ShaydDeGrai

The activity and building experience aside (which already drop 90% of AFOLs out of the picture, as that's really what _they_ are there for), imaginative play is about engaging in a _story_. Professional writers (and wanna-be pro-writers) have all sorts of ideas about what goes into "building" a good story but most can generally agree on a few key elements: Setting - where does the story take place, what universal rules and expectations apply to everyone in the story; premise - without getting into specific actions and complications, what is the story about; conflict - if the resolution were easy or obvious the story wouldn't be worth telling, so what complications make this story interesting?; characters - design of a good character can be a story building exercise in itself, what makes each of them unique? what motivates them? why do the act the way they do? what do they value?; and plot - what actually happens as the story unfolds? Some writes say that if you get all the other things right, the plot writes itself because it should be obvious once you _really know_ the characters, conflict, premise and setting. If I tap into an established IP (licensed or in-house) I'm also (potentially) bringing in constraints on my narrative. Star Wars is an established setting; Jabba the Hut seeking to punish Han Solo failure to pay his debts is an established premise; we know who all the key players are and we have to work harder to get outside the story we're given to create our own path. It can certainly be done (hey The Lego Movie itself was an exercise in taking known character out of their established contexts) but it's a lot easier to run with the story you're given and just accept it. Now take a classic space man. We still have a setting (or do we? Is that a space suit or a haz-mat suit? Maybe it's just needs flippers and an air tank to be some sort of diving gear...) Our story has no predetermined premise (First person on Titan? Mutant bunny rabbit discovered while cleaning up a toxic waste site? Alien landing base discovered while mining on the ocean floor?) Likewise questions of conflict and character are wide open. A kid with a vivid imagination could spend years world-building his or her on narrative (I know _I_ did back in the day) I'm not saying that sets based on an established IP are bad (lord knows I own enough of them), but, particularly for young minds, I think the more open-ended we leave the narrative the better. Kids will always embrace some sort of narrative when they play, its just the way they are wired, the only question is do we want them to learn to write their own story or learn to live within the one they're given.

Been, there, done that, had to throw away the T-Shirt... The trick I found was to put the bricks in a separate tub, spray the whole thing down in a fine mist of Nature's Miracle, snap the lid on, shake it up and leave it in a sunny place for about a week then wash the bricks again with a mix of dish detergent and baking soda. I found that the polycarbonate (trans colors) cleans up pretty well; the ABS can sometimes harbor a bit of a smell for a short time; and, the soft rubbery pieces (claws, whips, some spikey hair pieces) need to sit outside in bright sunlight even after cleaning to break down the smell. In other news, as some may have guessed already, I also have a couple cats; a British Blue who loves the sound of loose brick and comes running when she hears it; and, a rescue tom who isn't very bright and likes to chew on polybags. If you look at my avatar, you'll see I've built MOCs of the Pillars of the Kings from the Lord of the Rings. My British Blue loves these statues and when I had them out for display she would routinely snap the hands off from all the self petting she was doing.

