2023 Majisto GWP

[MAB]

1 hour ago, wanderer1980 said:

this diversity is ridiculous. I know it's a toy, but how many female knights were there in the Middle Ages?

 

 

It's a man that has just eaten a tomato based sauce. Problem over.

[Classic_Spaceman]

3 hours ago, wanderer1980 said:

this diversity is ridiculous. I know it's a toy, but how many female knights were there in the Middle Ages?

What little legitimacy this argument may hold in discussing factions such as the Black Falcons and Lion Knights evaporates completely when the knight in-question is one of the Dragon Masters! 
 

1 hour ago, MAB said:

It's a man that has just eaten a tomato based sauce. Problem over.

That is actually less accurate! The rough dates of the Middle Ages are ~500-1500, but tomatoes were first cultivated in Europe (Italy) around 1540-1550 and spread over time from there; it is actually more plausible that this knight is a woman than it is a man who has just eaten tomato sauce! 
 

[Alexandrina]

31 minutes ago, Classic_Spaceman said:

That is actually less accurate! The rough dates of the Middle Ages are ~500-1500, but tomatoes were first cultivated in Europe (Italy) around 1540-1550 and spread over time from there; it is actually more plausible that this knight is a woman than it is a man who has just eaten tomato sauce! 

Don't forget, tomatoes in the Lego universe only exist in prints rather than as a piece in their own right, so they are as real in the Lego world as dragons and unicorns are in the real world. 

If we're talking real world, various orders of chivalry accepted women as members (and thus women could be actual, bona fide knights with the properly invested title) as early as 1381. Women fighting on the battlefield are attested well before this, too.

[Sir Blew]

10 hours ago, wanderer1980 said:

this diversity is ridiculous. I know it's a toy, but how many female knights were there in the Middle Ages?

 

 

Agreed. I wish Lego would at least include alternative male heads, or even revesible male/female heads to accommodate everyone. Even the original non-gendered basic smiley face would be prefereable to making everyone female.

[Classic_Spaceman]

19 minutes ago, Sir Blew said:

Even the original non-gendered basic smiley face would be prefereable to making everyone female.

TIL 50% is everyone. 
 

[F1stzz]

On 11/5/2023 at 7:31 PM, jodawill said:

The guy who created 10320 appears to be a vehicle expert. He designed the Maersk Train, which is a real classic.

Should've stuck to his roots, just sayin'  

[MAB]

10 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

Don't forget, tomatoes in the Lego universe only exist in prints rather than as a piece in their own right, so they are as real in the Lego world as dragons and unicorns are in the real world. 

 

1x1 red round brick, with a 1x1 plate on top = jar of sauce. It doesn't matter if tomatoes or glass jars existed at the time. With imagination, they are there. These sets are not historical,  they are fantasy.

3 hours ago, Sir Blew said:

Agreed. I wish Lego would at least include alternative male heads, or even revesible male/female heads to accommodate everyone. Even the original non-gendered basic smiley face would be prefereable to making everyone female.

So long as the torsos are neutral in both gender and skin, I'm fine with it. It is easy to get hold of heads these days, whether male or female, yellow or a large number of flesh tones. 

Edited November 8, 2023 by MAB

[Alexandrina]

5 hours ago, Sir Blew said:

Agreed. I wish Lego would at least include alternative male heads, or even revesible male/female heads to accommodate everyone. Even the original non-gendered basic smiley face would be prefereable to making everyone female.

This would pretty solidly undermine Lego's own aim in gender equality (unless you extend this to all male minifigures having a female alternate face). Right now the message to young girls when they play with Lego is that they are just as represented as boys. If you start putting male heads in sets as alternates, the message becomes "boys are the default, which is why we've had to throw them a bone on top of their 50% of the representation. You girls are the afterthought". Not a very nice message.

Honestly, I really don't understand why people get up in arms every time a "historical" set dares to include women. Why does it bother people so much?

[El Garfio]

I agree that lego ESG policies are going to the far of becoming ridiculous

We have some hairs that even if the head is yellow, the character adopt a certain race 

Also, they are including female characters in historical themes (although they try to justify it saying that is fantasy) 

Luckily, we have BAM, PaB and bricklink to change it if we are not comfortable with LEGO extravaganzas 

Lego is not going to include alternative faces or heads, or also polybags with spare pieces, because it's against their ESG policy 

[Alexandrina]

1 minute ago, El Garfio said:

Also, they are including female characters in historical themes (although they try to justify it saying that is fantasy) 

This set literally includes a magic wizard and his magic workshop. Of course it's fantasy.

