Does fandom influence your Licensed preferences?

[J.V.D.]

Well, for starters, it is a license that got me back into Lego... When buing toys for the children, I noticed the Indiana Jones sets. They got my attention right away, still I doubted a long time before actually buying something... "spending that much? on a kids toy? just because I liked the movie??" Pitty, when I finally did by my own first set (the swordfight in Cairo battle pack) IJ was almost comming to and end, so I had to buy a lot at the aftermarket...

Though I am not interested on getting the complete line, even not if I like the license... If the set is not appealing to me, I dont buy it..

On the other hand, I sometimes buy licensed stuff even if I dont like, or know, the license. E.g. I only recently have seen the PoP movie on DVD, but the sets were a must have from the moment I saw that tan,white and gold oriental looking goodness.. (though I waited for some sales to get rid of at least a bit of the license mark-up..)

I guess that is still the main; licensed or generic , first of all I must like the set, being it based on one of my favourite licenses is just an additional factor why I might like and buy it...

[Gryphon Ink]

Yes, No, and Maybe. I will say that I'm initially attracted to some licensed sets because of the fandom, but more often than not I will decide to buy or not based on the design, the parts and the value, not the license. Avengers is a great example. I had originally not liked Loki's Cosmic Cube Escape at all. Then I saw the movie and thought "well, now that set really makes sense, and I would like at least one Avengers set because the movie rocked the house" - but then I looked at the set's reviews again, and found that I still don't like it at all, so I haven't bought it and am not likely to.

There are a few things that I just have to have, though. Star Wars is a franchise that I really don't buy much of, but it was the Luke's Landspeeder set that brought me out of my very long dark age because I HAD to have a Lego landspeeder as soon as I saw it. I'll probably buy an X-Wing at some point, too. Because, dude, it's an X-Wing. Its parts-to-price ratio sucks, and there are better Lego sets available right now, but none of them are an X-Wing.

[Blondie-Wan]

Hm. All of the four poll options work for me to some extent, but in the end I went with the top one, "Totally...," since the question is whether my fandom influences my preferences, and it certainly does that.

I've grown up a fan of George Lucas and Lucasfilm - not just Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but American Grafitti, THX 1138, you name it - so obviously Star Wars and Indy are huge deals for me. Unfortunately I'm very limited in my resources, and with their having been so many Star Wars sets produced over so many years at so many price points and with so many exclusives and promos and whatnot, it's quite a challenge for even well-heeled LEGO fans to acquire everything; I can't even come close. I do get an awful lot of Star Wars sets, though. I also made a point of getting every single "regular" Indy set that was released. It was tough for me, given my finances, and I sometimes found myself waiting months before finally picking up even some of the smaller sets, and I never was able to pick up as many copies as I'd have liked of most of them (I always want extras for parts, army building, etc.), nor was I able to get the ultra-limited San Diego Comic-Con set (and I just didn't quite bother with all the accessory items like magnets and keychains). But I did get at least one of each retail set and one of the "regular" Brickmaster set; in fact, Temple Escape is the only retail set I got just one copy of - I've gotten at least two of each of the other fifteen retail sets, with as many as eleven copies of one of them (Ambush in Cairo). I wouldn't have made a point of getting so many copies had I not been a fan of the franchise.

I've also gotten all the Prince of Persia sets, partly because I enjoyed the movie, but not because I'm a fan, per se; however, my Indy fandom did help push me to get those, because the part and color selections offer so much that's useful for Indy MOCs. I'll probably get more of those eventually, in fact (the TRU near me still has all of them); it might become the first theme for which I get multiple copies of all the retail sets.

With licensed themes based on films and franchises of which I'm not particularly a fan, I do still get them if I have at least some passing interest in the stories, or if I simply like the sets and/or their parts selections.

EDIT: Meanwhile, this current thread on people getting into Star Wars because of LEGO (as opposed to the other way around) is probably of interest...

Edited May 11, 2012 by Blondie-Wan

[Aanchir]

Fandom definitely plays a role in which licensed themes get me excited, although to be perfectly honest I don't feel like I should respond to the poll since it's been years since I actually bought a licensed set.