 

Yellow is the base colour for skin in the LEGO world. It is not a skin colour in real life. Even seriously ill people do not have skin that colour. There is no race in LEGO's yellow skin world, so there is no skin colour diversity. It is only when people outside of this fictitious world are represented that problems arise. LEGO tried doing racial facial features on yellow heads in the past, and it turned out to look stereotypically racist.

I'm white. Yellow doesn't represent me, just like it doesnt represent hispanic or black. Light nougat is not a very good match either but it is the closest colour that they make. Just like reddish brown does not match the skin of many black people, but it will be closer than other production colours. 

Edited October 7, 2022 by MAB

[Karalora]

Didn't we have a whole thread about skin tone diversity in LEGO a while back? (Spoiler: Yes we did.)

@living_off_lego isn't talking about yellow minifigs, so bringing them up is a distraction from the main issue, which is that characters of color are underrepresented in the source material for licensed sets, and hence in the sets themselves. That's not entirely on LEGO; that's on the whole entertainment industry. What is on LEGO is which price points/set sizes they choose to assign which scenes in the source material, and how they choose to package and sell flesh-toned minifigs apart from that. There's nothing stopping them from either replicating a less setpiece-intensive scene that also features a character of color as a $20-30 set, or outright selling fleshie minifig packs with a variety of skin tones.

[MAB]

> why does lego only strive to put diversity in expensive sets?

Probably because many of the appropriate characters are minor characters in the movies, and the small sets would not sell well if the only minifigure in the set was a minor character. Take Dean Thomas from HP for example, he is a minor character in the HP franchise. I've seen the movies, but I cannot actually tell you which movies he was in or what he did without looking it up. And I imagine a lot of kids would be the same. Would they want a small HP set where Dean Thomas was the only character? I doubt it would sell anywhere near as well as if it had Harry/Ron/Hermione in. So that means he will only appear in a bigger set where other characters are included.

If they moved to doing realistic skin tones in City and other unlicensed sets, where the heads do not need to represent any exact source character material, then I imagine you would get a lot more darker skin tones than in licensed minifigures. Look at what they do in Friends. The same with other facial features, not just skin colour.

 

 

>why do realistic tan skin-toned heads only come in expensive history

>why do I have to buy either a $60 set or a $249.99 to represent myself in lego?

There is a dominance of light flesh heads matching the distribution in the movies LEGO makes sets of.  From bricklink, raw numbers without looking for human heads.

972 Light Nougat

77 Nougat

61 Medium Nougat

98 Reddish Brown

49 Tan, but many of these are aliens or scarecrows.

If you see your skin colour as tan you are almost certainly out of luck as LEGO does not really use that for human skin (unless in brickheadz, where it represents white).  If you go for nougat or medium nougat instead, then you will have a significantly larger choice of (human) heads.

You could go for a current set like this $30 one, which gives you both a male and female head in nougat, the colour that LEGO typically uses for hispanic characters. Obviously I don't know if that is close enough for you. The source material has more racial diversity and so the set does too. And it is a reasonably cheap set.

Or you could buy the relevant or similar minifigs for $4-5 each on bricklink.

 

It gets much harder if you want specific facial features, and even worse if you want a combination of them, and worse still a combination plus a specific colour. Even with 972 light nougat heads, there are none that have a brown beard and glasses like me, let alone the right shape beard and the right shape glasses. There are plenty of clean shaven heads, some with glasses. There are a reasonable number of beards, without glasses. There are some old man ones with grey beards and glasses. But I guess there are not many people with brown beads and glasses in movies that LEGO make sets for, so none that match me. I have to give up on one of my features to represent myself in minifigure form. I usually go for a head without the glasses, even though I tend to wear them most of the time as glasses without a beard doesn't look right. There are some yellow heads that have a brown beard (wrong shape) and glasses (wrong shape) but I don't identify myself as yellow and prefer to go for the nearest fleshie one instead.

 

 

[The Island Chronicles]

Yellow people are better than flesh toned. No race or ethnicity involved. What if you start a Lego fanfiction and need voice actors? No need to be ethnically correct. So yellow will always be superior. 

Edited October 7, 2022 by Poodabricks

[Lion King]

1 hour ago, Poodabricks said:

Yellow people are better than flesh toned. No race or ethnicity involved. What if you start a Lego fanfiction and need voice actors? No need to be ethnically correct. So yellow will always be superior. 