[Yperio_Bricks]

As a man i am ashamed to go through this very same discussion every time a history themed set (or in this case even a fantasy set) releases, which also represents female knights, soldiers or else. Women exist, get over it. Lego wants boys and girls playing with their toys to feel equally represented. There is nothing wrong with it. If this brings more girls into Lego, which still is often considered to be a boys toy, because they feel more comfortable when there are female minifigs, how can this be a bad thing?

As was mentioned before, nowadays you can easily buy a truckload of heads and swap them as you like.

[sahidko]

Well bit late to the party but what a disappointing GWP this ended up being. :D Unfortunately I was delaying some purchases to be able to acquire it but right now I guess I will try to resell it immediately. As someone who owns the original there is nothing here worth keeping.

[Black Falcon]

5 hours ago, El Garfio said:

Also, they are including female characters in historical themes (although they try to justify it saying that is fantasy) 

Where? I see members of this forum posting that statement, but I haven´t seen Lego doing so. In the end I don´t see the reason to bring that discussion up for every historical Set are releasing.

[Khargeust]

Still no official reveal as for the Winter Market Stall... I want to see clear pictures, especially from the interior.

[Aanchir]

20 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

Don't forget, tomatoes in the Lego universe only exist in prints rather than as a piece in their own right, so they are as real in the Lego world as dragons and unicorns are in the real world. 

Well, there are also the brick-built ones that often show up in Friends sets, made from a red Bionicle ball joint attached to a green 1x1 flower plate

7 hours ago, El Garfio said:

I agree that lego ESG policies are going to the far of becoming ridiculous

We have some hairs that even if the head is yellow, the character adopt a certain race

 Also, they are including female characters in historical themes (although they try to justify it saying that is fantasy)  

Nah, this is a ridiculous take. The hair pieces with tight curls are hardly any more race-specific than old-school ones that obviouly have straight hair like 4530 and 6093. Even in licensed themes, we've seen the newer curly-haired designs used for actors/characters of extremely varied races and ethnicities. For example, 79688 has been used for characters like T'Challa, Mo Morrison, Viktor Krum, and Bruce Wayne. 21778 was also used for Viktor Krum, along with other characters like Lando Calrissian, Dennis Nedry, Dean Thomas, Wong, and Razor Fist. Frankly, I think it's much better that these more varied options exist rather than having to pretend that smooth or straight hair is implicitly neutral/universal, when anybody with more textured hair can tell you that's not the case.
 

Moreover, LEGO Castle and Pirates have been heavily based in fantasy rather than historical reality since at least the late 80s. In fact, portraying of these themes as fantastical, idealized storybook versions of these time periods is a big part of how the original LEGO designers even got away with including so many weapons in classic LEGO Castle and Pirates sets in the first place, since back in the 80s the company's leaders were much more averse to portraying any forms of realistic violence, death, or warfare in sets (regardless of their setting). And as others have already pointed out, we can all recognize that ghosts, magical wizards, and dragons are not real.

Even Robin Hood and his Merry Men are, for all intents and purposes, not real — even if there might have been a real-life basis for "Robin Hood" at some point, the Forest People obviously take their inspiration from the fictionalized portrayals of the character in later folklore and works of fiction, such as his signature Lincoln green garb and fortified treetop hideouts. Likewise, Captain Redbeard and many of the other LEGO Pirates characters are obviously much more heavily inspired by fictional pirate characters like Long John Silver and Captain Hook than by any real-life historical pirates. You might as well be complaining about the historical inaccuracies in Le Morte d'Arthur or Treasure Island.
 

If you truly believed that the neutral facial features and yellow complexion of the classic minifig were meant to be able to represent anybody and everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity, then I don't see why any of this should bother you? After all, back in the 80s, other LEGO fans were free to interpret the generic knights/soldiers in classic LEGO Castle and Pirates sets as women, just as you were free to interpret them as men! It's not that strange to believe that versions of these themes updated to modern design standards would acknowledge these varied possibilities.

Yet the objection you express here isn't that these updated figures include varied facial features and hairstyles — rather, your issue is just that LEGO didn't uniquely prioritize your interpretation of the classic Castle and Pirates characters as "male unless otherwise specified". All in all, if these are the best arguments you have against LEGO designers including diverse characters in their sets, then their position in that debate is hardly the ridiculous one!

[Gavino]

I am usually not a fan of race/gender swapping in media and toys. In the case of Lego, I don't like how they swapped out Redbeard in Eldorado, especially because the figure is not in any retail sets right now and he is a pretty iconic character. In the case of almost every other set where they have swapped the head for random non-named army-massable troops, I really don't care too much what the head is. It's Lego you can swap the head pretty easily.

[Trekkie99]

On 11/8/2023 at 6:26 AM, Yperio_Bricks said:

 Women exist, get over it.

