Building bricks again
February's been an odd month, and the fact that this blog's been so quiet has been a side effect of it. I've been ill a lot in many ways (I'm typing this while on leave, in fact), I spent a week back in the old home country keeping company to my mother and dealing with some of the unfortunate life admin following my dad's passing, and life's been generally a bit up and down and all around. That hasn't left much space for blogging as I've barely written anything to begin with (my music review site's been quite barren too), and the few ideas I've had I've abandoned because in the end I realised I had nothing really to say.
I have however been buying some Lego for myself this year, which I've not done for a long time though I've always been a big fan of the classic plastic bricks. The trick is to, of course, cater for my nostalgia and fandom whims. In other words, just throw Sonic Adventure 2 at me and I'll be happy.
Both the Cyclone walker and the Biolizard models are really well done and full of fantastic detail that isn't visible just by looking at the package. The Cyclone for example is powered by a Chaos Emerald nestled deep within the engine - you can never in your life see it, but it's there and I really enjoy that level of detail (even if it's the wrong colour but we'll let that one pass). Both also really highlight just how much the general design has evolved over the years that I've not been actively building Lego - you can practically hear the gears in the engineers' heads on how to bring these designs out as faithfully as possible without abandoning the core tenet that every Lego piece should fit anything you could ever want to build.
What really catches me with both sets though is that they both contain little projectile cannons to shoot off small Lego pieces (the Biolizard has two, in fact). Not only did I not expect this (have I mentioned I've not built Lego for a while) but I didn't expect just how hard these things shoot. I've kept my eye out on toys and action figures in recent years because of my nephew and I've seen that in general, these toys have become increasingly more boring with little in the way of the projectile-shooting accessory gadgets that most of my toys in the 1990s came with - I presume because of health and safety above anything else, lest any li'l champ shoot their eyes out. Lego seemingly do not give an absolute fuck about this, the force that the tiny one-dot pieces shoot through the cannons when you press the activated button is so fierce it took me by surprise when I first gave it a try, soon finding the projectile ricocheting all over my room. I... kinda love the audacity of it. At least the Danes are making sure kids still get to have fun.
The fact that the Lego/Sonic licensing partnership has moved on from generic playsets to highly specific fan-pandering designs is very fun though. And probably dangerous for my wallet if they keep this up.