Issues of when/whether/if a "toy" becomes a "collector's item" and is no longer suitable for young hands aside, I'd say never underestimate the power of a child's imagination, and by all means encourage him/her to use it. I have a two and half year old daughter, we've been playing together with Duplo for 18 months now. I also have a Lego collection of my own that spans half a century of collecting. My daughter "knows" that her Duplo are hers and she can play with them any time and that "daddy's Lego" is something she only gets to touch when I'm there. A by-product of that is that I'm there when she's oohing and aah-ing over my models (even though they are just sitting on the shelf and she hasn't had the opportunity to explore "play features"). I _have_ noticed that she is drawn to the more "modern" kits over similar themed offerings from the 70's or 80's. Just looking at them side by side, I can understand why. The new offerings are more visually interesting, even new kits done in an old style (such as Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP from The Lego Movie or kits from the Ultra Agents theme) have that visual "something" that makes them more interesting to young eyes. But the story doesn't end with "the new kits are better." The other day she decided she wanted us to play with the Emerald Night train set. I didn't want her to take it apart, but we were both fine with the notion that it needed a train station to stop at, so we built one in (classic any-color-block-will-do-in-a-storm style) Duplo. Then we "discovered" that her Duplo penguins didn't fit in the Emerald Night's passenger car, so we needed to build a bigger, better train the penguins could ride in. Well, it had wheels and the cars coupled together and we called it a train, but I doubt it will be nominated for Ultimate Collectors' Set of the year, but by the time we were done, the spiffy model that was the Emerald Night was gathering dust in the corner and my daughter was going on about how this penguin was the conductor and this penguin needed to get to work and those two penguins were taking the train to playgroup. Her train was the best train ever built (at least in her mind for the course of the afternoon). A cool set (well beyond her age and building ability) may have set the tone for the play session, but it was her imagination and level of engagement with the raw building blocks (no pun intended) that really made things click (again, no pun intended). So I guess my advice would be to give your kids enough raw materials and _just_ enough narrative/backstory to inspire them to run in their own direction. A kid today isn't going to know M-Tron from Black-Tron from Classic Space from Exo-Force. They are going to see ships and robots and launchers and moon buggies and it's fantastic if they decide to invent a narrative that glues it all together. What matters is that they are engaging in imaginative play and using that vision to create something real. A few cool model kits can be a good starting point (but try to see these with the eyes of a child - is it visually interesting? is it swooshable? Does it have things that open/spin/shoot/light-up? - not because _you_ remember the backstory or always wanted that kit as a child or because it was your favorite vehicle in that Star Wars film your kid hasn't even seen yet) but there's a lot to be said for imaginative play value in a generic tub of bricks. For the price of a couple vintage sets on eBay you could get enough raw brick on bricklink or lego store pick-a-prick walls to build a decent moonbase. Does it really matter if their grand creation matches M-tron's color scheme? It might, but only your children say so.

I was chatting with a Lego Designer about this a few years back and many of the points he covered have already been raised, but for completion I'll try to channel what _I_ was told: When it comes to parts that will eventually be buried in the build color choice (and sometimes, though less often, geometry, i.e. using two 1x2s in place of a 1x4) there are several tradeoffs ( in decreasing order of importance) to consider: 1) Visibility, clarity and visual interest - using high contrast parts makes the instructions easier to follow; it makes the model easier to orient if the build up to that point has been highly symmetric; and, it breaks up large seas of monochrome studs with "reference" parts and in general makes thing less bland. 2) Cost and availability - molded parts sitting in bins take up space and represent money that has already been spend but not yet converted into a revenue stream. Parts that need to be fabricated represent addition expense in money, time and materials. Where possible, spending down existing inventory is preferable - it feeds the revenue stream while freeing up slots in the warehouse to store other parts. 3a) Production line constraints - polybags are filled one item at a time (though sometimes that "item" is a sealed polybag itself) this means that each type of part (shape & color) requires a dedicated filling station on the production line. Ideally you want the number of unique parts in a bag to be well aligned to the capacity of the line (number of potential filling stations). Lines vary in length and you don't want to tie up a high capacity line with half the stations idle just because you went over the capacity of the next smallest line by one part type. 3b) Filling station constraints - filling stations usually try to separate and drop parts one at a time even if the station is supposed to add 400 technic pins to a bag. Stations may count parts optically or by weight or both. In the weight case, basically the system weighs the bag coming in, drops X parts that are known to weight Y grams each and turns off when the bag is X*Y grams heavier than it was when it started. And it tries to do this really, really fast. When the system screws up, it usually errs on the side of caution, dropping too many parts rather than too few (which is, in part, why it's more common to see spare parts in a kit than missing pieces). Scales often have a saddle curve where they measure this extremely accurately in some mid-range and accuracy falls off on either end. Depending on the filling station, it might be preferable to add "at least B but not more than C parts per bag" to minimize counting errors. The designer I spoke to was acutely aware of points 1 & 2 and said that when it came to production line issues he'd gotten an overview that end of the process but other than some vague guidelines it wasn't really his problem. There were people whose job it was to figure that out and he only got involved when someone would call him and say "would it be possible to substitute M for N or use more O in place of P" then they'd refine the design. So I guess the bottom line is that "random" interior colors are anything but random. It's driven by everything from shaping the user experience, to long term inventory management, to packaging and quality control.

