https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Racers_(video_game)
You could build your own car brick by brick and then race it, which was pretty dang neat in 1999.
i dont know much about the cartoons but anecdotally they seem to be popular with their intended audience. after all their ninjago line has been running for ages. certainly their core business is the bread and butter, but i think Lego actually does a pretty good job with their side ventures (missing a minecraft-type opportunity aside)
I have not played these but I have heard nothing but praise for the lego star wars games. Do you think they are bad or do you assume they are?
Essentially point was that Lego was scared of building/allowing a game that allowed "free blocks" as their whole business was selling blocks for money. It seems very short sighted but as any legacy business they tend to fall into that trap.
This is why they allowed various games that utilize block as a art style, but there were not many building games.
Lego Star Wars is fun, but is exactly the same game as all the other Lego tie-in games.
However, I must acknowledge that the game is impressively fluid when you know that every brick in the world is a real (modifiable, breakable ...) brick.