anothergol

Anyone knows if Lego would be open to produce special colors in not-so-big batches, in this era of crowdfunding/crowd-everything? I mean, I can imagine a new "vote for a part" section at BrickLink, after enough votes, it gets produced & sold to BL sellers.

But are they REALLY D2C? I mean, to me the Brick Bank isn't "out" yet. If all other modulars have been available outside the Lego shop, I expect the same from Brick Bank - which I love and I plan to buy, but there is NO way I'm gonna pay 170eur for a set that my neighbor in Germany can get for 150eur. If Lego really expects that, they're silly. And yeah I understand "the market is smaller, blah blah", but Lego: just close the Belgian Lego shop & ship your stuff from Germany (which wouldn't even cost 6eur) then. In that spirit, I'm really thankful to Amazon & TRU that they don't have online presence in Belgium. The Batman & Ghostbusters sets: I like them, but for the budget they require they aren't amazing enough IMHO. The Batman one should have been cut in half, half of it is boring. Assault on Hoth: let's not beat a dead horse. The Village: probably reserved to die-hard MineCraft players because to me all those sets look the same.

Personally, I'm not so much interested in licensed parts, but if anyone happens to see any of this year's new parts popping up, plz share. Here are 6, available for quite some time, but stil massively expensive on BL for some of them: -24217 (stud with hole) in LBG, 10c -43898 (3x3 radar) in LBG, 30c -61409 (1x2 slope) in LBG, 10c -93550 (rapier), 70c (same as on BL actually) -43719 (4x4 double-wedge) in LBG, 60c (cheaper on BL) -18649 (1x2 with 2 handlebars), in black & LBG, 17c and that's really not much, B&P is still deceptively empty of all the recent cool parts. Here I'm monitoring these from time to time: 23969 bordered panel in LBG (one other color is already there), 24246 "teeth" (easy to get a lot of them through mixels, though), 24299 2x2 wedges (one of the most important new parts IMHO, but strangely not very expensive on BL), 24144 (batman's big grapling hook gun, quite handy), 18675 (6x6 inv radar with handle), 22890 (new towball part! Also, an existing important towball part now exists in DBG for some reason), 22484 (another neat new towball part, but only in dumb colors from nexo knights), 24217 (SW jetpack), 48457 (a neat old part that I hope will appear again), 11476 1x2 black with clip, 19118 key in LBG, 87994 3M shaft *in DBG*, 85984pb100 (new printed slope tile, don't know the proper ID yet), 22961 (new axle piece), 22385 (2x3 spiky tile), 22885 (new brick with studs on a side), 23405 (corrugated wall).

Nice, it'd really have made the set more exciting (for not that many extra parts apparently) to have been launched with this plate

like, recently, all those ugly Chima sets that were discounted a lot. And yeah, I wouldn't buy them because the parts suck/are in ugly colors, but that's exactly what I'm saying, if it's random Lego by the weight, unless we can see all that's inside, it doesn't have more value than those bargained sets (which it might as well originate from).

The last time I bought on a BL "sale", the seller did something like this: Per-lot, you had to pick either the whole lot, or at least 100 items of the same lot, and you got 50% I don't know how it worked for him, but I bought a lot of parts that I didn't need at that moment. But selling 18k random parts, it'd really have to be cheap, and consider that there are new Lego sets that can be bought for down to 4cents/piece.

Looks like AT-AT's (well, the sides) look different in that upcoming Rogue One movie. And for that movie Lego has an AT-ST in the making.

they're nice And IMHO they haven't aged at all, they look like something that could be done today. I wouldn't say the same about many of Lego's past stuff.

I have opened a Legoland space set from '83, which I believe was the very first Lego set I got when I was a kid. I didn't regret it, it brought back memories. Now, it was a small set, and I got it for cheap enough because the box had a defect - basically it was meant to be opened anyway. (& here it is, all shiny next to the one I had 33 years ago)

Well, my own started because I wanted to replicate the first nice one on Lego Ideas https://ideas.lego.com/projects/84533, but then decided to first try doing it myself. Eventually I only kept his idea of combining the 2 dish pieces at the upper joint of the legs, because that looks cool.

Lego also has its share of cheap parts (bad design, cheap or miscolored plastic [especially for minifig accessories], ugly sprue marks) I've only bought a little Kreo set, and I was surprised that its ball joints were fully rubbered and moved more nicely than Lego's. And that it had parts that Lego only has as compounds. The design of the set, though, was bad.

I happened to have 2 of them (bought in past BL orders), so I didn't have to hunt for them. Yeah it's not common, but still much much less rare than the LBG trapezoïd flags (which have.. never been officially released) that the version 1 was using. You can of course improvise your own thing back there, I picked that part because it looked cool, but it doesn't look like the flat boring rectangles on the back of the AT-ST. The other rare-enough part there are the printed vents (NOT the printed ones in the LDD), but those are more important because they have the correct print, they were made for Lego's own AT-STs, and they exist in old & new grey, but are starting to get expensive on BL.