I'm with you on this one. I love that my daughter (now ~2.5) enjoys her Duplo so much. I make it a point to get her generic sets (ordering on-line) and my wife and I make a conscious effort to shield her from excess branding and marketing, but the moment we walk in to the local toy store my daughter runs over to the Duplo aisle and EVERY SINGLE KIT is a licensed theme (mostly Disney). When we go to playgroups, I see kids fighting over the (licensed) figures and ignoring the bricks themselves. Call me old fashioned (or older than dirt) but that's just wrong. When I sit down with my daughter and she breaks out her (generic) Duplo animals its always "let's build a pool for the penguins" or "let's make a tree for the squirrel". She names the human figures and makes up stories for them while building houses and trains and whatever else the story requires. I watch other kids playing and the story begins and ends with "Hey I got Spiderman!" "Oh yeah, I got Micky Mouse" and the bricks might as well be uneaten Cracker Jack, the kids treat the (licensed) figures like a prize and barely notice the rest. As for "regular" Lego Bricks, I hear your pain but appreciate the role licensed themes have had in bringing TLG back from the brink. I must also admit that I have a pretty extensive collection of UCS kits. Still, give me a nice generic Creator Expert kit over yet another licensed remake any day. I'm not even that taken with the new Downtown Diner but I just ordered one anyway because I just couldn't get excited about building yet another snowspeeder (I have eight variations on this theme already and doing it in tan and calling it a sandspeeder isn't going to make the experience feel "fresh".) I do miss the classics. There was a clean simplicity to the basic themes like space, pirates and castle that encouraged creativity and imaginative play in a way that even the modern, in-house IP successors like Nexo-Knights and Ninjago just seem to lack. Too much of the narrative is directed; too much of the focus is on building "So-in-So's whatch-ma-call-it" as opposed to just building something that would exist in that world. I appreciate that it's easier to market a tie-in, particularly if it ties to a recurring TV show, comic or frequently watched movie, but it's a shame that that same "iconic recognition" sometimes makes the Lego experience less open-ended.

I'm not exactly devout when it comes to maintaining my Brickset Inventory. I don't actively collect mini-figures (I more sort of accumulate them) so I don't bother logging those and the bulk of my collection is raw parts, not sets. Still, according to Brickset I have: 704 Sets 1114 Minifigures ~376,000 Pieces The first two numbers are probably 70-90% accurate. The part count is a seriously lowball estimate, I have individual MOCs in storage that use more parts than that. After half a century of collecting, I'd guess that the true number is closer to 1.5 Million parts.

Welcome RandomBoy! Hope you're doing okay in that Artic freeze and foot+ of snow Beantown is dealing with at the moment. If you're looking for local inspiration, there's a Lego Discovery Center at Assembly Row in Somerville (a couple stops outside of Boston on the Orange Line (or exit 29 off of I93 North)). They have an "adult night" about once a month on Wednesdays host a display of various Boston landmarks (custom house tower, old north church, fenway park, etc.) done in Lego in their Miniland display. I wouldn't make a habit of visiting the place, but it's worth checking out at least once. Perhaps you and your boyfriend could make an evening out of it sometime. Welcome to Eurobricks!

I just got an email from Lego telling me that they were taking orders on the UCS Millenium Falcon again. I popped over to the shop and ordered one. Better yet, I had 500USD in points on my VIP account that I'd been meaning to spend down so - yea - heavily discounted UCS Falcon! Just the thing to cheer up a dreary afternoon.

