ShaydDeGrai

Nice haul I've always said, if you left room for the cup to hold water, you're wasting money... Where can I find a brother like that?

I like the sky crane. I think it adds a lot to the project (and I mentioned this to the CUUSOO people on the support dialog so hopefully they'll keep that in mind if/when this passes review and they start adapting it to their own modelling standards)

In reading over this thread (in its entirety - oy ) I've noticed that a lot of people are mistaking the rules of grammar with the intellectual property law and while one has bearing on the other, they serve two different purposes and at times can be orthogonal, and in some cases in direct opposition. I don't claim to be an expert by any means but I have taken few courses in both IP law and Linguistics for what its worth. First, language is a living thing; the purpose of language is to convey a common idea with minimal ambiguity to a diverse audience and despite the best efforts of scholars and educators to define and enforce the rules, language always evolves by mutual consensus; spelling changes, rules of grammar drift, adjectives become nouns, nouns become verbs, etc. Acronyms were almost non-existent in English prior to WWII and now they everywhere and some of the older ones (like SCUBA - self-contained-underwater-breathing-apparatus) is no longer formally considered an acronym is now just an adjective (same for LASER and dozens of other terms where the term became popular with people who didn't know the specifics of what it _really_ meant) People try to find the easiest way to convey information quickly. Xerox became a verb and a generic noun because "photocopy" and "photographic reproduction" had too many syllables and xerox was just too easy to say in its place (even if it is technically a "misuse" of a proper name as a part of speech). The same is true for Q-tips (who _wants_ to say "antiseptic cotton swap" when you can just say Q-Tip) Band-Aids, and dozens of other proper names that have, by mutual consensus been impressed into the public domain (at the expense of the original trademark holders). As far as IP law is concerned, you can't technically trademark a word. You can trademark a catch phrase or slogan, but when it comes to words it gets hairier. You CAN trademark an ideogram (which can be made up of letters and is effectively a picture of a word) but the ideogram is considered atomic; a graphical symbol to convey an idea that can serve as a placeholder for something there isn't a word for in normal grammar (at least in English, in Chinese, for example, everything is an ideogram and you don't have what the west would consider a 'normal' phonetic alphabet) When you file for a trademark of an ideogram you need to say as what part of speech the symbol can be used. In the case of TLG, as far as I know, they hold a trademark on 'lego' written in all capital letters when used as an adjective, and in this context it should technically be followed by the Registered trademark superscript. The life of a trademark is different from that a copyright or patent in that if the brand looses its uniqueness in the mind of the masses and l-e-g-o becomes a generic adjective, or evolves into a different part of speech (as is the case when you use it as a noun and add an 's') this undermines TLG's legal standing to defend its IP. Companies like Megablocks or Hasbro would (arguably) be able to say something like "fully compatible with legos from other manufactures" because (although everyone here knows that LEGO bricks only come from TLG) if the word evolves into a generic, TLG becomes like Johnson&Johnson and "Q-Tips" and would have to decided to either surrender control over the use of the term or become mired in lawsuits that are no longer the cut-and-dry clear violations they would have been years ago when LEGO meant exactly one thing to everyone who used the term. In short, TLG wants to defend its trademarks and delay the natural evolution of language with respect to "their" ideogram as long as possible (and this is a perfectly reasonable things for them to do, I have no problem with it). Every capitalized, registered trademark use of it as an adjective supports their legal standing; every mixed case or lower case use as a 'normal' English word undermines it. Legally (as opposed to what a wiki or a dictionary might print) LEGO is not a word, it's an icon that happens to include letters and therefore cannot be pluralized by adding an 'S' any more than I can refer to extra happy faces by saying " s"

If the actual build were a little bigger and more complex, I could see myself buying it and I don't work for NASA; but I am a bit of an engineering geek, so I'm not sure I'm really disproving your point, only pointing out that there might be enough non-NASA geeks out there to support it regardless of the timing. Hey, I'd buy an Apollo-Soyuz link up kit if they made one and I'd be willing to bet that most active Lego consumers today hadn't even been born when that was making headlines.

