Lyichir

A map? I'm not sure what statement you're referring to. There have been plenty of maps both printed (in the case of ones like the classic Pirates one as well as the overused Indiana Jones one) and stickered (the last of which to come to mind is the large map from the Lion base in the Chima theme). I haven't had problems with stickers wearing out in some time, and I collect a lot of themes with stickers—Exo-Force, Agents, Power Miners, Atlantis, Space Police, etc. Then again, if environmental factors play a role in stickers wearing out, then it could be different for other people. The only stickers of mine that have worn out are ones that were removed and replaced (like, unfortunately, the ones off my UCS Naboo Starfighter), or ones that have come off due to poor placement (the Exo Force and Spongebob themes in particular had some poorly-thought-out stickers around 2x2 round bricks, which seems to be a bit too much of a curve for the stickers to maintain effectively). All my other stickered parts were doing fine last I checked.

1) Lego is an expensive hobby for devoted fans like us, who buy hundreds of dollars worth of sets each year. But what about kids who just get one set every few months? What about kids whose Lego purchases only come in the form of $20 or lower sets? Technology should not be a barrier to entry. 2) 1.4 billion smartphones in the world, but how many of those go to kids, or families with kids? And that's still a fraction of the world population. A poll from June of this year pegged smartphone ownership in America alone at about 60%. Which is a lot, but eliminating 40% of your potential audience is a risky proposition. 3) Digital manuals are indeed on the rise. But that's in part because the number of people with access to the internet far outweighs the number who actually have the internet in their homes. You can access a digital manual for an automobile or the like at a local library if all else fails, but I doubt people would be as willing to relocate just to build a Lego set. Heck, many people still rely on desktop computers for the internet. Should the kids have to relocate to the computer room and kick Mom and Dad off the computer just to build a set? 4) Paper usage has increased even beyond that. Many institutions do more business than ever and still have to keep paper records as backup, especially things like corporations and banks. However, I concede that that fact has little to do with Lego instructions. 5) Tripling a number has little to do with the overall increase. That could easily be a few people for whom the technology has simply allowed them to read more. And eBook lending, purchases, and what have you is obviously increasing exponentially since it is a dawning medium. Ten years ago, the rate of eBook borrowing was probably zero, so by that standard it has increased by an infinite percentage since then. Anyway, your local library's rate of eBook lending has little to do with the argument of physical versus digital instructions. 6) There's a significant difference between being able to go further with a set online, and having to go online just to build the basic model. 7) Technology evolution is amazing, but it's starting to reach limits. The low price of electronics in the first world is already artificially inflated by abominable working conditions and pay for the people who have to put our electronic devices together. And no matter how cheap smartphones get, you're still talking about the transition between a product that is 100% self-contained, and a product that is reliant on technology that is not included. 8) I doubt the amount of money that could be saved by not including instructions is comparable to the amount of sales that would be lost by making that transition. I don't see that changing in the next ten years. As for your main point: does it matter if you're building onscreen or on paper? For me, I think it does. Don't get me wrong: I have an iPhone. I have a laptop. I have been building based on internet-based instructions since I was a kid. But at the same time, I've spent the past few Christmases in North Carolina with my aging Nana. She doesn't have internet. But I've done an awful lot of Lego building there... and at college... and even in the car traveling from place to place, where I need all my hands to keep from dropping parts, and have to keep the instructions spread open in my lap to build. The second Lego set I remember getting was 6898 Ice-Sat V, and part of why I remember it so clearly is that I built it at my mom's college reunion, during a blackout. The amount that would be gained on Lego's part by going all-digital would offer at best a few dollars off the price for consumers coupled with far, far less convenience.

I'm not sure whether I'd prefer that to be printed or stickered, honestly, if only because that windscreen hasn't been used in any other set in that color. If it had been printed then you'd have to resort to chemical means of removal if you wanted an unprinted one, whereas with a sticker you can opt to just leave it off. But just by looking at it I can tell that that sticker's probably a bear to apply. Again, though, I think they're relying on the assumption that if you're an adult who has paid that kind of money for the set, you'll take the utmost care to make sure the sticker is applied perfectly.

