For the better part of the past week (the last six days, to be precise) I’ve been at our newest store in Wake Forest, first setting up the shelves, stocking the shelves, then organizing the store for business. Long days, hard days, and in the middle of interviewing an applicant yesterday I yawned, apologized for yawning, and said, “You know, I think I’ve just hit the wall.” Twelve-plus hour days, one after another, for six straight days, will do that to a person.
And now, on a completely different subject….
Last Tuesday I was puttering around Crabtree Valley Mall and went in KayBee Toys. They had on sale Transformers “Lego” sets. They’re not really Lego sets, they’re actually “Built to Rule!” sets, but the pieces look like Lego pieces and the box states “Compatible with other leading building systems,” meaning Legos. I looked over the selection, picked up the Starscream set, and got myself psyched up for an afternoon of building enjoyment.
Try ten minutes.
Problem one. It’s essentially pre-built. There are some big pieces–arms, legs, cockpit, base–that are preassembled and you just snap them together. Only a few pieces–a grey 2×10, two black 1×6–would qualify in my mind as being Lego-like. The rest of the model isn’t because you don’t have to build much of anything.
Problem two. It doesn’t transform. When I was ten and I watched Transformers religiously I built a Lego airplane that transformed into a robot. It wasn’t a particularly good airplane, nor was it a particularly good robot, but at least it transformed from one state to the other. For the Built to Rule Starscream, you have to disassemble the airplane state and rebuild it as the robot state. That doesn’t qualify in my mind as transforming.
Call me disappointed.
That’s what you get for buying offbrand. 😉
Yeah, Megabloks did something similiar a couple years ago, except with a generic transforming robot to go along with the generic bricks. You had to dissasemble it into several large chunks, which you would then rearrange to “transform” it. It was all right, but horribly unstable in robot mode. Still, I had fun integrating it into my One Lego Universe story. I think it was a tool of the Red Nexus, who in my Universe was the enemy of the Green Nexus, which was really the aliens from the Mission to Mars sets.
Steve
I’m sorry you’ve been so busy! You should take some time off! They work you too hard at EB! ^-^
oh…and those lego’s are mostly prebuilt because they are for kids- not big ones like you but little kids….yes really.
just kidding! Kids these days just can’t handle transforming legos…what a shame.