Is It Possible To Reintroduce Old Sets?

[icm]

^ This.

[danth]

42 minutes ago, CastleRail said:

But nothing says that every connection is used together to connect to the next part. Say you put a grid of 1x1 plates on your theoretical 2x8 with 75% clutch and half of them just fall off. That 75% vs 98% becomes very significant.

C'mon, Lego doesn't make sets like that and neither do MOCers.

Regardless, the clutch of 1x1s have to be strong so they'd stay on.

[CastleRail]

2 hours ago, danth said:

C'mon, Lego doesn't make sets like that and neither do MOCers.

Regardless, the clutch of 1x1s have to be strong so they'd stay on.

You're missing the point. Making the tolerances less strict on larger plates makes every single point of connection on that plate less "clutchy" - take a look at 40561 for Lego putting 1x1 curved tiles onto each and every stud on multiple plates. Now those ¼ circle tiles don't even fully encompass the stud, if they made the plates (6x6 in this instance) with 75% clutch then tiles would be falling off everywhere. The tolerances have to be of the same standard for every connection (stud/antistud/bar/hole/pin etc) otherwise there is no logic at all in having a connection there.

[icm]

Also, note that I was mainly talking about location tolerance for the studs, not clutch tolerance for the studs themselves. Not only does the clutch tolerance for every single stud on a large plate need to be just as good as clutch tolerance for every stud on a small plate, but location tolerance needs to be much higher, because a large plate needs to be able to accommodate the accumulated clutch and size error of a lot of small plates at maximum material condition.

[SpacePolice89]

19 hours ago, MAB said:

I guess it depends if they want to kill off bricklink as a secondary marketplace. And if doing torsos then why not heads and legs too? They could wipe out the secondary market on old CMF and classic figures if the price is right. Whether that would be a good thing is another matter.

 

Wouldn't many of the newly produced minifigs end  up on Bricklink at some point? Every time I buy sets from Bricklink stores I buy parts for my MOCs and minifigues at the same time and I have never found classic minifigs in large quantities, the stores often have 1-5 examples of a certain classic minifig. I'd like to buy 10-30 Futuron or Black Falcon minifigs at a time but it's very hard to find inventory.

18 hours ago, Slegengr said:

If every past print was an option, not only would it directly harm the secondary market but it would also give so many options that most consumers would be overloaded.  Try randomly searching for a good torso for a personal interest by skimming through all printed torsos on BrickLink right now... without a theme reference or very extensive and accurate search terms, it takes a long time to skim thousands of prints to find what you want.  Most of the old printings would likely be missed and never get enough preorders to justify a production run.

If there was a reasonable high preorder quantity threshold for a certain minifig only some would go as far as production as you mentioned. Are you sure that it would harm the secondary market like Bricklink? Because older minifigs are not an infinite resource and even the secondary market needs new supply to stay viable.  

Edited September 12, 2023 by SpacePolice89

[MAB]

15 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Bionicle molds were different in many ways from other System themes, but many of them DID continue to be reused throughout the theme's lifespan. Bionicle sets were also cheap (usually $30 or less, with the majority being less than half that) and produced in large quantities, meaning that, for instance, a mold investment for a series of six similar figures could be paid off more easily than other parts made for more expensive, lower-production sets. There's also rumors (I don't recall them being confirmed or not) that Lego did some reaccounting in Bionicle's later years that found that the cost of some molds had been underestimated, leading to more reuse of molds and fewer discrete molds per year in the theme's later years.

 

It is similar with accessories in CMFs. These often tend to have just one or two points of connection such as a bar or antistud so as long as that part of the mould is accurate enough, the rest doesn't have to be such high quality. And they appear in low value sets sold in huge numbers. I imagine this is why some CMF parts don't get reused in normal boxed sets.

Some people may remember the CMF princess headgear. That appeared to have a flaw in that most of them were very loose compared to other headgear.

[Mylenium]

On 9/11/2023 at 10:37 AM, MAB said:

Why was it greed, and not just trying a new way of expanding into a new market.

There's sensible profit margins and then there's 20 Euro Beatboxes. LEGO killed it right out of the gate by even trying to sell these products at such abhorrent prices. Sure, everything a company like LEGO does is to generate some form of benefit (not always monetary), but it's not like we're talking luxury products you can sell at totally arbitrary prices. They simply overstepped the line with VIDIYO and got slapped hard for it.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

19 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Compared to many other toy companies, Lego molds DO tend to be more precise and expensive,...