Great review! I can honestly say I enjoyed this review more than the set itself, thank you. I'm one of these people that have been building LOTR inspired creations since the early '70's and had been hoping that TLG would license the franchise since I spotted my first Lego Star Wars kit and thought, "Hey if they can license a movie, why not a book..." That said, I wish TLG would do more with LOTR than they have in this first round. I have no complaints about the parts and mini-figures in the Mines of Moria offering (I'm actually contemplating picking up another one just for the parts). I think guys at TLG did a great job of sweating the details, but the playability (usually not a big factor for me in general but I recognize I'm not in the core target audience) seemed a little contrived. The downside to this set, for me, was the build and the DSS, I like big, complicated builds, but this is more of a big set with lots of small builds bundled together, not that there's inherently anything wrong with that, but it was a little too "short attention span theatre" for my taste. As for the stickers, the set looks pretty bland without them (I built the whole thing sticker-less just to see how it would turn out) and with them, I find the process of applying them actively distracts from the fun of the build. I usually have a high tolerance for this sort of thing but this one just went overboard. Hinckley is dead on suggesting that they should have made more use of pre-printed bricks and the new brick-brick element. Thanks again for a most entertaining review. You're not alone, Hive. I gave it an "Average" mostly for its value as a source of useful SNOT and castle parts and some cool figures, but as a LOTR set my response is lukewarm at best. I'm still holding out hope (and lobbying for over at Cuusoo and elsewhere) for LOTR to get the Star Wars treatment (some play sets, some battle packs, but most importantly an Ultimate Collector's Series with non-mini-figure-based complex models) rather than the Harry Potter treatment (take away the mini-figures and most sets fall flat). With stickers applied and all the little builds packed together, the Mines of Moria set at least reminds people of the scene in the movie even without mini-figures, and it's not a bad start for the franchise, but as a LOTR offering, I think there a lot of potential to the IP that TLG has yet to explore.

Well, I'm not really a big college sports fan but I think a line team mascot mini-figures could be interesting. This would get you things like: Tiger suit guy Owl costume girl Elephant suit guy Eagle costume girl etc. They wouldn't need to reference a specific school in the packaging (no licensing issues) or even a specific sport (ship them with a sports accessory pack: hockey stick, baseball bat, cricket bat , etc) for one hand/paw and a blank pennant for the other. Add a small sticker sheet with a variety of solid colors and Tiger Suit Guy can be rooting for Clemson Baseball or the Dundee Tigers (ice hockey). Give Elephant Suit Guy a crimson and red pennant and he's for U. of Alabama, make the pennant brown and blue and he represents Tufts University. Stage them with sports players or cheerleader figures to stay with the mascot motif, or use as a basis for customizations. Elephant suit guy becomes the basis for Ganesha; put a lamp shade on Tiger suit guy and he's the party drunk in the tiger-stripped pajamas. Put a Batman cowl on Owl costume girl and you've got Nite Owl from Watchmen (all figures I'd assume you'd never see from TLG directly).

Wow, for something that had nothing to do with an existing pop franchise, this thing just flew through the process. It got more _votes_ in one day than some of my projects have even gotten _views_ in their lifetimes to date. Personally, I like the project. I've got the whole Discovery Science series and this would made a nice companion piece to the 7471 Mars Exploration Rover, I just wish it were a _tad_ bigger, a power function variation would rock (no pun intended).

I finally got around to unpacking a PAB cup I filled a couple weeks ago (it took nearly as long to take apart as it did to build the "plug" in the Burlington MA store). I could tell that I was in no danger of breaking my personal best for a tall cup, but it felt pretty hefty so I figured I'd take the time to do a detailed inventory. Without further ado, I managed to cram in: 7 - 6x8 plates 1 - 2x2 brick 2 - 1x4 palisade bricks 25 - 1x4 bricks w/ arch 59 - 1x3 bricks 72 - 1x2 palisade bricks 185 - 1x1 bricks 60 - 2x2 bricks with slope 45 184 - 2x4 plate with angle (right) 88 - lamp holders 198 - 1x4 plates 124 - 1x2 plates 67 - 1x1 plates 42 - 1x8 tiles 121 - 2x2 tiles 61 - 1x2 tiles 137 - 1x2 grills 59 - cheese wedges 73 - 1x1 round plates That comes to (if my math is right) 1,565 pieces or just a little under one penny per piece. Not a bad average, now if I only knew what to do with 137 radiator grills...

