LEGO: Exo Force

[Dragonboym2]

[COLOR=Blue][COLOR=Blue]Hey out there, everyone.

When I was kid, Legos were one of my favorite things in the world. Did any of you play with Legos? Oh, the advetures I had with them when I was a kid.
My favorite themes were:

CASTLE-I really liked this one. I had a couple castles, a large group of midevil mini-figures, and get this: A real working lego catapult! It could fire off little rocks across the room!

SPACE-This one was the one I was into the most. I had many spaceships from all sorts of space themes. I even had this HUGE spaceship that had a badass laser cannon on it. I'm not kidding.

ADVETURERS-This is like "Indiana Jones" stuff. It a had a daring hero, crazed villians, treasrues, stuff like that.

NINJA-I'm not kidding. I really wanted these, but I never got around to them. They had ninja, samurai, fortresses, not bad.

But in the recent years, I thought Lego was suffering. Alot of their products were based off licenced stuff liked "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter." I thought that kind of killed some of Legos creative spirit. Even the wildly inventive "Bionicle" started to suffer with OVA movies, that gave away the endings to Bionicle sagas. Then one day, this came along.
"Exo Force", an anime inspired Lego theme. I was suprised at how they now got mini figures that resemble anime characters, and these really cool lego mecha you can build. It revolves around your basic "good vs. evil" story, with humans fighting robots in giant robots. I got say, I like this. It's a good idea, and I hope it goes well. As for creativity, they of course supply products with summerys, and some characters, but from there, it's all yours. It's nice to see that Lego is re-embracing the creative spirt that made it famous. With giant robots, no less. :)
What do you guys think?

"KAMEHAMEHA!"

Dragonboym2[/COLOR][/COLOR]

[Allamorph]

[FONT=Arial]Oh, man. LEGOs. Wow, it's been a long time since I've played with those. I mean really played - I went home recently and dragged out my tub of miscellaneous blocks and sets, but that doesn't count. All of my old constructs were still there, though, which means my younger siblings haven't been into them. I've taught them well. (^_^)

Yeah, I was a space kid myself. Those were my favorite sets: the Explorians, Spyrius, Unitron, Blacktron (which no one seems to remember). That and the original two underwater themes - Aquasharks and Aquanauts. Never got too much into the whole castle/pirate/town bit. Although, I have lusted after those kick-butt police sets. The Adventurers were cool, too, 'cause they had those neat little jewel blocks, and the hero was named Johnny Thunder. How awesome is that? I ask you! (Really. I ask you.)

I was also depressed when LEGO started selling out to popular movie titles to make money. Star Wars didn't bother me so much because no one can resist a two-thousand piece Millenium Falcon (forgive me my slight exaggeration). But when I started seeing Harry Potter and Spiderman I was pretty well disgusted. I liked LEGO for its originality and the way it made all those sets out of basically the same pieces, and for sets to have twice as many specialty pieces as normal stuff seemed a little pointless and felt like the company was catering to the kids it produced for instead of encouraging them to create their own stuff. I couldn't build anything with a web-rope except...well...a web-rope, or maybe an odd-looking nunchaku for my giant mecha that I'd made out of the [B][I]real[/I][/B] sets I already owned.

Bionicle gave me hope, especially when I got free DC Bionicle comics along with my LEGO Magazine (which they've since stopped sending to me, even though I haven't 'outgrown' them yet). It was a great idea, and I enjoyed both the comic and the sets. When LEGO started putting out their Bionicle movies, they neglected to keep the flow of their comic book going, and even though they started a new series, I lost interest.

I haven't seen much of their Exo Force line yet; it sounds like a good ole' LEGO idea taken from somewhere that worked, renamed, redesigned, and (hopefully) rebuildable. I'll check it out. Maybe my descendents will have toys other than the PS3 to play with when they're four. The wooden playgrounds have almost become relics, what with those darn static-shocking plastic deformities replacing them.[/FONT]

[The Spectacular Professor]

YESSS!!! LEGO is so one three three seven! Man, I used to spend so much time in my room building robot mutant shark people and the like. Heck, sometimes I even dust off the ol' collection and start building (I currently have a very crude representation of the Going Merry on my bookshelf among other creations.) Yeah, I've heard of the Exo Force thing, which seems kind of cool. I wonder how they come up with the names, though. I noticed that one of the characters is named Hikaru, so I instantly thought "After he gave up Go and dyed his hair blue." Anyway, the liscensing thing doesn't nessecaily mean that they're going downhill. If so, there is no explanation for LEGO Star Wars II (great game, by the way.)