Oh please, don't spout LEGO's self-motivated propaganda for the umpteenth time. It's in their interest to tell people molds are expensive to justify their prices, but the reality is just the opposite. Molds have never been as expensive as the moon and at the current point have never been cheaper thanks to CNC milling, electric erosion, inductive partial tempering, laser stuff and so on. Yes, a "block" (all the connections and ancillary that holds the actual mold and the mold combined) costs a given amount X, but when small 100 people facilities producing in the B2B sector can afford having custom molds made, then so can LEGO. And given their revenue, they can do so more than once a year. For aforementioned reasons your argument also fails on the precision point, BTW. Nobody intentionally degrades quality in the hopes of producing cheaper molds. That's just not how this works...

Mylenium

[danth]

10 hours ago, CastleRail said:

You're missing the point. Making the tolerances less strict on larger plates makes every single point of connection on that plate less "clutchy" - take a look at 40561 for Lego putting 1x1 curved tiles onto each and every stud on multiple plates. Now those ¼ circle tiles don't even fully encompass the stud, if they made the plates (6x6 in this instance) with 75% clutch then tiles would be falling off everywhere. The tolerances have to be of the same standard for every connection (stud/antistud/bar/hole/pin etc) otherwise there is no logic at all in having a connection there.

Fair point that there are sets with many 1x1 tiles stuck to a plate. However those tiles are "leaves" in the build, i.e. there is no stud to build on top of them. They only need enough clutch to not fall off, not to support further building.

9 hours ago, icm said:

Not only does the clutch tolerance for every single stud on a large plate need to be just as good as clutch tolerance for every stud on a small plate

I dispute that, for the reasons I gave earlier, but obviously have no proof.

But it doesn't really matter, what I'm really saying: don't just buy into the Lego PR points without doubting them first. I gave a lot of reasons why they are probably exaggerated, and I didn't think about it very hard. I might be mostly wrong, but that doesn't mean a real manufacturing engineer couldn't walk in here and destroy most of Lego's PR stuff about precision/quality with even more accurate reasons than I gave.

There's just a constant drumbeat on this website where people worshipfully push Lego PR on us, and it's really tiresome.

2 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Oh please, don't spout LEGO's self-motivated propaganda for the umpteenth time. It's in their interest to tell people molds are expensive to justify their prices, but the reality is just the opposite. Molds have never been as expensive as the moon and at the current point have never been cheaper thanks to CNC milling, electric erosion, inductive partial tempering, laser stuff and so on. Yes, a "block" (all the connections and ancillary that holds the actual mold and the mold combined) costs a given amount X, but when small 100 people facilities producing in the B2B sector can afford having custom molds made, then so can LEGO. And given their revenue, they can do so more than once a year. For aforementioned reasons your argument also fails on the precision point, BTW. Nobody intentionally degrades quality in the hopes of producing cheaper molds. That's just not how this works...

This.

I want to hear your hopes and dreams about future sets, I wanna see your MOCs, I want to see your reviews of sets you bought. I do NOT, ever, want to hear people playing fanboy PR rep for Lego. Because that always ends the same way: telling AFOLs they can't have what they want because Lego is some tiny poor company heroically fighting a Goliath of expense and engineering problems that no other company faces. Which is just not true.

Not saying anyone here is doing this. But there are some people who have never posted a MOC, never talked about set building, never ask for anything more from Lego, but boy do they always show up to play PR rep like it's their job. Most people in this thread are NOT doing that; I think even for legit fans it's hard to resist all the propaganda without internalizing some of it and repeating it.

Edited September 12, 2023 by danth

[Slegengr]

7 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

If there was a reasonable high preorder quantity threshold for a certain minifig only some would go as far as production as you mentioned. Are you sure that it would harm the secondary market like Bricklink? Because older minifigs are not an infinite resource and even the secondary market needs new supply to stay viable.  

"Harm" is a relative term here.  It would certainly impact the secondary market.  If all designs were available through TLG at similar pricing to TLG's Bricks and Pieces plus an up-charge for limited production manufacturing, these parts could still be cheaper than secondary market prices, sometimes significantly.  This would demotivate a potentially significant portion of the secondary market since sales and pricing would not be high enough to justify time spent sorting old parts for resale.  I speculate that almost all sales would shift to the primary market (TLG) since you could order parts in new condition and source all desired parts through the same store.

In general, I think the impact on market is harder to predict and of less consequence.  The more significant reason TLG does not (and should not?) keep old designs in continual production is the difficulty in maintaining reasonable production coupled with unpredictable marketing.

Another thing to note is that companies regularly refresh logos and marketing, sometimes reverting back to "retro" or old designs again.  This helps keep the marketing fresh and tends to generate interest in the brand (unless too much change occurs and loses the connection to the brand image).  This same idea applies to TLG: new designs, sometimes with references to old designs, are likely to draw and keep interest better than producing the same dated product over and over again.

