Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion

[Qahne]

That's a very good point, I just hope they keep the classic faces in production on some line somewhere, it would be a shame to let it be consigned to history. I began getting the impression that the modulars' audience had shifted from just AFOLs to a broader one when DO was released, and I think that's a great thing. I'm very happy that people are buying these for their kids, and that LEGO's other lines are not the simple stacking they used to be. I would definitely say that LEGO has improved overall in the past decade, but there have been a few missteps here and there where they are trying to be more like a normal toy company and fit in with what kids want, which I understand, but I always liked how they stood out and weren't afraid to be different. After the near-bankruptcy they are probably more cautious about that sort of thing and are paranoid about being seen as not cool and see a need to change with the times, but looking at Playmobil and how little they have changed to appeal to a modern audience, despite growing sales, I think it's not as necessary as TLG thinks.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Qahne

[x105Black]

13 hours ago, Ghostcat said:

They did 12 modulars with classic faces. It was 10 years but there was 12 modulars in that time (and 13 if you want to count ninjago city)

Fair enough.  13 Modulars.  The point remains the same though in regards to a 10 year anniversary, and change coming in a new era afterwards.

[koalayummies]

2 hours ago, Qahne said:

I just hope they keep the classic faces in production on some line somewhere, it would be a shame to let it be consigned to history.

Change is a very good thing.

[Capparezza]

13 minutes ago, koalayummies said:

Change is a very good thing.

Comparing Apples and Bananas is not.

[koalayummies]

39 minutes ago, Capparezza said:

Comparing Apples and Bananas is not.

They're the precursor to what is now known as the minifigure. Googling 'first lego minifigure' yields that result. Its a valid comparison, arguing semantics on the other hand is a waste of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_minifigure

For the semantics pedants, change is a very good thing.  

[BrickFit26]

10 hours ago, gotoAndLego said:

I find it hard to believe that most of us don’t have a couple of classic faces lying around if the set faces bother you; or just budget 1$ extra to buy them from BL. Seems like such a trivial complaint against the set.

E X A C T L Y.

P.S. before the DD was announced or a pic was leaked, conversation regarding the minifigures faces always seemed to be more about switching them for the newer different expression faces. I like the change.

[Huigberts Builds]

Wow the new Downtown Diner set looks amazing. This is surely one of the most unique modular building sets ever. They've really accomplished that 50s look. Also is it just me or does the singer look a lot like Rick Astley?

[Ghostcat]

My colour sense on images is crap. This is the colour that rockraiders had or the same azure blue of galaxy squad?

[TheLegoDr]

4 hours ago, koalayummies said:

They're the precursor to what is now known as the minifigure. Googling 'first lego minifigure' yields that result. Its a valid comparison, arguing semantics on the other hand is a waste of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_minifigure

For the semantics pedants, change is a very good thing.  

 

 

I actually really like the plain fireman and police officer better. Funny how that works

 

[Aanchir]

9 hours ago, Qahne said:

I prefer the timeless, more stylised LEGO look over the detailed caricatures they do now. History has shown that simpler styles age the best, both in art and in other areas of design. The classic minifig is 40 and it's still a design icon; I believe many of the modern designs or the spinoffs like the mini-doll will be dated in the future. The fact that they've redone their philosophy on minifig design so many times in the past 15 years compared to simply adding parts on to the classic face as the 35 years before (a beard, a moustache, an eyepatch, glasses, etc) is a reflection of a more transient design direction that really goes against the whole appeal of LEGO being a simple, timeless toy to me.

Honestly in the past 12 years or so I don't feel like the general minifigure face design standards have changed much at all. You look at a figure like Rascus and he could still fit in pretty well with a modern-day Ninjago or Nexo Knights figure. Certainly design standards have become a lot more stable than they were in the 90s and early naughts when we had all kinds of weird and awful faces (it's kind of ironic to read a comment about designs that don't age well from somebody with a LEGO Island avatar… though granted, the Infomaniac is one of the only characters in that game whose design did age fairly well).