Setting aside the fact that TLG is a huge and long-lived toy company with a fantastic and beloved flagship product for a moment, at the end of the day they are a privately held company and have the "luxury" of being able to do what they feel is best for the company itself without fear of reprisals from angry stockholders who may value the day-to-day value of their stock certificates themselves over the long term value of the company represented by those stocks. On the flip side, their decision making process is opaque to nearly all, and there are few external checks in place to raise red flags or challenge questionable choices. I've known a number of people who have launched successful start-ups over the years. Some people were just in it to cash-out with a big IPO and walk away; others really wanted to grow and nurture their companies as personal assets that they could pass on to their kids and couldn't imagine "going public", carving up ownership of the company for the sake of quick cash infusion. Of the latter group, I recall one particularly successful founder told me his secret to running a solid business: When times are good, remember your core business model, look for growth opportunities and don't over-extend yourself; when things are lean, remember your core business model, look for growth opportunities and don't over-extend yourself. In other words, just because you had a good year, don't squander the money and don't over-react to bad years, plan for them; they _will_ happen. Having watched the ups and downs of TLG over the years, I occasionally wish someone had given them similar advice. When times are good it seems like they expand their workforce, diversify into areas outside the comfort zone of their traditional business model (sometimes with success, sometimes not), and start introducing new parts to the point where you start wondering who's counting the beans back in Billund and do they really have _that_ much cash on hand that they can spend millions in new molds every month for some specialty part that's only available in one kit, etc.? Then, growth slows; a boom audience demographic enters its dark age; some new gizmo becomes the hot holiday gift this year; that tent-pole film with the billion dollar toy tie-in line utterly flopped at the theatre; the 99% of kids who weren't part of the focus group think the new in-house theme is lame, etc. TLG waits too long to realize what they are spending on things that aren't generating revenue and they end up taking some corrective action that send shockwaves through the press. I'm not in a position to know if TLG really _needed_ to axe 1400 jobs, but their track record with boom and bust cycles does make me wonder how many of those jobs were "recently" created as part of a not-well-considered growth plan. How many of those slots could have been phased out over time via natural attrition, with any short term expenses being covered by cash on hand squirreled away during the boom years. How do the personnel costs of 1400 low- to mid- ranking employees compare to the production costs of the dozens of new molds and over 800 part recolors introduced in 2017? How much cash on hand does TLG really have? Are they trying to fix a short term budget crisis, or was this new management re-baselining to move in a different strategic direction? Now don't get me wrong, I love new parts and getting familiar parts in new colors as much as the next AFOL and not every downturn in sales is a reflection of a poor product or poor marketing of that product, but sometime it just seems like TLG doesn't know how to cope with success and it comes back to bite them when tides turn.

You'll probably get a bigger response if you ask this in the train forum, but in any case, I have a family bias or the Flying Scotsman (LNER Class A3) My grandfather was an engineer on her for the bulk of his career.

In many cases this is probably true, the very definition of a "good deal" is when both the buyer and the seller walk away with what they wanted, regardless of price. That said, I've seen scalpers in action who deserve a little harsh treatment. I was in a Lego store once shortly after the Star Wars UCS Snowspeeder came out. The store had five of them and this guy came in and took the three off the shelf and had a clerk get their last two from the back room. While he's in line to check out a kid, maybe twelve or so, and his mother come up to him. The boy tells him it's his birthday and that they came to the store specifically to get _that_ set. He then, very politely asks if he could have one of the five kits. The scalper just shrugged and told them that he was there first and that if they really wanted the set, they should have gotten there sooner. Needless to say the kid was very upset, started having a meltdown in the store. Then, after the scalper checked out, he had the nerve to go over to the mother who was trying to calm the kid down and tells her she can buy one of the sets from him for $300 ($100 more than what he just paid less than two minutes earlier). She used language you don't often hear in a Lego Store and the scalper left. I very much want to believe that this sort of behavior is atypical for most "Lego speculators" but even one incident like too many and I have little sympathy with people who deliberate upset a child on their birthday just to try to blackmail a quick profit out of a loving parent. For those who care, the Lego staff were much more sympathetic and called around to the next nearest Lego Store (fortunately there are four within an hour's drive of each other where I live), tracked down a copy of the set and had it set aside for the boy and gave him that month's promotional polybag "in advance" (I'm sure he got another at the other store when they actually bought the kit). They were very apologetic regarding the other customer's behavior but since he was under store's policy limit of 5 copies per buyer their hands were tied.

Those are all great choices really. I haven't built Ninjago City or Destiny's bounty, but I think it's hard to go wrong with any of them. Personally, were I in your position, I'd go with either the Parisian Restaurant or the Old Fishing Store (though from your post it looks like the restaurant has a better PPP in Canada). I found both to be very enjoyable builds with distinctive models in the end (not that there's anything _wrong_ with the other modulars, the Parisian Restaurant just stands a notch higher on the scale for me (for reference, I'd say it's tied for second (with the Town Hall) behind The Fire Brigade as far as my favorite Modulars go)). The Old Fishing Store was more fun that I was expecting. I was actually going to pass on it until reading a number of positive reviews and decided to give it a chance. In it's own way it reminded me of the Monster Fighter's Haunted House (a great non-Modular set that could be made to work with Modulars with a little imagination). If you're a MOCer, it's got good parts, "mature" colors and was an enjoyable build in its own right. Plus it has seagulls, you can't go wrong with seagulls (maybe that just the sailor in me talking...) Aside from the building experience and the quality of the final model, those two are also the ones most likely to go out of production in the near future. Parisian Restaurant is the oldest Modular still in production and will likely go away as soon as the next modular is announced (if not before). The Old Fishing Store is an Ideas set, which traditionally means it's starting with a limited production line and could sell out at any time; some Ideas set linger on shelves for a while, some get a second run, some just go away without much advance notice. My rule of thumb with Ideas sets is: if you want one, get it now rather than regret it later. Hope this helps.