 

2 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Oh please, don't spout LEGO's self-motivated propaganda for the umpteenth time. It's in their interest to tell people molds are expensive to justify their prices, but the reality is just the opposite. Molds have never been as expensive as the moon and at the current point have never been cheaper thanks to CNC milling, electric erosion, inductive partial tempering, laser stuff and so on. Yes, a "block" (all the connections and ancillary that holds the actual mold and the mold combined) costs a given amount X, but when small 100 people facilities producing in the B2B sector can afford having custom molds made, then so can LEGO. And given their revenue, they can do so more than once a year. For aforementioned reasons your argument also fails on the precision point, BTW. Nobody intentionally degrades quality in the hopes of producing cheaper molds. That's just not how this works...

Mylenium

Though I am sure that LEGO has self-motivated propaganda to justify their costs, this seems absolutely not true to me with regard to mold cost (in general; to get specific, I would need in-depth data I do not have but TLG would have).  I am quite confident that LEGO molds are more expensive than those produced by many toy manufacturers.  There is a reason why no competitors (as far as I know; I do not have exhaustive data) produce a product close to the same quality: they don't fully understand the depth of design tolerances TLG applies and they likely don't want to risk as much cost on just the mold for the parts.

I think what is being missed by most in this discussion is just how expensive tolerances are, especially when we are talking about the small scale of LEGO pieces.  Smaller tolerance equals higher cost.  If you think molds are "cheap", try to get a quote yourself.  Though manufacturing methods have improved and new methods are available today, you would be foolish to assume that this means that these manufacturing methods are cheap.  

Another major complication in this discussion is that costing for a manufacturer is always relative.  Base cost is not the only factor; profitable return from the use of the tooling or part is what is significant.  For a random example, if you buy a mold for $1 and sell 3 parts made from that mold for $0.30 each, net profit is a loss of $0.10.  If you buy a mold for $1000 and sell 10,000 parts made from that mold for $0.30, net profit is $2000.  I think this is generally understood, but it is a crucial element in TLG's decisions for new molds.  This is exactly why they repeat the use of molds as often as possible, and also the reason why they tend to release molds for some licensed product parts through CMF or other outlets to retain rights to the design/mold and be able to use the part in more than the limited licensed applications in order to increase likelihood of recovering costs in design and production of the part through increased volume (necessarily at a profit, of course; increased production volume at a loss is obviously an increased net loss).  Also keep in mind that molds are only one small piece in the costs of design and production, so I am sure TLG does not allot excessive or unlimited funding for this at the start of design.

Nobody intentionally degrades quality in the hopes of producing cheaper molds?  How familiar are you with manufacturing?  Of course, it is never the intentional degradation of product quality, but wider tolerances result in cheaper production and degraded quality and are absolutely a viable and often-applied decision that companies make.  This is the exact reason why TLG molds are sure to be more expensive than most other toy company molds: they claim tighter tolerances and the product shows this clearly.  If this was all smoke and mirrors, so to speak, there surely would be competitors stealing significant market share and TLG would not be viewed as the premium product like they are today.  Free market will always tend to prove the concepts and discussion points here, and relative market shares and prices people are willing to pay show clearly that TLG is the best in the market when it comes to quality, and, again, quality comes from tighter tolerances which drive up costs of molds (the one specific aspect being discussed here).

It is an entirely different discussion on how many molds (new or old) TLG should/could produce in the year, and simply a discussion we do not really have enough data to narrow down conclusively.  TLG surely keeps marketing and costing data and makes the final decision from that data as they are the one with all the risk in this decision.

For background, I do not have extensive training in manufacturing, but I work as an engineer corresponding regularly with manufacturers, so I feel I have sufficient experience to make the claims and share the insights above.

 

On 9/10/2023 at 1:56 AM, MAB said:

There have been a few such appearances in the CMF. It is a good way to revive some insignia but keep to modern standards.

Spoiler

The balancing out also applies to their new weird products that are often described as "nobody asked for this". They are continually looking for a new big thing, a step change rather than incremental change. We often laugh at Life of George, Vidiyo,  etc but if one of those types of toys actually took off it could bring in many bew buyers compared to a slightly different theme. If they can tap into a new market - kids playing with apps that don't really play with lego much - then they have a huge new market. Experiments have worked in the past. If they hadn't experimented with minifigs, or technic,  or mindstorms,  LEGO would be very different today (probably not around any more). 

 

CMF lines are a great way to merge new and old, though I also hope to see more of this in sets as well, such as the classic remakes.  As you mentioned and as fits my general ideology, the merge between classic and new is a good choice.

