Alexandrina

I'd just like to highlight this little part of your comment to say that I would love it if some globally-influential powerhouse concerned with world history were to emerge. IMO history is the most fascinating subject, so the more resources get put towards it the better. I do think that one difficulty certain periods in history would pose (and by 'certain periods' I mean basically everything that's not medieval or age of sail or Roman or Ancient Egyptian) is the lack of an agreed-upon cultural mythos, at least in the western market. Roman and Egyptian themes could be done as easily as Castle or Pirates, because as periods of history they have a lore which - while not strictly historical - is instantly recognisable. There are tropes you can do that will make those periods evident even without the underlying history being spot on. Minifigures with togas and laurel wreathes, with gladiators and chariots, are going to be obviously Roman - Lego don't have to go into the gritty gory bits, nor do they have to make up their own tropes. Equally, Ancient Egypt has pyramids, hieroglyphics and the aesthetic of their gods. Lego could do a theme with these aspects and not touch on the ins and outs of mummification. They can make their own child-friendly pseudo-history from the cultural imprints. Compare that with something like 12th century Ethiopia (random example off the top of my head). It doesn't have the same pre-determined tropes, so Lego have a choice. Either they make sets as historical as possible, covering every detail with as much accuracy as the blocks allow, or they pick and choose. And whatever they do, the fact is that many periods are many times more interesting than they are widely known.

Nothing in there says that you have the right to a refund because you didn't enjoy the set - so long as the model is as advertised and the bricks aren't broken, you're out of luck. True - not that you actually had any way of knowing that from my comments. In any case, I only said you come across as hating Lego - which you do, given that all your comments seem to be grousing at the company's business practices and their products, including often-contradictory complaints within the same comment. I'll ask again: what could Lego do that would satisfy you? I notice by the way that despite having a multitude of responses to your post, each addressing issues you had and explaining why things are the way they are, you've so far engaged with very little. I myself quoted and responded to six different specific points from your original comment, answering issues you've had, and the only part of my response you chose to engage with was a single off-the-cuff comment. Furthermore, you keep talking about how logic dictates that what Lego are doing doesn't make sense, but as far as I'm aware you've not laid out the logic which tells you this. I for one don't see how Lego are being logically inconsistent.

Viking and Castle coexisted the first time, so there's no reason they couldn't again. Maybe not so much Greek, but kids absolutely love Roman and Egyptian stuff. In the UK at least, they are historical curriculum subjects in Year 2 and Year 4 respectively (or at least when I was at school, and I don't think much has changed since then). That's kids aged six to nine getting excited about Romans and Egyptians - you bet your life they'll want the bricks too.

Where is Lego going? Nowhere. Lego have been the premier construction toy brand for decades (their last true rival, Tente, went to the wall about thirty years ago, and I don't think even they ever outperformed Lego). In that time, every new initiative is heralded as a portent of doom by a subset of fans, and every time Lego gets stronger. The sets today are better than they've ever been, and only improving. The company is a titan, investing in the future. I personally don't like the concept of the new Mario sets (not really new any more, but still). What I have done about it is not buy them - there's plenty of other things I do have interest in. But that doesn't mean I think Lego is dying, they have just made a theme that doesn't interest me. Just like Monster Fighters didn't interest me, just like Technic doesn't interest me, just like a dozen other themes. All companies have to evolve with the changing times, and Lego are no different. For an idea of what happens to a company that doesn't evolve successfully, see Woolworths. Pop in to your nearest Woolies and tell me what you find. (Disclaimer: this won't work if you are in Australia or anywhere else where Woolworths is an active brand).

I would guess that they had to make adjustments to contrast so the design would look better in gold, and while they were changing it anyway they figured they could tidy up the print a bit.

