Alexandrina

Was Majisto ever confirmed in the first place? I thought it was just rumour that swelled into "everyone knows Majisto GWP is coming this summer". Lego mightn't have cancelled it because it might never have been planned in the first place

No, it's not a bad faith statement. The only apparent reason @LegendaryArticuno accused @MAB of arguing in bad faith was because their views on the topic differ. As you said yourself, you and MAB were having a genuine discussion about the usefulness of PPP as a metric. (For my two cents, I absolutely use it as the first thing I look at before making a judgement call on all purchases, except for certain discontinued sets - not the only thing I consider, but a big part of it.)

I'd never heard of that set but wow, it's a huge exception to what imo is normally relatively fair pricing. (Is there, like, some weird technical gimmick in the set that might justify extra pricing?) That said, I'm a bit confused by why you're talking about PPP as though it's something that Lego can take away. It's a measurement, and my understanding is that the amount of pieces has to be shown on the box in the USA under some American law? (Correct me if I'm wrong on this; I seem to remember a lot of pictures of boxes shipped from Europe with white stickers on them when the Mexican factory was shut down during Covid, as the rules in America are different from the rest of the world) Even if the Lego community as a whole decided not to care one jot about PPP, both the price and the amount of parts would still be available information? However: I don't think it's fair to just decide that somebody is arguing in bad faith when their argument is different from your opinion. Just because an opinion is different to yours (and I've seen some opinions on this board that are wild to me) doesn't mean that it isn't sincerely held by the person commenting.

I can't say I agree with this. Look at the Stormtrooper minifigures. The original ones up to about 2010 look great, they're instantly recognisable as Stormtroopers and also feel like Lego - plus the legs can be used for other things. By contrast the modern ones are way too busy, don't look any more like Stormtroopers than the old ones but also look less Lego-ey, and aren't as reusable. Imo printed legs should be reserved for minifigures where the leg printing is fundamental to actually representing the character. The only one that comes to mind off-hand is Han Solo with his holster, but I'm sure there are others where the leg decorations are actually essential and not just extra detail. (I also personally disagree that Captain America looks bland without printed legs, the figures look just fine to me)

Is it? And what about people who don't want printed legs? There's a middle ground to be had, where some of the legs are printed but plenty aren't. Imo they strike that middle ground quite well (honestly, if anything they've gone too far towards printing - why on earth are stormtroopers and clone troopers having printed legs?)

The sets haven't been released yet, though. If you're trying to argue that Dreamzz is overpriced and that's why it's a dead theme, I'm a little confused. There are eleven sets on Lego.com right now. Eight of them have a price/piece ratio of less than £0.10 per piece. Of the three outliers, Grimkeeper the Cage Monster is about 11.5p per piece, the Stable of Dream Creatures is pretty much exactly 11p per piece, and the Crocodile Car is about 11.5p per piece. I wouldn't say any of those are far beyond the average price (and we're also getting the Dream Village, which isn't much more than 5p per piece, so there are some very good deals among the range)

Oh lol, I figured it was something from the Lion King being as it's a king who is a lion. Did Disney really do a Robin Hood film with lions?

It hasn't even come out yet so there's not even the argument that it's been a sales failure. It doesn't have a technological gimmick like the most recent flops (Vidiyo, Hidden Side) so I can't see how it does that bad.

Honestly that seems consistent with their policy. Some parts, especially those longest serving ones, have gone through so many tiny mould variations that listing them all would clog up the database. The difference in the bat moulds is tiny; there's a reason it took about thirteen years for anybody to even notice!

I've just checked out the ones I own (nine total). I have two with the Lego logo and seven without the Lego logo (these all have a copyright symbol in the place where the Lego logo would go). Can't check how they all interact with 2l bars unfortunately as my box of them seems to have vanished without a trace. For what it's worth, I have seven bats that predate the CMF era and two that are subsequent to it, so if there was a mould change I would suggest it came between 2009 and 2010

So most of those are mixed rather than being fully original minifigures. The heads of 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 15 and 17 are all regular City heads from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s (various introductions; the silver sunglasses is the oldest print of these and the head on number 5 is the most recent). Figure 5 also has a generic prisoner torso from City sets of the same era, and figure 17 has a torso from the 2009 Pirates sets. I believe figure 16 is a Ninjago Movie minifigure minus the headgear (certainly the legs and torso are Ninjago; I don't have the figure in question so I'm not sure if the head matches). Figure 4 is a Legends of Chima minifigure, with the hands swapped for yellow ones. Figure 8 is from the City set Tire Escape from circa 2017 (the legs are wrong; it was plain white legs in the set itself) while Figure 9 is a Star Wars figure from the early 2010s - this was the era where Clone Wars sets were all the rage, and there were lots of variants of clone troopers with different printings. I don't recognise these specific prints but I'd guess it's from around 2012-2013. The head of minifigure 7 is by far the oldest part there - it dates to the mid-1990s, and was I believe used in Spyrius and Aquazone sets. Figure 14 is really odd to me. It doesn't seem like a Legends of Chima figure (the aesthetic isn't right; Chima animals used bulky 'masks' over printed heads, rather than what appears to be a sculpted head) but I'm wracking my brains trying to think of when else an anthropomorphic lion figure might have been released. For specifically identifying parts, your best bet is the Bricklink database. You can filter by colour and then select parts categories. For instance, this link will bring up a list of every dark blue printed torso, for figures 15 and 16 (and maybe figure 7, the lighting is a bit ambiguous as to whether it's a dark blue or black torso).