The discussions on this thread are directly related to research and development.  Without new experiments and some lines potentially netting a monetary loss, companies really could not exist in general.  Risks must be taken and TLG would have the most data available to make their own decisions on what risks to take.  Some have flopped, but they must be doing something right in order to be the leading toy manufacturer in the world.

 

21 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Spoiler

I don't really appreciate my words being taken out of context to support a wholly different argument.

Lego molds are a complex subject. Compared to many other toy companies, Lego molds DO tend to be more precise and expensive, owing to their need for consistent compatibility. Even for Lego it can vary (more functional, connectivity-focused parts need a greater degree of precision than something like a figure part for which precision and longevity might be less essential). In Bionicle, an example of this was some masks or weapon parts being molded out of a softer plastic that could be molded more easily, without as much issue with the molds breaking down over use. These savings helped to keep costs down compared to basic bricks or sturdy Technic parts, but they DID result in notably less resilient parts (breaking or developing scratches more easily than hard ABS or Polycarbonate parts).

Bionicle molds were different in many ways from other System themes, but many of them DID continue to be reused throughout the theme's lifespan. Bionicle sets were also cheap (usually $30 or less, with the majority being less than half that) and produced in large quantities, meaning that, for instance, a mold investment for a series of six similar figures could be paid off more easily than other parts made for more expensive, lower-production sets. There's also rumors (I don't recall them being confirmed or not) that Lego did some reaccounting in Bionicle's later years that found that the cost of some molds had been underestimated, leading to more reuse of molds and fewer discrete molds per year in the theme's later years.

Obviously there are reasons why this doesn't apply as neatly to reissuing your average '70s, '80s, or '90s set (or for that matter, to bringing back older Bionicle sets now that their stable of common parts to draw from are almost all retired). Among other things, one reason why one-to-one reissues of many older sets is unlikely is that older molds were in many cases refined or replaced with superior versions over the years—an example is older castle wall panels, which included easily damaged supports that newer versions eschew. For that reason bringing back the older, inferior versions would be ill-advised.

I think recent modern nostalgia-focused sets, like the Galaxy Explorer or Lion Knights' Castle, have taken a safer approach than the older "Lego Legends" reissues by trying to come up with modern builds that merely evoke classic sets (and often do so with a greater level of detail and engineering), instead of trying and failing to create "authentic" reissues that nonetheless fall short of matching the originals.

Molds are indeed a complex subject.  I agree with your points here, especially the ones directly relevant to the original question on this thread about reproducing old sets.

...and, of course, due to the number of times I mentioned the same thought, I agree that modern set remakes are a much better/safer choice than reproduction of original sets.

 

19 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

Yes, yes they do. Take it from a terrible "clone brand" buyer of many years. Some parts won't separate, some brick brands are so loose a connection that they hardly stay together during a build, let alone play. Then you have the "quality" that causes a 2x16 plate to warp if you put a 2x4 brick onto the middle. LEGO are doing some things to count towards their premium status. 

Agreed, the market agrees with the premium status of LEGO products.  I only have experience with clone brands from 1990's to 2000's (some of which were terrible experiences!), but I have not yet found compelling enough reason to consider clone brands since LEGO still maintains their quality assurance (not without issues or hiccups here and there, but this is nearly a guarantee with any product and brand; TLG seems to stay on top of these issues fairly well).

 

19 hours ago, icm said:

That's not really how tolerance stacking works.

Spoiler

 

A little imprecision doesn't matter much on a few parts or items that need to meet. Generally, the more points that have to meet certain relative positions, the tighter the tolerance has to be on each point. A 2x8 plate has to have higher tolerances than a 1x1 plate, because it needs to accomodate the tolerance buildup of sixteen 1x1 plates placed on top of it. That's why larger plates (and larger bricks) are so expensive. Not only are the molds more complex and the filling/cooling patterns more complex, but they have to be machined to higher tolerances because they need to accomodate the tolerance buildup of all the smaller parts that are going to attach to them. That, in turn, is why best practices for Lego building are to not have very long lengths or very large areas of stud-antistud mating, but to break those areas up with tiles: the buildup of all that wiggle room in the location of each individual stud results in a lot of stress in the large parts. A little imprecision here or there isn't like a little noise here or there in scientific data, where you can stack multiple measurements to get a better signal-to-noise ratio. It doesn't cancel out. It may "improve clutch," but that just means that you're getting tight interference fits where they're not intended due to imprecise molding, and that damages the parts. You don't want to improve clutch that way.

Source - this is based on my general understanding of things from my first- and second-year undergraduate courses in CAD and manufacturing processes. I'm not a materials scientist or manufacturing engineer and don't have any specialized knowledge of metals or plastics beyond what I learned in those classes. My later courses were in fluid mechanics and orbital mechanics. Any real manufacturing engineer on the forum should correct me if I've said anything wrong, which I probably did. But - FWIW - that's not how tolerance stacking works!

