Random minifig of the day: frnd105

Yeah I'll have the green flower and yellow flower smoothie. I'm on a very natural diet.

I realize there are limitations to how they can make the legs, but I just realized those "shorts" look like she's wearing a garbage bag that's hanging down below her knees.

@PurpleDave said:
"I realize there are limitations to how they can make the legs, but I just realized those "shorts" look like she's wearing a garbage bag that's hanging down below her knees."

I feel like sometimes minidolls slip a little too far into the uncanny valley. Usually when looking to closely at the limbs. These trash bag pants don't help with that.

That bow is not a great look there, Olivia...

@PurpleDave said:
" @PhantomBricks said:
"That bow is not a great look there, Olivia..."

It's not a bow. It's a restraining bolt that's plugged into her brain."

Are we going into Friends conspiracy theories now?

I really miss the Lego Friends looking like this. Their faces were more natural in the first few years of the friends series, and the girls were like a true group of “BFF’s”. The direction they took the Friends series this year is so abstract, it really should have been renamed. All the original friends are gone, Heartlake City seems to be gone, the color scheme they used to make them unique is gone, and the truly relatable characters are gone as well.

@Miyakan said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"I realize there are limitations to how they can make the legs, but I just realized those "shorts" look like she's wearing a garbage bag that's hanging down below her knees."

I feel like sometimes minidolls slip a little too far into the uncanny valley. Usually when looking to closely at the limbs. These trash bag pants don't help with that."

They have a name, the shorts that is, 'culottes,' 'knickerbockers,' or 'knicks.'

Still popular to this day in baseball. I think it's a good look as long as they're form-fitting. I've even seen men wear these with suits jackets.

@Ridgeheart said:
"Ah, Olivia, the original hidden monster in the Friends-line. You'll notice that there have been far fewer animals wearing make-up since the rest of the original crew banished her to space.

Then again, the few animals that are around nowadays are usually bruised, cut, missing eyes, limbs, or their entire selves, and this time Olivia might not be to blame.

...Unless Nova is doing Olivia's bidding.

@StyleCounselor said:
" @Miyakan said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"I realize there are limitations to how they can make the legs, but I just realized those "shorts" look like she's wearing a garbage bag that's hanging down below her knees."

I feel like sometimes minidolls slip a little too far into the uncanny valley. Usually when looking to closely at the limbs. These trash bag pants don't help with that."

They have a name, the shorts that is, 'culottes,' 'knickerbockers,' or 'knicks.'

Still popular to this day in baseball. I think it's a good look as long as they're form-fitting. I've even seen men wear these with suits jackets."

This day I will not be following the advice of our resident style-consigliere. The Dutch word for these pants translates to 'turd-catcher', and that's just not too appealing."

OMG! I think I need a pair after reading that! The laughing got something moving. ;)

@JoeysGirl:
One of the original five (Mia) is mother to one of the new slate (Autumn), although Mia appears to be dying her hair these days. They explained the transition when they announced the 2023 lineup of sets. The original group ran ten years, and (even if AFOLs weren’t paying attention) their adventures evolved over that time. Where they may have started out running a local dog-washing service, they ended up doing international wildlife rescue operations via helicopter. Or it started with informal performances for a gathering of friends and family to participating in big concert tours. If one of the favored aspects of the theme is a greater sense of realism…well, kids grow up and become parents to the next generation (technically modern society tends to stagger generations, like Boomers raising Millennials, and Gen-X raising Gen-Z).

Anyone who has been paying attention has probably also noticed stuff like the massive shift to EVs (can’t put a car in a set without a charging station to plug it into). The original lineup got criticized for a lack of diversity, to the point that one of them went through an abrupt change of ethnicity. With a complete reset of the core group, that’s all baked in from the start. Different ethnicities, male core characters (the first year, the only male character released was Olivia’s dad), and so on.

The original characters aren’t exactly gone, either. Mia may be the only one who has shown up so far, but they mentioned the possibility of others visiting town from time to time. But “relatability” is relative, right? Two very different people are probably going to relate most to two equally different characters. They did clearly try to appeal to a wide range of tastes with G1 Friends, by giving all five girls very different interests, but five characters can’t possibly cover every possibility. Even adding the new group doesn’t exhaust the possibilities. In ten years, expect to see G3 Friends, and Mia may have finally given up and let her hair go stark white (or maybe she’ll dye it pink).

@shedjed: Indeed. I was already a man in his early thirties when Friends came out, and if I've ever had a problem with minidolls, it's simply that there legs are fixed together, so they can't be posed as if walking. Other than that, they're fine as far as I'm concerned.

@Ridgeheart: Surprised you didn't mention on @PurpleDave's "restraining bolt" comment. And no, I don't Nova and Olivia are in league. Unnecessary makeup is a far cry from mutilation.