Agreed, i always prefer yellow minifigures over fleshie ones. i am afraid that I may receive backlash if I use fleshie minifigures in my photography scene in an inappropriate way. So I avoid using them by using yellow ones. Yellow is neutral, which it’s better. 

[Vindicare]

HP CMF Series 1 offered two different skin tones, a very reasonable price. Then Kingsley came in the second...at a less reasonable price.  Then we had Jim Gordon & a number of Barbara’s in the Batman Movie CMF. Aladdin, Jafar, & Jasmine in Disney. Cyborg in DC. Monica Rambeau & Star-Lord T’Challa in Marvel. And 4 in the German football series. 

[Gorilla94]

On 10/7/2022 at 6:18 PM, MAB said:

> why does lego only strive to put diversity in expensive sets?

Probably because many of the appropriate characters are minor characters in the movies, and the small sets would not sell well if the only minifigure in the set was a minor character. Take Dean Thomas from HP for example, he is a minor character in the HP franchise. I've seen the movies, but I cannot actually tell you which movies he was in or what he did without looking it up. And I imagine a lot of kids would be the same. Would they want a small HP set where Dean Thomas was the only character? I doubt it would sell anywhere near as well as if it had Harry/Ron/Hermione in. So that means he will only appear in a bigger set where other characters are included.

If they moved to doing realistic skin tones in City and other unlicensed sets, where the heads do not need to represent any exact source character material, then I imagine you would get a lot more darker skin tones than in licensed minifigures. Look at what they do in Friends. The same with other facial features, not just skin colour.

 

 

>why do realistic tan skin-toned heads only come in expensive history

>why do I have to buy either a $60 set or a $249.99 to represent myself in lego?

There is a dominance of light flesh heads matching the distribution in the movies LEGO makes sets of.  From bricklink, raw numbers without looking for human heads.

972 Light Nougat

77 Nougat

61 Medium Nougat

98 Reddish Brown

49 Tan, but many of these are aliens or scarecrows.

If you see your skin colour as tan you are almost certainly out of luck as LEGO does not really use that for human skin (unless in brickheadz, where it represents white).  If you go for nougat or medium nougat instead, then you will have a significantly larger choice of (human) heads.

You could go for a current set like this $30 one, which gives you both a male and female head in nougat, the colour that LEGO typically uses for hispanic characters. Obviously I don't know if that is close enough for you. The source material has more racial diversity and so the set does too. And it is a reasonably cheap set.

Or you could buy the relevant or similar minifigs for $4-5 each on bricklink.

 

It gets much harder if you want specific facial features, and even worse if you want a combination of them, and worse still a combination plus a specific colour. Even with 972 light nougat heads, there are none that have a brown beard and glasses like me, let alone the right shape beard and the right shape glasses. There are plenty of clean shaven heads, some with glasses. There are a reasonable number of beards, without glasses. There are some old man ones with grey beards and glasses. But I guess there are not many people with brown beads and glasses in movies that LEGO make sets for, so none that match me. I have to give up on one of my features to represent myself in minifigure form. I usually go for a head without the glasses, even though I tend to wear them most of the time as glasses without a beard doesn't look right. There are some yellow heads that have a brown beard (wrong shape) and glasses (wrong shape) but I don't identify myself as yellow and prefer to go for the nearest fleshie one instead.

 

 

I know that... it is the same with blond hair and glasses.

Could the TLBM-Robin-Hairpiece including glasses combined with a bearded head work?

[MAB]

2 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

I know that... it is the same with blond hair and glasses.

Could the TLBM-Robin-Hairpiece including glasses combined with a bearded head work?

Not for me, they are like joke glasses.

[Ondra]

I found these official lego promo photos with lego sets as centerpieces of home pretty cringe.

Firstly nobody builds these sets as on these photos, they always show completely nonsensical building process with every pieces perfectly alligned.

Second these actors have impress like they build something out of this world. And they always feel like they are having best times of their lives. Its funny in cringe way.

Third they always put build set instead television for example.

 

For me some sets are rage inducing when building and space costly when they are building. But hey I love them... Its rewarding process at the end.

[Lyichir]

3 hours ago, Ondra said:

I found these official lego promo photos with lego sets as centerpieces of home pretty cringe.

Firstly nobody builds these sets as on these photos, they always show completely nonsensical building process with every pieces perfectly alligned.

Second these actors have impress like they build something out of this world. And they always feel like they are having best times of their lives. Its funny in cringe way.