Even in the early 90s when faces were still simple like you describe, there are some that have aged very poorly. This one here looks more like a sex doll than a real person (arguably, several early female minifig heads did). Plus, only about seven or eight years passed between the first figs with facial features other than a smile (in the 1989 Pirates sets) and some of the worst ever minifig faces (like Flatfoot Thomsen and the various American Indians from the Wild West theme). Certainly some throw shade at themes like Exo-Force and Clone Wars that consciously broke from design conventions of the time, but at least those generally didn't resemble racist caricatures. With that in mind, the fact that we've gone so long with fairly consistent design standards tells me that the minifigure is largely through with a lot of its earlier "growing pains".

28 minutes ago, Ghostcat said:

My colour sense on images is crap. This is the colour that rockraiders had or the same azure blue of galaxy squad?

The same as in Rock Raiders. That's why it's so extraordinary… it's very rare for a color to come out of retirement like that.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Aanchir

[ChrisPChicken]

6 hours ago, koalayummies said:

They're the precursor to what is now known as the minifigure. Googling 'first lego minifigure' yields that result. Its a valid comparison, arguing semantics on the other hand is a waste of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_minifigure

For the semantics pedants, change is a very good thing.  

I like a variety of expressions, but I'm not a fan of the many frustrated, angry, serious and hard-working expressions. I hate bad cop, for example. I don't use them in my layouts, my town is too laid back for them I guess.

In my opinion, all of the images you chose are a win for the classic smiles.

[koalayummies]

14 minutes ago, ChrisPChicken said:

I like a variety of expressions, but I'm not a fan of the many frustrated, angry, serious and hard-working expressions. I hate bad cop, for example. I don't use them in my layouts, my town is too laid back for them I guess.

In my opinion, all of the images you chose are a win for the classic smiles.

So a sunshine and rainbows fairytale town where everyone has a the same cloned pharmaceutical induced smile. 

Funny how it works indeed, adults fretting over Lego.  The nostalgia obsession among a few may worry a psychiatrist but its not enough to stop me from loving the change to the new faces for even a second!

[Gorki247]

I also like the change to the new faces. I've actually been thinking about replacing the classic faces with new ones. I did this with the old and Clone Wars era stormtroopers, but that was easy. For the modulars I would need to find the right face, something that would match their character.

[ReplicaOfLife]

5 hours ago, ChrisPChicken said:

I like a variety of expressions, but I'm not a fan of the many frustrated, angry, serious and hard-working expressions. I hate bad cop, for example. I don't use them in my layouts, my town is too laid back for them I guess.

In my opinion, all of the images you chose are a win for the classic smiles.

This!

Also, I don't get the argument that the new faces allow different expressions, while the old ones did not. They don't. They allow exactly ONE expression each, just as the old ones. But, contrary to the old ones, what you get is not a neutral face for all that allows you to project whatever you feel like unto it. Instead they are frozen in - sometimes grotesquely overdone - expressions that can't be more than momentary snapshots, that are just ridiculous if you want to have that same minifig just 'walking around' or doing something else. Having someone walk around with an expression of extreme frustration/anger/strain all the time is nonsensical. Having someone walk around with a smile on his face, on the other hand, is not.

So my vote in favor of the plain, smiling faces is also a vote for creativity and usage of imagination, and against prefabrication and scripted storytelling. With the old faces, you could project whatever you wanted upon any minifig. For example: A plainclothes minifig in a police set could be a crook, a passersby, a secretary, a witness or anything else you wanted it to be. With the new ones, all you get (usually) beside the cops are angry/mischievous crooks that are pretty much impossible to cast into any other role.

Edited December 2, 2017 by RogerSmith

[Sammael]

Yeah, because it was so easy to project whatever we wanted to the smiling faces of Lion Knights and Black Falcons while they were disemboweling themselves. Or the smiling face of a Dragon Knight who ran into a ghost. Or the smiling face of a Futuron monorail operator being held at gunpoint by Blacktron raiders.

Even if LEGO City is supposed to be a Roddenberry-style utopia (and it's not, it's a police state run by the Octan corporation), smiley faces look ridiculous in many other themes.

Now, if the default face had a neutral expression instead of a smile, your argument would have merit. This way, it's purely nostalgia speaking.