Congrats on reaching 10K and I hope this both passes review and whatever UCS model TLG ultimately creates is as true to the scale, level of detail and power functions features as is economically viable for them*. * For those who don't follow CUUSOO closely, TLG has never (and probably will never) release a CUUSOO submitted model verbatim. To date, they've only released their own designs based on the ideas embodied by the submitted models so don't expect to see mb_bricks fantastic model reproduced for mass consumption at $1000 a kit any time soon.

Well... To paraphrase the late US Senator Dirksen "A billion (bricks) here, a billion (bricks) there, pretty soon you're talking real money." As vices go, Lego is easier on my liver than drinking, kinder to my lungs than smoking and has a better average return on investment than gambling, for what it's worth...

I usually just save them up when shopping on-line and them use them when I go to a store in person to treat myself to a "free" gift while my wife is off shopping in the mall. It was funny one afternoon, I was filling a tightly packed PAB cup listening to the girl at the cash register tell people "you have five/ten/twenty dollars on your VIP card, would you like to use that today?" She sounded like she'd said that so many times a day she probably mumbled it in her sleep. Finally, after I'd finished my cup and picked up a couple modular buildings, I handed her my card and she squealed "OMG you've got over $2000 on your card!" in a voice that I'm surprised didn't draw the attention of mall security. A little embarrassed that all eyes in the store were now on me, I quietly replied, "Shh, don't tell my wife what it takes to earn that..."

I always wanted the 8880 super car. Even now, some 15 or so years later, I remember calling Lego shop at home to order one only to be told that they'd been discontinued and they didn't have any more in inventory. I scoured every KB Toystore and ToyRUs in the area in the hopes that there might still be one on the shelves somewhere and came up empty.

