ShaydDeGrai

I remember chatting with Tim C. about this at a Lego convention couple of years ago. He emphasized that, while there were posted "rules" for potential projects (and things that violated the rules wouldn't get approved for posting in the first place), beyond that, anything was "possible." When I pressed him to distinguish between "possible" and "realistic" he both sidestepped the question initially and said that every review was a unique and complicated process involving many stakeholders within TLG. Eventually, however, he did point out a few things most followers of Cuusoo/Ideas already knew about what _statistically_ helped or hurt projects in the review process: - Nearly all "successful" projects have had less than 500 pieces (the main exception to this is the Birds set which has about 575 or so (mostly small) parts and came out long after this conversation). This doesn't mean 500 is a magic number or that more than 500 parts dooms your proposal from day one, but historically proposals expected to be viable in the 300-500 part range have proven to be the most likely to pass review. - More than two or three mini-figures is a tough sell unless the theme of the set really demands a specific cadre (e.g. Ghostbusters and Big Bang Theory) and has a significant non-minifigure build. Sidebar: looking to Cuusoo/Ideas for cheap battle packs? Don't hold your breath… - Proposals for sets for which TLG already holds a license is an even tougher sell than asking for lots of mini-figures. Crowd-sourced ideas are a small fringe operation of TLG's organization and it simply doesn't have the clout to march into other, established sandboxes and start laying claim to territory. Again, technically it _could_ happen, but I got the impression that even the people running Ideas wouldn't expect to ever get approval to release a Star Wars set (for example) so long as there were still a Star Wars theme. - Resurrecting an old theme, licensed or otherwise, is another uphill battle. If TLG let the theme/license lapse, they did so for a reason and people will recall that reason as part of the review. Tying your idea to a lapsed IP may actually prove to be more of a liability than an asset in the eyes of the reviewers as they have access to actual sales data and audience reaction at the time when the theme was cancelled potentially biasing their opinions. - Tapping in to new IPs is a tricky game: other companies may hold exclusive licenses; the branding may not be compatible with TLG image even if the set itself is kid-safe; and, pop culture is fleeting and fickle. It takes a long time to get a set to market and "that cool movie" than opened last weekend and inspired your proposal may be long forgotten by the time you actually reach a review cycle (if you make it that far). Classic "cult" IPs are safer bets than trying to catch lightning as it's striking. - New printings are minor speed-bumps, new parts are show stoppers. Although Cuusoo originally asked explicitly for new part proposals in its early days, TLG reversed this stance and years ago. Proposals just for new parts were removed outright and set proposals that included new parts were only allowed to stay if an acceptable version of the set could be built using existing parts My take-away* from my conversation with Tim was that, to optimize your chances of passing review you should: 1) Keep sets in the 300-500 part range 2) Stick to generic, readily available parts 3) Avoid any past or present IP already licensed/controlled by TLG - focus on original or "timeless" subjects with broad appeal 4) Minimize the number of mini-figures needed to "sell" the set 5) Make the model as interesting as possible without relying on custom printing or stickers (you can add those later but make sure the form works on its own first) Of course, to _get_ to the review stage in the first place, those above guidelines are not necessarily the best advice, but what's the point to getting to 10K if you really don't stand a change in the review cycle anyway? * To be clear, these are _my impressions_ from talking to Tim coupled with some hindsight from past review results , _NOT_ official advice from TLG on how to pass a review. Tim repeatedly emphasized that anything that complied with the published rules was possible and he didn't want to discourage anyone from submitting anything just because history was suggesting it would be unlikely to get made.

