Subject:
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Re: Star Wars v. Harry Potter
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.starwars
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Date:
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Wed, 28 Nov 2001 21:25:00 GMT
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Viewed:
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447 times
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I think comparing the Star Wars LEGO Sets with the Harry Potter sets isn't
really fair. The Star Wars sets have essentially all been vehicle sets, whereas
with Potter, aside from the train, they are all playsets. Designing a LEGO
playset and a LEGO vehicle would seem to be totally different challenges. With
the Star Wars vehicles, as long as the set is accurate to the movie, their job
is done. The imagination can come up with endless scenarios to play with that
vehicle with all the inspiration provided by the Star Wars movies, games, books,
etc. With a playset, however, your imagination is mostly limited to the one
scene that the playset represents. LEGO had to take a lot of liberties with the
Potter sets to design locations that are clearly from scenes in the movie/book,
but also give them enough play value so that a kid doesn't play with "Snape's
Classroom" for just the 2 minutes of approximate screentime it got in the flick.
When Kenner first did the Star Wars action figures, the vehicles they released
were very accurate to the movie for the standards of those days. But look at the
playsets they did. "Movie accuracy" isn't the same with playsets.
Look at the "Final Duel" sets, which are really the only Star Wars LEGO sets
that depict specific scenes. These sets are cool because of the minifigs, but
aside from that they're pretty lame. At least with the Potter sets it's clear
LEGO put effort into adding play value to sets. Sure, sometimes adding play
value can backfire, like the silly escape pod in the Millenium Falcon set, but
none of the features LEGO has put in the Harry Potter sets seem to blatantly
contradict anything from the book.
I really like the way the Potter sets are modular and can be stacked in a
variety of ways. If LEGO decides to do Star Wars playsets, especially something
like scenes from the Death Star, I hope they incorporate a feature like that.
In lugnet.starwars, David Eaton writes:
> In lugnet.starwars, John R. Beck writes:
> > Is it just my imagination or has Lego done a better job developing their
> > potter line than their star wars line? I just seems the pieces are cooler.
>
> My impression was exactly the opposite. SW line (ESPECIALLY the 1999 sets)
> were amazingly done. There was little if any juniorization, and the sets
> were *much* more accurate than I would have expected. Granted it's since
> gone downhill a little.
>
> The new pieces for Star Wars are just so much more generally useful, IMHO.
> Although perhaps they weren't specifically Star Wars:
> - Laser cannons (X-wing, Snowspeeder, etc)
> - Lightsaber handles (did the blades also come out that year?)
> - Large wings
> - Click hinge cockpits
> - Smoke-grey transparent color
> - Rounded canopies (Naboo fighter)
> - Click hinges
> - Cool decorative instrument panels (tiles mostly)
> - Cloaks (rather than capes)
> - Cloak hoods
> - EXCELLENT peasant/plainclothes torso's & some heads
> - Grey hair
> - Tan hair
> - 1/4 8x8x6 round thinwalls (released later, granted)
> - The return of 8x8 grey radar dishes! (it has to be said)
> - LOTS of hard-to-find and new colored elements (dk grey extreme slopes &
> corners, white inverse 2x2 corner slopes, brown plates & bricks & slopes,
> tan plates & bricks, etc, etc, etc)
>
> Harry Potter:
> - Neat looking castle doors
> - Keys
> - Spiral staircase
> - Neat old-wall-with-ivy printed bricks
> - Frogs (did they exist before in scala/belville?)
> - Owls
> - Rats
> - Swammi hat (purple)
> - grey hair/beard
> - Some other cool colored items...
>
> > What got me thinking was the difference between Chewbacca and that big brown
> > dude with the huge black hair in the potter set. You'd think that Chewie
> > would be that big...and what's with the ewoks looking like the same size as
> > a regular lego minifig? Have I got a genuine beef here? Or has this debate
> > been already talked through...
>
> Well... yeah insofar as people ultimately wanted chewie to be taller and
> ewoks to be shorter than they WILL be (they're not the same size as
> minifigs). And yes, Hagrid is nice and taller just as expected... but all in
> all, the initial Star Wars release blew me away, even with just the 5
> "classic" sets. HP just doesn't add up. It's useful for some of the cool
> colors and trinket-type items here and there, but the sets overall really
> aren't that useful. At least, I don't think. And the set design (excepting
> maybe Hagrid's Hut) is really a lot poorer than the initial SW sets.
> Admittedly SW has gone downhill, but it's still a quality line...
>
> DaveE
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Star Wars v. Harry Potter
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| (...) Well, you're right-- they're very different themes. And granted it's easy to come up with set ideas for SW. I mean, SW already has a HUGE bonus insofar as its spaceship designs were cool and semi-"realistic", unlike many of the space sets (...) (23 years ago, 28-Nov-01, to lugnet.starwars)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Star Wars v. Harry Potter
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| (...) My impression was exactly the opposite. SW line (ESPECIALLY the 1999 sets) were amazingly done. There was little if any juniorization, and the sets were *much* more accurate than I would have expected. Granted it's since gone downhill a (...) (23 years ago, 23-Nov-01, to lugnet.starwars)
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