Lego Licensed Parts available from Bricks & Pieces

[Grover]

3 hours ago, Megbricks said:

Really? I receive a lot of them from NewJersey Post. (US). I figured they had more than one warehouse

Yeah, they're all out of Billund.  Depending on where they ship, they go to a hub/distribution area first to go through customs.  Usually the closest hub, but not always.  I've received B&P orders from NJ, AZ, CA, and NY before, but the origin is always Denmark.

[Anonknee Muss]

8 hours ago, Roebuck said:

Would make sense since he said in a interview that he wanted to include the goat in the set, but there was not enough time to make it.. I understand that, but most likely they have the blueprint for it on a computer etc so Lego do not have to "create" the mould just push enter Off course it is a little more complicated than that, but nowhere near as complicated as designing a bran new piece from scratch I am sure they have to make new moulds for the most common pieces all the time due to wear and tear. The goat mould could not have been worn out after only one set, maybe it was a accident and it broke Off course that reduces the chances that there will be a goat in the set, but it is not impossible sometime they "must" make a new mould for the part right 

He said moulds are very delicate/fragile so it sounded like it perished over time I think.

3 hours ago, The Reader said:

This makes me wonder if TLG makes profit with B&P? It's a very good service which I appreciate very much but I am lacking the imagination how to make profit with this very special service. The costs must be very high (e.g. employees for service and handling, packing all this little orders).

They work through the night too. The order I placed a few days ago 10pm GMT (11pm Danish time) and was packed in 10 minutes!!

[Megbricks]

Anybody noticed changes in the available pieces for the minecraft sets on B&P?

last week I checked a few of the sets for new head/ body pieces. Found a few available and a few listed as out of stock. (The usual). 
 

Now this morning they all vanished, we are left with regular bricks only...:/

[LegoFjotten]

21 hours ago, Roebuck said:

The goat mould could not have been worn out after only one set, maybe it was a accident and it broke

I remember from a factory tour in Billund that the moulds were not always built to the same specifications. Moulds that were considered "one-off" were made with cheaper materials and would be close to worn out towards the end of their planned use. I think the specific example used was "something like a helmet from Chima that was only used for a single wave". It is possible this was the case with the goat.

If I remember correctly they also had some moulds which were made with replaceable inserts (of extray durable materials) for heavy-hitters like the 2x4 brick. instead of replacing the entire thing they could just swap in a new insert. This was 4 years ago though, so for all I know they might do things differently now.

[Anonknee Muss]

50 minutes ago, Megbricks said:

Anybody noticed changes in the available pieces for the minecraft sets on B&P?

last week I checked a few of the sets for new head/ body pieces. Found a few available and a few listed as out of stock. (The usual). 
 

Now this morning they all vanished, we are left with regular bricks only...:/

It surprises me a little but not much. They might come available again one day, it remains to be seen. You could try BrickLink if you are after them.

[Roebuck]

22 minutes ago, LegoFjotten said:

I remember from a factory tour in Billund that the moulds were not always built to the same specifications. Moulds that were considered "one-off" were made with cheaper materials and would be close to worn out towards the end of their planned use. I think the specific example used was "something like a helmet from Chima that was only used for a single wave". It is possible this was the case with the goat.

If I remember correctly they also had some moulds which were made with replaceable inserts (of extray durable materials) for heavy-hitters like the 2x4 brick. instead of replacing the entire thing they could just swap in a new insert. This was 4 years ago though, so for all I know they might do things differently now.

Strange if that is the case with something as general as a animal opposed to something as specific as a chima helmet. Maybe it is the case and I give greater value to animals than Lego does  To bad we did not have this discussion before I went on the inside tour in September, maybe I could have gotten some answers then, I even talked to the designer of the goat

Anyway my point about Lego already have the "recipe" for the goat so they only need to make it should still be valid even if the original mould was made with cheaper materials 

[Grover]

