ShaydDeGrai

I'm not disagreeing, I just think that I'd like them a lot better if Lego had come out with a simple 48x48 baseplate in black and cut the price to a third to a quarter of what they are asking. The price point just isn't worth it, I can build my own with parts on hand for a lot less.

Couldn't agree more, though I think we're actually convolving two separate issues. First they are trying to implement a new system that, at best, I think we can agree is "less than universally seen" as an improvement. The second issue is that they are doing it poorly. Regardless of what I (or others) think of their new VIP system, I appreciate that they are trying to have a fresh and exciting e-commerce site; the problem is (and I say this as an IT professional who, in a previous position spent a decade building Web UI infrastructure) at a coding level, their web site is terrible. Under the covers, they aren't trying to do anything that couldn't have been done in a fault tolerant, cross-platform way five years ago, but when I visit the site with my development platform and see what's going on under the covers with a debugger, the code looks like it was thrown together by a some high school hacker with no regard for exception handling, dynamic error recovery or the professional discipline one would expect from a company with TLG's resources. If there's an established, proven standard way of doing X, and a proprietary, bleeding edge alternative, nine times out of ten they opt for the latter. I know first hand the challenges in getting a web site to look and behave uniformly (or at least predictably) across dozens of versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, IE, Opera, Android, etc. and all the mobile variations thereof, but there's a quarter century of software engineering lessons-learned to help identify good and bad practices, and it seems like they completely ignore it on a regular basis. The basic lego shop website already had all sorts of rendering issues, untrapped/unrecovered errors and cross browser behavioral issues _before_ attempting a quasi-integration with the VIP subsection so I can't say that I'm in any way surprised that the added (IMHO, unneeded) complexity of the new system has only added to the instability of the shopping experience. [ I really am turning into a grumpy old man, aren't I? -sigh- Sorry... ]

My "problem" (for lack of a better term) with these sets isn't that they are boring (I can appreciate them for what they are and could see myself chilling out to Lego's answer to paint-by-numbers with a glass of Scotch on a cold winter evening) but that they are grossly overpriced for what they are. But wait, some say, you get over three thousand parts for 120 USD that's like 4 cents a part, much better than the 10-11 cents/part magic range you usually cling to... Perhaps it's the Scotch in me talking (you can take that either way, it still works) but if you look at something like the Iron man kit, you get 136 bricks, plates, and other "infrastructure" elements, for argument's sake lets say these average 10 cents a each on BL - Let's round up to $14 for the lot. You also get 44 technic pins; the last time I bought these in quantity I paid about a penny a piece - let's double that and say we have $1 worth of pins. That means the rest of the set are 1x1 rounds, a little under three thousand of them. Usually I don't go out of my way to even buy these, I just use them as filler when I have spaces left over in my pick-a-brick cup in at the Lego Store and I've passively amassed tens of kilos of them over the years, but for arguments sake lets value most of these at a penny each as well on the secondary market) Add it up and you've got about $45 worth of parts selling for nearly three times that as "licensed art". No perhaps I'm low-balling a this a little bit, some of the larger plates would clearly sell for more that a dime and some of the 1x1's are in rarer colors, but with a retail price of $120 versus a bin of mostly black and red 1x1 rounds there's a lot of wiggle room to cover before that 4 cents a "brick" average becomes a true indicator of "value". The math only gets worse when you thing about what it takes to build the multi-panel versions. $360 for a standing Darth Vader mosaic? I could build a decent 3-D sculpture for that. I like the look of them, but even at half the price I think it would be cheaper to bricklink them or build with parts on hand.

I'm having flashbacks to the movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock when Scotty says "The more sophisticated they make the plumbing the easier it is to gum up the drain..." I miss the old system, this one just makes me want to order from Amazon instead - and I have, Lego has lost a significant amount in direct sales from me since they switched over. It was so much easier when I could just hand a physical card to the clerk at check out and have him say "You've got $900 in rewards, would you like to apply some of that to todays' purchases?" No advance planning, no vouchers, no prorating by region, no need for a smart device or network connectivity, just drop in when it's convenient and walk out with 'free' Lego. As a consumer who has no interest in posters, park tickets, or lotteries for a chance to win some exclusive mini-fig, I feel this new system detracts (a lot) from the their shopping experience (compared to the program's prior incarnation) while brining nothing of note to the table for my supposed "VIP" status. It takes true brilliance to cook up a "customer loyalty program" that actively encourages a once loyal customer to shop elsewhere.

