The Love for Printed Pieces Thread/Sticker Resentment Thread

[icm]

Some Speed Champions sets have clear-backed stickers. The Apollo Lunar Lander and the Space Shuttle Discovery have reflective stickers. 2019, 2019, 2021.

[MAB]

There are also stickers like price lists that look good on any colour, like this one:

In fact, this sticker was designed to be put on a different coloured piece:

[danth]

Sure but it covers the whole brick except for the edges so what does it matter? Already covered this. It would be just as good as a print.

[Jiesdeo]

Sometimes I don't understand how Lego thinks about stickers, or at least their thinking is a bit short-sighted at times.

For example, in the 2022 Fire Station (60320) there is a sign at the top that is a sticker on a panel. Then this year they have the 4+ 60375: Fire Station and Fire Engine, which has 1x4x3 bricks, printed with the same logo as the Fire Station. So those could have been used already then! Wouldn't a bit of foresight have been good?

Also, this year there are two police trucks that are using the same sticker on their blue bonnets (piece 4294739: Plate 4x6x2/3): 60369: Mobile Police Dog Training and 60371: Emergency Vehicles HQ. Wouldn't that merit a printed piece? That could have been reused on so many police sets as well.

Especially for fire and police there should be a lot of printed pieces that could be reused over and over again for several different sets.

[MAB]

14 hours ago, Jiesdeo said:

Sometimes I don't understand how Lego thinks about stickers, or at least their thinking is a bit short-sighted at times.

For example, in the 2022 Fire Station (60320) there is a sign at the top that is a sticker on a panel. Then this year they have the 4+ 60375: Fire Station and Fire Engine, which has 1x4x3 bricks, printed with the same logo as the Fire Station. So those could have been used already then! Wouldn't a bit of foresight have been good?

Also, this year there are two police trucks that are using the same sticker on their blue bonnets (piece 4294739: Plate 4x6x2/3): 60369: Mobile Police Dog Training and 60371: Emergency Vehicles HQ. Wouldn't that merit a printed piece? That could have been reused on so many police sets as well.

Especially for fire and police there should be a lot of printed pieces that could be reused over and over again for several different sets.

I imagine it is still down to "logistics" in some way. I think all the sets you mention have other decorated parts in them that require stickers, and adding another sticker to the sheet is simple. The fire station with the stickered panel also has multiples of them for use in for other locations, which probably plays a role in the decision to go for a stickered same part rather than a different printed part. Even if  similar printed parts exist, having 3x of one part where one needs a sticker is presumably a time saving when robots are packaging the set compared to 2x one part and 1x another. Little modifications like this can sometimes make surprising cost savings that customers don't appreciate. I don't think there is someone at LEGO deciding to add stickers when there is a similar printed part just to be evil or annoy customers.

 

[lifeinplastic]

I fully support all the gripes regarding stickers in this thread. Stickers are simply the worst.

[ChrisW]

I build my Lego sets for a bit of ‘me time’, time to unwind after a days work.

I shouldn’t have to do more work to apply stickers to sets - I find it absolutely anxiety inducing and I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

Yes, there is the Windex method, but it only really works on the solid backed stickers. They leave glue marks when adjusting on black parts, and forget about it with clear backed stickers - moving them will leave visible patches of glue.

So what’s the solution? I’d happily pay more for sets with all printed parts instead of stickers. Alternatively, is there an option to have reusable vinyl stickers, like you used to get in those play-scene activity books? That would keep everyone happy - MOCs builders could remove stickers from parts they wanted to use for another purpose, and sticker phobia types like me could easily reposition a sticker after placing.

[danth]

8 hours ago, ChrisW said:

I build my Lego sets for a bit of ‘me time’, time to unwind after a days work.

I shouldn’t have to do more work to apply stickers to sets - I find it absolutely anxiety inducing and I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

Yes, there is the Windex method, but it only really works on the solid backed stickers. They leave glue marks when adjusting on black parts, and forget about it with clear backed stickers - moving them will leave visible patches of glue.

So what’s the solution? I’d happily pay more for sets with all printed parts instead of stickers. Alternatively, is there an option to have reusable vinyl stickers, like you used to get in those play-scene activity books? That would keep everyone happy - MOCs builders could remove stickers from parts they wanted to use for another purpose, and sticker phobia types like me could easily reposition a sticker after placing.

Anyone suggesting you bust out solvents and tweezers when putting together the most expensive plastic bricks you can buy is essentially saying "F*** you*. Nobody should have to mess with chemicals while enjoying Lego. We'd be model kit builders if I wanted to deal with that stress.