@PurpleDave said:
" @JoeysGirl:
One of the original five (Mia) is mother to one of the new slate (Autumn), although Mia appears to be dying her hair these days. They explained the transition when they announced the 2023 lineup of sets. The original group ran ten years, and (even if AFOLs weren’t paying attention) their adventures evolved over that time. Where they may have started out running a local dog-washing service, they ended up doing international wildlife rescue operations via helicopter. Or it started with informal performances for a gathering of friends and family to participating in big concert tours. If one of the favored aspects of the theme is a greater sense of realism…well, kids grow up and become parents to the next generation (technically modern society tends to stagger generations, like Boomers raising Millennials, and Gen-X raising Gen-Z).

Anyone who has been paying attention has probably also noticed stuff like the massive shift to EVs (can’t put a car in a set without a charging station to plug it into). The original lineup got criticized for a lack of diversity, to the point that one of them went through an abrupt change of ethnicity. With a complete reset of the core group, that’s all baked in from the start. Different ethnicities, male core characters (the first year, the only male character released was Olivia’s dad), and so on.

The original characters aren’t exactly gone, either. Mia may be the only one who has shown up so far, but they mentioned the possibility of others visiting town from time to time. But “relatability” is relative, right? Two very different people are probably going to relate most to two equally different characters. They did clearly try to appeal to a wide range of tastes with G1 Friends, by giving all five girls very different interests, but five characters can’t possibly cover every possibility. Even adding the new group doesn’t exhaust the possibilities. In ten years, expect to see G3 Friends, and Mia may have finally given up and let her hair go stark white (or maybe she’ll dye it pink)."

Stephanie is making an appearance in the next wave as well.

This brings back so much nostalgia for the original Friends.

@PhantomBricks said:
In regards to the negativity, I tend to agree with you. Some take their criticisms too far. Others are constantly negative, ignore who the target demographic is, and erroneously claim that the return to classic themes is what everyone wants. I'm generally quite positive in the comments such as with the most recent Ninjago and Dreamzzz reveals. I still should be allowed to criticize themes like Friends at times, but I recognize my voice will not have as much weight as the thousands of girls who adore the theme.
You probably won't read my rambling comment, but if you did, thank you. ]]

Well-said in general. I like the Friends line/theme models and have a few of them*, but I despise the minidolls (vs minifigs). The whole idea of "girls can't play with minifigs" is condescending AF. I get the arguments that have been made for it and don't buy it at all. They could also have had cross compatibility, or even basic functionality: Minidolls are weirdly proportioned and also way bigger than minifigs, there are fewer points of articulation (yeah, "girl toys don't need to have action elements!"). And what's with the heads not even using the same stud size to attach? There could have been a much easier-sell in between. If it's the "more realistic face", that could have been handled by making them. As it is, there's no good transition point between them. Sure, held-in-hand items and general "studs" still apply, but that's it. If a kid has Friends and wants to move on to "other" or "grown up" sets (say, Harry Potter sets or something), they're stuck with this divide now, too.

Similarly, I also didn't like when they started doing flesh-colored minifigs rather than all just yellow. I get why they did, but I still disagree with it.

*And probably another this year, even though it comes with minidolls.

@PurpleDave said:
" @JoeysGirl:
One of the original five (Mia) is mother to one of the new slate (Autumn)..."

Sounds like she has been busy.

The only thing I never really liked about the minidolls, was the fact that they 'threw off' minifig-scale builds, usually by a brick or so. This was especially egregious in the first few waves of Friends, Elves and the likes. The colours took some getting used to, but hey - it could be worse. At least the minidolls didn't give us some horrible eyeblight like, I dunno, HIGHLIGHTER-YELLOW. I think the scale is what initially made me a nay-sayer; that and "I thought Lego was already pretty unisex" is what I grew up on. I don't think that was a bad thing to grow up on, but it doesn't mean that there isn't room for anything new.

Several years back, my nephew suprised me by asking for Elves-sets, specifically because he liked the colours, and who was I to refuse that little dude? If he wants Elves, he gets Elves. As far as I'm concerned, TLM and TLM2 basically cemented that 'Everything is Awesome' also pertains to mixing yellow minifigs, flesh-coloured basketball-minifigs, minidolls, Duplo, whatever. Do what makes you happy. Play and build however the hell you like. Use the colours you like, who cares what other people think? They're not the boss of you.

I will admit that seeing the massive step up in quality of the past few Friends-waves (which absolutely and consistently destroys City) definitely made the minidolls much more acceptable to me, and I really appreciate how the scale-discrepancies seem to have lessened over time, to the point where minifig- and minidoll-scales are now basically interchangeable. But hey. Guess what. Even if everything up until now was nothing but lies, who even cares? I am not the target-audience, what I think doesn't matter. The minidolls and their sets are very succesful, they're not going away.

I still reserve the right to judge individual minidolls based on their personal merits and my personal suspicions. Harshly, at that.

@emQ said:"The whole idea of "girls can't play with minifigs" is condescending AF."
My understanding is that the girls in the test groups didn't like minifigs, so Lego decided to try something new, and the minidolls were much better-received.
"Minidolls are weirdly proportioned..."
And minifigs aren't? I find minidolls to be better-proportioned than minifigs, but will freely admit that both have weird proportions.