This is another case of those pesky magnets that would warrant a redesign rather than a reissue. The original is (mostly) held together with the old style train coupling magnets. I say mostly because I've noticed that over the years mine has started to sag under its own weight and the magnets have enough play to let large sections of the ship slip out of alignment with the whole. That said, I'd be happy to see a "modern" take on the classic Star Destroyer. The magnets aren't needed to achieve the shape these days, the same thing can be accomplished with clips, hinges and ball and socket joints and would result in a more structurally sound model in the end. I'd happily buy another UCS Star Destroyer under these terms even though I've got the original. Of course, then you'd need to reissue the 10221 Super Star Destroyer at the same scale so they'd look right sitting next to one another (and then I'd need to find somewhere else to park my car because the SSD would take up the whole garage, oh if only I were in a position to have such problems....)

I have a scar on leg where I tripped, landed knee-first on a windshield part, snapped it in two and embedded a shard of polycarbonate into my leg. It wasn't anything I couldn't fix with a little superglue and suture tape (my leg that is, the windshield was toast) but it hurt like hell and when I was limping around the next day I felt pretty stupid admitting it was a Lego Injury. So far, this has been a once in a lifetime freak accident; Usually, I'm just sore from sitting too long and reaching for parts trays.

I've only had time to skim things over, but my initial impression is that it looks nice and presents a lot of well organized tips to, well, being well organized. From a quick read I guess I fall into the category of owning an extremely large collection. [ I have no idea how many parts I own. I'm not very good at keeping up with my BrickSet inventory and between Pick-a-brick walls, Bricklink orders, random donations from parents whose kids (sadly) have lost interest in Lego, etc. sets are only a fraction of my collection in the first place. ] I like to build fairly sizable things from pretty small parts (my Barad-Dur used an entire K-Box of gray cheese wedges alone). My preferred organization method is sort by both part and color for most things and to use what you refer to as tackle boxes, though I opt for the Stack-On cases over the Plano due to the built in handle, curved bottom to the cup rows - and the fact that the last two dozen I got were effectively free ;-) I first started using the tackle box approach when I got the 8062 Technic Briefcase set 20+ years ago and it just seemed like storage solution for my most commonly used parts (at the time). It kept out dust and cat hair (the failure of open bins). It had a much higher packing density than a parts cabinet (and if it ever got knocked over while I'm not using them, it stayed sealed, unlike a friend's parts cabinets that had an unfortunate encounter with his dog and undid days' worth of sorting hours). They are a lot easier to get into than a plastic tub filled with ziplock baggies (though I still use this storage approach as well for bulk parts and small "family" groupings (e.g. "purple 4x plates"). I also make it a point to always have a decent size bin of unsorted parts on hand for tinkering. My collection is largely sorted first by color (with the exception of mini-figures, which just go in a bin, and Technic, which is segregated and sorted by part), and then by part - to a point. If I have fewer that a few dozen of a particular part in a particular color, say bright yellow cheese wedges, they might end up in a "misc yellow slope" baggy instead of getting their own cup. The downside to the tackle box system is that no one tray ever has all the parts needed to build something so I need lots of counter space to keep a dozen trays open (and pray that my cat doesn't knock an open box onto the floor while I'm working) One point you touched on in your book that I think people underestimate is the value of not being too organized. You mention it in the context of a small collection for young children, but I'm older than dirt and have a major collection and I deliberately keep a few thousand pieces just dumped in a tub. Granted these are mostly either sets that I've scraped or the spoils of Pick-a-Brick wall visits to my local Lego Store that are just waiting to be filed properly, but I never put _everything_ away. Sometimes you need to rummage around and build without a plan just to get the creative juices flowing. An unsorted pile of parts is great for that. I appreciate that in several of the discussions you call out "Best for" to highlight the strengths of a particular solution over the others, but it might be worth offering a deeper discussion regarding some of the drawbacks/trade-offs each storage option and organization method has (beyond just "hard to find a small part in a bin of like-colored bricks"). From my experience, it seems like the various methods _I've_ explored could be rated against several (admittedly subjective) axes, such as: speed of retrieval; space consumption; "rummage-ability"; time/effort to set-up; time/effort to maintain; extensibility (as size of collection grows); vulnerability (how easily can this system get undone by kids, pets, movers, drunken party guests, etc.); and, "MOC-ability" (the ability/level of effort to find a wide variety of parts in just the right colors for a given MOC); Parts cabinets and tackle boxes sorted by element are clear winners when it comes to speed of retrieval when you know what part you're after, but how do they compare when browsing or brainstorming what the "next" part should be? How easy is it to maintain one organizational method over another? When do I reach the point when it takes longer to take a MOC apart than it did to build it in the first place because I'm trying to be too organized and trying to put everything away where it "belongs"? Where is the sweet spot between being organized and being creative? Obviously I wouldn't expect you to have universal answers for those last few questions as, I'm pretty sure, the "right" answer varies widely from person to person. Still, I think bit more discussion of various trade-offs and their implications for the overall creative process/time management/fun factor, would help further the point that people need to develop a system that works for them.

