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I politely request for you to respect peoples' decision to hate Minidolls.
Dontcopythatfloppy
Member Posts: 43
So, obviously, I've been looking at the comments sections of the various DC Super Hero Girls threads on the main site, and frankly, it's kind of depressing how quickly it devolved into something resembling a virtual lynch mob. Personally, I couldn't care less about the existence of minidolls, and do appreciate their upsides as opposed to the original minifigure design (more potential for detail, more human-looking, etc.), but at the same time hating their very existence is a perfectly justifiable point of view (I would say that liking them more than minifigues is justifiable as well, but frankly I don't actually sure if anyone here has that opinion). The same thing goes with including bright colors in "girl" sets and the existence of DC Super Hero Girls in general. Now, it's one thing to debate the merits of the minidoll over the minifigure (same goes with the inclusion of bright colors in "girl" sets, Lego's decision to make "girl" sets in the first place, etc.), but I've seen far too many pro-minidoll FOL's acting as if there is zero reason to dislike the concept, or even just its inclusion in the DC Super Hero Girls theme (I know I would've loved to see a minifigure Bumblebee). Basically, all I'm asking is for people to be civil to one another over their plastic miniature style preferences.
And speaking of being civil, can we please, PLEASE keep issues of sexism and political correctness out of most (if not all) Lego discussions on this site? I get that it's a hot-button issue, and I have some strong opinions on the matters myself, but the main reason I think most of us use this forum is for Lego-centric discussions. I already have websites on which I can argue about whether or not society is inherently anti-woman or whatever, I don't need another. I mean, I get there are some situations where it might be relevant, but I still don't really want to talk about such matters unless absolutely necessary, as they're riotous for ruining friendships.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
And speaking of being civil, can we please, PLEASE keep issues of sexism and political correctness out of most (if not all) Lego discussions on this site? I get that it's a hot-button issue, and I have some strong opinions on the matters myself, but the main reason I think most of us use this forum is for Lego-centric discussions. I already have websites on which I can argue about whether or not society is inherently anti-woman or whatever, I don't need another. I mean, I get there are some situations where it might be relevant, but I still don't really want to talk about such matters unless absolutely necessary, as they're riotous for ruining friendships.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
2
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Comments
As for minifigs and minidolls, eh.
Some people like and some do not. Personally, the rage against the minidolls seems extreme to me, but I get people liking or disliking.
the only reason to take those threads down those paths is either to troll people, or to derail the topic needlessly
Personally I don't care for the minidolls, but then again I grew up with the minifigs and I'm not the target audience. So when I see pictures of new Friends/Elves/Disney Princess/DC Super Hero Girls sets, I just ask myself: "will my nieces like these?" Usually the answer is "yes". Except for #41129 Hot Dog Van. That will be mine! Just like the Ninjago sets are not my cup of tea, but I had to have #70751 Temple of Airjitzu. And since this week a couple of Ninjago dragons...
I don't understand why people that don't like them have to invade every thread about minidolls saying they shouldn't exist as they hate them. There are plenty of minifigure sets available, many more than minidoll sets.
It is no different to Star Wars fans leaping on every non Star Wars thread saying that whatever it is shouldn't have been made and it should have been Star Wars instead, as we don't have enough Star Wars sets and to have another licensed / non-licensed theme is taking away from Star Wars.
I think the issue is that people who don't like mini-dolls keep using words like "hate", "horrible", and "disgusting". Those are very strong words indicating very strong emotions. The person uttering those words appears to suffer from great distress, sadness and rage.
When someone expresses such strong negative emotions, it is natural for other people to reach out and try to at least tone down - if not neutralize - those feelings" "Look, buddy, it's not that bad" - and give them a real or virtual hug. Nobody likes to see another human being exploding in a fire of rage - especially over a little plastic toy.
It is perfectly fine to have preferences. We like things. We don't like things. And some of those things are more important and urgent than others. So it is a good idea to be responsible with our words - especially over the internet, where our words are the only indication of our state of heart and mind.
So if you are not suffocating, hyperventilating, having a stroke, suicidal, or in any other imminent danger physically, emotionally or mentally, then don't use words that can be interpreted as such. Neither minifigs or mini-dolls are worth such strong emotions. They are just toys.