Third they always put build set instead television for example.

 

For me some sets are rage inducing when building and space costly when they are building. But hey I love them... Its rewarding process at the end.

Having heard from people who work at Hasbro (not Lego's) photo studio, I get why the build photos can be like that. Firstly, talent (including photo models) costs money, and they don't necessarily have time to have them build a set halfway or so in order to have an authentic look at what that stage of the build would actually look like. Also, what makes for the most "authentic" photo of the build process doesn't necessarily show off the total contents of the set the best (especially since builds tend to be broken up into stages so these days you would rarely have all the parts of the set spread out in front of you). Even so, having an in-process build photo (even an inauthentic one) feels important to emphasize that it is indeed a building toy, not just a prefabricated model like it appears in most of the other product photos.

As for your other criticisms... I dunno, I always feel happy and impressed when I put together a suitably large or complex set. And while my house is obviously nowhere near as neat and tidy as the professional lifestyle photographic sets where those sorts of photos are taken, I do like to display recently completed builds prominently for at least a few weeks before trying to find them a permanent home in a more out-of-the-way room or shelf.

[Peppermint_M]

I dunno. My sister is not AFOL at all but she has the succulents set put on display. It is not quite a centrepiece but is set out as decoration.

As for a nonsense building process: that is advertising baby! Food is never food, the car drives on a test track, the process has been shortened and it is not in-game footage.

[Murdoch17]

I think Lego is spreading themselves a bit too thin and is heading for the cliff. They are hooking onto franchises that's ship has sailed (who hears about Fortnite as much as a few years ago? But yet LEGO is apparently coming out with a battle bus!), have had issues with partner company's policies / ethics (Blizzard), are just plain head-scratching (Viydio with WB music), or just aren't selling period. (stadiums and the Fab 5 loft are on DEEP discount. My LUG was discussing parts drafting Fab 5 because it's so low priced EVERYWHERE.) Then there are the sad few themes with puzzling options were taken (No real DC sets this year?) or Marvel's cash grab of a set: the Black Panther bust, and the $500 Hulkbuster yet to come.

My friends, we are heading for the bad ol' days again (1997 to 2003). They've apparently learned the wrong lessons from those dark times.

After all, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger usually succeeds in the second attempt!

[Toastie]

42 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

After all, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger usually succeeds in the second attempt!

Well, that would be their third attempt, isn't it?

I do see a subtle  difference to the 1997 - 2003 period: TLG seems to have arrived at the let's-do-as-much-as-possible stage (desperation before collapse), but I believe this is a more refined approach, that also works with Mercedes, Tesla, Porsche, and you name it: Sell the over-priced and/or premium products to the wealthy - or would-be wealthy. Not the masses. Folks who believe that a $700 UCS ATAT is cool to have on a living room board. Or a Hogwarts Express "train", a large wooden minifig, a large tree, an Adidas soccer shoe, stadiums, masks, and all that - with crazy price tags.

And it appears as if this is a wheel in perpetual motion - as Alan Parsons once texted ... "There are unsmiling faces in fetters and chains - On a wheel in perpetual motion - Who belong to all races and answer all names - With no show of an outward emotion - And they think it will make their lives easier - But the doorway before them is barred ..."

The difference though is that TLG is spinning the wheel and watches with no show of an outward emotion ... and folks having the money believe, it will make their lives ... happier.

I simply don't care - let TLG do it their way and let folks buy stuff their way. It really is OK with me.

42 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

I think Lego is spreading themselves a bit too thin and is heading for the cliff.

Could be - the good thing is that if they go over the cliff ... so what? The bricks and much more importantly the creativity and ideas and the desperate will of other brick makers and brick assemblers to make a fortune - are all out there. Yes, it currently is the Dark Side. But we are talking small plastic bricks and not lightsabers or death stars approaching . 

Let's see how this plays out. I am much more relaxed as compared to 2000, when I was literally freaking out, hearing about TLG's stupid moves and the consequences. I am not anymore. I simply go to a Dark Side webpage and - totally relax.

All the best,
Thorsten

 

45 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

My LUG was discussing parts drafting Fab 5

I am sorry - stupid German here - what does that phrase mean ?

