Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Jiesdeo]

13 hours ago, dukesofbrickdom said:

Ninjago and Monkie Kid are more based on Chinese culture, anime is Japanese.

Ninjago is definitely based on Japanese culture.

Quote

Simply put, they have a huge emphasis on huge, flashy vehicles and mechs; which anime clearly does not have....

It's not like there a whole genre of anime called Mecha/Robotto or anything like that. With obscure franchises like Gundam, Full Metal Alchemist and Neon Genesis Evangelion....

Edited January 29, 2023 by Jiesdeo
Edited to add

[neithan]

Gladly the MCU has a huge emphasis on huge, flashy vehicles and mechs - otherwise I couldn`t understand why we get THAT many Mechs and vehicles in Lego Marvel Sets...

[dukesofbrickdom]

7 hours ago, Jiesdeo said:

Ninjago is definitely based on Japanese culture...

Ok, while true, a mixture of Chinese and Japanese culture, I do not consider Ninjago anime. When I was a kid and my favorite show was Ninjago, I hated anime. Ninjago used to be nothing like anime and so I loved it.

[Jiesdeo]

17 hours ago, dukesofbrickdom said:

Ok, while true, a mixture of Chinese and Japanese culture, I do not consider Ninjago anime. When I was a kid and my favorite show was Ninjago, I hated anime. Ninjago used to be nothing like anime and so I loved it.

Things can also be Japanese without being anime.

[Yperio_Bricks]

On 1/29/2023 at 12:00 AM, Ondra said:

Modern sets completely ruins reusability in MOCS.

There is color coding/vomit for bricks, plates not full of studs.

Its clearly they dont see them as parts donor to kids buildings anymore.

I think so too. As a kid i built the sets only once, after i got them for Christmas or birthday. Then they quickly got disassembled and i used the parts for my own creations. With the same parts i built a fortress or a town house or an aircraft carrier.

While the variety of parts we have nowadays allow for a more detailed approach, i imagine that - for me as a kid - it would have been much harder to build my own creation out of all the different colors and special parts and all the tiny 1x1 parts.

I don't suffer from nostalgia and i think all the variety we have nowadays makes Lego bricks and pieces much better. But surely the company want us to buy sets, assemble them, then buy new sets... I don't know if the Lego company deliberately tries to reduce the reusability of the parts from a set, but it surely comes in handy for them, so they can sell more sets. And all these display sets are not meant to be disassembled so the parts could be used for mocs. Just buy more display sets...

[danth]

Lego has TOO. MANY. COLORS.

Almost EVERY Lego piece I have is useless for the MOC I'm trying to build. Why? Color inflation.

I want blue. Not Dark Blue, not Medium Azure, not Teal, not Sand Blue, not the other 5 blues that also exists. No matter which blue I pick, I have the same problem.

Or maybe I want light (bluish) gray. Not pearled light or dark gray, not sand blue, etc etc.

Or Yellow. Now all the sets come with the new neon yellow or the light orange. WTF is the point? They don't look any better. And I can't even use them for Yellow MOCs.

I don't EVER want to hear anyone try to say that stickers are "better for MOCing" because "what if some poor kid needed that printed part for a MOC; at least you can remove a sticker" when literally almost every brick made today is NOT IN THE COLOR YOU WANT.

This is is simple math. When there were 6 colors, and you were making a Red car, every brick had a 1/6 chance of being the right color. Now it's like 1/40.

Also, you know that "too many boxes" argument people use against printed parts? Geeze, I wonder why this argument is never used against all the new colors? Every differently colored part requires a separate box to track the piece, so...that means Lego couldn't possibly make new colors right? And yet they do. Lots of them. If Lego got rid of, say just 5 redundant colors, they could probably print every part that is now a sticker and have the same number of boxes.

[LegendaryArticuno]

20 minutes ago, danth said:

Lego has TOO. MANY. COLORS.

Almost EVERY Lego piece I have is useless for the MOC I'm trying to build. Why? Color inflation.

I want blue. Not Dark Blue, not Medium Azure, not Teal, not Sand Blue, not the other 5 blues that also exists. No matter which blue I pick, I have the same problem.

Or maybe I want light (bluish) gray. Not pearled light or dark gray, not sand blue, etc etc.

It's the opposite for me, I feel like Lego doesn't use colour enough and will most of the time cheap out and just default to light bluish grey. The most recent and biggest offender being the new Quinjet.

I still wish we would get a sand blue Tie Fighter similar to the old school Kenner toys.