I don't think there is any one "right way" to begin, but I can share what tends to work for me. Whenever I think about a "scale" model of a real place or object, the first thing I need to pin down is exactly what "scale" I'm shooting for. If you have enough parts and patience you can build just about anything at a large scale and get the shape exactly right while packing in lots of detail, but an accurate model of something like a stadium in a large scale is a daunting and expensive proposition. I usually scale things down and that means developing an eye for abstracting away the clutter and capturing the form. From an artist's perspective, abstraction is a technic for glossing over the details while capturing the essence needed to convey a thought or idea. The Architecture line has many good examples of this. For example the Empire State Building uses only a handful of bricks and fully assembled takes up less space on my desk than my coffee mug. It has no windows or doors or any of the other elements you notice when you see the real thing, but the shape is so dead-on your mind makes the connection for you and fills in all the details the designer omitted; you didn't need windows and doors to know that was a building, the abstracted form was enough to jar your memory and pull everything together. When working in Lego, I find that getting the scale and abstracted form right usually begins with lots of reference photos (thank you Google) and looking for a key feature or characteristic of the structure that maps well to a particular Lego piece. If you can find the part or subassembly that really pops with respect to representing the original then you're on your way. For example, take a look at the Robie House kit in the Architecture like. When _I_ look at images of the real Robie House, the form that sticks in my mind is the roof line - yes there's lots of great stained glass work and brickwork but it's the roof that makes me think "midwest brick pagoda" (no offense to FLW fans intended). I think the designer of the kit had the same impression because he mapped his design to match the TLG's line of low slope roof tiles so that this key feature of the building would be captured very organically; no fancy snot techniques, nothing for one's eye to figure out or one's mind to read into, just a clean model of an essential shape of the building. Mapping the roof to a particular part then dictated the scale for the rest of the model, and now knowing the scale, the designer could decide what level of detail was appropriate for the rest of the model. I did the same thing when building my LOTR Argonath statues. The key detail I wanted to capture was the outstretched hand. I must have built and rebuilt those hands a dozen times in scales ranging from a couple of plates to twice the size of my own (real) hands until I found something that was small enough that I could actually build the entire figure, but big enough so that the form was instantly recognizable. Once I was happy with the hand, I just scaled the rest of the figure around it. For my Minas Tirith model, I knew I wanted seven tiers and a razor-like jetty of stone slicing through the city. In this case, balancing the the thickness of the jetty and trying how to get seven concentric curved walls dictated the scale (the tightest curves were done with 1x2 "macaroni" bricks, broader curves were done with hinges and less conventional building techniques. Other than a couple arches, most of the surface detail is just odd studs and fiddly-bits meant to "suggest" the details of an ancient city rather than actually "rendering" them. Again, capture the essence and the viewer's mind will forgive a lack of detail. For a stadium, I think the first thing I'd look at is the footprint. Ask yourself, what is the essential shape and what Lego parts will best help me capture it? If I recall, St. Jakob-Park stadium is "mostly" boxy (which works well in Lego) rather than round or oval (which can become either tedious or fragile when realizing in Lego) but it does have diagonal walls on the corners so now you need to be thinking about angled bricks or wall panels (as seen most recently in LOTR sets) or using hinges. Next, I'd look at the roof line and the various facades. It may sound silly, but grab a bit of paper and a pen and draw what _you_ think the stadium looks like _without_ having any reference photos in front of you. The things you remember to put in your drawing are probably the things you want to make sure you can build well in Lego. Find the right parts to capture these "essential" elements and the rest of the model will start to come together in your mind. I'll often start an idea in Lego Digital Designer or ML-CAD when trying to capture these first few elements, mostly because I find it easier to rummage through a large virtual part library than to open score of trays and tubs trying to figure out which part I actually want to model a given contour or form; but I, personally, prefer working with my hands so once I think I know where I'm going, I usually abandon the virtual model and break out the bricks. If you don't have a large collection to draw from, however, a digital model is a great place to experiment and refine your design. I hope this helps, and good luck with your project. I hope it is a pleasant experience for you and don't forgot to share your creation with us when you're done.

Curve builder parts consist of bricks, plates and tiles that are one stud wide and rounded on at least one end (along the stud axis). At a minimum, it makes sense to have these parts available in a 1x2 geometry, but a 1x3 option would make things even easier for staggering vertical joints and adding structure. A half round (square on one end, rounded on the other) alone can be very versatile but a full round option (rounded at both ends) would allow for even tighter curves and small polygonal structure (like a hexagonal turret on a castle, etc.) So what is it good for? The rounded end allows for bricks on the same row to be assembled "off angle" allowing for curved walls of (nearly) arbitrary radius. A round-nose-to-square-tail arrangement allows bricks to swivel up to about 20 degrees off the center line. A nose to nose arrangement allows pieces to pivot up to 110 degrees off the center line. This greatly simplifies the task of building round towers, elliptical curved buttresses and other, non-orthogonal structures. It frees designers from the choice of either using a predefined radius piece (macaroni brick, 2x4 half round cylinder, etc.) or playing tedious tricks with 1x1 rounds. The round nose design allows for arbitrary curves. As the design allows for normal brick staggering, the resulting wall is quite strong and stable. Even when a curved wall is not the ultimate goal, curve builder bricks can still offer a cheaper and effective alternative to using more expensive hinge tiles or hinge bricks when trying to build angled walls such as a bump-out. Unlike hinge-based angled walls, which are often only hinged at a limited number of connection points to mitigate cost, curve builder bricks can be staggered along the entire length of the joint leading to a more durable play set and less fragile models. And speaking of hinges, these bricks enable designers to build their own, stud-aligned hinges for situations where you want to hide the knuckle of the hinge or just achieve a different look. I've hand built a few of these over the years (ranging from glue ups of mutilated standard bricks to castings in white metals and epoxy) and have found the design to be quite viable even in small quantities. Recently have considered getting a 3-D printer to give larger production runs a shot, but it would make my life a lot easier (and open up a wide range of off-angle construction for a lot of people) if TLG would just mass produce these. There are a few digital mock-ups of the 1x2 half-round brick in action over at my CUUSOO proposal for this family of bricks, please feel free to check them out, feedback and questions are always welcome.

