Alexandrina

Can't say I agree, there's really nothing in Doctor Who iconic enough and big enough to justify a D2C on the scale of Rivendell. The TARDIS is playset sized - even if you padded it out with the zero room and the swimming pool and Nyssa's bedroom, it would still fall short of a proper large D2C. Doctor Who's strength is in its variety, of characters and locations. Done right it could not only draw in fans of the show but fans of sci-fi Lego eager for new offerings. Even the classic series is ripe for the picking. I envisage a Robots of Death playset - even from a nearly 50-year old serial it would sell like hotcakes. Who fans would eat it up, sci-fi fans would want the robot minifigures, and the sandminer has this incredible art deco aesthetic that would be wonderful in Lego form. Or what about The Web of Fear? Robot yeti and the London Underground would make for a wonderful set that would have appeal beyond just fans of the show.

I don't have a formal "formula" per se but I'm always evaluating whether my purchases are worth the money before I commit. With 'new' sets (by which I mean any set currently available from Lego.com) I usually have a large list of "this looks cool" sets, constantly updated as new sets come out; it's not a checklist to get every single set, but I rarely buy sets outside this list. I factor in the price, the number of parts, what those parts are, whether I can get those parts easily elsewhere, and other things to the same extent. Threshold also changes based on how old a set is. For the most part I'm less likely to rush to get a brand new set the day it comes out as there's still ages for me to pick it up, whereas a set that's been out for two years already I'll probably grab when the opportunity arises. When it comes to specific parts I want, I'll check via Bricklink whether they're available in current sets, and investigate whether those sets are worth my buying. For example: a few years back I bought Skull Sorcerer's Dungeons because it contained some specific parts I wanted, but also had a lot of other parts that looked interesting to me but I hadn't planned on getting. With second hand sets, I have a hard upper limit of the Bricklink average price - I won't ever pay more than that for a set (with possible exceptions - that haven't come up yet but could in the future - for sets which were never released in my country; in a hypothetical scenario where a UK seller was offering a Dark Forest set for £10 over the Bricklink average, I might go for it, as postage from the USA for the same set is going to be more than that). I evaluate all sorts of things: - Why do I want this set? Is it for the build itself? Certain parts included in the set? Can I find the parts I want for cheaper than buying the set? - Is it likely to be available cheaper any time soon? I don't care about boxes for old sets and instructions aren't a deal-breaker. If I find a good deal which includes these then great, but usually I'll be able to find a set cheaper by waiting for a listing which is just the bricks. Obviously for some sets it's very rare to find them on the market at all. A few years back I was able to get Fort Legoredo for £60 used, which is frankly a deal I doubt I'll see again any time soon. Usually when I buy a second-hand set I've specifically searched for it, because I want that particular set. Sometimes it's just opportunity. The other day I nabbed an incomplete copy of the Belville set Pretty Playground for £15, reduced because it was missing the box, instructions, dolls and dog. I didn't intend to buy it, and in fact I already have a copy of the set, but I would have a hard time finding the cypress tree/lattice bricks/curved bricks/chrome silver tiles with balls on top for less money than that, and I have an obsession with cypress trees so I pounced. Honestly though, most of my used Lego comes from job lots, either on Facebook or eBay. I've got a very good batting average with job lots - I never buy unless I can afford the price, and I can see at least a few worthwhile bricks in the listing photo. Obviously there's a gamble involved with job lots, but I've found visible elements like BURPs, the old log palisade panels or distinctive single-use printed parts are a good indicator of a worthwhile job lot. These parts usually mean there's other good parts hiding there, but they're not super recognisable like the yellow/black castle wall panels, raised baseplates or monorail tracks. I never get sucked into bidding wars for listings with parts like that because the price will always go over the odds. I also never buy Lego joblots priced at more than £10 per kilogram. In three years of buying regularly, my least successful lot was worth 4x what I paid for it (I have a very detailed spreadsheet) and I usually get at least 10x value. This also gives me the option of reselling bricks I don't want to recoup the cost entirely.

Excellent, thanks for the link! I've ordered one for myself :)

Wonderful MOC, detailed and aesthetically pleasing. What's the hair/bonnet piece you've used for the woman by the cart?

