Stickers in Lego Sets (opinion)!

[obsidianheart]

Love stickers for MOCs. Re-purpose them all the dang time! Bring on the Minifig torso stickers. My x-acto will make it so I won't have to differentiate between yellow-fellows or fleshies anymore. I'll finally get that white original Agents torso. Gonna have to practice applying the leg decals, though, I guess.

[AmperZand]

I try to avoid stickers wherever I can. Before my Dark Ages I was a big supporter of stickers, because I liked the choice involved in whether or not you wanted certain stickers on your sets or your MOCs - but my opinion changed when I came back to Lego late last year and discovered the extremely poor ageing of stickers in my sets. There are several sets I own where the stickers had wasted away over time so badly that I had to scratch them off of the bricks, and those sets will never have those details again - whereas sets I have from around the 80's have printed pieces that look almost brand new.

Completely agree for the same reason. I've been an AFOL since 1993. My ABS and cloth parts from the '90s are fine. I doubt stickers would be. If not kept in perfect conditions, I suspect the adhesive would have dried and the stickers come off. As I hope to be an AFOL for decades to come, I don't want to find myself with sets that look tired due to their ageing stickers.

I've also personally struggled a lot with applying stickers, because although I'm only 19 my hands are rather un-coordinated and shaky due to dyspraxia, and it's an infinite struggle just to get stickers to align properly. There's just an unnecessary amount of anxiety involved in trying desperately to align stickers correctly before they lose their stickiness - I've heard there's a way to make a soapy solution that gives you more time, but it's just an amount of sheer terror I don't want when I'm enjoying building Lego.

If you apply a bit of window cleaner to the part with a cotton bud, mopping up almost all of the excess, you can place the sticker and move it around until it's in exactly the right spot. Then press down from the middle of the sticker outward to squeeze out the remaining fluid and any air bubbles. In the UK, I use Windolene. I don't know if it's available in Ireland.

In the scenario that I get sets now which have stickers, I usually leave them off unless they are absolutely essential.

Me too.

Edited June 9, 2016 by AmperZand

[dr_spock]

Completely agree for the same reason. I've been an AFOL since 1993. My ABS and cloth parts from the '90s are fine. I doubt stickers would be. If not kept in perfect conditions, I suspect the adhesive would have dried and the stickers come off. As I hope to be an AFOL for decades to come, I don't want to find myself with sets that look tired due to their ageing stickers.

My 6382 Fire Station stickers are still fine on the fire trucks after 35 years. The stickers on 8258 Crane Truck from 2009 are cracked now. Both sets sat on the shelf for years. I think it depends on the material LEGO used for the stickers and environmental conditions.

[Aanchir]

So salty.

Actually it's like none of the things you say. Stickers and prints are two ways to achieve the same effect. Rubber and non rubber pieces are not. Transparent and non-transparent pieces are not. Your argument makes no sense.

It makes a lot more sense than your sorry argument did. Let me make this clear: I LIKE stickers. I enjoy putting them on sets. I even ask to put on stickers for sets other people in my family get, because lining them up feels satisfying and rewarding, and a lot of sets look nicer with stickers than without. But I don't want them for everything. I feel like they're better than printing for some things, like decorations on large, smooth surfaces with well-defined edges, than they are for others, like minifigures, minifigure accessories, faces on brick-built characters, non-planar surfaces, or patterns that are likely to be repeated a lot of times throughout a product or product range. Those things I prefer to see as prints.

Additionally, I hate STAMPs (Stickers Across Multiple Pieces), but that often depends less on stickers vs. printing (since printing the same pattern across multiple pieces is limiting in its own right) and more on whether you use one big piece for a pattern or lots of smaller pieces. STAMPs were common in my childhood — thankfully, today, they're exceedingly rare, and the only ones I'm aware of in recent years are the two most recent Maersk sets.

Seems simple enough to understand, right? But you've locked yourself in an irrational "all or nothing" mode of thinking, where stickers have to be superior to printing for EVERYTHING or else they suck. I don't subscribe to that. LEGO clearly doesn't either. Never in the past 45 years have they used only stickers or only printing, nor shown any inclination to do so. Both because there are economic advantages to both, and because, believe it or not, some people genuinely enjoy both types of decoration.

[ctx1769]

I hate stickers and have only used some for instructions for multifunction sets like 42043.

[RetroInferno]

I don't mind the concept of stickers, however, for a product sold as toys for kids, they really are pushing it sometimes. Some stickers are extremly hard to put on and require very steady hands, and you can't peel it off to redo it again without loosing some major adhesion afterwards. Second, if they can't print every pieces ( unlike Megablock collector sets ), why don't they increase the sticker quality? Make them thicker, use better adhesive, do something Lego...

[Chorduroy]

I absolutely abhor all printed parts other than minifigs. A printed part is typically only good for one application, while I can always choose to apply stickers or not (usually "or not" because I almost never build official sets and only need the parts). Thus, I'd prefer no printed parts at all.

[Vindicare]

I don't mind them. I get slightly irritable when placing them...like many of us.

[BrickCurve]

For obvious reasons, I prefer printed parts though I don't mind the transparent ones as they are quite durable. The white background ones are horrible! On some of my older sets they have gone all hard and flaked into shreds. So from now on I actually don't apply stickers at all! Most of the time they aren't absolutely essential to the model anyway.

Edited July 10, 2016 by BrickCurve

[anothergol]

On one hand I hate stickers, and I don't use them, unless they're critical and it takes me forever to be sure I won't screw up.

On the other hand, I'm glad there are stickers & not every part is printed, because that would ruin new part colors for me, as a MOCer.