One problem with the idea of today's military vehicles becoming acceptable at some point in the future is that surplus weaponry and vehicles from this century's conflicts have a nasty habit of reappearing in the hands of militants and extremists who can't afford the kind of R&D that superpowers like the U.S., Russia, and China have. This slows the rate at which even World War II-era weaponry passes out of the public consciousness. On top of that, video footage of the atrocity of conflicts as far back as Vietnam is sure to be maintained far into the future, which has a good chance of keeping future generations from universally romanticizing modern warfare the way many did with medieval warfare or the age of piracy. And finally, conflicts as far back as America's Revolutionary War also involve nations that exist to the modern day (as did the age of piracy, but it had the benefit of being more or less stateless due to all nations alternatingly opposing piracy and employing pirates as privateers). Toys of conflicts that a given person's country explicitly lost are likely to sell more poorly in said country, which is a risky proposition for a global company such as Lego.

From the photographic shots, they look to be printed. It would make sense for them to be, since the Classic Space logo is versatile and time-tested, and the same part is used at least three times in this set with the same decoration.

A big problem with your suggestion is that it is in Lego's best interest if they DON'T even the playing field with other retailers. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon get their sets from Lego, too, and the last thing Lego wants to do is look like they're underselling some of their biggest clients. They can get away with offering deeper discounts during times like Black Friday primarily because the retailers will be offering even steeper discounts, and the VIP program and gifts-with-purchase are a way to offer benefits year-round to people who shop directly from Lego without actually cutting the prices on current products. Offering you a choice of gift-with-purchase sets, as you suggest, would eliminate the other benefit of these sets, that being that they expose buyers to themes they may not have considered otherwise, and offering the equivalent of 20% off ANY order over $100 year round would ridiculously wound Lego's profits, especially since it skims most of the profit off purchases from Lego's best customers, and would lead others to consolidate their purchases in the same way. On the other hand, Lego does not have any problem with sellers like Amazon underselling them, except in the case of products like the modular buildings, which ARE supposed to be exclusive to Lego.com and Lego brand retail stores and are only sold through Amazon by third-party resellers (the same kind Lego is trying to crack down on).

These days, there are five primary uses for printed parts: Parts with patterns intended for use in multiple sets (examples include old mainstays like dollar bills and newer parts like the Chima "Jet engine" inverted tiles). Curved parts that would be next to impossible to effectively sticker (examples include any sort of dome shaped windscreen). Parts meant to represent characters (examples include the eyes of next year's Chima Legend Beasts, the windscreen eyes of the Cars sets, and of course, traditional minifigures). Parts intended for AFOL appeal (examples include the printed parts in the modular buildings). And parts intended for sets for early builders (examples include, again, the Cars sets, as well as next year's Juniors sets from the looks of it). Anything else is more likely than not going to use stickers. Unlike a surprising majority of AFOLs, I have no problem with stickers. They allow Lego to economically produce more specialized patterns on parts (such as the graffiti on the Space Police III sets that were filled with in-jokes and references, or the individual identification numbers on the Power Miners vehicles, or computer screens in all sorts of themes that show contextually appropriate imagery instead of the classic "green screen of death"). They offer anyone the option of having a piece with or without a pattern, which is wonderful in the case of parts that are new to your collection or otherwise rarer than others. And the era of STAMPS (Stickers across multiple pieces, which used to be one of the primary uses for stickers in sets), is long behind us, with only the Maersk Train using them in recent memory. When I was a kid, I always let my dad apply stickers, since his hands were steadier than mine from years of experience and he could line them up perfectly. So I'm still a little surprised that the majority of sticker complaints I've seen come from adult fans.

Not a chance. The internet isn't nearly as universally available as it may seem from a privileged perspective, let alone smartphones, tablets, and other devices. As it stands currently, if you were on a desert island with nothing but a Lego set, you could at least rest easy knowing that, excepting the miniscule potential for a lost or broken piece, you'd have everything necessary to enjoy the set you have right there in the box. By eliminating paper instructions, you would be writing off anyone who didn't have access to a computer or smartphone or tablet, or who had those but didn't have access to the internet. Believe it or not, that's still a huge number of people; perhaps even more than half of Lego's audience. People have been fortelling the dawn of a paperless society since personal computers first began to take off, but the truth is we use more paper now than ever. It's true that some electronics have begun shipping without manuals (especially those which can include the manuals or other information digitally by default, like software or smart devices), but for a non-digital product meant to be easily accessible to kids, like Lego, a shift to digital-only manuals would be corporate suicide.

