AmperZand

Technically, custom moulding might be a violation of TLG's IP. In the UK, for example, design rights subsist in the 3D characteristics of an object. So it's possible that TLG has rights to the shape of a piece and copying it without permission is a transgression.

I can understand why kids like them: they're a fun play feature. But as an AFOL, I've never cared for them and mod them out of sets I otherwise like. Here's an example of a TLG design that I modded to remove the FFMs (plus a few other small changes):

Perhaps a portmanteau that combines Lego and otaku, so legotaku.

You're too modest. More fitting would be "superhuman"!

I have been to a LEGO store where the staff help you to find the bags you're after whether you want their help or not! It's actually quite annoying because you either have to trust them without really knowing if they're any good at feeling bags or insult them by checking the bags they think they've identified. I'd rather not be in that situation. I usually go to a store where I'm the only one feeling bags and prefer it that way. Sometimes, the staff are after particular minifigures too and ask for my help. On one occasion, the manageress gave me one free as a thank you.

If you replace Mickey's legs with Mr Incredible's, does it look like Mickey has had a "wardrobe malfunction"?

When I saw the title, I was expecting a rider on a pale horse. But I like your NK demon on a warg! The landscaping of your MOC is really well done.

"AFOL" to other AFOLs. "LEGO enthusiast" to non-FOLs. I disagree. There's nothing in the word "collector" that implies or connotes completion. If you have an interest in and seek to obtain minifigures, for example, are you only a collector if you try to get at least one of every minifigure ever produced? By that standard, there are probably no minifigure collectors. On the other hand, you probably don't qualify as a collector if you only have one of something or you have no interest in that type of thing. For example, a kid with his first minifigure doesn't count as a collector and neither do people in their DA who may have quite a few minifigures they don't care about in their parents' attic.

Both of those MOCs are cool Krikkit, Like your inclusion of Zack. Unless I'm misremembering, Raj wore a blonde wig with his Aquaman outfit.

I suspect that one reason for two instruction books is that lots of kids - TLG's main market - would find one massive instruction book off-putting. Two books is easier psychologically. As for store exclusives, they don't pay for them directly. Rather, they're an incentive for large volume sellers to order even more LEGO. And for big chain retailers, it allows them to outcompete their smaller rivals.

You're very welcome I hadn't actually prepared a mounted archer or javelin thrower for my display collection, so I assembled the following just for these shots. I used a LEGO bow and arrow for the archer as that's the part most people will have, but the toxophile looks better with a separate bow piece (one not combined with an arrow) such as this one by BrickForge: https://www.brickforge.com/Recurve-Bow.html. I imagine it would work just as well with a BF longbow. Hope these pictures help.

Last year, I backed a Kickstarter project by Crazy Bricks to produce minifigure arms angled differently from official LEGO ones (Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstar...res/description). The project exceeded its funding target and unlocked additional colours, another arm angle, some satyr legs and a new afro hair piece. This is a review of Crazy Bricks' new parts. I used some of the Crazy Bricks parts in four of the minifigures shown below, specifically for the front musketeer's right arm, the devil's legs, the Zulu warrior's hair and the Greek hero's right and left arms. I have more Crazy Bricks parts that I haven't photographed but still considered them as part of the review. 1. Functionality 7/10 The arms don't attach to the torso in the same way that LEGO arms do. Each Crazy Arm is fixed to a piece inside the torso that itself attaches to one of the studs on the top of LEGO legs. You get one internal attachment piece per arm. It's an ingenious design and I'm sure there must be a reason for it, but I can't help but feel that these new arms would have worked just as well if they had used TLG's simpler attachment method. The Crazy Arms are easy to assemble and the articulation rotates perfectly both at the wrist and at the shoulder except the straight-out arm (the musketeer's right arm and the Greek hero's left) which is very stiff. Unlike LEGO satyr legs, Crazy Bricks' - which they call "Digitigrades" - aren't articulated and don't have any printing. 2. Compatibility - arms & hair 7/10, legs 2/10 The Crazy Bricks arms and hair parts sit flush with LEGO minifigures and have perfect clutch. After additional research, I discovered that the satyr legs stress LEGO torsos and can cause small patches of discolouration to or even cracking of the sides of torsos. The arms, hair and legs are sculpted to look like they could be LEGO parts and if you weren't a FOL, you wouldn't guess from their shape that they aren't. But the colours and lustres aren't exact matches. The arms and legs are ever so slightly glassier than LEGO's: shinier with less rich colour, while the afro is a bit more matte. Also, the reddish brown (not pictured) is fractionally lighter than TLG's. In fairness to Crazy Bricks, I have exceptional colour acuity and I can only see the differences in shean and shade in good light. A casual observer wouldn't notice. 3. Material 9/10 The new parts seem to be made of similar ABS to LEGO. My guess is that they will last just as long. 4. Manufacture 6.5/10 The parts are well cast with minimal moulding lines. The only problem is that some of the arms and legs have quite noticeable partition marks where the piece was originally attached to its sprue. 5. Variety 7/10 The angle of arms allows for quite a range of poses from spear-chucking to archery to two-handed-along-the-middle-of-the-body. The range of colours is a bit disappointing though. Yes, many expected colours are there: white, black, reddish brown, dark bley, yellow and dark tan. But it's a shame, there's no blue, red or dark brown. I don't think there are any green ones available though I could be wrong about that. That said, the range of colours allows you to create satyrs in more colours than TLG's reddish brown. 6. Usefulness 10/10 These arms are incredibly useful for anyone wanting to create a realistic archery pose and many other stances. They also break up the monotony of large groupings (crowds, armies etc) of minifigures, making them look more life-like. 7. Originality 10/10 I'm not aware of anyone else injection moulding variously posed minifigure arms. This is one of those ideas that you wonder how we ever lived without. Even the satyr legs are original. At the time they were announced, TLG had not yet revealed that it would be doing goat legs. 8. Service 10/10 Dealing with Crazy Bricks has been a delight. They kept backers of the project up to date with regular bulletins and were happy to comply with special shipping instructions. 9. Value 6/10 I appreciate that designing, testing and producing relatively small quantities of injection moulded pieces is expensive but even so, Crazy Bricks parts aren't cheap compared to other suppliers of third party minifigure parts and accessories. Overall, I'm very pleased I backed this project and was able to obtain these new parts. I have only used some of the Crazy Bricks pieces I ordered but have already planned what I'm going to do with my spares. My only regret is that my budget didn't stretch to ordering more. My guess is that Crazy Bricks will eventually make these parts available for sale through their site. If you didn't catch their Kickstarter project, do yourself a big favour and get them when they do. Questions? Comments? Craziness?

