pombe

@astral brick Are you asking why if TLG can put out a line of 16 collectible mini figures for $3.99 each, why don’t they put out a line of 16 collectible micro sets for $3.99 each (sort of in the same vein as the advent calendars)? Maybe all 16 can be put together to make a micro city or a micro space colony or a micro medieval village?

I don't think microscale is underrated at all. And I think AFOLs definitely appreciate MOCs at that scale. As for TLG not putting out microscale polybags, I actually see the polybag for the microscale train right now on sale. There was another microscale train polybag recently for sale during Christmas. Then there's all the Star Wars polybags for X-wings, snowspeeders, and AT-ATs. And there were polybags for Marvel Super Heroes vehicles, like the SHIELD Quinjet and the jet from Black Panther. And there was the LEGO Batman Batwing polybag. And there were Creator and Speed Champion polybags for cars and semi truck cabs. There was a microscale Zane's tank from the LEGO Ninjago movie (which I bought several of to get those chain links!). And the entire Architecture line is microscale (though, not polybag). Then there was that Toys R Us exclusive line of mini-modulars, though those are gone now. I'm not sure I understand why you think that microscale is underrated.

Nice! I'm guessing you will have hangars, too. But that will require your spacecraft to have landing gears with wheels, so that they can taxi themselves, correct?

I love your Blacktron one and have been wanting to copy it for an eventual Classic Space base (or maybe a Blacktron one ). I love how it has pipes and details to make it look like it's functional and can supply whatever has landed. It always bothers me how small most LEGO landing pads are, which barely accommodate the vehicle, but this one is large enough to be realistic for most LEGO spaceships.

Neat topic! My first wooden sailing ship (pre-BoBS, built as part of Andromeda's Gates): My first BoBS ship: Probably my best BoBS ship, which is also a micro: The last wooden sailing ship I built :

Oh, something else happened. When I ordered the set, only the bunny polybag was available as a free gift, which arrived with the set. One day after I received both the pirates set and the bunny polybag, I got an email confirmation saying that my LEGO order was shipped again. It turns out that the easter egg set came back into stock and they sent it to me for free. So maybe for those who may not have had it available when they made their purchases earlier, you still may get it after the fact. I do admit to initially wondering if they had sent me a second pirates set by mistake.

Wow. That finale.

Those are quite precious! SKID MARKS ARE REAL!!! Wait, what, we're back? I thought we were done with this! Pish posh, Lucy. Anyways, toilet paper as a roll was actually not invented until after the Age of Sail. Until that happened, people would mostly use newspapers or magazines, nothing at all, or their left hands, which is why as a custom we shake hands with our right hands. In fact, the first documented use of paper to clean oneself after defecating was recorded in Medieval China. Note that splinter free toilet paper is a relatively recent refinement. This reminds me of a joke: did you hear about the movie named "Constipated"? IT NEVER CAME OUT!!! I hate you all.

I guess it's time to build some piratey things. For those who are still waiting on their set, here's the timeline for my order. Note that I am in the California bay area and that I chose the standard free shipping. I ordered my set at midnight-ish on April 1st, Pacific Time and it arrived in the morning of April 14. They must be really slammed, since FedEx wasn't even notified until April 8 and it was "In Warehouse" until April 10. Mine shipped from Illinois. Tuesday , 4/14/2020 10:45 am Delivered Signature Service not requested. 2:43 am On FedEx vehicle for delivery 2:32 am At local FedEx facility Monday , 4/13/2020 10:04 pm SACRAMENTO, CA Departed FedEx location 5:50 pm SACRAMENTO, CA Arrived at FedEx location 4:19 pm SACRAMENTO, CA In transit 5:17 am SALT LAKE CITY, UT In transit 5:07 am NORTH SALT LAKE, UT In transit Sunday , 4/12/20201:37 pmNORTH SALT LAKE, UT In transit 12:18 am COALVILLE, UT In transit Saturday , 4/11/20201:15 pmCOZAD, NE In transit 1:10 am ROMEOVILLE, IL Left FedEx origin facility Friday , 4/10/2020 5:51 pm ROMEOVILLE, IL Arrived at FedEx location 12:00 am ROMEOVILLE, IL Picked up Wednesday , 4/08/2020 4:14 pm Shipment information sent to FedEx

I saw this on Flickr and crapped myself immediately liked it. You need to make other letters so you can spell AWESOME!

Another awesome episode, @KotZ!!! The droid challenge looked fun, and again, Tyler and Amy really demonstrated their ability to make outstanding character builds with EZ-PZ. I have no experience with power functions, so I can only imagine how difficult this challenge was. All the Star Wars scene MOCs this week were incredible, given the 8 hour limitation. To be honest, I have no idea how they were able to do it with such a short amount of time. I personally would have placed Sam and Jessica's Crait scene at the top, given how much sense of motion their scene had, especially how they had the speeder tilted at an angle. Mark and Boone's Endor scene was incredible and had so many ridiculous details hidden in it, but the fact that the AT-ST was way out of scale with the minifigures really bugged me. Tyler and Amy's Hoth scene didn't bug me because of a lack of color (c'mon, it's Hoth), but because of a lack of motion. Yes, I understand that the AT-AT legs were being tied up by the Snowspeeder harpoon, but from a distance it seemed like it was just standing still. I also wished that the other AT-AT was "in" the snow, rather than "on" the snow, but the fact that they built 2 in 8 hours along with the rest of the scene was ridiculous.

