Lego and other brick toys

M. Virion

Bent but unbroken
Citizen
I really love the mini doll pseudo Botanicals sets. (I still need the Moana 2 one, just waiting on a sale)

This new Wednesday set may actually have shot up to the top of my favorite Lego builds.

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Ceir

Active member
Citizen
Treated myself to the Creator Haunted House today. Quick thoughts just on the house build - the ghost ship and train are pretty well done for alternatives made from a building, and I choose to read the train as a Monster Fighters 2010 homage, but the house is what I bought the set for.

It's not a bad little set - but it is smaller than you think, and just barely not a facade. But it's a fairly tight build with some neat little details, no stickers, and 3-5 figures depending on how you count ghosts and skellies. Plus, I never got Lady Vampyre, Wolfman, or Frank from MF2010 or any of the CMF series anyway! The skeleton is a skeleton, nothing surprising there, but it at least gets a lantern to hold. I didn't realize that the ghost is actually another new style though; the ghost shroud in this set is matte finish instead of glossy, has no 'sock' tail on the head, and a different mouth shape! Still glows pretty good.

For the main build, opened up, the front face looks pretty good, but there's minimal depth and just a few niches to put figures. The gate side build doesn't attach anywhere, it's just placed, and it looks kind of out of place with no other fence, but it's not really wasted parts. Turning some of the extra bits and plates into a teeny graveyard is pretty good though, and the use of an extra skeleton leg as the ol' "arm reaching out of a grave" is cute. Liberal use of brick-bricks make the exterior at least not completely flat, you get the prints for the boarded up windows, the evil tree side build, it's pretty solid.

The interior is pretty minimal - as I said, barely not a facade - but what details are there are decently done. Little table with some hats, built-up clock, a couple of printed tiles worth of art on either side of the door. The built highlight is the bitty pipe organ directly over the door, framed with candlesticks and with enough room for a figure to sit. There are also two very small mechanical features, neither of which is called out by a bright red or yellow knob: an axle through the wall lets you twiddle the pendulum of the clock, which is cute for a feature you'll never really see; the visible one is in the tower by the organ, and is a gear that when turned rotates a pillar to show either a gem or a plate-build sheet ghost in either of the two windows or the interior.

The building does close up, for a fully enclosed even smaller footprint. The porch looks a little disjointed, but not completely out of whack when it's separated at the fold, and when closed the floors inside are fully complete, at least. One amusing feature I justified after the fact - unless you add or change pieces, there is no actual roof/ceiling over the pipe organ. In a bigger playset, it'd probably be a trapdoor. But positioned like that, it's clearly the vampire "turn into a bat and GTFO" moonroof, haha.

ETA: a minifigure stand, the 3x4 kind, is an almost perfect fit to cover the moonroof, and subsequently a great place to stick the ghost!

So yeah. It's smaller than you think, and doesn't have a lot going on, but it revisits a theme and figures that Lego doesn't often touch on. It's on the expensive side for what you get, but I for one am happy to add it to my Halloween stuff.
 
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Superomegaprime

Wondering bot
Citizen
I ordered some parts the other day, enough to get the free ghost kit which is on its way to me now and some of those parts I plan to use on my Winter Lodge model combined with the lighting stuff! I resently did buy a second copy of a winter scene made of blocks that are compatable with lego but the way I've been doing it on the second part is different as I bought the kit with the intent of using it with the winter lodge model to create a nice setup, thou I need to currently repait the lodge as how I had it placed the other day, I accidently knocked it and it broke apart on the upper levels, but I'll put it back together later on!
 

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
Was it even that bad, or did it just get ignored to death?
This is actually the first time I've ever owned Galidor toys, which is perhaps the problem. I remember seeing them in stores back in the day, but just never felt compelled to get any, or even ask for any from my parents. I was fifteen. All of my allowance was going towards CDs and Leafs sweaters.

Thing is, I did like the show. It's not prestige television, but it doesn't have to be. It's a teen sci-fi show from the early 2000s. So it's not anything more than that, but it lives up to that bar well enough. It's also got some Scandinavian history and mythology built into the plot that went over my head at the time, but now I kinda appreciate. It doesn't do anything Tolkien-esque with these ideas, but there's clearly effort on display.
So I liked the show. I revisited the show recently and thought it held up as well as you could expect something like that to. It's definitely better then some Power Rangers seasons. However much you wanna take that.

I donno... it's just one of those things. Show was good enough for purpose but the toys just never compelled me. Or anyone else if Lego cancelling the whole thing half a year into it is any indication.

Having finally gotten the Nick and Allegra (that's Allegra Zane... they were cooking with the character names) figures in a spur of the moment bit of nostalgia... they're really good! I never got into Bionicle so I don't know how they compare to those, but the Galidor figures are solid and their interchangeable nature is really fun to mess with. I think they could have been a bigger hit if they were just presented better? I donno. It feels like they need just a bit more polish to make the potential that's here more evident.

They're also wearing the most 2000s teen fashion to ever 2000s, and as someone who turned 13 in 2000, this speaks to me on a spiritual level.
 

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
I think this is the first time I've read positive comments about Galidor.
It's like Gundam X-
It was a severe financial disappointment so that "spins" the narrative into the product being bad...even if it really wasn't. I will DIE on the hill that Gundam X would have been a more relevant series to give American audiences in 2001 than try to force the god damned Universal Century (especially the original 1979 cartoon) upon us.

I remember a LOT of marketing and ads for it in late 2001/early 2002...then it just disappeared. I remember seeing a LOT of it on clearance and close out, probably before 2002 was even done. The toys always looked awkward and the cartoon had an EXTREME case of the "uncanny valley" I wasn't able to get past.
 


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