Mylenium

I have to disagree. This isn't about the complexity or number of pieces, it's merely a design issue. It would in fact not be too difficult to create better quality creatures by e.g. leaving out some of the joints. That's a bittersweet irony, anyway. Many Ninjago dragons and mechs have a ton of such movable parts, yet a lot of times they are virtually useless because there is only a handful stable poses for your model, anyway. So IMO foregoing some of that stuff in favor of a more rigid model with greater stability, better design and only a mildly increased number of pieces would not be an impossible thing to do. In fact it might even go down better with kids as those large dragons with dangling tails can indeed be a health risk as I wrote in some of my reviews (Stormbringer Dragon, Green Dragon). I'm not saying that an UCS level dragon couldn't be awesome, but i think once the quality of the regular dragons goes up again the demand for that would minimize. Mylenium

I tend to agree, though this is kind of a chicken vs. egg problem with the Bionicle parts themselves. There's tons of parts nobody really wants (too specific, weird colors) and then there's some highly sought after ones that of course are expensive. In the grander scheme of things this seems to be the crux with all of Bionicle/ CCBS. It appears LEGO never quite knew what to do with it after a certain point and it never evolved beyond that. It took/ takes some talented MOC builders to actually show them what can be done with it... Mylenium

I haven't bought that many, either. I usually just browse through the digital instructions and then make up my mind whether it's worth it (and if I can afford it). The green dragon is easily the best of them, though I still wish it was only half as complex as the actual dragon in the movie.. Mylenium

Probably a combination of factors: The way it's build doesn't exactly feel like it would be easy to translate into a mass-producible model. Similar to the first point, something likely wouldn't have worked out with their internal design rules. Underlying issues with the minifigure trademark. Some secret plans they have on their own (as usual). Personally I won't miss it, not being into minifigures to begin with, but your effort (and likely LEGO's as well to make this work) are appreciated. On that note, I'd be cautious filing this again in Ideas. I seem to vaguely recall that in the detailed rules there's a paragraph that all too similar designs that were previously already submitted may be kicked to the curb right away... Mylenium

Have you actually ever looked at Friends sets? There's almost literally a vehicle in almost every set these days, be that just some small delivery tricycle or some such thing. Mylenium

Let me correct that: Some of them are. Though actually it looks like they're really getting worse and worse due to LEGO trying to trim them down more and more and use less pieces. The latest one from this years gaming/ cyber theme looks just plain terrible and it's construction is pretty naff. The rest is perhaps subject to POV, but if I were seriously into collecting dragons, LEGO would be last on my mind. There's tons of nice (though pricey) collectible sculptures and for what it's worth, indeed the Mega Drogon looks way more realistic than any of LEGO's half-baked attempts at re-creating Smaug and so on... Mylenium

I'm afraid it's still not a conclusive logical argument in terms of how it might affect overall sales. Your cousin is likely more the exception than the rule. We mustn't get lost in our own bubble too much. That scene may not be economically unimportant, but its certainly not the main drive behind LEGO's business. Mylenium

We have to disagree on a lot of things, because ultimately I think you underestimate on which level and at what scope LEGO operates these days. You see, those "part-out" pieces have to come somewhere, too, and they're not going to produce any special parts unless it fills an x number of their storage and transport boxes or otherwise even setting up one of their injection mold machines would cause much more kerfuffle than it's worth in the end. That's just one of those things. Suffice it to say that I still strongly think it's never going to happen unless LEGO are so pressed for cash, perhaps due to their next self-caused crisis, that they will do anything out of desperation.... Mylenium

But ultimately isn't that comparing apples with apples already? I just see natural evolution, not something revolutionary driven by any specific demographic. It's the innate drive of capitalism - companies want to make money and adapt to changing markets in order to survive and possibly usurp a given market segment. Of course sometimes something unexpected and magical happens, but in particular comics are perhaps not a great example. Most of those companies have been bankrupt many times or at least been on the edge of collapse and this can happen and inevitably will happen again. Not today, but maybe tomorrow. Same for "The LEGO Movie". Sure, it re-invigorated people's interest in LEGO, but was its impact outside a certain core demographic really that big? It's all too ambiguous and at the end of the day it still boils down that you need to have clever managers with guts and trust them to make the right decision. The adult-driven market is sure important for LEGO to some extent, but it's not that they necessarily would be worse off had they moved in a different direction once they had overcome their many crises in the past. With that being the case it also doesn't matter how much influence there actually is in ideological terms. There could be 50% AFOLs and they'd still play second fiddle as long as enough revenue can be generated elsewhere... Mylenium

