Friends tends to have actual buildings more often than not in sets that are under $80. Buildings in smaller City sets tend to be a single wall you can attach figures to with one or more vehicles, a bunch of figures, and maybe a road plate or two to drive up the price. It’s why I’m not bothering with the School Day set, even though I was looking forward to it. Lego doesn’t make school sets very often, so I was hoping for a decent one-story building or a wall that looked more interesting. If the school was colored in beige (like the Hidden Side school) or grey, I might be more likely to buy it. The only thing in that set I kind of like is the bus, and I’m not buying it just for that.
A bunch of these sets look really nice. The City stuff just looks so boring most of the time. Friends has had a ton of variety and I'm 100% sure my daughter is going to want a bunch of these. The houseboat, the tree house, main street, the street food set... So fun! I saw an online comment where someone complained about the minidolls (as in, why can't they just use regular minifigures) and setting aside for a moment the urge to roll my eyes, if one really truly hates the minidoll style you can - believe it or not - just use regular minifigures with these builds. It's LEGO, do what you want! (Personally I've come to appreciate the minidolls - my kid certainly likes them a lot). Lots of great new hairpieces here too.
Plus the hair works on the standard minifigures too! Shocking I know. What is funny is that I read those same complaints all the time in comments on Lego fan sites. I thought they were weird when we first started getting some of the sets. Why would Lego make dolls instead of just including fancier minifigures? Then I saw my Niece playing with them for hours when they would come over. She would sit there and change combinations till she had them "just right" and then had them interact with the sets we had built and on display. I then saw the brilliance of Lego and never looked at the Friends line the same way again.
Well, to be fair, it took LEGO numerous failed tries to find the right mix of things that would appeal to girls, not to mention nearly a decade of research. The minidoll was the result of all that research, which showed that young girls didn't relate to the short, fat proportions of the minifig, but the minidoll struck the right note with them. Add to that a true building experience with LEGO bricks to create the world in which they live and you have a winning theme. I don't collect it personally, but I keep an eye on what they're doing with it, and I think they do a pretty good job of maintaining variety. They touched on fantasy for a few years with the Elves, but I haven't seen them do any sci-fi, which strikes me odd b/c I'm sure there are a lot of young girls out there who like robots and spaceships and the Friends design team could add their own flavor to the genre. I totally loved Sweet Mayhem and her ship from the LEGO Movie 2, and more sci-fi stuff with that approach would be nice for variety. Good old 4483- still my favorite minifig scaled AT-AT set, and still on display at my house, too. I think it's about to be demoted by the UCS AT-AT within the next few days, though.
No, but some of those sets have a lot of creativity put into them. I don’t usually buy Technic and the bull truck is a bit tempting.
Usually the big and super impressive (and expensive) sets don't come until the second half of the year.
The Benny crossbody bag isn't available yet (Dec 17) but my wife and I just bought a bunch of stuff including the 4 Astronaut plushies.
I need Mei's car to change into Zane's car with a few mods, that'll leave me just needing a car for Cole Missed the Guardian, that was a good price FML Not to shabby
I don’t follow monster jam, but I definitely want Megalodon. Kinda want to repurpose it into a Bionicle shark. I also kinda dig the $50 cars, but don’t know if I’ll get any.
