ShaydDeGrai

My solution to this has always been to say "I'm more than happy to share, let's build something together" She's never taken me up on that offer with LEGO, but since our daughter started getting into DUPLO, my wife has been more open to playing "big bricks" as a family. While not an AFOL herself, my wife appreciates my hobby (more so now that I've dragged her to a few festivals and galley showings). She's come to see it as more of an art medium when I'm working on a MOC (though it still counts as a "toy" if I'm buying a kit) and speaks openly to her friends and colleagues about my "extensive" collection and multiple awards (as opposed to cringing in embarrassment on my behalf as some former others of significance had done). If I get a new catalog or we happen to be near a LEGO Store, she'll be the first to suggest that I get myself something and "LEGO" is a line item household budget; she just draws the line at leaving my creations all over the house. I have designated work, display and storage areas and so long as I stay inside the lines we're both happy (give or take our recent exchange of: "$800 for another Millenium Falcon?!? Don't you already have three of those?" "Actually I have five, not counting duplicates, but this is an Ultimate Collector's Edition" "I thought that big one in the basement was the UCS version" "It _was_, now it's penultimate, the new one has alternate radar dish designs..." "Fine, whatever, don't forget to order more DUPLO train track for our little builder as well.") Back to the question at hand though, I don't think you can have too large a collection so long as you are using and enjoying it. If it's just taking up space with no monetary or emotional reward, it's expensive clutter; if it makes you happy, reassures you, helps you to relax after a bad day, etc., then more is better. I agree with others that the true limiting factors are really space, time and organization. I could certainly use a massive infusion of the first two; never enough space to store everything, not enough time to realize all the things I want to be building. As for organization, that's where, at least for my collection and creative process I need to find a balance. While it's nice to be reasonably organized (to the point where sometimes when I'm working on an out-of-the-box kit I'll get frustrated looking for a particular part and just grab one from my parts library because its faster than rummaging through half a dozen poly-bags) too much organization can get in the way of creativity. I want things organized when I know exactly what I'm building, but when I'm designing something new (or just randomly tinkering with vague ideas) having a random bin of parts just sitting out can be very inspiring. Too little organization is chaos, like that big "To Be Sorted" plastic tub in the corner with 10,000+ random parts from models that have lost battles to cats and gravity. Too rigid an organization scheme wastes time and squanders effort. Unlike part count, color variety, space and time, where more is always better, level of organization has a sweet spot; too little is bad, too much is equally bad and what works for one person may be completely the opposite of what someone else needs/desires.

Mine (currently) is a shot of one half of my Argonath MOC from the Lord of the Rings. I made the sculpture many years ago when TLG first announced that they were going to do a LOTR theme. I'd been doing LOTR related MOCs since the days when I first read the books (and decades before Peter Jackson brought it to the screen) but the Pillars of the Kings statutes were really the first time I'd poured over 10,000 pieces into a single MOC. It was also one of the first pieces I ever displayed at BrickFair. ( It won me one of my first Brickees. ) More importantly though, going to a convention and displaying this work helped bring me into a larger AFOL community - I've been a Lego fan since the days of Samsonite produced kits, but it was always very much a solitary hobby. This piece was instrumental in my making a social connection with other fans and I use the image now to remind me of that.

Thanks! I successfully made the half century mark back in January (and took a bit of a hiatus due to some family issues, but I'm (mostly) back now)

Nope, but that's a nice looking engine and I'd probably buy one if it ever made it through the gauntlet. Mine has a more festive color scheme ( I wasn't even trying for realism ) and is done with actual bricks and photography rather than a digital model. Honestly, I'd be surprised if it made it that far. I'm really more interested in the rate at which it fades away, not the outcome. I kept data on all my other projects. My most successful proposal was archived a bit shy of 5k votes and was picking up support at a rate of about 50 a day - I lobbied heavily for that one (even posting to non-lego forums in three languages ). It stared strong (over 100 votes in the first six hours) tapered off and then resurged once I started pushing it outside of the AFOL community. My least successful project took three months to get to 100 votes and barely saw any action at all after that. Of the projects I had that _didn't_ make it to the 1K mark, all but one of them saw 2/3 of their eventual support in the first week on the site. As I said, I don't expect this project to "succeed" nor do I expect it to be particularly popular. I'm just curious to see how a non-IP based proposal fares on its own merits and, to a lesser extent, how the site's search engine does with putting it in front of people's eyes without me pushing people directly at it. If I'm a user who supports one train, does it offer me this one as a consideration? Etc. Sure it would be nice if it actually succeeded and found an audience, but I don't expect that to happen. It's just a disposable Idea proposed in order to get some data.