[Darnok]

While I am not a fan of the new Modular, the change about minifig faces is the least of my concerns. People who like it "oldschool" can just change the new heads for old ones, while you are also not forced to use the old heads with previous Modulars. You can even mix them, the horror!

[LegoSjaak]

My layout has such measurements that you cannot see what faces the minifigs have...haha!

[Capparezza]

15 hours ago, koalayummies said:

They're the precursor to what is now known as the minifigure. Googling 'first lego minifigure' yields that result. Its a valid comparison, arguing semantics on the other hand is a waste of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_minifigure

For the semantics pedants, change is a very good thing.

I'm neither a semantics pedant, nor a nostalgic romantician. Sorry if you got that feeling just by those 5 words I issued.

You compared the precursor to the now current minifigs - precursors without any arms and without movable legs. To me, THIS comparison is way off. The real change has occured way back when LEGO decided to make the precursor posable by adding movable arms and legs and a face. Comparing the classic minifig and the precursor would've been more fitting.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Capparezza

[DeanLearner]

3 hours ago, Gorki247 said:

 

I also like the change to the new faces. I've actually been thinking about replacing the classic faces with new ones.

 

I’m slowly accumulating a range of heads to do the same thing, and personally I feel it will help to add a bit more character to my layout, as well as integrating the modulars better into the standard creator and city sets I have.

 

3 hours ago, RogerSmith said:

So my vote in favor of the plain, smiling faces is also a vote for creativity and usage of imagination, and against prefabrication and scripted storytelling.

I appreciate some people’s preference for a simpler, and arguably more “classic” aesthetic, e.g. with buildings in the 70s style (though as @Sammael , nostalgia for classic themes is not without complication); but I don’t think that your argument really works that this is a more imaginative way of working.

The addition of detail into models, whether that is in terms of buildings, vehicles, or minifigures, may reduce the range of possible interpretations, but that is not an invalid choice. My sets are on display rather than being used for regular play, and so I like to have little vignettes within them, with facial expressions being used to tell a story (akin to some model railway layouts I remember seeing as a child). I don’t agree that this is any less imaginative, and besides, the argument of it being prefabricated is not very useful, as what is Lego, if not prefabricated?

 

[Aanchir]

There are a lot of reasons I prefer the more modern heads. As a disclaimer, I have always been a big fan of story-driven themes and their potential for storytelling play. Just as sets with more complex builds teach kids to be more advanced builders, themes with more complex stories teach kids to be more advanced storytellers. Consequently, themes like Bionicle and Ninjago inspire a wealth of fan art, fan fiction, fan animations, and other forms of storytelling beyond just MOCs. None of the people who write great books and movies and comics and plays got there by closing themselves off from other people's stories and forcing themselves to create in a complete vacuum of outside influences. Enjoying other people's stories is how you acquire the tools to create better stories yourself.

Much has been said about how open-ended the classic themes were, but as a kid I found myself much more inspired to create stories with my sets and figures if I had some kind of "story starter", like characters who had some established (or even just suggested) personality or motivations. A figure with a generic smiley face is just a cipher — there's nothing more to them than whatever job their clothes happen to suggest. But give them determined-looking eyebrows or a devilish smirk and suddenly they convey the sense of a character with real thoughts and feelings. And then you can start digging into them on a deeper level. Why is this character angry? What is this character so determined to do? What is this character scared of? Even a happy expression conveys more meaning in this context than it does if every character has the same happy smile. As Sammael pointed out above, the smiley face is NOT an inherently neutral expression. To imagine a character with the classic smile being angry or sad or frightened means having to IGNORE their facial cues… and how is that any less limiting than having to disregard another expression like a scowl, open-mouthed grin, or frown?

From a creative building standpoint, more detailed faces greatly multiply the mixing and matching possibilities you have with a given number of figures. More detailed faces also help free figures from the outdated idea that hairstyle denotes gender. Just look at how the boxer in this set uses a hair piece originally designed for female figures, but his printed mustache helps make him more recognizable as a man with wavy hair. Similarly, a face with more feminine traits like lipstick enables you to use a shorter hairstyle without the figure being confused for male. Furthermore, regardless of what other facial features the figures might have, I greatly prefer minifigure faces with eyebrows and white sparkles in their eyes. It makes them feel so much more alive compared to the classic black dot eyes.