[Ondra]

16 minutes ago, danth said:

Lego has TOO. MANY. COLORS.

Almost EVERY Lego piece I have is useless for the MOC I'm trying to build. Why? Color inflation.

I want blue. Not Dark Blue, not Medium Azure, not Teal, not Sand Blue, not the other 5 blues that also exists. No matter which blue I pick, I have the same problem.

Or maybe I want light (bluish) gray. Not pearled light or dark gray, not sand blue, etc etc.

Or Yellow. Now all the sets come with the new neon yellow or the light orange. WTF is the point? They don't look any better. And I can't even use them for Yellow MOCs.

I don't EVER want to hear anyone try to say that stickers are "better for MOCing" because "what if some poor kid needed that printed part for a MOC; at least you can remove a sticker" when literally almost every brick made today is NOT IN THE COLOR YOU WANT.

This is is simple math. When there were 6 colors, and you were making a Red car, every brick had a 1/6 chance of being the right color. Now it's like 1/40.

Also, you know that "too many boxes" argument people use against printed parts? Geeze, I wonder why this argument is never used against all the new colors? Every differently colored part requires a separate box to track the piece, so...that means Lego couldn't possibly make new colors right? And yet they do. Lots of them. If Lego got rid of, say just 5 redundant colors, they could probably print every part that is now a sticker and have the same number of boxes.

This, in 90s there were like 5 colours. All parts from sets were mostly interchangeable thanks to this 

Now its like 5 colours only in one sets.

Its even worse looking after timeline after 90s, there were so many different colours, shades with small runs. And now I completely lost track...

 

Maybe I sounds like boomer, but Im having hard time looking at new sets as useful donors...

 

Its weird building sets from other bricks companies  and saying, hey lego used to be like that. Its even worse, when I get price,weight, number of pieces and quality into decision.

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, danth said:

TOO. MANY. COLORS.

FINALLY!

These are my words since I began playing with LEGOs sss s - and they began making all sorts of pieces with "new" colors. As said before: I am color-blind - which doesn't mean I can't see red - I do see red very well. All reddish things are red or - not. Depends on the -ish bit. Could very well be that it is some sort of weird reddish-green. My absolute favorite is the brownish stuff. I have a small drawer with pieces that look brown to me. My daughter asked me recently, why I am mixing up all these colors in the drawer .

But: That is my very personal problem and the reason I gave up on the mixed brick boxes LEGO sells as the ultimate part packs and inspirational and creativity turbo boosters: Too many dilutions into all sorts of colors. So I go BB. Parts packs with pieces of one type and one color for a fraction of the price TLG is charging. And a name tag on it: Blue. Dark gray. Oh, they also do have the -ish and pearl- and sand things - but not for me :D 

The other thing that I am interested in: I do watch a few YouTube channels ;) It appears as if TLG has a color quality control issue. Not that I can say anything about it - but how do all these myriads of colors, plus the additional tints they apparently get - depending on the land of confusion - still maintain their original name? The "sandish-dark-sort-of-white" names they have? Well, I believe normal people can still tell them apart from "sandish-allmost-dark-sort-of-white" even when manufacturer A's color is a bit on the "dark" instead of the "darkish" variety, and manufacturer B does it the other way around. Or this is all just hearsay. And over-amplified.

Here is to all people of all colors:

Best regards
Thorsten

[MaximillianRebo]

I'm in the opposite camp when it comes to Lego colours. Sand blue, dark blue, dark red, dark orange, bright light orange are some of favourite colours when adding accent colours to a MOC that would otherwise be white or bleyish and I'm always happy when an official set is released using a lot of one of those colours as it means more availability on Bricklink.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, MaximillianRebo said:

I'm in the opposite camp when it comes to Lego colours. Sand blue, dark blue, dark red, dark orange, bright light orange are some of favourite colours when adding accent colours to a MOC that would otherwise be white or bleyish and I'm always happy when an official set is released using a lot of one of those colours as it means more availability on Bricklink.

I'm similar. I also like to use dark red, dark blue and dark green more than I like red, blue and green. I think they are more 'adult' colours. Now they have 18+ sets, maybe they need to have distinct colour palettes for them, Let the kids have a range of bright colours, and adults get a more earthy set of colours! :-)

 

[Peppermint_M]

Never enough colour! As an enjoyer of vibrant shades and bright trim, there needs to be more parts available in all stages of the colour spectrum.

