Alexandrina

Is the village actually confirmed yet, and especially containing a ghost? I'd not heard that particular rumour. Also, does Wales especially have a high concentration of castles? You're most likely to find them on the border, as there were a lot of castles put up along the Marches. I'm thinking of places like Raglan, which is in Wales put is actually further east than the original border; the castle is pretty well in line with the very definitely English castles at Skenfrith and Grosmont.

So there's several factors when it comes to bricks. First off, your colours question. MAB's link is good but Peeron doesn't seem to have been updated in about 12 years, so some of the newer colours aren't on that list. This one from Rebrickable looks up-to-date to me; it has the Lego, Bricklink and Ldraw names for every colour. Bright Light Blue is indeed the same as Light Royal Blue, but Bright Purple appears to correlate to Dark Pink. Magenta is what Lego call Bright Reddish Violet. PAB doesn't normally sell colours which don't exist according to Bricklink, as those colours will often be resold. It does sometimes have colours which don't exist in sets (you can still find price information on Bricklink by selecting the Price Guide tab so long as it's been listed at least once for sale in the last six months, but it won't show up if you click on 'Appears in'). Occasionally new parts might take time to appear on Bricklink, but it's much more common for Bricklink to have parts available in colours that aren't for sale on PAB - since rather than being a curated selection of parts, Bricklink is essentially every part in every colour that's ever been available, supplies willing. In terms of getting lots of parts, obviously it's good to know exactly what you already have first. If you haven't already, I recommend inventorying your collection so you know what's available to you. I don't know if Bricklink or Lego is particularly cheaper for the same part, but if you want brand new bricks then PAB is a good bet - but yeah, free shipping is a bonus if you want lots of bricks. It's also worth scouting out a Pick a Brick wall if there's a Lego store near you. The selection won't be nearly as wide, but if the store has parts you need for MOCs, that's going to be by far the most economical solution. Depending on the parts you can fit up to around 1000 pieces in a large Pick a Brick cup (maybe more if all you want is studs). Alternatively if you don't want specific bricks but just lots of parts, Facebook and eBay are good sources for large job lots (and even better, you can resell individual parts that you don't need and recoup a chunk of the money you spent!) As you say you're using Stud.io, though, it sounds like you do want specific parts - I recommend seeing what you can find on Lego's PAB, then searching for the rest on Bricklink. Lego might be more expensive per piece, but if you need lots of pieces the chances are slim of finding a single Bricklink seller that has everything you're after, and when you start splitting your purchase across multiple sellers the postage begins to add up.

Ooh, I'm not at all familiar with the source material but that's a nice looking set. Might have to be picking it up for the parts!

Don't know about drawers specifically (last drawers I bought were from B&Q about three years ago and I can't remember what the brand was) but I've been using the big clear plastic boxes you can buy at the Range, with plastic food containers to further subdivide. I've found that the various sizes they come in are good for handling large/common bricks (I personally have one about half-full of 2x4 bricks, another nearly to the brim with 2x2 bricks, etc.) and you can fit a lot of the food containers inside them - as many as 21 inside the mid-size one, with room for some even smaller boxes too. The food containers themselves I've only found in large quantities at places like Bookers. Retail shops tend only to do them up to packs of 10 and overpriced for what they are, whereas you can get 250 from Bookers for about £17 (and take it from me, 250 seems like a lot but they absolutely disappear when you start sorting!!). Or alternatively you can just buy a lot of Chinese takeaways and wash the containers when you're done eating.

Of all IPs, it's the one most in need of a HETV reboot. Film is rarely a good medium for adapting long-form dramas with lots of characters, as time limits mean a lot has to be cut out, and the Harry Potter films aren't exactly peak cinema - there's no continuity regarding basic stuff like the uniforms and the layout of the school, and their quality as adaptations drops the further into the series it goes. We have A Series of Unfortunate Events as testament to how good an adaptation of a book series into HETV can be; with prestige television firmly established, there's really no reason for anything of that ilk to be on the big screen again.