The things you mentioned are penny stuff and in fact would probably be the easiest to handle. Based on what I remember from working for clients in the print industry an instruction and a box doesn't even cost two Euros. It wouldn't even matter how large a box or how thick the booklet. Same for the bags/ foil. This stuff is coming from some exterior factory no doubt. You see, cutting corners on these things would not be any incentive. Let me tell you what costs a lot, though: Digging out old molds. Reviving and adapting those old molds to modern machines, possibly requiring to create entirely new molds. Organizing the logistics. Ordering raw materials. Digging out old digital files for pre-press work on the boxes and instructions. Shooting new photos and creating new layouts if old stuff can't be found or is inadequate for today's requirements. Mounting molds into the machines, cleaning and maintaining machines, production run-up. Marketing. Need I go on? It's the labor involved that is the cost factor, not necessarily the materials. Given all that, producing 10000 sets of an old Modular Building may sound great to you, but would certainly require a lot of effort on LEGO's end. It very likely just isn't economically feasible under those conditions, even more so since that "higher price" you are willing to pay could easily end up equaling collector's prices that you are trying to avoid... Mylenium

Definitely. As someone who hasn't even a particular love for cars every brick "wasted" on the umpteenth pointless vehicle makes me wanna yell at someone. I totally get that I'm in the minority and in fact utterly understand that kids just love police cars, fire trucks, weird helicopters and the like, but that doesn't change the fact that the abundance of all sorts of vehicles at times feels a bit desperate and unimaginative. It's like whenever they have to fill a slot and can't come up with something else they settle on a car. Different story, IMO. Ninjago simply has run its course and probably should be put to rest and replaced with something else one of these days. They simply have navigated themselves in a corner with the ever same stories, just in different guises, and everything has been done to death. The kids still love it, but overall it's become stale... Mylenium

Yes/ No/ Maybe. At the end of the day it probably doesn't matter. Each company has their own mindset and is run by a certain type of managers. The bigger they are the less flexible and innovative tend to be because holding on to what they have becomes more important to what they could potentially achieve and gain. Is TLG any better than that? Dunno. Too many things about their decision making make me cringe, at least what's visible for the customer. With regards to that AFOL thing I still tend to think one mustn't overrate the importance of the adult demographic. It all becomes a matter "Too much of a good thing..." eventually. You know, those crazy prices and sales numbers of sets dropping off relatively fast after initial release. It may look cool on paper if a 700 Euro set sell 50000 times in the first week, but in my view it's perhaps nothing more than a blip in the overall sales stream. This is more about marketing more than anything else... Mylenium

It says so in the press release - an evaluation of the German toy market, of course with an emphasis on and from the perspective of LEGO. I'm not getting into your other arguments, or else I'd have to use an ugly F-word. Mylenium

Molds certainly aren't in the day and age of CNC milling and electro erosion, but a machine costs what it costs. Just buying the thing isn't even the biggest issue. You also have to have a foundation/ anchor frame and integrate it with existing automated systems (feeding the plastic pellets, transporting the pieces to their collecting stations etc.), which in turn may require additional machinery and control electronics. It quickly becomes a chain ripple effect. That said, of course LEGO might consider scaling back production runs of other sets or just not even start up re-runs of sets that sell poorly, but still, it would take some planning and keep quite a few people on their toes for a while... Mylenium

Actually, it appears to be the "new normal", i.e. the new neon transparent yellow introduced last year with the switch to different materials and also used in Ninjago et al. That being the case, it appears too yellow too me, as the material still has a distinct green-ish touch under daylight. The subsurface scattering/ slightly frosted appearance on most of these pieces is of course another matter... Mylenium

Well, price would be my least concern, but I would maintain that the logistics could be endlessly more complicated. I'm pretty sure if someone showed a project chart of the planned production runs, there would be very few gaps in there that could be filled without sacrificing other sets in the process. LEGO may have hundreds of injection molding and printing machines, but I'm pretty sure their running times are planned out to the T for the next year at least. Add on top of that that they may already be planning new parts, new sets and whatever for the next three years, one might imagine that it may not be at all trivial to sneak in some extra stuff. That's the curse of being so big and needing to feed the market in a specific manner to keep interest and money flowing. Not saying that it is impossible, but the devil is no doubt in the details and specifics of such projects. Mylenium

Agree. Lovely little set, though I still wish they had created a regular Bantha set, not forcing it into Microfighter format. Building it at twice or three times the size would have allowed for more options and just looked much more impressive. Mylenium

Not sure how that would work out with some of the more recent models, TBH. Looking at those Legends models it is my impression that they were a) mostly based on standard parts, b) used very few different parts, c) were relatively small/ complex and/or d) were mostly reliant on very specific prints and minifigures. Now compare that to relatively contemporary sets from just a few years ago. I still think just getting the production underway would require much more effort and complexity and thus makes it less likely. I would even argue that way back then it might also have been easier due to LEGO's factories not having been scattered all over the place. You know, logistics... If it were to happen at all it would require much more lead-in time and resources, which could be a factor why LEGO hasn't done it yet. Mylenium

