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The Weirdest LEGO Themes


aldero

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You know LEGO? Of course you do! They are a pretty good company, and have mostly deserved their high status among toy industries. But, throughout the years, LEGO has made some strange decisions with their lines of toys, and I am going to list some of them in no order.

 

Avatar: The Last Airbender

 

Great show, but odd sets. I didn't get any of the whopping two sets that we got for the line, but they look okay. Nothing major about this line, nothing particularly horrible, it's just odd. Probably a cash-grab regarding the popularity for the show at the time.

 

Ben 10

 

Yet again, another possible cash-grab. Ben 10 exploded in popularity during it's first run, and it was hard for anyone not to notice the ten-year old Benjamin wearing an ultra-powerful watch called the Omnitrix. So, during the second Ben 10 wave, LEGO released six constraction sets of six forms that come with the new Omnitrix powers. These sets were very forgettable, and had very simplistic builds that didn't really catch anyone's attention. While popping into my local toystore to get a few CITY sets, I thought I would pick up the Humongosoar (or whatever it was called) set. Why not? These consisted of few pieces, and weren't that interesting. I'm not bashing on the line for being simplistic, because it was just an innocent experiment.

 

Time Cruisers

 

Now this theme is pretty weird. I know I shouldn't be bashing on this theme so much, as it is an earlier System set, but these sets are still pretty strange. I know that the 'time travel' aspect is a main reason for all the weirdness, but the builds are all over the place. One particular set called the Flying Time Vessel is supposed to be a boat.. crossed with a plane... crossed with a pirate ship... what? The sets in general look like sets slapped together by the creative director's nephew, and shipped off and mass-produced to be sets. Weird.

 

Znap

 

Now I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel. While scrolling through themes on Brickset to look at some Viking sets (awesome sets, by the way), I found this theme. So I took a quick look, and the sets looked repulsive. It's an odd attempt to make vehicles out of the Technic line, and this was most probably the first try. Seriously, the sets look like they are made from straws! It's still pretty funny, since it looks like a LEGO knockoff when LEGO themselves made them. Yet again, a little dud on a good reputation.

 

And... Galidor

 

Oh boy. Galidor was an epic fail by LEGO. First of all, these look like cheap action figures made in China. There is absolutely nothing that makes it unique to LEGO. It's just your run-of-the-mill action figure. Second, the figures look horrible, and at times, terrifying if you look at some of them. I can't even explain how bad it is. Before you leave this post or write a comment, go and look up Galidor. Have fun laughing hysterically. Nice try LEGO, should have stayed content with Bionicle.

 

So? Have I introduced you to any themes you haven'y heard of? Disagree with me? Do you also think the Vikings sets are awesome? Give me your opinion.

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Mixels? Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's pretty weird.

 

Oh, also, Ben 10 had no such first wave. It was only the constraction...

Edited by Toa Green Ninja

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Mixels? Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's pretty weird.

 

Oh, also, Ben 10 had no such first wave. It was only the constraction...

He means the TV show. Hence, the Lego sets came out during TV Ben 10's second something.

 

 

Also- another weird theme was that Time Cruisers one. I had to check Brickipedia for the name, and I read about it... it was quite odd.

Edited by Pohatu: Master of Stone
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Primo. anyone else remember those? weird giant blocks that weren't compatible with other Lego pieces.

Primo was compatible with Duplo, which was compatible with Lego. To a certain extent it's like Bionicle, which, being directly compatible only with Technic, made it two degrees of separation away from standard bricks.

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Primo was compatible with Duplo, which was compatible with Lego. To a certain extent it's like Bionicle, which, being directly compatible only with Technic, made it two degrees of separation away from standard bricks.

 

I think you're thinking of Quatro bricks, not Primo/Baby bricks.

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Primo was compatible with Duplo, which was compatible with Lego. To a certain extent it's like Bionicle, which, being directly compatible only with Technic, made it two degrees of separation away from standard bricks.

I think you're thinking of Quatro bricks, not Primo/Baby bricks.

 

No, I'm pretty sure he's thinking of Primo, since our family actually owned Primo bricks and never owned Quatro bricks. Four Duplo studs can attach to the underside of any Primo brick, and this brick existed to attach Duplo bricks to the top of a Primo construction.

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No, I'm pretty sure he's thinking of Primo, since our family actually owned Primo bricks and never owned Quatro bricks. Four Duplo studs can attach to the underside of any Primo brick, and this brick existed to attach Duplo bricks to the top of a Primo construction.

 

Oh yeah! Totally forgot about that. My bad.

