Announcing a LEGO Friends fan community

 

  • Announcing a LEGO Friends fan community

    Posted by Huw, 14 Feb 2013 01:00. Filed under Miscellaneous.

    The team running new Friends fan site FriendsBricks.com are using Valentine's Day to announce that the site is open for business:

    "We are a worldwide community of Friends fans: Our members are AFOLs, TFOLs, Parents, Sisters and Brothers -- some seasoned LEGO fans & builders, and some newly discovering the love of building through Friends bricks.  Our core purpose is sharing creations, reviews & news. 

    "Since the January 1st, 2012 launch of LEGO Friends, Heartlake City life has been inspiring us.  Stop by www.FriendsBricks.com and join in the Friendship! "


    17 comments, latest one posted 3 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by lego613master in United States, 14 Feb 2013 11:27

No comments yet. No offense, but I do not think that Friends is a very popular theme. Oh well, that's just the opinion of a male TFOL. :P

Posted by The_Creator in United States, 14 Feb 2013 11:40

I think a lot of guys dislike the theme, as you do. But it actually is an extremely popular theme, there is no denying that.

Posted by Odeinoichus in Canada, 14 Feb 2013 11:41

@lego613master: That is a rather absurd statement to make, judging by the numerous stores the past few months selling out completely of 2012 sets, especially during the huge Holiday shopping season, and the amount of young girls who never before collected LEGO purchasing these because of the Mini-Dolls styles and such, not to mention LEGO is supporting this Theme quite as much if not moreso as their Legends of Chima Theme I suspect this Friends Theme has a large following of fans and indeed will be a hot ticket seller for LEGO for quite some time.

I might take a look at that site later just to see what the deal is, haven't the time at the moment due to other errands to run and such. It's nice to know that Friends has inspired enough people to make an entire community based site for fans of it. Seeing another new LEGO Site joining the community is always welcome, even if there are those who vocally find the line to be terrible or unpopular.

Posted by tmgm528 in United States, 14 Feb 2013 11:54

@lego613master: I am a male TFOL like yourself but it did win toy of the year and is extremely popular.

While I would LOVE to watch friends bite the dust it has a HUGE market and popularity. At least there is now a site to put all the friends lovers in like one of those animal sanctions where they are protected. d:
The reason why I say I would love to watch it bite the dust is not against a theme for girls I am all for that! It's just they have absolutely no qualities of a Lego figure and they are very "girly girl" which many girls don't like (including ones i know) I just wish they could make a girl theme with actual lego minifigures and that are not a pink explosion.
With the exception of a custom friends Catwoman that I am proud to own :)

Posted by kbsig106 in United States, 14 Feb 2013 12:38

I like them theme and my 5 year old daughter LOVES it, she actually has asked for more "boys" in the series and is looking forward to the 2013 releases.

I have added the Friends Fan community to my flickr followings.

Posted by tmgm528 in United States, 14 Feb 2013 12:41

/\ To each their own right.

Posted by CM4S in United States, 14 Feb 2013 15:22

Didn't FBTB just make a similar site?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 14 Feb 2013 16:01

Yes, http://www.heartlakefriends.com.

Posted by Aanchir in United States, 14 Feb 2013 16:45

I was invited to this site a while back due to my activity on Eurobricks in discussions related to LEGO Friends... however, as of yet I only have one LEGO Friends set (which I bought for a hairpiece) and haven't become invested in the theme's story like I have with Ninjago and Hero Factory. While I'm a huge fan of the concept of LEGO Friends and I want to see it continue to go places, it hasn't called out to me the way that absurd, adventurous, cheesy themes like Hero Factory and Ninjago have.

I'll need to see the TV special sometime, and that might be enough to make me more invested in following the theme on a deeper level. But as it is, for me it's a lot like City and Star Wars. While I appreciate the theme for its quality design and its importance in the grand scheme of current LEGO product offerings, it's not enough to make me want to join a more insular, close-knit fan community.

With that said, I hope this site does well. So far AFOL interest in LEGO Friends has been somewhat narrow in its scope, with a lot of MOCs, set reviews, and future product speculation but not much fanart, fan fiction, or story discussion like Ninjago and BIONICLE tend to have. I'd love to see that grow and blossom in the years to come.

I suppose part of this is a matter of its audience-- while it's almost certainly quite successful with younger girls just as LEGO City is with younger boys, and successful with AFOLs for the same reason, it might not capture as much of the TFOL audience, a group that often seeks out more adventure-oriented themes or technically-intricate themes in order to justify investment in a "kids' toy" in the face of mounting peer pressure. And TFOLs-- or teenagers and young adults in general-- have typically been the most productive group I've seen when it comes to non-brick-based fanworks based on LEGO themes. I'm often astonished how young some of the great Ninjago fan artists I see on deviantART tend to be.

Posted by osuharding1 in United States, 14 Feb 2013 16:58

@lego613master: Whoever said LEGO Friends is not a very popular theme is not very well versed in LEGO popularity. I consistently post LEGO videos on YouTube and the LEGO Friends Olivia's House is my most viewed video with well over 100,000+ views.

