Just to build on this a bit: Lego has lost its original focus. It current tends to zero in on initial play value. Perhaps there is a greater fun in playing with this set than with 6066. It might be more fun. But once the initial thrill of the newness wears off, what then?Jojo wrote:That's exactly the point: It's fun for, like, an hour. And after that hour the knights are supposed to drive home or what? What's a knight worth if he doesn't have a horse? TLC simply overemphasizes the short-term playvalue and their own simplistic story lines rather than to offer figs and parts for free building and playing that's based on the child's (or AFOL's) own imagination.Emperor James wrote:Actually, it is kind of fun and addictive to make the knights crash together. (...) But its got to count for something if you can sit there and launch them together, for, like, an hour.
In old sets of this size, you had two alternatives. 1) In an older set, say 6066, you had extended play value. The initial entertainment of smashing two knights together may have faded, but you were given enough figs and such that you could have numerous stories with the original set. Stories/games that were based on the child's imagination. For instance, the peasant in the set could be in love with the princess, and wins her hand by taking the place of the fallen knight in battle. You actually had enough figs to have a full fight, not just a duel or joust.
2) In old sets you could actually build good alternative models, and lots of them, using only the pieces that came with the set, and your own imagination. I'm not saying that this is IMPOSSIBLE with this set, but it is WAY more of a challenge, and for a kid, not so likely to happen.
Lego has, to a large extent, lost the ability to create sets that can tell ENDLESS stories (with the possible exception of the REALLY big ones). More importantly, Lego has lost the ability to give you enough pieces in a set to make thousands of other models. The pieces you get today are so few (because of their size), and so useless (because of their set function), that making an alternative model using JUST the pieces in the set is really difficult.
I think it would be almost impossible to make an alternative model for this set that was comparable in size, and looked like a professional model, using only the pieces in this set.
