The other day, my brother and I visited a small shop at our local mall that sells Chinese knock off Lego figures. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony).
But what can I say, game recognizes game.
As we shuffled through to the display cases, we found something both hilarious and infuriating.
The shop was selling clone troopers, of course. But something was different about these guys. Something that absolutely blew my mind.
The antenna hole was... IN THE RIGHT SPOT?!
Yep. You heard that right.
Something that I had previously speculated was structurally impossible for Lego to implement, for plastic integrity or something like that, was being done by a knock off shop. Not only that, but it was done without compromising the movie accurate shape that these helmets once had, like a thousand years ago in 2013.
Why can some bootleg manufacturer get something right that a multi billion dollar toy company routinely fails to accomplish? The most BASIC accuracy issues constantly made, which seem completely avoidable. And yet, things that they have literally gotten correct in previous years continue to be done wrong today. It's embarrassing.
Incompetence? No. it almost feels like spite at this point.
To make matters worse, there's actually an even bigger problem with their helmets. No, It's not the mold.
It's the visor design.
Seriously, have you ever looked at clone trooper figures recently and felt that there was something very off about their visor design?
Well, that's because there IS something wrong with it. And for me, it basically singlehandedly ruins the entire figure.
The visor is TINY. It looks like his face has been squished in. But WHY? The crazy part is that Lego's instructions often show a MUCH BETTER print on the instructions, or on their product photos on the website! Isn't that crazy??
After ruining a few helmets, I eventually found a way to paint on the accurate visor, and it basically saved my Clone army from a massive loss in Aura.
But for the rest of Lego fans, I think they feel slighted because it feels that Lego is both aware of the issues, cognizant (and capable) of fixing the issues, and yet they elect to do absolutely nothing about it.
In the future, I'm thinking of doing a little tutorial on how to fix your own clone trooper helmets visors. Let me know if you're interested in seeing that.
Thanks everyone! Please check out our shop for some really cool custom minifigs and parts, our stop motion films for some wacky entertainment, and of course, this blog for my thoughts on the toy scene.
Hope your week is great!
- Brick Beanie