I was a Tintin fan growing up too (probably around the same time) entirely because the cartoon was being broadcast on UK TV on Saturday mornings when I was at cartoon-watching age. As far as I'm aware it's not being broadcast at the moment, and aside from a surreal moment in a Tintin store in Nottingham I've not seen any merchandise or books for the IP since the film came out. As Harry Potter is concerned: I've obviously only got anecdotal evidence to go on, but my mum teaches in a primary school and Harry Potter is at least as popular there as Marvel (slightly more popular than Star Wars, possibly) - interestingly there's a prominent Home Alone fanbase there which was in existence before the set was announced, so maybe Lego were onto something more than just nostalgia when they decided to go for it. I'm also currently lodging in a house where the kids' Lego collection consists of Friends and Harry Potter, and relatives' kids are wanting Harry Potter far more than they're wanting Star Wars sets.

At risk of going off the topic of Indiana Jones altogether, imo Doctor Who stands out as a big IP that fits with Lego's product range but which hasn't been represented aside from a single Ideas set.

Not everyone sees the same figures as desirable though. Take this last series as an example, as you've mentioned it: I personally couldn't care less about an orc, it's not a figure that interests me; on the other hand, the pompadour woman, on the other hand, appealed to me immensely. That's counter to your comment. The mistake would be to assume that any one person's wanted figures are guaranteed to be the wanted figures.

Hi Laura, welcome to the forums!

The rational part of me agrees with this analysis, but the dreamer inside me just wants a cypress tree service pack. I've bought entire sets second-hand just because it's somehow cheaper than buying a single cypress tree on the aftermarket - not sure why that would be the case! I do think premoulded trees have their niche, especially in basic buckets/small creator sets aimed at a younger audience. They're a better fit than brick-built trees for the sort of sets they used to be included in - less-complex houses and sets, and the like - but those sets don't seem to be the main focus of Creator at the moment. But also, it's similar to the goat in that there are probably plenty of sets that might have had a cypress tree over the years if the mould was still extant, but none that justify creating the mould for it.

I'm out of the loop: what's happening with Star Wars?

The cypress tree must be reborn. Everyone meming the goat out of retirement and just sleeping on the coolest tree Lego ever did.

Maybe that's location-dependent? I know I've never encountered people hoarding the 'good' figures near me. I remember getting my elf in WHSmith when it was either the last or second-last figure in the box. You say you only have eight of the tournament knights. I'm curious: did you buy those on the aftermarket, by feel, or by blindly buying and getting lucky? Because I would argue that people buying that many of desirable minifigures is part of the reason those figures are so hard for kids to get. If there's no way for people to know what figure they're getting, kids have the same chance of getting a good figure. Eight is by no means a small amount of tournament knights to have.

Not all shops are created evenly. Go to the Lego shop in Leicester Square and you'll be caught very easily if you break open a box. On the other hand, if you're in a smaller shop (like the garden centre near me) which sells Lego, you'd get away with it unless you were greedy or unlucky. The particular shop I'm thinking of keeps their Lego in a spot with a bit of a camera blindspot (because there are other aisles/shelves in the way) and around the corner from the tills, so cashiers won't be able to see you. It's also very rare to see staff wandering around in that part of the shop - I've only ever seen staff at their specific workstations or wandering about the food/garden sections, from which you can't see the Lego stuff. Someone so inclined could easily pop open a box, take the bits they want, pocket them, and be out the door.

I completely agree. For the record, my stance is that Lego are free to do whatever they want - it's part of the terms and conditions after all, and we as consumers of the product just want the best sets. I just think that unless there's something concrete and tangible that links a specific rejected build to a later-released set, people saying Lego have stolen an idea don't have a leg to stand on - before you even get into the issue of whether Lego are within their rights to take ideas or not.

I'd argue that in the event that something was submitted to Ideas which used a new or very novel/unorthodox building technique - and a few years later the exact same technique was used in an official Lego model - then there might be an argument of them copying the idea. (Might. I'd still give Lego the benefit of the doubt unless there were compounding similarities.) I'm not really aware of the goings-on on Ideas, but I'm not aware of this happening at any point. My understanding is that the sets which are claimed to be similar to rejected Ideas submissions use the same concept, but aren't the same build.

