Mylenium

Not really. And it's not that you need to even cook up something convoluted like @SpaceM. At the end of the day it simply comes down how much you want/ need certain parts and how available and accessible they are. Just like MAB I study the inventories and digital building instructions and then simply go by gut feeling. Thinking about this too hard and trying to be "economic" is just driving you insane. You end up obsessing about fractions of a penny and never commit, which at the end of the day could even work against you when you miss the window of opportunity when the prices were most balanced (not necessarily lowest). I have quite a few such situations where I could kick myself in retrospect not having bought a set when it was around and now have to get its pieces the hard way on Bricklink... Mylenium

This could be a million things, but I'd assume they are completely legit. A few things to consider: LEGO have been thinning out walls and supports with new parts revisions they have been dialing down the pigment amount and also messing with the base ABS mixture they continually experiment and use different pigments older bricks may use mineral-based pigments and fillers like chalk that are simply more opaque in-machine pigment mixing causes variations, anyway Mylenium

The UCS Falcon was never LEGO-exclusive. It was only "exclusive" to some retailers. And those will simply offload it to other resellers when stuff clogs up shelf space. Normal practice in the retail space. Similarly, most LEGO stores are independent franchise operations (here in Germany they are GmbH, meaning LLC) and in theory they could sell their stuff for any price. They may just not be able to do this in reality because they sold their soul to LEGO and no doubt the contracts are pretty strict. Still, even they will eventually filter surplus stock to secondary markets if they can't sell it themselves. the rest is probably that grey area in-between where just driving over the border into another country changes the formula. Perfectly possible that you could load your van just on a day trip from Germany to The Netherlands or similar. Sets that are exclusive here could be sold in regular toy stores over there. And of course reputable sellers have all sorts of connections to other sellers and exchange stock all the time. Mylenium

Depends. The real point probably is that it's cheaper than having to deal with tons of returned products every time a 1 x 1 plate is missing. You know, they'd have to reimburse the vendors and all that. Anyway, here in Germany you have the right to "cure the contract", in turn meaning you are entitled to have your defunct stuff repaired or replaced. It's also a common rule under EU law and while consumer protections in the US may not be as stringent, I'm sure there is some rules that at least cover scenarios where a product is completely unusable, which based on the OPs story would be the case with a damaged actuator. Mylenium

Get in touch with whatever customer rights organisation in your country/ area and ask them what can be done. You have a faulty product and are entitled to getting the situation rectified. Mylenium

They've gotten really pissy towards customers at B&P. They will cancel even the simplest order for defective or missing and you have contact them again and appeal your case. Mylenium

It might be worth adding some questions for internal electrification (e.g. USB ports for turntables and lighting kits) and labeling/ displaying plaques. Personally, if I were ever to purchase a custom shelf, I'd also look for customizeability by ways of having ramps to display models at an angle or being able to have custom inserts that can fit into standard pattern holes like on professional exhibition showcases in museums... Mylenium

Probably just a standard matte acrylic paint. Printing with UV-curing paints wasn't really a thing in those days and enamels don't respond to isopropyl. Any modelling acrylic like the one @MAB suggested will do. Mylenium

That's not illegal and your post illustrates the core problem of the discussion: People perceive things as "illegal" that aren't and on the other hand will happily accept techniques that actually are damaging to the material and model as being non-illegal. Yes, of course it's nuanced and the conditions under which certain connections and techniques are used can influence this as well. A connection can be perfectly legal one moment, but turns illegal when you add a wrong element next to it. There's potential for infinite discussion here. Mylenium

They are in the sense that they put stress on the plastic and affect stability of the models. Whether you care about that in any way is of course entirely up to you. I do to a certain extent, but that's just my engineering mindset shaped by my work bleeding into my hobby, I guess. Mylenium They rarely do, though, and when they do, they're quick to declare it an unfortunate accident. Mylenium

Hard to center those little buggers if you print a few thousand of them per hour. I'm sure the holding notch is very flat and there's a lot of unwanted slipping going on. Mylenium

SRSLY? *lol* Using stickers is a decision not a "problem". You still incur extra cost. Technically of course it's not at all an issue to manage even the biggest inventory in the day and age of computers, but you still have to transport the actual physical product. See above. Managing it is one thing, actually moving stuff another. Mylenium Depends on the subject, I suppose. I never considered it relevant for Technic sets for instance when I was still into that. Price or how "precious" a set is is not necessary a criteria. To me it's usually about whether or not a print would add to the model. Sticking with the Technic example I for instance always cooling gills or fuel hatches to be printed, but at the same time I couldn't really be bothered with the branding. At the end of the day a panel plastered with advertisements is also unattractive and kinda useless for other stuff. Perhaps in the end that would be a line of thinking to pursue: Rather than wanting to have everything printed, consideration should be given how it improves the base level rudimentary appearance of a model. Mylenium

They won't. With soon to be ten production facilities across the globe they just won't transport a bunch 1 x 4 x 3 bricks from Vietnam to Billund to print them or whatever people imagine would happen here. To me that's the biggest point people are always oblivious about - LEGO's internal production flow and logistics. And you can spin this however you want it. If they don't want to transport plastic pieces, they have to share molds and transport them around or create duplicates in every factory or even more critically they'll have to build a printing department in every one of them. It really is one of those things where no matter what they do they can't get it right. They've simply grown beyond a point where you can sensibly handle everything in a single place like pretty much all their many times smaller competitors. I dislike stickers as much as the next guy and never use them, but once I put on my production manager/ engineer hat, I totally get why things are as they are. Yes, certainly. Even with 4+ sets or other sets aimed at the youngest kids there is no stringent logic as to what gets printed and what is a sticker (aside from the technical stuff). Mylenium