But really, Lego could do better:

-2 sheets per set. It's not like it would cost anything, and it would give people another chance after screwing up.

-waterslide decals maybe (only, pre-cut, if that even exists). Not as straightforward, but at least they allow easy centering, and look much better.

But I hate it when a set looks totally different with no stickers on. Like, the Audi R8 relies on stickers for everything, and without them it has absolutely no detail, not even headlights which Lego normally makes out of parts.

[BimmerBoy]

I love and hate stickers. Putting them on is a hassle. The cockpit sticker for the Red 5 X-Wing was a real pain. You need to take care to have clean hands and a good method to apply them to make sure they are lined up correctly on the part and don't peel.

However, stickers are very handy for MOC's or making different variations of a set (For me Octan and Speed Champions cars). Also, printed pieces are great for the set they come with, but are limited in their MOC use.

I think Modulars, true Star Wars UCS, and high end Creator sets (cars like Ferrari F40, Mini Cooper; trains like Horizon Express, Maersk; etc) should have printed pieces. Stickers, despite their annoyances, are OK for most everything else.

[wolf_grrr]

Printed decals over stickers anytime.

You would get that disgusting residue and gloss look.

[Brickadier General]

For the most part, I'm ok with stickers because it means more MOC parts! Printed parts are nice when you get them but have more limited application. All of my stickers get filed away in a "giant sticker bag." They pretty much sit in there for years unless I can find an appropriate MOC to use them in.

[anothergol]

However, stickers are very handy for MOC's or making different variations of a set (For me Octan and Speed Champions cars).

IMHO Speed Champions is the worst as for stickers. And here it's not printed vs stickers, it's the fact that they relied way too much on drawn detail.

I got the R8 and it looks nothing like the one on the box, without stickers. Generally, Lego uses grilles & cheese slopes on car fronts, but in this line they just go for large slopes, so there is absolutely no detail if you don't put the stickers on.

[Andrzej777]

Totally depends ob the sticker. I generally dont use them because I am afraid they will get damaged when the set gets disassembled. I generally prefer printed parts. In one of those movie sets they had piano notes, unfoetunately with a sticker. Would have made a nice printed piece

[syclone]

I used to apply them,but when I discovered the Lego community and started MOCing I peeled off as many as I could and now all the unused sticker sheets are stored and I'm ready to cut them If needed in a MOC.

The only ones I keep are the Nitro Menace ones,because the model is assembled

[RetroInferno]

Why is it viable for Megablocks to print all their pieces, but isn't for Lego?

[zux]

I thought about it and it enlightened me that the main reason behind this could be storage and time. Let's say LEGO produces some slope in number of colours for current product line. Then each colour needs to be stored separately, so roughly, number of colours = number of boxes. Now if you use printing instead of stickers this means you have to add an additional box for each printed piece. And we have a lot of pieces with stickers. This way storing and managing stock gets complicated.

On assembly line, during set production (putting bricks into boxes) the process gets much more complex with printed pieces and consumes more time per set - like grabbing 10 different printed pieces from different boxes rather plain ones from one or two boxes. To keep time short (LEGO needs to make money) there wouldn't be much printed parts in the end and models would look plain without stickers.

Just my 2 cents, but I feel there could be some truth here.

Why is it viable for Megablocks to print all their pieces, but isn't for Lego?

Maybe they don't produce as much as LEGO in terms of quantity and variety so it is easier to manage the stock?

[Aanchir]

Why is it viable for Megablocks to print all their pieces, but isn't for Lego?

Probably because Mega Bloks cuts costs in other places like materials. Plus, LEGO has found time and time again that a lot of kids like stickers, so printing everything wouldn't necessarily make their sets more appealing to their primary audience.

Plus, Mega Bloks was still using stickers extensively a few years ago, so if they have in fact entirely stopped using stickers, it's a very recent change — too recent to really judge how practical it will be for them in the long run.

[Shadow223]

I personally hate stickers now. I have tremors in my hands and it’s really hard to get them right. I also have ocd so it gets really frustrating sometimes when I can’t get stickers exactly perfect. What’s worse is when you have to match two sides to look the same. I love buying and building legs but I hate spending money on the larger ones just to mess up a sticker and have it look bad. I am talking about sets that are $100 or more. It’s not like all stickers are bad but it seems lego has gotten lazy and just said “let’s make every picture ever a sticker”. There have been a couple of Legos I wanted but refuse to buy because of the stickers. It’s gotten to the point where I won’t even put on stickers if I don’t think it looks good or I don’t think I’ll be able to get it good enough for me to be satisfied with it. I have decided this because if I just say a sticker is close enough, instead of enjoying the Lego all I’ll pay attention to is the sticker. I’ve recently been cataloguing my lego sets that I’ve bern collecting since I was a kid and noticed on some of the older ones the stickers are either falling apart or off and I just have to take them off and it really takes away something from the set. I don’t think I’d have this big a problem with stickers if lego put an outline or something where there sticker was supposed to go as a guide.

[-zenn]

Stickers;
- I only use them to accentuate a model.
- Preferable on a 'transparant' sheet so I can stick them over any color.
- Mostly cut them up for certain prints.

[Bricked1980]

Generally I'm not a fan of having to put stickers on to Lego sets. At least they do give extra details though and at least they're not as bad as some that were used in the past. Who remembers this beauty from the early 90's? The van had stickers that went across several parts, basically meaning the set couldn't be taken apart without ruining the stickers.

https://brickset.com/sets/6350-1/Pizza-To-Go

[MAB]

There were so many stickers like that, there was an acronym for it: STAMPS - STickers Across Multiple PartS.