I think the solution is the Lego makes .001% less profit. Easy peasy. Or improve their logistics in order to easily handle more stickers.

Getting rid of all the new colors that are too similar to existing colors would also free up some tracking boxes.

They could also literally track printed parts like stickers: Put all printed parts for a set in one bag. Track bag as one item. Easy. They already do this for some printed Dots parts.

Edited February 2, 2023 by danth

[TeriXeri]

Just built 80043: Yellow Tusk Elephant , the sticker on this part in particular is awful to get fully on, due to it's shape , curved in multiple directions.

And while I do prefer prints in pretty much all situations, the Pigsy print is still far from perfect, the skin tone on the torso doesn't match the pink of the head/hands in real life, only in renders.

Edited February 4, 2023 by TeriXeri

[neithan]

12 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

Just built 80043: Yellow Tusk Elephant , the sticker on this part in particular is awful to get fully on, due to it's shape , curved in multiple directions.

And while I do prefer prints in pretty much all situations, the Pigsy print is still far from perfect, the skin tone on the torso doesn't match the pink of the head/hands in real life, only in renders.

I am building the elephant right now and I can totally agree with you!

Putting on the stickers in this set was/is a nightmare and I already f...ed up. :-(

Monkie Kid is by far my favourite theme, but the amount of stickers used in most of the sets is atrocious. So, to no surprise, I`m 100% in the "prints are suprior to stickers" team.

[TeriXeri]

10 hours ago, neithan said:

I am building the elephant right now and I can totally agree with you!

I had no big issues with the other stickers, but this car hood sticker just feels like a "design flaw" as both of them I put on keep lifting up on the same edges, due to the piece being curved in all directions. (and the same lifting up "bubbles" showed up in at least 3 other review videos, where the sticker tries to lift up from the sides)

Meanwhile, the Cars theme got a ton of similar car front pieces with elaborate prints on them.

Edited February 5, 2023 by TeriXeri

[MAB]

2 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

Meanwhile, the Cars theme got a ton of similar car front pieces with elaborate prints on them.
 

I guess that is because they were aimed at the younger end of the fan base. Quite a few were 4+ / Juniors, and younger kids have even more trouble putting on stickers.

[icm]

Still, the parts in the Elephant should have been printed.

[MAB]

Yes, anything double curved should be. Even thin stickers are hard to apply.

[danth]

Alright. So how do we actual get Lego to give us more prints and less stickers?

This might be a multi-parter.

First, let's look at the big argument that people always trot out to explain why Lego just can't do prints. The argument goes like this: every unique part needs to be stored/tracked in its own box. So, if a set had 10 printed parts, and another set had the same exact 10 parts without the print, then you'd need 20 boxes to track the printed and unprinted versions of the parts.

However, if the printed parts were instead stickered parts, you would only need 11 boxes: 10 for the parts, and 1 for a sticker sheet. And Lego, the biggest toy company in the world, can't afford or manage to track and store those extra boxes, even though Cobi and Megablocks both somehow do it.

But that's not all. There's a general attitude of smugness and contempt that generally comes with this argument.

How dare *you* -- the loyal fan who loves building with Lego and spends your hard earned money on Lego -- ask Lego to make a product more to your liking, without bothering to understand the inner workings of their manufacturing logistics? You aren't a true fan. A true fan reads all the interviews with Lego employees and reads books about Lego and studies their history and their manufacturing processes. They're basically Lego insiders, and hang out with Lego designers, and go to after parties with good old Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen himself. At least, that seems to be how they see themselves.

And this is all by design. Lego PR doesn't want you to think about how much money they make -- billions in pure profit each year -- while also telling you "no, you can't have more prints". They want to distract you with logistical problems. Because logistical problems can be made to sound complicated and distract from corporate avarice.

And also by design, these PR-crafted logistical arguments give a certain kind of Lego fan an excuse to act like they know better than you. To act like superior fans who know the inside info. What, you didn't read the latest interview? You don't understand these engineering problems? What, you just buy their stupid toys and build them? And these kinds of fans can't resist this. So they peddle the PR excuses because they want to be seen as Lego gurus while trying to make you feel like there is something wrong with you.

The framing of this argument is, of course, total BS. I'm a fan of Lego with money. I will buy their products, or not, and I will damn-well demand what I want. I want prints.

I don't need to justify what I want. I just say what I want, and buy what I want.