On one hand, there's some truth to this. On the other, you need to remember what Cuusoo/Ideas was two years ago. A lot more people have Ideas accounts now so the likelihood of a "new" project making a bigger splash in its first few days is higher (assuming people are actually using those new accounts and aren't just one-offs to vote for the Twitter sensation of the day, never to return) Also, from my experience and generally backed up by GlenBricker's stats, most projects used to get the majority of their lifetime support within days of being added to the site. Once you slipped off the first few pages of "new" projects, support dropped to a trickle. The site's interface just wasn't that good at promoting quality, older projects. Most people, it seems, have neither the time nor the patience to browse pages upon pages of older projects in the hopes of stumbling on something of high quality by random chance. I don't know that the site has really improved in this regard, but older, quality (as measured by the view to support ratio) projects have certainly languished due simply to a lack of visibility. If the algorithm for suggesting related projects (or even just random users themselves tweeting or blogging about a chance find) changed over time, a reposted project could certainly see a different result. All that said, I decided back when they first announced the expiration policy that I wasn't going to repost any of my submissions. My LOTR Argonath made it about halfway, support wise, and a couple others made it above the 1K mark (and I thank everyone who supported me) but given the sorts (in both scale and subject matter) of kits Ideas is producing these days, I really don't see any of those old proposals making it past review even if they had the votes. I decided to just move on and I feel, for me and the projects in question, it was the right choice - others' mileage may vary.

I think it's important to differentiate the "collector" from the "speculator" As, has been pointed out, collectors come in various flavors: those who build the sets and keep them as display peices, never "playing" with those parts after the initial build; the hoarder, who keeps multiple copies of a set for personal consumption; and (among others) the "mint-in-box" collector who sees the seal on the box as scared and treats the kit in its entirety as an historic artifact. As collectors, they act differently, but they share a common motivation, a love for the subject matter of their collection. The speculator, on the other hand, is motivated more by value than by love for the item. These are the people who don't want to open the box because it won't be worth as much without the factory seals. In my mind speculators really aren't AFOLs, they're more like day-traders who don't really care whose stock they're buying so long as they can sell it for a profit at some point in the future. I know someone who is a speculator/collector. He always buys high end kits in threes and stores them for years. One for his personal collection, one he sells to cover the cost of the three kits, and one he sells for pure profit. He never opens any of them. He gets no joy from the Lego itself, he just gets a thrill out of selling a Green Grocer on ebay for three times what he paid for it. He does the same thing with Beanie Babies and Star Wars action figures. For him, it's all about the thrill of the auction and turning a profit. As an aside, he likes the fact that _I_ open _my_ sets; he says it makes his pristine copies more valuable every time some "foolish builder" breaks the seals "destroys" the value of their kit.

Trust me, I know I'm an outlier, and I'm very grateful that I've had the opportunity to become one of the few "burdened" by trivial things like excessive brick separators. According to BrickSet inventories, my first decade or so playing with Lego growing up only amounted to about a thousand parts _total_. My emigrated to the US with basically a suitcase full of clothes and a train ticket- then had to cash out his train ticket after getting robbed at Ellis Island, so I was very familiar with the lecture about the cost of LEGO versus trying to fill a bag of groceries, to pay the electric bill, to buy second hand shoes at the thrift store, etc. LEGO was like the once a year gift; far more often my Dad used to take scrap wood home from work and cut it into blocks for me to stack/build with instead (he did what he could and I appreciate that, now). So I guess if I were a kid in that position today, I might not even know brick separators even existed. On the other hand, I go to the local Lego Store and see divorced parents competing to see who can buy their kid more Lego, walking out with $1000 in kits in one hand and a kid who is whining about not even liking LEGO and wanting to play Call of Duty in the other. Kid probably doesn't even realize he has a shoebox worth of brick separators. Go figure...

Yeah, the inherent strength this sort of power transfer system is going to fall off exponentially with distance. It says the supply is only 5VDC with a 2W output (that's about a third of what an old analog doorbell fires off while it's ringing) which means it was only designed to drive low power over a short range in the first place. I'd guess that unless you're right on top of it, the induction field would be no worse than a cell phone and far, far less than standing next to an active, modern microwave oven (which have gotten a lot more pace-maker friendly over the years).