Finally… I have over the years seen some obnoxious articles that try to insinuate that figures with angry, sad, or determined emotions somehow influence kids' development in a negative way, whereas a world of smiling faces inspires kids to grow up to be happy and agreeable. Now that right there is some hot garbage. Speaking from experience as an autistic person, it's profoundly important that kids learn to understand and recognize emotional cues, and to be aware that everybody being happy all the time is neither realistic nor ideal. Kids need to know that being upset about things is valid, that showing how you are feeling is valid, and that "negative" emotions can be just as effective motivators as positive ones.

[jdubbs]

Very well said... I could not agree more, Aanchir. Your comments, especially the second paragraph, bring to mind a book written by a close friend of mine: Journey, by Aaron Becker. It's a wordless children's picture book, depicting a young girl who can't get her family's attention, picks up a crayon, and draws an entrance to a fantastical world that she then steps into. What sets it apart from most children's books is that I have to provide the details of the story as I read it to my son, since there aren't any words. The broad strokes are all on the page, but a lot is still left up to interpretation and so each time you read it, the story changes. As my son gets older (he's now 3), there are a lot of details that he is now filling in himself, so the questions he asks — "why is she sad?" "why are the bad guys chasing her?" etc. — he now answers himself. The same goes for the LEGOs we play with together... my son generates stories and characters for everybody, taking the cues that the figures provide and running with them. 

(Sidebar: Aaron is a big LEGO fan and is actually the one that introduced me to LEGOs as an adult... though he's also a bit of an old-school purist and might actually prefer the generic smileys!). 

 

[Dakar A]

14 hours ago, Aanchir said:

The same as in Rock Raiders. That's why it's so extraordinary… it's very rare for a color to come out of retirement like that.

Wasn't it retired back around the great Lego consolidation, in favor of dark purple? That's what I heard, and considering they're much more stable now and have introduced a number of new colors, it seems like the perfect time to bring it back into rotation. Fingers crossed for sand red and purple next!

[Dakar A]

Also, figure I'll throw my hat into the classic smiley vs. detailed expression debate- I prefer the detailed expressions for the exact reasons that others like KoalaYummies and Aanchir said: they allow for so much more inherent characterization for figures than the classic smiley. Sure, the classic is a blank slate, but it also makes them feel lifeless and artificial (like they've been Kragle'd ). Whereas the new detailed faces allow you to build your figures with character and inherent traits. Plus there are quote-unquote 'default' smiling faces in the new style:

 and 

But you can also add to a character built with those heads- say you've got a female chef in your Parisian Restaurant with the face on the right, but then her turkey catches fire! Oh no! You can change her face to this, and she's now perturbed by the burning bird instead of staring blankly at it with a default smile on the face:

And that kind of power is why I think that the detailed smiles are the better choice, going forward.

[ElectroDiva]

Wow - who would have thought classic smiley vs expressive minifig faces would be such an emotive topic?

 

Personally - I like both and see uses for either in the right setting. Classic smiley when you want a neutral look and don't want to detract from an accompanying build, expressive faces when you want to inject a bit of emotion into a scene/vignette.

 

I will however be sorry to see the demise of the classic smiley in the modular building series as up until now it's been one of the hallmarks of the series. I'm sure I'll get over it though.

[Brick_MOCery]

I think both can be worked in together. I mean, in the real world we have more "plain" looking people and then those dolled up and a little more animated. I think the classic face looks like a plain happy go lucky person, while the newer more detailed faces look like younger hipper people or movie star like types. To me they work well together. I have a mix and I really just don't notice it. It's like the melting pot that is the world. Everyone is different and different is good. Plus, I don't know why with just this one set we are assuming that is the new norm? Who said they were moving to the new faces just because this "one" set doesn't have them? Did someone from Lego officially make this claim? Not that I am aware of. Seems like we are getting all bent out of shape because of a few posts that amount to nothing more than someone supposition which inevitably becomes a rumor and ends up being "true" as we see over the past few pages here.