Juicy June – LEGO Friends Magazine, June 2022

It’s a well-established tradition that the LEGO Friends magazine is very seasonally themed and so here we are with the summer edition for this year.

As you would expect, the comic is centered around all sorts of activities one can do in the sun and the heat, most notably spend some time at a beach or a pool. Aside from my more general dislike for the Friends comics due to the girls looking creepy this one also comits a similar sin as the latest Jurassic World comic – everything looks just flat and lifeless and of course the story has very little substance beyond haphazardly trying to set you up to buy the latest pool-themed sets.

Personally I’m pleased that the magazine at some point has introduced more “real” activities and the coloring page has now become a staple. There are some more drawing-centric tasks plus a few puzzles. Another standout is a tic-tac-toe/ memory style “pack your picnic bag” game which could offer some ten minute fun. unfortunately it’s printed on one of the regular pages instead of the thicker outer wrapper, so durability and handling aren’t going to be great.

The posters aren’t half bad this time as someone had the good sense to not plaster them with unnecessary typography or extra fluff character cutouts that don’t fit the subject and don’t match in perspective, the most common sin in many of Blue Ocean‘s designs.

The extra is a small push cart with a juice/ smoothie bar on it, which is rather appropriate for the subject at hand. It’s simple and efficient and well decked out with fruit, which is something one cannot always take for granted. Two bananas and an apple is nothing to balk at. The only thing that could have made it better would be one of the printed pineapple or melon minifigure heads, which I would have preferred in place of the smartphone tile.

This issue doesn’t quite give me the positive vibe I had with the last one, but it’s still quite good and absolutely serviceable to keep your kids occupied for a bit while enjoying the sun at a public pool or beach…

Not so hyper-active, but still…

As the year quickly nears its end, I figured I better start summing up my activities that so far have slipped under the radar and not been mentioned here for reasons such as obeying deadlines, working out details behind the scenes and not prematurely publishing stuff. All of that is now out of the way and I can share what little activities I have done.

Of course my output pales in comparison to others. I have no issues admitting that. Too many other things going on like making myself unpopular with posting way too much on blogs and forums (not just LEGO-related), dealing with my health issues and way too many other hobbies/ interests. However, occasionally I find myself particularly enticed and highly motivated to get my lazy ass up when there is stuff to win, not least because when there is sets to be had that under regular circumstances would be hard for me to buy due to limited finances. My Ornithoraptor entry for the respective LEGO Ideas contest didn’t go anywhere, but I don’t give up that quickly, so let’s see how I fared elsewhere.

Early in the summer I participated in the Beyond the Brick merchandise design contest. Since they didn’t stipulate any specific rules of course this could be interpreted in a million ways and as someone who built plastic model planes in his youth and always admired the box art I thought I’d try to do something that might evoke a similar vibe with a “plane” zooming by a brick “mountain” peeking out of the clouds. I spent a few afternoons on this in Adobe Illustrator, but of course it’s merely a first draft. Looking at it now even I realize what’s wrong with it and definitely would approach it differently for a final design.

Oddly enough somehow people seem to think that everybody has time during summer and so quickly after that design challenge the publishers of the LEGO Star Wars magazine, Blue Ocean, which of course you are familiar with when reading this blog regularly, launched a celebratory competition to honor their 50th issue. The only requirement was to build your favorite Star Wars scene with the grand prize being an UCS Millenium Falcon (75192). That sounds cool on paper, but the result was a major kick in the balls, to be honest.

To say that the contest was an utter debacle would be putting it mildly. After pre-selecting ten entries user were supposed to rate the ultimate winner on Facebook and that caused an uproar of outrage. The reason why is pretty straightforward: The people in charge seemed too busy to keep up the pretense that their magazine would only be read by kids of a certain age and so they picked a bunch of builds that matched that demographic. I have no problem with that, but this was an open contest and by all means the best model should have won, regardless of age. Worse still, many users commenting reported from their own kids, nices, grand children etc. that they had seen way better builds from them.