Edited October 10, 2022 by Toastie

[MAB]

I also think there is a big difference to 20 years ago. They are producing a number of seemingly niche sets for the rich but what does it matter if some of those don't sell so well? LEGO are making huge profits and have a huge fan base compared to 20 years ago. Some of that fan base is very rich. If Queer Eye fails because it is too niche or any of the much more expensive sets fail because they are too expensive then they reduce to 50% and the masses will buy. LEGO are probably still making money on them. Presumably a lot of the expensive sets are selling well enough as they keep making them. 

Another big difference now is that LEGO is a commodity.  That helps smooth out the sets that fail, as they soon get snapped up when discounted. 

And LEGO don't seem to be doing the mistake of spending huge amounts on single use items.

And the final big difference is licensing. Licensed collectables will keep LEGO alive, even if some choices fail.

[Murdoch17]

38 minutes ago, Toastie said:

I am sorry - stupid German here - what does that phrase mean ?

@Toastie first off, love the Alan Parsons Project reference, as I'm a big fan. (I've got their complete works on CD including the not-released "Sicilian Defense" album) I actually saw Alan Parsons in concert a few years back (pre-covid) at a Casino here in St. Louis. So, of course, they played the song you are referring to!

Now onto your question: We were talking about potentially parting out the Queer Eye Fab 5 loft set as a parts draft at a future LUG meeting, with every element  / color combo being sorted into a separate "lot" (ex: 85 white 1x2 masonry bricks in one copy set 10291) except for figures, which would be assembled into their own lots. Then, when the multiple copies (usually one per person participating) are done being sorted, we split the larger lots down (85 in my example is a lot for one lot, so maybe 10 get put in one smaller lot, and 10 in another, and so on.) to make it more fair, or pair weird single-digits numbers of parts together. Then, we draw numbers out of a hat to determine the picking order. The last person goes twice, as he goes first the second time through. Repeat until all parts are distributed. when it's over, whoever wants to can trade whatever they don't want for other things, as it's technically over at that point.

(If I missed any of the rules of parts drafting, somebody sing out!)

Anyway, I don't think it got much traction, as $60 per copy of the set is still a lot... and a lot more parts to sort through doesn't leave a lot of time for other things in a three-hour(ish) meeting. HOWEVER: we did do Boba Fett's throne room when it was on steep discount, so Fab 5 loft may be drafted, but I really don't know... it's a lot bigger than anything we've ever drafted before!

Edited October 10, 2022 by Murdoch17

[RichardGoring]

I've recently removed a chunk of things from my wish list, realizing that there are too many releases of large sets, which I will never find space for. Nor probably time. And I'm in the very fortunate situation that those are my only concerns, while many others have a great deal more to worry about too.

I note that Optimus Prime is also now on sale on the Lego website. How many other large, somewhat niche license sets will follow?

[Lyichir]

1 hour ago, Murdoch17 said:

I think Lego is spreading themselves a bit too thin and is heading for the cliff. They are hooking onto franchises that's ship has sailed (who hears about Fortnite as much as a few years ago? But yet LEGO is apparently coming out with a battle bus!), have had issues with partner company's policies / ethics (Blizzard), are just plain head-scratching (Viydio with WB music), or just aren't selling period. (stadiums and the Fab 5 loft are on DEEP discount. My LUG was discussing parts drafting Fab 5 because it's so low priced EVERYWHERE.) Then there are the sad few themes with puzzling options were taken (No real DC sets this year?) or Marvel's cash grab of a set: the Black Panther bust, and the $500 Hulkbuster yet to come.

My friends, we are heading for the bad ol' days again (1997 to 2003). They've apparently learned the wrong lessons from those dark times.

After all, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger usually succeeds in the second attempt!

If I had a nickel for every time in the past two decades I've seen someone warn that Lego is repeating the mistakes that led to its near-bankruptcy and is heading for that again, I'd be able to afford that Black Panther bust.

Lego is gonna be fine. Yes, there have been some misfires. But there is no recipe for success that comes with zero risk. And while it's easy to gripe about something like Vidiyo that misses the mark, Lego's core themes like City, Ninjago, Creator, Technic, and Friends are still firing on all cylinders. For that matter, even among licensed themes the number of sets in heavy-hitters like Star Wars, Marvel, and (much as I hate to admit its popularity) Harry Potter WAY outnumbers the number of niche, adult-targeted properties.

[Toastie]

9 hours ago, Lyichir said:

But there is no recipe for success that comes with zero risk.

Yup.

And - over the past decades, a few competitors have fired up their power tools as well.

As said: I can comfortably live with either or both ways.

Best,
Thorsten