You have yet to give any compelling reason why this scheme is fishy marketing - and the frankly dismissive tone with which you mention "TLG cheerleaders" when referring to the vast majority of AFOL's for whom this initiative is a good idea makes me think that you have your mind set and won't listen to people explaining to you again how this all works. If you a) don't expect instructions to be included and b) are prepared to wait for 3,000 others to purchase the same extra coaches before they are shipped - and if that threshold is never reached, you're prepared to not receive the coaches - in that case it would be equivalent. Since that doesn't appear to be what you mean, it's a false equivalence. You likely already know this, though. Not at all. You order the sets through Bricklink, Bricklink distributes the sets. Lego provide the parts. That they own Bricklink is immaterial - nobody would say it was a logistical fiction if Pepsi ran a promotion in collaboration with Walkers Crisps, even though Walkers are a PepsiCo subsidiary. Would you rather they split the Train Fan votes so neither set got to the threshold? As I explained to you in the other thread, part of the design process that the designers have to complete is building the sets with physical bricks so they know the design works. You don't get refunds for a normal Lego set if the design is slightly flimsy, and this won't be any different. (If the bricks themselves were compromised, you probably could get a refund - but that's not especially likely to happen). There are train sets of some sort pretty much every year. It's a theme like any other - sometimes it's the vogue, sometimes it's not. It's the same thing with Castle, Pirate, etc. You have to remember that Lego is not a specialty train hobbyist company. They are a plastic brick company who make sets of all kinds, some of them trains. On top of this, the last time Lego had lots of trains and coaches available on the retail market at the same time, they didn't sell. Since then Lego have nearly gone to the wall, rethought their business practices and bounced back. Is it any wonder that they're reluctant to repeat the actions of their worst years? Honestly, it feels to me like you have a bone to pick with Lego to the point that you're determined to hate them no matter what they do. You're complaining in your post about the lack of train sets while also complaining about the mechanism which is allowing you to get a new train set (and accusing Lego of dodgy marketing, and their fans on Eurobricks of being corporate stooges, while you do so). How can they win? What could Lego realistically do that would satisfy you?

Oh, I know - we would never have seen a license. I only mentioned it as it was the face of the genre in popular media for some time and just... died.

You know that illegal builds is just a Lego term, right? Many of them have been used in sets before, and they're certainly not going to face any hot water for using one now. As for impossible, part of the process is physically building the sets - if it's impossible, that will be spotted then. In what way are they rationing supply? Most non-licensed in production parts can be freely bought from Bricks and Pieces, and the Designer Program won't be introducing parts to the market that would otherwise be unavailable. It's effectively a large Bricks and Pieces order with digital instructions included, all prepaid. Most suggestions I have seen for a similar business model (not saying your suggestion is this, just an observation) tend to involve either remaking old sets, out of production parts and all, or introducing brand new moulds. I've seen a lot of people asking for specific new parts for Trains sets, for example. Things like this necessitate a higher production run since the addition of parts not in the current Lego toolbox adds new costs. It is conceivable that Lego could afford to extend this scheme as a permanent thing, producing sets that only utilise existing parts and only making the sets once they reach a set threshold of pre-orders, but without the targeted pooling of pre-orders into a set number of ideas for a set time frame, it'll be harder to reach the threshold.

The optimist in me says robes. The pessimist says they'll keep up with the anniversary theme and give us the Moments Torsos. Though having a Hufflepuff torso would be welcome, so swings and roundabouts!

I thought the assumed wisdom was that those torsos were anniversary torsos. It would be odd for the anniversary figures not to have the anniversary torso prints, no?

I'm sure at the time I wanted the other buses, but I never got any of them. At that point, getting a toy of any sort on a trip to town was a rare treat, and I was asking for other things for Christmas (though I have no idea what - I don't remember any Christmases before 2004 and I don't think I have any presents left from that long ago either!) I do know that I kept the spare stickers on their sheet for a long time after building the set. I have Microstars figures from 2005 and 2006 (McBride, Veron and Campbell if memory serves) with Lego squad numbers stuck on the bases, even though the set was several years old by that point. I also know that I peeled the country flags off the windows in a very destructive fashion some time ago, so they're long gone.

