gylman

Notwithstanding all the whining about minifig costs, you have to admit that those minifig armies are a beautiful thing. I think that something so nice as that should cost $100+. (of course, I admire them from a distance, I have no intention of collecting such an army........ this week anyway). GYl

Being reminded of my loneliness spurred (inspired) me to find a suitable maiden....

Lonely helmet? I needs to finds me a maiden. How about http://ewancient.lysator.liu.se/pic/art/g/.../vikinggirl.jpg Or, more likely.... http://www.avondale18.force9.co.uk/j.jpg How about senile helmet? LOL You guys need a day job. :-D EDIT: Hey, check the avatar! Lonely no more. Gyl

After age 13-15, homework and the "need to breed" take over your free time. Lego requires some free time. Lego cannot be truly enjoyed again until you have completed you education (highschool, university, whatever) and settled down to a boring adult life where there is some free time. In my case, what got me back into Lego was buying Duplo, then Lego, for my kids to play with. Cheers Gyl

LMAO. You young whippersnappers! I'm a month shy of 41. Doubt anyone here tops that. I was online before most people here were born, but only got back into Lego in the last 4 years cuz of my kids. My dark ages were from 10 to 37! I'm used to being the oldest member on all my sites. I think I am permanently 14 mentally (but with the income of a full grown adult - yeah!). I find adults my age mind- numbingly boring. Only problem is that people my age generally don't have enough free time to do what they can now afford to do. Gnight kids. Gyl

Castle rules from those choices. But...... what about Technic/Mindstorms? That's an awfully big group left out. Cheers. G

WTF? you don't mean to be racist? And....... let me guess, some of your best friends are black too, right? And... you don't want to offend anyone? I assume you are joking, or trying to get a rise of out people.

Well, I never had an avatar until now. So..... I guess just a helmet will do. One of these days though.....

That was excellent. TLC can personally thank you for the 2 copies of this set I ordered from S@H yesterday (normally I don't buy HP). Cheers. Gyl

Well, the whole Lego Factory business seems to be rather disappointing. Never mind the fact that you only can choose from a very limited pallete, the real problem is the cost. This is an example http://news.lugnet.com/announce/moc/?n=2955 very basic set, you get 118 parts you need, and 514 you don't (for the set, anyway) Cost - 43.93 US$ Crazy. I guess we should have guessed it would be this way from the marked overpricing of the three first lego factory sets. I understand why TLC is releasing the 'packs" you need, not individual parts,but it ends up being insanely expensive. I guess what will end up happening is that once all the part packs are known, people will just build MOCs that make maximum uses of specific packs, or just pseudo-mocs just for the parts. Oh well, it was too good to be true. *devil* I look forward to making a house entirely from pneumatic parts! G

For the obsessive collections, of which there may be one or two on this forum ;) this may be a worthy site. Highly recommended, and I have not come across his site before. http://www.legofigs.com/fameset_e.htm It made me realize just how feeble my minifig keychain collection really was. Sigh Cheers. Gyl

This is what I mean by lego bikes http://cgi.ebay.ca/AS-NEW-UNUSED-BOXED-GT-...1QQcmdZViewItem However, it's not like they made a million bikes. The point is that rather than focusing on making a construction toy, they tried to market their name and product lines outside the context of a construction toy. This may have had some success, but my impression is that the effort spent is not worth it overall from a bottom line point of view. Certainly many people have said this before, and TLC seems to agree, for now. This kind of stuff gives me the heebeejeebees, even though I like bionicle most of the time. http://www.thinkwaytoys.com/ourtoys/lego_b.htm Cheers. Gyl

Well, given that the interest in Lego Factory so far appears to be nearly nil because of the cost issues, I sure hope that TLC is not betting the future on Lego Factory for significant income. I guess we would all like to design our own sets, but how many people are there who will actually do this? How much profit can TLC make from a single set at a time this way while maintaining the infrastructure needed to provide the Lego Factory service. Of course it will be outlandishly expensive, and this will limit accessibility to AFOLs only (even then, there will be cost issues). Not a big market, noisy though it is. I do endorse some of the other stuff heard at the keynote -stop making Lego bikes, etc -focus on core business -pleased to hear Vikings are Technic are successful **GO TECHNIC** I was disturbed that there was no mention, it seems, of the role of the internet. They talk about selling direct and bypassing retailers, which is quite reasonable, but I think the key to TLCs future success is a strategy integrated around the internet in every way, with a million interactions between Lego sets, their web site, and whatever else they can throw in. One of the main problems TLC faces, and no one mentioned it in the keynote, although it has come up before, is that their bricks live forever, and older sets are available on eBay etc, significantly cutting into the money available and demand for new sets. If new sets had some of functionality that was time-limited, like through a link on the net, that would slightly improve the value of new relative to old sets (not if all you want is the brick - but perhaps for the play value). I'm sure we'll all be saying and hearing more about this. That's my first impression, though