I put some giant blasters in a Mom minidoll's hands yesterday and imagined her being badass heeheehee.

[Yperio_Bricks]

19 hours ago, Gavino said:

I am usually not a fan of race/gender swapping in media and toys. In the case of Lego, I don't like how they swapped out Redbeard in Eldorado, especially because the figure is not in any retail sets right now and he is a pretty iconic character. In the case of almost every other set where they have swapped the head for random non-named army-massable troops, I really don't care too much what the head is. It's Lego you can swap the head pretty easily.

Did Lego say that they swapped out Redbeard in some designer interview or so?

 

9 minutes ago, Trekkie99 said:

I put some giant blasters in a Mom minidoll's hands yesterday and imagined her being badass heeheehee.

Sorry, i don't understand but i guess it's a good thing?! I hope haha

 

[Trekkie99]

2 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

Sorry, i don't understand but i guess it's a good thing?! I hope haha

Point being the idea you can't have women Knights is silly lol.

[Yperio_Bricks]

7 minutes ago, Trekkie99 said:

Point being the idea you can't have women Knights is silly lol.

Yes, i agree with you!

[Alexandrina]

46 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

Did Lego say that they swapped out Redbeard in some designer interview or so?

I don't know if Lego have specifically commented on the matter, but it seems to me that the reason Redbeard isn't in Eldorado is because - let's face it - the target audience for a big nostalgia-based Imperials set is pretty much identical to the target audience for a big nostalgia-based pirate ship set, so the assumption is that most of the people buying Eldorado already have a Redbeard. And you can't have two Redbeards running about.

(I mean, you can - imagination and all - but having two Redbeards kicking about your MOC feels a bit farce to me.)

The question is why they included a second Anne Anchor, albeit slightly different. IMO the best course of action would have been to have an entirely new pirate, or else ditch that figure entirely and give us a Camilla Broadside or something.

[Yperio_Bricks]

4 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

I don't know if Lego have specifically commented on the matter, but it seems to me that the reason Redbeard isn't in Eldorado is because - let's face it - the target audience for a big nostalgia-based Imperials set is pretty much identical to the target audience for a big nostalgia-based pirate ship set, so the assumption is that most of the people buying Eldorado already have a Redbeard. And you can't have two Redbeards running about.

(I mean, you can - imagination and all - but having two Redbeards kicking about your MOC feels a bit farce to me.)

The question is why they included a second Anne Anchor, albeit slightly different. IMO the best course of action would have been to have an entirely new pirate, or else ditch that figure entirely and give us a Camilla Broadside or something.

I just asked because of the statment that was made. I can not believe that Redbeard was left out because an other character took take his place. I guess he was never considered to be in the set in the first place.

Funny, because just in this minute i was flicking through the classic comic to see if the new pirates match any of the classic ones from the comic (by clothes color at least). Camilla and Will were always my favorites.

[Gorilla94]

I think Lego took the best approach from a buisness standpoint: Female quota for those who care about such things with neutral torso prints (no yellow/flesh visible, no female outlines) for those who just see a building toy, that has to be good in what it is supposed to be: being open for own combinations. I don´t get the discussion about it. The one thing I really disliked quite often in those female figures lately is the fact that they are pretty poorly designed like the two in the Barracuda bay. Robin loot looks like leftovers from a very poorly sorted BAM tower... The one with black hair is better but simply sucks next to the older version of that character with a much more elaborate design - especially the hairpiece. I am glad the female vikings look so much better than those.

What in fact bothers me in terms of diversity is the lack of different beard pieces as well as the very small amount of blond male faces.

10 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

The question is why they included a second Anne Anchor, albeit slightly different. IMO the best course of action would have been to have an entirely new pirate, or else ditch that figure entirely and give us a Camilla Broadside or something.

This... I´d love to get a new pirate torso with stripes in another colour than green, red or blue.

[Alexandrina]

2 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

I just asked because of the statment that was made. I can not believe that Redbeard was left out because an other character took take his place. I guess he was never considered to be in the set in the first place.

Funny, because just in this minute i was flicking through the classic comic to see if the new pirates match any of the classic ones from the comic (by clothes color at least). Camilla and Will were always my favorites.

Yeah, I think people assume he was left out because Redbeard was in the original Eldorado Fortress. But I don't believe there's any evidence Redbeard was ever to be included in the new one (and Governor Broadside didn't make it in either, so it's clear they weren't trying to replicate the original figs like for like)

[Classic_Spaceman]

1 hour ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

Did Lego say that they swapped out Redbeard in some designer interview or so?

I think they said that he was left out because he appeared in PoBB, but I am not sure of the source.