Flak Maniak

A+; this is easily the most unpopular post in the thread. You win. None of us can compete with this post.

Yeah, you get it; imagine a bucket with some large green plates, and pieces in green, dark and/or light bluish gray, reddish brown, and one or so accent colors (red or blue). Hell, imagine one bucket with green + dark bluish grey + dark brown + red, one with bright green + light bluish grey + reddish brown + blue, and one with lime + black + dark tan + dark purple (Ragana's Shadow Castle colors), things like that. Just, restricted and cohesive color palettes, and high quantity of parts per-color. Show some example fantasy buildings on the box. Oh, and a bonus pirate one, with blue + white + yellow or something, Imperial fortress colors. Whatever. You can make up your own variants. And yeah, as you say, it wouldn't even have to be marketed solely as "landscape and architecture". Just, various example builds from those colors. And, maybe even four colors is too few. But, even if you go up to, I don't know, seven colors with significant parts, it's still way more cohesive than the current Classic lineup. You can put it on a lot of places on the specificity spectrum, between "M-Tron box" and "somewhat restricted-palette big brick box with vague build ideas related to those colors". Side note, whenever they'd do the for-four-year-olds "Castle box" or "Pirate box" or whatever, they'd have a couple theme-appropriate minifigs (good!), some specialized (and often printed) pieces as conceptual build-starters (sure), and a few other appropriate-color pieces, and then extra bricks... In seemingly random colors. And I never got that. I mean, I can't speak for the four-year-olds, or for their parents, but if I'd been in charge, I'd have had more color scheme cohesion in those "Brick suitcase + concept" products, seeing as they're the closest thing to this idea.

Here's how Lego can do castle fans a solid: Just, look at the "classic" theme on Lego's website, how much plastic per-dollar that is. Then, imagine that, but just in light and dark bluish grey. Just, pick the part composition of one of these sets, have fewer and the right colors and... Presto. Look at Bricks Bricks Bricks, or Bricks and Animals, or Bricks Bricks Plates, or Creative Building Bricks. Now imagine a monochrome version. I mean, a dark bluish grey brick bucket with that kind of value per-dollar, I would buy five. I guess this is an even simpler version of my old-timey notion of classic-themed brick buckets. (I mean you can fill in the details in your mind; imagine a "castle bucket", or an "M-Tron bucket" or whatever; just parts in those colors appropriate to the theme, and a couple minifigs.) But, forget about themed buckets. Just give me monochrome or restricted-palette buckets. (Reminds me to call and ask about buying some K-boxes of 1x4 bricks.) Sure, I get it; Lego's testing must say that the kids want as many colors as possible available. (Hmm, what did we think when we were kids? I think I'd have enjoyed having high quantities of specific parts/colors.) But, just, they can easily sell these big brick buckets to me now, if there's higher quantity per part/color combination, and fewer colors. Look, many of these colors are great; I just don't want that many in the same box. You can sell me a box of 1,500 lavender bricks; I'll build a lavender castle.

Yes exactly. If they're going to be making horses for current sets, some or all of those sets should have saddles.

So, I haven't actually ordered any of the tan horses. But... As long as horses are going to be available... Shouldn't SADDLES be available, too? Come on, Lego! (I of course want some saddles to go with the reddish brown horses I got off the wall at the Lego store years and years ago.)

It varies enormously, and often takes a long time. For example, I just checked my orders, and none of the B&Ps placed March 14 or later have arrived. The latest one that's gotten here was placed on March 8. That one got here a while ago; probably more than a week. I'm in the US, for the record. At least the US shipping is extremely cheap, at $3. Just, if you need parts extremely soon, B&P isn't your thing. Just be patient; the parts will get to you eventually. Your in-progress builds will still be there!

Design IDs, you mean. And yes, I did check them all. I just could have sworn that the pearl dark grey ones were on B&P at some point. Probably I'm misremembering. Wait, they sent you Ronin's head? That's sick! It's not available on B&P at all! I wanted to buy a bunch of Ronin's minifigure parts, including several of his head, but they're not on there.

Weren't lightsaber hilts in pearl dark gray available at one point? I feel like I saw them on there a while back, but they're no longer listed. Brickset still lists them, element ID 6122727. But B&P doesn't show 'em.

Tell me if this counts as truly unpopular: I don't like how much leg printing these days is matched up to torso printing. In fact, I'm not even that into leg printing to start with. I think if Lego had set the precedent about ten years ago that leg printing would appear hardly ever, and then stuck to it, we'd still be used to plain legs with maybe different-colored hips, and it would look fine to us. You don't look at old Aquazone minifigs and say "this needs leg printing". But, more to the point, if there's going to be leg printing, I want it to end decisively at the hips, in a belt. So that it's useful with more torsos. Super-matched printing creates a nice one-off minifig, but in general I want the torso print to have a conclusive end at the bottom of the torso, so that it will look plausible against various printed (and unprinted!) legs. I don't mind that generally Lego has decided to do more printing over time, and that it gets more intricate and slowly changes style. I just want the modularity preserved.

Remind me; was the Sword of Gryffindor from the recent HP CMF available? And if so, what was its element ID?

Huh; I didn't think I wanted any Swords of Gryffindor, but, now I'm off to check if they're on B&P...

I dunno if this torso is too fancy for your tastes, but try Vaughn Geist's torso and legs, from Hidden Side: 6310346 (torso) 6302226 (legs) Pretty good cowboy outfit, if you ask me. (And yes, I checked; they're still in stock, even though many of the summer 2020 parts are gone-forever now.)