They are not. You need to insert a bracket or a lamp brick for a half plate thick offset. Mylenium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_cosines The rest is a quantization problem, which is the hard part. It's one of those things Studio should have a panel for perhaps... Mylenium

Nobody can have a link because LEGO never said any such thing. Even the mere assertion that they won't do big figs anymore sounds ludicrous. Why would they not? This may have come up as a point in the recent battle over the minifigure trademark/ design kerfuffle (diluting the design, infringing and usurping other companies' designs etc.), but otherwise there's no rational reason for them to never do a big fig again if they see it as the viable solution for representing a specific character. It was never consciously destroyed. They simply "lost" it, meaning they didn't store it properly and then it was damaged beyond recovery. Why they never created a new one is of course another question entirely. Mylenium

Probably not. Dark Red will just turn into pink because it doesn't have the grey-ish undertone Sand Red has. And I can't imagine other approaches like "greying" Bright Pink plates or applying a red tint to Dark Tan, either. Sand Red has some very specific characteristics that are hard to capture. Ultimately that's why so many people would love to see this color come back. Mylenium

Food for thought: Said plate would get pressure from both sides without being able to "evade it" by bending ever so slightly, so ultimately the forces need to be absorbed by the intra-structural elements such as the (hollow) studs themselves or the anti-stud rings. It's perhaps not a problem on some models, but since such stuff is cumulative and tends to be quite damaging, the long term repercussions could be notable. It's the same thing like when you build your model all too solid and then people wonder why after a few years their precious MOC crumble. Not meaning to turn this into an endless academic discussion, but from a engineering standpoint these considerations matter. In fact even your brackets example could be mentioned here because it's the same problem. Don't get me wrong, personally I wouldn't care and the lack of straightforward direction inverters drives me up the wall just as much as anyone else, but I do understand LEGO's reasoning from this side of things. Mylenium

Generally I agree with that, but the circumstances for my pistol example are very specific. Apparently the same solution would not work if there weren't the large hollowed out spaces. If you only have a 1 x 2 or 1 x 1 area it's over, because you need a 2 x 2 area at least to accommodate the handle. LEGO is extremely pick-ish about structural issues, that's why. Turning things upside down changes the whole equation in terms of pressure on models when they stand, shear, torque and bend forces and so on. The irony of course is that none of that is a problem in practice. Those models won't last for forever, either way, and most customers simply don't care. That and of course it would be even less of a problem if LEGO's bricks hadn't such bad quality, which lately is really becoming an issue. Mylenium

Yes, exactly. It's more of a design philosophy, though at times it gets ridiculous as clearly the designers often feel the lack of e.g. proper direction inverters is a hinderance to their work as well (see the rather creative use of the pistol pieces in the Singapore Architecture set): https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/island-architecture-lego-architecture-singapore-21057/ It's 2022, not 1963. There's isn't some poor tool maker polishing molds for days on end inflating the cost. You can produce a production-ready mold using latest CNC manufacturing methods within 72 hours if you have the design ready. And just see the facts for what they are: There's new heads in every Avatar set. There's like 20 new large pieces in every new Ninjago wave. They introduced a bunch of new molds in City and Minifigures this year. They have introduced a ton of new pin designs. Need I go on? In relation to the money LEGO makes off these things, the cost for molds is negligible. And further proof to that is in every of the alternate vendors introducing new molds when they need just as well. If those many times smaller companies can do it without going bankrupt, so can LEGO. Molds being super expensive is really just a myth that won't die and it's in LEGO's best interest to keep this myth alive as well. The much bigger issue, and funny enough this is something you never hear because people don't consider it, is how any expansion in the parts portfolio needs to make sense as it ripples through the whole chain of designing models with them in mind, manufacturing the pieces and logistics. Mylenium

For me the biggest advantage is that the store sometimes has enough supply of sets that are sold out in the online shop. They also occasionally sell of leftover GWPs. Otherwise there aren't too many benefits, at least here at he Leipzig store. The PAB wall is not refreshed often enough and not the biggest one to begin with and I don't have much interest in minifigs. Unless you arrive there on the first day, most really desirable accessories have been gobbled up from the BAM towers, anyway. Mylenium

Yeah, without having a wanted list you can't find that out easily since there's no way to just add items to the basket and compare. Mylenium

Any such colors will have some fluorescent properties, but it's merely a side effect of the pigments used, not necessarily intentional. In this case the effect is perhaps too weak to have any real world use and generally blasting plastics with any form of UV light is not the best of ideas in the long run. The pieces I have only show a gentle shimmer under UV, so it may not be worth it for whatever you may have in mind. Mylenium

There are not that many. Apparently there's the 1 x 1 x 1 bricks with four studs on the sides, the 1 x 2 x 1 brick with studs on both sides and then something like this https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4081b#T=C . Otherwise you're pretty much out of luck. LEGO doesn't do direction inverters, though more recently there are more and more sets where the lack of these elements that are common for their competitors becomes painfully apparent and the creative workarounds (see this for instance: https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/island-architecture-lego-architecture-singapore-21057/ ) don't really disguise this fact. Mylenium

Most definitely not. It's an extra burden. You need to plan for it and integrate it into your production schedule and then selling 20000 or so packages is not much compared to LEGO's usual production numbers. Any extra revenue they could generate in theory is likely eaten up by the higher cost. It's still a niche product and outside the AFOL bubble or even more specifically an informed sub-set of that demographic who regularly follow the latest news people don't took any notice most likely. Mylenium