I decided a while back that,other than buying the end products, I was pretty much done with Ideas. I'd been with it since the early days of Cuusoo and watched the rules and expectations change, watched a lot of good projects get lost in the noise and clutter of "non-starters" and, in general, gotten very disillusioned with the whole thing. There have been a number of good kits to come out of the pipeline, but the cynical side of me thinks that Ideas has becomes more about guerilla marketing than about genuine crowd-sourcing. It wasn't so much about, "share your great idea" as much as it was about "go on social media and talk about Lego." Granted the nominal reason why you'd be burning social capital on Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, etc. is to gain support for _your_ project, but at the end of the day its the Lego brand that gets the most exposure and free press. Of course, no sooner had I decided to swear off Ideas, than people started nagging me about submitting stuff (and resubmitting projects that had expired). After a year of turing people down and seeing the Ideas people pushing for non-IP proposals, I've decided to try a little experiment. This evening, I submitted a little non-IP-related kit (that's of sufficient quality to have won an award already), has a comparable part count to existing/successful Ideas sets with crossover audience appeal ( in this case, model trains). I plan on advertising none of this personally. I won't be pandering for votes in any of my usual internet haunts, I won't be posting links to it all over the web and, to be honest, if the whole thing ends up stillborn, I'm okay with that. I'm just going to track its support (or lack thereof) and compare it to the data I have from the days when I _was_ actively pushing some IP-related, quasi-popular stuff. I wonder how the curves will compare. Can a generic idea with no cult following and no active backing from its creator get noticed and sustain itself amid all the noise of weak projects and hub-bub of IP-related, 15,000 piece MOCs, or will it slip quietly off the end of "Most Recents" page 1, never to be seen or heard from again? I guess only time will tell.

I was quite taken by this year's Brick Friday holiday set, the 40138 Christmas Train, but the scale of it left something to be desired, so I decided to do something about it. Train-wise, it's not a very technical model, but hey, as a fantasy holiday train, it works for circling my Christmas Tree and the Winter Village set up around its base. I've actually entered it into the Town Forums' Expand the Winter Village contest, but thought I'd share a few shots over here as well for those Lego Train fans who don't frequent the other fora very often. For the curious, there are a few more shots over at my MOCPages account and in my Winter Village contest entry thread over in the Town Forum. Thanks for visiting and have a great holiday.

A few years before there _was_ a Winter Village theme, TLG came out with the 10173 Holiday Train. I've always considered this to be sort of like the pilot that kicked off the series, for a train has always been the defining hallmark of _my_ winter village set-up. Each year I arrange my sets beneath my Christmas tree. The track is the first thing I lay down, to define the space, and placing a train on those tracks is the finishing touch once the buildings are all in place. For a few years, the official Holiday train was the engine of note around my tree until it was replaced by the Emerald Night. This year, I was particularly fond of the little promotional train TLG was giving out for Brick Friday but it was far to small to incorporate into my village (as I had with some of the previous holiday promotion kits), so I decided to upscale things a bit. So I present for your consideration, The Winter Village Holiday Express: I realize that, with the exception of the 10235 Market set, official Winter Village sets usually devote most of the building experience to a static structure with a vehicle or two added to flesh things out a bit. This is a bit of a reversal, with the vehicle taking the spotlight and a small platform for context, but after a consultation with our organizer Rick, we decided to let the voters decide how apropos this might be for the contest. Here we have the engine and tender decked out in holiday colors, along with a dutiful engineer to keep things rolling on time for all those holiday travelers. The passengers themselves can hang out in the lounge car. If you look carefully, you'll note a certain gentleman in a bright red suit wishing everyone a merry Christmas as the train passes by. We also have a small platform to help the folk of West Winterville get on and off the train (East Winterville has a full train station - which was my WV entry a few years ago). For the curious, I have a few more shots (including a comparison of this guy with the inspiration model) over at my account on MOCPages. Thanks for visiting and may this holiday season bring peace, joy and happiness to all.

