The Great LEGO Plague of 2002

[Music] hey everyone I'm your host RR Slugger instead of reviewing 2022 I would like to turn back the clock 20 years and discuss what I consider to be the great Lego plague of 2002. this will certainly be more of an opinionated piece than our usual fare no objective slugometer in this one so feel free to agree or disagree to your heart's content let's start by setting the stage 2002 if you're familiar with Lego's history in this era then you may already be trying to fill in the blanks as to what the subject of this video is what indelible Affliction cursed the landscape of our favorite toy manufacturer in 2002. infamously galador was released that year could that be it well was galador really a plague to me galador was more of a flash in the pan a unique mixture of good ideas and bad ideas with varying degrees of successfulness galador was like a weird mole or a skin growth that if not removed immediately could become cancerous and fatal but a plague plague implies Mass infection on a wide scale rather than tainting other themes galador's part inventory was swiftly scuttled and never spoken of again in terms of dissemination galador was hardly contagious no the plague I speak of was more Insidious polluting what seemed like every single Lego theme for many years to follow this will be overly reductionist but I think the great Lego plague of 2002 can be traced to a single piece [Music] this piece and others like it led to a fundamental change within the construction of Lego sets that in my opinion had a vastly negative impact on the build and aesthetic quality of the entire toy line you can leave your dislike now all right I know them's fighting words for some folks out there so I better be able to back up my claims with something let's take a look at the dimensions of part 41747 and how it interacts with other pieces firstly this piece takes up roughly a two by six footprint there is a slight 1x4 recess in the tapered angle but only a few specific pieces can make use of this I wasn't able to find a single example of an official set doing so and I think the reason why can be traced to this next point this brick is almost completely unstackable with only two studs to work with across a 12 stud area and a significant curvature leading up to them this piece almost always has to be placed on top of something not as a building block in a larger shape because of the slight curve of these pieces they're really only compatible with parts designed to have an identical arc when stacking them this visible bowing creates a sort of lumpy aesthetic compared to the more pleasing uniform look of traditional angled slope bricks this notable lack of Versatility in the use case of these bricks is further compounded by the fact that they are almost always paired up with another equal yet opposite mold doubling The Afflicted footprint to four by six that's 24 studs made unusable by two very specific bricks and I haven't even mentioned the 3x12 versions also introduced in 2002 the massive and obtrusive Footprints taken up by these pieces plus the fact that they almost always gravitate towards the top of a model by Design leads us to the Apex of their awfulness the because of their conspicuous nature these pieces were regularly recipients of unique printing to correspond with the set they came in on the surface adding printing to a set in place of stickers is rarely considered a bad thing however in this case I think it's the coup de gras not only are we saddled with these awkward new curved pieces but now half of them have set specific printing making them much more difficult to reuse anywhere other than the model they were designed for what's more remember that all these pieces are produced in pairs set or theme specific printing is nothing new at all but at least in those situations if you had the piece you had the piece with these printed pairs if you're missing one well you're out of luck for anyone like myself who has done a significant amount of digging through used brick bins you'll know it's mostly these guys loan socks worthless without a pair hopefully by now I've made it clear why I have it out for these pieces I'm by no means a master builder but I just think these are bad bricks with limited uses they rely heavily on consisting of a matching pair and or including other large bricks that were designed specifically to interact with them but the LEGO Group has made bricks that fit this description before heck even Rock Raiders has a few that come to mind what makes the 41747 and 41748 combo more noteworthy well I don't call it the great Lego plague of 2002 for nothing almost overnight These Bricks or others that were designed to interact with them seeped their way into nearly every Lego theme that year I would not be surprised at all if there was an internal mandate that forced Lego designers to use these pieces as their adoption rate was staggering but was it plague worthy the Black Death famously infected and killed 30 to 60 percent of the population of Europe between 1346 and 1353 is it possible that these new curved pieces had a similar infection rate in 2002 in this completely scientific peer-reviewed study I went through all of the sets released in 2002 in order to find out I eliminated anything I felt didn't represent a traditional retail system set galador Bionicle Technics soccer polybags those were all out what I was left with was a pool of 74 quality sets that I felt represented what was available for purchase starting that year from there I visually lumped the sets into two categories plagued sets and non-plagged sets the results were terrifying of the 74 sets I reviewed 43 were deemed unaffected by the plague that means that 31 sets a whopping 42 of all the retail sets that year utilized these new curved parts that puts us well within plague territory also keep in mind that the previous year featured zero sets with these plague Parts in them to go from zero percent to 42 adoption rate in a single year is mind-blowing just to add some additional perspective I decided to go through the list of 74 sets again this time looking for something even more vague to contrast against the LEGO Group is the world's largest tire manufacturer by a huge margin right well how many sets included Wheels with tires in 2002 before I show you this number keep in mind that this was a time when Lego Racers was in full swing with pullback motor cars big and small okay you want to know how many system sets included tires in 2002 24. that's it only 32 percent of our 74 set total the plague pieces were more widespread than something as rudimentary as Wheels so what caused all this I know some folks out there have one name locked in their crosshairs already Jack Stone to those folks I regret to inform you that I intentionally left Jack Stone out of those 74 sets I curated meaning that the jackstone series had no impact on those numbers I shared earlier in fact the specific plague Parts I've been complaining about hardly show up in jackstone that Series has its own awful array of massive printed curved pieces but those remained quite self-contained know the main offenders seem to be Lego Racers and Alpha Team Mission deep sea with the latter containing an astounding seven plagued sets out of its total 10. interestingly some themes seem to be immune to the plague for example only a single Harry Potter set from 2002 utilized plague parts and it actually did so quite Tastefully this leads me to wonder if the majority of these sets were actually designed much earlier along with the 2001 sets and staggered for release Lego soccer also managed to avoid the plague though it had its own unique slew of hyper-specific molds to contend with overall these 2x6 curved slope pieces defined this year of Lego and began to Signal my disinterest in the majority of builds going forward there was still a lot of good to be had don't get me wrong but these pieces left a permanent curvy scar on Lego as a whole that still exists today there's a reason I rarely collect sets Beyond 2002 and this is why your tastes may vary but I prefer Lego sets to be a bit more angular in their construction many modern sets now balance the two Aesthetics but back then Lego was messing with the power they had no idea how to control pieces themselves could be used to good effect but when you force them into nearly half of the retail sets you release in a year well you've got a plague on your hands thanks for sticking with me through this one if you've got a least favorite Lego piece too but don't want to write up a four-page script and record a video about it let me know in the comments your hosts RR Slugger and I'll see you next time for another video

Channel: R.R. Slugger

Views: 71,029

Keywords: rock, raiders, lego, review, retrospective, slugger, slimy, slug, rock raiders, axel, jet, docs, bandit, sparks, chief, chrome, crusher, hover, scout, loader, dozer, tunnel, transport, granite, grinder, rapid, rider, RR, HQ, Rock Raiders

Id: cJN-GVoWIew

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023