[The Island Chronicles]

So.....after putting it together, I'm not too keen on the 2023 Garbage Truck. Personally, I think I'll stick to older garbage trucks from City. 

[Aanchir]

9 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

Never enough colour! As an enjoyer of vibrant shades and bright trim, there needs to be more parts available in all stages of the colour spectrum.

Yeah, while I can definitely relate to the frustration of particular parts not being available in the particular shade of blue or green I want, I feel like the current color palette could not be much smaller than it is now without cutting out a huge slice of colors that are super important to one group of builders or another.

I mean, we've seen how much hubbub there was over LEGO getting rid of Bright Bluish Green, Sand Red, and Tr. Fluorescent Orange — and how much worry there is any time another color like Tr. Fluorescent Green seems like it might be on the chopping block. And these are relative outliers from the more "traditional" hues associated with LEGO, or their nearest tints and shades! I can hardly imagine the uproar there'd be if LEGO got rid of a color like Earth Blue or Dark Orange on the grounds that there are similar colors that are "close enough" to serve roughly the same purpose.

Even some of the colors I personally could just as easily do without, like Dark Brown or Olive Green, are hugely important to other builders — as plainly evidenced by the responses any time a LEGO Ideas set even partially replaces Dark Brown parts from the original pitch with Reddish Brown ones.

 

Also, as a 90s kid myself… I don't understand where people get the idea that in the 90s, it was easy to find whatever parts you wanted in that decade's more limited colors. Certainly that might have been the case with colors like red, yellow, blue, black, or white. Less so with green, which was still used in a fairly limited capacity until the middle of the decade.

But colors like pink, purple, and teal were next to useless due to how few parts came in them (especially in minifig-scale themes), while Dark Orange was still non-existent outside of Duplo and Belville. Likewise, it wasn't until near the end of the decade that standard orange bricks EXISTED, or that useful basic building elements started showing up in colors like Dark Grey, Brick Yellow (Tan), or Earth Orange (Brown). Previously, these colors had been almost entirely limited to specialty parts like animals and minifig accessories.

And there were lots colors on the palette at that time that saw even MORE limited use than those! For example, 90s sets offered five different solid shades of green — it's just that only ONE of them was at all useful as the main color of a System build, since most were only used for a small number of Duplo/Belville parts, Fabuland figures, plant pieces, and baseplates. It's particularly telling that a lot of people thought Bright Green was a new color when it showed up in the 2012 City recycling sets, even though it was in fact introduced in 1995! It took 18 years for LEGO to release enough basic building elements in that color for many System builders to actually take notice of it!

Frankly, despite there being around 44 solid colors on the current LEGO color palette, I'd say LEGO is doing a much better job today at releasing a useful variety of System parts in those colors to justify their existence than they did with their color palette in the 90s. The only solid colors out of those 44 that are still too limited to be used as the main color in a build are Medium Brown and Warm Tan, two colors introduced last year as skin tones, which still haven't really seen any use outside of that context.

[Toastie]

2 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

Also, as a 90s kid myself… I don't understand where people get the idea that in the 90s, it was easy to find whatever parts you wanted in that decade's more limited colors.

But that is the thing: Not the limited colors, as this defines "failure" upfront. Nothing is easy with limitations.

I lived through that period as well (and some earlier periods also) and was never looking for limited colors. I never had that idea, but regarding basic colors, put the green aside, it worked pretty well.

With all the colors available now: Did this availability really improve? Regarding sets that is, not BL or whatever. I do well remember going into a not-LEGO-store and pickup packs of something - in basic colors, of course. So this is where I got my "idea"; it came from experience.

I am not saying that TLG should do that with the gazillion colors they are now producing, not at all.

Regards,
Thorsten

[Aanchir]

11 minutes ago, Toastie said:

But that is the thing: Not the limited colors, as this defines "failure" upfront. Nothing is easy with limitations. 

I lived through that period as well (and some earlier periods also) and was never looking for limited colors. I never had that idea, but regarding basic colors, put the green aside, it worked pretty well. 

With all the colors available now: Did this availability really improve? Regarding sets that is, not BL or whatever. I do well remember going into a not-LEGO-store and pickup packs of something - in basic colors, of course. So this is where I got my "idea"; it came from experience.

I am not saying that TLG should do that with the gazillion colors they are now producing, not at all.

