Mylenium

Not really. I'm way too slow a builder. That's why I do graphics, not LEGO for a living. You have to know what you're good at, which is basically what I'm saying. It often seems that people just imagine that in a commercial environment people could live out their craziest fantasies, just with more resources, which isn't how this works. Most of the time at least, anyway. It's that "be careful what you wish for" thing. Mylenium

Sure, but ultimately it's just everyone presenting his opinion. Nothing wrong with that as ultimately the proof will be in the pudding once LEGO actually release such products - or they don't. ;-) Mylenium That's just a bad stereotype. I've seen seniors taking twenty-somethings fresh out of business school to the mat and coming out on top with their in-depth knowledge of products, company details, specifics of the supply chain and so on. Mylenium

I'm not saying it couldn't work, I just don't see it as clear-cut as yourself. I've seen a few of our clients' products bomb in my time in the media industry due to lack of distinction, that's why I have some reservations on muddying up the waters too much. Something like City+ just seems an odd proposition to me. That's all I'm saying. Mylenium

However you wanna skin it. As a non-native speaker I'm sure you can cut me some slack for mixing up things or using terms incorrectly interchangeably. :P That aside it's ultimately irrelevant what you print on the box and how you sort your hats. At the end of the day introducing a ton of themes/ sub-themes/ genres/ series/ tiers can end up more confusing than helpful. Anyone care to remember that "Master Builder Series" debacle that never went anywhere because the Cloud City set was actually quite terrible? To me there is no point in some marketing directors playing out their fantasies from behind their office table. Therefore I also don't see how you would place that 13+ thing you want. It seems to me you still want it to be very City-like and how then would you communicate this within the existing series other than slapping on a different age rating? It's that old Matroska figurine thing of layers within layers that you can only take so far. It makes for lousy advertising and marketing it would be a pain in the rear. You'd be caught between fire and flood on this one - make it separate and people may not recognize its relation to City, keep it in there and it gets drowned out by the other stuff... Mylenium

That's a fair point, but ultimately we are kinda getting there already with the reintroduction of actual building models in the Creator 3in1 series and if you only look for it, you can find enough cars in there just as you can find similar stuff in Friends, Hidden Side, Ninjago. They may not always be off-the-shelf solutions, but a lot of that stuff is easy enough to modify even for less experienced builders. In fact something like Emma's Art Stand would already fit a generic city quite well once you get rid of the pink blinds for instance. Similarly, last year's Heartlake City Restaurant is very City-ish and if you combined two or three of these sets would build into a nice almost modular building. Sure, LEGO could certainly throw in a few more such sets or at least change their marketing so people become more aware of these alternative options, but overall I don't see that we necessarily need yet another dedicated product line. And of course it would still be a matter of whether you could actually buy all this stuff. You know, City enthusiasts pining over those options without being able to afford them would not serve any purpose on either front. Mylenium

I wouldn't make too much of it. There's already enough adult-targeted sets. Or does anyone really think kids buy a 300 Euro Bugatti? It doesn't get more "daddy candy" than that. Same for other things like the recently released Trafford soccer stadium. What more does anyone need? At the end of the day it will still have to be a cross-intersection of a) people being interested in LEGO in the first place, b) being interested in a specific subject and c) having the required massive funds to actually buy it. And there's also the antithesis to that by ways of Overwatch, which didn't last long and was pretty much ignored by everyone. It's not as easy as saying "Lets make an adult set based on a game." and just the same this would be a tricky proposition for other genres as well. LEGO must be careful to not navigate themselves into corners here or they'll end up like what happened in the model train manufacturer crisis a few years ago. So for what it's worth, perhaps things do not need to change that much at all... Mylenium

You arguably could, but would it meet the client's expectations and conform to the ideas how he wants to see his products presented? That's ultimately the crux of it. You could be an experienced MOC builder and get accolades and prizes for your stuff on exhibitions or here on this forum, but you may utterly fail in a commercial environment. Trust me, I've been in the graphics/ media business for more than 25 years now and it's all about nitpicking over details, not actually making something grand in the way you may think... Mylenium

