Thursday, April 4, 2013

Reasons NOT to live in LEGO® City

CITY has always been one of The LEGO Group’s top selling themes and it is also my personal favorite. When given a glance, it seems like the perfect ‘boy toy’. What’s not to love about building your own city? However, when the demographics of LEGO® CITY are examined more closely, it seems like this place would be an absolute horrific place to live if you were a minifigure. Please take into fact that I have nothing against LEGO® CITY, it’s just that there is a stark contrast when it is compared to a city of our modern day and age. All of my information is taken from Brickset.com and only pertains to CITY sets released in 2012. When all of this is examined, the following are the results from my demographic census:

According to Brickset, there were 42 CITY sets released for 2012. Of these 42, 35 contain unique sets. In these 35 sets, there are 46 vehicles, 8 pieces of aircraft, 2 boats, and one uncategorized mine crane. This means there are 57 things with motors. Of the 46 vehicles, there are only 8 cars and 38 trucks. This means the ratio of cars to trucks is 1:4.75.

In the 35 sets, there are 84 people. Of these 85 people, it appears that only 11 are females and 74 are males. That means the female to male ratio is 1:6.73.

Of the 35 sets, 19 have to do with some kind of emergency: 11 police sets, 6 fire sets, and 2 hospital sets. Within the police sets, there are 8 robbers and 18 policemen, (no police women). We can only guess what these robbers are in jail for, (arson anyone?). There are also 12 firefighters. Of all of the minifigures, only 12 appear to be regular citizens, as opposed to working in some kind of profession. There are also only 5 crude buildings throughout the entire 35 sets.

Based on all of this information, we can draw some valid conclusions:

There are almost 7 males for ever female. 83% of the vehicles are trucks or vehicles for work. There are almost as many criminals as there are women. There are 5 crude buildings in the entire city.

Reasons not to live in LEGO® CITY
·         A large male population

·         A lot of pollution from so many trucks

·         Nowhere to live

·         Almost a dozen pyrotechnics constantly breaking out of jail

·         Only 7 trees, half of which are always on fire

LEGO® CITY needs some major reform before I would even consider living there. Safety, housing, discrimination, and health are my major concerns about LEGO® CITY. Until these things are fixed, and a government is established, I would not encourage anyone to move to this city. So where else could I live in LEGO® Universe? Chima? Nope, constant tribal fighting. Ninjago? Never, an endless battle. STAR WARS? No thanks, too much war for my tastes. Kingdoms? Too much feudal warfare. Galaxy Squad? No way, huge bugs! The only safe place seems to be Friends. It looks like it has everything CITY doesn’t: Trees, cars, housing, and no criminals. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would much rather live in Heartlake City that LEGO® CITY. I’d be surrounded by women, but hey, we all have to make sacrifices. J