Vee

I have read more than once that Lego's secret lies in their design department. Anyone can produce bricks, now that their copyright has expired, but a few can make beautiful and economically viable set as Lego. That is what I read. But I think Lego's secret is not in their design department, but it their human behaviour studies department. They have to have one. They play with us, customers. Every set seems to have a few pieces that are unique or almost unique to them so that those that try to "bricklink" it will have a hard time; they are very strict on the use of colors so that it is very difficult/expensive to collect the pieces that we want in the color that we want (I don't want basic green, red, yellow and blue, I want earth tones, pastel tones, etc); they like to produce "special edition" sets (like this one discussed here, the Ole Kirk's House, etc) that few will have access to so that the rest will keep wanting (or pay the expensive price of the parallel market); they have no rules about how long a set will stay on sale (see Architecture Studio, still new but sold out) and then you think you can wait a little bit more but when you realized the set is gone and you have to pay the infamous prices of the after-market (if you really want it and can afford it and is fool enough). It is like a psychological game where they play with us, against us. They want our money and they know how to get it. I have been developing my own theory about Lego so that I can avoid their traps. Even if I am wrong, it does good to me!

Thanks! Yes, the obvious choice: a pair of earrings . By the way, I tried to copy as much as possible the original boxes, based on the video (had to stop and rewind that video dozens of times...) but a few things, as told, I modified (hopefully for better). One thing was bothering me though since when the project was only in LDD form: the stack of 2 or 3 red 1x2 bricks above the horizontal red stripe. In the small box, it is of no concern, just one layer, but the medium size (2 layers) and specially the big size (3 layers), yesterday, after assembling them, it did prove to be very "delicate", to say the least, because it is connected only to the bottom and any pressure applied to them will disconnect them (except when the lid is on because there is a recess in the lid that avoids this easy disconnection). But today I, in my rookie wisdom, devised a solution: only in the top layer of these two boxes, I will use two Technic 1x1 red bricks with a hole, instead of the regular 1x2, sandwiched between two Technic 1x1 white bricks with a hole, and one 4L axle connecting them all. LDD shows it is possible and should be a good reinforcement (picture). There is no time for me to buy the pieces, all available in PAB, so I will do this only after Christmas. For now, it is good enough.

Well said. I forgot about eventual stickers. Do you know if a complex build will dry well if kept assembled? You know, water gets inside everywhere and I am afraid it may be trapped someplace and, although it will eventually dry, it may take a long time. I don't know if this would be a problem (maybe leaking water on top of your display table that may happen to be on top of something that you don't want water in it at any circumstances...).

I have a few small Legos that have been built years ago and are on display since then. I see that they have gathered dust, not that kind of dust that you can remove easily with Dust-off but a dust that is stuck to the pieces. I'd say that the only good way to clean them would be by washing them with water and soap! Anyway, I have never done that so I am guessing. But then I am about to assemble, in the next months, big Legos, the modular buildings, and my plan is to leave them on display for the time being. So my questions are: is there any trick on how to keep them clean? How do you clean your Legos that can't be cleaned with compressed air? Can I use water and soap in an assembled Lego? Is it wise, is it not? Should I always disassemble them completely to clean the pieces individually and then build them again? That would be Herculean..

The problem with anything black is that ... it is the same color as the shadows it creates, that is why pictures look usually bad, it is difficult to discern things, you can't see easily textures, etc. but it is a great color, I mean, lack of.

I proudly present my first MOC! Well, by MOC I mean "My Own (blatant) COPY" Because I did not create them, I shamelessly copied them from a video found at Lego website. I have uploaded the LDD file to the LDD Gallery. It seems Lego did not mind me uploading something not original. . I made little "enhancements" to the cubes. They will be used to make a little surprise to my wife this Christmas (my daughter helped me!). These cost me a fortune, around US$100 (PAB + others).

No for the 2x2 (#74340), Dunno about the others.

No regrets here, maybe because I became "hooked" to Lego very recently. Until then, we were just parents buying a few Legos a year for our daughters. Now that I am "hooked", I have three sets that I'd like to have and I know that it will never happen so be it. It is just plastic. I regret a few very important things in my life that I can't change - but could in the past if I were wiser - but regret over consumerism is not one of them. By the way, when I was 14, we were moving from an old house to a new house. My dad took the opportunity and destroyed literally all of our toys, and they were a lot. His reason was that it was time for us (we were 3 boys, me the youngest) to grow up.

Yay! Got it! Thank you! Thank you! Now let me see if the set was worth its retail price...

