Mylenium

Yupp, couldn't agree more. The core issue for me is slightly different, though. As I wrote on my blog just yesterday (https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2019/11/19/weep-for-the-future-natoth/) it very much feels like a regression to a few years back. This year's sets were on a good track to becoming somewhat "normalized" and thus more widely acceptable/ accepted and now it's back to garish colors, wonky building styles and overall questionable world building (within the Friends theme). I'm definitely not going to be spending much on these new sets and will only be buying two or three... Mylenium

Free instructions are now available: https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2019/11/18/the-krakken-has-risen/ Mylenium

Just another terrible, but costly Technic joke... Mylenium

Long and short answer: Unless you get the biggest of those boxes it's usually not worth it. I wrote some thoughts on this in a review last year: https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/bricks-by-the-thousand-10717-extra-large-brick-box/ The only reason to get the smaller variants would be if a) you have ogled a set of specific parts that you need for a project and would be difficult to procure otherwise and b) it's dirt cheap so you can buy them in bulk if need be. Oddly enough these boxes sometimes include parts in colors that aren't used in the more expensive other sets, or in reverse, only exist in super-costly sets that you wouldn't buy just to scalp them for parts, meaning they would be expensive to source from Bricklink either way due to being relatively rare. Still, it very much depends on what you have in mind and whether you can live with the fact of also getting tons of "useless" bricks that you may never even remotely use. Occasionally I tend to pick them up during sales just for the fun of it, though, but only if it's more than a 40% discount or so. Then the math adds up for me. Mylenium

Magnifique! :) Mylenium

I'm not clear what you mean by that. It still would have to adhere to some specification/ file format definition like e.g. the various XML-based ones used in tech doc and logistics programs. Clearly you are not referring to a binary memory dump while the programs are running, or are you? Or are you looking for QBasic or similar as used on CNC machines? You need to be much more specific and explain what you actually plan on doing. Mylenium

Though that in itself is a statement, isn't it? If a hobbyist/ semi-professional with limited equipment can sell them for that price it goes to show how LEGO are stretching people's goodwill with a mass-produced, CNC-milled version. The legal points are not worth debating. Depending on where you live, those hand-crafted figures could still be perfectly legal and thus an unwarranted C&D might be nil and void at best or an abuse of the law at worst... Mylenium

Correct. One could probably find someone who's into lathing/ turning and wooden toy making and have him do three figures or more. In fact the Erzgebirge region, renowned for wood carving, Christmas figurines and all that jazz, isn't that far away from where I live and I'm pretty sure those little manufactures there would have latched on to this for a fraction of the price years ago if the minifig wasn't a registered exclusive design... Mylenium

Well, have you actually tried to set the ASSEM MODEL_SCALE ? This usually works. Often it only needs to be a fraction tinier than the 1.25 it seems to use as default. Mylenium

Entirely depends on the colors. Some 1x6 types are pretty rare and thus somewhat costly. I'd first look around what's actually available and not get locked into a specific idea that you may not be able to go through with. In fact even some 1x1 bricks in some colors are elusive, come to think of it... Mylenium

There is not really an answer. Stud.io's own release notes state that support for flex elements is at best spotty and does not cover a lot of elements just like the library doesn't handle some legacy and "custom" elements. Unless you care to really put up with the obnoxious oldies, i.e. MLCad and the original LDraw that allow some of that stuff which could later be imported as "frozen" files into Stud.io, you're more or less out of luck. Mylenium

A simple scissor mechanism most likely - two liftarms jacking open and or closing based on a corkscrew wheel. Mylenium

Count yourself lucky! All those sets had been pulled from shelves in the LEGO store here in Leipzig (Germany) when I was there yesterday for Triple Force Friday, so "getting stuff overseas" may no longer be an option, too. Mylenium

Not to make a stink, but a script that works based on tall slopes then perhaps is not the right approach in the first place? It also seems to me that in case of almost perfectly vertical tidal/ fluvial erosion one would emphasize the colors of the sediment layers rather than the physical structure of the cut surfaces, basically meaning you'd stack this up with colored plates with occasional protrusions rather than building it with large 2x and 3x height slopes. Just sayin... Mylenium

Agree with the others - your image actually has perfectly normal spherical distortion. It's just that it uses a very "flat" perspective. As suggested, you need to tweak the FOV settings in Stud.io or move on to a real 3D program if you want really fancy camera stuff. Mylenium