It's interesting to me that not only does Bricklink not have any listings for the part in sand blue, it's not on any wanted lists either. Where there are known unreleased recolours that are or have been present in the market, you can normally find at least one person who has it on their wanted list waiting for the day it surfaces again. Nobody seems to want this dinosaur in sand blue. You can actually brute-force your way onto the page for the part in sand blue through URL trickery but it's not a very interesting read. Nothing is listed on any of the tabs whatsoever, and there's no image on the Bricklink database. I'm always fascinated by parts in colours that seemingly shouldn't exist. Earlier today I myself came across an old trans-clear pneumatic hose in a length that Bricklink insists never came in trans-clear, and somewhere I have what I'm fairly sure is a 2x4 brick in Very Light Orange. I suspect you're right about the source of this colour of dinosaur, though; it would make sense that it was intended to be used in conjunction with the buildable dinosaurs from around that time. Does anyone know if those sets were poor sellers? I know I never owned or even saw any (and I was a dinosaur-obsessed kid whose price range for toys was exactly what those dinosaur sets cost at that time) and failing sales would explain sets being dropped last-minute.

The solution is obvious. Invent time-travel, go back to 1995 with copies of the Harry Potter manuscripts changed so that their post is delivered not by owls but by goats. This gets you: All the wealth and plaudits of "writing" the Harry Potter series A chance to buy the golden sets of the mid-90s at their retail price In the year 2023, a surfeit of different goat molds In fact, massive tangent train of thought but you could turn a tidy profit if you had a time machine, just finding all the rare and expensive sets on the second-hand market, then travelling back to when they were new and stocking up. Anyone for flooding the market with 10,000 copies of 1309?

I'm not sure what's laughable? Are we supposed to agree uncritically with every criticism of Lego or their enterprises, even if those criticisms aren't fair? Are we not allowed to express the view that Lego's website is adequate in this regard? "A lot of time" was actually about twenty seconds while I had my coffee this morning - I don't see that as excessive time for anything.

So over the years I've bought a lot of bulk lots from Facebook Marketplace and eBay and other second hand sources (according to my spreadsheet, about 1/3 of my entire collection is from these) and - in scouting for deals and then sorting through what I have - I've found some surprisingly 'expensive' parts that didn't strike me as being worth much. I think most of us, when presented with a bulk lot, make a quick judgement as to whether it's worth the money. For me it's a combination of "are there parts in here I will use?" and "are there parts here I can sell to recoup my money?" - and for the latter part, I'm immediately looking for likely indicators of a valuable lot. Old-style castle wall panels (especially printed ones, especially the yellow and red ones with the black detailing); printed sails and flags from vintage Pirate sets; raised baseplates; anything with the M:Tron logo on it. Even things like cypress trees sell for a decent chunk on the secondary market (though I'm a cypress tree fiend myself and will never part with any of mine; I've been known to buy an incomplete Pretty Playland just to get the cypress tree at cheaper than the Bricklink rate). Anyway, I'm rambling. The point of this thread is to compile a list of those unexpected valuable parts. The sorts of things you wouldn't look twice at, but are actually worth a pretty penny (or are indicators of other things which are worth good money). For example: Technic Brick 1x2 with Holes in blue We all have plenty of these kicking about in the more common colours, and as blue is a standard colour it seems odd that it would be worth anything. And yet the current going rate on Bricklink is £7.00 for a single used piece. Discounting re-releases and weird Legoland exclusives, this piece was only included in one set, which perhaps goes some way to explaining the price. A lot of job lots I buy cost me about £40 or thereabouts; finding and selling one of those Technic bricks would make me nearly 20% of that straight away. Unlike printed panels and flags and things, though, it's not likely to spark a bidding frenzy because it's such an innocuous-looking piece. I'm wondering if anybody's aware of other parts like this, where the apparent value is significantly higher than one would expect.

That is incredible! Not just the build itself (which is gorgeous) but the custom minifigure prints (I need those face-painted islander heads!) and the sheer effort you've put into presenting the entry.

