Hello, just2good here,
and today, I'm counting down
my top 10 favorite LEGO themes of all time.
There's so many themes it was a pain to make this list,
because a lot will be left out that I love.
Don't take anything personally,
as these aren't what I think are the best themes to everyone,
just the best themes to me.
So, without further ado,
let's get into the list.
[intro music]
Oh my,
starting of the list at number ten is Star Wars.
LEGO Star Wars and I have had a rocky relationship.
I liked this theme back in 2001 until about 2005.
For some reason,
after revenge of the Sith,
I lost all interest in this theme.
But then in 2008, I began to resent the theme.
My foolish view of the Clone Wars sets
was that there were too many released
that took up the shelf space of other themes
with their ugly minifigures.
I mean, look at those faces.
Could you blame me?
But then,
after Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012,
with the promise of new films coming,
my interest was piqued in the Star Wars franchise in general.
I especially dove back into the line with the 2014 Microfighters
and the January 2015 sets,
which gave me a familiar but new look at classic vehicles.
And then, the Force Awakens came around
which fully restored the love I had
when I was a kid in the Star Wars universe.
Now, I have taken the time
to revisit the older LEGO Star Wars releases
and I'm always eager to see what new vehicles come
from the new movie releases.
[transition music]
The most recent theme on this list
is the LEGO Ninjago Movie line.
This didn't come by surprise because look,
these LEGO Movie-based themes have a certain style
that puts LEGO to the limit as much as a mass-retail line can.
I mean, the builds in this line are exceptional.
The standouts are definitely the LEGO Ninjago City
and Destiny's Bounty sets…
which, I will own soon.
Mark my words.
Both are fresh and beautiful builds
that make for great playsets
and display pieces alike.
The mecha sets,
like the Green Ninja Mech Dragon,
Kai's Fire Mech,
and Garma Mecha Man all bring in a new flavor
to the overused mech style across various action themes.
Again, just like the two best of the line,
they're great display and play pieces.
I own a lot of the smaller ones at the moment,
and one of which,
the Ninjago City Chase is one of the best $20 LEGO sets in a while.
And of course, throughout,
the minfigures are fun,
colorful,
and detailed.
We were introduced a bunch of new hair pieces
for the main characters which always makes me happy.
Look, I know the sets don't officially come out until August 1st,
but I felt leaving this incredible theme
out of the list would leave me in regret
of not including it.
[transition music]
Number eight is the LEGO Power Miners theme,
one that I have liked more and more since its release in 2009.
There's something about the consistency in this theme I admire,
where, unlike the recent years of themes like Nexo Knights and City,
they kept the vehicles fresh
in which most are unique and memorable one from another.
The designers took the limited setting of the underground
and used it as a way to think outside the box.
There's two great playsets,
and action packed vehicles that are actually interesting!
The Thunder Driller is the perfect LEGO drill.
The boulder blaster is one of the most interesting
mid-price range sets I've ever built,
and like the driller,
it's always fun to play with.
Love that launching feature.
The Claw Catcher and Claw Digger,
despite similar names,
are completely different with creative play features.
Actually, something I can say about this theme
is I think it may be the most fun on play features alone.
That's another area where creativity exceled.
Then, when there was maybe a bit too much redundancy
in vehicle design, bam,
in 2010 we had the next part of the theme that explored lava.
This changed up the color scheme a bit
and made the villains even more menacing.
Hopefully one day,
the Power Miners will return.
But as it stands,
the theme has a phenomenal legacy.
[transition music]
As I mentioned with the LEGO Ninjago Movie line,
these LEGO Movie themes are just on a new level of detail.
However, what makes me like the LEGO Movie theme more
is the variety of themes covered.
Fitting for the film,
there's City clashing with Space clashing
with the Pirates clashing with Western,
so on and so forth.
And, the theme pays tribute to beloved themes.
Whether it's Johnny Thunder's appearance,
or the Green Ninja's,
or the classic space inspired Benny's spaceship -
one of my favorite from the line.
While I vastly prefer playsets to vehicles,
which, this theme has some fantastic playsets,
they even kept many of the vehicles fresh,
by making 2 in 1s.
Finally, we got a LEGO Ice Cream Truck,
but it also doubles as an Ice Cream…
fighter plane.
And, something I never knew I wanted -
a Plumbing Truck -
appears as well.
Do I even need to mention the great minifigures?
Look, the LEGO Movie Sequel is giving me bad vibes,
but if anything good will come out of it,
it will be the sets to tie in with the movie…
if they can reach the quality of the original theme.