When Lego produce a conventional set, they have to produce the set in advance of it going on sale, in anticipation of it doing well. This is why you often see sets still in shops years after release, for themes like The Lego Movie 2 that didn't do well - they were made and never sold, and now they're excess. On top of this, they have the costs of printing manuals, paying one of their designers to refine the set to make it production ready, and the possible costs of new moulds/recoloured parts, depending on whether the set in question calls for them. That's a lot of money to put forward with no guarantee of seeing a return, so Lego pick a small number of Ideas submissions for this treatment - the ones they believe will be the bestsellers. The Designer Program differs in a few key respects. First off, there are no physical instructions - a printing cost saved on every set produced. On top of that, the fan design will be used as-is unless there's an issue of unavailable parts that makes this impossible. They're no longer needing to pay one of their designers to recreate the Idea from scratch, just a cursory go-over to make sure it's possible to produce the set physically and change a few bricks here and there if need be. A third point - and disclaimer, I could be wrong on exactly what the Designer Program entails, so someone else might correct me on this - is that Designer Program sets are limited to the existing Lego range of parts and colours. The parts are going to be being made anyway, so it's easier to divert some production towards this than it would be to fire up disused moulds for a limited-run set. On top of this, as I previously mentioned, Lego have no risk here. They aren't gambling on sets selling - they're only making the sets that reach 3,000 pre-orders and maxing out at 5,000 pre-orders, so the full production run will be known and payment committed to before a single brick is made. That's very different to blindly making a set with no guarantee that anybody will buy it.

I wonder how many of us started out with these larger bricks, somewhere half-forgotten in our memory banks? I'd forgotten until you shared the picture of your first set, but I used to have a push-along trolley filled with large bricks (I'm not sure, but I don't think they were Lego brand - the bricks were about four times the size of Duplo bricks). It was great - all the bricks lived in the trolley, and the sides were studded to allow for construction. I used to make "tower bridge" (in reality just all the bricks stacked as high as they could on either side with a very flimsy beam running across the middle) and then let the trolley roll down a sloping path in my Nan's back garden so I could watch the tower fall down when the trolley hit something at the bottom. Endless fun! Then I learned about the Fire of London in school, so my new favourite game was making a town plan out of the bricks, each 1 x 1 representing a house, and then pretending to be the Fire, tipping them on their side as the house 'burnt down'. Not sure what the game was, since there was no impediment to me eventually tipping all the bricks on their side.

The same reason there's a shortage of Castle products, or Wild West products - Lego don't have the means to sell every possible set, so they chop and change year on year while maintaining their most profitable lines. Train had a very good run as a regular staple of the Lego line, and in recent years gets plenty of bones through other product lines. Sure it's been a while since there was a full range of Train sets, but through sets like the Disney Train or the Ghost Train Express as well as things like the Crocodoile Locomotive and last year's Train GWP there's usually some sort of train on the shelves. In the future they'll probably try a full range again, as part of their rotation through themes - and if it sells well enough it'll continue, if it doesn't sell well enough it'll end.

I didn't realise that this was Twitter for Lego, with a character limit. I've not written a huge long comment, nor padded it out longer than it needs to be. Agreed. I don't have the budget to pre-order all the sets that look like they have potential, so it's going to be the final designs that win me over on a few of them - but the train station is in a very good position right now.

In that, the fall from grace of Game of Thrones can't have helped, especially with nothing in the genre ready to replace it. The Witcher went some way (though that series had major issues in my view, to the point that I'd argue that it's worse than Game of Thrones ever was) but you're right - it's the coming Lord of the Rings/House of the Dragon/Wheel of Time that'll revitalise the genre. The Wheel of Time particularly - at least the bit I've read so far - seems like its archetypes could be easily transplanted into a Lego world.

