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Lego depicting war is so depressing... (well, except for Lego Star Wars of course, somehow that seems to pass both the corporate and my personal "no way toys!"
by usrusr 4y ago
Lego depicting war is so depressing...
(well, except for Lego Star Wars of course, somehow that seems to pass both the corporate and my personal "no way toys!" filters)
- bluetomcat 4y agoAs far as themed sets go, Lego has been consistent in promoting aggressiveness in the last 30 years. Police chasing the bad guys to put them in a prison cell, pirates wanting to plunder the treasure, ninjas riding heavily-armed aircraft.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoAre you criticizing Lego for producing what sells? Aren’t they producing what our culture wants? Do you think a wokeness set would sell as well as a pirate set?
- egypturnash 4y agoThere was a time when Lego was pretty solidly pacifist in what they chose to make. Sure, you could make a gun out of your bricks, but they didn’t make plans for them, or special parts. Over time this has changed. There is an entire page on Wikipedia dedicated to chronicling this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_Lego https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_Lego
- NickNameNick 4y agoWhen was that time? Because classic space had rayguns, and the pirate ships had working cannons.
- Morgawr 4y ago> When was that time? It's literally written in the article that the person you are responding to linked. I'd recommend reading it.
- Xylakant 4y agoThe article is about “realistic weapons that kids may recognize from conflict zones.” Everyone I know from the time took the various “antenna” pieces on the space craft as “laser guns.” The space police figures had weird looking pieces that can be interpreted as or such, but they easily serve as futuristic guns as well. I’m observing my kid picking up lego and assembling my old sets and they take that the same way without prompting. Using bricklink as proof that the number of weapons increased is hilarious. Many kits used and still use regular bricks in places where they can clearly be read as weapons. (1) Lego definitely has a trend to make more specialized pieces now, so it’s not surprising at all that more specialized weapons show up. (1) The cannonballs are listed as “Brick Round, 1x1 open stud”, because that’s what they originally are. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3062b&name=Brick,%20Round%201%20x%201%20Open%20Stud&category=%5BBrick,%20Round%5D#T=C https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3062...
- gattilorenz 4y ago> From 1945 onwards, Lego began producing a wooden version of a toy pistol. The company then applied for a patent of the model in 1946. A plastic version of a rapid-firing pistol began to be manufactured in 1949. The first minifigure is from 1978, the first weapon is from the same year.
- wodenokoto 4y agoYeah, it's pretty weak. According to the article, they made toy guns up till 1962, and then reintroduced weapons in the 1970s, with the caveat that they would not be realistic, current weapons (so space guns and pirate guns are okay. AK47 is not, presumably). But yearning for a 12 year period in the middle of the last century and talking about it as if deviating from it is a recent sign of the company losing its way, is a little odd IMHO.
- mmustapic 4y agoPolice transitioned from just cops with a police station or a motor cycle directing traffic to police stations with jails and criminals inside.
- dleslie 4y agoI have a Lego City police station from the mid-80s that has a jail cell.
- bombcar 4y agoThe very first Lego police station had a jail cell: https://blog.firestartoys.com/evolution-of-the-brick-lego-police-headquarters/ https://blog.firestartoys.com/evolution-of-the-brick-lego-po... but no criminals, I guess you had to supply your own or assume that one of the cops is a dirty rat.
- mmustapic 4y agoI never understand the argument of "what our culture wants". You can still be a critic even if it's the norm. Also, you can cater to a part of what the culture wants, so yeah, you can criticise Lego.
- tzmudzin 4y ago> Are you criticizing Lego for producing what sells? There is demand for all sorts of things the society in general considers harmful. If one chooses to offer it anyway, be prepared for the criticism.
- dleslie 4y agoWell, FWIW it's impossible to find a Pirate set on a brick and mortar shelf, but Lego Friends and similar are still selling reasonably well.
- bombcar 4y agoPirates have never really "come back" as an official theme but pirate-themed sets have appeared on shelves now and then (Creator has one). Part of the problem is that dedicated toy stores are almost dead, so if Walmart or Target's shelf of LEGO doesn't have it, it basically doesn't exist.
- ARandomerDude 4y agoPirates, knights, ninjas, cops and robbers, etc. are part of being a boy. Girls have Barbie.
- kergonath 4y agoIs that it, are we back at “video games cause murders”-level pearl clutching? I’ll take a peer-reviewed cohort study before I believe that “Lego has been consistent in promoting aggressiveness”.
- kingofpandora 4y agoPoster said Lego has been promoting aggressiveness, not that it has caused aggressiveness. It's undeniable that Lego themes have drifted a lot more to violence (Lego City is half about Policing), plus all the Ninja and other stuff.
- Xylakant 4y agoI deny Lego themes drifted towards violence. I just went through my kits from the late 80ies/early 90ies since kid is reaching Lego age. I was a big fan of Space, and like > 60% of the sets are Blacktron and Space Police. City kits always had police and my cousin mostly owned Castles/Knights. There were pirates and pirate ships with cannons that can shoot bricks (we loved those) Pirates seem to be mostly gone and replaced by Ninjago but police stuck around. No surprise, kids love police stories. On the civilian side of Lego City, a large collection of civilian space exploration has been added. Space definitely has been demilitarized.