[neomonkey]

LEGO IS GREAT! I love them so much, I have a door magnet that says "Warning: I still play with legos".

But yes, lego is suffering with the release of the Spongebob, batman and other licensed sets. Now [B]Bionicle[/B], that's a different story. :cool:

[Dragonboym2]

[QUOTE=neomonkey]LEGO IS GREAT! I love them so much, I have a door magnet that says "Warning: I still play with legos".

But yes, lego is suffering with the release of the Spongebob, batman and other licensed sets. Now [B]Bionicle[/B], that's a different story. :cool:[/QUOTE]
What kind of Legos do you like? I think the Batman Legos are kind of cool.

[Solo Tremaine]

[COLOR=#503F86]To be honest, I didn't mind LEGO licensing thsmeslves out to other franchises. After all, it's still LEGO, and the chances are they'd only have had to try and re-invent the old castle and city lines anyway (which they subsequently have). A friend and I recently went halves on a LEGO Star Wars Star Destroyer, and it was really great fun to put together, and looks amazing.

I had been sceptical of LEGO's franchising moves at first, but I think it came at a time when i was growing out of LEGO anyway. Now I've not played with it in ages I've suddenly found a whole new appeal to it- my friend and I spent about 14 hours in total building a massive science complex/living quarters for a lab on another planet. And it was great ^_^

Admittedly I'd never buy the Spiderman range because I'm not so sure it works by itself (hence why it comes with a cameraman and director, I think), but the Dino-Expidition or whatever it's called has a really nice-looking helicopter that I almost got as well.

I used to be into Bionicle but sort of fell out with it after watching the movie. That could have been better.[/COLOR]

[Raiyuu]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS]I have no problem at all with Harry Potter LEGO or Star Wars LEGO or any of the other franchised-out sets. But I DO think LEGO are getting lazy. Say you buy a set that builds a boat. You'll open the bag and there'll be a massive custom block shaped like the prow of a boat, where once you would have had to build it out of standard blocks. These huge custom blocks make it more difficult to mess around, experiment and build new stuff, too. You've got a piece that looks exactly like the prow of a boat, what are you going to build with it, except a boat, or something that looks like one? Standard blocks allow more for imaginative projects, which I thought were the whole point of LEGO.[/FONT]

[Dragonboym2]

[quote name='Raiyuu][FONT=Trebuchet MS']I have no problem at all with Harry Potter LEGO or Star Wars LEGO or any of the other franchised-out sets. But I DO think LEGO are getting lazy. Say you buy a set that builds a boat. You'll open the bag and there'll be a massive custom block shaped like the prow of a boat, where once you would have had to build it out of standard blocks. These huge custom blocks make it more difficult to mess around, experiment and build new stuff, too. You've got a piece that looks exactly like the prow of a boat, what are you going to build with it, except a boat, or something that looks like one? Standard blocks allow more for imaginative projects, which I thought were the whole point of LEGO.[/FONT][/quote]

[COLOR=Blue]Yeah, I think they are getting lazy too. I would like to see less franchise stuff, and go back to some orginality. Hey, you remember the Lego "Aquazone" sets? That was a pretty cool idea. An underwater world were two forces fight for control over these crystals that could be used as a sourse of oxygen. They had these cool subs, undersea bases, I liked it. Too bad it got canned, I wanted to see a sea monster of some kind for it.[/COLOR]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Dragonboym2][COLOR=Blue']Hey, you remember the Lego "Aquazone" sets? That was a pretty cool idea.[/COLOR][/quote]
[FONT=Arial]Yeah, and it looks like LEGO feels the same way. It looks like their reinvening the underwater set line. They're calling it [B]Aquaraiders[/B] (which sounds a little familiar, actually), and they've got about six/seven sets planned already. Good to see an original series revived, even if it might be a little used.

Oh, wait! Weren't the first [COLOR=Green][B]Aquaraiders[/B][/COLOR] the ones who were set against the [COLOR=DimGray][B]Stingrays[/B][/COLOR]? . . . Yeah, I just checked, and they were. They were released alongside both the [COLOR=DimGray][B]Stingrays[/B][/COLOR] and the [COLOR=Blue][B]Hydronauts[/B][/COLOR]. They were cool, but not as cool as the original Aquazone inhabitants - the [COLOR=Red][B]Aquasharks[/B][/COLOR] and [COLOR=Yellow][B]Aquanauts[/B][/COLOR].

And I agree totally about the specialty pieces. What can you do with them except build the type they were designed for? Nothing. For some pieces that's okay, but yeah, a boat prow is pretty much useless as anything but a boat prow.[/FONT]