ummester

I think BrickLinks MOC shop will eventually gather wider interest than Ideas, as the platform is more open. Part availability is the MOC shops Achilles heal, though - both in being limited to what is currently available and limited by store availability. Theoretically, however, so long as you are willing to invest in the stock of parts, you can effectively package and sell your own LEGO sets (on any Idea, including franchises not already marketed by LEGO), with Bricklink charging a relatively small amount to host it. Of course, if it does take off, Bricklink will no doubt charge more :D

It looks nice - but I've given up on TLG every working out what minifig scale is for Star Wars sets with any degree of consistency or accuracy.

Which begs the question, are the fans wanting to come into LEGO, or come into the franchises that LEGO has partnerships with? I would argue, if a fan comes into LEGO because they want something Marvel related, they are more of a Marvel fan than a LEGO fan. Of course, the attraction to Marvel may cause them to appreciate LEGO more and become a genuine LEGO fan. And then this begs the question, is LEGO no longer of capable of attracting it's desired fan base without licensed products? Has the packaging of the brick become more important than the quality of the brick?

MOD - 10% BRICK MOCer - 45% LDD MOCer - 45% I seldom buy sets anymore and everything I have kept is heavily MODed. I don't build everything I design - I like to design, more than anything else and there is something so much neater about playing digitally :D

Unfortunately BirdOPrey5, in a world dominated by marketing and consumption, visibility equals credibility. This holds true for LEGO ideas - the projects that become more visible get more votes and the creators have to generate the visibility by themselves. Take this project https://ideas.lego.com/projects/72407 I supported it early on because I thought the idea was sound, even if the presentation was lacking - it was a set idea I was working on myself. It was rolling along quite slowly, not generating too much support and then, out of nowhere, the views started rocketing and so did the support. Somehow the creator increased project visibility big time and the more visible it became, the more visible it remained.

It's quite popular in Australia - though I do agree that it is more of an adult focused license. Simpsons was different because, although a much of the humor is adult, it still has a lot of child followers. Big Bang Theory LEGO would be like Modern Family LEGO - which I just can't see as something that would make a good toy. If you think of all ideas projects that have been passed, excluding perhaps The Research Institute/Female Minifig Pack, they all still make good toys. Ghostbusters and Back to the Future had playable vehicles, the Exosuit had definite play elements, the NASA vehicles were playable and the Minecraft sets are build able and playable whilst relating to a children's orientated video game. I would be very surprised if Big Bang gets through. Also, I think Dr Who has more chance of getting through over the bird project, because the figs and Tardis are playable, whereas the birds are more build able and would be like one of the animal creator sets - though I would still prefer the birds to make it as a kind of proof that the Ideas platform will release projects that aren't really toys.

I hope the bird project gets through more than Dr Who. I like Dr Who, though agree that the bird project promises more true diversity for the future of Ideas.

What is more important, LEGOs credibility with it's fans or it's business partners?

HI all, I started a new LEGO ideas project - a reboot of my favorite toy. Support here: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/72716 Current flickr album is here https://www.flickr.c...57645467031607/ I am open to any suggestions for updating this project to be the best Galaxy Explorer reboot possible, bearing in mind that I wish to keep the build simple and the part count as low as possible. I enjoyed the heck out of this set when I was 8 - I would like a reboot to include that age group upwards. Cheers.

I'm with Faefrost on this entirely - wrapping our offspring up in too much cotton wool can have adverse effects, like generating adults that think the world owes them something. There seems to be an expert on everything with children now - how they should eat, play, dress, what they should watch - a very 'cushioned' and overprotective environment. Human's learn through pain, we only know how to get up again after we fall down. Parents/adults should reasonably protect children, though not to the degree that it is restrictive - children are their own people and should be able to define their own personal boundaries. They should be allowed to fall down every now and then. I was a culprit of probably more bad than good LEGO parenting - I didn't want my kids to lose too many parts or mess the sets up too much. Mine are older than LEGO now - but you live and learn. All I would suggest to anyone who has young kids just getting into LEGO - play with them, they need that, they need to be inspired by how mum or dad can assemble the bricks but let them build entirely how they want. As noted, I feel the LEGO movie sums up how parents and children should play with LEGO perfectly. My only concern is that it is no longer packaged as a product entirely in line with the film's philosophy.

7965 - because it was the set that really made me want to MOC, rather than collect.

I think the original suggestion was that child experts inhibit creative play, GregoryBrick, not that they made play less safe. It is possible that the safer something is, the more controlled and potentially restrictive to creativity it is.

And who is prepared to stand in an annoying queue for hours on end without any guarantee of getting a figure. These SDCC exclusives figures are really not worth it, when you think about it - but the conversations surrounding them are interesting. The things that human's desire :D It reminds me of a Little Finger quote 'It doesn't matter what you want, when you get it you always want something else.' I'm sure the solution is to want nothing that you can't give yourself.

So it seems more the case that LEGO has just adapted to social change, whilst still trying to hold onto it's creative elements, do you think Legogal? I wish there were more articles that addressed the possibility that the way society is evolving may not be in our children's best interests, rather than criticizing a toy. I guess if the 'child experts' were entirely honest about the situation, they would negate the need for their own profession.

What if Comic Con isn't held in your country? The solution doesn't work.

Yes, you have probably phrased it more correctly Faefrost - 'investable' LEGO may be due for a crash, I do think it is tied into the vast number of sets released that seem tailored to collection though. Re Star Wars and Super Heroes - I would agree that Super Heroes has become a very profitable line for LEGO and, although their stockholders think of it as evergreen, would be hesitant to call it such - because of external factors, not the LEGO line itself. The Star Wars franchise has already stood the test of time, like LEGO - they are both embedded positively with various generations. The modern Super Hero resurgence could be a fad, in comparison. Yes, Super Heroes in comics are well and truly embedded - but I'm talking about the run of Super hero films that have flooded the cinema in the past decade. Nolan Batman, no breaks between Spiderman reboots etc - the modern Super Hero movie has to reach saturation point soon, there has just been too much, too quickly and, when it dies down, toy lines will die down with it.

Good points Faefrost, kid's are too wrapped up in cotton wool these days to truly be able to explore what they are.

Well, they had to start somewhere

Other than the cockpit, I think 4504 is closer to the right shape than the UCS one, Lind.

I'm pretty sure when you check out there is an option to remove the parts from your wanted list.

Great review Future74, I think the 4504 is quite nice - it has the most accurate mandible angles of all LEGO Falcons, IMO. I never owned the 4504, only the 7965. I did buy a bunch of 4504 parts to MOC the 7965 into something closer to the film Falcon than either of them. Here is a pic comparing 4504, 7965 and an old version of my MOC. https://www.flickr.c...57646134810358/ I don't know which TLG Falcon is my favorite - they all have good and bad features. If you don't have any, I'd say get a cheap 4509 and 7965 (incomplete/sans minifgs) from Bricklink and build your own ultimate Falcon with the parts My favorite part from the 4504 is definitely the printed chessboard.

I don't have a preference - there are up and down sides to both. But it look's like the picture 'ayes' have it.

You may regret whatever you sell off down the track - so i think you have to make the decision yourself. This said, OT is classic Star Wars goodness, where Clone Wars and the Prequel trilogy are not.

Nice review. At $75 US I think the set is worth it, at $130 AU I think it is very overpriced for 665 pieces.

I try not to have a backlog at all now. I try to run on minimal spare parts, also. More and more I am leaning to LDD because it is neater and only want to gather parts once I have a design I'm sure I want to display.