Hi and welcome, i understand how frustrating it can be when it seems like your folks don't appreciate your passions or dismiss things that are important to you as childish or a waste of time and money. While it can be maddening to deal with in the moment, remember that at the end of the day they just want what's best for you. Every parent I know wants a better life for their child than they had for themselves. So even when you're feeling upset, angry or insulted, try to remember that what lead to that situation was born of love, not malice. I grew up "LEGO poor". Lego was a pricy toy that I loved, but we really couldn't afford to buy more than a few small kits a year. By the time I was your age, my folks were encouraging me to take as many odd jobs as I could and to save every penny I earned so I could afford to go to college. In their mind they were "encouraging" me to know the value of a dollar and to get a good education. In my mind this often came off as: stop buying LEGO and comic books; if you've got time for a hobby, you've got time for a paying job; etc. They wanted to set me up for a lifetime of success and it took some time for us (together) to find the right balance between being who I was and preparing me for who I was to become. We worked it out though, you will too. That said, Andy D is quite right, you're NEVER too old for LEGO (Yes, I'm older than dirt myself, I'm older that Star Trek and I remember watching the first moon landing siting on my dad's lap in 1969). Today, I have a Ph.D., a family of my own, a good job, a house, a sizable LEGO collection and I started this morning by playing with DUPLO blocks with my daughter. I hope she never "outgrows" LEGO. Moreover, and this is something you can share with your folks (in a polite way) to better inform them about LEGO being more than a toy. I used to be an engineering professor at a fairly elite (i.e. hard to get into and ridiculously expensive) university and I taught college-level classes that had LEGO lab components to them. I also know a professional architect who uses LEGO bricks to flesh out ideas on a regular basis. Former students of mine have told me about job interviews at places like General Dynamics, Boeing, and Industrial Light and Magic where part of the interview process included leaving them alone with a pile of LEGO bricks to see how inventive they are. A strong sense of spatial relations and a creative mind is a winning combination in many professions, and working with LEGO is a great way to tune those skills. Talk to your folks. Passion can be a good thing, but so is moderation and with a little mutual understanding, hopefully you can find a respectful, informed resolution. Again, parents usually just want the best for their kids - and we don't always know what that is, we just know we love them.

I'm a bit of a collector and I've been at it a while now so this is an interesting question for me. A lot of the obvious choices: 3450 Statute of Liberty, 3724 Ollie the LEGO Dragon, 10181 Eiffel Tower, 10194 Emerald Night, 10210 Imperial Flagship, 10193 Medieval Market Village, 10223 Kingdoms Joust, 3739 Blacksmith's Shop, 10030 Imperial Star Destroyer, 10221 Super Star Destroyer, etc. I already own. In several cases (10193 MMV, 10194 EN, 3739 BS) I even have unopened spares (no intention to sell, I just really liked them and plan to build them again some day). So if I take all that off the list, it leaves me with: I'd love to see a reissue of the 8480 Technic Space Shuttle, one of the best Technic kits ever; feature rich, challenging to build, beautiful model, and - from a personal history standpoint - a key factor in my return from my dark ages. Those few kits that are out there are selling for roughly 4x original price. It's never going to happen though. This kit is from the days when TLG nearly bankrupted itself by not paying attention to its own costs and this set was clearly underpriced for what went into it (and, hence its popularity made it an even bigger money loser for TLG). This kit had micro-motors and fiber-optics and old style battery boxes and motors that haven't seen the light of day since PowerFunctions was introduced. I already have one, but I'd love to have another to build with my daughter when she's old enough. From a nostalgia standpoint, I've always wanted the 8880 Supercar. Sure the modern ones are nicer, but the 8880 is a classic. The one modular missing from my collection is the 10182 Cafe Corner, though like the new Millenium Falcon, I wouldn't object to a slight redesign to flesh out the interior. From the old Model Team line, I've always regretted not buying 5571 Giant Truck. I was in KB Toys; it was on clearance. I had it in my hand, but I hesitated. I changed my mind the next day, came back and it was gone. - sigh -

