Need I say much more than that? Even the black “nori” (seaweed) are black baseplates. This is pretty epic in shear size and scale.
I guess Sean and Steph Mayo were pretty hungry after creating their Coral Reef. Which is equally epic!
Look at it in large size to get the full effect and all the complex building. I think one of my favorite part is the use of the clickits bracelets.
If you’ve been paying attention at all to the buzz around the internet, you’ve probably seen at least on or several posts or articles about the LEGO Friends line. When I first heard about a new girl theme coming out over a year and a half ago at the LEGO Conventions I kept hearing “It’s unlike anything you’ve seen before.”
My reaction, like most AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO), was — we’ll see.
The first low-res pictures didn’t do much to sway my cynical opinion. It looked like a rehashing of older themes. Once I finally saw good quality pictures, I thought it looked a lot like Polly Pocket. And it does. But so do a lot of other toys geared towards girls.
Unlike previous girl LEGO lines, LEGO Friends was widely promoted by the company. And almost before the first press release got out, the backlash started.
“LEGO already has a LEGOs for girls — they are called LEGOs” one person touted (and I apologize to all who cringe when an “s” is added to LEGO).
This comic posted on FBTB.net showed another side of it.
But what a lot of those who are complaining don’t know, or don’t care to research. Is that this is hardly the first time LEGO has made girl sets. They’ve been doing it for decades. Ever since the first Homemaker sets in 1971, LEGO has made sets clearly geared towards girls. That’s over 30 years people!
So why now? Well part of it is just because these naysayers can. Part of it is because LEGO didn’t promote previous incarnations like Belville and Scala as strongly as LEGO Friends. So all of these people who never really paid attention to LEGO themes before are taking sides over LEGO Friends. There’s even a petition to stop LEGO Friends.
A petition? Really? Don’t we have anything else to worry about?
I admit, Belville, Scala, and Clickits were never my favorite lines. I felt and still feel that they were an insult to my intelligence. There were no difficult builds and the figures looked like Barbie for LEGO — especially Scala. The only girl lines I liked were the Homemaker line which is a little bit before my time, and Paradisa.
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know I’m not a girly girl. In fact I took over my brothers’ LEGO bricks when they grew out of them. Something I never did. So even though I like Paradisa, it was too girly for me. I much preferred Castle or City — before it was populated only by cops, firemen, and robbers. I grew up in the golden age of LEGO when some of the truly great lines came out. I was just as into space and pirates as my brother (my little brother was a little too young at the time).
So when Scala and Belville were finally available in the US — they were originally only available in Europe — I was already a die-hard LEGO fan. These sets annoyed me and I ignored them. I refused to buy them because I didn’t like them. But what I didn’t realize was how many cool accessories there were. Food and cooking elements especially. So as I got more building savvy and started looking as sets more like parts packs and less like sets, I started to purchase Scala and Belville.
So what do I think of LEGO Friends? Well I wanted to wait until I had gotten some before I gave my opinion. I was getting more and more excited as I saw all the fun elements. And now that I have a couple sets I really, really like them.
Even with the images I’d seen of Friends to Minifig scale comparisons, I didn’t really appreciate how very small they Friends dolls are. They are tiny! Which naturally makes them cuter. They won’t replace my love for the Minifig, but they won’t be relegated to the back of the LEGO box either.
When I saw the sets in the stores I wanted to buy all of them! Okay, maybe that is my girly side coming out, but I am a girl, so that’s okay. 😉
Lots of non-LEGO people are complaining about the pink. But there is actually very little pink in the sets. And there are all these great new colors and parts! There are just as many, if not more, male AFOLs wanting these sets because of the accessories.
So in short — after this long rant — I like LEGO Friends. Is it exactly what I would have wanted as a child? No, but that’s what Modular Buildings are for. I do want all of the sets, if not multiples. I love the new accessories and colors. The MOC (my own creation) potential is very high! And I will be recommending them to everyone. I hope they come out with more. My opinion — Cool. 🙂
Katie Walker never ceases to amaze! By using the mirrors from Clickits sets she created a working kaleidoscope! Truly a stunning achievement and a good lesson that even when a LEGO theme fails, there are still really cool things you can do with the parts. 😉
On a completely unrelated note, for those missing my annual Christmas Advent Calendar review, well I’m missing it too. 😦
Photo by minifig
The good / bad thing this year is that I am much, much busier with my business compared to previous years. Christmas is one of my busiest times, and it gets busier every year as I help Santa with Christmas gifts.
And unfortunately one of the things I’ve had to let go this year was my daily Advent Calendar story review. Normally I get it prepared in November, but even November was really busy for me. As you can probably tell from my less frequent blog posts, I’m getting busier all the way around. Not that I’m complaining mind you, I’m just sad that I can’t do twenty things all at once. 😀
I think we all have to agree that the new face clingers from Alien Conquest sets is awesome. I immediately wanted several, although I only have 1 at the moment (but I’m accepting donations — just kidding 😉 )
Anyhow, back to the post, when I saw Karf Oohlu’s latest creation and the story that goes along with it, it made me rethink of the face clingers as the menaces they are portrayed to be. 😀
The day Grxzz always feared had arrived. Rumours of…HUMANS…seen wondering in the area. They’d always been a horror fantasy, something you used to scare the kids. But now, it seems they’re here, Quivering down to the very ends of his tentacles, he really wished he’d waited for others to arrive before coming out here – alone…
That’s not to say that I’m not impressed with the building techniques. The use of the Clickits elements — a theme that wasn’t so good, but elements that were, in my opinion — as mushroom tops is very cool.
Poor little Grxzz, all by himself searching for humans. Of course as he is a face clinger he could always just grab hold of them and take over their brains, at least that is what they did in Futurama. 😀
Well its come to the last few days of my project. I still won’t show you the full model yet, but I’ll give you another peek:
As you can probably guess from the picture this is a really large building. To give you an idea on size — there are almost 1,000 plants on this building and more that will go around as landscaping.
Here’s another Model Building tip to tide you over — Because of the plastic that LEGO plants are made off normal glues don’t work on them. The best solution when placing down hundreds of leaves and flower stems is to hammer tiny nails through the stud and into the LEGO below. To “hide” the fact that there are all these nails on the plants I then took a green Sharpie permanent marker pen (well two different shades of green actually) and colored all the nail heads so that they match closer to the color of the plants.
Now back to building my model! 🙂
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