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Star Wars: The Clone Wars S4

forgot to say, but aren't the Nightsisters just as strong as the Sith in the Dark Side? i guess this won't matter too much if dooku brings the droid army along with him.
 
No the nightsisters are the equivalent of the dark jedi just apprentices in the dark side, the sith are the masters of the dark side.
 
So it seems unlikely that those bounty hunters will make it into action figure form besides maybe Hardeen and Cad Bane in his new duds, if that. (Lego might make them, though.)

Lego just renewed their Star Wars license.
For 10 moar years.
We'll be getting everybody, bounty hunters included.

Slightly off topic, but did you see this summer's Queen Amiadala? Outstanding. No end in sight to the awesome of Star Wars Lego.

 
Everybody in Lego form, probably. they can reuse parts to save production costs. Hasbro has gotten stingy (citing production costs mainly, of course), they've said that Clone Wars toys will be subline as long as the 3D movies are released so 5 more years after this? The CW cartoon will be over by then, anyway.

Lego's doing LOTR, DC, Marvel, add that to Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones (i think those two are on hiatus now) and Spongebob...it's like a crossover mania. They have some classic movie monsters theme line...not officialy Universal Monster, though.

Fun stuff, I don't collect Lego. I just like to see what they make.
 
Lego has changed so much. When I was a kid, Lego was just... bricks. Period. Rectangular bricks in various sizes and colors, usually red, white, and blue, and some angled red pieces for building slanted roofs on Lego houses. Oh, and some wheels, pulleys, and gears in the more elaborate sets. They didn't have Lego figures yet. When I wanted to make Lego people, I'd take two of the smallest bricks, just two pips wide and one pip thick, and stick one (the head) on top of another (the body), then draw a smiley face on the top piece with a pencil, and maybe some hair around the edges. Everything came from my own imagination.

By the time I was in my early teens, they'd started to come out with themed playsets with human figures, but they weren't merchandising tie-ins, just things like City and Space and the like -- more distinct shapes, like rocket nozzles and cockpit visors and gray, cratered "lunar surface" platforms to build on for the space set, but you still had the freedom to put them together in any way you wanted.

These days, though, it seems all you really do is put together the pieces into predetermined vehicles and playsets based on things from movies and comic books, like building model kits. Instead of being raw materials for the imagination to cut loose on, they're prepackaged and predetermined. I don't see how that would be nearly as much fun, or nearly as stimulating to young minds.
 
By the time I grew up, Lego had evolved to include what was branded "Lego Technics" around here, which covered things like pneumatic cylinders, valves and piping, electric motors and numerous types of gears.

This was still way before "Mindstorms", though - initially you could only make the motors rotate in either direction at a fixed speed (which was of course enough to build a little compressor to power the pneumatics). Later they released a nifty control pult that one could hook multiple motors up to and vary their speed, as well as store and play back short macros of turning them on and off and switching direction and speed.

I used that to build a little plotter that could move a pen around on paper, and a car with four-wheel drive, etc. I remember my father being very proud when I independently developed a differential gear to fix issues with my car.

Those were wonderful times.

Edit: I also built a model of the Galaxy-class USS Enterprise that was capable of saucer seperation using the pneumatics. It was a pretty lopsided affair and fragile and fell apart all the time, though, and I was never happy with it because I didn't have enough grey bricks to make it aesthetically nice. My Enterprise was mostly yellow :(.
 
I don't see how that would be nearly as much fun, or nearly as stimulating to young minds.

That's because you're not young.

Yes of course you can build what they have on the box and suggest you build, on the other hand, if you feel inclined to do so, using the "raw" materials you have at hand, you can use those pieces to build what ever your imagination allows you too, as I did on a regular basis and children do these days.

To be honest, just having those old school lego bricks can be pretty restrictive. I would rather try and build a funky spaceship from parts salvaged from pieces of the Millennium Falcon, an X-Wing and Vadars Tie Interceptor over a house or other building using just cuboid pieces.

Plus, you wouldn't be able to make this if all you were restricted to were those cuboids.

DSC_2842.jpg
 
Actually, that Vader does seem to be mostly comprised out of bog-standard blocks.
 
Actually, that Vader does seem to be mostly comprised out of bog-standard blocks.

Yeah it does doesn't it, actually having a good look at it myself on Friday when I was in Hamleys in London, it really isn't though. :bolian:
 
By the time I grew up, Lego had evolved to include what was branded "Lego Technics" around here, which covered things like pneumatic cylinders, valves and piping, electric motors and numerous types of gears.