Edit -

I've also bought a lot of kits from a number of other brands in the last couple of years, and Lego does still have the most precise molding. Lego parts fit together better than Cobi (which is by far the best competitor as far as part quality goes, and is much better in terms of prints and print quality), and much better than Bluebrixx (parts sourced mainly from Xingbao) or Sluban, which are both companies I respect. And of course they fit together much better than parts from any of those anonymous Chinese "MOC shops." In the larger hobby model space, the quality and precision of Bandai molding is just about second to none, but the parts in the Bandai Gundams don't click together quite as neatly and securely as Lego parts, not to mention standing up to repeated cycles of assembly and disassembly. The ball joints are also a lot rougher than Lego ball joints. In hobby modeling generally, though less with Gunpla, panel gaps and mismatched assembly tabs are generally expected, though to varying degrees, and it's expected that you'll have to fix them with knife, glue, putty, and sandpaper. Lego is just supposed to fit together without all that. Most other plastic toys with male-female joints are designed to require as few of those joints as possible and to be very forgiving of misalignments and panel gaps.

I don't have enough experience with action figures, especially high-end action figures like Hot Toys or McFarlane, to have an informed comment on the precision of their molding, but I expect it's less demanding than Lego in many respects. Action figure parts have relatively few connection points and mating faces, and the tolerances between connection points and mating faces are what matter. Tolerance of surface cosmetic detail can be much looser. With basic Lego parts like a 2x8 plate, everything (just about) is a connection point, and every face is a mating face. So tolerances do have to be pretty tight - much tighter than for Bionicle parts (except the ball surfaces and maybe the joint-to-joint distances), because those are much more like action figure parts than conventional Lego parts (to the continual astonishment of many Lego fans).

 

 

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding in the general discussions surrounding this topic since most people do not seem to have much understanding of the manufacturing processes or realize the marketing surrounding these products.  My interactions and general experiences as a design engineer working with manufacturers match your points quite well.
Can people outside the manufacturing/engineering work fields understand tolerance stacking?  I know I did not really understand it until I learned it in my engineering schooling, and even then really learned it when I saw issues I caused by not understanding it while working as a design engineer.

The point on action figures is certainly a valid one, as is the general joining/mate faces point.  LEGO has to have more precise tolerances since there are so many more connection points as intended.

 

16 hours ago, danth said:

 

I've heard only good things about Cobi and Megablocks in recent years from people like Jang and others, but it sounds like it's not universal. I don't have any recent experience. I've heard Mega used to be a lot worse.

You sound like you're much more knowledgeable than me on this, and I certainly could be wrong. I can explain what I mean more specifically.

Some of what I'm saying relies on the premise that it requires more force to pull apart pieces with more stud connections. I think that's fairly uncontroversial but I could be wrong.

Spoiler

 

Let's say you have a concept of 100% clutch, where any more tightness and you're liable to have problems putting pieces together or separating them after. And let's say you're manufacturing a 1x1 piece and you want to make sure the clutch is going to be strong so the piece doesn't just fall off with a single stud connection. If you target 98% clutch, and have precision such that the variance is 1% clutch, then you should be safe, since you can expect 99% to 97% clutch. Good clutch either way, and not too strong. But you have to be very precise. 

Now let's say you're making a 2x8 plate. You can get away with less clutch per stud since you will have multiple stud connections (up to 16) i.e. it will take more force to make your plate connection fail. So you target 80% clutch (maybe your anti-studs have a slightly larger inner diameter). In this case you can get away with a lot more variance, even 5%, because who cares if you actually get 85% or 75% clutch on some studs? That's still not too strong, and with 16 connections it's okay if one is slightly weak.

The above "sounds logical" to me but that doesn't mean it's true. I'm sure you're right about errors not stacking in a good way.

But I think what I'm saying is slightly different: more connections means less required clutch which allows lower precision. Which is based on absolutely no expertise or data, I admit. But I feel like there has to be some truth to my thinking, even if it doesn't totally pan out.

 

 

I think what you are saying here about necessary clutch force could be accurate in some application, but I don't think TLG applies this thinking with their design/manufacturing philosophy as shown in the quality of their parts, especially when it comes to tolerance stacking as icm mentioned above.
Every stud/anti-stud is a single connection point, along with other types, and must have tight enough tolerances to work independently.  If they lowered the quality assurance of larger parts by widening tolerances, there would be failing connections at some point.  Consider baseplates for an example: every stud is a viable connection to a single piece (like a 1x1 brick) and repeated connections on-off-on-off have a very low failure rate as evidence of the quality assurance from tighter tolerances in production.

