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Does Anyone Else Remember The Jack Stone Sets?


Dwanny

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Oh my goodness, Jack Stone. This was my first SYSTEM theme that I got into. I have very many Jack Stone sets, and have very fond memories with them. These are the ones that I remember getting, though I probably have more somewhere.

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Oh man I bought way too many of these sets. In hindsight, I wish I had spent my money on other themes, as I hardly use the big chunky pieces from the theme anymore, though my sister and I had loads of fun with the series back then.I've also had a bit of funtrying to take the figures apart. :P Edited by Chols

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The Jack Stone stuff really got better in the second year, I think, but by that point my family had stopped collecting it. In general I think it deserves a lot more respect than it gets. Sure, it was for little kids, but that was the point. AFOLs tend to venerate Fabuland, a previous LEGO theme aimed at the post-Duplo, pre-System ageset. But Jack Stone's aesthetic obviously doesn't suit the typical adult fans as much as the cutesy aesthetic Fabuland favored.Incidentally, while Jack Stone had a similar sort of action-packed storyline to Rescue Heroes, another toyline my younger brother used to like, one advantage it had over a lot of storylines like that is that there were in fact "bad guys" in the police sets. I definitely appreciated that.

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I've also got a good deal of Jack Stone toothbrushes. I don't know who else remembers those, because I didn't know about them until not too long ago. They each came with a minifigure inside.

416huFmg8BL.jpgJack_Stone_Toothbrush_4.gif

Edited by Meiko

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DISCLAIMER: All opinions and contributions made under this account are based solely on my own personal thoughts and opinions, and in no way represent any of the above groups/entities. If you have any concerns or inquiries about the contributions made under this account, please contact me individually and I will address them with you to the best of my ability.

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I kind of remember seeing these sets, but not by their brand name. (I wouldn't have known who Jack Stone was if it wasn't for the picture of him in the first post.)

That's probably because the Jack Stone brand name disappeared from sets after 2002. Sets at this scale continued through 2004 under the brand name "4+" or "4 Juniors". Incidentally, this style of figure was also used in LEGO Creator sets of 2001 (at that time the LEGO Creator brand was far different than what it is today, focusing on basic building like the Basic and Free Style themes of previous decades or the Bricks & More theme of today).
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I've also got a good deal of Jack Stone toothbrushes. I don't know who else remembers those, because I didn't know about them until not too long ago. They each came with a minifigure inside.

416huFmg8BL.jpgJack_Stone_Toothbrush_4.gif

I remember seeing those. :DI remember the Jack Stone theme, but not really any sets in particular. I never was too fond of this theme, but I didn´t dislike it either. Rather, I never paid too much attention to it.-Gata signoff.jpg

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Jack Stone was decent for its time. At that period in LEGO's history, even themes for older builders used large, cumbersome parts like those in the Jack Stone theme semi-regularly, so it was easy for a four-year-old builder to transition them into their collections as they aged. But now LEGO has gotten to a point where smaller, more versatile parts are the order of the day. And these days, those Jack Stone parts are some of the least-touched parts of my collection.So while I appreciated Jack Stone at the time, I can't honestly say I miss it.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I remember those. I had several Jack Stone sets when I was younger. There were some really strange pieces in those sets (especially the building columns and windows... I mean, who creates a tower IRL with some of the walls made out of glass?).
Who creates a tower that's only one room wide on each floor? Realism would have made the sets far more complicated, and thus would defeat the purpose of the theme: a simple LEGO theme to help transition 4-year-old Duplo builders into standard LEGO.

Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

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Yeah, I used to have a couple of those a looooong time ago! And I agree, they definitely weren't the best ones I've seen.

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I fell in love with it, although I had a sad lack of sets. However, I did play the games many times.

I've also got a good deal of Jack Stone toothbrushes. I don't know who else remembers those, because I didn't know about them until not too long ago. They each came with a minifigure inside.

416huFmg8BL.jpgJack_Stone_Toothbrush_4.gif

I had a Jack stone toothbrush too, but he was in his black uniform. I loved playing with the minifigure, but the worst possible thing happened. I lost the brush and figure.Ever since that childhood tragedy, I was no longer interested in the theme. Edited by Sybre: Soul Shinipire

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I was cleaning up my room the other day and found a Jack Stone figure (blue jumpsuit). These guys TOWER over normal minifigs!

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OH my gosh! So much NOSTALGIA!I remember being little and thinking to myself how weird it was that his legs had to cover not two, but THREE rows of LEGO studs. Which made cockpit making so meticulous. But man, thanks for a good burst of child memory. I love remembering the old toys I used to play with. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
I've also got a good deal of Jack Stone toothbrushes. I don't know who else remembers those, because I didn't know about them until not too long ago. They each came with a minifigure inside.

416huFmg8BL.jpgJack_Stone_Toothbrush_4.gif

Man I had like 3 of those. They were really the only Jack Stone things I got. Edited by Bamble
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I was cleaning up my room the other day and found a Jack Stone figure (blue jumpsuit). These guys TOWER over normal minifigs!
Actually, they're not that far out of scale with Hagrid from the Harry Potter sets, if I remember correctly.

Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

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I was cleaning up my room the other day and found a Jack Stone figure (blue jumpsuit). These guys TOWER over normal minifigs!
Actually, they're not that far out of scale with Hagrid from the Harry Potter sets, if I remember correctly.
Yeah, they're about the same height, and proportions are about the same. Hagrid is wider than Jack Stone figures however.

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Meiko - @georgebarnick

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DISCLAIMER: All opinions and contributions made under this account are based solely on my own personal thoughts and opinions, and in no way represent any of the above groups/entities. If you have any concerns or inquiries about the contributions made under this account, please contact me individually and I will address them with you to the best of my ability.

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I remember that from the days I got Lego magazine. It looked pretty good, and I enjoyed the comics in the magazines, but I never owned any sets. The minifigs looked a little incompatible because they were larger and better proportioned. I think Jack Stone was one of the bigger lines while I got the magazine, a lot of memories coming back.

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I'll be honest: while I didn't immediately recoil in horror upon first looking upon Jack Stone, as I did when my summer 2002 issue of Lego Club Mag was adorned with the awfulness of Galidor, in the end I still treated it as a slap in the face. Like TLG's single biggest mistake, Jack Stone almost entirely did away with the creative core of my favorite toy, relying almost exclusively on big, single-purpose parts, most of which were quite honestly unattractive asthetically. The models were also quite poor: buildings were nothing more than skeletal frames, and the vehicles not only looked ungainly, but felt extremely wobbly in hand. Worst of all, the "minifigures" of Jack stone were inferior to traditional lego minifigures in every way: they were one piece, lacked detail, and gave off none of the charm of their predecessors. Overall, Jack Stone was a prime example of TLC's Dark Ages folly - one of many ill-concieved experiments that TLC wasted much time and money on rather than expanding and improving their core product.

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I'm personally quite surprised that Jack Stone sets got so much hate from LEGO fans when they have so much in common with the well-loved theme Fabuland. While they have more of an emphasis on action and less emphasis on cutesy animal characters in slice-of-life situations, many of the criticisms of them-- their large, specialized pieces, their larger-scale figures which allowed for little customization, and their aesthetic which didn't really fit in with regular LEGO-- apply just about as well to Fabuland as to Jack Stone.Personally, I loved the concept of Jack Stone, being a bridge between Duplo and System, and it was nice when its design style was extended in the 4 Juniors series. I'm curious whether there will ever be another theme that aims for that intermediate age range or if TLG has decided it's better to let kids of those ages either continue with Duplo or move on to the regular LEGO System.

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