Author Topic: New stuff 2019  (Read 20661 times)

Offline Macruran

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #30 on: January 26, 2019, 20:13:08 »
Thanks. For those who come after me, here is the actual link itself to the post with the two pics of the knights theme.  https://klickywelt.de/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=68287&start=105#p1015646


HOLY COW DO THEY LOOK AWFUL  :omg: :0
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Offline bml87

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #31 on: January 26, 2019, 20:42:29 »
At the time I´m writing this, there are a lot more pics in the topic on Klickywelt then in the topic you linked to at amclicks...

Indeed, but I posted the link of klickywelt already on page 1:

They are in this topic, but you have to be a member of Klickywelt (it's for free): https://klickywelt.de/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=68287 klickyweltmember Playmolook was so kind to share the pictures there.

So I linked amclicks for those who aren’t a member of klickywelt ;)
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Offline Oliver

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #32 on: January 26, 2019, 22:51:39 »
Thanks for the Amclicks link, I'm not a member at Klickywelt (yet).

Some of the individual figures look OK, and I'd like the food truck. I wanted to pick up one of the ones they made last year, but they didn't turn up in the UK.

Re; the shift from historical themes generally. While I don't like the newer sets, and I also sat at home and played out historical scenes with my Playmobil, we have to accept that times have changed. If I'd been born ten years later, would I have played with Playmobil or would I have played Age of Empires and The Sims instead?

Offline Redmao

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #33 on: January 26, 2019, 23:30:55 »
Thanks for the Amclicks link.
The movie line looks pretty fun.

Offline playmofire

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #34 on: January 27, 2019, 10:09:18 »
I agree with you, Hadoque on your analysis of the present day, although I wouldn't necessarily believe all that surveys say on young people and their likes and dislikes and interests.

In recent months I have read the following books in the order shown:

Travellers to the Third Reich - a year by year account of the views and comments of visitors of all sorts (tourists, business people, diplomats, sports men and women, artists and writers) to Germany and non-Germans living in Germany on the rise of the extreme right wing.  It had worrying similarities to what we see now in the UK and Europe.

The War that ended Peace - an account decade by decade from about 1870 to 1914 on relations between the Great Powers and the drift towards "hard" diplomacy and brinkmanship and away from consensus diplomacy.  Again, there are worrying similarities with today.

The Age of Decadence (Britain 1880-1914) - Again, worrying similarities to today.

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Offline Macruran

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #35 on: January 27, 2019, 10:48:32 »
"We like things in little." - G. Stein  
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Offline playmofire

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #36 on: January 27, 2019, 14:04:37 »
Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLiPPtxKRAA  :sherlock:

It's a tempting argument when you first hear it, but when you look further into it is less convincing.

On to the graph of book quantities and prices, you need to add a line showing changes in the literacy rate which was low in 1495 and was still low in the mid-19th century.  The production of a lot of books for a population that cannot read isn't going to affect public opinion much if at all.  You also need to take account of the fact that in the time span on the book graph, the graph starts at an absolutely low level for quantity and still ends at a relatively low level if you compare the starting level with the end level (sell one book one week and two the next means you have increased your sales by 100%) and also the number of books per head  books per head of population will still be relatively low.  That Luther's ideas went "viral" was because his writings were available to a small but powerful elite, notably the German princes in the north who were wanting to increase their freedom from the Pope and would lead those they ruled to do so, plus the spreading of his ideas by travelling preachers, i.e. by word of mouth rather than by written page. but even this could be controlled by the authorities by censorship and banning and burning books and arresting and punishing those producing them or spreading their ideas.  Yes, there was a peasant uprising but it was only shortlived in terms of the years of war which followed.

The period 1870/1880 to1914 saw a more widespread change with the increase in literacy and the growth of newspaper production and circulation and the realisation by newspaper publishers and by governments that through the Press you could manipulate and even create public opinion to your advantage, either by what you allowed to be published or what you prevented being published, while from the 1920s the growth of the radio added another dimension for creating, altering and controlling public opinion.

The big difference nowadays with the internet is that the influencing and creation of public opinion is less open to control, whether by governments or organisations seeking to maintain standards or by the companies or organisations providing the means to disseminate information.  Plus, the old idea that if you read it in the newspapers it must be true has been overtaken that if it's on the internet it must be true.
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Offline Oliver

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #37 on: January 27, 2019, 15:12:24 »
My Klickywelt membership has been approved!