[transition music]
The super hero fatigue.
When will it hit us.
We see so many superhero films release each year.
And, y'know what,
if it's Marvel,
I'm most likely going to go to the theaters to watch it.
Which is why LEGO Marvel Super Heroes,
introduced in 2012, takes the sixth spot.
I'll ignore those Sam Raimi trilogy Spider-Man sets,
which I also love.
I like the Marvel characters a lot,
and the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe
was always something I thought was a cool concept.
Of course,
that concept is being exploited by so many other studios now
it's just disappointing.
Either way,
the minifigures throughout these sets are always colorful and fun.
The sets themselves are good…
for the most part.
I mean, it's really a theme that you can see
has made SO much improvement over the years.
And there's some really great sets in here.
I think the fact that there's
so many different sets for this theme
that release each year since 2012,
there's a lot to appreciate.
Like The LEGO Movie,
there's a blend of various set styles in here,
but here, it mostly leans towards City and Space.
With each new Marvel Studios movie,
while I'm always interested in watching them,
I'm always interested in
seeing if there will be sets based off the movie,
and what these will be.
[transition music]
The fifth entry on my list is the LEGO Adventurers theme.
My first experience in the Adventurers line
was with the LEGO Jurassic Park 3 Studios sets.
The Studios theme almost made it on the list,
but look, I fell in love with the Adventurers theme
with the Orient Expedition sets.
I love the idea of the theme.
Traveling across Asia,
finding treasure and battling bad dudes.
I owned a lot of the smaller sets,
and it's my life goal to get some of the biggest sets -
especially the amazing Dragon Fortress.
This theme and its minifigures gave my brother and I
a lot of inspiration for our own LEGO adventures.
Of course, going back to the start of the theme,
the egypt sets were incredible as well.
Johnny Thunder became a LEGO icon from then on.
I'll be honest,
while I think the Jungle sets are cool,
the Dino Island sets…
I really don't like.
Maybe it's the use of the brick plates and dull dinos.
I don't know.
Since Adventurers,
they've returned to the desert setting with Pharaoh's Quest,
and while I love that theme and think it's underrated,
it doesn't match the quality of the Egypt Adventurers sets.
They've also returned to dinos numerous times -
even with one having a connection to the Adventurers theme -
and recently,
we've had a return to Jungle with the City theme,
but Adventurers will always have a special place in many of our hearts.
[transition music]
Okay, number four
is a shared spot of the LEGO Town and LEGO City themes.
Look, these go hand and hand,
they're basically the next step to each other.
Heck, throw in World City which I have a couple sets from.
LEGO Town has some sets I've been dying to get my hands on
for most of my life,
like Rocky River Retreat,
the Airport Shuttle,
and Breezeway Cafe,
and some of my favorite sets of all time,
like Pizza to Go,
the Velux House, and Town Plan…
I guess?
Do we count that?
Unlike a LEGO Pirates or Castle,
LEGO City has almost as much sets as Town,
and I own A LOT of those sets.
Thus, I feel more comfortable putting it on my list.
And, many of those City sets are some of my favorites as well,
like the 2009 Camper and City Corner sets,
and the Family House from 2010.
I mean, I like the idea of having a little world in LEGO,
and that's really what these civilian themes provide.
That's really where my love for building-based sets come from.
However, the current state of LEGO City
is that it has come to the point
where there's so much of the same that the new stuff fails to surprise me..
I mean, I used to put LEGO City in my top 3 favorite themes,
but it's so predictable of what will happen next
that I'm unmotivated to buy new sets.
It's cool they've been doing these sets outside of the City,
but you know most of it will be vehicles,
and you know it will be one and done.
Like, I love the Jungle subtheme of City,
but the playset aspect is downplayed
and most of it is just vehicles.
And then, to me,
the price of some of the newer LEGO City sets totally puts me off.
Like, the 2016 Service Station looked great,
but 90 bucks is friggin' terrible.
Stop that.
However, I can't take the faults of its recent iterations too hard
to the point where I forget the past gems.
Thus, I feel safe putting this theme at the midway point of my list.
Sort of.
[transition music]
My third favorite LEGO theme of all time
is the Toy Story line from 2010.
Alright, the places of the last seven entries of this list
always swap around,
but these top three are the ones that never change in their spots.
The original Toy Story is my favorite film of all time,
and the first two films embody my childhood.
So, when I heard they were going to release LEGO Toy Story sets
back in 2009, I was instantly filled with joy.