Working as a design engineer has widened my realization of the depth of intent needed for good design, and, though I would be thrilled to be a LEGO engineer/designer, I am quite glad to not be working in such small scale with tolerances.  I design elements of large structures where 1/16" tolerances are acceptable for most parts and assemblies in almost all cases.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Slegengr

[icm]

@Mylenium, I believe you're a manufacturing engineer, right? Do you have any experience with or knowledge about how the tolerance buildup would be managed with, say, a 16x16 plate? I'm sure I got a lot of it wrong and I'd be interested to know how it actually works.

@danth, there are some sets with a whole lot of 1x1 plates in a row and then other parts laid on top of them, like the Creator 3-in-1 pirate ship. But those aren't very common, and I think the layer underneath the 1x1 plates in the pirate ship is probably broken up so they're not all stacked on one long plate. I haven't checked the instructions to make sure.

Yeah - I admit I've always been a gullible fellow, and as a kid I pretty much swallowed all corporate propaganda from, well, anywhere really, but Lego in particular. It's hard to avoid doing that today even though I want to think of myself as an adult capable of critical thinking. I have no expertise to really judge the quality or precision of Lego molds, I was just noting that in my experience the part quality is still generally better than competitors, and speculating on reasons why most Lego molds might require greater precision than most action figure molds or general plastic toy molds.

Obviously we need a real manufacturing engineer with professional experience in injection-molded plastic toys to weigh in!

[danth]

9 minutes ago, icm said:

Yeah - I admit I've always been a gullible fellow, and as a kid I pretty much swallowed all corporate propaganda from, well, anywhere really, but Lego in particular. It's hard to avoid doing that today even though I want to think of myself as an adult capable of critical thinking. I have no expertise to really judge the quality or precision of Lego molds, I was just noting that in my experience the part quality is still generally better than competitors, and speculating on reasons why most Lego molds might require greater precision than most action figure molds or general plastic toy molds. 

Sorry, just wanted to say I wasn't directing my comments at you or anyone else specifically. You don't strike me as gullible!

[Slegengr]

On 9/12/2023 at 11:24 AM, danth said:

Fair point that there are sets with many 1x1 tiles stuck to a plate. However those tiles are "leaves" in the build, i.e. there is no stud to build on top of them. They only need enough clutch to not fall off, not to support further building.

Spoiler

 

I dispute that, for the reasons I gave earlier, but obviously have no proof.

But it doesn't really matter, what I'm really saying: don't just buy into the Lego PR points without doubting them first. I gave a lot of reasons why they are probably exaggerated, and I didn't think about it very hard. I might be mostly wrong, but that doesn't mean a real manufacturing engineer couldn't walk in here and destroy most of Lego's PR stuff about precision/quality with even more accurate reasons than I gave.

There's just a constant drumbeat on this website where people worshipfully push Lego PR on us, and it's really tiresome.

This.

I want to hear your hopes and dreams about future sets, I wanna see your MOCs, I want to see your reviews of sets you bought. I do NOT, ever, want to hear people playing fanboy PR rep for Lego. Because that always ends the same way: telling AFOLs they can't have what they want because Lego is some tiny poor company heroically fighting a Goliath of expense and engineering problems that no other company faces. Which is just not true.

Not saying anyone here is doing this. But there are some people who have never posted a MOC, never talked about set building, never ask for anything, but boy do they always show up to play PR rep like it's their job. Most people in this thread are NOT doing that; I think even for legit fans it's hard to resist all the propaganda without internalizing some of it and repeating it.

 

 

I think I understand what you are saying here and agree with most of the points with some nuance to the discussion.  A quick point: I do not think design tolerances really should change much whether or not a part is intended to be mid-structure or at the top.  Each connection should be viable on its own.  A baseplate or large plate does not care whether it is connecting to a tile or a brick; the stud tolerances need to be viable enough for either connection. 

Most of this is not just fanboy discussion of LEGO PR talking points.  The market shows what people believe, and LEGO still has the largest volume share at the higher price than most (all?) competitors.  If they did not prioritize quality assurance, the product quality would show this lack, and the market decline would follow.  I very highly doubt that a significant portion of LEGO's multi-billion dollar revenue is due to fanboy positions without real-world justification.