It's not my job to understand and figure out Lego's logistical issues. It's their job.

Anyway. Next up: Tackling this argument and offering solutions. Even though I shouldn't have to.

Edited March 21, 2023 by danth

[RichardGoring]

12 minutes ago, danth said:

Alright. So how do we actual get Lego to give us more prints and less stickers?

This might be a multi-parter.

...

Anyway. Next up: Debunking this stupid argument altogether. And offering solutions.

Very nicely put!

Having said that, three other things to consider:

1. Before they replace all stickers will prints, they need to get much better at printing. Opacity on some of the colours is terrible, leaving things washed out. Yes, they should be doing this as part of your points above and the billions of dollars profit they make.

2. Sometimes it's nice to have a piece without a print so you can reuse it for something else. But this would affect a pretty small number of parts in a collection, and a small number of people who repurpose pieces, and a small fraction of the pieces they repurpose that would have prints on. So it probably only saves you $30 over a lifetime of MOCs. Maybe.

3. My children like the stickers. So maybe keep them for Friends and City sets? Or, give extra stickers to personalize things further. Little ones that can 'float' anywhere on a piece, providing cool decoration without having to be lined up properly. I suspect they'd love that even more.

[Toastie]

48 minutes ago, danth said:

They're basically Lego insiders, and hang out with Lego designers, and go to after parties with good old Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen himself. At least, that seems to be how they see themselves.

Here is to Kjeld!

Best,
Thorsten 

[MAB]

1 hour ago, danth said:

Alright. So how do we actual get Lego to give us more prints and less stickers?

 

Vote with your wallet. Don't buy sets with stickers. Only buy sets with prints. That will send them a message that you don't like stickers.

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

Vote with your wallet. Don't buy sets with stickers. Only buy sets with prints. That will send them a message that you don't like stickers

That's exactly what some people (including me !) believed when it came to "force" (e.g.(!) - there are so many more examples in the apparently free market driven industry) the meat industry to stop the way they treat animals (= we can a) all afford to eat them on a regular basis and b) they make a ton of money and c) it appears all nice, and clean and easy, no blood or parts of brain visible).

So, I bought only meat in the category A (1 pig running around freely - 5 times more expensive than E category meat - 10 square feet of "living space" for 1 pig throughout its "life") - because I can afford it. Change: Zero. What did cause a change? ALDI Germany "disliked" category A meat for whatever reason. They are now on B. Universities did a huge study on that - things have to change on a large scale - to change. In an industrialized mass market world.

Sounds reasonable to me. I still go for the A thing - and mostly just don't eat animals anymore. >Not< to change the world, but to get better sleep, that's all.

Could help here as well: Yes: Buy sets with prints only. Makes you sleep better, but does not change anything else. Not on the scale, TLG is making money.

Best,
Thorsten

Edited March 21, 2023 by Toastie

[MAB]

7 hours ago, Toastie said:

:

:

Could help here as well: Yes: Buy sets with prints only. Makes you sleep better, but does not change anything else. Not on the scale, TLG is making money.

The issue here is many people will continue to buy sets with stickers, presumably because they don't mind stickers enough to stop them buying lego sets with stickers. They might prefer prints to stickers but not enough to go without the sets that have stickers. When large portions of consumers don't mind something that much, things don't change for a minority that want a change. 

[Karalora]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

The issue here is many people will continue to buy sets with stickers, presumably because they don't mind stickers enough to stop them buying lego sets with stickers. They might prefer prints to stickers but not enough to go without the sets that have stickers. When large portions of consumers don't mind something that much, things don't change for a minority that want a change. 

If I had the option to pay, say, $5-10 more to get a set I want with all printed parts instead of stickers, I would. But LEGO doesn't give me that option. Any given set either uses stickers or it doesn't; in the former case, my choice is between buying a set with stickers or forgoing it altogether.

[MAB]

37 minutes ago, Karalora said:

If I had the option to pay, say, $5-10 more to get a set I want with all printed parts instead of stickers, I would. But LEGO doesn't give me that option. Any given set either uses stickers or it doesn't; in the former case, my choice is between buying a set with stickers or forgoing it altogether.

I agree. It comes down to a how strong is the preference, what that preference is worth to you and not just a simple this or that preference. If you absolutely hate sets with stickers, then you have a much smaller pool of sets (without stickers) to purchase from. Or, if you just prefer prints to stickers, then you have to sometimes buy sets that go against your preference and contain stickers, or you get the choice to miss out on that set completely. If the majority of people prefer prints enough to not purchase sets with stickers, then LEGO will eventually change. Whereas if it is just a weak preference and enough people still buy sets with stickers even if they prefer prints then nothing will change. Throughout the thread, in posts such as this one

On 1/25/2023 at 11:13 PM, danth said:

Nope.