Look at it another way: You have Eldorado now. Future discontinuation/aftermarket price hikes won't affect you. HOWEVER you also don't have any Lego to build right now, which gives you the excuse necessary to buy whatever other set you want/will want soon. (Alternatively, you could tell her that you need to build it now to make sure there aren't any missing pieces, as if you leave it too long you might be missing a piece that Lego can't replace - this way you get to build it now, box it up again, then build it again next year!)

Completely unrelated to the Galaxy Explorer (which is a wonderful set) but possibly because I've never been interested in cars beyond the barest functional sense, and because it's one of the best vehicles in Simpsons Hit & Run, I've always thought of the Homer as a cool car. To the point where I don't like watching that episode because I don't get the reveal; I'm not sure what's supposed to be so horrible about it.

I've never actually found a complete Pirate set in a job lot (closest I came was 75% of the Islander Catamaran) so take this with a pinch of salt, but I've found the same. I've got my Eldorado populated with a few extra classic bluecoats I've picked up in random lots, but to this day I've never actually seen an original redcoat in the flesh.

My instructions were fine (well, Book 1 was and the first page of each subsequent book was; haven't built the rest yet). My only issues with it are the lack of numbering and the horrible plain-white covers that seem to be Lego standard now.

They are indeed (though I suspect this is the sort of thing which doesn't show up on the mobile site; can't tell for sure as I'm at a desktop). However I did notice this: This is on the front page of the website (well, not the front page as that's a list of the sites without any information at all; this is the front page when clicking on a location)

Although I disagree with there being too many colours I can definitely see that there are colours that aren't necessarily easy to identify except by comparison to one another - Bright Light Blue versus Medium Blue is one, as is Bright Light Yellow versus the old Yellow (and I defy someone to figure out whether a piece is the old Purple or the old Light Purple without access to any sort of comparison). That being said, I'm having a hard time figuring out how you can say Neon Yellow and Bright Light Yellow are too similar. Neon Yellow is (because of its neon properties) so garishly bright as to be almost dazzling. Bright Light Yellow is very muted in comparison. You could argue that Lego considers them interchangeable if they were jumping back and forth, but it seems as if they used BLY as a best option before Neon Yellow was introduced to the colour palette. Following that logic you could argue that Lego consider yellow and tan interchangeable (because Pirates sets used to use yellow then switched to tan) or black and brown (because the old Forestmen sets had black trees but the Dark Forest sets had brown ones)

I don't think I ever actually played with Lego like that - and it didn't help that as a kid the only heads I had were what I call the 'standard set' (3626bp01, 02, 03, 04 and 05) plus Johnny Thunder and Lucius Malfoy - all smiling apart from the one based on a real bad guy from non-Lego. By the time I started getting more Lego I was that much older and already fully into making films as my main use for Lego. It seems to me as though the Western sets were the turning point for facial expressions, and that was partly because Old West bandits have snarls and grimaces as part of the language of them. Even in movies where the 'bad guy' is the hero, they're still always grizzled and scowling.

Knowing Merlin is separate from Lego doesn't seem like it should count as "too much insider info". It feels like a pretty obvious thing to figure out from the fact that Legoland appears on all the same cereal boxes as Alton Towers and Chessington and the Merlin Entertainments lot, and is tied into those same promotions, yet doesn't give VIP points at the shop. (I must admit I didn't know Lego were part of the consortium that bought Merlin, but to be fair that was a £5 billion deal that was reported on BBC News when it happened - not exactly secret knowledge)

I'm in a weird place of equal parts agreeing and disagreeing with you. I love the 90s face print standards (even the downturned smile on the villain Basil the Bat Lord) and understand exactly what you mean by the faces stifling creativity. On the other hand, having a variety of face prints is really useful to me for my brickfilms (which is the main reason I hoard Lego like I'm Smaug) - when I'm making a film, I don't want the audience to be concocting their own characters. Having less ambiguous facial expressions helps here (and also, it looks really weird when a knight is being violently slain and has that perma-grin on his face the whole time). That said, while I'm glad there's more variety than there was, I feel like Lego has gone too far the other direction - it seems like rather than having a standard core of seven or eight faces like they used to, there's a standard core of a dozen or so 'faces', but each one has a dozen different expressions spread over multiple dual-printed heads. I'm in the process of trying to collect every yellow face print ever released, and it's tedious having to track down every little variant. As an example, I was able to check off the entire Time Cruisers theme's facial expressions through one purchase of Mystic Mountain Time Lab (plus having half of them already from other sources). On the other hand I have three Hidden Side sets (and not tiny polybags) and I still don't have every version of the main characters' faces. Pick one print and keep it for every iteration of a character.