It's not just a question of a competitive price cut. TLG doesn't sell things at a loss (or narrow margin) in the US (though vendors like Amazon and TRU are known to undercut the MSRP in the hopes of volume making up for low margin from time to time. A lot of the pricing comes down to the question of what costs are implicitly passed down to the consumer, what costs are explicitly added and what costs are amortized overt the system as a whole. The US economy, in general, has been built around facilitating consumerism. There are federal regulations to limit things that could impede interstate commerce, shipping and distribution; all in order to make it cheap and easy for a vendor to get its goods to market (or more correctly, to get American consumers spending money). This is reflected in both commercial shipping (getting the product to a local store or distribution hub) and residential postage (mailing a purchase to a local buyer). The US tax system focuses on taxing people when they make money, taxing them again when they spend money, and taxing them again if they own anything of value or try to resell it to anyone else - so it's in the government's best interest to keep the money flowing rather than encouraging people to save (as the revenue from tax on interest earned pales by comparison to the revenue streams from sales taxes, retail taxes and excise taxes) Because of all free trade legislature between states and all the the tax dollars collected (some tiny portion of which is reinvested in transportation infrastructure and subsidies), shipping goods thousand of miles across multiple state lines in the continental US is a fraction of what it costs to move the same freight across a few hundred kilometers across EU borders ( and trivial compared to the cost of getting a package to the far end of the planet - like Australia). The low shipping overhead is reflected in the asking price, and the taxes that made that low cost possible is explicitly excluded. This allows the actual price tag on the box to often times be significantly lower than international prices. Like any commodity being sold in a free market, the price is going to reflect what the market will bear, but once you start crossing borders, there are so many other variables it makes it hard to say what a fair comparison is. Shipping costs may be dictated by weight in one country and box volume in another. Currency exchange rates and raw material costs vary daily but retail prices are typically defined for the life of the production run for a set. Protective or punitive tariffs might inflate the price of individual sets where a conflict is cited while not impacting other offering from the same line. Similarly, in the US (though I wouldn't be surprised to hear that other places have similar laws), some states have environmental protection laws impose special "green" taxes on products deemed bad for the environment. In practice, for example, driving up the cost of products that take batteries as a way of raising money for battery recycling research. The point is, international pricing is a complex equation with many, many factors normally hidden from consumers' eyes. Rarely does it boil down to anything as simple as "Ponies are popular here, let's charge more for our sets with ponies because these people will pay up…" or "We're giving away free stuff with a $25 dollar purchase so lets price everything in increments of $50 so they'll really have to spend $100 to qualify for the freebie.." If you try too hard to make sense of it, you'll just drive yourself as crazy as the poor people who had to set the pricing in the first place.

I see the logic in this, but I also see the clutter of scores of these things sitting around filling two shoeboxes in my Lego storage area and I know I can't be alone in this. I'd be fine with brick separators becoming a perpetual check-out line freebie at the Lego Store (i.e. "would you like a free brick separator with that?") as opposed to bundling it in the sets directly. Shop at Home could do the same thing: "Free brick separator with any order totaling $150 (or whatever)" with a "remove from cart" option when you check-out. I realize that they _do_ actually have them for sale in the stores, but, really, WHY? Can the for-sale copies of these things really be a revenue stream when they've saturated the market by bundling them with every mid to high-end set to come out in recent memory? Better to be a general incentive to spend more (like free shipping or a poster or something) so at least if you're buying several big sets you get one separator rather than five. Yes, I'd still probably still have a ridiculous number of separators as I rarely make _small_ purchases from LEGO and never decline any freebie they offer to add to the mix, but at least I'd know that I _chose_ to have 200 brick separators not that I just wound up with them because of some well intentioned but misguided policy at TLG.

This brings up an important point, in my opinion, it's not just a question of "could this part be built with existing pieces?" there's also the question of "does it serve a unique purpose by being a single part?" By this metric I'll give a lot of parts made for the Juniors line a pass (in much the same way that I don't complain about there being Duplo bricks even though I can build a mass of blocks the same size as a Duplo brick from regular Lego Block). If the part is _intended_ for a younger audience, to make it easier for them to get into Lego - Great! - it's not a redundant part at all. If on the other hand, it's just a "macro" part intended for regular kits as a shortcut in the building process, I'd rather they stick to the basics. I think the worst offenders of this latter category came during TLG's own dark age when they when mold happy and kind of forgot that they were first and foremost a _construction_ toy. Those "prefab" parts eroded the building experience and the excess expense of unique molds seriously hurt their bottom line. Of course, I'll also admit that I'm thoroughly biased in this matter, I like big things made from small parts (I bought a full K-Box (the cases they used to fill the PaB walls in the Lego stores) of 1x1 gray cheese wedge slopes about a year ago and I'm running out now) and I know I'm a bit on the extreme here, but would it kill someone to have to stack two 1x2 bricks atop one another rather than waste a mold on a double height brick?