In the interests of full disclosure I must admit I've got a closetful of decade+ old kits, but that's because I haven't gotten to them yet, not because I plan on scalping them. Probably my oldest kits in the pile are two copies of the 3739 Blacksmith Shop from 2002 at this point. I consider this a backlog, not an investment. In the past couple of years I've also been picking up various sets that I think would be fun to do with my daughter (but I'd be unlikely to buy just for myself). Right now, she's too young (but loves her Duplo) and I generally assume that the kits I'm choosing today will be discontinued by the time she's old enough to appreciate them. I concur with the majority here, the biggest losers in the re-issue game are the "investors"/scalpers and it's hard for me to have much sympathy for them (i'm looking at _you_ bricklink guy who wanted me to pay 400 euros for a "mint in box" 8880 Supercar - I could download the instructions and bricklink the parts for a dozen cars at that price). Reissuing certain kits can be a great way to give a new generation access to things they never had the chance to buy and Older-than-Dirt fans a chance to recapture that special set that came out during their dark age, or the year their first child was born, or the year they lost their job and had to cut back, etc. (sigh, if only I had an 8880 Supercar....) As for the Taj Mahal in particular, I think the biggest downside for me personally is that I already own (and have built) one. I suppose it saves me some money in my Lego budget, but I wish they'd come up with a NEW high end Creator Expert kit for those of us who got the Taj the first time 'round. I'd like a new modular, or a new landmark series kit on the scale of the Taj or the Sydney opera house, or even a new sculpture (The Thinker? Winged Victory? David?) to keep my Statue of Liberty company but with the reissue of the Taj this week, it seems unlikely they'll come out with something to compete with it any time soon. Oh well...

Rebrick just ran an "ultimate trains" contest for October. Unfortunately, the contest is already closed for entries, but if anyone is interested in browsing train MOCs, they have about 280 entries (both physical and digital) to peruse. As with any Rebrick contest, quality varies widely, but sometimes it's just fun to see what other people are doing with the theme. The contest home page should be reachable here.

Just to echo Chriosphynx' advice: Don't feel disparaged just because you saw some awesome MOC on-line and think you'll never measure up to that. The truth is, nobody's assessments really matter but your own, and if you enjoy what you're doing you're already in great shape. It's wonderful to want to get better at something, but that's a process that happens over time. If you enjoy the process and keep at it, you _will_ get better; but that should be a side-effect of having fun, not an impediment to it. I remember being nervous before my first BrickFair, I hadn't even posted very many things online before that and here I was about to put things on public display, not just with my name on a card next to them, but with me actually sitting behind the table on display to the public as well. I kept telling myself that my landscaping was horrible, I'd seen fantastic work making water and foliage really "pop" and my best efforts were pathetic by comparison. My only hope was that I'd be able to set-up somewhere well removed from any expert Lego gardeners. Then I got to the show, saw more awesome MOCs, and then something unexpected happened. People started coming up to me asking about _my_ techniques, _my_ rock work, _my_ form language - and some of those people, I later learned, were the creators of some of the excellent landscaping i was trying not to sit next to. I'd gotten so obsessed with what I felt I was doing wrong that I didn't give myself credit for all the things other people were convinced I was doing right. In the end, I taught, I learned, I made a few friends and we're all making better MOCs based on what we shared with each other. So never get hung up on comparing your work to someone else's. If you see something you like, draw inspiration from it. Start small, figure out what makes you happy, and explore that direction until you start pushing the envelop into areas you'd never even considered before. As for selling "star wars" and "classic space" stuff, I'd say only do this if you really need the money or have truly decided that lego is not for you. Outside of mini-figures and a handful of excessively specialized pieces, parts is parts, these are only Star Wars and Space parts if you choose to use them that way. I'd look at them and think, "hey, lots of gray, black, white, blue, maybe some dark red..." That could be a shipyard, or a ship, or a cargo crane loading containers on a big shipping hauler. In a medium where people have been known to use mini-figure body parts as decorative moldings and lipstick and hot dog pieces as structural elements, don't dismiss the potential of any given part too quickly. Above all, don't be afraid to dabble, at the end of the day, it's just a hobby and hobbies are supposed to be fun.