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That one theme with the ball-jointed action figures that had these gears that you turned so they could knock off each other's masks. That was pretty weird.

You smug little-

 

Chima was slightly weird. From the looks of it, it's like Chima was catering to just about every weirdo on the internet.

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That one theme with the ball-jointed action figures that had these gears that you turned so they could knock off each other's masks. That was pretty weird.

 

Do you mean Ultimate Judge: Masker? I know a guy who had Trua, it was pretty weird.

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Chima was slightly weird. From the looks of it, it's like Chima was catering to just about every weirdo on the internet.

What. It's. It's just anthropomorpphic animals. That's not even really a furry thing. It's not even an internet thing, or a new thing. Mickey Mouse is an athro animal! I really don't even understand why people think Chima is creepy/weird.

 

Anyway I definitely agree that the Ben 10 theme was weird, but more importantly, really dumb. Trust me, I was entrenched in the Ben 10 toy fan community for a long time, and while many of us would have loved to see system sets based on the line, few of us cared about the constraction figures. They were weak not only from a set standpoint, but as far as accuracy goes, they were the worst.

 

I wish the Ben 10 line had at least happened in 2012.

 

Then maybe we'd have gotten this lego gorilla guy fellow.

Edited by farmstink buttlass
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Most themes are pretty weird when you think about them, and most lists of this kind reveal a lack of interest in researching the topic. Let's talk about the 1979 Scala line (a girl's jewelry line guilty of most of the complaints nonsensically leveled against Friends), or the ACTUAL compatibility issues with pre-DUPLO jumbo bricks instead of people's imagined complaints with QUATRO and PRIMO (both of which are fairly easy to use for anyone with reasonable building skills and decent selection of "normal" System pieces - and some recent changes in DUPLO part molds mean that QUATRO is actually getting more useful as time goes on). HO vehicles from the 50's would be a better "weirdest theme" suggestion than anything mentioned in this thread so far.

 

...and Time Cruisers was an excellent source of rare/discontinued parts in sets with excellent play features at great price points. By any sensible definition, it wasn't a bad theme, and is actually more in-line with how people prefer to track down hard-to-find parts on BrickLink. The goal in designing kits is rarely to make a top-notch collector's model - it's to make an "experience" that's fun to build/play with, and to include enough special things to make people want to buy that particular set.

 

Znap is actually MUCH better than people give it credit for, too. It's a fairly sturdy system that is best read as a response to Mattel producing Construx sets - there was no reason for LEGO to expect Mattel's updated Construx line to be less of a competitor than the 80's Constux sets made by Fisher-Price. The first post in this thread claims that Znap is "an odd attempt to make vehicles out of the Technic line, and this was most probably the first try" - a false statement that is just short of out-and-out trolling. The Technic line has featured vehicles more than anything else since its introduction in 1977. Znap is compatible with Technic in the same sense that Bionicle is.

 

Of themes mentioned in this thread so far, Clikits is most likely to qualify as actually being one of the weirdest - it was actually manufactured by an outside company. Many new colors were introduced for Clikits and phased out after they only appeared in a few pieces. Most of the pieces were new molds, and poor quality control on them meant that it was a total toss-up whether a piece would work with anything else in your LEGO collection (this also necessitated a special separator element). That's before we get into the vellum and paper elements.

 

These things need to be judged better in context - Bionicle is probably one of the weirdest, but the theme developed in an interesting way to the point where we could spend hours discussing the merits of different waves of it. The in-house video games line of the late 90's was huge failure for the company, and unlike anything before or since. The licensed watch line had similar results (and shares some of the cost and color issues) with the Clikits line. There are also many times LEGO has gone back and crossed lines that they refused to before - they used to have very strict rules about violence in themes (it could only appear in fantasy themes, and was heavily bowdlerized there) to the extreme that LEGO avoided putting brown and green pieces in System sets because they could be used to make military camouflage. Set designers were shocked that they were allowed to use skull and crossbones imagery on the 1989 Pirates line. The 1994 Pirates line (after control of the company passed to a younger family member) was even more scandalous - Islanders and skeletons were suddenly in kits!

 

...you know what's really weird, considering the long history of LEGO avoiding any depictions of violence and developing sets in-house? In 1999, they did a major push for a new licensed property with "Wars" right in the title! That might be the weirdest, most out-of-character thing the company ever did! You only think it's "normal" now because LEGO Star Wars has been pretty popular for the past 15 years, and the success of that changed how they handle licensed themes.

 

In short, you crazy kids need to get off my lawn.

Edited by danny316p
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It should maybe be noted that weird doesn't equal "bad", at least to me.