If something is described as mint in box, I expect to get everything in unopened condition, including both intentional and random spare parts. The next tier down in my mind would be 'complete' -- as in, every part listed in the inventory is there (including parts for alternate models), but if the part wasn't documented as being in the original box from an official source, the part's absence doesn't count against the "completeness" of the kit. Below that, all bets are off, I think the best you can hope for is to focus on knowing exactly what you're buying and getting a fair price for it. While I've never done an exhaustive study, I've always assumed that the extra parts in kits consist of both intentional and accidental spares (as is common with other automated part counting systems). An intentional spare is something that the company knows ahead of time will be in the box. This might be extra flick fire missile parts (since you just know some kid is going to lose one) or it might be a symmetry issue based on how the production line fills bags. In the symmetry case, for example, you might have a technic model that needs 149 friction pins, and have filling stations that can put up to 75 pins in a bag. In a case like this, it might be cheaper for the company to just fill two bags at 75 pins each on one machine (and ship an extra pin) than to have to tie up two filling stations with one filling to 75 and the other to 74. These are packaging decisions and, while just a conjecture on my part, would account to the high degree of consistency in so called "spare" parts. Accidental extras are random (and infrequent these days) additions based on the way filling stations usually operate. Basically a filling station only adds one type of part (and is part of a production line with many stations to fill a bag) the machine knows the weight of the part it's supposed to add so when a bag comes in, the bag gets weighed and parts drop in (ideally one at a time) until the weight of the bag meets (or exceeds) it's initial weight plus the total weight of the new parts to be added. With very small parts on a quick production line, it's possible that an extra part drops now and then as part of the last "intended" release, resulting in a random "spare". As far as kit completeness is concerned, since they are there inconsistently in factory sealed boxes, there's really no way of saying if something is "missing"

Trust me, you are not alone...

First, I'd like to second Covenant84 and Dr_Spock's suggestions for a Gerry Anderson Theme; Space:1999, UFO and Thunderbirds were the inspiration for many of the MOCs I made growing up and I've love a Star Wars style treatment of those in official kits. And speaking of Spocks, while I know legalities get in the way, but Original Star Trek, Next Gen, DS9, etc. are just teeming with examples of ships and locations that would make a fantastic Star Trek Universe theme. Ignoring for the moment the recent JJ Abrams ret-con, the Star Trek franchise of prior TV series has such a wide variety of popular and iconic ship designs TLG could go for a few years before repeating subject matters. And for a rehash of an old theme, I was really fond of the old Discovery Space theme with models of the lunar lander, mars rover, etc. Given the popularity of realistic space-related models on Lego Ideas, I wish they'd revisit this subject matter as an ongoing theme with kits like the ISS, Hubble, various space probes and rovers, etc. At a small scale, these kits could be the space geeks answer tot he Architecture series, at larger scale these could be cool Technic creations.

I have bad news for you, feeling part-limited, as far as I can tell, is an intrinsic aspect of MOC-ing. My collection easily outweighs me several times over. When I place a Bricklink order for some part X, I buy the store's entire inventory of that part even if I only need a few dozen under the presumption that If I need that part now, I'll probably need more of them later. Back when Lego stores would actually allow you to buy PAB parts by the case, I'd routinely ask the store what they had on hand and buy entire boxes of anything I even suspected I might need even if I wasn't working on anything at the moment. Still, I routinely feel "part-limited"; either I have the right piece in the wrong color, or I need 100 of X and only have 98. It's frustrating, but it happens - a lot. I did a sizable sculpture of Barad Dur a couple years back, I remember buying 5000 black cheese wedges thinking, "I'll use the leftovers eventually." A month later, I'm cursing myself saying "You knew how big Barad Dur is, why did you only get 5000 cheese slopes?!?!" as I noticed I was running out and only half done. I find it particularly annoying when I have some momentum going on a build and end up shy by just a part or two. I don't want to sit around for a week or more for a Bricklink order to come in. Or a month or more waiting for parts directly from LEGO. Fortunately, I live a reasonable distance from four Lego Stores and a Discover Center gift shop so I've got several Pick-a-brick walls to scour in search of (near) immediate gratification. Even so, I must admit, in desperation I have bought entire kits just to get a needed part or two for a MOC I wanted to finish.