The thing is, BAM parts existing is meaningless for people who don't live close enough that they can get to a Lego store (and even then, they have to hope that the part they want is in stock). For instance, I've worked in London and when I've been based there it's easy for me to go to the Lego store to grab what I want (or even take the train to look for the new Indy sets a month ahead of their release because I forgot to check the release date! ) but at other parts of the year I go home, where it's simply not practical to go to a Lego store. For instance: I went to the Lego store more times in three months living in London this year than in twenty-five years of living prior to that. Some parts don't even make it to Bricklink. I made a few posts on this very forum some years back about a particular torso I had my eye on which Bricklink still haven't got listed, and which was impossible for me to obtain until I happened to go to a Lego store in another city. 3-in-1 sets might give the same amount of new useful parts as BAM stands, but those sets are accessible to far more people.

For me the defining feature of the set was the lioness. That's what I bought it for, the vehicle is just there. And it's not like there's hundreds of white SUVs on the market at any given time anyway.

See, this to me is too flippant in the opposite direction. When you're not well-off, sometimes you can't afford to get another set. Sometimes you get a set as a gift and don't get a say in what set that is. I can say from experience that it made no difference to me if a part was available in fifty sets I didn't have; I'd be getting maybe half a dozen sets for birthday and Christmas combined (if it was a particularly lucky year) and could afford to save up for one more, so I was forever leaving stickers off sets so I could use the parts again. I would actually go so far as to say that those sorts of sets are exactly the ones that should have stickers. The zebra pattern isn't important to the look of the model. I bought that set, built it without stickers, looked at it for a bit, then put the stickers on. It looks cool either way. Anyway, I'm personally inclined to think that the best case scenario would be Lego switching to printed parts only but reducing the detail on some of their licensed sets. Prints are nice, but some details are so specific that you'd basically never have use for them in anything other than the original model. I'm thinking of things like the X-Wing Fighter from Star Wars. My version as a child was 6212, which has no stickers and three different prints excluding minifigures. Those prints include a red and white striped tile which is very general purpose. Compare that to the more recent 75301 which has eleven stickers (plus a printed piece). Personally I'd rather see fewer prints and only the essentials; a lot of the stickers on 75301 are detail for detail's sake, and the model is no less for not having the decoration at all.

That set's filling in a few 'gaps' in the standard brick palette too, right? I'm seeing lots of Coral, for instance, which I don't think had the full range of bricks available before.

I must say, it is even if the hours are killer. Even better, it allowed me to spend a few months living a Tube line away from a Lego store and with money to spend on Lego

Honestly, no. The extent of my knowledge was hearing a conversation between two people discussing their next projects while I was in the queue for crafty. One of them was art department and had got the Cursed Child job. Sadly the thing with crafty is eventually you get your coffee and go back to your department, and I was based in an entirely different part of the lot to the art department so could no more drop eaves. To be totally honest, it could well have been for the TV series instead if they'd begun crewing up before the announcement came.

I wasn't sure if the reboot has changed things, but I work in film and TV and I definitely know of a few people who were signed on to work on Cursed Child (this was about a month or so ago)

The point is that for all people grumble about stickers, those sets are still selling. Lego are making money off the sets with stickers - the anti-sticker sentiment online isn't translating into sets with stickers not selling. As long as those sets continue to sell, it's tacit endorsement of stickers.

I'm wondering if the next year or so will bring Cursed Child sets (if, indeed, the film hasn't been canned). Might be an opportunity to get older variants of some of the main characters in minifigure form?

I'd be surprised if there's no female minifigures at all (whether they take the form of civilians is another matter). Barracuda Bay had two female minifigures even when the figures were direct modernisations of the original 1980s/90s wave which had one female fig. Recently we've seen through the Black Falcons/Lion Knights revival that Lego have no qualms about making female knights. In that vein I'd expect to see at least a few female guards - especially since unlike the pirates, which all had their own characters, most of the original run's guards were just generic smilies.