I already had checked. Redirects to Lego site and Lego has removed the link. On a side note, Lego has changed the status of the set from "Sold out" to "Call to check product availability". That should mean something... Have you noticed the tag "GIRLS" for this set? Not for boys.... I feel bad...

OK, let me try not to make a confusion again here. I just noticed that I wrote that I got the parts list from Brickset (and then I said wrongly "Bricklist") but the parts list is from Rebrickable actually and it almost matches the parts list that also exists in this site, toysperiod. This toysperiod's list has the round 1x1 as transparent blue (which exists in LDD) while Rebrickable has it as transparent dark blue. Since Bricklink has for sale the piece in trans-dark blue - so the color exists for the part - and since the set looks better in trans-dark blue, I chose to believe in Rebrickable. Also, Rebrickable lists 121 total pieces while toysperiod lists 122. 121 is the correct number according to the pictured original package, one more reason to trust Rebrickable (also the 121 parts were perfect to build the lighthouse as pictured). Brickset itself has no parts list for the set. (Toysperiod lists one extra yellow 2x3 plate as the only yellow piece in the set. Rebrickable lists the yellow 2x3 plate as a spare part)

I have Fire Brigade 10197, Apple Tree House 5891, Grand Emporium 10211, Pet Shop 10218, Farnsworth House 21009, Jabba's Palace 9516, Haunted House 10228 and Family House 31012. Some are under the Christmas Tree,some are not, and all but JB were gifts that I gave to myself this month. All but JB will be opened, one by one, after Xmas, and assembled, probably by my daughters, with my help, if needed. I don't like Jabba's Palace, I bought it several months ago by mistake. I will wait as many years as necessary to see its value at least match what I paid (retail price) and then get rid of it at ebay. I hope it doesn't take too long specially now that it is sold out at Lego Store and I hope it never comes back.

If I built nice MOC's I would document them via LDD. I like LDD. Even if it cannot do all that you can in real life, it is still a nice, although time-consuming, tool to document MOC's. No pictures, no pen, no paper, just a file.

By the way, is there someone that could send the PDF file to me? I know that Lego removed it from its website, so they surely don't want this file to be distributed because I agree with andibandit, but since Lego did put it available for a certain period of time (until they regretted the decision), I wonder if it was possible for someone to send the file to me. I am new to MOC and although I have read that the book has nothing much new to experts, to me it should be like a bible. Anyone?

What is this "VIP early access" and how does a VIP access it or know about it?

Thank you! Found them. I will use the 30033. It is the part listed by Brickset (and the part I used to build my copy ). I don't know how trustable Bricklist is but since the rest of the list seems faithful, their original source must be good. I built this without instruction, just using the material list from Bricklist and the one picture you can find of this lighthouse finished in the internet. Also, I didn't know I could type the number of the piece in LDD to search for it.

I could not and can not find it in LDD. If you know where it is please let me know how to find it.

RALEIGH - Lego Store Grand Opening Crabtree Valley Mall Raleigh NC LIghthouse - <LXF File> v4.2.8 Brickset - Rebrickable Error: plates round 1x1 transparent dark blue replaced with transparent blue Note: this mini-lighthouse was inspired by the Hatteras Lighthouse (NC).

But if you took pictures, couldn't you build them again rather quickly?

If the job opening were here in Maryland, I certainly would be interested.

So, does it mean that when the Lego store has the "sold out" tag in a product, it may return? Because they also have the "out of stock" tag that always carries some date for when it is expected to be available again, even if the date is generic.

How is it possible that a product that has the tag "NEW" at Lego Store is already sold out? http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Studio-21050?fromListing=listing Does this usually happen, Lego being unable to do the right math of how many units they need to manufacture to avoid this situation? Sometimes I think Lego is a sadistic company. They produce some sets in few quantities on purpose just to see their price rise in the parallel market and make some after-market sellers happy and the general population upset.

I miss this feature the most. Sometimes I just want to stop its processing and see whatever solution it may have found, if any, but it is impossible. Also, if there was a way to save the prices so that when you start again the application it does not have to download everything again from Bricklink,that would be useful. I know that prices and stock change in real time but the chances are small for a certain batch and even if some of them change (and we would only know when we tried to actually buy them), we then would ask the application run again and "refresh" the prices. Or we could refresh when we finally find a good combination. That would be up to the user to decide.

This is a joke, right? It can`t be true, just can't!

Being attached as I am to the things I create, I would probably never destroy a MOC, if I liked it. If someone builds them for profit, then it is just business and destroying is part of it. But that is me and I don't have creativity, so maybe that is why I think this way. Maybe people with high level of creativity just can't stop making new things and the price of keeping what they have done is too high.