The only "debate" really, is whether your friends and family are mature and open-minded enough to see the innate value of your hobby. I used to be a professor at a (reasonably) elite university and I actually gave Lego-based assignments to my aspiring engineers precisely because they'd spent too much time growing up in front of a computer and needed to learn to work with their hands, think in three dimensions and be creative for a change. The secret to be ing a good engineer is to have the mind of a scientist, the hands of an artist and the imagination of a child - so if anyone ever gives to that sideways, incredulous sneer of "You play with Legos?" Look 'em right back in the eye and say, "I'm studying to be a better engineer." As for modulars, they are a fantastic place to start getting back into the hobby - lots of parts at a reasonable price point and a nice introduction to modern building techniques / clever use of parts. It's hard to go wrong with any of them, but I'm particularly fond of the Parisian Cafe. I've also been looking forward to having the time to assemble the Detective Agency one of these days... I strongly encourage you to embrace your latent love for Lego (and inner child) and know that you are not alone; we have people here that are older than dirt (there's even a badge for that and I'll be earning my next January). Welcome to Eurobricks!

Welcome, Amy! I also have the issue of more kits than time and have a healthy (or obsessive) backlog to address at some point; space also becomes an issue after a while. I think I need a TARDIS to support my Lego hobby. I always wanted Lego Trains growing up, but they just weren't feasible in our family budget. Returning to Lego as an adult allowed me to fix that. The Lego "My Own Train" sets circa 2001 did a lot to turn me into the Legoholic I am today ( Those trains used pretty generic parts and instructions are free to download if you want to mine them for inspiration for your MOC-ing ) You can also check out Railbricks, a website and magazine dedicated to Lego Train MOCs and Building techniques and the Trains forum right here for more clever ideas as to how to spend time you haven't got. As far as official train kits go, my favorite of the train themed one has to be the Emerald Night. It's a great model in its own right, but also reminds me of the Flying Scotsman; my grandfather was an engineer on that line for decades. Welcome to Eurobricks!

That's a beautiful piece of work with or without the printing, but the printing just adds that little extra "Wow factor" Really nice scale, level of detail and shape. This model also resinates with me in that my grandfather was an engineer on the Flying Scotsman line from about 1920 till the latter 1960's. Family lore claims he worked on A1s, A3s, A4s and a Deltic Diesel over the course of his career. The A4 may have set the speed record, but the A3 (and your model of it) had a lot more character, if you ask me. Great job, keep up the good work.