My "dark age" was, to be honest, brought on by a lack of money (and to a lesser extent time). Money was always tight growing up, but by the time I was in high school I became keenly aware of how much of it we didn't have and how much college was going to cost. I spent years saving every penny I could earn for college and then four more years working multiple jobs to try and stay ahead of my next tuition bill. That didn't leave a lot of time for building and there was zero space in the budget for new kits. While I missed the hobby initially (and occasionally dabbled with what parts I had) by the time I started college, I'd grown accustomed to _not_ having Lego be a significant part of my life. And it might have stayed that way if it weren't for a chance encounter a few years later with a Technic space shuttle while killing time wandering through ToysRUs (but that is another story) Lately, I've been trying to keep the lights on as I deal with a bit of a "dim age" (as those who may recognize my handle may have noticed, I've been rather quiet for a couple years now). Inside of one year, I lost 4 uncles, 1 aunt, both my parents, my only sister and a devoted cat I'd had for 13 years ( it was a rough time ) and was named as the executor of multiple estates. I'm still dealing with paperwork, lawyers and the IRS and let me tell you I'd rather be playing with LEGO, but life hasn't been very accommodating. On the bright side, my daughter was born in the midst of all that, and, while there aren't a lot of opportunities for _my_ "Lego fun time" I'm making darn sure she gets _her_ daily dose of Duplo.

Inspiration, for me, has never been the problem. The list of things I haven't built yet is far greater than my (by comparison) pathetic collection of MOCs. For me, the limiting factor is time. Now if something could just inspire me to get more done in less time at work and on the home front so I'd have more free time to devote to building, then I'd really be getting somewhere.

Hmmm... I worked for the Department of Defense for a decade - oh, you said "crazy" not "stupid" - my bad. I got a Ph.D. Oh wait, same problem... I built a "beer couch" (looked like a regular couch but had quarter kegs and taps built into it) and smuggled it into Spring Fling one year in college to watch "This is SpinalTap" in style, does that count?

A big deadline for work just moved 30 days later, they really shouldn't have told me that; I came up for air and lost all momentum.

Having worked in academia, I think most dorm rooms are tiny by design. I remember when they were building a new dorm and there was great debate over how many people it should house. At that time the campus average was about 65 square feet of living space per student (usually in the form of a 10x6.5 ft "closet single" or a 10x13' double. From that 65 square feet, you usually lost 9 to the swing of the door, 18 to the bed, 16 to the desk and chair, 8 to a wardrobe or closet, and 4 to a bookcase (the standard furnishings), leaving about 10 square feet open to move around in (half the time it felt like you had to go out into the hall just to get the elbow room to change your mind). Doubles often felt roomier because it was common practice to stack the beds into bunkbeds to reclaim a little space. The architects of the new dorm has allotted 100 square feet per person and when the plans were first shown to the administration, the admin people complained that the "doubles" seemed too small and there were too many "triples", because they assumed, from the size, that what the architect intended as the singles were "so big" they must be doubles, and a 10x20 foot room was surely intended to house three people, not just two. When the faculty were asked for their input, the overwhelming opinion was that if you made dorm rooms too big, it would just invite clutter, personal refrigerators, personal electronics, partying, guests crashing on floor-space, personal furniture (some of which would likely get abandoned at the end of the year and B&G would have to remove and dispose of) etc. They really pushed back hard on the idea that the space should be cramped enough that students are using the space for cloths, books, sleeping and little else. It's really hard to MOC under those conditions. You can usually get away with a mid-sized kit now and then (assuming you can ship it home when your done) and I knew people who did this, but once you got past a shoebox or two worth of parts space really became an issue for most people. Of course this was before the days when one Kindle might be replacing a dozen textbooks, so maybe you'd have room for three shoeboxes of parts these days. It's really amazing that ElysiumFountain was able to produce that MOC if his living conditions were anything like what we had.