Grover

For completeness, and because some, like the bear and the mountain lion, may come back: Creatures available in July 2018: Black bear: 6212887 / 36603 Mountain Lion: 6215575 / 37166 Sabretooth tiger: 6237743 Mastodon: • Body: 6224747 • Head: 6227893 • Trunk: 6224750 • Tusk: 6146951 • Tusk Tip: 6110023 Available in Sept 2018: Crocodile (dark green): • Head: 6104420 / 20132 • Tail: 6103387 / 18906 • Body: 6103384 / 18904 Tiger: 6193877 / 34137 Eagle: 6232185 / 39172 Available April 2019: Scorpion (tan): 6259035 / 28839 Frog (tan): 6259036 / 28841 Polar Bear: 6227046 / 38725 I also bought one of the black pumas, but I can't seem to find the number now.

More theme euphamisms: Pre-Reniassance Western Europe Scientific and Engineering Imagination Building Learned Concealed Part Hairy Plodder (I swear, it's about a slow, shaggy horse!) Fusing astral body conflict

Ouch! Pricey! Just got notification that my last two B&P orders shipped. Be interesting to see how long they take to arrive.

The bear cavalry look good on the first page.

For what it's worth, the customer service rep who talked to me checked and said the lioness and the blue birds were unlicensed and good to go, whereas the white bird is licensed for some reason, despite being in unlicensed sets (usually the line for TLG). It's possible the white bird may be released later, unlike something that won't show outside of licensed parts, such as the hippogriff from HP.

Now we need our WhiteFang review so we can get better pics and see what the box distribution is.

I've had only one order that was short by one brick. Most orders I come in with 1-10 extra of each type or brick I order. In my experience, the more of a type or brick you order the more you get extra, especially with smaller pieces, so ordering 200 of something usually nets you a number of extras. Really big pieces tend to be dead on, regardless of count.

Just received the prize today! Thanks for @Henjin_Quilones and all the guild leaders who made this possible, and cheers to everyone. There were some really beautiful builds!

@Brandon Pea, I agree, I would like to see more 'regular' vehicles. Most of what I see on the road, at least here in the US, are passenger vehicle: sedans, SUVs, pickups, etc., but there are a LOT of non-emergency government and commercial vehicles, like road crews and construction trucks, delivery vehicles, etc. I think it would be neat to see some work trucks of both road workers and other general contractors, as well as a few sets with only a car or something. They had them a few years back. Maybe they didn't sell well?

One of my friends commented that there are so many police cars that Lego city must be a police state. Just by sheer number of police in city sets, it seems like 15-20% of the population must be deputized. It is a fair point, though, even with all the vehicles, what % are emergency vehicles? Much more than the usual % in a real city I suspect.

Well done! I think making functional brick built doors is one of the trickier propositions in Lego building and yours look very good!

I think some others have run into this before, but the white bird from the treehouse and the mail plane (among other things like the Jasmine CMF figure and some of the Aladdin sets way back when) is still marked as licensed, and the clerk told me that he didn't expect it to ever be available for sale. In my experience, that is unusual since pieces like that usually become available as soon as they are released in an unlicensed set, and they are now available in two unlicensed sets. Here's hoping for another recolor of the bird in something of a common color (brown, tan, dark tan, light grey, sand blue) that we can add to our cities en masse through B&P. I'm not crushed about the white bird since there aren't that many pure white birds, but I do find it kind of weird, especially since the blue one is available.

What a great creation! I love seeing re-imaginings of the old classic sets. You did a great job with the shape of the cave and how it opens into the ground. The path into it is particularly well done with the green plates over brown. If this were a different style MOC, I might suggest more ground variation (stones, different colored grass, etc.), but since it is a re-envisioning of a classic set, the green is the right choice. Your Flickr pictures are great, and I would encourage anyone reading this to click on the link and see the other pics. I like the use of the white birds on the trees as well. The construction of the siege engine with the makeshift derrick is great, too. I might have more suggestions if this were a different style MOC, but I think you really hit the Classic Castle style just right. Great job!