- usrusr 4y agoYeah, the answers in this thread clearly show that I greatly overestimated whatever pacifism commitment Lego ever had. I'm genuinely surprised, apparently they were quite successful at overselling the "play good" brand to me. Pirate cannons actually throwing plastic? Before today I was convinced that this was the defining difference between Lego and Playmobil. I'm from the region that is home to playmobil and we have a joke here that by count of items identifiable as "handgun" we have the world's largest guns manufacturer at our doorsteps, given the number of pirate and wild west kits sold each year.
- bombcar 4y ago
- smcl 4y agoThe police minifigs have certainly kept up with real life US cops: https://twitter.com/aliceavizandum/status/1141547556322852864 https://twitter.com/aliceavizandum/status/114154755632285286...
- dudul 4y agoThe switch that I really regretted was the move from "open play" to "good vs bad". When I was a kid I had a ton of castle sets. They were pretty much "neutral". Various factions doing their thing, some a bit more shady sure, but you could set up whichever story and alliance you wanted. In early 2000 it turned into humans vs ugly trolls. I felt like so much was taken away from kids by doing that.
- Thorrez 4y ago>well, except for Lego Star Wars of course Until you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WmLmPYvrMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WmLmPYvrMA
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 4y agoWatching this makes me feel ill, and it has nothing to do with the content. Seriously, were they holding a phone in their hand while moving minis around?
- marginalia_nu 4y agoProbably just someone figuring out stop-motion by trial and error.
- Thorrez 4y agoLol. I actually created it. Sorry for the undisclosed self-promotion. I made this when I was 14. Yeah, camera stability was a major problem for me in pretty much all my videos, and this one is especially bad. I'm trying to remember exactly what I did over half my lifetime ago... This was made with a point and shoot camera. I think the 2nd shot was indeed me holding the camera with my hand. I don't think there's any actual character movement there though, so that shot didn't involve me moving the characters. I had the actual Episode 3 up and was going through it frame by frame trying to replicate the scene with the same camera angles and possibly camera movement. I think simply setting the camera on the table wouldn't have given me the angles I wanted. There was no tripod short enough to get the camera as low to the table as necessary. I would need cutouts in the set's floor for the camera, requiring multiple sets or a set that can be broken into different pieces. That was too complicated for me and I'm not even sure if I had a tripod at that time. For the 1st shot, it looks like the camera is sitting on top of something (maybe a book) because its elevation seems constant. Its angle though is quite erratic, so I think I was tilting it down with my hand because simply setting it flat on the book wasn't giving the necessary downward angle. For the last shot, I think the camera was sitting level on the table. This shot is the most stable, but is still pretty shaky. The camera had a shutter button that required a fair amount of force to press. Every time I pressed it there was a large chance that it would move the camera. Also it was a crowded set. Sticking my hands in there to move the characters often resulted in me bumping the camera. For the 3rd shot, possibly the camera was also sitting on something. Another problem is I think the camera was on autofocus, auto exposure, and auto whitebalance. So between each picture these settings could change, which also contributed to inconsistencies between frames. I don't even think that camera had the option of manual focus. As I got better at stop motion, I started using a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 USB webcam attached to my laptop. That allowed me to trigger a frame by pressing a key on my keyboard, which wouldn't shake the camera. I also then enabled manual focus, exposure, and whitebalance, and could use onion skinning. The camera also had hinges allowing the height and vertical angle to be adjusted easily. I focused more on keeping the camera steady, by building a LEGO cage around it, and trying to avoid bumping it while moving the characters. I didn't have a cell phone at the time. I think I got my first phone a year and a half after this video. It was a feature phone and I think its picture quality was a lot worse than this point and shoot's quality or that of the QuickCam. I never thought about using it for stop motion; that would have been worse than this.
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoWhen I was a child, Lego was explicitly and deliberately pacifist in outlook. I remember reading that the colour palette was determined in part by this philosophy - green, grey and brown were verboten, the latter colour completely absent and the first two existing only in limited plate form. Of course manufacturing cost limitations made a restricted set of colours sensible anyway. As a preventative, this was not entirely effective - we war-mad kids still had red bombers intercepted by white fighter aircraft over a battlefield of blue armoured vehicles, we didn't care!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dxdm 4y agoWhen were you a child? In the late eightees, I happily played with Lego that had grey swords for knights in grey castles, and pirate themed stuff with brown guns, and cannons that were grey and brown. Lots of green base plates, too.
- Aeolun 4y agoNot to mention gray spaceships galore.
- mcv 4y agoI assume it was the 70s. During the 80s, Lego included more and more green, brown, and especially grey, and also more and more weapons. First swords and spears for the knights, later muskets for the Pirate theme, and then blasters for Star Wars. They still don't like modern weaponry, though. I'm not sure if they have guns for their cops and robbers. The real military stuff comes from clones/competitors, not from Lego.
- tokai 4y agoLooking through 70s lego sets there is a ton of greens and grays. Not a lot of 'violent' stuff, as it's mainly models of houses and transport vehicles. But it seems to come along with the minifigs in 78.