The end of the story? After all the negative backlash nobody ever since  heard again of the contest. I’m sure they were planning on drumming this up big in the magazine itself as well as other channels, but it really turned into a PR disaster that I’m sure everyone just wants to forget this embarrassment. I’m not even sure if any of the group of ten actually ever were picked as a winner and received their prize. I can only hope they learned their lesson and next time come up with clearer rules or multiple tiers/ categories to avoid such a mess.

Finally, and to end this on a positive note, I did succeed in a contest and even made it to the number one spot with my “(E)Island Holiday”. That’s of course a bit of German/ English word play and would translate to “Ice- (Is-)land Holiday” in a very crude fashion. Again this was once more in the midst of the summer and there were no restrictions, so for me at least it was quite a challenge to even get it finished while struggling with the heat wave and sweating like an ox.

I didn’t particularly expect to win, but the idea of a toppled-over ice cone had been in my head for a while and this was the perfect opportunity to turn it into a model. Only after the first reactions began to praise it for it’s originality, I got a little nervous and began to hope for more. In the end it’s of course just another summer-y beach scene like so many other submissions, but I suppose that little twist makes all the difference. In any case, I’m glad it worked out…

 

Chasing the Horse

As you well know by reading this blog I regularly LEGO Friends sets. That does however not mean I’m picking them randomly and indiscriminately, so I do not necessarily cover certain subjects. One of those is all that horse stuff, which most of the time is simply contained in sets that just don’t interest me. I therefore welcome every opportunity to catch up on this using other means on my modest budget and lo and behold – this year we are getting a horse special for the summer.

The issue has been out for several weeks already as I’m writing this, but Blue Ocean somehow decided to only release it in limited distribution, meaning my local newspaper agent was unable to obtain it through his channels. I therefore had to wait until I got a chance to pick it up when I was on the road for medical appointments in the next big city this Thursday.

Let me cut to the chase right away – a price of 4 Euro doesn’t bode well from the start and you can’t expect that much from the magazine. The actual print product therefore is pretty limited to put it kindly. The comic is pretty uninspired and drawn rather poorly. The funny thing is that it hints at this year’s boardwalk amusement park sets, but apparently at the time of planning the magazine and creating the artwork no finalized designs were available, so they made up their own stuff. As a result it lacks all the details that would make the comic rich and vivid and feels rather meh.

The magazine comes with the usual mix of posters plus a few games and on one page even features a cutout horse stable. Unfortunately unlike in past years they didn’t bother to print it on thicker card stock nor did they make it a double-sided print or at least a consistent solid color for the backside. Instead you are supposed to glue it onto stronger colored paper yourself. Less than ideal and really not great for a special issue.

Of course the main reason for me were the parts and within what you can expect this is actually quite nice. The black pony/ foal makes up a good chunk of the value, but the rest isn’t bad, either. It even includes one of the newer 1 x 3 on 2 x 1 jumper plate in white and overall you have a good volume of stuff, if not a huge parts count. There have definitely been less useful Friends magazine extras, so I’m happy with that.

As it is this is an okay issue and should make your kid happy for what it is. It feels a bit barebones, though, and if they keep reducing the useful stuff further while also cutting down on distribution and print numbers in upcoming years it may simply not be worth it any longer.

Icy Summer

While we currently have a lull with quite low temperatures the summer is far from over, the next heatwave is bound to hit and so it seems fitting that the LEGO Friends magazine for August/ September offers us some cool refreshments by ways of a little ice cream machine.

The build of said little device is solid enough and with a little extra work it could fit well into Olivia’s Cupcake Café (41366) or Emma’s Art Café (41336). that would mostly extend to either converting it from a tabletop to a standalone machine or at least reducing the height slightly so it lines up with the rest of the kitchen appliances used there. Nothing extraordinary to be sure, but nonetheless done well enough. The only piece that stands out is the 1 x 1 round stud in Reddish Brown, which apparently is new in this color and used in a few Harry Potter sets.

The magazine itself is once again pretty awful with its terrible CG and poorly drawn comic, which makes me think that it won’t before long that I’ll stop buying it regularly (unless there’s really some cool model pieces included). It seems that indeed it is faltering and the reduction of the publishing frequency to only every second month was only the first step and it’s declining further….