In the second thread, mini-doll discussion got a bit more heated, mostly because of comments like ZeeBricks that made hateful comments like "Blech!! …The minidolls ruin the whole line." or OhioBricker who called mini-dolls "an abomination" and even bragged about throwing them in the trash. But even then, members like @akunthita stayed pretty respectful in their defense of the mini-doll. Overall, there was nothing that would constitute a "lynch mob". No personal attacks whatsoever.
Plenty of people who did like the mini-dolls said so, of course, and some went so far as to defend the mini-doll even though there was perhaps no pressing need to do so. But preemptively defending something you like is not the same as attacking people who dislike it. And if you're having a hard time distinguishing those kinds of disagreements from personal attacks, that may mean you're more invested in other people's opinions than you really ought to be.
It's easy to be apolitical and treat it as an ideal when stuff doesn't affect you personally; when it does, it's like a knife to the heart when you just came online to discuss Lego or some other hobby you normally use to relax, and you find yourself having to read slurs or patronising rubbish about people like yourself.
If you are a minifig only person, why go to a story about a minidoll range and post there. And not just post there, but be one of the first to post there within minutes of it being published?
Within 20 minutes of the article being posted the first three comments were:
Is this new theme meant as an insult to girls in general? Come on Lego, many builds look like they are juniorized. And you try to sell a giant penis with balls as a high school. To girls? This theme will fail at all levels.
Oh dear. These look horrible.
So bad, so very bad. I know they did product reviews, focus groups, etc. But, I'm trying to understand who/how they did all of this with, and still came up with these as a good idea. It's extremely insulting to girls - my daughter looked at these and gave them all the emphatic "thumbs down". That's the vote that counts, and that's kind of telling given that she's probably their perfect demographic (9-year old, loves math and science, loves building LEGOs).
The first comment is not really explained, saying they are insulting and giving the reason as juniorized, when they are pretty much the same style builds as regular minifig sets. Then going on to compare them to a penis and balls, which pretty much loses the argument right away. Then saying the theme will fail (which I highly doubt).
For example, how is this...
any more juniorized than this...
The second comment. Horrible, but no explanation given?
The third, saying they are insulting to girls. Why? There is no reason being given as to why they are insulting. Their daughter might prefer minifig sets, that's fine. But many girls have bought into minidoll sets. That's why friends is such a big money maker for lego.
Personally I hate mindolls and if anyone does like them they aren't real fans of Lego and probably buy Megabloks and Lepin and kick cats and hate children.
People like to find reasons to be prickly and argue just to fill time. Even finding arguments where there weren't any to be had.
I spent my weekend kicking MegaBloks, hating Lepin, buying cats and children.
^ buying children? ;-)
(Best part is at 50 seconds.)
Sometimes this distaste has merit- there's some truth in what they believe, othertimes it has no merit, they're just being paranoid about how much focus their preferred product will get.
Given that TLG seems to be struggling with capacity problems at the moment, I'd be inclined to believe there's some merit in the concern that more minidolls means less minifigs. If TLG are struggling for resource as is, does that mean these new sets and minidolls will be getting created at the expense of existing lines and minifigs? Quite possibly I suspect, and therein lies the problem people have.
It's already well known that the reason we're getting crappy things like the overpriced half-arsed Death Star remake is because of Lego struggling to properly resource things, so when TLG announce another whole new line, it's not just something that's made in isolation with no impact, it inevitably has to have impact on their already overloaded schedule. As such it should be no wonder that people might be concerned that their preferred set is suffering - there's a reasonable chance that TLG is indeed chasing a new audience at the expense of their existing audience. That existing audience has every right to be annoyed and to air their discontent as a result of that.
Therefore I'd agree, it's unfair to dismiss people's concerns with simplistic arguments of "If you don't like them, don't buy them" because they may also be stopping people from buying the sets and minifigs they actually want if those sets and minifigs can't be made due to lack of resource.
So let's be honest, if you're in the existing audience you have every right to be pissed, if you're in the new audience you have every right to be happy. Neither side is going to agree.
People posting uncivil comments when sets with minidolls are released and then claiming they feel persecuted when other people merely point out (in civil worlds!) that they actually like minidolls: not so much.