I don't know. Personally I don't get it, but then I'm old and, despite actually having written commercial video games back in the 1980's, I was never a Mario Bros fan (they lost me at Donkey Kong, circa 1981 and never won me back). Still when I got my latest catalog in the mail yesterday, I had a little bit of a "WTF?" moment seeing 11 pages dedicated to Super Mario. That's got to be a personal record for me, flipping through so many pages in a Lego catalog while seeing absolutely nothing I actually wanted to order. Obviously, I'm in the minority here (that's fine, I don't begrudge anyone their toys of choice) and I _do_ appreciate that they are trying a new take on mixing electronic play with bricks. The "game" is physical, realized with stickers, sensors and a smart "brick-fig" , not just another app gimmick so, in that respect, I like the _concept_ better than Dimensions, Hidden Side or any of the new PoweredUp/Control+ app Technic kits (pity the assembly instructions are app-based though, from a graphic design standpoint it struct me as a failure of imagination and an unneeded dependency on smart devices). But like I said, these kits weren't aimed at me (and missed by a wide margin) I just wonder if, internally, they justify 11 pages of catalog coverage (plus the cover) because TLG thinks this will be really big or because TLG fears the opposite and doesn't want a repeat of Lego Dimensions on their hands after years of investments in partnerships and innovations to make this departure from "traditional Lego play" even possible. When it comes to mixing software and bricks, their track record is, at best, inconsistent regardless of the subject matter. I wonder how much a gamble this line was and whether or not anyone is really nervous about it behind the scenes.

Great review, thank you for taking the time to really show what you do (and don't) get with this set. I really _want_ to like this set, but I find the whole PoweredUp / App aspect more of a liability than a feature. On the one hand, we have an elegant design that strives for a decent level of fidelity with a real piano; and on the other you've got a hokey little App that doesn't do much and what it does do, it doesn't do very well (and having to stop in the middle of the build to use the app to set the works to the neural position, that was an eye-rolling moment...) I would rather they'd focused on a pure display model, ditched the app and the power features, made the body thinner (more elegant for its studless character) and dropped the price point. It's a nice design, probably an interesting build, and looks like a good parts pack as well but the PoweredUp angle makes me feel like I'm paying for gimmicks that detract from the model and I'll never use. Again, awesome review, I just wish TLG had let the Lego piano just be a Lego piano instead of a phone accessory.

This is really the point of Ideas, isn't it? It's guerrilla brand marketing. The process is more about getting people to volunteer their time and effort to stir up social media buzz with no commitment (or licensing agreements, or corporate partnership negotiations, etc.) on the part of TLG until after the bell has already been rung, as they say. For them, it is a minimal investment in resources and accountability while reaping a high return on advertising, brand recognition and crowd sourced market research. In the end, the proposals that make it into sets are really more of a by-product, fulfilling the promise of reward just well enough to encourage continued participation. While it HAS produced some wonderful sets of a kind we might never had seen otherwise, the revenue generated by most of these one-off, small production run offerings for the TLG pales in comparison to the value of the social media buzz, news feed coverage and overall on-line brand marketing (i.e. a lot of "free" advertising). Even if a popular idea ultimately gets rejected, it still advances TLG's standing with non-AFOLs and non-TFOLs. Having "too many" proposals make it to the 10,000+ threshold is something I doubt TLG actually sees as a problem. It just means the system is working as designed and it gives them more to pick from when trying to decide which ideas might actually perform well on a store shelf, appealing to an actual _consumer_ as opposed to simply being popular with people who are happy to click their support for an IP they remember fondly from their youth while having no intention to actually buy the end product.

Absolutely fantastic job. I love the attention to detail you put into every nook and cranny. It's just stunning at every level. In my book that really the mark of a great build, something that catches your eye from across the room, invites you to look closer and then rewards you with interesting discoveries at every step in the path. Congratulations. The time you invested was worth every second and then some.