Boy this takes me back. I, too, have a few thousand of those pieces dating back to the early days of my Lego hobby, though it looks like your recent find has suffered less UV exposure than mine. I've found that with my old Samsonite bricks the white bricks have yellowed and the clear have become a little foggy (other colors hold up better) and all of them tend to chip and scratch. I'm not sure if the chipping and scratching is a function of the material, their age or both. BTW the 2x2-to-2x2 plate-ish flexible coupling, as has been pointed out, is an early trailer hitch though I tended to use them as cheap train couplings, but then again I couldn't afford a proper Lego train set back in those days so all my trains had rubber wheels (the tiny ones with red hubs and a metal axle that snapped to the bottom of a 2x2 black brick like the ones you put on your sample car, only without the tread) and ran on a "track" that consisted of two parallel lines drawn with a marker on a big sheet of poster board. My how things have changed... Thanks for this walk down memory lane.

Hmmm.... Not spending money on Lego - I cringe at the thought, but in an alternate universe where there is no Lego to be had, where would my money go? I've always wanted a modest little yatch, like maybe Hinckley's Sou'wester 61 A summer house on a lake would be nice, and of course if you own a lake house you need to have kayaks and maybe a small daysailor. And New England winters can be pretty rough so a beach house in Florida would offer a refreshing alternative. Wow, this exercise is making me think that perhaps I'm spending a little _too_ much on my collection.

It's a great Architecture-style abstraction - catches the essence quite nicely. I've been trying to think of a way to scale down Barad Dur to a convenient desktop size to add to my collection, perhaps this will be just the motivation/inspiration I need to head back to the drawing board. Nice job.

1. caster-troy - 1 11. Darkblane - 1 29. Kristel - 1 37. jirikone - 1 38. TheLegoDr - 1

5. Caparica - 1 11. mObby - 1 14. Multiverse - 1 15. Oky - 1 24. Bernd - 1

12. moctown - 2 2. lisqr - 1 10. CarsonBrick - 1 15. lightningtiger - 1

I'll reserve judgement until I see actual box art, but I can say that, on one hand, if it says Lord of the Rings on it, I will buy at least one. On the other hand, the kit I'm most looking forward to hasn't even been mentioned yet. I want Smaug on his treasure hoard, and not a "Vikings" series little dragon. I want a big, fully articulated, could-swallow-a-hobbit-whole-in-one-gulp, sort of dragon, with a decent sized den and slews of gold parts (bars, coins, chalices, swords, etc). I don't expect to see one from TLG any time soon, but if you're asking what I'd _want_ and look forward to enough to queue up to get one on day one, there it is.

