The Brick Boss Posted July 15, 2019 Just now, PickleManDan said: I think they're a reference to the pizza brand in LEGO City sets. Some examples are from the pizza van set from 2017, and the pizzeria from the 2013 town square set. But the stickers on THIS sheet are newer versions of the CITY PIZZA sign. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Aanchir Posted July 15, 2019 (edited) 19 hours ago, ks6349 said: Typing up 1000 words and making up 100 excuses won't hide your ignorance, narrow-mindedness and stupidity. You actually like stickers, you don't like Lego, you don't need to spend ten times or hundreds time more for Lego to pretend that you can afford something you can't actually afford. XD Setting aside your unnecessary belligerence, I'm perplexed at why you think I don't like or can't afford LEGO? I mean, my twin brother and I own over 400 sets from the past decade. Since becoming an AFOL in March 2008 I've enthusiastically collected Bionicle, Agents, Space Police, Atlantis, Hero Factory, Ninjago, Elves, and Creator Expert Modular Building sets… to say nothing of the many themes I've bought more sparingly. I have multiple shelves' worth of LEGO books, have attended LEGO fan conventions for over a decade, have written numerous news articles and reviews for LEGO fansites and fan magazines, and have made over 10,000 posts here on Eurobricks. And you think I must actually dislike LEGO because I… enjoy applying stickers to the sets I collect? Whatever makes it easier to make-believe you speak for all LEGO fans, I guess… 7 hours ago, TeriXeri said: Xtra is the closest we got in recent times to official LEGO sticker sheets, the last official ideas books with stickers were over 20 years ago (1997 and 1990) It only contains 12 LEGO parts and 5 sticker sheets, overall it's the best we have right now, sadly sold out for months now on European Shop@Home. (I hope they'll return) I can fully understand why LEGO put a few parts into their sticker pack, as a starting point. More of those "sets" are always welcome, and I hope the Xtra theme continues to expand. https://rebrickable.com/sets/853921-1/brick-stickers/#parts I love this Xtra pack and hope to see more like it in the future! It's awesome how many references it makes not only to existing LEGO City brands, but even to classic sets and themes ("Paradisa Beach"; the burger sign; the Octan, transit, cargo, and utility company logos; etc). I can see it being a great source of inspiration for City builders. Easter eggs like this are another mark in the "plus" column for sticker sheets, IMO. It's so cool to see little set-specific details that help to draw connections between LEGO sets, themes, and media, and sticker sheets tend to provide far more of those kinds of delightful little details than printing could ever be expected to. I mean, Ninjago City has 56 different stickers in addition to at least eight new set-specific printed elements. And it has definitely never been realistic to find 60+ brand-new uniquely printed parts in a single set at any point in my lifetime… Edited July 15, 2019 by Aanchir Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TeriXeri Posted July 16, 2019 (edited) 3 hours ago, Aanchir said: I love this Xtra pack and hope to see more like it in the future! It's awesome how many references it makes not only to existing LEGO City brands, but even to classic sets and themes ("Paradisa Beach"; the burger sign; the Octan, transit, cargo, and utility company logos; etc). I can see it being a great source of inspiration for City builders. I agree it's a good move foward , but now if only they can fix the availability, that'd be great. It was sold out within like 1 month in March, and now I see on the US site, it's on backorder September 26 shipping date, no word for EU however. Edited July 16, 2019 by TeriXeri Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim Posted July 16, 2019 On 7/15/2019 at 4:55 AM, ks6349 said: Typing up 1000 words and making up 100 excuses won't hide your ignorance, narrow-mindedness and stupidity. Wow, can you please tone it down a notch. This is not how we talk to each other on Eurobricks. On 7/15/2019 at 3:07 AM, ks6349 said: No excuses. Fact is Nobody likes stickers. It's purely because of cost concern. Only a few pieces of stickers replaced by printed piece shouldn't raise the cost of production so much. If cost will really rise up so much and they are worried about sales, Lego should avoid any stickers, Lego can certainly survive well without stickers. In fact it's not. The problem with printed parts is that a printed part is a new element. And printing every part that has a sticker would mean hundreds or thousands new elements each year. That is logistically simply not possible. So no, it's not purely because of cost concern. Please keep that in mind. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ReplicaOfLife Posted July 17, 2019 (edited) On 7/14/2019 at 7:45 PM, Aanchir said: I don't think it's strictly about price or cost-cutting in Palace Cinema's case. I think it had more to do with wanting to be able to print details that they wouldn't be able to print directly on the parts themselves. LEGO prints their actual bricks using pad printing, a lithographic technique. Their printing machines print in twelve stages. One stage = one coat of one color on one surface. Shades, tints, tones, and intermediate colors each need to be printed as a separate stage, hence why printed parts in the early 2000s featuring gradients or intermediate colors often had to rely on unsightly stipple effects (e.g. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0348 or https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0326c01). As far as I know, LEGO prints their sticker sheets via laser printing, which means they have no more restrictions in the number of tints, tones, shades, or hues they can print than you would on a home computer printer. That allows for stuff like the detailed shading, gradients, and old-timey film grain effects on the Palace Cinema's movie posters and movie screen. That's not to say there's no cost benefit, but when there is it's mostly from an inventory standpoint — LEGO has to store each printed piece in a set as a separate element, whereas a sticker sheet can apply patterns to numerous pieces while only introducing one new element. In many big, expensive sets, the reason for using a sticker sheet is if the entire budget the designers were given for new elements in that set is already being used for new molds, recolors, and even other printed parts (especially minifigure parts — a lot of people don't think about the sheer number of those when they accuse LEGO of being too "cheap" to print as many parts as they used to). In these cases, only using printed pieces wouldn't mean turning all the stickered patterns into printed bricks, but omitting those patterns entirely. And at that point, customers who dislike stickers can get the same effect the designers would be able to achieve by buying the set (sticker sheet and all) and just choosing not to apply the stickers at all. But I don't think this was what happened in Palace Cinema's case, since its stickers only include seven different patterns — a far lower number than how many new elements appear in other modular buildings and Creator Expert sets. To be honest, I never really thought about the storage angle, that's actually a good point. Imo, though, they would do better if they reduced the number of different decorated pieces in sets with lots of stickers, and made those as printed pieces. I've seen a lot of sets that, for example, featured detail stickers that where almost, but not quite, identical (without the difference bearing any relevance to the 'plot' of the set). While that attention to detail in itself is welcome, I'd still prefer to get those as identical printed pieces instead. They also could re-use a lot of designs that are nowadays realized using stickers. I'm thinking about stuff like masonry, wood, etc. Then there are the stickers that are just there to liven up otherwise boring pieces, e.g. huge panels. And - in sets that already have thousands of pieces and cost a tenth of their parts count - it should be possible to just throw in the 12 or so pieces for each panel that would be needed to fill the same space using regular bricks and pieces, including some greebling... Regarding the different printing methods: That's very propably true in cases like the huge window adverts ion Palace Cinema, but on the other hand there are many, many stickers that have far fewer than twelve colors. And I still maintain my point that it's ridiculous that they include stickers in the big and often way overpriced D2C sets. If it's really such a big deal because they don't have enough shelves in the factories, just optimize which different decorations are actually needed, and include those as printed pieces. Edited July 17, 2019 by RogerSmith Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
paul_delahaye Posted July 28, 2019 On 7/14/2019 at 3:15 AM, ks6349 said: I love the design of Palace Cinema but I hate that stickers are important part of it. That's why I skipped it. Probably exclusive printed pieces are higher costs The good news for us is it looks like Steindrucker is shortly to produce the litho printed parts for Palace Cinema! They are not going to be cheap, but it will at last mean my Cinema has something on the screen! https://steindrucker.com/lego-10232-original-cinema-package Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ks6349 Posted July 28, 2019 2 hours ago, paul_delahaye said: The good news for us is it looks like Steindrucker is shortly to produce the litho printed parts for Palace Cinema! They are not going to be cheap, but it will at last mean my Cinema has something on the screen! https://steindrucker.com/lego-10232-original-cinema-package Stickers are always stickers. It's inconvenient to take care of them. I hope Lego would invest on printed bricks, while trying to balance the cost by minimizing customer service in which some people will intentionally cheat new bricks through that. Also trying to minimize size of box should also reduce cost of storage. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
