Electromistress

On the topic of using off-brand parts in MOCs- if you are just building something for yourself, of course anything goes. But when it comes to (LEGO) online communities, it's a different story. The whole reason why certain MOCs are considered brilliant and why "NPU" exists is because we are all working from the same limited pool of parts (which gets increased yearly by the LEGO Company) and often times a new build or technique is impressive exactly because the creator managed to find a new, previously unseen combination from that limited pool of parts. I believe a lof of the hype around MOCs comes exactly from this, and it's also why websites like The New Elementary exist in the first place. Once you introduce off-brand parts to that... Well, it's the Wild West then! Of course, it automatically makes many, many more things possible (I genuinely cannot understand why LEGO is refusing to introduce certian bracket pieces) but at the same time removing those restrictions makes many things less impressive... You see someone's new MOC, you wonder how they constructed something- it turns out that they used a random part from a random alternate brand which is not even available in your country. Great! So personally, I am not for mixing parts in MOCs, or at least not in MOCs that you post online. In my own collection, I will always keep other brands separate from LEGO. But going back to the main question of the thread... I do believe the alternate brands deserve their section (or sections) on this forum. Firstly because many of them are genuine, quality products and they deserve addtional exposure and more places online where their products can be discussed. Secondly because I feel LEGO has lost its touch (and whimsy) and I believe it would aslo benefit them to read and see how AFOLs feel about alternate brand sets, and what those brands are doing right. And thirdly because well, I personally want to have a placce to discuss those sets.

Hi everyone! I can't exactly call myself a new member, as I've made this account years ago, but so far I haven't been actively... Active around here. My name is Luna, I live in Croatia (although I hope to change that in the future) and I have been a steady LEGO fan since the early 90s. You can take a look at my Brickset to get an idea what kind of sets I like, but in short, my primary focus is everything sci-fi related. I've never had a real "dark age" and I have been collecting LEGO all my life, however due to time/space/budget constraints, I haven't been building much MOCs in the past 10 or so years. Since I'm hoping to change that going forward, I decided to become a more active in the community to keep the building motivation and spirits up. On that note, here's a tiny MOC I whipped up a few weeks back: Recon party scouting ahead by Luna S Cheers!

Wow, that's a really straight to the point name, I wonder how I never came across it before... But it seems even the topic here never got much attention. Thanks so much for the share!

Wow, this one looks quite amazing. I know Star Wars had them, in fact, when the first X-Wing was made, the instructions even included a little comic about all the alternate model suggestions. But again, nowadays you pretty much only get to see these builds if you personally own the box of the set, it's a shame.

Hi, as I've said, I'm currently on the lookout for M-tron boxes (1990), but ideally I would like to see all box backs available online. I'm not exactly sure how long was LEGO doing that? I think it was from somewhere in the 80s to somewhere in the late 00s,

For the large part of LEGO history- as I presume most of you know- the backs of LEGO set boxes had on them "ideas" for alternate models that could be built from the set. This was always a very dear feature to me, and as a kid, I would always make sure to try to assemble all the alternate builds. Unfortunately, at some point LEGO stopped with this practice, and to this day I hope they will change their mind on that eventually... But that's not what I want to discuss today. What I want to discuss now is the backs of the boxes of old sets, or better said, where to get photos of them? It's very simple to find photos of the front side of boxes online, and instructions for almost every set are available in dozens of places. But the back sides, with all those nice alternate builds... Not so much. The best that I've managed so far is to dig through BrickLink listings, hoping that some seller will take a photo of the back of the box as well. It would be a real shame if all those alternate builds ended up lost to time. After all, the LEGO designers of the time certainly put effort into coming up with those. Personally, my current goal is to collect all the M-Tron ones, to use as inspiration for my own M-Tron themed MOCs. So, did I miss something? Is there a website out there that stores those photos? Do you think a website like that should exist? Should maybe LEGO put in some effort and upload all those photos, just as they upload instructions? Please share your thoughts.