Not to get too off-topic here, but there are a number of ways to produce molds and a number of costs associated with that.  Good molds with tight tolerances are usually made from steel and cost around $100k, a mix of design and fab time.  TLG makes the best injection molded parts in the world with a tolerance of 1-2 microns usually.  The design of these parts (flow, runners, sprues, etc.) is expensive, but I would bet that TLG has their own in-house design software and engineers, so that reduces their costs to some extent.  Cheap molds are usually smaller molds that sit in a MUD (master unit die) frame.  These are usually only prototype work, and I doubt that TLG would ever use such a thing.  In particular, aluminum alloy molds typically only hold up for tens of thousands of shots and I strongly doubt that TLG would use such a material unless it's in a small R&D wing of their facility just to test a few shots to see about something new.  As someone else mentioned, you can also put high quality steel mold inserts into a frame, for interchangability, cost savings, greater thermal conductivity of a different metal base, slight part to part variation, etc.  Not to be confused with insert injection molding (different process).

With respect to the goat, there are a lot of factors we don't know, and I suspect unless someone with injection molding experience talks to one of TLG's floor engineers who has had hands on the mold, we won't know for sure.  The molds themselves are not 'fragile' in the sense of them shattering or something (they're made from metal), but with a mold having tolerances that tight, it's pretty easy to knock it out of alignment by mishandling.  Consider that these molds usually weight hundreds of kilos and are usually moved with a forklift.  One dropped mold and it's out of spec.  Inserts can help with this since they can be reused, but if the mold was a one-piece back then, it may not have been salvagable.  There are also questions of overmolding and which machines it could run on (not all machines have overmolding capability), if the mold has a heated sprue or runner, if the mold was cooled (not all the machines have cooling lines compatible with the molds, etc.), and the actual size of the mold itself.  Some machines have tie bars and other such features that do not enable the placement of molds of certain sizes within, and others requires specific minimums for clamping force that not all machines are capable of producing.  One-off molds like the Chimia molds may have been made from lesser metals to save on costs (it's amazing to me that TLG makes as many new molds as they do considering the cost of making them!), but we don't know what the goat mold is made from or how it was put together.

On the upshot, the goats out there don't seem to have any structural flaws, so TLG probably didn't retire the mold due to integrity issues, and thus the original flow design is probably good and such a mold would not require redesigning.  Additionally, since this Ideas set won't come out for another year or so, there may be time to produce the goat mold again if they wish to.  On the other hand, the absence of the goat since its original set brings up a lot of questions about the availability of the mold itself, its original construction (if it was meant as a one-off), or if there are other issues (printing, etc.).  I would guess that there are a number of factors that have conspired to keep us from having the goat.

And, back on topic, I hope we get the goat again so that we can buy it on B&P!

Edited February 15, 2020 by Grover

[Anonknee Muss]

What are we talking about? I’ve already stated the facts about the goat.

[Megbricks]

8 hours ago, Anonknee Muss said:

It surprises me a little but not much. They might come available again one day, it remains to be seen. You could try BrickLink if you are after them.

Yeah but I wanted this to be available in large qty :

 

I’ll see if they come back...

 

[Anonknee Muss]

Oh I see. That’s gone completely! That’s sucks, I wanted some too.

[GlacierPhoenix]

Since everyones talking about price here Lego costs a lot less than we think to make and in general most stuff here is being sold above 10 cents per piece which is the defacto set standard. They're making bank off selling these parts, why do you think they bought the largest part store, there's a lot of money on the table here. Also think of all the overhead for sets vs this, sets have marketing costs, distribution, retail markup while with B&P they just have distribution. 

[Anonknee Muss]

Just now, GlacierPhoenix said:

Since everyones talking about price here Lego costs a lot less than we think to make and in general most stuff here is being sold above 10 cents per piece which is the defacto set standard. They're making bank off selling these parts, why do you think they bought the largest part store, there's a lot of money on the table here. Also think of all the overhead for sets vs this, sets have marketing costs, distribution, retail markup while with B&P they just have distribution. 

Sets are packed by machine. B&P orders are packed by people, in fact most of the entire process is by people.

[izx]

On 2/14/2020 at 12:56 PM, The Reader said:

This makes me wonder if TLG makes profit with B&P? It's a very good service which I appreciate very much but I am lacking the imagination how to make profit with this very special service. The costs must be very high (e.g. employees for service and handling, packing all this little orders).

Probably a very slight chance it's not being run at a loss. Simply good customer service whose "price" is included in regular LEGO sets.