There doesn't seem to be an inventory up on Bricklink for 71784 yet so I can't confirm but the yellows look like Bright Light Yellow - which is a long-established colour and very distinct from Neon Yellow. Both colours should absolutely exist, because they have different use-cases. Neon Yellow is representative of the bright yellow commonly seen on emergency service vehicles (ambulance, police, fire) and indeed is mainly used in that context. Bright Light Yellow could be used in the same context, I suppose, but it's a much more muted, pastel shade, better suited to buildings/shading. Aesthetically it would fit Friends, but there are better-suited colours and if you're not using the bright shade then you might as well use a classic white/red/yellow. I'm not really sure why you would argue that one of these two colours shouldn't exist when there are many examples of more similar shades (see: the various blues/azures, lavenders, pinks and greens. Even Red and Dark Red are more similar than these two shades of yellow). I will of course retract that last sentence if the yellow in 71784 is a new shade though I will defend its right to exist. Except that's not happening at all. Trans-Neon Orange is very possibly not extinct at all/has been revived (Bricklink has it appearing in sets up til 2022, which suggests that rumours of its demise were greatly exaggerated) while both Sand Red and Dark Turquoise were discontinued during the 2000s, when Lego's colour palette was contracting (they went in the same period as Blue-Violet, Sand Purple and Light Yellow). Dark Turquoise has also been back in the colour palette for several years now. In fact, since the colour palette began to expand with Dark Red, Dark Tan and Dark Brown back in the late 2000s, I don't think any colour has been retired to make room for a different colour. According to Bricklink, the last solid colour to be discontinued aside from the limited-utility Maersk Blue was Light Grey in 2008 (presumably when the last old stock was sold out), and before that Medium Orange/Light Lime, two colours which were anything but established given the paucity of parts available. I'd actually go so far as to hazard a guess that 60-75% of AFOLs on this forum have never even owned a Light Lime brick.

At risk of derailing the thread entirely: The Wheel of Time is certainly an original series (and for my money, the books and the TV show are at the very pinnacle of their genre) but anyone who tells you the first Wheel of Time book is more original than the TV series - in terms of its similarity to Lord of the Rings - is misleading you. The Eye of the World was written deliberately to mimic The Fellowship of the Ring in the early part, and most of the truly original elements of the series don't appear until later books (even the Aes Sedai, the all-female magic organisation that is very distinct from Lord of the Rings, is really only in the first book as an organisation that is mentioned and through Moiraine - but saying the Aes Sedai are front and centre in the first book because of her is like saying the Maiar are major players in the Lord of the Rings because Gandalf is in it). The TV show actually brings a lot of the interesting points from the second and third books forward, to avoid the first season being a reskin of Fellowship. I actually think WoT would be a better theme for Lego to do than Lord of the Rings - because there's more variety of sets they can do (especially if they had a licence to do scenes from the books that are cut out of the TV series) but obviously the best case scenario would be sets from both franchises. What worries me about the future of Lord of the Rings sets is the very polarised reaction to the TV series. (Which imo stems from the fact that Lord of the Rings lore is incredibly deep and written by a guy whose worldbuilding was essentially his life-work). Those who are really into the lore are very critical of changes to it, as a general rule - this isn't meant as a criticism btw, just an observation. What worries me is that their dampened enthusiasm for the Amazon series will lead to lower demand for the show and thus less perceived demand for Lego products. For better or worse, the original films are the past of the franchise - they'll always be there, but they won't ever be the big new thing again. Kids just being exposed to the world now, who are also the kids who want Lego a lot, won't see the issues with the new series (see: Star Wars prequel fans). They'll want sets from the series as well as the films, and either be disappointed if the sets don't materialise, or those older fans who just want Lord of the Rings sets will be disappointed if sets don't materialise.

I don't think Lego are going to sit on their haunches and wait for the D2C's sales figures to come in before deciding to move forward. Maybe they'll not 100% lock-in more sets until then, but I wouldn't be surprised if they've already been quietly planning some possibles/have some designers doing a bit of work. It takes time to make a set, and what they absolutely don't want is for the D2C hype and the LotR hype to die down again before they can get their regular sets out. Especially if they're planning on following the D2C with a regular range of playsets - for those to be a success they'll need buy-in from kids, not just AFOLs who in some cases already have half the characters from the last range.