This topic is about the lego factory sets: http://shop.lego.com/Factory/ Has anyone bought any of these? They have been available on S@H for some time, but I have been reluctant to buy because of the cost. I am struck that they have never once shown up on the "what's hot" list in either Canada or the US as far as I can tell, which makes me suspect that they are not selling well at all. It would be too bad if that experiment dies - the idea was good, but the pricing seems to kill it. If anyone has bought any of the factory sets... what did you think? Gyl

Very nice. You might consider larger photos. Gyl

This is what I've been saying since I joined here a few months ago. Bionicle is not System Lego, and does not integrate well with System lego, which leads to frustration. Many parts are useless, and the Lego models from Lego suck since they are for the 6-9 year old crowd (some notable exceptions are Boxor, Cadhok, Muaka, Exo-Toa, Makuta). BUT BUT BUT when you get enough parts together you can do awesome stuff with Bionicle. The stuff that has been shown on this topic only scratches the surface of what some of the people on BZpower have done. I hope TLC goes back to what it did with bionicle the first 2 years, when they had many a few big sets of 400+ parts that were fun builds on their own, and great sources of parts afterwards. Gyl

LMAO Read title of topic. Galidor is obviously a disaster, and no need to discuss it further. Excluding Galidor..... what do you think? Gyl

A more complex castle and ship build. The big sets look good, but are too simple and not really that fun to build. Gyl

It's very hard to predict what would succeed though. The soccer and basketball games are not much different, yet the soccer was probably a success, but basketball a disaster. I think that probably they didn't market test Hockey and Basketball too much, but just saw them as an extension of the soccer line. However, the basketball game is just not fun to play, and the giant curved pieces are useless outside the sets. If ANYONE here would have seen the bionicle designs before release, they would undoubtedly have predicted total disaster. It was a radical change for Lego... yet I am told that Bionicle basically has kept Lego alive the last few years. Galidor was looking very hot on TV a few years ago, but then died over night. Not really TLCs fault. They obviously would have been better off with a Reboot license (Megabyte woudl have been quite a cool build), but maybe that license was gone. It's easy to secondguess. I am pretty sure they do a lot of testing before they fire up the molds for a whole new line (but would bet they skimped on the market-testing for Hockey and Basketball) "Explore" was a marketing mistake, not a new line. Gyl

I'm quite sure soccer (football in Europe and rest of hte world) did quite well. It went on through several years and two generations of fields, accessory packs, etc. I played it and it was quite fun, and my kids kept it and used it for quite a time. Basketball was (and is) a dismal failure. It's in every bargain bin and S@H sale. It is totally unplayable, and the sets are useless even as parts packs. I think hockey was a failure, but not on the scale of basketball. It is a bit more playable, and I have seen a good number of hockey figs on eBay as parts of loose lego sales. I think the hockey sets had more useful pieces for MOCs etc. Basketball remains my vote for the worst failure, although it may well be that Duplo to "Explore" change cost Lego more money. We should make a poll out of this: Basketball Time Cruisers Explore (Duplo) Rock Raiders Hockey Any others?

I am looking for any forestmen castles or large sets. I have most other castle sets in multiple copies, lots of harry potter, lots of starwars, technic Cheers. Gyl

Hey people, read the title of the topic. We all agree Galidor was the most spectacular failure, that's a given. Also, 4+ pirates and Jack Stone may suck, but Lego is not losing big bucks on them. They appear to be successful series that are being continued even now. So far we have: Time Cruisers Sports (esp. Basketball) Lego Explore (dumb duplo) Gyl

That was duplo's version of technic. I think it did quite well. At least it did at my house when my kids were 4 and 5 years old. We have a big box full of it I have to list on eBay one of these days. My kids sold all their duplo on Ebay 2 years ago, but still are still unwilling to part with the Toolo. They were still selling it, although under another name I think, in the stores last year, but I have not seen it this year. I doubt that the Toolo line was a financial disaster. Gyl

Time cruisers seems to have died a very rapid death. Agree it would be one of the faliures. I have the big Time Cruisers set and it appears to be a big mishmash of leftover bits from other series and sets. No consistency of colour, construction, or anything. Rock Raiders and Aquanauts seem to have a decent resale value on eBay, so I don't think they were totally unpopular, but I doubt they failed on the scale of Lego Basketball. The arctic sets I don't know much about admittedly.

OK people, which do you think was the biggest Lego bomb ever? I am talking about popularity and sales success, not whether or not you personally like the sets. Also, not just a single set out of an otherwise successful line (some Star Wars or Bionicle sets can be obtained for 1/4 price, but overal the line was successful) If you have any actual data to back it up, that would be great, but I doubt such data is available. My vote is for the recent sports line. Soccer I think was a modest success, but then it all went horribly wrong. Oh the humanity....! From what I can see at the discount stores, The "Ultimate NBA arena" set 3433 and hockey's "Slammer Stadium" (set 65182.. why the weird number) are sitting there in piles, and no one is buying either. I see 3433 being sold at nearly 80% off (19$ for an 89$ set, Canadian dollars), but no one is buying any. Welcome your inputs! Gyl