Oh my god... Astro Kitty has a Classic Space cutie mark! Uni-Kitty is rapidly becoming my favorite character. My heart just about exploded when I checked out these two coloring pages on the Lego Movie site. And now we see that she looks completely different in every appearance! I love it!

I am ridiculously pleased with the sheer quantity of Uni-Kitty variations we'll be getting. She's got such a clever design.

I don't think there's been significant change in Lego's business strategy as of late. When it has, it's been largely to benefit end consumers over resellers and speculators. Discounts exist largely to clear out overstocked or old merchandise. I think the main reason you're no longer seeing as many is simply that Lego is hitting its sales goals more consistently. Regarding the no discount policy on Hard-to-find or exclusive items, that seems to have been implemented largely to cut down on resellers taking advantage of coupons by buying high-demand sets with them and then turning around and selling them at an inflated price once Lego no longer offers them. They HAVE been taking a hard stance against these sorts of speculators in recent years, so that is a concrete way in which their business strategy has changed. Regarding the one-day triple VIP points, that was a better deal than we had gotten any other year. I completely missed out on the triple points because I had expected the double points in October to be the best deal of the year, and got all my purchases for the foreseeable future out of the way at that time. Offering a deal that we've never had before for a single day isn't miserly; it's a pleasant surprise on top of the typical sales. And a surprise sale like that has the bonus effect of catching resellers and other bulk purchasers by surprise and making sure they can't plan ahead to buy massive amounts of rare sets.

The other day at Barnes and Noble, I noticed that the Lego Movie novelization is now available in the wild. I'm going to avoid it (a bit too spoilery for my taste), but anyone who isn't as spoiler-averse could get that and probably get a pretty good idea of what happens in the movie.

Being a bit overdramatic, are we? Cuusoo is an experiment, and Lego found through repeated trials of that experiment what they were capable of doing through the program and what they weren't. It's really no surprise that they'd apply what they learned to the program so that fewer projects would pass review only to be inevitably rejected. Sure, Cuusoo means "to wish something into existence". That doesn't mean, and has never meant, that every proposal has an equal chance of success. Some projects are simply incapable of being produced through Cuusoo, and all the staff have done is make it a little bit more clear what kinds of projects those are.

It's only really based on the Ninjacopter conceptually (in that it's a helicopter vehicle for Zane). I needed a toy vehicle for him that wasn't too much like any of the others, and seeing that that part existed in warm gold inspired me to make it a helicopter. I was much more concerned about the vehicles being visible for what they were than for making them match any existing vehicles closely.

Actually, the sleigh, fireplace, and jet are the only models that require parts in new colors, and the jet only needs them by mistake (I forgot to verify whether the new 1x2 curved slope existed in blue). I tried my best to stick to parts that existed unless a new part would give me options I wouldn't have otherwise.

The Cuusoo idea won't work. Do you know what'll happen when one person submits something that is blatantly against the rules (as set rereleases are) to Cuusoo? It doesn't even go public, and all you've accomplished is showing them that one person wants the set back, and didn't read the rules properly. But if the left door is significantly cheaper than the right door the Café Corner actually uses, why not just use the left one instead? It won't be totally accurate, but it'll fit just fine.

I thought I'd share a project I'd been working on for a while! This is a Ninjago-themed Advent Calendar I designed to put on Lego Cuusoo. I put a lot of work into designing a variety of small and interesting models based on the theme. I did my best to make it with the same sort of constraints as the other Lego Advent Calendars. It has a similar part count, no new molds, and a limited number of recolored parts and new prints. Each model is simple and small in scale, and I took efforts to make sure that there was plenty of play value from the first model onward. I'll link to my pictures on Flickr, since I've already given them detailed descriptions there. Also, if you would like to see this as a set, I encourage you to support it on Cuusoo! Full Photoset on Flickr All Contents (pictured) Day 1 - Kai Day 2 - Anvil Day 3 - Toy Mech Day 4 - Weapon Rack Day 5 - Zane Day 6 - Snowball Catapult Day 7 - Toy Helicopter Day 8 - Snowman Day 9 - Cole Day 10 - Punching Bag Day 11 - Toy Driller Day 12 - Lamppost Day 13 - Jay Day 14 - Video Game Day 15 - Toy Jet Day 16 - Fireplace Day 17 - Lloyd Day 18 - Presents Day 19 - Toy Trike Day 20 - Christmas Tree Day 21 - Nya Day 22 - Tea and Cookies Day 23 - Sleigh Day 24 - Sensei Claus