I won't deny that CUUSOO certainly has its issues and, yes, it _should_ be about new ideas, not just new models, or new tweaks to old models, or reviving old ideas, etc. but the simple fact is models are what sell proposals and ties to popular franchises are what, to date, seem to grab and hold the spotlight, leaving (nearly) everyone else in shadow. CUUSOO's entire crowd sourcing model suffers from the fact that crowds are not known for their clear logical thought. TLG might _want_ novel concepts to succeed, but on sites like these, people _react_ to what they are shown; most aren't thinking about the big picture. In many cases the person voting may not even be an AFOL, they just got a Tweet about "My Little Pony" or "Shawn of the Dead" or "Firefly" and rushed over to create an account, cast one vote, and never return. This is not to say that there was anything inherently "wrong" with the proposals I just mentioned (I thought all of them were very well done, actually) but the mechanics of CUUSOO allows a non-AFOL flash mob to drive the "crowd" in a way that isn't thinking about the grander concept of new "ideas" from a viable Lego perspective. In these cases, was all about a cool model that resonated with a fan base of another franchise; meanwhile original models and novel ideas were pushed aside and lost in the mire of 3500 or so other back proposals that aren't getting noticed because the screen real estate at the site is heavily biased to push, effectively, the top 10 projects by support and a small handful of the most recently added projects into a spotlight at the expense of all others. Over the past six months, if I had to guess, I'd say that the typical new project got half its current support in the first 24 hours of public viewing, then a new batch of "most recent" projects got posted and projects (good and bad like) slipped away. Certainly, quality projects continue to get a trickle of support by AFOLs who look for them and appreciate them, but it's a slow, up-hill battle. It's made even harder if you're trying to sell an "idea" (even a really good idea) while watching proposals that are trying to sell cool models or the "concept" of a Lego tie-in to yet another franchise fly past you. It's demoralizing to watch a "trendy" project get more _support_ in one day than your proposal even gets _viewed_ in a week, and I think, in its own way, that discourages some designers from pushing the idea side of things; the mob wins. I don't think CUUSOO itself knows what to do about this, as the structure of the site and its policies are, at best, enablers for this "cool model trumps novel idea" phenomenon. Take, for example, the question of new part proposals. One would think that a new part pretty much _IS_ all about the _idea_, not whether it shows up in a Star Wars kit, or whether an expert builder used it to great effectiveness redesigning the latest Technic bulldozer. The basic rules set up a category explicitly asking for new part designs, with separate rules for how the designer would be compensated if the idea flies, slightly different submittal process, etc. On the surface, all this strongly implies that they _anticipated_ people being able to make serious parts proposals through this site. It all sounds like this would be great for really soliciting actual novel ideas, but then if you try to support a part proposal you get the standard support dialog asking how much you'd pay for it (with a minimum value of 1USD), what you liked about the model, etc. Those questions make sense when asking why you'd support the concept an UCS Sandcrawler, but really aren't apropos to the question of a new angle bracket or roof tile. Forget about the price, they can figure out what it would cost to make it, and that will drive the PaB and Bricklink market as well as amortization over set MSRP; it's a calculation TLG does all the time, not an matter of popular opinion. They should be asking people what they'd do with the new part if it were available. How versatile is it? Do people want one or two or would MOC-ists be ordering them by the case? By asking the wrong questions, they again, intentionally or not, discourage people from embracing ideas and put the focus back on models. I know from experience, most people on CUUSOO don't even bother looking at parts proposals and those that are have difficulty finding the handful that are there. Given that all parts proposals are already self-identified as such at the moment of submission, would it kill the CUUSOO team to just lump them into a separate tab on the home page such that people who want to see just parts ideas can find and compare them? Many new parts designers try to use the tag system so that their proposal can at least be found on a search for terms like "new piece", but it's entirely on the designer to anticipate what search term they need to include to be found; despite having all the information needed to tag and retrieve these "pure concept" proposals automatically, the CUUSOO engine does nothing; and again, the "new idea" gets set aside in favor of the "cool model" in the mind of the CUUSOO audience. In the interests of full disclosure, I freely admit that I'm the author of the Curve Builder Bricks proposal over on CUUSOO, so if you chose to dismiss this as the ranting of an embittered old parts designer, I'll understand, but I'll still cling to the opinion that there are a lot of good ideas for both sets, lines and parts to be found over there that are simply being lost in both the noise of mediocre projects and the dust of meteoric (if not particularly novel) ones.

I think I know the product you're describing, or at least I've used something very similar. The stuff I got was intended for doing leather crafts and is much heavier than normal thread and much stiffer than light crocheting string. It holds up great under normal wear and tear and is available (last time I checked, which, unfortunately was a while ago) in black, brown, tan, and white. I first discovered the stuff years ago in a Tandy Leather craft store (which is now closed around here) but have since found similar products in art supply stores in the leather craft section.