I actually don't know which specific set was my first. As early as I can remember, I had a small Lego collection which consisted of 3041 Big Bucket of Fun, 4121 All Kinds of Animals and 4171 Spot & Friends, as well as (for some reason) a couple of light grey castle wall panels - I don't know where they came from, since I was an only child and my mum's only Lego was second-hand when she got it in the 1960s and long-lost by the time I came along. The first set I remember getting was 3405 Blue Bus This was followed by 4731 Dobby's Release and a couple of Racers sets before I entered a brief childhood Dark Age. That ended when, obsessed with Lego Star Wars II on DS, I bought 6205 V-Wing Fighter

[I edited the text I quoted only to omit the double line-breaks for conciseness] They're committing to producing the first thirteen sets from the programme which reach a pre-order threshold of 3,000 buyers - and are capping the supply of any given set to at most 5,000. No sets will be produced until that threshold is reached. They already know that the number of each set they'll need to produce is going to be between 3,000 and 5,000, and presumably the price will be slightly bumped up to cover costs. I'm not aware of any clone manufacturers that explicitly seek to produce limited-run sets in a way that Lego don't. And it's disingenuous to make out that Lego are hiding their activities, as though they're doing some shady backroom dealing. These sets are already going to cost less to produce than a traditional Ideas set. A set which is approved is going to have a Lego designer rework it to make the most marketable model, and considerable time spent on marketing, packaging, physical instructions. I don't know if these sets are allowed to have recoloured parts, but I'm fairly sure they won't be seeing new moulds - unlike Ideas sets, which always have the possibility of new moulds if the model necessitates it. But these sets will use the designer's model pretty much as-is (their FAQ does mention the possibility of making a minor change if a part isn't available). Lego can produce a predetermined number of parts which will presumably be shipped in bulk to somewhere else where they will be parted out into the sets. Don't forget that there's also no risk on the production. A traditional set, Ideas or otherwise, is produced and then sold. Every copy of a Designer Program set will be sold before a single brick is produced. You seem really upset by Lego doing something which many people want to see. Should they instead not bother with the Designer Program?

I think it's a different jumper - presumably he was upset his favourite one was torn so he went to buy a replacement. The one in Chamber has three wider 'pillars' of the twisted fabric in the middle of the jumper and straight stripes the rest of the way, whereas the one in Philosopher's has equal-width stripes of smooth and twisted fabric alternating.

One of the sets included in the summer leaks is supposedly a pink castle. I'm not 100% sure if it's even confirmed to be pink or if that's just an assumption from the name/theme (it's called something like Candy Castle). On top of that, they're no more guaranteed for the future than Castle/Pirate/Space were in their heyday. (Well, there'll always be a Town theme of some sort, but other than that...) It would be a brave soul who'd stake any money on Ninjago ending in 2021, while it's still an incredibly popular theme, but eventually it'll enter a decline - all themes do - and at that point it would make sense for Lego to retire it, make room for something new, and bring it back a few years down the line when it's fresh again (though Ninjago as a story-based theme is probably not going to return as is after a hypothetical multi-year hiatus). I'd be surprised if Ninjago continues its run through to 2030 without an interruption - simply because that's the lifespan of a Lego theme. Friends is a different beast - I don't actually know much about it, but my impression is that it's sort of a modern-day Paradisa with minidolls rather than minifigures - but that's not immune either. Other than Town and Basic, I'm not sure any theme in Lego's repertoire is immune to being dropped. It's a good thing for all medieval fans that Castle has retained such a strong following during its off years. How much clamouring is there for themes like Fabuland to make their triumphant return?

I'm not sure I have much that's especially rare. I've got the classic Yellow Castle with four grey visors rather than one of each colour, but I picked it up second-hand in a bulk lot so I don't know if it was a mispackage that came that way or if the original owner traded the coloured visors with friends who owned the same set back in the day. Other than that, the rarest figure I have is probably Queen Amidala from the Gungan Sub, based on her resale price. I also have set 2064 Air Ambulance, which only 180 people have according to Rebrickable and the similarly rare 7696 Commuter Jet. I always used to get the promotional set on the plane when I went on my summer holidays around that time, which has done more for the rarity of my collection than anything I've bought at retail/hunted down elsewhere.

Ah, fair. I didn't actually watch the video as I don't like it as a format for conveying information, so I just scrubbed to a good shot of Hooch/Quirrell and looked at the paused frame. Missed Ron altogether. I don't have any issue myself with Ron having stars on his jumper. Harks back to the starry capes of old.