Lego have done exactly that in the past, though - sets like 3727 which just came with 100 1x2 bricks, or other similar sets. I'd love to see sets like that again, but we can only assume that Lego - knowing what the sales figures were for these sets when they were last on the market - is withholding them for a reason. Of course, there's also the question of which bricks and colours do you make available? According to Bricklink, there are 43 colours in use in 2023 sets (excluding the transparent/pearl/metallic colours) and even if you limit yourself to the very barebones line of basic elements, there are thirty-one different standard plates and bricks in the 1x and 2x sizes alone (not counting any longer than twelve studs, as those are usually quite niche in my experience). Already that's 1333 different colour/brick combinations. Throw in a basic set of slopes, corner/macaroni bricks, jumper plates and tiles and you're in the region of 3000 combinations. So that's way too much to sell each brick/colour in individual sets - especially given how little some of them would sell (1x4 bricks in white? Gonna sell loads. 1x2 jumper plates in yellowish green? Probably going to be warehouse warmers.) So they have to limit the combinations, and they probably have to make parts packs with more than one element in. But then it's a case of how do you pack these? Given the ubiquity of Pick a Brick and Bricklink now, there's an easily accessible threshold at which it's not necessarily cost-effective for someone to get a set for the basic bricks rather than just... buying the bricks. Let's imagine Lego came out with a line that included a pack of 2x plates in green (something they actually did before, with set 10059). If you just want a general assortment of green plates 2x then this is a fantastic pack for you but if you want a specific plate, I'm not sure it is. Set 10059 retailed, according to Bricklink, for $5. I can't find a price in £ and I'm not even sure it was available in the UK, but at the current exchange rate $5 is £4.13. Let's imagine, then, that a re-release of this exact set would cost £4.50. I'm getting a good deal on the parts here if I want all of them, but let's imagine hypothetically I only want 2x3 and 2x4 plates. In this scenario 2x2 is too small for my use case and 2x6 is too long. Okay. I'm getting 12 2x3s and 16 2x4s for £4.13, plus some parts I don't want. Or instead I could go to Pick a Brick and get exactly the same parts for £3.68, without the ones I won't use. At least when you buy a regular set for the parts, you also get a model out of it and a variety of parts. If you buy a pure parts pack, the parts you don't want have literally no use. So while most people would still get this set, there'd be some who'd choose not to. And that's a very common and useful set of parts in a useful colour. Less common colours are going to sell less, especially if they're packaged with parts you're unable to use because of their odd colour. Green plates are useful for grass - you can easily make a use for other colours there. What do you use your unwanted neon yellow macaroni bricks for? The NHS emergency rocket ambulance? So the range has to be culled, and Lego have to decide where to do the culling - all to sell parts packs to a limited subset of the customer base (AFOLs who want to build their own stuff, rather than displaying the sets). Especially when if they don't put those parts in parts packs, the same customer base will use Pick a Brick instead. Really, imo, the issue here isn't the death of bulk parts packs - but instead the gaps in the Pick a Brick range. What I would like to see Lego do is expand Pick a Brick to include their entire currently-produced range (for standard bricks; their portfolio is broad enough to justify potentially omitting some more niche parts) but also dividing parts into three categories rather than the current Bestsellers and Standard. Keep those two, of course, but also add a third category, of parts that don't get regular production runs but are in production - and which upon ordering clearly state that they'll be picked and shipped once they've accumulated enough orders to justify a production run (and this is where you have to limit it to currently-in-production parts, where in the worst case scenario it's a wait of a few months until the next batch of a set the part appears in is made; if it was the case that every possible combination of part and colour could be ordered, it might be years before some parts are ordered in enough quantity to justify actually making them).

Ah many thanks!! That's definitely the one. Sadly the key appears to have become separated from the motor at some point in the past. Maybe I'll find a key in another lot in the future!