Even if you were to reach the quality of a Lego part, it would be hard to beat the 10 cents/piece by printing it yourself, not even counting the printing time. I think 3D printing is great for Lego itself, and they're probably already using that for prototypes.

To me the question isn't why are "bricks" still popular, but more why is Lego still the most popular. When I was a kid there was no other compatible brand, now there are many. As an adult I will only use Lego because it's kinda the rules of the game, but as a kid I know I wouldn't have cared where the part came from, and -because I assume there are more poor people than rich ones-, I find it weird that cheaper brands don't sell more. Maybe there's the fact that brands matter not for playing but at school, like, you're not cool if it's not real Lego? I don't know, I was a kid 30 years ago. Of course, the licenses must be selling a lot. But why Lego police vs cheap clones that have the same theme? I don't know.

I don't know if it's related to the gold color fading on Classic Space minifigs, but if it is: I thought it was only friction (fingers, other parts). Light would be my second clue, but that'd be weird. In any case I opened a small Classic Space set not so long ago, and the minifig's gold was pristine.

well that has been released, but in stupid yellow only in the Fireman sets

Yeah it was already available some months ago when I checked (at the same high price - more expensive than on BL). I wish there was a website dedicated to monitoring what's new on B&P, we must be many people checking every day.

ah it's a large peg.. much less useful

never saw it, but it'll be nice to have, even if it's redundant with the new 1x1 round one, which will hopefully exist in other colors than transparent

From experience with BL (in the EU): broken or really nasty parts are common, BUT BL sellers are generally very cooperative. In the best case he will send new new parts, in the worst case, refund or give you a coupon (generally of a higher value). If he doesn't do any of that, of course give him bad feedback. But yeah, get used to it, I'd say more than half of my BL orders had problems, whether it was missing/wrong parts, or broken crap (which is why I generally don't buy used, plus used parts are often more expensive than new, even sometimes in the same shop). It could also be region-dependant. I avoid buying from sellers in eastern europe, they're generally the kind of bulk sellers with crazy rules (like, min 5eur per lot, min 200eur) and often have bad feedback. I've had minifig heads with teeth marks right on the face. I don't know who to blame, the kind of kid who removes heads with his mouth, or the seller who lets this pass. it's obvious that ball-jointed parts broke during use (as it seems common), not transport

makes sense (I assume you decided this because a theme required several models & would have costed a lot) To me the problem of having to buy the bricks btw, isn't so much about money but the time it takes to gather them, through the often unreliable BL, making it a high risk of missing the contest's deadline, which is why I never entered any.

Yeah, but that's pretty much what goes on (for many) in order to make a final, concrete model. So this contest is more or less about "the 80% of the work of a normal MOC", and not really related to 3D, unless it's about rendering detail showoff. (it's not a complaint, I've already posted my entry which follows that restriction, anyway)

Hi, While the V1 model had one very rare part (trapzeoid flag in LBG), this one has none. The LXF is missing a 4mm tube, 7L (buy longer, cut it) (meaning: the tube on the roof is only a placeholder), in LBG, also possibly some printed console parts for the interior. You will also notice some parts in green, that's a bracket that wasn't available in the LDD yet (now it is), and should be DBG. Also quite possibly there are parts in the LXF that are rare in their part # but exist as another #. Yeah, quite some work to properly publish this, that's why I haven't done a Rebrickable entry for this one yet (possibly in the future, when 2x2 wedges will be available in LBG and I'll be able to enhance the model). There are also round tiles in DBG at the back of the legs, they don't exist, they should be dark metallic parts printed with a gauge (or whatever part you want). But you can inspect all this on my final photo's.

Entry #2: The Crew Meet The Crew : Willis - if it moves, he can break it Irena - if it stops moving, she can repair it Cortez - when the only way left is to kill it with fire Pierre - an android. Programmed for pacifism. Mostly brings food. Baddies have infiltrated their ship, will they survive? I mostly do mechs, so I have several other MOCs that complete this theme, however they all have been seen, only these 3 are new. I've nearly built 2 of them (using some extra parts not allowed in the LDD, like minifig hands or lever bases), they went well.

"The models have to be physically buildable, so no floating bricks and such." --> say the models are spaceships, does the rendering need a virtual display stand, or is it ok to show them "floating" (just like Lego would do on their boxes)? "Renders are allowed but photoshoping in other parts, backdrop, box-art etc into your images is not allowed." --> does that also exclude the theme's name? That is, presented as a logo?