[Megbricks]

14 hours ago, Anonknee Muss said:

Oh I see. That’s gone completely! That’s sucks, I wanted some too.

Yeah vanished:/

[Grover]

I think some others have run into this before, but the white bird from the treehouse and the mail plane (among other things like the Jasmine CMF figure and some of the Aladdin sets way back when) is still marked as licensed, and the clerk told me that he didn't expect it to ever be available for sale.  In my experience, that is unusual since pieces like that usually become available as soon as they are released in an unlicensed set, and they are now available in two unlicensed sets.

Here's hoping for another recolor of the bird in something of a common color (brown, tan, dark tan, light grey, sand blue) that we can add to our cities en masse through B&P.  I'm not crushed about the white bird since there aren't that many pure white birds, but I do find it kind of weird, especially since the blue one is available.

[jpx]

Are there any kind of update-cycle? I'm waiting for the windscreens for new 2020 Speed Champions Ferrari and Lambo to be available, but so far no luck. I assume it's a licenced product, otherwise please forgive me for posting in this thread.

[Anonknee Muss]

24 minutes ago, jpx said:

Are there any kind of update-cycle? I'm waiting for the windscreens for new 2020 Speed Champions Ferrari and Lambo to be available, but so far no luck. I assume it's a licenced product, otherwise please forgive me for posting in this thread.

‘Twas a while until the first lot of windscreens were available. The unprinted versions will be made available this is a guess) maybe next year. I’m not really sure with Speed Champions. Your best bet is to phone up and customer service and ask them.

You could put your order through and phone up immediately after and ask them to add it to your order. However, I’m starting to suspect Lego is onto our phone-up-and-add-extras trick because my order went immediately to “In Warehouse”.

[julesvincent]

I already received the new windscreen from the Urus, but the Tributo and Huracan are probably licensed. 

[Megbricks]

Received a few new orders here are a few pics from my IG account. 
 

More orders are coming!!! But I have slowed down. Too many things I need to buy this year!

 

[jonwil]

I also need to stop buying LEGO and start doing more building :)

 

[Ponga91]

54 minutes ago, jonwil said:

I also need to stop buying LEGO and start doing more building :)

Same here. Good part is wife doesn't know how much they cost  I spent almost 600€ in parts and sets since Jan 1st...

Edited February 17, 2020 by Ponga91

[Anonknee Muss]

9 hours ago, Ponga91 said:

Same here. Good part is wife doesn't know how much they cost  I spent almost 600€ in parts and sets since Jan 1st...

 I’m assuming you sort the finances out in your marriage. How has she not figured it out yet?

[Megbricks]

10 hours ago, Ponga91 said:

Same here. Good part is wife doesn't know how much they cost  I spent almost 600€ in parts and sets since Jan 1st...

Hehehe. Let’s just say that last year. With mostly bricksandpieces purchases I was at 200$ worth of vip points by March:) no one but the buyer needs to know exactly how they cost:)

i budget for it:

-food

-mortgage

-electricity

-internet

-fun

-plants

-lego

:)

Edited February 18, 2020 by Megbricks

[Pdaitabird]

13 hours ago, Ponga91 said:

Same here. Good part is wife doesn't know how much they cost  I spent almost 600€ in parts and sets since Jan 1st...

The key is using the parts to build a MOC of a charity like, say, a homeless shelter. That way, when your wife asks you what the 600€ is for, you can honestly say it's for the homeless shelter! 

[Ponga91]

8 hours ago, Anonknee Muss said:

 I’m assuming you sort the finances out in your marriage. How has she not figured it out yet?

Those are my personal money actually, not shared on marriage. She doesn't know prices because she is simply not into it so she doesn't look around on shelves and websites. And I am very careful to destroy every bill immediately 

7 hours ago, Megbricks said:

Hehehe. Let’s just say that last year. With mostly bricksandpieces purchases I was at 200$ worth of vip points by March:) no one but the buyer needs to know exactly how they cost:)

Wow, you are just in another league then us all

5 hours ago, Pdaitabird said:

The key is using the parts to build a MOC of a charity like, say, a homeless shelter. That way, when your wife asks you what the 600€ is for, you can honestly say it's for the homeless shelter! 

Genius  Next time I'll go with it