It's a simple of question of preference we were talking about. Do people prefer prints or stickers? That's it.

When I ask people "Do you prefer cheese or pepperoni pizza", people just pick one. They don't go into long rabbit holes about hidden costs. "I like cheese better, but what's the cost? Will I receive a poke with a sharp stick as I receive the cheese pizza? Because then I pick pepperoni." Said nobody ever.

The question of stickers vs prints sure make people say weird things.

It's a simple question of preference!

If you say "I like prints but not if they cost more", then guess what: You prefer prints.

we have been told this is a simple question of preference and that costs don't come into it, and bringing up any other factors outside of a simple preference is weird.

Yet in reality, these other factors are immensely important when it comes to buyer behaviour, especially if you want to send a message to the company to change and the only message that is really important to them is whether a set sells and not just to you as an individual but to the population. I (normally) prefer prints to stickers, but that doesn't mean I'd pay significantly more for a set with the same amount of decoration if it was only prints and no stickers, or that I'd accept the set at the same price but with significantly less decorated parts because they were printed instead of using stickers. I prefer a cheaper set with stickers to an expensive one with prints. I usually prefer to buy a set that has stickers than to miss it altogether. A simple preference doesn't mean I wouldn't buy a set with stickers.

There is no way to send a message that you prefer prints to stickers if you continue to buy sets with stickers. That tells LEGO that although you might email them to say that you prefer prints, you (and many other people) are still happy enough to continue buying sets with stickers. And by using stickers they keep costs lower and so cater also for people wanting lower prices than they would be if there were only printed parts and no stickers. The only real message is sent if you refuse to buy a set with stickers in it. But that individual message will be drowned out by many others that continue to purchase the set with stickers. So to send a message, someone that prefers prints would have to convince many other LEGO buyers to stop buying LEGO until they do prints only.

If I prefer cheese pizzas but the pizza company rarely makes cheese pizzas as they nearly always make pepperoni pizza, then personally I'm OK with pepperoni most of the time. I prefer cheese when I can get it, but pepperoni is good too (and definitely better than no pizza). I could refuse to buy pepperoni in the hope that they will stop using pepperoni and go to cheese only pizza but that message will be lost due to the large queue of people happy to buy ANY pizza. If there is another company that makes cheese pizzas exclusively then I could buy from them instead. Although then I wouldn't be able to get my pizzas in the shape of Darth Vader or a Classic Space helmet.

 

[kill will]

I have absolutely hated stickers since I was a kid and continue to actively avoid any sets with them. Of the dozens of good reasons provided in this thread, the biggest one for me is the objectively poor quality. Stickered pieces will fray, lose color around the edges, peel, and generally degrade in quality incredibly fast. They need to be handled and stored with extreme care but age will still cause them to degrade regardless. As I rarely keep sets together long and generally buy them specifically for parts, I don't even apply stickers anymore or consider them to be part of a set. Even brand new stickers' colors don't perfectly match with the bricks they're to be placed on and have an obvious silhouette. They look cheap from the start and only continue to look worse over time

For example, the upcoming 77013 Well of Souls set would have been an instant buy of multiple copies for me if there was even a single printed element in the set. Without stickers it would look like a very bland wall and arch surrounding a plain yellow 2x4 that's supposed to represent the Ark of the Covenant. As a parts pack it's just some very common pieces in a hodgepodge of colors that could be had for cheaper on PaB or BL. I think I'm better off spending $40 on some of the beautiful printed pieces from the Adventurers line that are perfectly preserved 25 years later!

Would anyone be ok with stickers for minifigs one day? The exact same arguments people use to justify stickers now could be applied 

[MAB]

13 hours ago, kill will said:

Would anyone be ok with stickers for minifigs one day? The exact same arguments people use to justify stickers now could be applied 

In the early days, torsos were stickered. Brickforge also used to sell sticker sheets that you could apply to old worn torsos and shields to revamp them. I have some that must be 10+ years old and they still look great.