More complicated, yes, but not impossible. The sucky DOF and the incorrect transparency on the lightning elements gives it away along with some nasty shading noise. ;-) Mylenium

Not impossible, but you have to decide what you want to do with your life the next three months. Fixing up the geometry and materials will likely take longer than spending a week in a photo studio and taking images of real bricks. Point in case: "Photorealism" pretty much only works on a shot-by-shot basis even with today's unbiased renderers and requires a lot of tweaks. The added difficulty in your case would have to be that the setups would have to be 100% physically plausible or else your AI algorithm would possibly produce wrong results and with that you're basically asking to produce hyper-real images without the usual cheats that still are commonly used in CG. Perhaps it might be more helpful to start a crowd action for people to send in all kinds of random photos of LEGO pieces under different conditions. That would make it much easier to scrape together the hundreds of thousands of shots you may need. Mylenium

Nope. There would simply be a ton of practical issues from a production standpoint alone. The short version of it is that getting things organised for a production run of just a few thousand sets would far outweigh how they could recover the cost even at the most outrageous prices. And as @meliander already pointed out, LEGO has been more and more moving into a "high value collectibles" mentality and they're not going to screw with that. It's not impossible that they may bring out one or the other set as an "anniversary edition", but even then it's more likely they will be redesigned reissues of older sets rather than 1:1 copies. I agree that it's unfortunate for some people, but it's part of the game. Unless LEGO run out of ideas or their economic troubles make them desperate for quick cash grabs we won't see much of that. At best you could hope for is some of the sets resurfacing via something like the AFOL Designer program on Bricklink now that LEGO own it, but even that will be a limited thing. Mylenium

There's no rule. That's what you do your market research on and decide on "placement" in terms of target demographics, pricing tiers, distribution methods and so on. Even the number of pieces doesn't matter. I mean you could have a hyper complex model on your hand that either nobody would be interested it or that would be extremely difficult to re-create due to which pieces it uses and then what? What would be the point if you price it at 80 Euro a pop as an expression of your effort when still nobody is buying it? You need to weigh those factors just as well as the actual size and complexity or in fact even more than those. Similarly you need to consider things like uniqueness and similar competing offerings. E.g. currently there's a ton of "Star Wars" related models on Rebrickable flooding the market, so even if you built the best ever Razorcrest ship from "The Mandalorian" your market would severely be limited by the fact that there are always alternate offerings that may be cheaper. You might want to look around there to get a feeling for what goes and what not on a more general level, BTW. Mylenium

The report discussed here is not based on internal surveys, it's an external survey by a market research company that themselves may not have any reference point to LEGO's internal sales channel data. Also keep in mind that they were looking at the toy market as a whole, not just LEGO specifically. So for what it's worth, this is far from being absolutely reliable data, even more so since the actual study isn't published for review. LEGO can make any number of claims about it without ever proving anything. And we could all have a little fun and do the same for other manufacturers/ vendors. GeoBra (Playmobil) claims growth as well, when everyone agrees that overall the German toy market is stagnating or even shrinking. So who's right? I wouldn't put too much stock in any of this. Public market studies are made to look good and it doesn't matter whether that's by leaving out some important questions or simply limiting the scope. I for one for instance am pretty sure that they didn't go out of their way to cover every mom & dad outlet and only focused on big retailers like warehouse chains. Conversely, I'm also sure they didn't ask which sets catch dust on shelves vs. the ones that actually sell like crazy. The data is most definitely skewed and biased somehow. Mylenium

It's probably fair to say that LEGO doesn't give a capital F about that part and you might find out and see it flying in your face when one of the designers thinks it would be a cool idea to use such figures in a contemporary set again. Suddenly those pieces would be available in mass again at discount prices and your precious rare items lose all their monetary value over night. Other than that all that counts for a company are first market sales because that's the only thing they can control directly. Bricklink is just a playground for LEGO and compared to the rest of the company it's pretty definitely quite unimportant in terms of how it may or may not contribute to revenue. You are of course correct in that the distinction between AFOL and "just" adult LEGO aficionado may be irrelevant, but the difference between a casual buyer or someone who makes regular bulk purchases certainly is not. I believe that is ultimately still the point. When they talk about addressing adult demographics more specifically I'm pretty sure they are still referring to people with a stable, relatively high income that might be interested in buying a Bugatti or Batmobile once every blue moon, but not necessarily the longtime existing fans. However, by the same token that doesn't mean that you don't have to take care of both sides of the equation to maximize your cashing in. At the end of the day it's that fine line that they must walk. Mylenium

Not everybody is a custom builder and beyond that one could open up endless discussions about parts availability, parts colors, useless Classic brick boxes, model complexity, customer expectations and so on... Mylenium