Lego Death Star, anyone? Should go nice with the cool but also too expensive Star Destroyer.

Sets like those aside, Lego is in such a sorry fucking place right now. I was out looking for Legos this week -- for once not for me but for someone else -- and I didn't have a ton of time, so I was only able to hit one store. I know that Lego has been in a shit state for years, but I was like, there's always at least one decent set, right? So I should be able to find something. Well, there pretty much was just one decent set in the whole fucking store (one of the Harry Potter sets). Everything else I saw made me wanna vomit. Like what the fuck is that Dino Attack shit? I didn't give those sets a close look because I didn't want to know. And then there's the Holocaust that is the Knight's Tale series. Several years ago they discontinued the castle lineup, and I was pissed. Then, they brought it back under the Knight's Tale moniker, and I was pissed. They should have just left it dead. The same goes for the pirates stuff. Ten to 15 years ago, that shit was bad-ass. Now it's resurrected as part of their 4+ lineup, and it fucks ass.

Some of the entertainment property-based sets are cool. A lot of the Star Wars ones are good, and I don't even like Star Wars that much. Some of the Harry Potter ones look decent, even though I've never read one of the books (because I'm not a child, even though in some ways I look and act like a child) or seen the movies (which I hear are decent). That should tell you something right there: the only Legos I can really get into now are for shit that I don't even like. It's like Jews playing with Nazi Legos, only way less extreme.

Actually, fuck. How cool would that be? Holocaust Legos would go great with our already planned line of September 11th toys. As I've mentioned before, I will call my toy company Depraved Indifference Toys. Our slogan? Depraved Indifference Toys: Making a Killing off of People Making a Killing.

Okay, I'm getting off track, as per usual. Back to why Lego has become the Trent Reznor of the toy industry. Okay, that's not really a fair comparison; both used to be really cool but now mostly suck, but Trent was never that cool, nor did he inspire anything other than screaming. And, okay, "really cool" is a stretch, even back in the day for Trent. But yeah, inspiration. Lego seems to have none of that anymore. It's just a bunch of stupid crap with way too many pre-fabbed pieces. I knew something was fucked up when I saw huge boxes with a piece count of, like, 12. The reason being that more and more of every set was constructed out of pre-fabbed plastic pieces and not built out of bricks by the user. That's... Fucking bullshit. Once I first noticed it, I was like, it's over. Lego will never be what it used to be.

Don't even get me started on Bionicle.

Like I said, though, there's some stuff that's decent, or even really good. There is a ton of train stuff that I'd love to get, but a lot of it is just bloody expensive. I totally need the Shinkansen and The El. And a lot of the roll your own train stuff is cool, too.

Some of the City stuff is OK, but not anywhere near as cool as it used to be. Like the fire station? Weak. Fucking. Sauce. Some of the construction stuff might be fun, but I need to get a closer look at all of it.

For some reason, I never got into the Technic stuff, but I should have. I really need this for some reason. ETP and BOETP got me the Ferrari F1 Racer, and that's BA. The only thing that's not cool is that it's Ferrari, enemy of the rest of Formula 1, including BMW. So it's still cool, I just can't feel good about it.

So yeah, there's a couple 'a sets that can float, but for the most part, the genre sucks. Some stuff has potential, but for some reason, fucking up is just in Lego's blood now. Like I just saw that they have a Viking line (which the store says is "not available in this country") which could be cool if this was 15 years ago. For me, that's when it was on. All sorts of cool shit was out. There were fun, interesting sets that didn't have a bunch of lame crap or too many pre-fabbed pieces. Going back to the mid-80s or so there was also some hard-core shit, but I unfortunately don't have much from that era.

The best set I've got? Hands down, the Black Seas Barracuda. I've got some really good sets, but this one still easily rises about the rest. This motherfucker has cannons that actually fire. I'd imagine they stopped making the cannons that could really shoot after not too long for predictable reasons -- stupid kids. Oh, and the Barracuda is big. The only ship that came close was the Skull's Eye Schooner, which I don't have but have always wanted to get my hands on if I could find one sealed. It might have been bigger and had some cooler features, but I'm convinced that it wasn't as neat as the Barracuda because I don't have one.

I have no conclusion for this, other than it's never going to be good again.