Nope, I mean the show, which premiered on Sept 8, 1966 on NBC (I premiered half a year earlier than that). As a very young child, I would sit on my mother's lap (on Thursdays, I think it was) to watch it with her. It was a special treat, keep me up way past my bedtime, though I recall the episode "The Lights of Zetar" was really scary when I was three... Anyway, I'm in the final count down now, I'll be older than dirt in three weeks...

I'm gonna go with "no". They have unarmed police to deal with non-violent offenders and if things get out of had they can just get on the radio to call the Theme Dispatcher and have them send in Ultra Agents or the Avengers as a sort of uber-SWAT team. In real life I'm not "anti-gun" (within reason). While I don't own one, I've handled firearms, gone target shooting, have a good friend who is a nationally ranked marksman, etc. so I appreciate that there is the potential for a "teachable moment" by introducing armed police, etc. to CIty kits, but it's not up to LEGO to decide when (or if) that lesson should be given. That's something each parent needs to decide for themselves and their family; by "bundling" weapons with one of the few lines that _doesn't_ have weapons, TLG would be forcing an agenda by making the question inescapable. So I'm fine with keeping the out-of-the-box City themed sets weapon/violence free. It's like a "G" rated movie in the US; Grandma doesn't need to preview it to make sure it doesn't have any potentially objectionable material before putting it in front of her grandchild. If you want to add guns and SWAT teams and National Guardsmen to quell the rioters in _your_ city to make it more realistic, that's fine and it's easy to do, but as a marketing device, especially at this time of year, I think there's a certain wisdom to the idea of having a Theme you can point a non-AFOL gift-giver toward and say, "any of these would be a great gift for your grandchild," without having to worry about the individual family's take on guns, or violent play, or religion, or gay rights, or excessive move/TV tie-ins, etc.

No argument there. What I meant to say (but only implied) was that after adding the tube LEGO wasn't a clone _anymore_ . That's because their new "non-obvious" innovation became the heart of their product line. Yes, they built upon (no pun intended) the prior art of kiddiecraft and their own knock-offs, but almost all patented technology does that these days, but the key point is that they weren't supplementing the copied IP with custom additions (like BrickArms or Mega-Blocs) they were supplanting a borrowed idea with a new innovation and stopped selling the old design. In the MegaBlocks (et alii) case, their innovations (and there are some) are largely meaningless without being co-packaged with _exact copies_ of the "borrowed" IP, unlike Brick Arms, who can be very successful selling you a baggie full of arms and armor without actually selling you a Mini-figure. Imagine what the typical MegaBlocs model would look like if they _only_ sold you the parts that they authored the original patents for (expired or not) - there wouldn't be very much in the box because the core of their product is based on IP developed elsewhere. Just to be clear, I am not against patents. I'm an engineer and co-author on several patent applications over the years. I'm against abuse of patent law in order to stifle competition. Patents were invented to encourage widespread adoption of good ideas while trying to be fair to inventors, manufacturers and consumers alike. That's why they are public and have expiration dates. In this fred67 is quite correct but I'll take it one step further and say that the concept of "blame" only applies to patent infringement, which is illegal. Once a patent is issued the original authors are entitled, by law, to set the "fee" associated with using the idea. After a fixed term (which has changed over the years but typically has been somewhere between 14 and 21 years) they may have the option of applying for a one-time renewal (varies by country and industry) which, if granted, gets them another fixed term (usually half to three quarters of the length of the original) to collect fees from companies seeking to use the idea to advance their own agenda. After initial term (and any applied for and approved extension) elapses, the idea _automatically_ is given into the public domain and _anyone_ can use it without asking permission or paying a fee. That's just how the system works and and the inventor has to agree to play by these rules when they apply for the patent in the first place. Patents are designed to funnel ideas into the public domain and if you don't like it, use a copyright (if appropriate) , a trademark (if eligible) or take your chances with a trade secret. TLG knew there would be a day when anyone would be able to produce compatible bricks using the very patent that they authored and, presumably, they planned for that day by not sitting on their laurels assuming they'd always have a monopoly on 2x4 plastic bricks. It makes no sense to "blame" MB for capitalizing on a good idea in the public domain, that's just good business sense and is exactly the sort of thing the authors of the first patent laws back in the 1400's _intended_ to have happen. Now if someone were producing a design that was still protected under patent without asking permission and paying a fee, that would be a different story (mostly playing out in south east asia these days) but that's not what Kre-O and MB are doing. The parent companies are both too big and too market-aware to risk international lawsuits and product recalls over the design of a particular brick when they can fill a box, design reasonable kits and realize a tidy profit using all public domain elements.