But that's not the reality of marketing/ advertising/ media agencies and production companies, unfortunately. You pitch an idea and whoever has the best idea vs. a for the client acceptable budget gets the gig, regardless whether he actually cares for the product. It's just a job like any other, any myths about the "creative industry" notwithstanding. Mylenium

Well, but isn't that a statement in itself? Once you cut out all this crap about a traditional family enterprise they are just like any other big corporation with the same wrong priorities, issues and shortcomings. You could in fact be cynical and almost say that LEGO making a show about their values makes it actually worse. You know, this is where the reality of The LEGO Company as it exists today cannot hold up to the myths and legends of the past. It's like Google's "Don't be evil." thing which hasn't been true for years now. I also don't even think they actually have the resources. Just like those other companies they've very likely streamlined and economized all their internal processes to a point where anything more would result in a complete breakdown of the whole shebang. I'm pretty sure they have a ton of marketing executives, but only a handful of people doing the actual materials and that is even merely a concession to their secretive process. I'm sure they'd love to outsource the hell out of their marketing if only it didn't complicate their process to a point. Mylenium Yes/ No/ Maybe. You know, printing is dirt cheap, not least of all to digitalization. It's almost not worth thinking about whether you print eighty pages or a hundred. Yes, it may be a consideration, but I don't think it would be any serious hinderance. To me it really boils down to who is actually producing the content, how the products are rolled out and the logistics involved, but not so much that there would be anything technical stopping them from producing more elaborate catalogs. And whether the shop (or for that matter the whole LEGO web site) is actually a functional replacement or extension of the marketing and information policies is anyone's guess, to put it mildly... Mylenium

Well, I'm sure we could all have a wonderful wank competition about our IQ ratings.... :P *lol* Mylenium

Generally I agree. Specifically, though, I think the issue with LEGO characters is first and foremost their sameness. In a world where every minifigure is basically identical it will be infinitely hard to distinguish two police officers just by minute differences in their prints. Kids won't go out of their way to memorize those names and just call them whatever they like, anyway. Mylenium

I think you're assuming too much (and by extension so perhaps does LEGO). It's a simple matter of people needing to find the time and also being able to find these things in a never-ending stream of media onslaught. I would predict that LEGO's "reach" in those departments is actually terrible. I mean what can you expect? A shoddily produced animated series buried on obscure second-rate TV channels or competing with way better produced content on streaming services isn't going to cut it, if you get my meaning. Same for those tie-in magazines that I regularly review on my blog and on which someone lately is cutting corners, too, like it or not. I could rant on forever, but suffice it to say that the average buyer outside the AFOL-bubble is probably a lot less informed than you seem to presume and that outsourcing content from your core marketing is perhaps not that viable a strategy, at least for some demographics... Mylenium I could counter this argument with a personal anecdote that just happened on Friday. As I was already writing in my reply to @TeriXeri, a lot of people (including social media crazy kids) are a lot less informed and not up to speed on the latest stuff happening in the LEGO universe. Again, it's the AFOL bubble vs. the mundane reality of LEGO as a toy, after all. You could even broaden this argument by how generally unaware people are of some of that stuff when they visit exhibitions or see showcase models presented in a mall. And to add one more argument/ thought: The catalog bins in the shops I visit still empty out quite quickly, leading me to believe that the seasonal LEGO catalogs are still a primary source of information for many potential customers. We could debate this endlessly, but in my not so humble view one must not make the mistake of overrating all this secondary media stuff. Buying decisions are still influenced a lot by actual POS presentation, including the catalogs... Mylenium

Entirely depends. You could at the very least argue that going too crazy with fancying up your product presentations and showing unrelated content can get you in hot water over misleading advertising. At the same time of course it would be nice to see some models in a different context... Pretty much irrelevant. Graphics design changes just like the seasons. A lot of the stuff from the old catalogs just wouldn't "fly" anymore, but that is no indication that today's clean and purist designs are necessarily better, just different. It's all contextual and the zeitgeist and of course generic design trends always figure in. Other than that I think @Lego David already said it: It's obvious where LEGO are cutting corners. Also unlike in the past of course the release cycle has become more chaotic with some sets only being revealed until the very last minute. That alone would make it difficult to meet deadlines and you have to be careful to keep things relatively straightforward to be able to get quick turnarounds and incorporate changes. Mylenium