Yeah, I remember when Technics came along. That was just a year before they introduced Lego people, and I was 8-9 at the time. I think my family actually got a Technics set once (though they would've been called Expert Builders at the time); I have a memory impression of playing with it in the living room of the house we lived in until I was 10.

And yes, I was definitely pleased by the greater variety of options than the basic sets had, and pleased by the chance to play with the Space sets that came out soon thereafter (I never owned one, but my friend across the street from my second house had them, and I practically lived over there until that family moved away).

And Dimesdan, of course you have a point, and I didn't express myself well. I certainly haven't forgotten the ability children have to take their play in whatever direction they wish. Hell, I couldn't make a living as a writer if I'd lost touch with my childhood skill for imagination. What I meant was that the decisions of the toy designers seem strange and unfortunate to me -- it's like they're trying to do all the creativity themselves and instruct the children in what they're supposed to do with the toys, rather than creating something more broad-based that's specifically geared toward promoting children's own creativity.

And no, I don't think that because I'm not young anymore. I thought that way when I still was young. When I was a preteen or adolescent and saw these increasingly specific Lego sets coming out -- not to mention the sometimes insanely specific action figures based on a single moment or costume variant of a character in a film -- I thought those were terrible ideas for toys because they were too restrictive. As a child myself, I preferred toys that left it to me to do the creating -- things like basic Legos, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, modeling clay, crayons, etc. (not to mention the HO-scale train set that I only had for six months until we lost them in the aforementioned move to a new house -- waaaahh!!!!). I liked action figures, but just general character figures that I could put in any situation I imagined. Even then, I found the proliferation of figure variants based on specific scenes in a film to be annoying, more about trying to make the toy company more money than about trying to stimulate and satisfy children's imaginations. Sure, these days, such figures are geared mainly toward the collectors' market, but I'm not sure that market had really emerged yet in the early '80s. And I was reacting to it as a youngster who wanted toys to play with, not a collector seeking figures to mount on a shelf.
 
I felt it was strange when Lego started making licensed property sets. But IIRC, licensing saved the Lego brand...or boosted it a lot.

After that strange things happen, when they started making caucasian skin tone Lego people.

And before that non-smiley faces. Originally all mini-figs were :). (Pre minifigs were non-poseable blank faces...kinda creepy)

As a kid, I had a yellow castle that was made with bricks. Then they made grey castles with pre-fab wall pieces...not as cool. But I can see why they did it...lowered production costs and probably item weight but maintained the same appearance of size.
 
Kids still have amazing imaginations, despite toy maker's attempts to pre-program everything for them. On a recent visit to my niece, I was greatly entertained as both old and young Obi-Wan rode a green monkey to rescue Luke from evil dinosaurs. :)
 
I just started watching this show, I avoided it for ages as I am not a PT fan, but it really is pretty damn cool.
 
Kids still have amazing imaginations, despite toy maker's attempts to pre-program everything for them. On a recent visit to my niece, I was greatly entertained as both old and young Obi-Wan rode a green monkey to rescue Luke from evil dinosaurs. :)

This whole discussion brings me fond memories of the Lego Wars my sister, our friend and I used to play. :) The Lego Wars were very much like the Clone Wars, actually - lots of little stories that sometimes linked in to one another but often stood on their own. Different snapshots of the larger picture (not that we really had an idea of the picture before hand). Our friend had vast sets of lego, including Star Wars and Harry Potter, and we raided it all to build cities and large casts of characters that then interacted. It had to be the three of us, though - on the rare occassion someone else joined us they didn't "do it right". They just weren't on the same wavelength. It must have been frustrating for them, because we were all making it up as we went along - there were never rules - but my sister, our friend and I just "knew" what made the best cooperative story and outsiders just...didn't. :lol:

It was generally agreed that the standout character was my man "Joe", who was basically a cross between (I'm not kidding here) Indiana Jones and Joe Pasquale. I was an odd fellow.
 
I just started watching this show, I avoided it for ages as I am not a PT fan, but it really is pretty damn cool.

I also just finally got round to seeing some of it - the entire first season. I found it reasonably enjoyable, and might well watch the later seasons at some point. In some ways, this cartoon either avoids the errors of the prequels or renders them harmless because, hey, it's a childrens' cartoon this time and can get away with it. :)
 
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