In _my_ mind, a "clone brand" is one where the core of the product is a direct implementation of expired (or infringed) intellectual property as recognized by patent. This is different from "licensed by patent" or "derived from patent". To qualify for a patent, an inventor has to demonstrate that his/her idea represent an "non-obvious" innovation over prior art, which is to say that a third party, knowledgable in your field is convinced you've done something meaningfully different than what everyone else had thought to do based on the same starting position. Nearly all patent applications cite prior (patented) work (and if they don't it often raises flags that results in the patent being rejected) so that it is clear where the unique, value-added starts. By this definition, after adding the "tube" to the "knob" of interlocking bricks, LEGO wasn't a "clone", they'd demonstrated "non-obvious innovation" at the core of the product. Also, Samsonite Lego wasn't a clone, it was licensed (and as a side-bar let's not lose sight of the fact that the word "patent" means "open" and the original purpose of patents was not to promote exclusivity, it was to get good ideas out there while protecting inventors from manufacturers who wanted to steal their designs, bring them to market and not share the profit. For much of the history of patent law, most companies did not have R&D departments; invention was something largely left to individuals and companies focused on implementation. It wasn't until the rise of people like Ford and Edison that "in-house" innovation became a big business model. Also, it is only in the last half century or so that companies have started using patent law as a way of _preventing_ competition rather than promoting it (and this is usually done by setting patent fees so high that anyone trying to license the IP will be priced out of the market (thanks largely to Drug and Software company lawyers). Things like Mega-blocks and Kre-O (and any number of cheap knock-offs) clearly are clones as, while they may introduce a few parts here and there that are worthy of patents, their products simply wouldn't be viable without directly implementing designs originally held by TLG that they are not paying licensing fees on (which is all perfectly legal). Things like Brick Arms and Big Ben Bricks are not clones as the core of their business is to innovating new parts that are compatible with LEGO but not a direct implementation of existing parts. So, are clones bad for TLG? I would say only where they undermine the LEGO brand with misleading packaging (counterfeits) or dilute brand recognition (like all cotton swabs becoming known as Q-tips, all adhesive bandages becoming Band-aids, etc.) An educated consumer will not be fooled, just as my wife would never buy a "Guchi" purse for $50 thinking that it was a great bargain on a "Gucci" one. And it is also fair to say that an educated customer might also _choose_ to buy the clone for whatever reason. The problem lies with the uneducated consumer, the cost to "educate" them and the competition for "shelf space" (real or virtual) with vendors. I remember being on vacation once up in Vermont and overhearing an elderly woman who came into a local General Store. "Do you carry Lego?" she asked. "Oh yes," replied the clerk, "we carry all the major lego brands, even some exclusives from England" and pointed her at the toy section. _Major lego brands??_ I thought. _England?_ So I wandered in that direction myself and found a wall with a handful of genuine Lego side by side with Mega-Blocks, Kre-O and Best-Lock kits, all displayed under a familiar red logo on the wall advertising Lego. Regardless of brand, nearly all the kits were in the 25-50 dollar range but that also meant that the genuine Lego kits were fairly modest (Creator line) compared to the buying power of $50 for the clones. The woman, BTW, opted for a larger, non-Lego kit. So yes, there are ways in which clones hurt TLG's bottom line. The woman set out to spend $50 on a gift for some kid who likes Lego and that money went to a different manufacturer, plain and simple. Would the kid have known the difference and opted for one of the "real" sets, maybe (or maybe the kid would have opted for quantity over quality as well - who knows) The point is LEGO, as a brand, was diluted, a customer was (intentionally or otherwise) mislead into thinking there was no real difference and the in-store inventory implied that you "get more" by _not_ paying for the Lego brand. Granted this was just one incident that I personally witnessed, but I find it quite easy to believe that scenarios like this play out all over the world every day. Maybe this is a good thing (for us as educated consumers) in that it reminds TLG to keep prices reasonable, quality high and innovation forthcoming. Then again, you have to wonder how many kids are politely faking smiles under the pressure of a parent's glare when that well-meaning aunt or grandmother shows up with a Best-Lock Dinosuar Set after repeatedly asking for a Lego Jurassic World kit for Christmas