The latter. Not only does the LDD team have a limited budget (since it's a division of Lego that does not produce its own profits), but the team itself is limited in scale and the amount they can do. I think LDD is doing perfectly fine, considering that. They're working in close collaboration with us AFOLs via the Ambassador program, and while updates are spread out I would say the improvements in all the areas you mentioned are far more than "marginal". I use LDD as my primary CAD software, partly due to the intuitive controls and interface, and partly because its part selection tends to favor newer parts more than other design programs (especially in constraction categories). And I've seen significant improvements in the areas you mentioned over the course of the past few updates. It'll probably never have every part from over the course of Lego's history, but it's got a wide selection that's growing all the time. And it seems that the most significant glitches and errors are usually fixed in the next update after they're brought to the team's attention. So I really can't complain.

Keep in mind there is a difference between the vague instruction to bring back a theme (which on top of the fact that it's a theme proposal, is not an original idea) and a more focused set proposal. A single forestmen set would be a perfectly valid proposal (and if it came down to it, it could be promoted as an adjunct to whatever Castle theme is currently running). The same would apply to a Neo Classic Space set. As long as it's a single set and doesn't involve new or discontinued parts (like Monorail track, for instance), it wouldn't break the rules.

Part of me is hoping Lego has a Ninjago Advent Calendar next year, and part of me is hoping they DON'T, since I've been working on one for Cuusoo. But in regards to the original poster's question... yeah, an all-minifig calendar isn't going to happen. Primarily because of the cost, but also because it eliminates the building, which is what Lego is really all about.

Technically, all of the colors in the standard mode have an element ID. That means that they were at least considered for production by Lego, although there are a number of parts which have element IDs yet were never actually released in sets. For instance, many basic bricks exist in rare colors solely for the use by Lego Master Model Builders in things like the Miniland in Legoland parks.

I have to correct you about the softer plastic. That is not used so that less expensive molds can be produced, for the most part. It's primarily used specifically for the properties of that plastic. Part of the reason it's often used on specialized head molds is that it is not as brittle and thus can be used to make long, thin or sharp protruding segments that would otherwise be too fragile (like Kit Fisto's tentacles, Yoda's ears, or the spiky Exo-Force hairpieces). If those parts were molded with the standard ABS, these parts could snap off during production (costing the Lego Group money) or worse, when a child is playing with them (potentially creating a safety hazard if the edge that is left is sharp and/or jagged). This is also why you see sharper details on the CMF spear (with the soft tip) than on the classic spear (which itself was remolded with softer plastic for the Hero Factory theme).

I don't think a realistic military theme would be a good idea. Lego has good reasons to avoid portraying real-world conflict, particularly its position as a globally-operating company (meaning it serves many markets where real war is a delicate topic). I would, however, be okay with more "pseudo-military" themes like Dino Attack (militaristic tanks and choppers and such versus giant monsters) or Pharaoh's Quest (historical militaristic vehicles like biplanes and halftracks in a non-war setting).

This is why I dislike Youtube as a Lego community or Lego news source. So many videos (like this one) contain a small snippet of factual information (if even that) and 20–30 minutes of speculation and rumor-mongering.

Exactly. That's one of the things I like about Hero Factory, actually. It makes fewer excuses about its nature. That makes it easier to explain the theme to people ("No, honestly, they're not robots, even though for the most part they have no biological features in the sets!" versus "Yup. Robots."), and makes the "set forms" (which in almost every case is the original depiction of the characters) more obviously canon. It frustrated me to no end the way some Bionicle fans couldn't grasp that Hero Factory heroes, despite being robotic, had just as much free will and personality as Toa. They had been conditioned after years of Bohrok and other drone-like robots to insist that robots must always be soulless entities, when Hero Factory is far from the first or only sci-fi story where that's not the case.