Sven F

Genius as always. I wish all your posts were just automatically frontpaged so I see them as soon as i visit the forum.

loooool! these are hilarious! but there is a strange occurrence with bootlegs, some of those older copies of action figures from the 70's are now more valuable than the originals, some people collect ripoffs, the worse and more obscure they are, the better. Btw, this series seems super easy to bag feel compared to some of the previous ones, I was out of the shop with everything I need in 5 minutes.

Yep, similar story here. I left lego for good durring the late 90's when city sets went all baby like. 15 years later, my girfriend sees the parisian restaurant in a shop window and asks me about it. I didn't even want to talk about it, as i don't like theorising about stuff i can't afford, but well, couple of weeks later we bought 7 modulars, some ucs's and a bunch of creator stuff and thought how did we end up here like some lego junkies.

I think you'll never get castle back without a license. Problem is all the medieval films and series have far too much inappropriate content for legos policy. Game of thrones is all the rage now, but thanks to american overprotective censorship laws, you'll never see that happening. Unlicensed themes with the exception of city all seem unprofitable in comparison because they target a single geek community, lego fans. Something that was considered sufficient once upon a time.

Part of what makes classic space classic is that it's long gone. 70's and 80's were very space popular ages in general. After the moon landing it took 20 years for the dust of fascination to settle. Star Wars being what essentially brought lego from the grave and keeping it very alive since, makes the possibility of any potential rival theme highly unlikely. The niche is too specific in comparison to the raging sw fanatics.

I am hoping the minifig with animal becomes another set practice in cmf's like the costumes. We got the cobra snake in s13 Black cat in s14 Apparent pig in s15 Simpsons 2 had even 2 animals. S12 teddy wasn't really an animal, but close enough.

Great to see the process. Personally, i think the blue version looked most harmonious with maybe just the windows needing a bit more decoration

With the large distances between stores and inconsistency in S@H's shipping destinations, maybe we should establish a closed community of "PAB forwarders" and have our own private brick exchange program?

It's a tricky issue for Bricklink. I think there should be a category for customized parts which are either modified LEGO pieces or 3rd party pieces made for LEGO, and this would be a separate category from parts/sets/minifigs. This solution could backfire however as it would open up a highly exploitable market option for sellers. Who would decide weather Chinese paper cocktail umbrellas can be sold as custom minifig utensils or not? or clone manufacturer pieces as "custom lego compatible parts" ? It would require a subjective selection which is neither 100% fair nor labor & time efficient for whoever enforces or makes up the rules. I have no personal negative issues with custom add-on parts, but see this as a potential problem as far as Bricklink goes.

What role does the color of the packaging play in a series apart from easily distinguishing it from the previous one? You are highly unlikely to stumble upon series 4 in a shop. My only worry is that vendors don't see the difference between normal series and the simpsons, and might stop selling them or understock them since nobody is buying the simpsons, they are dragging on the shelves on clearance for months now. If I had a say as a retailer, I might consider not bothering with the cmf altogether.

Ecto-1 with wall-e a close second. This voting is too biased though as people will always vote for their personal favourite subject, theme or licence instead of the most well made set.

Looking greater every time. I would just replace all the train stuff for a tram. (not the ugly city one) The tracks could be level with the surface and tiled up. At least until you have a proper train station to go with the euro style of the square.

Ah, so you are the one who increased the price of tan macarones. It's for a great cause at least, This looks fantastic, very realistic, especially for that scale.

Why do you think the colors look awful? white and grey aren't extravagant colors and can commonly be seen on real buildings. I don't think it's fair to put all the load on Jamie as a designer, since the size of the building isn't really part of the design as much as keeping inside the price boundary while satisfying a market majority. I am sure he would like a large impressive building himself if this was made for a lego exhibition. As an actual product where you have endless angles to think about, from playability, clever parts usage, colors, size and of course price, this is as finished and polished as it gets. Most moc's that come even close, either use obsolete parts, illegal builds or enormous brick counts which just isn't plausible as a set, so replacing Jaime as designer would be very hard for keeping with the style. (btw i'm pretty sure Astrid had a lot of help from him) It's called "modular buildings" which means they are both modular in the sense they connect to each other, but also modular in the sense they are expandable. So where is the problem? too small? buy two, too expensive? too bad. Large sets already have a much better price per piece ratio, you aren't paying for any licences, so I think we just have high expectations or better yet unrealistic ones.

I guess these animals sell well between the non-afol and "not particularly fanatic about lego" kind of consumers. It's the kind of thing you buy someone as a present and then either moc around with it if you are a kid or put it on your work desk as an ornament. Looking back though, I don't think i'd be too thrilled about them even as a kid.

The baseplate looks tan / brick yellow Not sure what you mean by price increase, I think this is 10 eur less than last year, maybe this has more to do with US prices for lego going up in general

No, the building style isn't even remotely art-deco, I was just referring to the color of the window frames. Sand green or oxidized copper was commonly used in Art-Deco and Art-Noveau, which is why these are so fantastic for MOC's Though they work pretty good here too.

I think this is a different yellow from the postman bike I don't quite understand what's seasonal about the last set, but it's the only one I like. Lots of nice parts in a tiny set.

I think it's fantastic! (and i was underwhelmed by the DO), Very clever build techniques, great parts and colors! Yes, not as big as they used to be, but it's way more detailed, something I can live with. Play features don't get in the way too much, and the colors are especially great.. I don't understand people who complain about sand green window frames, that's the best thing ever. Ever heard of Art-Deco?

It was a "lego basic" brick, early 90's there was also an arch brick to fit over. I think it's way too bulky for this use. The dress slopes are bad enough. "Basic' was a kind of bridge between duplo and normal lego, it had large simplified pieces and came in large tubs of mixed elements.

I get you, but I never offer help from fear that the parent would tell me off for minding my own business. Besides kids have a different algorithm for value from us. We can't understand why they like something so much over something else.

This is great. It's very hard to do a normal looking car in minifig scale that fits the figs inside, has a roof and such a slick windscreen. All we get from lego are utility vehicles and sports convertibles. I think your design would work very well as a slightly extended version and a color combination of a woody station wagon. You know like the tacky american family cars in the late 80's

Then they should have changed all the figures to fleshies in 04 or whenever they went from the old brick colors to new.

Fleshie doesen't work for me. I can't use those parts. I wish the flesh heads didn't even exist or that they are all like that, this just makes an incompatibility problem.

Great stuff here, I'm looking at it for the 3rd time in 2 days. I especially appreciate new ideas for unusual parts. What's the matt- rubber looking stuff the fancy chairs are made of? I don't want to copy them, I'm just curious. The only thing i'm not too fond of here is breaking up the letters that you use for shop window signage, in fact i'm not a fan of those font tiles in general. The black columns are a peculiar choice of color, but not impossible, marble and some stones can be black I guess, I think it looks good. Also great use of the lion heads, usually in building MOC's they are used too prominently, you made them fit in just right.