So here's a (long, meandering) question with respect to keeping entries along the lines of existing sets: I realize that the 10173 Holiday Train predated the launch of the Winter Village line, but I've always thought of it as sort of the pilot that sold the series. Every year I set up my WV sets under my Christmas Tree and the railway is the thing that really ties everything together. For several years the holiday train orbited my village until it was retired in favor of the Emerald NIght. Further, the official sets to date _have_ included vehicles (trucks, plows, wagons, sleighs, etc) though usually as a complement to the building itself; the Winter Village Market being the notable exception in that it was really a Carousel (which I'll call a vehicle, as it expends energy to take you in circles (like taking a cab in Boston)) with a handful of vendor booths for context. So my question is this: Is a small Winter Village themed train with platform fair game for this competition or is it too much of a departure from the general trend in the series to have the building be the lion's share of the build?

I don't think anyone here is arguing that they aren't a good idea, I remember buying several of the old style ones when they first came out years ago and the new design is even more versatile (even if the old ones fit my hand far better). The issue/point of mockery is really that, for avid collectors who've been at it for any length of time, it gets a little out of hand. I did five kits over the Thanksgiving holiday, every single kit had a brick separator in it. I have totem-pole of brick separators in the corner of my office that is over a foot tall at this point. At this rate, I should be able to use it for a coat rack by the year 2025. They are handy little buggers, but I wish they'd at least vary the colors from time to time.

It's possible to spend too much and interact too little, particularly if you buy multiple copies of exclusive sets. There was one year I almost didn't get invited because, according to the store manager, the list from LEGO Corporate had flagged me as a speculator rather than an AFOL, but she overrode it because she knew me. They specifically DON'T want to invite people who they think are going to buy up lots of high end sets at a discount just to stick them in a closet for ten years and sell them on eBay for a small fortune once they've been long discontinued. They feel set scalping hurts their reputation and contributes to the general perception that LEGO is too expensive and what _this_ event to be about rewarding lifelong fans of the product not profiteers. I'm not saying you (or anyone else here) is a "profiteer" I'm just relating the story _I_ was given once as to why I almost didn't get invited after spending over $3000 in a single year. If you're a big spender and want to increase the likelihood that you will get invited, make sure the staff at the store know you, and if they email you a customer satisfaction survey take the time to fill it out. They really do read those comments and want to get to know their "high rollers".

My oldest sets date to the late 1960's, and Brickset shows birthday and holiday collection expansion throughout the 1970's followed by a marked fall-off in the 1980's (when I was trying to save for / pay for / attend college). The early years were very lean for me as times were pretty tight for my family. Still, even by that meager standard, purchases/gifts received slowed to a trickle until the latter 1990's when I returned to the world of LEGO with an actual disposable income. So for a more direct comparison, by the time _I_ was 18 I only had a few dozen sets; lately, I buy a few dozen unique sets per year.