Supported! Though, from my observation, support for Classic Space themed sets, even truly outstanding submissions, just tend to run out of gas and get nowhere near the required 10,000 votes. Why was the Exo-Suit so successful, while Peter Reid's Galactic Explorer doesn't seem to be nearly as popular (just over 2,500 votes with 64 days to go)? (vote for it here: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/d30ce870-6ede-486a-9d84-bcc9b9c6b5f9). It is an incredible MOC by an incredible AFOL dedicated to one of the most popular sets of all time. That must be a surefire formula for a successful submission, no? Just looking at the vote distribution, I would guess that it is exponentially difficult to achieve 10,000 votes. As of this post, there are a total of 2,150 submissions gathering support, with only 6 that have >9,000 votes. That's 0.27% of current submissions! And even then, there's no guarantee that they'll achieve the 10,000 votes, since if you look at the expired submissions (a total of 26,183) there are 5 that got >9,000, but couldn't clear the 10,000 hurdle. I guess what I am asking is: those IDEAS that got 10,000...what was their secret sauce? At first I thought it was beloved themes, like Ghostbusters, The Flintstones, or Voltron, but then I see the Old Fishing Store, Birds, and Treehouse, so that's not it. I'm left scratching my head, because I can't seem to determine which entries has their finger on the pulse of the consumer and which ones don't.

[DarthVader]NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!![/DarthVader] I had plans for that Classic Space tile!

First, I'm in the U.S.. LEGO Ideas Voltron retailed for $180 when it launched (lined up at the LEGO store on day 1 to buy it). Then, at Christmas, I saw it for $115 at Costco, which surprised the heck out of me. Who knows? You might get lucky.

Went to the website at midnight: Website Order Limit: 2 Wife Order Limit: 1 Now the wait begins....

I guess I'm just not understanding some of these celebrity co-hosts. I like Terry Crews and I thought he was funny, but I think it would have been much better if they had showcased his connection to LEGO (maybe show off his collection at home, his MOCs, him building with his children, or maybe just some childhood pictures of him playing with LEGO...something other than "I'm a big fan of LEGO"). As far as the competition goes, I think it's really heating up. I really like Tyler and Amy. Their MOCs are just exceptionally clean, polished, and well composed. Their execution and their ability to create a visual focus puts their builds above everyone else in my opinion. As far as the team that was eliminated: their technical ability is incredible and without doubt, but I think what hurt them was their inability to embrace the absurd.

Oh man...how am I going to convince the wife? I don't usually buy LEGO to build the sets, as I'm primarily a MOCer, but this is a masterpiece in design, marketing, and feels. I think I have to buy one just to build and keep as a set. Which means...I need to buy additional sets as parts packs to MOC with! Oh my poor, poor wallet.

#NygaardMemorialFleet Dedicated to Jens Nygaard Knudsen. Edit: instructions are now available for free here: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-55618/AlbertLee/ncs-lunar-hopper/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=approvemoc&elid=5380568

@KotZ Nice! They really focused a lot on the announcer and flagwaver! Interesting how there were so many engineers in the competition, but none of them used larger wheels to achieve more distance given the same angular velocity since they would all have the same starting acceleration due to gravity. The model that using wheels with no tires to minimize friction seemed to be the best, which was interesting to learn. Sort of makes me wish LEGO slot car racing was more of thing. Also interesting to learn that there is no official consensus on some LEGO jargon. The bridges were cool, and I also felt that Tyler and Amy were robbed. The initial criteria was which one could hold the most weight, period. And while they weren't allowed to go over 1000 lbs, their bridge had no cracks or damage at all (compared to the other one, which started to crack), so it would have made sense that they would win. As for aesthetics, both bridges were beautiful (to me) so it was just a subjective decision.

I agree that the episode 4 is better than the previous 3. All the hosts seem to feel more comfortable in their own skins (Will Arnett in particular seemed so uncomfortable for the first couple of episodes). And the surprise guests in episode 4 actually made sense, as opposed to episode 2 where they did the "let's bring a random celebrity with a PhD because only nerds play with LEGOs, even though she doesn't really have anything to do with the brand, because celebrity guest!". The judges' top two picks were pretty spot on. For some reason the Baby Shark song kept popping in my head, though... And @KotZ the popcorn was awesome!

I watched Ninjago and liked it. I gave Nexo Knights a try and found that the quality of writing wasn't as high and I stopped. That killed off my motivation to collect Nexo Knights except as parts packs. I just wasn't interested in the characters. Maybe someone who watched both more comprehensively can disagree and explain why I'm wrong? But to me it just seemed that the writing quality was very different.

@KotZ Great job on the detonator and Yorick! It must be great to see your MOCs featured on the show! I have to admit the first three challenges were very cool. Who would have thought to build a MOC with destruction in mind? And the half sculpture was a great idea, too. I'm going to say that I've been most impressed by Tyler and Amy so far. I thought their alien and telescope MOCs were fantastic! Their MOCs are the most well composed and thought out...their choice of colors is always perfect and makes their MOCs pop more than the others. I do feel bad for Jessica, I hope she and Sam can improve their relationship as the show progresses. I also feel that Mel and Jermaine don't get their fair share of air time.

This is the classical marketing/sales dilemma of being able to give the customers what they ask for, but not what the customers actually want. Customer survey after survey tells you what the customers are asking for, but when you produce the product based on that input and put it on the shelf, and it doesn't sell then it obviously wasn't what the customer wanted. The recipe analogy is apt; there's a reason why the industry calls it the "secret sauce". Finding and hiring people who truly have their finger on the pulse of the customer (as a population) is one of the most difficult achievements in any business.

Thank you, Jens. Words cannot express how much your work has meant to me.

Well said.