Flak Maniak

Now when is that trans-bright green windscreen from the White Dragon Horse Jet gonna be available...?

Is this even the right forum to ask in? I figure it's the most nautical one, so perhaps; feel free to move this thread to a different subforum if it's in the wrong place... I'm working on a ship now that could use some custom-made sails, and I was wondering if there's some usual suspects to commission for sails made in a very Lego-ish style. I'm not sure if what I'm looking for is even particularly viable to make, given it'd be a black sail base, but maybe it's feasible. What I'm imagining might be a single sail, or it might be several, with most of the area being black... Except for the Aquasharks logo in the middle. Basically, if Lego had done a black sail with the Aquasharks logo, what would that look like, and who can make such a thing? I'm not super-concerned about price; for a build like this, that will be so distinctive on my shelf, I figure I have to be willing to spend some serious cash on key custom parts. But I am really concerned about quality and style; that it should look right, fit in with the Lego aesthetic, that sort of thing. The opposite of the "realistic custom sails to make it more like a historical ship" kind of aesthetic.

Hmm, when are the flat silver cylindrical helmets from the Blacksmith gonna come back in stock? Forgot to check for those when placing my last few orders; I figure some in that color won't hurt. Not sure what faction uses those, and what faction uses the pearl dark grey ones, but, they're both fine colors.

I'm not saying that raising the price will stop the scalpers; I'm saying that it would make it worth Lego's while to focus on producing this part to sell directly to consumers. If they currently don't want to devote more mold time to these parts, despite them selling like hotcakes, then they should raise the price a little AND devote more mold time, because clearly there's significant demand. Also, unrelated, but does anyone know how to find the element IDs for the new parts in series 21 minifigures? Unlikely that any given part will be on B&P, but I'd like to check anyway.

Hopefully they can make enough Black Falcon torsos to defeat the scalpers... We'll see. Probably they ought to limit that torso and legs to 20/order, too, but, if they can JUST shift production to it until all the demand is met, that'd be even better. And, well, they could raise the price on it a little too; round it up to 1USD per torso and legs. If a price increase is needed to incentivize Lego to produce enough to meet demand... Then that's fine with me.

Your concept got my gears turning (which is a very good sign; "fantasy pirates" is instantly evocative), so here's my proposal, if you're going to have various fantasy races... A significant conflict can be between the (mostly) human pirates and the imperial armada who are... Orcs! The orc empire! Isn't that a fun reversal! Just imagine, fancy imperial uniforms, with sand green orc heads. (Can even have an orc admiral with a barrister wig.)

If you want sets with a ton of plastic for the price, the "Classic" line is hard to beat. It might be hard to sell the parts later for a significant fraction of the price (unless you're into running a BrickLink store as a hobby), but... If you just want lots of parts for cheap...

When searching for images of upcoming Ninjago sets on Instagram, are there particular tags to check other than #legoleaks and I guess #ninjago? Or is there some other good search method entirely, some particular accounts to follow?

How many times do you see a project for a license you don't care about, but the build is so good you support it anyway?

Split IDEAS into a no-licenses, original-builds thing (basically current IDEAS but no licensed projects allowed), and a website that just says "vote for your favorite licenses and plead for Lego to acquire them".

One wonders if the various Vidiyo minifig parts will make it on eventually... Now THOSE would be a treasure-trove. Tell me you don't want a dozen of the Alien DJ, for a new space faction! As soon as I saw that minifig's color scheme I thought "Damn, I need to use those colors on some spaceships." Well, maybe not quite all of them at once, but still!

Let's go one step further: A castle or a pirate ship is also an existing object or concept in Lego form! So the only original-enough things would be... Truly abstract builds with no precedent in reality or fantasy!

I like the design and shaping; the Blacktron-style cockpit pods are very true to the idiom. The one thing it could use is... Big Blacktron II logos on the large white sections! (Which I realize couldn't be done without large custom stickers spanning multiple parts.)

Given that this thread is a bit purposeless until next year when they announce the winner... Well, maybe it can be a betting thread, to bet arbitrary units of clout on which theme has won!

That's kind of plausible but to me seems hardly conclusive.

Perfect convenience; I wanted some Black Falcon shields as I'd not remembered to order them when I phoned in for Black Falcon torsos and legs. And that was the time they pulled the switcheroo on me after the call, and I didn't end up with any Cyber Drone heads either. So I ordered (among other odds and ends) a dozen Black Falcon shields and twenty Cyber Drone heads. Now all the things on my wish list are things that haven't been for sale at all yet, I reckon...

Sure, but I think it's more about the designer themselves realizing what's workable when they try to build it in the real world. Either way you have to trust the designer that it can work, but if they built it in the brick, at least they'll know for sure.

For Lego Ideas, you're normally allowed to propose recolors, as I understand it. So renders are fine, at least if your project relies significantly on plausible recolors. (If it relies on a thousand recolors of obscure parts from 1978, then yeah, it's not a credible project in the first place, or at least, it's not a credible build for purposes of an Ideas project. I mean, the usual caveats apply about trying to read the entrails on whether Ideas is to do at all with the build you present, or just about the concept, but clearly there's at least some of each.) But yeah, a render can easily conceal connections that just don't work in the real world, or overly-fragile/finicky sections, etc. etc. etc. Any build will be more persuasive in the brick than on a computer, if it's photographed decently.

You know that the click-hinge plates can be had for about a tenth the cost on BrickLink, right? But yeah, ouch on the glow-in-the-dark plates. I won't decide to build any substantially-glow-in-the-dark MOCs until I'm a rogue billionaire!