According to Brickset (which I know to be incomplete because I don't do a good job of entering data) I have at least 600 or so unique sets (I generally don't bother entering duplicates), about a thousand unique minifigures, and about 300,000 parts. Between duplicate kits, bulk brick orders, PaB, Bricklink orders etc. I'd guess that's somewhere between a quarter to a third of my actual collection. Does anyone know if Brickset can tell me how many brick separators I own? I'm curious but at my age I don't think I can count that high anymore...

It sounds like the annual "Big Spender's" pre-Brick Friday event. I've attended a number of them in the past (but I don't expect an invite this year as the birth of my daughter has seriously cut into my "LEGO Fun Time (and curbed my usual spending habits)). Years ago this used to be a pretty big thing with triple VIP points, scratch cards for 10-50% off your entire purchase, exclusive early access to upcoming sets, assorted LEGO swag, free PaB boxes and Holiday kits, free coffee and doughnuts, personal assistant, etc. One year they even had a shop attendee carry my stuff out to my car for me and help me load up. I _was_ a big spender (I used to drop $1K-3K at the event each year) as were the two dozen or so other invitees. The store manager knew it so she went all out to make the event an even bigger deal than Lego Corporate guidelines dictated. Last year's event was pretty lame by comparison and sounds similar to this one (double VIP points, promotional set with purchase and 10% off a handful Lego Exclusives). One the whole not all that different from what you could get if you just did Shop-At-Home on Cyber-Monday. The store manager actually apologized to a number of us about scaling things back so much but said that the home office was the one dictating the terms, not her. Given TLG overall financial success of late I don't expect them to bending over backwards to keep the big spenders happy when mass appeal and a pending Lego shortage should more than make up for any dent in our spending habits. Still, even if the sale itself isn't all that great, it _IS_ an exclusive invite for a small number of really dedicated AFOLs. If you don't already belong to a LUG this might be a good opportunity to meet a few like-minded people in your area and exchange contact info.