Now, I also agree that a reasonable measure of doubt of a company's claims about their own products is a good thing.  I apply this to all companies and products.  In TLG's case, the quality assurance seems to speak for itself with the market agreeing, rather than it just being my personal opinion.  I've had some competitor products and have read many reviews from other builders.  It still seems to me that there is no competitor very close to the same level of design refinement and quality assurance as TLG.  (Though I will mention it, I don't intend to redirect discussion into my extreme dislike as a design engineer for any company that directly steals designs that TLG spent time and money to do the research and development; competition is fine as long as the competing brand offers their own designs, both at set and part level; this is a real problem that likely will not go away, but I still dislike it nonetheless)

When it comes to discussion, yes, it is best to back up points with evidence from MOCs and reviews and I am always interested in hopes and dreams about future sets.  Probably the best way to be more effective with these discussions is to have them directly with TLG rather than debating it with other hobbyists that don't have full data at their disposal about what TLG can/cannot or should/should not do.
I have about 30 years of continual experience with LEGO products, but I don't document or share much of this online, so my arguments can be taken as unproven and are essentially only anecdotal, not true evidence.  Then again, this is a thread of discussions about opinions, so sharing of opinions (no matter how wrong they are :) is acceptable.

For myself, I try to never just repeat or internalize propaganda but rather try to base all of my discussion/opinions on direct experiences (even though I will never be able to cover all the nuances through text alone...). 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Slegengr

[Slegengr]

24 minutes ago, icm said:

@Mylenium, I believe you're a manufacturing engineer, right? Do you have any experience with or knowledge about how the tolerance buildup would be managed with, say, a 16x16 plate? I'm sure I got a lot of it wrong and I'd be interested to know how it actually works.

Spoiler

 

@danth, there are some sets with a whole lot of 1x1 plates in a row and then other parts laid on top of them, like the Creator 3-in-1 pirate ship. But those aren't very common, and I think the layer underneath the 1x1 plates in the pirate ship is probably broken up so they're not all stacked on one long plate. I haven't checked the instructions to make sure.

Yeah - I admit I've always been a gullible fellow, and as a kid I pretty much swallowed all corporate propaganda from, well, anywhere really, but Lego in particular. It's hard to avoid doing that today even though I want to think of myself as an adult capable of critical thinking. I have no expertise to really judge the quality or precision of Lego molds, I was just noting that in my experience the part quality is still generally better than competitors, and speculating on reasons why most Lego molds might require greater precision than most action figure molds or general plastic toy molds.

 

Obviously we need a real manufacturing engineer with professional experience in injection-molded plastic toys to weigh in!

@Mylenium You are a professional manufacturing engineer?  I would be very interested to know more related to icm's questions and general manufacturing insight, especially if you have mold-specific experience.  I must admit that your previous claim about molds being cheap lead me to a different conclusion about your experience.  Maybe I missed significant nuance in what you were trying to say.

Though this discussion seems to have taken a slight turn into mold quality and costs specifically, it is a discussion in which I am very interested.

One specific question that comes to mind: Was your earlier point about TLG's " self-motivated propaganda" about molds being expensive related to the fact that molds are not as expensive as they used to be and therefore should not be a significant hinderance to TLG's design considerations or that TLG faces the same design decisions as other toy manufacturers when it comes to molds? ...or maybe some other point that I am missing?
It seems clear to me that there are a lot of viable options for producing molds today that were not available 20 years ago, but I still think that the cost is relative to profitability of the product made with the mold.
I also still firmly believe that experience shows that TLG's products are of better quality than competitors, which directly implies more thorough part design and manufacturing tolerances, which in turn mean higher costs than companies that cut corners.

[SpacePolice89]

58 minutes ago, Slegengr said:

"Harm" is a relative term here.  It would certainly impact the secondary market.  If all designs were available through TLG at similar pricing to TLG's Bricks and Pieces plus an up-charge for limited production manufacturing, these parts could still be cheaper than secondary market prices, sometimes significantly.  This would demotivate a potentially significant portion of the secondary market since sales and pricing would not be high enough to justify time spent sorting old parts for resale.  I speculate that almost all sales would shift to the primary market (TLG) since you could order parts in new condition and source all desired parts through the same store.

I wouldn't want to pursue any action that would harm Bricklink because it's such a valuable asset. But I believe new supply in limited numbers would only be a positive thing for the secondary market because those who didn't preorder the minifigs would have to buy them from Bricklink or other similar sites.  

[Slegengr]

30 minutes ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I wouldn't want to pursue any action that would harm Bricklink because it's such a valuable asset. But I believe new supply in limited numbers would only be a positive thing for the secondary market because those who didn't preorder the minifigs would have to buy them from Bricklink or other similar sites.  

Special limited reproductions could be viable within controlled circumstances, but I still think the best option is to make new designs with references to the original and make them available on TLG's Bricks and Pieces service where individual parts can be ordered.  It seems to work well enough as they did with the new Black Falcon and Lion Knight torsos and legs.  Since resources are always limited, though, there will never be a system where everyone can get everything they would like...