 

Also, Time Cruisers sets resemble what a lot of my and a friend's MOCs ended up looking; he had a lot of system parts, as opposed to me, a lot of Bionicle/Technic parts. (Admittedly, he did have one Time Cruisers set, the Hypno Cruiser). Just unstructured creativity.

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That one theme with the ball-jointed action figures that had these gears that you turned so they could knock off each other's masks. That was pretty weird.

You mean the one where superpowed half-robots fought animals with treads as hind legs, creepy smiley spikey guys with glowing eyes, and it turned out that it all happened inside a giant robot?

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For me it would have to be Jack Stone because the age range LEGO was aiming for with those sets were already available in other sets with normal sized minifigures, I never understood what the aim of it was

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For me it would have to be Jack Stone because the age range LEGO was aiming for with those sets were already available in other sets with normal sized minifigures, I never understood what the aim of it was

It was supposed to be a transitional theme for newcomers to LEGO System (ages four and up), much like the Fabuland theme a couple decades earlier, or the Juniors theme now. Though Juniors does use regular minifigures.

 

It's worth noting that even if a kid is five years old and technically within the target age range for regular LEGO System themes, that doesn't guarantee they'll be at the level of building skill they'll need for those sets, any more than being within the target age range for Technic sets guarantees you'll be able to build those without becoming frustrated. LEGO has a bit of a learning curve, and while an experienced LEGO builder can often jump right into a building system as soon as they're within the target age range (if not earlier), a less experienced builder might still need to practice with simpler sets until they truly get the hang of things.

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That one theme with the ball-jointed action figures that had these gears that you turned so they could knock off each other's masks. That was pretty weird.

You mean the one where superpowed half-robots fought animals with treads as hind legs, creepy smiley spikey guys with glowing eyes, and it turned out that it all happened inside a giant robot?

 

 

I'd have to agree. The Rahi having treads as hind legs is really weird. And kinda lazy when you think about it. Instead of making four legs, they cheaped out with the two front legs and treads. The strangest have got to be the Tarakava. Apparently they're supposed to be based off of real animals, but I just don't see it in them. The other ones are quite clear. 

 

The Muaka is a bear, the Kane-Ra is a bull, the Manas are crabs, the Nui-Rama are dragonflies, and the Nui-Jaga are scorpions. What is up with the Tarakava??

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That one theme with the ball-jointed action figures that had these gears that you turned so they could knock off each other's masks. That was pretty weird.

You mean the one where superpowed half-robots fought animals with treads as hind legs, creepy smiley spikey guys with glowing eyes, and it turned out that it all happened inside a giant robot?

 

 

I'd have to agree. The Rahi having treads as hind legs is really weird. And kinda lazy when you think about it. Instead of making four legs, they cheaped out with the two front legs and treads. The strangest have got to be the Tarakava. Apparently they're supposed to be based off of real animals, but I just don't see it in them. The other ones are quite clear. 

 

The Muaka is a bear, the Kane-Ra is a bull, the Manas are crabs, the Nui-Rama are dragonflies, and the Nui-Jaga are scorpions. What is up with the Tarakava??

 

Muaka is actually a tiger.

 

Tarakava are ostensibly lizards, but since they basically stand upright and punch with their fists, I'm guessing they're more based on kaiju like Godzilla than on any real lizards (this would also explain why most Tarakava come from the sea). The Tarakava is an example of a set where its shape was based more on playability than on what it was meant to resemble, though, since no depiction of Godzilla has ever been nearly as skinny as the Tarakava.

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People think Galidor was weird? Try CYBOTS.

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Bionicle was very weird especially when it came out

To be honest I feel Bionicle was more "normal" in its early years as far as action figures/robotic people go. Things like the Vahki, Piraka, and Phantoka lines were pretty unusual.

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Chima, humanimals driving animal shaped vehicles?

 

The lego movie set lines pretty odd, flying septic trucks? Robot pirates?

 

Galidor

 

Fabuland

 

Ninjago, isn't the whole Ninja thing about being all stealthy and stuff? Not driving tanks and jets?

 

City, why city you ask? Well, what kind of city do you know that has TONS of police stations and rescue outposts, but almost no hospitals?

 

Oh, and Friends, for being sexist.

Edited by ToaSalvus
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Spongebob sets are weird. I have the Krusty Krab set and it's just weird. I would have to agree that Jack Stone is pretty weird. I really like the vehicle designs of that line, but it is a weird line. I always thought the lego sports (basket ball and soccer), while cool, were weird sets. I don't own any of them, but I thought they were weird. I used to have the technic hockey set as well and that was a very weird set.

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