Not to get too off-topic here, but there are a number of ways to produce molds and a number of costs associated with that. Good molds with tight tolerances are usually made from steel and cost around $100k, a mix of design and fab time. TLG makes the best injection molded parts in the world with a tolerance of 1-2 microns usually. The design of these parts (flow, runners, sprues, etc.) is expensive, but I would bet that TLG has their own in-house design software and engineers, so that reduces their costs to some extent. Cheap molds are usually smaller molds that sit in a MUD (master unit die) frame. These are usually only prototype work, and I doubt that TLG would ever use such a thing. In particular, aluminum alloy molds typically only hold up for tens of thousands of shots and I strongly doubt that TLG would use such a material unless it's in a small R&D wing of their facility just to test a few shots to see about something new. As someone else mentioned, you can also put high quality steel mold inserts into a frame, for interchangability, cost savings, greater thermal conductivity of a different metal base, slight part to part variation, etc. Not to be confused with insert injection molding (different process). With respect to the goat, there are a lot of factors we don't know, and I suspect unless someone with injection molding experience talks to one of TLG's floor engineers who has had hands on the mold, we won't know for sure. The molds themselves are not 'fragile' in the sense of them shattering or something (they're made from metal), but with a mold having tolerances that tight, it's pretty easy to knock it out of alignment by mishandling. Consider that these molds usually weight hundreds of kilos and are usually moved with a forklift. One dropped mold and it's out of spec. Inserts can help with this since they can be reused, but if the mold was a one-piece back then, it may not have been salvagable. There are also questions of overmolding and which machines it could run on (not all machines have overmolding capability), if the mold has a heated sprue or runner, if the mold was cooled (not all the machines have cooling lines compatible with the molds, etc.), and the actual size of the mold itself. Some machines have tie bars and other such features that do not enable the placement of molds of certain sizes within, and others requires specific minimums for clamping force that not all machines are capable of producing. One-off molds like the Chimia molds may have been made from lesser metals to save on costs (it's amazing to me that TLG makes as many new molds as they do considering the cost of making them!), but we don't know what the goat mold is made from or how it was put together. On the upshot, the goats out there don't seem to have any structural flaws, so TLG probably didn't retire the mold due to integrity issues, and thus the original flow design is probably good and such a mold would not require redesigning. Additionally, since this Ideas set won't come out for another year or so, there may be time to produce the goat mold again if they wish to. On the other hand, the absence of the goat since its original set brings up a lot of questions about the availability of the mold itself, its original construction (if it was meant as a one-off), or if there are other issues (printing, etc.). I would guess that there are a number of factors that have conspired to keep us from having the goat. And, back on topic, I hope we get the goat again so that we can buy it on B&P!

Yeah, they're all out of Billund. Depending on where they ship, they go to a hub/distribution area first to go through customs. Usually the closest hub, but not always. I've received B&P orders from NJ, AZ, CA, and NY before, but the origin is always Denmark.

I don't mind road vehicles, but they have way too many helicopters in my opinion, and in general too many boats. I refuse to buy helicopter sets anymore. I wish they made more residential houses and apartments.

Are you sure that the reference wasn't discussing a mold in temporary storage (such as in the second page of the thread below)?

Unless the molds were poorly designed (unlikely due to the robustness of the goat pieces), the molds themselves are likely fine, as quality steel molds hold up for hundreds of millions of shots. If the goats were overmolded, however, it may be that they require a specific machine to run them that is tied up with other parts (the overmolding machines are more expensive and less common). Printing is probably not an issue, but assembly may be tricky or require a specific machine again. Lots of speculation, so unless an employee tells us, we won’t know what the status of the goat mold is.

We can always dream...

Yeah, that's way too long unless you live in Australia or something. Also, everyone get ready... the new Lego Ideas Medieval Blacksmith shop might just have a goat! I don't care if they're $4 each, still better than the $30-50 they go for on BL. B&P will have a LOT of my money. It will likely have a lot of animals and a bunch of great pieces in any case.

I am really shocked. I never thought in a million years they would pick this set to produce. I am quite happy nonetheless, and will probably max out the number of copies they let me buy. Without a proper castle theme, I think the best thing to do is for all of us to support it with our money and let TLG know that there is still a lot of excitement about Castle. Also, here's hoping they add a goat.

I’d call again. I called and got the birds and the lioness a few days back and they’ve shipped. $1.09 USD per bird. Still haven’t seen the white ones though they are in unlicensed sets (such as the mail plane and the treehouse).

Ordered Jan 31. Shipped Feb 6th (although no update of that until today). Be interesting to see how long this takes to arrive.

Great job! I really like the wooden framed stone. The angled slats look good, and fit right in with the Neo shield pieces in brown. The incorporation of the Mitgardian colors looks great too. My favorite part of the build is the use of the new 1x1 corner pieces to make corners for a cheese slope roof. I've always wondered how to pull that off, and it really looks good. The overall colors look good, too, in terms of composition. The only question that I have is if this is supposed to be the spring/summer in the north, is that an appropriate amount of vegetation? It almost feels like a jungle to me with the density. I am used to seeing a more sparsely foliated tundra appearance, although if this is southern Mitgardia, it may be quite appropriate. Well done!

I just ordered almost the same time you did and got the same thing. I called and apparently they had an issue with payments that caused them all to look bad. They looked into it and all was well, so it's going through now. You should double check to make sure that was the issue with your order, though.