These are all very good points that many people have glossed over since the very first days of Cuusoo. Like Fred67, I don't treat proposals as a "like us on Facebook" sort of thing where people randomly click a thumbs up that they have even the slightest interest in. Ideas isn't MOCPages or Flickr (no matter how many posters try to treat it as such) it's a cross between a crowdsourcing business site (like Kickstarter without any level of actual commitment) and in Internet buzz site to raise LEGO brand awareness (which is probably why TLG _doesn't_ require firm commitments for support, it would likely drive away casual traffic). Personally, I only support projects that I would actually buy and on the rare occasion when something I like gets made, I follow through and _do_ buy it unless the "Official" design has scaled things back too much or otherwise spoiled the thing that attracted me to it in the first place. These days, I don't support very many big builds (mostly because I've become jaded and don't feel like wasting my time on stuff that, based on the past few year's experience, will never happen) but I used to, and even then tried to be realistic with my expectations. Unlike many people who decide to support a huge model, if _I_ back something ridiculously huge, I expect it to command a pretty big price tag. I remember when the UCS Sandcrawler was gaining support; I backed it and when the site asked me what I'd be willing to pay for it I said something like $1200 and explicitly noted in my comment section that I was backing the scale, the power functions and the lighting aspects of the largest USC Star Wars model ever produced. I went on to say that if it wasn't on par or better than the USC Millenium Falcon I wasn't interested. I didn't expect them to actually build it, but I was using Cuusoo as a way of telling TLG that there _were_ AFOLs out there that wanted more high end UCS sets and that a "limited" run of 10,000 copies of a $500+ set might not be as risky a proposition as they marketing models (based on interests and incomes of teenaged boys) might suggest. But I understand TLG's position, I know I'm not their typical consumer. I remember talking to someone from the Cuusoo team at a convention. He expressed his frustration with the price suggestion box they had on the support form and why they were considering getting rid of it. For every serious user who tried to associate a real value for a given proposal, there were 50 people who'd just enter $1 as their way of saying Lego should cost less. So, not only were people saying they wanted huge kits, they were also stating in the same breathe that they effectively saying that they wanted them for free. I know "cuusoo" means "wish" but if that's your idea of a sound business model, perhaps you should invest your retirement savings in lottery tickets, because your odds of getting an outcome you're happy with about the same. Even with the token dollar crowd aside, I've known people who supported that Sandcrawler set and (unrealistically) wanted that same model, brick for brick, for the price of the original official SandCrawler (140 USD). When I pointed out that the old model could fit entirely within the proposed on with room to spare _and_ the proposed one probably had $140 worth of motors, lighting and other PF parts alone, they were completely un-phased, somehow thinking that if 10,000 people told TLG that they _had_ to make the set and they _had_ to sell it for a $1000 per unit loss, TLG would just say "okay, the customer is always right…" For both the "dollar" crowd and the "better but still way off" crowd, you need to realize that offering a big kit isn't just a risk at that point, losing money is almost guaranteed. If you price it low enough to made the masses happy, you're not covering your costs. If you give it a realistic price tag, it's a given that a lot of the people said "I'll buy that for a dollar" aren't queuing up to get one at $750. And just by putting a big set into production, it means that some other big set ISN'T getting made. This is not a big deal if your factories are sitting idle, but LEGO has dozens of themes and hundreds of kits and only limited capacity to produce parts, bag parts, print boxes and instructions and packaged the whole thing up into a massive kit. It's not like Ideas is its own entity with its own production and infrastructure; it's just business sub-unit in a zero-sum game. Look at it from TLG's overall perspective. Would you take the Shield Helicarrier out to production to make room for a 4000 piece Idea's proposal, or delay the release of the next flagship Technic model because 10,000 people thought that if they asked nicely TLG would release a big build kit with a dozen mini-figures and and average price of a penny a piece? Mid-sized kits win because they minimize risk, plain and simple. The asking price is modest enough that even when the token dollar crowd fails to buy it, others will discover it and step in. The production runs and packaging demands are small enough that TLG can squeeze in kit without seriously impacting "normal" production. The brand awareness advertising mission of Ideas is satisfied and the exposure from a potential product failure is minimized. It may not be what the typical Ideas user wishes for, but it makes good business sense.

John Hammond: Don't worry, I'm not making the same mistakes again. Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, you're making all new ones. - The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Personally I hope that TLG has at least another 50 years left in them if not more (but 50 years should be enough to keep me in Lego for some time) But eve if the unthinkable were to happen and the flow of new kits and bricks were to abruptly halt, Lego as a toy will go for quite some time in the secondary market. Just think about other iconic toys with cult-like following. Lionel stopped making trains in 1969, saw their chain of direct to consumer toy store get whittled away to nothing, filed for bankruptcy protection several times the 1980's before finally being liquidated in the 1990's. Still, in my area there are several toy train conventions and trade shows _every year_ where thousands of fans buy sell and barter fifty year old engines, rolling stock and track. Granted, most of the fans are, themselves at least fifty years old, but if defunct toy trains are good for half a century of after market life, a far more flexible (and arguably more popular) toy like Lego should be able to do at least as well, if not far better.

Actually, small yellow was submitted by the original artist, Nathan Sawaya, so I don't think that was the problem. For the volume of sets an average Ideas run consists of, popularity probably wasn't that big an issue either ( Nathan could probably have bought the entire run himself and just resold them at one of his roving Art of the Brick shows) I think the more likely explanation is the question of the build itself. The idea of a third of the bricks just being loosely tossed in probably didn't sit well. Also, having seen Nathan's work close up (and having had to solve a lot of engineering problems while making sculptures myself) it's possible that the statue as designed was too fragile for TLG taste. Sawaya uses glue on his pieces, sometimes for durability and sometimes because his design exceeds the native clutch power of the bricks under his typical construction techniques.