A warm thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment on this guy, I really appreciate the feedback. I'm especially gratified that several of you mentioned the textures, kilt and shield, I struggled with many redesigns trying to come up with renderings with which I was happy. It's good to hear the effort is appreciated. I've got a "blooper shot" of my cat leaping between the legs (she hopped up on the table just as I was taking the shot). I was going to post it but my cat wouldn't sign the release, she's heard a lot about cat image exploitation on the Internet and is threatening to get an agent. In any case, the statue is about three feet tall ( a little under a meter ) including the base. I took a few Work in Progress photos at one point, but never uploaded them. I'll see if I can find them now. I've never weighed the finished piece, but based on postage for Bricklink orders, I bought about 12 kilos (about 26 .5 pounds) worth of parts (plus what I already had on hand), so I'd guess it's fair to say that this guy weighs about as much as a small child. He's pretty dense and made from a lot of small parts (layered plates, cheese slopes, technic pins) and technic beams so there's a fair bit of ABS in play. As for "sturdy" it's probably more accurate to say that he's structurally stable, right down to the slight forward lean to stare down at incoming ships. The inner core is Technic, using frame bricks and pins rather than simple studs to resist decoupling in any given direction. Normal stud construction just doesn't have the clutch power to support the torque on the arms - I know, I tried. The technic skeleton is then covered with plates with studs out in all directions to allow for "SNOT skin" to be applied and hide the mechanics entirely. Where I switch to studs and clips to support the skin is where things become fragile. The kilt is very delicate, as is the helmet and the sword hand (the shield hand is balled into to fist so that's fairly solid). The kilt is built like a cross between a hoop skirt and a tiled roof with plates clipped onto concentric rings of plate hinges, creating overlapping layers that form an oblong taper cone. I like the effect but it's a pain to build and repair (and it needs repair every time you hit a pothole when transporting this guy to a show). Other than adjusting the head slightly, he's not really posable. A lot of hinges went into his construction to achieve his fixed pose, but those where used to triangular structures for his joints so they are pretty much locked in place at this point. Given how much strain holding just one pose puts on the structure, I not sure arbitrary articulation is really feasible. After my first experience trying to get my Argonath Sculptures to and from a show, I learned the importance of designing for transportability. The Titan is actually designed to dismantle into several large pieces. The arms are attached to Technic beams that run the entire width of the shoulders. These beams allow the arms to cantilever, using the mass of the torso (and a Technic cage running through the shoulders) to keep the far end of the beams from lifting. Each arm beam is half the mass of the shoulder section and the head sits on a post that comes down through a hole in the top of the torso to lock everything in place The torso itself breaks at the waist, in what is effectively a mortise and tenon joint. The lower portion has a mortise (cup-like structure) 4 studs by 12 studs by six bricks deep and the upper part has a mass of technic blocks (pinned together vertically to prevent separation) than exactly match the size of the hole. The skirt and legs are one piece (give or take road vibration doing a job on the kilt) and are basically an A-frame built with technic. The ankles have hinged tenons (like the waist, but with more angular wiggle room) that slip into mortises in the statue's base. The feet are actually part of the base, not the leg. The little bits of island on the "outside" edge of the bases are solid masses of brick used to buttress the ankle connections and prevent the A-frame of the legs from splaying more than intended. Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to comment on this guy. I'm glad it found an audience and I really appreciate your feedback.

Being based on George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and the HBO series Game of Thrones, I'm not sure if this belongs in historic themes or in "special" as just a sculpture, but since Martin was blatantly ripping off the Colossus of Rhodes and that was clearly historical, I think I'll post this here. (Moderators, feel free to move as you see fit) This guy stands about three feet tall (just shy of a meter) and made his public premiere at Brickfair New England, 2015, where it/I took the Brickee for Best Individual Builder (I offer a big thanks to all my fellow AFOLs who voted for me). A fair bit of engineering went into figuring out how to get him to lean/loom just right without collapsing under his own weight. The arms are cantilevered on technic beams through the shoulders. No glue or trans-clear parts are used to extra support, the shoulder joints actually do support the weight of the extended sword arm and the shield. Actually, there's quite a lot of technic action going on under the skin, the whole sculpture is pretty much a system of trusses with studs out in every direction and then it gets skinned in tiles, slopes and bows to give it its final form. The shield and armored kilt went through quite a number of revisions, reworkings and a few "why on earth am I even trying to do this?" moments, but in the end I came up with designs that generally worked for me. I hope you like them as well. Thanks for stopping by.