The difference imo is that football stadiums are a niche within a niche. For most things, you've got fans of the IP and people who aren't fans of the IP. For instance, there's people who like Star Wars sets and people who don't. The thing is, football stadiums are the theme, not the specific stadium. Within that niche, it's the minority who support that team. Imagine if people rooted for their favourite Star Wars ship and only that ship - a world where if you like the Millennium Falcon you dislike the X-Wing and vice versa, or where the Republic Gunship and the TIE Fighter were bitter rivals whose fanbases were always at loggerheads. Star Wars would struggle to be a profitable license if everybody who collected the sets only ever bought the sets of their favourite ship and nothing else.

With your example of the web effects (same as the Hidden Side ectoplasm squirts) there's the fact that none of the parts treated as one are ever packaged separately. Much like the old tools on a sprue, you get the whole set even if only one of the parts was needed. Presumably, therefore, the whole bag is treated as one part internally from start to finish. When it comes to printed/stickered parts, the same doesn't hold true. Stickers (which would be replaced by prints in your idea) are usually placed over common bricks or parts; often, those selfsame bricks are used in the same set unstickered. The two circumstances, therefore, aren't exactly one and the same. It isn't going to save any boxes relative to having a sticker sheet, because the component parts are used elsewhere too. Just as a curiosity, I looked up the inventory of a random 2022 set (60316 Police Station). Assuming Bricklink is accurate, that set's stickered parts used nine boxes (plus a tenth for the sticker sheet). If you were to instead put all those parts as printed parts in a single box, all that does is replace the sticker sheet box; all the unprinted parts still need to be made. However, it adds an extra step in the production process. Those parts need to be gathered together from among the boxes of unprinted parts, printed, then put in their box. Compare that to your examples of several prints on the same part, or several parts that are only ever stored as a single part, and it's more work for no saving on space. As long as Lego's customers are happily buying the stickered sets, it's not going to be worth the hassle to implement your suggestion.

Oh, I get that, but even then, it's got a limited audience. Disregarding people who have no interest whatsoever in football, for any given team the amount of fans is going to be dwarfed by the amount of people who would never ever buy merchandise of that club. I support Chelsea, and would buy a Stamford Bridge set because I'm a hypocrite, but there is no chance in hell I'd ever touch Manchester United or Barcelona because I actively despise those teams. In the same vein, fans of those clubs would never buy a Stamford Bridge set.

I don't think this applies in the strictest sense to Lego, because Lego has a limited number of spaces for themes at any one time (and also things like genetic diversity aren't exactly a concern for Lego). If Ninjago were to die, it would be replaced by a new action theme. The only reason it hasn't been is because it's so successful as to be running for a decade plus now. Regarding minidolls, I can see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure I agree personally. They're still Lego, they're just new pieces (in the same way that minifigures were still Lego when they came along in 1978), and minidoll themes occupy a certain amount of Lego theme real estate. For instance, Elves would probably have been made even if minidolls weren't a thing, but using minifigures - the theme itself isn't contingent on a certain type of playfigure being included in the set. Friends to me has always seemed like a fusion of Paradisa and Belville, both of which I'd argue are second-tier classic themes.

I never got why Lego would make football stadiums in the first place. They're big models, most football stadiums look ugly, and the thing with football is that if you're into it enough to drop that amount of money on a stadium set, you're either a fan of the team or you don't like them at all. I'd have thought most big football fans wouldn't be interested in more than their own club's stadium, and the sets struck me as too expensive to be good as parts packs for people who don't care at all about football.

Maybe I missed it but there was no context regarding minifigures in either the comment I replied to, or the one you replied to in that comment. And your comment seemed to be excluding Ninjago, as it was replying to a comment including it only to say "now do themes that launched in the last five years" I'd actually disagree with this personally. Castles are awesome and now I'm an adult with money to spend I gobbled up the Lion Knights' Castle, but when I was a kid I couldn't afford the big sets. I couldn't even afford the mid-range sets. The only Castle sets I had as a kid were Blacksmith Attack and Prison Carriage Rescue from the Kingdoms range. But they gave me knights and I could build the castle I wanted from my bricks. There's always a market for big castles, but I think there would also be a market for impulse-buy sets that are more a minifigure or two and a quick build.