Yeah, I was really missing that too. That's a large part of why I got out of academia. Due to the school's admission practices (heavily favoring legacy students from wealthy donors), I was finding it harder and harder to find those sorts of students in my classroom (sorry, even more than a decade later I'm still a bit jaded). Still, there's nothing quite like the feeling of teaching something to someone who wants to be there and wants to learn. And let's face it, LEGO is a great teaching prop when it comes to getting people engaged (particularly for a young audience). If I had more spare time, I'd offer to do something more formal as an actual store event sometime. Even setting aside the free and discounted LEGO incentive, it was kinda fun to get back into "teacher mode" for an hour or so.

I always respond when asked and will occasionally offer an unsolicited opinion or factoid if it seems apt for the situation without coming across as butting in or eavesdropping (I guess it's the former professor in me). The oddest time when this sort of thing happened to me, though was actually on a very busy day in The Lego Store when I was just minding my own business at the PaB wall (where my wife had parked me while she went shopping) and the assistant manager (whom i knew quite well) led a mother and child up to me, introduced me (as a professor) and asked if I could take some time to talk about the educational value and age appropriateness of various Technic sets and Mindstorms. Being an ex professor, of course I can never give anybody a short answer, but while I was going over the various options, I attracted a small crowd of parents and kids. They started as eavesdroppers and then migrated into active attendees for my impromptu "lecture" on mechanics, robotics and child development. We took over the one corner of the store and new arrivals must have thought it was an organized store event because people just kept dropping in. After about 20 minutes, the manager noticed what I was doing and ask if I needed any props; she went into the back room and pulled a couple technic sets (with crushed boxes) so I could illustrate a worm drive, gear ratios, linear actuators and how lego pneumatics worked. Forty minutes later, I still hadn't filled my PaB cup but the customers were happy. The store sold 6 or 7 Mindstorms sets and a slew of midrange Technic models. People were very appreciative. Some parents told the manager they should hold more such "events". The manager herself let me keep the damaged kits I'd opened, threw in the PaB cup I was working on and offered me 10% off any kit in the store. Not bad for talking about Lego to a bunch of strangers. Of course, not five minutes later, my wife comes in (after having finished all of her shopping in every other store in the mall), sees my barely filled PaB cup and says "Aren't you done yet? What have you been doing for the past hour?"

To some extent I think they handicap themselves when it comes to ideas in that A) there is a distinct bias in favor of famous buildings by famous (mostly recent, on the timescale of civilization) architects and B) TLG's prohibition against being seen as promoting/depicting religion puts a _lot_ of outstanding examples of fine architecture in a gray area; TLG _could_ sustain the Architecture line for decades on models of famous cathedrals, churches, temples, mosques, pagan ritual sites (e.g. Stonehenge) etc. but doing so risks opening up a debate about "religious themed" sets on par with the long beaten dead horse of "How come you say no depictions of warfare but …(insert example from licensed theme or comparison of Creator jet to fighter plane here, etc.)…"

I've always liked trains in general, particularly steam engines. My grandfather was an engineer on the Flying Scotsman so trains were kinda in our family blood (or at least soot from them were in the family lungs). Both my sister and I had pathetic little second-hand model railroad sets growing up (she got Lionel, I had HO scale stuff; our parent's deliberately had us playing in different scales to keep us from fighting over the rolling stock, there was no question whose car belonged with which train). Still, I had Lego Train envy as a kid, I had a friend who had one (I think it was the 120-1, 4.5v freight train set but I'm not sure) back around 1970 and I _really_ wanted one of my own, but it was one of those luxury items that was just not to be. Thirty years later, I was standing in the newly opened Lego Store and I see the My Own Train large stream engine (3741) staring back at me from the shelves. I remember all those years of hoping I'd get a Lego Train for Christmas or my birthday or whatever and coming up empty because my folks figured that silly things like eating and having a roof over our heads were more important. I probably muttered something inappropriate around young children then, and proceeded to buy one of everything train related in the store; track, rolling stock, engines motors, lighting kits, speed controllers, etc. I've been a sucker for LEGO Trains ever since. I don't have the room for a permanent set-up, but every year I make damned sure there's at least one Lego Train merrily chugging away under my Christmas tree (usually it's either the Emerald Night or a variation of it I've Mod'ed to make it look more like the Flying Scotsman (A3 incarnation)).