[MAB]

1 hour ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I wouldn't want to pursue any action that would harm Bricklink because it's such a valuable asset. But I believe new supply in limited numbers would only be a positive thing for the secondary market because those who didn't preorder the minifigs would have to buy them from Bricklink or other similar sites.  

Or preorder them ready for the next batch. If people are buying them on bricklink then there is demand and so it won't take long to reach the threshold again.

[Kalahari134]

On 9/8/2023 at 4:22 PM, Slegengr said:

6267 Lagoon Lock-Up: 16x32 baseplate (baseplates in general are rare today)

Baseplates aren't moulded to a size though, they're cut from a sheet.

[Slegengr]

18 minutes ago, Kalahari134 said:

Baseplates aren't moulded to a size though, they're cut from a sheet.

I'm aware that baseplates are vacuum molded and cut to size from a larger sheet.  Unique sizes still require special production runs (and related market research) and different tooling/automation.  I'm not sure I understand your point here?

Though baseplates are still produced, TLG seems to have a current philosophy opposed to their inclusion in sets, especially middle-sized sets such as 6267 Lagoon Lock-Up.
The use of rectangular, rounded, and wedge plates instead seems to me a better option as it lends far more to the modular concept.  See the new 10320 Eldorado Fortress for example.  Not only is the original raised baseplate replaced with a brick-built mimic, the use of individual plates at the base instead of baseplates allow for the design to be modularly rearrangeable.

My assumption is that one significant reason TLG does not seem to have interest in reproducing original sets is that some included baseplates that TLG is not interested in including in current production.

[Mylenium]

Holy smokes! TL;DR! I'm out of here.

Mylenium

[Kalahari134]

19 hours ago, Slegengr said:

I'm aware that baseplates are vacuum molded and cut to size from a larger sheet.  Unique sizes still require special production runs (and related market research) and different tooling/automation.  I'm not sure I understand your point here?

32x16 isn't exactly an unusual size

[Slegengr]

32 minutes ago, Kalahari134 said:

32x16 isn't exactly an unusual size

Yes, it is not an unusual size but a baseplate still seems an unlikely inclusion in a current mid-size set based on observable trends in available sets.

To all, sorry for previous long posts; I did not mean to derail or end discussion here.  Often I forget that even discussion forums are impacted heavily today by social media trends toward only short posts.

[Peppermint_M]

1 hour ago, Slegengr said:

To all, sorry for previous long posts;

As a moderator, it is not a problem to have long posts. Forums are for long posts. 

This was not a long post, but I wish to assure you that long posts are a-OK. 

[Lion King]

There are so many (and long) posts for me to read even tho it is only a few pages here. Nah to catching up.

I will throw my thoughts out anyways. 

I have been thinking lately…. I acutally preer Lego to come up with NEW designs for old themes, NOT remake (new design for old sets). I mean, somehting new and different that we never saw in old themes before, yet there could be some references from old sets. For example….Johnny Thunder discovers a new hidden tomb not in Egypt or in Amazon  rainforest. I don’t know how to describe that right. Maybe I have another example - some new spaceship for Classic Space? No remade spaceships. 

Aain, I am not sure if I describe it right…

[Slegengr]

5 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

As a moderator, it is not a problem to have long posts. Forums are for long posts. 

This was not a long post, but I wish to assure you that long posts are a-OK. 

Thanks for confirmation.  The full-depth discussion is precisely why I prefer forums way ahead of social media formats.
I'm mostly disappointed here that the user that I may have dissuaded from the conversation with my multiple quotes and long posts may actually be a manufacturing engineer with very useful insight into the discussion at hand.

 

5 hours ago, Lion King said:

Spoiler

 

There are so many (and long) posts for me to read even tho it is only a few pages here. Nah to catching up.

I will throw my thoughts out anyways. 

 

I have been thinking lately…. I acutally preer Lego to come up with NEW designs for old themes, NOT remake (new design for old sets). I mean, somehting new and different that we never saw in old themes before, yet there could be some references from old sets. For example….Johnny Thunder discovers a new hidden tomb not in Egypt or in Amazon  rainforest. I don’t know how to describe that right. Maybe I have another example - some new spaceship for Classic Space? No remade spaceships. 

Spoiler

Aain, I am not sure if I describe it right…

 

I think a merge of the two options is the best path: Make mostly new themes based on similar open-story concepts to the classic themes (particularly Space, Pirates, Castle, Aquazone, Adventurers, etc.) with some references to the original themes (same/similar iconography, some updated main characters, etc.) while also making the occasional classic set remake to really hit the nostalgia.  New, updated themes can draw new interest while references to the classics can keep or rekindle interest in adults with nostalgia.  Maybe this is heavily impacted by my own nostalgia from being a child through what seems to be referred to as TLG's golden age (around 1985 to 2000).