Huh, I thought the Mixel-style joints did use the old towball size, just with the new high-friction cup as opposed to old low-friction hitches. (And, aren't some of the plate-with-towball-sticking-off parts still in production, and used with Mixel joints frequently?) Or, is it mostly a matter of changing tolerances over the decades, like with minifig necks and heads?

If Bionicle (with whatever story and setting will please the Bionicle crowd) can work as system-based brick-built figures, as a persistent theme... Then I'm all for it. Mid-size figure builds using Mixel-style joints and other similar stuff... Sounds good to me. I mean, think about it. If you can get the hardcore Bionicle crowd on board with system as opposed to large-ball joints (big if, but sure), then... What parts do you have to resurrect or make? Probably just new masks, right? That seems pretty feasible. Well, perhaps I should be asking if the age 5-10 crowd want mid-size, non-mech, brick-built figures with weird-looking masks and a story based on some stuff that came out 10-15 years before they were born. But, how about this: I'll selfishly ask for this concept, just in order to get Mixel-style ball joints and other smallish joint parts in new colors. Surely we can all agree on that, right? The Bionicle crowd can get... Whatever it is they get from this, and the rest of us can get small joint parts in new colors. Or, maybe there are some new small joint parts to be made! It might be daft to do "CCBS with Mixel-size joints", but, maybe a couple of parts in that direction could be made. I'm sure you can think of concepts for parts with a towball or towball friction socket on them, that's NOT just a 1x2 plate. Something with a towball on each end, and mechanical-looking detail in the middle including a couple bar-sized holes. (Think an early Bionicle limb part, but smaller, eh?) Sky's the limit here; just don't accidentally make it mini-CCBS. (Unless that's your grand plan, in which case, sure, unleash the madness on us.)

So, typically what will happen is I'm browsing new parts, or the part lists of new sets, and I find something that looks cool, so I look for it on B&P. Sometimes it's not listed at all, in which case, well, not much to be done, but maybe check back later. Sometimes it's listed and in stock, in which case I'll put some in my cart. But sometimes it's listed as out of stock (sometimes with a price assigned, usually meaning as far as I can tell that it's been sold on B&P and stock has run out at least for now, sometimes without a price assigned, which as far as I can tell mean it hasn't been sold on there yet). If something is listed but doesn't have a price, well, I'm going to check every so often, because it looks like it will be sold in the future. No guarantees, but, sometimes things like that are available for sale eventually. And, well, things that are out-of-stock the regular way (often due to BrickLink scalpers)... I mean, it happens, and it happens fairly often. And it's unpredictable when they'll be back in stock. (And they might be out of stock again very quickly, within hours!) It wouldn't be uncommon for me to have a dozen or so parts, or maybe several dozen, where I think to myself "if this is available for sale when I check, I'll probably buy some". Currently I just keep the Brickset tabs for those elements open near the tab for B&P. So I guess a more convenient pattern would be, whenever I see a part that I'd like to buy but isn't available yet for whatever reason (or is even unlisted on B&P?), I'd enter it somewhere and forget about it, and then if it ever is available on B&P I'd get some type of notification for it. Just, any shift from "cannot buy on the website" to "can buy on the website". I don't know how hard it is to implement; presumably it's significantly more difficult than just tracking sets. But, if it's convenient to do it, then, it would be significantly useful.

In-stock alerts for B&P are IMO much more useful than in-stock alerts for sets; I would certainly use your server for B&P-tracking purposes, given how many different parts I'd be looking at, and how capricious the stock/for-sale-at-all values on them are.

You're correct that complete sets are the easiest to resell, and that you can often recoup most or all of the price that way, after a few years of the set being retired. If you're reselling bulk parts as a single lot on eBay, don't expect to get much back. If you're reselling the parts individually on BrickLink, well, that's a hassle, isn't it? And yes, some of the very large sets like the Gardens can provide a good base of parts to work with. Not only are they cheap per part and per gram of plastic, but often they'll give you large quantities of particular parts or colors, which is especially valuable. For example if you just wanted a ton of parts and didn't much care what they were, some of Lego's "Classic" range is very cheap for the amount of, well, Lego. But you look at it laid out, and it's ten parts of this color, twenty parts of that color, repeat for a ton of colors, which is if you ask me a lot less useful than "just 200 parts of one color". If you are averse to buying secondhand parts, then you can still get a lot of things on BrickLink, as many of the biggest sellers specialize in new parts. I suppose you'd be against the yard-sale-trawling strategy (and in this pandemic!), but, well, I was never really one for yard-sale-trawling myself. You can also buy specific parts directly from Lego, via either online pick-a-brick, or Bricks and Pieces (yes yes, I know, confusing that they have two overlapping services). Bricks and Pieces is in the customer service part of the website; click the button that says "buy bricks". (But that would be getting ahead of ourselves; Bricks and Pieces is for the real ABS junkies, what with having to enter part/set numbers to even find anything.) I'll end with this, though: If you mostly want to build your own creations, then you will inherently end up gravitating towards places like BrickLink, and just buying a lot of parts there for specific purposes. And yeah your house will fill up with bricks that are not easily resold. It happens. You might keep costs under control, though, by designing in a CAD program (probably stud.io at this point; is Lego Digital Designer even halfway useful at this point, with how many years it's been deprecated?), and ordering just the parts you need for that build... (But wait! This BrickLink seller has a lot of this part, and they're oh so cheap, and wouldn't it be a shame not to buy some extras at this price?)

Oh, it was a day or two before people in this thread said backorders were gone. So, if it's dependent on backorders, it may no longer be possible (and I should have indeed gotten ten sail sets in that case!).