Regards,
Thorsten

Oh no, I get that bulk packs of single-colored bricks in every color could not be a thing, and I definitely see your point about how useful it'd be for LEGO to bring those back in some of the more basic/common colors (I suspect that Pick-A-Brick has at least partly taken the place of pre-packed assortments like that, but I can see the advantages the older "service pack" approach could have even today).

I was responding more to some of the comments expressing the opinion there are way too many colors in general. 'Cuz to me, the parts variety in any given color seems way stronger today than it was during my childhood.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Aanchir

[dr_spock]

As a kid of the last century, I think LEGO should stick with the simple basics. It would minimize SKUs and have potential cost savings for the business. Kids have good imaginations, they can pretend them to be different colors in their little heads.

[Lemerbrix]

On 1/21/2023 at 5:40 PM, Lemerbrix said:

#1, Lego friends got better after 2018

#2 Lego Minecraft is extremely underrated

#3 monkie kid should have ended in 2022

#4 18+ sets aren’t that hard

#5 dots is just Lego art, but on a budget

#6 the world map is not a set

#7 ninjago core sets are very good

#8 minidolls > minifigs 

Got another hot take for everyone

#9 Lego friends animals are 10x better than city animals

[dr_spock]

42 minutes ago, Lemerbrix said:

Got another hot take for everyone

#9 Lego friends animals are 10x better than city animals

It would appear that they are cuter and generally happier than CITY. 

 

[MAB]

13 hours ago, Toastie said:

With all the colors available now: Did this availability really improve?

To me, yes. A massive improvement now compared to "back then".

11 hours ago, dr_spock said:

As a kid of the last century, I think LEGO should stick with the simple basics. It would minimize SKUs and have potential cost savings for the business. Kids have good imaginations, they can pretend them to be different colors in their little heads.

Imagine a MOC of a river flowing over a rocky waterfall, with muddy riverbanks next to a lush green field. I think I prefer having more colours.

 

I doubt LEGO would be anywhere near as popular today with adults if it did not have the colour range to be able to make realistic looking builds. Many City sets would be fine with maybe just black, white, and a single red, green, blue, yellow, brown and one grey. They'd also need some transparent colours. But I still think they'd be seriously lacking compared to modern sets. And as for 18+ sets, they'd look terrible with such a narrow colour palette.

When I think what my kids can build today compared to what I used to build with a limited colour range, there is a vast improvement when it comes to colours.

[Toastie]

42 minutes ago, MAB said:

To me, yes. A massive improvement now compared to "back then".

I was asking for the availability (of parts in a color) - not for the improvement with regard to number of colors.

But: All is good, I am happy with what I have in basic colors. So everybody is served well, as it appears.

Best,
Thorsten

 

[MAB]

2 hours ago, Toastie said:

I was asking for the availability (of parts in a color) - not for the improvement with regard to number of colors.

I think they have. There was a time that there were 1x2 bricks and 1x4 bricks in some of the newer colours and 1x1 bricks or 2x2 corner bricks in another colour, which made building in a uniform colour hard. But I think that is no longer the case for most colours where you are likely to have enough even length bricks to build a decent sized wall or object. I tend to buy lots of 1x2 bricks then use either 1x1 or 1x3 bricks to fill in odd length gaps by doors or windows. If 1x2 bricks are expensive, I'll use 1x4 instead again filling in odd length gaps with 1x1 or 1x3. So I tent to buy a lot of even lengths, with maybe about 10-20% odd lengths. I think some roof tile colours are still a problem with respect to interior and exterior corners.

[danth]

19 hours ago, Aanchir said:

I mean, we've seen how much hubbub there was over LEGO getting rid of Bright Bluish Green, Sand Red, and Tr. Fluorescent Orange — and how much worry there is any time another color like Tr. Fluorescent Green seems like it might be on the chopping block.

Thank you for highlighting the fact that the price of new colors is taking away existing, established colors. Which is a far worse crime, IMO.

[Peppermint_M]

I miss the truly weird themes of yesteryear. Time Cruisers was just a mish mash of what themes existed at the time. Racers had the odd little Xalax characters and there were so many more niche little subthemes. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Ninjago and the numerous places City visits these days, but apart from Vidiyo, there hasn't been anything quite as random.

[danth]

Not to harp on the color thing but my mind was just blown.

I just built 60393 and 71784. Only after building both did I realize that the yellows are different. I thought both were the "new" vibrant yellow. But one is creamier and looks more like that "glow in the dark" plastic color. But I could only tell them apart because I had both sets next to each other.

Like...no. Both colors should not exist. It's madness.