I quite like the new Dollshouse. The only one I have is the original, but I think it has a few new parts that make it a bit more flexible? Have those half walls been made before? The right hand side also looks like it has a half height wall? I assume there will be a DS extension to provide an extra upstairs room.

Quite like the Smeg style fridge, but other than that I think the room sets could have been better without a lot of effort, since they have so many moulds now for furniture.

Offline Hadoque

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #38 on: January 27, 2019, 17:12:30 »
I agree with you, Hadoque on your analysis of the present day, although I wouldn't necessarily believe all that surveys say on young people and their likes and dislikes and interests.

I certainly don´t take all surveys for granted. But I´m gonna refrain now from further debate since this is not the right topic (and forum) for it and probably I shouldn´t have written anything so off-topic in the first place in a Playmo Novelties 2019 thread.

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Offline Macruran

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Re: New stuff 2019
« Reply #39 on: January 27, 2019, 19:47:26 »
The period 1870/1880 to1914 saw a more widespread change with the increase in literacy and the growth of newspaper production and circulation and the realisation by newspaper publishers and by governments that through the Press you could manipulate and even create public opinion to your advantage, either by what you allowed to be published or what you prevented being published, while from the 1920s the growth of the radio added another dimension for creating, altering and controlling public opinion.

The big difference nowadays with the internet is that the influencing and creation of public opinion is less open to control, whether by governments or organisations seeking to maintain standards or by the companies or organisations providing the means to disseminate information.  Plus, the old idea that if you read it in the newspapers it must be true has been overtaken that if it's on the internet it must be true.

Points taken, but by the same token your suggestion that the current period resembles the 30s also doesn't hold water. In the 30s, Europe was 1) suffering a major economic depression, 2) experiencing the aftermath of the collapse of much of the political system of central and eastern Europe (German and Austrohungarian empires, Russian revolution), and 3) burdened with conflicts unresolved or exacerbated by the peace of Versailles - just to name three major differences. The populations of Germany and Italy, among others, were prepared to try radical new approaches, and those countries soon began to agitate for territorial expansion by military means.

None of this is true today. The European-wide political order is mostly stable (Brexit notwithstanding), the economy, while not the most robust is definitely not in depression, and there are few territorial disputes among European states, and no drive for expansion - not to mention the fact that few European states have militaries that could even seriously contest such disputes. On the contrary, the one issue that is motivating the populist right parties today is immigration and declining native demographics - conditions that did not obtain to any degree in the 30s and that are producing very different responses than those times did.

There's a saying about "fighting the last war", and I think the tendency to see current times as the 30s might be an example of that, because everyone knows what SHOULD have been done in the 30s, whereas nobody really knows what the solutions are now.

To bring it back to PM somewhat, I was thinking about Hadoque's comments about the loss of more historically accurate medieval sets and continued rise of the X-TREEM style, with "power gems" now seemingly de rigueur in every new theme. I thought not only of the loss of the medieval theme as an modern expression of a specific culture (central European middle ages), but of all Playmobil from 1974 up until the Changes began as itself an expression of contemporary European culture. The early sets especially are excellent examples of the stylised, modular, futuristic sort of design that was very popular at the time they were introduced. As they became more detailed they still kept this very clean look, and the themes were generally kept to ones that had resonance for Europeans - Western sets for example are a sort of cartoony, Tin Tin style view of the American West, with accoutrements from different tribes all jumbled together. As has been pointed out, early PM was a system, and sets even from different themes still formed together a larger aesthetic whole.

With these new X-TREEM sets, and things like Ghostbusters and HTTYD and the Asian ninja theme (RIP), PM seems to me to be moving away from what made them distinct, both in design - items are becoming more elaborately detailed, the basic klicky face and form are being altered - and in theme, as the new themes often have no connection to European culture and indeed are sometimes Hollywood media properties. There's more of a sense of things clashing. So Hadoque's comments expanded for me into a larger sense of loss, of the passing of an era. :sorrow: This even as actual historical and cultural klickies like Luther and the Greek gods are snapped up ravenously by adult collectors.

All that being said, I am looking forward to better pictures of the Roman sets from the movie line!  :roman:
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