A Brief Note On Ben 10
Entry posted by ToM Dracone
718 views
Initially, I was going to go into some sort of rant about what abominations these sets are, but I've come to realize that that would be quite pointless, for a number of reasons. Instead I shall explain why I am disinclined towards them, including those reasons. It's possible, even, that this entire entry will be filled with things you already know.
First, for clarity's sake, the best adjective to describe my feelings towards them is 'disappointed.' Not in the way I was disappointed with the 2008 Nuva, since I lack any sort of fondness for Ben 10 like I had with the Toa Nuva, since I had no idea what the show was so much as about until basically tonight. Rather, I'm disappointed with Lego for making them the way they did.
Clearly, Lego has created sets that will sell well, and already are. I think it's pretty simple to say why: Ben 10 is a popular thing, and these sets look impressively like the aliens from the show (so much so that one wonders, if basing a set on a familiar image is clearly a ticket to success, why they didn't make the Nuva actually look like the Nuva we know, but that's another matter). Therefore, kids see them, like both Ben 10 and Lego, say "cool!" at the combination, and they fly off the shelves.
Thus they achieve their purpose (making money for Lego), and you know what? They're pretty good-looking sets, from an aesthetic standpoint. Solid colors, smooth pieces, and we get some nice stuff out of them.
But – I wish Lego's goal in them were more than just to make money. That is what I find so disappointing.
They've done what's needed to make them sell well – now why not go a little bit beyond that? Why not actually, say, make the builds slightly more creative than Avotoran on a massive scale? I'm not talking UCS-type complexity here, or 2001-style functions. I'm talking about the level Bionicle's been at for the past few years, if absolutely nothing more: where the feet are separate pieces from the ankles and the torsos are made of several pieces, not just a front and a back, and the upper limbs have a 'bone' piece and then armor over that. Was it really necessary to strip all of what little complexity there is in the Bionicle style, leaving the Ben 10 sets with exclusively ball-and-socket joints as the connections between all but two pieces?
The Ben 10 sets are made pretty much exclusively of big, clunky pieces. While I recognize this is what many AFOLs (and heck, some of us Bionicle fans) have complained about in Bionicle for years (see things like the Piraka torso), there's a crucial distinction between even the clunkiest Bionicle piece and the Ben 10 pieces: something like the Piraka or Avotoran torsos is riddled with Technic connection points of all sorts, and (minus the Avotoran-clone sets) every Bionicle set has been filled with Technic connectors of some sort. Ben 10 pieces are lucky to have an axle hole in them, and if they have anything more, it's just a minifigure rod-sized hole (the kind viking horns attach to, for clarity).
We've already seen several creative folk make lovely-looking MOCs with the Ben 10 pieces, so clearly they're not useless (and some of them are in fact quite appealing, even to me).
But what gets me is this: the Ben 10 pieces look as if they were not designed to be usable in ways other than what they do in the sets. And that is the essence of why I feel enormously disappointed in Lego here. They look like they're the result of some line of reasoning like "Hey, these sets need to be solid builds that look like Ben 10 characters. Don't bother making them work as anything else; the important part is that they sell well, not that their pieces are modular."
Some are better than that. The lower legs are a welcome addition to the lineup of Bionicle limbs; the new torso is intriguing and does have a fair amount of connections, but is limited severely by how huge it is.
But the rest... are just oversimplified and disappointing.
~ ToM
10 Comments
Recommended Comments