Yes, the world has many shades of grey and people's feelings on minidolls can be anywhere on that spectrum, mostly for good reasons. But people posting extreme opinions should not be surprised when not everybody shares that extreme opinion. Being free to have an opinion and express that opinion also means you accept that other people might have a different opinion and express that as well.
When asking for tolerance you will have better luck when expressing a bit of tolerance yourself.
Anyhow, I'm not sure I buy the minidolls canabalizing the minifigs argument. TLG keep putting out more and more sets every year, including large exclusives. They also keep them on shelves longer than ever before. Yes, SW UCS was messed up this year, but at least we did get some other nice sets such as the Disney Castle.
With Friends being one of their bestselling themes TLG got a large new audience. Without Friends/Disney Princess my nieces would likely (or is this wishful thinking from my side?) have some Lego, but not nearly in the same quantities they have now. It is their main toy, something I don't think would have happened without the minidolls. I firmly believe everything that is good for TLG (expanded sales through the Friends theme) is good for AFOL's. Yes, TLG only throws us a bone on occasion. Has it ever been different/better? TLG is in the business of selling toys to kids after all.
I think even the Disney Castle was a dissappointment, when you compare it side by side against the GBHQ the GBHQ is a drastically better set with drastically better value for money. The castle showcases very little of Disney's IP and is really just a frontal view of it - it's not that the front isn't bad, but that it's a poor demonstration of what it could and for many was expected to have been. Orthanc is probably the closest comparison, and a much better set in terms of value and content.
So yeah, I do think it has been better, much better. Last year, the year before, the year before that and so on. It's really just been a crap year with flops like Hoth, vintage Bat cave, Death Star republish with a massive price hike and so on. It's a sad state of affairs when it looks like many AFOLs have been more intrigued by what Lepin has been pouring out than anything by TLG themselves. If they're the only ones pushing out the big AFOL oriented sets and AFOLs are buying them which they clearly are then no, I don't think that's good for TLG and AFOLs in the long run.
I don't disagree with you about people making over the top arguments though, but this is the internet. That shouldn't be new to anyone whose ever witnessed a fanboy(or girl) discussion before. You'll be hard pressed to find any discussion with even the slightest amount of passion in it that doesn't descend into that, you either ignore it and just scroll right past it or accept that online forums just aren't for you, there's not really any other option.
First I cannot think of a single minifigure based set that lego have produced that I couldn't have bought if I had wanted to. So I don't believe the capacity problem. There might be shortages of specific sets at specific times and in specific places, but not a general shortage. I have never seen a lego store bare or an entire lego section of a toy store or supermarket bare. I have seen cleared shelves after highly discounted sales, but next to laden shelves at full RRP. I have also seen people paying 3x RRP on the secondary market for a current set for a Christmas present only for it to be back to RRP on the shelves come January. But at the same time plenty of other lego sets still available.
Second, if production capacity is a problem and the buying world is polarised into minifigure buyers and minidoll buyers, then why would they produce more variety in minifigure sets and cut minidoll ones? This would mean they lose access to the minidoll buying market, but at the same time introduce more choice for the minifigure buying market thus introducing more internal competition for each of their minifigure sets. Why do that? If there really was a shortage and they cut all production of minidoll sets, then they would probably still produce the same number (as in variety) of minifigure based sets but more of each of them to satisfy customers that cannot purchase them due to lack of stock (if that was true). So there wouldn't necessarily be more variety of minifigure sets by cutting out production of minidoll ones, just more copies of the same minifigure sets. They wouldn't need to design more sets if it was a stock problem, just produce more of the same.
Third, if the capacity problem (if it really exists) is down to constraints on design production rather than constraints on part production, then it is a simple matter of either employing more designers or designing less sets per year but make them available for longer. Yet there doesn't seem to be a real problem here either. The sets they currently design sell. They don't need better sets, as what the design already sells well. Are they poorly designed? Buyers seem to say otherwise.
I imagine cutting out minidoll sets would lead to a loss of overall sales. They would lose sales to a large number of minidoll buyers, while probably not increasing the sales to the minifigure buyers. They'd also be losing shelf space in toy stores and supermarkets where toys are categorized as boys and girls toys. They won't be putting the "boys" lego on girls' shelves. They will fill it with a competitors product. Of course, lego could stop making minidolls and make female minifigure sets and other sets aimed at girls and keep a girls range that way. Yet their research showed them that minidolls would sell better than female minifigure sets, which is why they do it. It also wouldn't lead to more variety in the regular lines, there would just be more pastel and pinks sets that happen to have minifigures rather than minidolls in.