In sorting through a recent ebay lot, I've come across a part I can't identify (pictures attached). It's 100% a red part, and has the Lego logo on the studs so I know it's genuine. Appears to be some sort of vehicle/train base but nothing in either category appears on the Bricklink database (at least that I can see) and searching for "4 x 10" in the search doesn't yield any matches either. There are two wheels attached, which seem to be part 3464 or some variant thereof. They turn in tandem with one another, and I'm not sure whether they're permanently attached to the brick or can be removed - I don't want to force them out, and they haven't shifted from a gentle tug. Equally, I'm not sure if it's a 2 x 8 brick stuck fast to the top of the part or whether it's actually part of the element. There's no part number on the brick, but at the bottom it's stamped "1" "01X". For what it's worth, most of the lot appears to be 80s/early 90s parts - mostly basic bricks with a smattering of Fabuland and Technic. Images in an Imgur album here (I can't remember how to resize embedded images and I don't want to clog the thread up with HUUUGE images!)

I mean, the Christmas Carol GWP the other year had three licensed figures, though most of the parts to make them weren't exclusive.

About six years old, I think. They were from 2001's Blue Bus (which I probably got End of Life as none of my other childhood collection is from 2001 but I do have a handful of 2003/4 sets) and I took the stickers off in 2008. I don't remember them being peeling but they might have been - I know the stickers that survived that same set intact (on the slope, for instance) are in a terrible condition now. Possible - but it's not like brickfilming is an unheard-of thing. Even in my childhood there was a decent community, and it's only swollen post Lego Movie/with the ubiquity of smartphones. Oh, I agree on that point. I was more likely growing up to not have a part at all than to have it ruined by a print. But my gut reaction was different each time - if I genuinely didn't have a piece, then that's that, but when I had exactly the piece I wanted in the colour I wanted but with a print on it, it had the sting of what might have been. Honestly I feel like I've somehow found myself arguing the stickers corner in a printed pieces thread, which isn't my intention at all - I prefer prints to stickers, usually, though I also feel like Lego have the tendency to overdo the decorations nowadays. I'd quite happily see the amount of decorations reduced to a fraction of its current number if they could all be done in prints. I just also remember my childhood days of hating anything printed that I couldn't use.

You might never have had this issue, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Many people - especially kids from less wealthy backgrounds - don't get very much Lego growing up. I was one of these. I have no siblings, and my mother's Lego was lost at some point in the 70s, so I inherited no Lego, and my family wasn't well-off enough that I could get much. Even though I was widely known as a huge Lego fan, I would get a handful of sets for Christmas (mostly £10/£20 sets, a £40 set if I was lucky) plus whatever I could save up to afford (I'd usually be able to scrape together about £50 to spend on Lego in a given year). Between 1998 and 2019, which were the years of my childhood collection/occasional set during my Dark Ages, I had a total of about 20k pieces - not anything to be sniffed at, but anybody here will know that 20k pieces drawn from twenty years of sets doesn't lend itself to having lots of the same part. I also made films with my bricks (still do, on paper at least). This meant that the models I built had to be visually consistent - I couldn't just have random prints/stickers in the way, as it would ruin the aesthetic. Regular bricks were like gold dust to me - I had more white bricks than any other colour, and even then I needed to use modified bricks with the pins/clips facing away just to be able to have a six-block-high wall the length of a 32x baseplate. I pretty much never applied stickers to my sets, specifically because I usually needed the parts without the stickers. And I have very definitely had to remove stickers before (from the sets I had as a kid where I applied them as per instructions) so I could use the parts. As an adult I'm lucky enough to be able to afford more Lego - and if I needed a specific part in a specific colour I didn't have, for 99% of occasions I can afford to buy it on Bricklink - so I don't need to worry about the stickers now. But that wasn't true when I was younger, and I'm sure there are loads of kids who withhold their stickers so they can use their bricks freely. The problem is not contrived at all. I would caveat this by saying that I would prefer printed parts on higher-end sets (anything £100 or above) - simply because these are generally supposed to be better products, are costing more money to buy, and are usually out of the range of affordability for those who would be working with small collections in the first place.

I've been way out of the loop with Harry Potter updates for a while now - but having just seen the announced new sets I have to give my opinion. Honestly, I'll probably end up getting most of them (the house common rooms eventually). They look nice, have interesting minifigs, and aren't prohibitively expensive. Can't help but wonder what it's going to take to get an Ernie Macmillan figure - I thought for sure a Hufflepuff set would do it, but they seem to have plumped for re-releases instead.