AmperZand

How does it work? Do you draw up a list of the parts you want by number and hand that list to the staff for them to get the parts for you? I can see that working OK for adults, but not so well for kids.

Nope. You did better than you think. Per the rules in the OP, it doesn't matter if you get the gender wrong; you still get the points. So 1 minifigure that is completely right = 2 points. I only got 1 point for being half right about the classic space astronaut. I didn't guess the police aspect so lost a point. Excuse me one moment while I have a good cry

@Robert8, Good find! Thanks Why the astonishment at the cabaret singer's name/identity? I would have guessed carnival singer, so am not too surprised.

It isn’t just a matter of what sells but how much it costs to sell it. It’s the difference between revenues and margin. Unlike the ‘70s and ‘80s when the Classic lines were new and kids’ attention could be targeted to a few TV stations at limited times and a relatively small number of publications, nowadays, kids’ attention is split across a vast array of media. To grab their attention requires a unifying story with easily identifiable characters and scenarios and hence LEGO’s focus on licences. That’s how you market in an atomised media environment. Even City which previously didn’t do that has started to do it with more named characters and a cartoon. Unless LEGO can develop IP that plays that unifying role for Castle, it will never revisit medieval history/fantasy as a theme - except possibly in the form of one-off (Idea) sets as a bone to adults and AFOLs.

I was aware of the mammoth and sabre tooth cat before their release, but decided against getting the former. I really don’t care for its sculpt especially the shape of its head and its neck joint. The smilodon, on the other hand, is very cool and I have one menacing my complete collection of yellow minifigure cavepeople.

@LegoLars, I don’t mean to be ‘that guy’ and I make no pretence of being a mod, but there already is a thread dedicated to identifying parts.

^ Yes, officially. Though likely end of this month. There are reports online of them already being in the wild in places.

I was thinking the same thing about the centauride. The differences with the gorgon is that she could plausibly hold her tail up and the minifigure wasn’t unbalanced. The centauride, on the other hand, could not maintain that position and I suspect would tip the base up when attached as shown in the picture in @Robert8’s post (though am not sure as I haven’t simulated it with an HP centaur). Maybe LEGO should have included two bases with the centauride or replaced the usual CMF base with a longer plate.

The slender minarets of Turkish and other mosques are possibly my favourite architectural structures. You have done a nice job of capturing their elegance. It would be really cool to see all your architectural builds side by side or arranged in the relative geographic position of each country.

A kid with straight-ish, black hair playing the violin? Could LEGO be appealing to China, its fastest growing market? I believe CMFs are planned more than a year ahead, so before the pandemic. ——— Male or female (I don’t mind which), I wish the centaur had come with a new hairpiece with elf ears. If LEGO wanted to convey a sylvan look, that would have been the way to do it.

Occasionally, LEGO ends production of a set early or updates one mid-production because it realises it has made a design mistake. And sometimes, especially in Technic sets, an AFOL finds a better way of achieving a technical goal that LEGO has missed. Those situations are not what this post is about. This thread is to discuss LEGO's bizarre design decisions that must have been obviously weird to the designers... but they went ahead with anyway. Here's an example I came across recently when writing an article for Brickset: the mech's hands in set 71640 Iron Man Mech. Pretty much every review of this set including Jang's has questioned why the mech has a protrusion from the little finger side of the palm. You can see it in the mech's left hand in the picture above. It looks out of place and serves no purpose. Why didn't the designers use two 2 x 1 plates, one with a wheel attachment for the thumb and one without? I am aware that LEGO's designers have to operate within constraints, but it would have only added 2 to the parts count (one for each hand) and negligibly more to the cost. It is no less robust than the 2 x 2 plate with two wheel attachments, so why? If you're wondering what the hand would look like without the superfluous attachment, here's my mod: Any ideas why LEGO didn't do this? Also, what build decisions by LEGO seem strange to you?

Mythbusters examined that in 2007 and found it plausible, but there are no historical documents supporting it.

Great diorama and very well photographed! I like how the minifigures are imbued with personality through their facial prints, stances and positions such as the barbarian scout hiding in the shrubbery.

That is phenomenal! Outstanding creation. Is it purist?

The way you have done the white carving in the top picture is brilliant. But the pièce de résistance is the use of hotdogs to form the decorated arches in the bottom two pictures. Genius!

Agreed Your wish is my command, oh Master! The steed is not the same colour as the giant deer (megaloceros giganteus) seen in a couple of The Hobbit movies, but it's as close as you can get in LEGO System. I haven't seen pictures of the Thranduil minifigure on the medium nougat stag anywhere else online, so it may be that the pictures above are the first. That Thranduil rode a giant deer is a fabrication of the writers of the movies; it isn't canon per Tolkien. The movies' writers didn't give the deer a name but I'm calling him Nelphae-a-Nêl which is Sindarin (Elvish) for 33

True but black hair with a black hat wouldn’t work well. The hair would be hard to see. I can’t think of a hat/hair piece by LEGO in which the hat and hair are the same colour.

@Aurore, Thanks for the ‘heads up’. I was aware of the new hat/hair piece. I hope LEGO eventually does it with the hair in a witchy colour such as purple. The botanical prints slipped under my radar though. I especially like the second one with anthropomorphic mandrake.

I love stave churches and this creation captures their likeness really well. Great build I was lucky enough to visit the one in Heddal both inside and out (the interior is generally closed to the public) as well as the one at the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo.

@BardDandelion, Great coach! Its decoration is what really makes it. @TwiceDeadTB, D&D is also a good source of inspiration for LEGO MOCing. There was an article about it in Blocks Magazine once, and I saw LEGO being used in a huge set-up to play D&D at a convention a few years ago.

Thanks for your kind words. Appreciated I had had a spare Krackenskull's helmet pretty much since it came out. The colour of the lightning pattern on it is not quite a perfect match with the Hidden Side body, but it's near enough and so small you can't really tell. The design though is spot on. I reversed the shoulder piece; it's supposed to slope up but looks better curving down. The angel of death's wings are indeed BrickWarriors. In fact, all of the minifigures in the picture except one have at least one third party piece.

Indeed. You should never mark a parcel you’re sending to a German-speaking country as a ‘Gift’. It doesn’t mean what you think (unless you speak German) and would be against international postal regulations! And when in Japan, even an Italian restaurant, don’t say the word for cheers in Italian which sounds like ‘chin-chin’. Means something completely different - and rude - in Japanese!

I have a false memory of short, metal axel pieces in LEGO sets about 45 years ago but now think they may have been from another toy system that had axels that happened to fit LEGO.

^ Fair point! I’m so used to modding brick-built Ninjago dragon-robots and the like to make them represent actual monsters that I take it as given that any brick-built creature will require modding to make it look organic. On closer inspection, I agree that this nian won’t need it. I think I’ve spotted another recolour: the extended hilt (lightsabre) that has previously only been in gold, silver and dark bley is now in black.

@Aurore, Thanks for the ‘heads up’. ? I could be mistaken, but it seems the book’s cover is printed, not stickered. Book covers are usually printed. The cow costume hood could be useful for creating a minotaur, though both LEGO and BrickWarriors have done minotaurs before. The brick built nian creature is supposed to be people in costume, but could easily be taken to be/modded to be an actual nian. It’s a shame LEGO doesn’t do a dedicated bamboo stem part. The brick built ones are clever but don’t quite capture the look of bamboo. Are the bases of the stems candle parts in a new colour for them? I wonder how many people would know what the brick built bamboo was out of context. I prefer the previous torso and skirt prints for the Spider Queen over this one, but can see how others may disagree.