When it comes to redundancy, a good model is essential to difference one proposal from another. It's ridiculous when someone proposes an idea like "Hunger Games" or "Game of Thrones" (that's it, no description, no model, maybe just a title card downloaded from Google) and then starts complaining when someone else proposes the same "concept", claiming they were ripped off when neither of them fleshed out the idea in any way that engages a general Lego audience. It's a little better when there are models that speak to the concept ("Apple Store" "Lego Store" "Star Wars Modular sets" and other high level abstracts that could be realized in different ways) but it allways comes back to "what is the value added _THIS_ vision brings to the general concept" that determines (for me) what is a valid new proposal versus a waste of my time. I can forgive a physical model for failing to convey a complete vision, different people have different skill levels and I can certainly empathize with people whose vision far exceeds the scope of their available brick collection. So, for the case in question, if it were a physical "box" with a poorly done PaB wall, gaping holes instead of windows, etc. I might give it the benefit of the doubt. But proposing what, for lack of a better term, I'll call an inferior rendering (though that's a harsher sentiment than I'd prefer to convey) in a virtual environment, strikes me as more laziness than anything else; too lazy to build a better virtual model with nearly unlimited bricks at one's disposal, too lazy to learn how to take advantage of LDD or other such tools; and/or too lazy to check the existing database of proposal to see if the new "idea" had any value added beyond existing proposals. There is certainly a case to me made that multiple, seemingly redundant, proposals actually do contribute a unique vision and it's not _all_ about the model. Take the UCS Sandcrawler, TLG has already done a Sandcrawler, but the "concept" of the UCS proposal is, in my mind, pushing the idea of bigger with more details. The model itself is stunning and I'd certainly pay large sums of money for that exact model, but I know TLG would never release _that_ (over 8000 parts including lights and motors, it would make the MSRP of UCS Millenium Falcon look like a stocking stuffer). If they signed off on the concept at all, it would be to release a model _inspired_ by that proposal, built to their building/documentation standards with a piece count that seems viable based on what people are willing to pay. And this is where, I think, the true measure of a "redundant" proposal lies and why (I think) CUUSOO asks what it is you like about a given idea when you click support. It's not a question of whether your model is unique (that's easy), it's a question of whether your model conveys enough uniqueness such that an official model, inspired by it, would be fundamentally different than anything previously proposed or currently available. I would accept arguments that radical differences in scale or level of detail can difference one idea from another of basically the same subject matter. I can also appreciate that some "concepts" are vague or broad enough as to allow for representation by very different models (for example several modular movie theaters have been proposed but the models are so different that I don't consider any of them to be redundant or "rip-offs" of the others). And then there's the other extreme where the value added is slim to none over existing ideas, and/or the proposals are flat out "stolen" and/or repackaged with little regard or erspect for the true originators' work. I've lost track of the number of proposals that look like someone downloaded building instructions from a decade ago, built it in LDD, tweaked it slightly and sent it back as a "new" snowspeeder, or Slave I, or X wing or some other kit that's already had half a dozen incarnations over the years. Personally, I've had two instances of a person building their best take on virtual copies of ideas I've proposed (with physical models) and then proposing pretty much the exact same idea right down to a paragraph lifted verbatim from one of my MOCPages (maybe it was an "honest mistake" where they liked what they found on MOCPages and they didn't realize I'd already proposed it on CUUSOO but really, if you're going to rip off some else's homework at least check first to see if the teacher has a copy of the original on file). Even if I weren't the person being copied, I'd have very little patience for this sort of "proposal" - they claim it's original work because they invested 20 minutes in LDD to produce a unique image of a model, but they contribute nothing to the discussion of the sort of "new" sets TLG should be exploring and show little respect for the people who _are_ investing thought, time and money into meaningful proposals (most knowing full well that they may never make it to 10k support).

@fluffyBunny88 Thanks for the images and the links. These are great examples of what microscale models can be and I wish TLG offered kits along these lines. The mini-modulars kit does little for me, but I'd buy those Taj Mahal, Mont St. Micheal, Notre Dame and Tower Bridge models in a heat beat.