That is indeed quite awesome. :-) Mylenium

I don't think so. Most of what those plates did could be achieved with building, though I'd rather say "should be achievable", which of course it isn't, but ranting about LEGO's lack of a consistent plant and landscaping toolset is a topic for another time. Other than that it simply becomes a matter of efficiency. A new plate for every potential scenario clearly can't be desirable, either. Mylenium

You'd likely have to approach this how actual restoration of historic paintings, books etc. is done - via a transfer process where the top layers are fixated onto special transfer paper and foil using soluble glues and varnishes that don't chemically interact with the paints and inks and then the medium is removed using yet another physical and chemical process. None of this is trivial in any way, so unless you seriously have to restore the set for an exhibition or have a very rich person paying for all of that it doesn't really seem worth the effort. Also do not ignore that the glue also interacted with the plastic, so removing the stickers might be even more damaging. Leaving everything as it is is probably the most sensible approach, give or take trying to remove some of the stains with q-tips and a light mix of water, alcohol and a detergent. Mylenium

Technically irrelevant. You see, in the past I used to run blogs/ web sites on some very specific topics and had a lot of behind-the-scenes knowledge on some of that stuff, wrote literally thousands of forum posts to help out people and had thousands of visitors each week on my sites. None of that, however, meant/ means anything in terms of "decent knowledge". There's always something you're missing about the community at large and even if you interact with a gazillion people, chances are there's an even larger fraction that you're missing out on. There is also a lot of random noise like e.g. occasional users that don't participate in the "community" other than getting their immediate issues resolved and questions answered. To put it in simple terms: There may be billions of LEGO consumers and within that group many might consider themselves part of some sort of community, but very few will care about these things beyond a certain point and might never meet your threshold. Even I myself would not fit most likely because there are too many things about LEGO I just don't care for... Mylenium

Well, you could always argue that they are not the ones buying the stuff. ;-) In any case, it's probably a moot point. Surely you could measure sales or people being organized in LUGs and other fan organizations, but it will simply be impossible to determine the overall volume of people who might perceive themselves as belonging to a specific community. Mylenium

These cubes are garbage. Just another way to dump surplus Friends stuff that nobody wants. The new 6 wide brackets are pretty much the only useful thing here. Mylenium

I wouldn't hold my breath. They didn't produce additional lots of the Dragon Dance and New Year Eve's Dinner, either, even for the Asian market way back when. This could really be a "On(c)e & done" thing. Mylenium

Yeah, sure, but what's actually your point? Not meaning to be insensitive, but the mere mention of 6 to 8 month delivery times would ring a ton of alarms and make me consider if I even wanted to pay a fraction in the advance... Mylenium

The baby rabbit/ hare definitely works both in size and appearance. The pug might also be acceptable as is the seal... Not too sure about others, though. Indeed they are a bit too cutesy for more generig uses. Mylenium

Not really. I picked up my sets yesterday at the nearest store and they sell like crazy. It's in fact not too hard to imagine that they will sell out quickly and many people waiting for the special Rat GWP will be disappointed not being able to buy the Temple Fair or Lion Dance. The Dragonboat Race is not a valid comparison, as its somewhat lackluster appearance and absence of something truly unique turned many potential buyers off. Mylenium

Well, this is a "Go big or go home" thing. You are way, way underestimating the numbers IMO. You could assume that there are several hundred million people that identify as LEGO fans and out of that crowd at least ten percent might actively participate in any kind of organized communities. Just take LEGO Ideas - some contests over there have 10000+ participants and those are just the people who are a) actually follow LEGO Ideas proactively and are registered, b) are interested in a given subject and c) have time to join the competition. Any text book on statistics can tell you how to extrapolate from there. Of course it's an open debate what qualifies as "community", but suffice it to say that anything LEGO-related is potentially huge. Mylenium

Interesting, though to me it still looks like they are actually just coatings on top of the base colors which now look brighter due to the new transparent materials behaving differently. In any case, it's probably safe to say that those parts are the most useless ones I can think of, so one could hope that - assuming this is real and persistent - they will come up with better use cases. Mylenium