After much internal debate I finally opted for Helm's Deep, though Orthanc and Weathertop are high on my list. I really like Weathertop and the two Nazgul, but it was too small. Orthanc is suitably epic, but the open back was a major detractor, I would have preferred hinged panels that could be closed for display and opened for "play". At the end of the day Helm's Deep "felt" the most like a real, complete LOTR set. That said, though, I have to say that overall I was disappointed with the LOTR line. There was a lot of potential that TLC could have explored (mini-scale LOTR Architecture style models, epic scenes like the fall of the Witch King (with a brick-built Fellbeast), the Watcher in the Lake, and the Bridge at Kazad Dun (with a Balrog), etc). I appreciate all the work they did with the mini-figures and the new articulated horses, but the minifigs sort of overshadowed the rest of the line. Much like my complaint with many of the old Harry Potter sets, if you take the mini-figures out of the kit, you are often hard-pressed to know what the point of what's left actually is. Mines of Moria _could_ have been a great set (or a couple of sets to keep the price manageable) but between the wall papering of stickers and the disconnected/disjointedness of the scene elements it felt more like the LOTR's answer to that Winter Village winter market set from a couple years ago. Most of the sets were just too small for the epic nature of the source material. Helm's Deep and the Army builder needed a taller wall; the Black Gate was way too short and you needed two copies of the set to even suggest the gate from the movie; even a stocking stuffer set like Gandalf Arrives where the whole point of the (movie) scene is Gandalf and Frodo riding together, put Gandalf in a cart too small to hold two figures. In general I really like the minifigures (and that's saying something as I'm not a minifigure collector and rarely even MOC in minifigure scale) I just wish they'd spent a bit more time thinking about the sets as "LOTR sets", not just vignettes, props and backgrounds for figures. I would certainly have supported a UCS line of non-playset kits (think Minas Tirith and Barad Dur, done along the lines of the Taj Mahal or Eiffel Tower models from a few years back) or even well done, "complete" play set kits (like Bree and the Prancing Pony done in the style of Midieval Market Village) but instead we got the LOTR variant on Dobby's Release several times over. As someone who has been both admiring and producing LOTR inspired MOCs for decades, I really think TLG wasted a lot of potential in the way it handled the official line. I bought them all and really tried to give them a chance, but it could have been so much better. And would it have killed them to make a Galadriel figure?

_IF_ they said their moral stance was against violent themed sets, then yes it would be hypocritical to have things like Ninja and Pirates, but their stance has always been against the glorification of modern/realistic warfare. That's very different that the broader, vaguer notions of violence (or conflict, violent or not, in general). I'm not saying that they aren't already shipping sets that take a very romantic, white-washed view of some pretty dark periods in history (anyone who has studied the treatment of the local peoples in Europe's expansion into the Americas will never look at a game of cowboys and Indians the same way again) - but that is a different question than whether or not a depiction of a cartoonish 17th century pirate somehow glorifies modern warfare. During the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, prior and during WWII, the Nazis used military toys (realistic tanks, planes, ships, artillery, V2 rockets and of course guns) to indoctrinate young boys into the mind set of the Hitler Youth, to desensitize them to the horrors of real war and fill their heads with dreams of glory and awards earned by killing all enemies of the state. Denmark had a front row seat as toys, rallys and propaganda turned innocent kids into teenage soldiers killing and being killed on real battle fields. TLG isn't saying "we oppose conflict based toys," they are saying "we will not be a party to the exploitation of children for the purposes of modern warfare". Making toys that could be misconstrued as glorifying warfare and used as propaganda devices by people seeking to exploit children is what TLG is taking a moral stance against. And if you're rolling your eyes right now thinking that such melodrama could never really happen, then you should a) consider yourself lucky that you grew up in a more sheltered part of the world; and, b) pay more attention to international politics - did you know that after 9-11 certain companies in Asia made collapsable skyscrapers packaged with toy planes to knock them down? One "toy' we found was a spring loaded model of the World Trade Center that read "Death to America" on the sides. The child could then push a button and the spring would compact the tower into a pile of rubble that read "God is Great" in the middle - please do not tell me that a toy like that is no different than a couple of mini-figures practicing Spinjitsu. Of course one could argue that brainwashing a child to abandon their childhood to become a soldier for the state/local warlord/drug cartel is a form of violence, but it is a very different sort of violence than that embodied by a flick fire missile knocking over Unikitty.

Welcome! If you're local to New Hampshire, are you planning on coming to Brickfair New England this year? It's the first weekend in May and will be held in Manchester, NH at the Radisson.