I recreated a Classic Space set a couple of years ago and had the same problem. After considering a number of options, the easiest approach turned out to be getting the required parts on BrickLink. Not all BL sellers were equally honest in their descriptions of the printing, but I was eventually able to get some excellent printings:

Small correction: Weetabix wasn't a chocolate cereal, just a wheat one. In recent years, there have been Weetabix varieties including a chocolatey one with chocolate chips. But Weetabix wasn't and still isn't known as a chocolate cereal in the UK. I don't know if that's also true in the Antipodes. I imagine it is.

If TLG are using different bag designs depending on region because of variations in the popularity of the characters, I wonder if the distribution per box will vary by region as well. The European box contains 3 Donalds. Perhaps the American box will have fewer making MIP Donalds in the American packaging more valuable than European ones on the secondary market. I wonder if this trend will continue to regular CMF lines with regional packaging and frequencies based on localised market research. Hmmm....

Many of the recipients of these minifigures will be young kids. The Disney co-branding may even mean that they are the first minifigures some kids receive. So for younger kids, the instructions probably are necessary. There's a French Youtube video review of one of the recent CMF series in which the reviewer, a young woman, fails to figure out how to assemble a number of the minigures. So if someone of that age can't manage it without guidance, you can be sure that some young kids can't either. I completely agree.

We already knew that LEGO can withstand considerable force. On average, a 2x2 brick can resist 4240 Newtons (equivalent to 950 pounds) before deforming.

The makers of that video missed a trick. They should have said: "No, Mr Brick, I expect you to die!" Kudos if you get the reference.

Fangy, We love you! Don't abandon us in our hour of need. The Minifigure Addicts German footballers will be released next and then later in the year we'll be getting a regular series of CMFs.

I suspect you're right for AFOLs but less so for others. I reckon these will be popular among KFOLs, (not LEGO-specific) collectors of Disney paraphernalia, and the general public (e.g. grandparents impulse purchasing these for their grandchildren). My guess is that AFOLs make up a fairly small percentage of CMF buyers so the fact that there are few army builders, no new accessories and not much desire to collect them all won't make much difference. Overall, they'll probably sell better than regular CMFs.

Good question! I'd like to know the answer too. Sunlight contains UV-A and UV-B. Black lights only emit UV-A. I don't know whether any kind of UV triggers the bromide additives in ABS to react causing discolouration or whether it's only UV-B. Is there a friendly chemist/materials scientist on the board with the answer?

If you scroll down this Brickset link http://brickset.com/article/20261/throwback-thursday-1979 that looks at the 1979 LEGO Catalogue, there's a tiny bit of info about Fabuland.

Great design! Does it represent a real species of fish?

There was a discussion of TLG's future some time ago here on the EB boards and I brought up the prospect of 3D printing. My thoughts then - and now - were that 3D printing would eventually allow home users or small local/online businesses to 3D print LEGO quality parts. It won't happen soon, but will happen in the long term. I expect that many buyers will still want to buy their bricks from TLG anyway. I also imagine that TLG will sell CAD files of their sets so that home users and small businesses under licence can print official LEGO sets. It's not dissimilar to how some books are sold now. There are books you can buy as PDFs and print off yourself (or at a printer's) or buy the book in hard copy.

IMHO, neither is better: they're both cool. As regular readers of this thread or visitors to my Brickshelf page (see link in sig) might have surmised, my collection leans much more to variety than quantity. My only duplicates are 40 or so uruk-hais; the other 600+ minifigs in my display collection are all different. That's not to say that I don't value big collections. The one on Youtube showing 5000+ Clone Troopers is undoubtedly impressive. To be honest, if I had the time, space and money, I would consider building a huge Castle army. I would still have my smaller, varied collection; I would just have a vast army to go with it. I can see why someone may not care for one type of army or the other, but I don't see the point of criticising other people's collections. If you don't like what someone else has done, just move to the next collection or post your own.