You're bored of debating, because you posted your opinion on a public forum and I engaged with it while offering an opinion of my own? I'm a bit confused as to why me pointing out the fact that pink castles are not a historical impossibility somehow renders every view I have on the subject to be the view of a tiny tiny minority. You saying your opinions are 'common sense opinions' doesn't automatically make them correct, and mine wrong - and as I already mentioned, I'm not sure they are necessarily common sense so much as one of two competing views. I'm well aware that recent Castle factions have tended to have opposing factions. It doesn't follow that just because past themes have done that means future themes will. Maybe not so much in Castle, but through Lego in general there are plenty of precedents for subthemes without opposing factions. The aforementioned Fire subtheme of Town/City is a good example. Paradisa never had enemies that I'm aware of (though the moustachioed waiter in Sand Dollar Café is a little shady if you ask me). Even in historical/action-oriented themes, the Native Americans subtheme of Western didn't have any opposing factions (they were on sale at the same time as the previous year's bandits/cavalry, but never included in a set together). The Time Cruisers and Time Twisters never shared sets, or even a year of release. There are definitely ways Lego can do even a full Castle theme without distinct opposing factions - and I'm not saying they're my preferred choice, or the best choice, but the possibilities exist. On top of that, I was a kid once, not too long ago. Often I'd only have a single set from a theme, so even the themes with distinct factions were often distilled to a single faction in my play. It never stopped me having fun. It never stopped me wanting more sets. If Lego believed that it was impossible to sell sets without two factions, they'd have both factions in every set from a wave - not just available at the same time. Bricklink lists, for instance, eighteen sets under the Rock Raiders label. Two of them contain the rock monster, the sole enemy of the Rock Raiders. One of those two was the flagship big set. I'd wager that a great many kids in 1999/2000 had Rock Raiders sets without having the Rock Monster (anecdotally, I've bought three collections second-hand in the last twelve month that had Rock Raiders parts, and not a trace of either of the two sets with the rock monster despite pretty much every other set being accounted for - but take this with more salt than the ocean because it's a pure anecdote). Lego can't rely on kids having enough money to buy every set in a theme - and usually even the ones they can buy will be one at a time. While us AFOLs can often afford to drop more money than is sensible on new sets the day they come out, kids might scrape together their pocket money/birthday money for a set, and then have to save all over again for the next one. In recent historical themes Lego have generally done this. A quick glance through the last three Castle waves (Castle 2013, Kingdoms & Fantasy Era) and the most recent Pirates wave has turned up only three non-polybag sets that didn't include both active factions (I may have missed a few more) and one of those was Blacksmith Attack, which did include an innocent blacksmith against the set's knight. (Incidentally, I remembered this because Blacksmith Attack was for a long time my only Castle set, until I got Prison Carriage Rescue a year or so later and finally had enemy knights.) I concede that it's likely they'll do it again when Castle returns as a full theme (barring maybe one or two smaller sets with a single figure, a la the original Knights' Kingdom or the 2009 Pirates). But it's not guaranteed. After all, Lego could easily have put an enemy faction in the Blacksmith or the 3-in-1 this year, if they wanted to. This is a public forum full of AFOLs with varying views. Acting like it's not even debatable that nobody could possibly want a set - having already seen at least one person in this thread (me) saying that they do want that set - is a bit presumptuous. Especially when nobody here's ever said that a pink castle is exactly what the masses have been clamouring for. All I have ever said is that the Vidiyo set (not intended to be a Castle set in its own right) may not necessarily be ahistorical, and may well provide some useful parts.

Can't say I remember a minifig with stars on the jumpers. Though I agree - there were never stars on the Hogwarts cloaks, yet the original capes were spangled more than an American banner.

Having seen the new minifigures, I must say I'm really impressed. Hooch, in particular, actually has a face print that looks like Hooch (the rear print) for the first time ever. I'm not sure if Quirrell ever has stars on his clothes in the films - but then he's never bright gold from head to toe in the films, so screen accuracy isn't my priority for his figure, and the stars are definitely evoking the childlike whimsy of the original Harry Potter sets/figures.