Would people accept stickered torsos from LEGO? Almost certainly not these days. Minifigure parts are handled much more than regular parts for play and so they need to be harder wearing. They are also quite hard to apply for kids, being small and also not square. And as kids will often play with them on the floor, carpet and other dust/dirt will get under the stickers making them less likely to stay on. Also, LEGO has printing equipment specifically set up for minifigure parts as they produce so many of them. Whereas for other parts, equipment has to be set up to change the part holder/mounts for printing each time they print on a different part. Hence it makes sense that they have specific equipment for printing on minifigure parts only but not have equipment permanently set up for every other part type. Having printing machines down while they are being reset for a different part is another cost. And like it or not, minifigures are now LEGO's premium product. Whereas they can get away with stickers in high priced sets, if they started using stickers for minifigures then it would kill sales. They would also be impossible to apply. While a torso sticker is relatively easy for an adult, can you imagine having to sticker arms, heads, and legs (and of course legs cannot be moved if stickered).

13 hours ago, kill will said:

I have absolutely hated stickers since I was a kid and continue to actively avoid any sets with them. Of the dozens of good reasons provided in this thread, the biggest one for me is the objectively poor quality. Stickered pieces will fray, lose color around the edges, peel, and generally degrade in quality incredibly fast. They need to be handled and stored with extreme care but age will still cause them to degrade regardless. .....  think I'm better off spending $40 on some of the beautiful printed pieces from the Adventurers line that are perfectly preserved 25 years later!

This all comes down to how well you take care of parts. I have old stickered parts and they look great. I also have old printed parts and they also look great. I don't chuck either type into a bucket full of parts. But then I have bought job lots of tubs of old parts and found both printed and stickered parts that are in bad condition. Similarly I have bought job lots of reasonably modern parts and found badly applied stickers and heavily scratched printed parts. At least with a damaged sticker you can remove it and clean the part up, whereas with a print you have to do significant work to remove the damaged print from the surface. Although often it is not worth doing that for the price of the undecorated part, and they are only fit for the junk box.

13 hours ago, kill will said:

I think I'm better off spending $40 on some of the beautiful printed pieces from the Adventurers line that are perfectly preserved 25 years later!

At that price, it sounds like you are buying a piece that has been well cared for and rarely played with, or possibly even new. There are of course many cheaper ones that will be less well cared for and scratched. If the pieces had been stickered, then well cared for parts would still be in as good condition as well cared for printed parts, and ones that had not been well cared for would be damaged like uncared for printed parts.

 

It is interesting to compare sets from a couple of decades apart although of course comparisons are never perfect. But here, for example, these two are about the same size (although the newer one has double the amount of parts in the X-wing, making it less blocky). The older one has no stickered parts and 6 different printed parts, whereas the newer one has 2 printed and 11 different stickered parts.

The main improvement to me (aside from the colour) is the appearance of the upper wings, and the detail through extra/modern parts in the engines. Would the new one look as good if they did not have so much decoration on the wings and engines. Personally, in this case, I find the stickers on the engines a bit superfluous. I think this is a set where they could have had no stickers and just a couple of different printed parts. Would people be happy with fewer specific stickers and more generic prints - like this one that appears in a huge number of sets

My personal preference is to brick build the decoration like the red patches on the wings and maybe have one generic and massively reused part such as a tile with the red stripes, but of course that is not really practical for detailed images such as the hieroglyphs mentioned above. But in that case, would people be happy with the same printed part appearing in every set in that theme or would they prefer a couple of different stickered parts in each set? That is the type of thing that LEGO has to balance.

 

[danth]

I finally have the time and energy for part 2 of my previous post. Tackling the "too many boxes" argument.

One thing I don't like about this argument is that it's only used to argue against prints. Do you know what else needs its own separate box? Any new part. That's right. Any new specialized part means a whole new box, or multiple boxes depending on how many colors it comes in.

And even worse are new colors. Every new colors means a whole slew of separate boxes. So how can Lego possibly come out with new colors? I thought anything that required more boxes was basically impossible?

If Lego can constantly come out with new parts and new colors, they can do prints too.

But I already know what the usual suspects will say: "But a single sticker sheet can replace a bunch of printed parts. You can't replace specialized pieces or new colors with stickers." But so what? That's just an argument for being cheap. Lego can make new pieces that require separate boxes, because they do all the time for new colors and new parts. Basically, stickers aren't a solution for "too many boxes" problem, because there is no "too many boxes" problem. Stickers are simply a way to cheap out.

To reiterate: There is no "too many boxes" problem, otherwise Lego wouldn't be able to create new parts and new colors.

Also, much smaller companies like Cobi and Megablocks wouldn't be able to print all their parts if boxes were a real limiting factor.