However, I think after seeing the two movies
re-released in theaters October 2009,
where the first Toy Story 3 trailer debuted,
my hype for the third movie reached the max.
Heck, I remember the day the Toy Story 3 sets
leaked online in early December 2009,
and how on December 18th of that month,
I visited Target after school and to my joy,
they had the Woody and Buzz to the Rescue set out for sale.
I freaked the heck out.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
The Christmas that year was AWESOME as well,
I recieved the rest of the sets,
save for Construct-a-Zurg,
which I bought with my Christmas money
at a Walmart a couple days later.
Skip forward a few months,
I remember…
I think it was March 2010 or something.
I came home from some school dance
and I checked back at a random Toys"R"Us page I bookmarked,
and the image popped up for the first time.
That was my first glimpse at the Garbage Truck Getaway set,
and I instantly gravitated towards the exclusive Twitch minifigure.
You see, this was what I thought would be my five seconds of fame
on the internet.
Finding pictures of this set early.
I made a Flickr account just to share
what I thought would be exclusive pictures,
and I shared them all over the LEGO community.
My avatar was changed to Twitch.
And he just stuck.
I remember when the final Toy Story 3 set images popped up on Kmart.
I remember the time I gathered all my money
to get the Trash Compactor Escape set late April,
before anyone else.
I saw it on Toys"R"Us dot com for a second,
and I knew I had to order it.
When I came home from school the day it came,
my lord, I was so ecstatic to build the set.
It was so fun to play with,
it still stands as one of my favorites to this day.
So look, I like the variety of the Toy Story sets -
being that the movies blend in toys of different genres,
it makes sense to have such a variety,
mixing City with Space with Western.
There were plenty of great sets,
like Woody's Round-Up and Buzz's Spaceship.
But what makes me LOVE the theme is the memories
I associate with it.
Whenever I look back at the sets,
I instantly cheer up and remember a great era in my life,
anticipating the release of a movie I waited to come out for years -
Toy Story 3.
[transition music]
Taking in the number two spot is the LEGO Simpsons line
that started in 2014.
A theme with two sets.
But both sets are some of the best LEGO sets
ever released in my opinion.
I mean, the Simpsons House is my favorite LEGO set ever.
You can see that in my Top 15 LEGO Sets of all time video.
I hyped up the Simpsons House set so much
I skipped class that day and went to the LEGO Store
just to pick it up and build it in one day.
And, the Kwik-E-Mart ranked high up there as well.
These two are direct to consumer sets,
so the level of detail on them is expectedly exceptional.
Really, the worst part of this theme
is that we didn't get more than the two sets.
I mean, sure, getting the Kwik-E-Mart
along with the second minifigure series was more than gracious.
At one point,
I was worried the House and first minifigure series would be it.
Heck, we did get three Dimensions sets,
but those were not anything too special.
Keep in mind, not only were the two main sets incredible,
but I have a personal attachment to the series.
I mean, growing up,
The Simpsons was one of my favorite shows.
I can say that Series 3ish to around Season 9 are the golden years,
and the show stopped being good around Season 12 or 13.
And, as a whole,
the show has taught me a lot about character development, humor,
and story lines, something that I will hopefully
put to use in the future if I ever get my dream job
of becoming a film director.
[transition music]
This list was originally going to be 20 entries long,
but it was so hard doing any ordering past ten.
So, here are some themes that almost made the list....
Honorable mentions.
[transition music]
My favorite LEGO theme of all time
is the LEGO Minifigures theme,
which started in 2010.
Minifigures are legitimately the best thing about LEGO to me,
so this comes as no surprise.
But, it's more than the fact
that this series is all about minifigures.
Think about it - my last three choices
have all had their own series (sort of).
It covers my favorite properties,
and each and every series always is a seasonal thing
to look forward to.
Not only that,
but I have fond memories of these,
whether it was scanning the codes for Series 1 with my brother
back when it was first released seven years ago,
or feeling thousands of packs
and then finally finding Mr. Gold on a whim
during finals week of 2013,
or getting all of Series 11 the day before school started,
and even finding the LEGO Batman Series
with the help of a generous worker.
So look, we'll have a dud series here and there,
but the LEGO Minifigures line
will always be something to keep me into LEGO.
It taught me that even when you think you'll get out of the toy,
there will always be a surprise to bring you back in.
So guys, what are your favorite LEGO themes?
Let me know in the comments below.
I'll see you guys later.
Peace out.
Bye.
[closing music]
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