If fans of one theme (such as Star Wars) are against minidolls, then they should equally well be against other themes such as City and whatever the current one year movie franchise (TLR, etc) or other theme (Monster Fighters, AC, PQ, etc) is. After all, those sets take away not just design and production capacity but also "boys" shelf space. It would probably be better for Star Wars fans (or any other theme) to be pro-minidoll but anti every other boys theme. That would shift production, design and shelf space in their favour.
You might think that, but the Disney Castle is the one recent minifigure set I can think of that has been harder than others to get hold of in some places. It is so poor it frequently sells out in the US.
There are a lot of sets and themes that don't interest me personally, like Jurassic World, Angry Birds, Minecraft, Disney Princess, Duplo, Juniors, and Speed Champions. Even Star Wars and Super Heroes, to a great extent (the only Star Wars sets I buy for myself anymore are the buildable figures). Sure, if these themes didn't exist, there's a chance that more might be invested in themes I do enjoy, like Ninjago, Elves, or Bionicle. Yet I don't whine that those themes shouldn't exist, because I recognize that the people who do enjoy those themes deserve an enjoyable LEGO experience every bit as much as I do. Part of being a grown-up is being able to think of people other than yourself.
The LEGO product range and the LEGO community are both big enough to cater to people with more than one set of interests. Truthfully, catering to more than one set of interests is what enables both of those things to grow and become more well-rounded. And to be honest, I have seen plenty of people who are reasonable and intelligent enough to admit "I don't like these sets, but they're not for me, and it's great that they exist for the people who enjoy them". That, to me, shows a lot more maturity than descending into paranoid fear that anything that doesn't benefit you directly is an existential threat to the things that do.
TGL selling more because they now offer minidolls means they have more money to add expand their production sites and hire more designers, hopefully resulting in more and better sets for every niche/not-so-niche taste.
With a few hiccups along the way (those UCS sets again). But we also got a 2704 pieces Porsche and 3927 pieces Bucket Wheel Excavator this year. I'm not into Technic myself, but wow. (And yes, I'm aware that those sets do have some flaws. Still wow.)
Personally, I'm not partial to the minidoll themes, but my daughters love them. I'm very happy that my girls love playing with LEGO, so I'm more than happy to buy them for them and I'm sure I'm not the only AFOL father (or mother) who feels the same way. :-)
So you think they do have a capacity problem?
Your argument is entirely contradictory, if there was no capacity problem, there'd be no problem keeping the shelves constantly stocked.
I am. I think the point of my post was largely missed, ironically by people defending minidolls without being willing to understand there was a different point of view. I had hoped given complaints about the anti-minidoll side of the argument making absurd far fetched arguments that the pro-minidoll side might be a bit more receptive of a bit of objectivity, but apparently both sides are firmly entrenched with their one true master view mindset and both are willing to be partially wrong if it means they don't have to give even an inch to the views of others. I get it, on the internet when people argue they entrench, and I missed the original argument so I guess you guys are all still too sore so as to find the concept of there being at least some legitimacy to the concerns of others so controversial when it really shouldn't be.
My intention was to make the point that there are two sides to the argument, and frankly both have a reasonable degree of validity in their concern or appreciation. I don't really have any problem with the fact that TLG have made a new group of people happy, but similarly I also sympathise with those who are disappointed.
No one's saying the world works on zero sum principles, but it'd be incredibly naive to believe TLG have infinite resources too, especially when they've stated themselves they have limited resources both by way of design capacity and manufacturing capacity on numerous occasions. It's not a secret that TLG has had problems scaling in the face of their massive success of recent years. This shouldn't be controversial, it's simple statement of fact:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/lego-factories-brick-wall-christmas
So I'll leave you guys to it, no amount of insisting you're right will make it so. People will still have legitimate reasons to dislike this move whether you wish to accept it or not. As I say I'm glad some people have a cool new thing to play with - it's always a nice feeling, but I also feel for those who are disappointed too. Even if you disagree, telling people they shouldn't be disappointed because you're right and that's that isn't going to magically stop them being disappointed, so it's a fools errand regardless.