First, I don't know what stores you've been dealing with, but from my personal experience, I've gotten _Refunds_ from Bricklink shops with people telling me that actual shipping was less than their initial estimate and they apologize for overcharging me. The refund is usually at most on the order of a dollar or two, but it says something about the character and honesty of the people one is usually dealing with on BrickLink. I obviously can't speak for all dealers, but of the ones I have dealt with, they bargain in good faith, occasionally err on the side of caution with respect to shipping charges and, if they overcharge me, they make up for the error in a timely fashion even though I'm usually completely unaware that the error occurred in the first place. Second, and I think this is something the average American (and many elsewhere) ether don't realize or take for granted, The United States has literally poured billions of dollars into transportation and shipping infrastructure since the end of WWII. Fast, cheap, domestic shipping and international port management is considered a strategic economic resource. Our rail system is optimized for cargo, not passengers, We subsidize fuel for aircraft, and we've passed laws allowing for (most) cargo to cross state lines without customs inspections or tariffs. Compared to large parts of the world, postage in most parts of the US is dirt cheap (in part because everyone who isn't sending a package is still subsidizing it through their tax dollars). It is a mistake to assume that other parts of the world have the luxury of an economy of scale, strong infrastructure, favorable laws and a broad base of taxpayers willing to subsidize delivering your next bag of parts to you. Even in remote parts of the US, such as Hawaii or Alaska, the price to move goods goes up. So, I don't blink twice when I see that shipping something from, say, Turkey might cost as much as my order itself - I'm perfectly willing to believe that _their_ costs are higher and they they are simply passing that cost back to me. If I'm uncomfortable with the postage-to-parts price ratio, I just look for a closer supplier. Ripping off people with bogus shipping and handling charges is certainly a staple of late night "as seen on TV" ads in the US and may be "a thing" on eBay (I have no basis to judge this one way or the other as I never deal with them), but it's unfair to assume that a non-US based vender is price gouging on the postage simply because they charge more (sometimes even significantly more) than a US vender shipping domestically would. Usually, it's just a reflection of actual costs in a "different" economy.

I think their actions are only hypocritical if you're fixating on the existence of the set (a by-product) rather than the basic concept. We often oversimplify the issue of TLG's position to "banning" war, drugs, alcohol and religion from the list of acceptable topics for production models. I think it's more correct to say that they are philosophically opposed to making kid's toys that "glorify modern warfare", "promote substance abuse" and "advocate for one modern religion at the expense of another" The raw existence of a Jeep or a mini-figure in a military uniform from a licensed theme (such as Indiana Jones or Super Heroes ) isn't _by definition_ violation of these greater _ideals_ in that, in context, those movies aren't about the military; the hero isn't the one wearing the uniform; the story isn't about who has the best weapons or about how blind loyalty to the state is a greater virtue than compassion for one's fellow man, etc. (Even in this context, I can understand how some people might say if the military stuff isn't core to the plot, why bother including it at all, but as an argument, that dead horse was beaten into dog food several hundred posts ago here and elsewhere, so I won't belabor it). Now if TLG decided to license Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, Jar Head, etc. and used that sort of license as justification as to why those sets don't break the "no modern warfare" stance, _that_ in my book would be hypocritical.

About 13,000 various parts on BrickLink for three different MOCs in progress, BrickFair New England is about a month away and I'm nowhere near ready...

I saw the title of this thread, got my hopes up regarding what it could possibly be, and was _not_ disappointed; a fine job there Dr_Spock and the most entertaining appearance by Jar Jar in a movie to date. May I recommend that in the sequel, Jar Jar gets shot though the glass panes of a green house to land in packed beds of cacti and then gets caught up in the workings of a Great Ball Contraption.

I had pretty much the exact same thought when I first saw this kit, TLG has release Star Wars models (e.g. the original Slave-1) with less fidelity to the original airframe than the differences between the "Blue Power Jet" and an actual F-35B. Oh well, I guess even the designers at Lego sometimes have difficulty knowing exactly where to drawn the line between "impressive expression of engineering" and "war machine." I can see the line being blurry with respect to high performance aircraft, stunt planes, maybe even spy planes (U-2, SR-71, theoretical "Aurora" or "SR-72" prototypes), etc. but I don't see how this could translate into tanks, half-tracks, APCs or Howitzers any time soon.