Imo it's disingenuous to exclude Ninjago and Friends as this does - both have very clearly established themselves as successful original themes, and they're still running so obviously replacements haven't launched. I'd also throw in Elves, which launched longer ago but was still on the shelves five years ago. Plus Castle (through Nexo Knights) and Town ofc. So really, in the last five years there have been eight original themes on the shelves, plus one-off sets here and there from other original IPs, as well as more adult ranges such as the botanical sets. A slight drop on the golden age, but for example 1996 - bang in the middle of the golden era - had nine original themes. When you add in the licensed coterie it's actually a broader spread now than in the golden age. The wide range of original IPs seems to be more an early 2000s thing, and I think a response to the decline of Pirates. For instance, in 2002 there were sets released in: Alpha Team Belville Castle Galidor Harry Potter Island Xtreme Stunts Racers Space Spider-Man Sports Star Wars Studios Town Train (I'm ignoring Pirates and Western which were only represented by re-releases of classic sets; they were as present in 2002 as Castle and Space are today). That's fourteen themes, which is a good number to be fair. Three of them are licensed (and all those licenses are active today too). Town has never left, and Racers is essentially Speed Champions with fewer stickers. Friends has replaced Belville as the 'girl-oriented' theme. The less said about Galidor the better... What you're left with is seven original themes which aren't active today and don't have direct replacements. The parallels between Studio and Vidiyo are obvious, even if Studio was more successful. Alpha Team, like Ninjago today, was the action theme of its time. Dreamzzz will last at least as long as Island Xtreme Stunts did. What's missing is the evergreen themes: Castle, Space and Train are no longer in regular production, but there's still just as many short-lived original themes as ever.

I even think some of the old themes are baked into Lego lore so to speak, and their legacy is oversized in common perception compared to what it actually was. I know I was a kid who spent a lot of time in my room looking on Bricklink and Peeron at all the sets I wished I had, and themes like Western, Aquazone, Time Cruisers or Alpha Team had already run their course and were listed there on those databases with the real heavy hitters. The sets have been a thing for as long as I've been into Lego, and yes they were long discontinued, but most of the then-current sets were things I'd never get a chance to own so there was no difference in my mind. Fort Legoredo and Café Corner both looked cool, and I was never going to be in the same room as either, so what did I care whether either set was still coming out of the factory? On the contrary newer themes didn't predate my Lego love; I remember a time before them, and I'm well aware of how short lived their run was. When you're around and paying attention to Lego from the moment a theme hits the shelves to the moment it vanishes, you're more acutely aware of just how long (or not) it was around. This is an AFOL forum so it skews towards people whose exposure to Lego predates things like Hidden Side. I'd be very curious to know whether people being born now, once they blossom into AFOLs themselves, see Hidden Side as something just as enduring as Aquazone was.

I don't know what the kids are playing with at the moment, as I'm about a decade out of school with no siblings or children of my own, but things like pirates and cowboys don't seem to be common subjects for kids' movies or TV at the moment (I might be wrong on this). Things come and go and always have. When I was in primary school, there was a big craze for robots, which coincided with Bionicle's peak. We rarely played pirates on the other hand. See western. That's very much tied to the popularity of the genre at the cinema; my school days were in a lull when western movies basically didn't exis tin the mainstream, and I can honestly say I don't remember anyone at school ever playing cowboys. A few decades earlier, it was such a common game for children that the most famous public safety film in British history is structured around a game of cowboys. Where are you that these sets are still on the shelves? I'd love to pick up a few more Hidden Side/Vidiyo sets but I haven't seen either for sale in years.

I'm not sure some of the themes you listed - especially Aquazone and Western - can be considered 'classic' themes. Neither had much longevity at all. As for things like Space, Castle, Pirates, I'd imagine they're on hiatus rather than dead. These are broad themes based on staple concepts - when pirates are in vogue with kids again, Lego will bring the theme back. When knights are in vogue, they'll bring Castle back.