As this LEGO news link also shows, LEGO is very pleased with the successful launch of LEGO Friends.

http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/news-room/2012/august/half-year-result_2012/

Posted by ericjohn in United States, 14 Feb 2013 20:55

I am an AFOL and a Friends fan. The sets offer a playability that hasn't been offered by LEGO in a long time that allows my children (and me) a greater imaginative landscape to play on. What the theme was lacking, has been corrected with the upcoming boy characters Andrew and Matthew. The colors may be brighter (really not pastel like they are so often sited) than they need to be, but the pieces that are in each set offer great potential when rebuilding new models, something else that many other recent themes have lacked. Paint me as girly for liking a "girls" theme, but I'm the one enjoying collecting and playing with LEGO again.

Posted by Zackula in United States, 14 Feb 2013 21:46

One day there will be a Lego fan site that doesn't have the word "brick" or "bricks" in the url.

Posted by floodllama in United States, 15 Feb 2013 07:40

I, for one, welcome new LEGO fan communities. LEGO Friends is a very popular theme with lots of potential. I wish Friends Bricks a long and successful run.

Zackula said, "One day there will be a Lego fan site that doesn't have the word "brick" or "bricks" in the url."

Maybe we could call one 'Lugnet' and another one 'Peeron'. MOCpages would be another great name. Dibs on that one. Oh wait.....

Posted by lordofdragonss in Poland, 15 Feb 2013 10:40

I can imagine this site become Classic Friends one day :D
Good luck- from the male fan of the series!

Posted by bruce n h in United States, 15 Feb 2013 10:47

Hi all,

Just a little bit of historical perspective for some of the comments above. Back in the days when Lugnet was the place to be (yes, I'm old), Bionicle was very much out of favor. Yes, there were a few mecha builders who had found great uses for the parts, but on the whole people really hated the them. The pieces just didn't fit with our traditional building styles. The theme seemed to rely way to heavily on this convoluted story line. Way too much shelf space in stores was devoted to these sets as opposed to our beloved castle/Star Wars/train/town or whatever was our theme of choice. The builders tended to be younger and less mature (sorry, TFOLs, I'm just reporting how people responded on Lugnet, not trying to make a value judgement). As such, whenever anyone posted Bionicle stuff they were largely snubbed, and as a result there wasn't much discussion of the theme or sharing of MOCs. It would have been easy to say that the theme wasn't very popular. But then, of course, forums like BZPower and Mask of Destiny grew up, and they specifically catered to a younger age range and fans of the theme, and these things had huge (!) traffic. I never saw specific sales numbers (I don't think LEGO shares those), but the word was that Bionicle far outsold some of those themes preferred by AFOLs, and some said that profits from Bionicle helped keep LEGO afloat, especially during some of their financial troubles several years ago.

I suspect that Friends will turn out to be very similar. It may not be on the radar of the traditional on-line LEGO community, that skews older and skews male, but it seems to be a very successful line with girl KFOLs and their parents (I'm trying to promote the term PFOLs for parents of LEGO builders). If this new forum only draws membership from the traditional on-line LEGO community, they'll probably be low traffic. But, OTOH, if they tap into girl KFOLs and their PFOLs, they could get really big.

@Zackula - LOL! As the curator of eight different blogs with 'Bricks' in the name I resemble that remark. OTOH I have to stick up for Classic-Castle. Of course, you understand why so many sits have 'bricks' in the name, right? It's to avoid getting into trademark/copyright troubles with the legal team over at LEGO. They've said that you can't use 'LEGO' in your site name, and so 'bricks' is seen as a widely-recognized stand-in.

Bruce
AFOL, PFOL, and curator of ____Bricks

Posted by Margot in United States, 15 Feb 2013 13:19

tmgm528 wrote "It's just they have absolutely no qualities of a Lego figure and they are very "girly girl" which many girls don't like (including ones i know) I just wish they could make a girl theme with actual lego minifigures and that are not a pink explosion."

I couldn't agree more.. I didn't think I would like Friends at all but they actually have a lot of really fantastic sets. I just won't buy any of them because I don't like the girly colors. I have gotten over my initial resistance to the dolls and kind of like them but I cannot get over the disgusting candy color of everything.

Posted by Hylirica in United States, 16 Feb 2013 11:39

As a female AFOL, life-long builder, and collector, I LOVE Friends! I've always wanted bricks in these colors and that's exactly why I buy them. The figures are different, but once you get used to them being different, they have their own perks over minifigures. This theme isn't just meant for girls, and LEGO fans shouldn't be trying to shun the theme from their communities. It's another LEGO theme, just like any other, that's meant to cater to a certain play-style, just like all of the other themes that TLG creates. There are plenty of young boys that like this theme for the animals, the colors, or because they just don't care what their bricks look like as long as they can build. The whole point of the theme is to bring a whole new group of kids into the LEGO lifestyle so that when they start out building a Friends set that has their favorite color or activity, they end up building a whole LEGO city complete with police, super heroes, and monsters galore!

TLDR: Don't shun/bash Friends in the fan community. You don't have to like it, but Friends fans are first and foremost LEGO fans, just like you.

Commenting has ended on this article.