I concur with the others - nice to get a "real" Conveyex. It's really too bad that the commercial set doesn't even contain a second and third carriage. If it did I'm sure more people would have bought it... Mylenium

It seems these days nothing is impossible. Lately LEGO have revived some molds that hadn't been available in over a decade. However, I don't think that the old style masts and the palm trunks are on the table. It's more likely they will substitute them for standard stuff built from other elements rather than produce a ton of hunky, costly pieces just for this set. Would be a different story if there were more ships and such, of course. The cannon and trapeze pieces should be less of an issue, as they have been used occasionally even in recent years. i also suspect once they have rediscovered their value, LEGO may use them more often again elsewhere, too. You know, it's those distinct phases where you just can see what colors and parts are popular from year to year because a good idea get's re-used across different products... Mylenium

I'm pretty sure they are going to introduce tons of Medium Dark Flesh, Dark Orange, Dark Tan and Dark Brown pieces for color variation just like they did on the Treehouse. The real trick will be to not make it look too ridiculous then... Mylenium

Well, in Europe a lot of cities consist of large chunks "downtown", so the situation is quite different. Even regular residential areas are full of villas and large block buildings. In the end it's a case of YMMV, funny enough. Modular buildings would be quite adequate to replicate entire quarters of many German towns, but you'd need tons of them. This even applies to suburbs and rural regions to not such a small degree. Of course there's also single family standalone homes, but even those fall under different rules and styles than would be appropriate for other countries... Mylenium Not that I care that much, but of course a lot of those chunky parts used in those old sets have been retired. That and to me this seems more a case of contemporary models feeling kinda flimsy due to very, very obvious cost cutting. If you get my point: Today's model's could easily live up to that old stuff if they weren't that stripped down... Mylenium Not sure about that, TBH. To me it's sort of a "If only..." thing, as sometimes I feel parts are simply wasted on pointless awkward construction techniques. I could perfectly live with smaller models if the detailing actually paid off, but a lot of times it doesn't, which I guess is a point in itself. Mylenium

Yeah, sure, but that doesn't make the whole situation necessarily better for TLC themselves. It feels kinda messed up for all intents and purposes... Mylenium

Sure. I never said anything different. Any company does it, even small ones.Though I have some serious doubts about how much they actually have to "toss around", given how literally every Cent is gobbled up by their fast expansion already... Mylenium

In so many words: Corporate BS. Sorry, but you need to read between the lines. LEGO aren't actually growing at all. All they are doing is invest a lot of money and in contrast to your claim, harvesting short term grosses from China in fact is the only thing that makes their financial report look kinda okay. Whether this will even pay off in the long-term is anyone's guess. And don't even get me started on this nonsense about traditional privately held family businesses. Those times are long past us. It's not like the Christiansen holdings would be small mom & pop shops to begin with. Their recent investment in Merlin, co-financed by Blackwater, alone should be proof enough that they are just as entangled in big finance as any other company out there with all the good and bad sides that has. Just because they're not trading publicly and the family is a majority stake holder doesn't mean anything in times such as these... Mylenium

Yeah, sure. As I said a few pages down - "shelf bricks" here in Germany and the retailers know it. They'll be glad it's EOL and they don't have to buy more stock from LEGO just because of foolish contractual commitments they made before the movie actually came out... Anyway, at least despite my concerns we seem to have gotten the complete final wave here, if only in official LEGO stores. Bought the Mayhem Flyer on Monday... Mylenium

Regardless of how the company is incorporated, it should show some organic growth, not what can only count as stagnation. To use one of my favorite quotes from a TV series: "Stable ain't sexy." (and shrinking even less) ;) That's basically all I'm saying. Ultimately the point is that a floundering US economy hasn't had that much of a negative impact on LEGO in the past, so I would argue there might be something up, after all. Not much use debating the finer details. In the end LEGO is likely too expensive a hobby for many of us to begin with, regardless of economic status... :D Mylenium But then again, at the most basic level it's not even about the tariffs. Mr. T. will only use them as a punitive means to achieve his personal goals and what his gang of lobbyists tells him. In that scenario LEGO are simply not important enough nor are they economically particularly relevant in the grander scheme of things. Compared to other markets, selling plastic bricks is peanuts... Mylenium

Kind of a bubble effect. The rest of the numbers doesn't really look that sexy. If I was a shareholder, I'd begin to worry. This is the third year in a row with no substantially positive results so far and shrinking markets in Europe and the U.S., which in a thriving economic climate is not a good sign. Mylenium