@StyleCounselor:
I remember a time in high school, a year or two before they finally started letting students wear shorts in spring and fall, someone in my grade trying to tell a teacher that she was wearing culottes. I didn’t know what those were (the teacher did), but I did know she was clearly wearing mid-thigh-length shorts.

But culottes with a jacket? Unless you’re a British schoolboy, or you’re wearing a powdered wig, that’s not a good look.

Anyways, to be fair, when I was looking up names, I did notice the current wave of characters has more shorts-like shorts, so they apparently figured out a way to improve the styling.

@bookmum:
I prefer OG Blacktron, so I’m cool with that if it happens.

@TheOtherMike:
No issue with the fused wrists?

@PhantomBricks:
I hate the minidolls, and I’m not really interested in the City/Town theme in general, but I absolutely understand the point of the theme. Brickworld had a keynote speaker one year, and she basically talked at us about how she had been involved in developing every failed theme that was targeted at girls (I heard she was no longer with the company by the time Friends launched). And my LUG recently had, for the first time in over 20 years, a female minor become a member, which got me realizing that the North American market, at least, basically lost the girls market from around the time the minifig debuted, right up until Friends hit stores. That’s basically skipping Gen-X and Millennials completely, with Baby Boomers falling under the gender-free years prior to the minifig, and Gen-Z latching onto Friends, Disney Princess, and Elves, and probably some themes with wider appeal like Harry Potter as well.

Now, the question is exactly what contributed to this success, and what was just adjacent to it when it happened? Friends had a different color palette, minidolls, pink and purple boxes, often got shelved next to Barbie rather than Emmet, a more “daily life” focus, and a cast that was almost devoid of males. But our TFOL builds Harry Potter, Minecraft, and Elves, and has no apparent interest in Friends whatsoever.

I talked to someone I know from Brickworld who also builds Elves, and her theory is that young girls fall into two main camps. Either they like the traditional dollhouse format, often with horses, or they prefer a more genre-oriented experience. And she thinks the reason why minidolls were one key to success is that kids aren’t buying these sets for themselves. It’s their mothers and grandmothers who pay the bill at checkout, and they’re not as likely to go for all the unicorns and dragons found in the more fantastical themes.

@emQ:
In my experience, girls absolutely don't have problems with minifigs. There have been a number of times when I was sorting through CMF packets (usually at The LEGO Store, but occasionally at another retail chain) when a young girl with her parent was trying to pick a CMF packet to buy, and the girl remarked that she just wanted to pick one of the female minifigs. So the fact that the gender disparity of minidoll themes works in their favor rather than against it is at least partially responsible for the success of themes like Friends.

@Ridgeheart:
Unisex? Hardly. Paradisa maybe, but the vast majority of minifig-based themes have been very conflict-oriented, with a lone female character who is limited to a single $50 or $100 set.

@emQ said:
[[ @PhantomBricks said:
In regards to the negativity, I tend to agree with you. Some take their criticisms too far. Others are constantly negative, ignore who the target demographic is, and erroneously claim that the return to classic themes is what everyone wants. I'm generally quite positive in the comments such as with the most recent Ninjago and Dreamzzz reveals. I still should be allowed to criticize themes like Friends at times, but I recognize my voice will not have as much weight as the thousands of girls who adore the theme.
You probably won't read my rambling comment, but if you did, thank you. ]]

Well-said in general. I like the Friends line/theme models and have a few of them*, but I despise the minidolls (vs minifigs). The whole idea of "girls can't play with minifigs" is condescending AF. I get the arguments that have been made for it and don't buy it at all. They could also have had cross compatibility, or even basic functionality: Minidolls are weirdly proportioned and also way bigger than minifigs, there are fewer points of articulation (yeah, "girl toys don't need to have action elements!"). And what's with the heads not even using the same stud size to attach? There could have been a much easier-sell in between. If it's the "more realistic face", that could have been handled by making them. As it is, there's no good transition point between them. Sure, held-in-hand items and general "studs" still apply, but that's it. If a kid has Friends and wants to move on to "other" or "grown up" sets (say, Harry Potter sets or something), they're stuck with this divide now, too.

Similarly, I also didn't like when they started doing flesh-colored minifigs rather than all just yellow. I get why they did, but I still disagree with it.

*And probably another this year, even though it comes with minidolls.]]

I get where you're going with that, the flesh colored minidolls are a wee bit weird, but considering we probably won't see much of the original five, it's very nostalgic for me due to I loved this toyline when I was younger. But

But I do see your point. (I accidently pushed enter)

@_Ranger_ said:
"But I do see your point. (I accidently pushed enter)"
You can edit your comment. It should say "edit" in the bottom right, at least for an hour after posting.

I know it's been said about the wrists and knees, but why do they look like they are about to give you a hug and aren't quite sure?