I don't know if this one counts as "unpopular", but surely you can at least give me a "controversial": I think many online fans are far too concerned with "what sets Lego makes". No, what I think matters is cheap and consistent access to useful parts, in good colors, in high quantities. The price of commodity parts affects me more than the design of whatever new marquee set does. New sets are useful to me insofar as they contain interesting new parts, or parts in new colors, that I will buy later on BrickLink or Bricks & Pieces. If anything, I understand the licensed minifig collectors more; yeah it's a lot more work to design minifig prints or specialized new molds yourself, than to merely make your own builds! I understand the desire for Lego to come out with new prints and molded parts for XYZ character. (I mean, I understand it; I don't share it. I don't want licensed figs; just cool new Lego-original figs that spark my imagination.) I suppose the contemptuous, "evil" version of this post would be, "online Lego fans need to be told what to do, and are too obsessed with 'official' configurations of parts and cardboard boxes, too much about collecting canonical products and not enough about what we did as children: BUILDING FROM OUR IMAGINATIONS!" And by "building from our imaginations", I mean "shopping on BrickLink all day while vaguely fantasizing about what sorts of builds these parts might go towards, and oh, my, that many of THIS part, in THAT color, for this price? How can I not buy them? I'm sure I'll find a good use for them eventually!" What I mean to say is, if you want XYZ subject matter depicted, you have the power. Free your mind, and your bricks will follow!

Wait, the oldish longsword (second photo in your post) fits? I wouldn't have guessed! I keep wishing that designed-for-katana holders would fit that sword blade, and they keep not fitting it! Well, I guess I'm off to BrickLink to get some of that scabbard, then.

What's the element ID for the light purple hair? Trying to check if I've ordered that hair piece in that color before.

You actually managed to order the Vidiyo parts? Sick! (Even for the short time those were available, only the Europeans ever saw them as in-stock, right? I checked a few times while they were listed and they were never available here in the States. I'd have gotten a dozen Alien DJs if they were.) Also, is the rope-with-handles still showing as available to you? Because I checked the three design IDs that BrickLink lists for that part, and the one that had a green entry on B&P showed out of stock.

As the title says. I don't have any of this part on hand. It looks like it's designed to fit with the standard old-timey pirate cutlass. Can it also fit with standard katanas, or other notable swords?

Yes, but why is a render in a nonexistent color used to represent the part? Who made that render, anyway?

Perhaps a frivolous question, but why is BrickLink's default picture for part 35635 in dark purple, when the part ostensibly doesn't come in that color?

All of this speculation about pirates and the lack thereof in IDEAS/BL-IDEAS... Well, either it points to the good end, where these things are snubbed because Lego has something substantial in the works, or the bad end, where nothing of the sort is under consideration at all... (Perhaps because Lego thinks that Barracuda Bay/Creator pirate ship are saturation for this kind of product?) Which is to say, I have no idea which is correct, but the middle ground seems unlikely.

Shipping time just varies a lot. I didn't make any orders before mid-2020, so I can't speak to the pre-pandemic era, but... The shipping times have not been consistent at all for me, and unless they were different before 2020, I doubt they ever will be consistent. Which is fine, really. I'm not in some tremendous hurry to get parts when I order B&P. They'll get to me eventually, that much I trust. But also, for orders in the States at least, they only charge $3 shipping, which is ridiculously low. I can't possibly complain about slow shipping if it's only $3 per order. I mean, not that I really mind slow shipping anyway. Last night I looked at some stuff, and the last order that has yet reached me was made on Feb 15. The order after that, from March 2, hasn't gotten here yet. The Feb 15 order probably got here a couple weeks ago. Also, only tangential to B&P, but wow, sets retire quickly these days. Early 2020 Ninjago sets? Retired. Hidden Side summer 2020 were gone-forever in early February if not before as far as B&P went. I was told those parts were no longer manufactured. I wish I'd ordered more of the heads for the summer 2020 Hidden Side goons! I guess the lesson is, whenever there's new and cool parts on there, buy a lot! Oh and in sorting one of my recent B&P orders, it said I'd ordered ten of one minifig legs and twelve of the matching torso, and I thought, surely that can't be right... Did I make a mistake? The packing list said ten and twelve. So I went to my orders on the website... And it said twelve and twelve! But, this order said "in warehouse", and for that part's entry, it said, well, "in warehouse". So I guess I've got to call them about it, and ask what's up.

Very good work. Not only does it have that proper Garmadon color scheme, but... Your build captures the Lego idiom, if you know what I mean. So many MOCs out there might look good, or detailed, or whatever, but... Just not capture that Lego-style look. But this build does. I love it when builds really lean into looking like Lego. And, well, I laughed out loud when I got to the four-armed version. That really made me smile!

I wish the printed Ninjago shields from summer 2020 had been available... Very nice prints on those.

Will I need a particular type of printer? Does it have to be an inkjet, or will a laser printer work?

Yeah I noticed there was a lot of irrelevant stuff in the tag; I guess that's the nature of an unpoliced tag on a public website, people can just clog it with any old stuff for self-promotion purposes. But, I just wanna see the most-proper images of the summer sets; I guess we'll probably be waiting a month or two for official pics, huh? Well, I suppose my remaining hope is that the summer minifig parts go on B&P. Seems unlikely though, given how few of last year's Ninjago minifig parts went on B&P. We'll see how many of these underwater sets I end up buying, but man it could be a lot of them... (They could REALLY get me to buy them all if they gave them the Aquazone octagon motif...)