Actually, when I was in academia (and years before either the smart phone was invented or I became a parent) I had a multi-million dollar grant from the US National Science Foundation to address the very tricky (and still open) question of how to preserve the benefits (critical thinking, math and logic skills) of having coding and IT in the classroom while minimizing the detrimental effects (retarding certain brain and body development, eye strain, circadian rhythm disruption, etc.) of screen time in early childhood education. It was (and remains) a hard problem and our most promising solutions were neither cheap nor easy on the developer side of things compared to just writing code. We got significant pushback from educational software publishers (particularly from the more commercial side of things) who wanted to push the narrative of "IT in the classroom is better than no IT in the classroom" (which on one level is very true but too often the real agenda was "cheap and easy equals profitable, doing it right cuts into our margins and would take real effort") So I'll agree that, in this day and age, formal IT education is important, but the way it's taught isn't always "completely fine" and it's just cheaper to play with touchscreens, apps and dumbed down copies of MatLab and LabView than to wire up breadboards, or play with chips, or smart bricks, etc. and screen based instruction scales better when you have an overloaded student to teacher ratio. It doesn't mean the kids are learning more or developing properly. There's room for improvement and things like the Control+ app is a step in the wrong direction for certain audiences - for others, it's fine. As one small part of the research, I ran an after school program for 5 year olds. We build robots with Lego. We programmed them with PLAs using a custom code generator that scanned in hand-drawn flow charts and state diagrams produced by the kids (with templates and stickers), and controlled them with physical remotes. After three months, we had kids doing 8th and 9th grade (usually 14-16 year old age range) algebra and trig problems on paper as part of their design process while their peers with the latest in education software were still learning their alphabet and, with the help of Dora the Explorer, were learning more about how their game controller worked than anything the game was trying to teach about Geography. Our lab was about new technology being taught in the abstract with practical applications, using hands-on old-school teaching methods and the kids picked it up like I was teaching them how to eat pizza. So I know there's better things we can be doing than staring at screens when it comes to early childhood education.

When it comes to storing instructions, over the years I've gone from repurposing Lego tubs to portable file boxes, to archival storage banker's boxes, to a two draw horizontal file as my needs (and size of my library) expanded. I'm currently using two 4-drawer upright file cabinets. Over time I've been making increased use of hanging folders as more and more of my library consists of booklets from sets that have more than one instruction book and the physical size of the books range from index card to coffee table tome. When I stared preserving instructions I just threw them in a "safe place" (i.e. a spare tub) over time I started organizing things by themes, but that eventually broke down and now they are organized by set number. I've probably devoted more time and energy to these instructions than they are worth as I rarely go back to them, but they do help now and then when I can't remember if I own a particular set, I look up the kit number and see if I have a folder on it (and yes, I know all about Brickset, I'm just terrible about keeping it my collection records up to date )

Aside from, in my opinion, spoiling the fun, not having the "complete package" in the box seriously diminishes the potential of these sets as gifts. I was always taught that a true gift should never place an unexpected burden or expectation on the recipient and, unless you're accompanying each gifted powered-up kit with a preconfigured iPad, that's exactly what you're doing; you're giving someone a partial gift, assuming they already own hardware that works with it and expecting them to download an app to make your "gift" complete. It might not seem like much to a generation that grew up using cell phones for everything except keeping their parents informed as to where they were and what they were doing, but to my generation, Ii.e. the parents of the those kids and the ones often burdened with completing the gift received by the child) that's just impolite. If that's the definition of an Old Fart these days then sign me up for the club. And it's not just my daughter for whom I'm trying to use Lego as a distraction from screen time, it's me. I stare at screens all day long and the absolute last thing I want is to let aspects of my job bleed into my hobby. I appreciate the flexibility and adaptability of using something like the Control+ App. I used to teach courses in robotics and worked with the RoboLab development team for the original RCX, so I understand the appeal at a "Mindstorms-level" of complexity. But the app isn't _that_ sort of controller, it's gratuitous sound and graphics at the expense of haptic feedback (physical controls that can be turned, pushed, clicked, etc.) which physiologists, development psych and child development studies have found is very important for mental and fine motor skills development/refinement in kids and teens. Touch screens are fine for adults well past college years, but touch screens actually retard brain, dexterity and muscle development in younger people compared to performing similar tasks with game controllers and RC consoles, This set, and indeed all Powered-Up kits, would become far better gifts and better ( developmentally for their target audience ) kits if they included a physical remote with levers, buttons and/or dials. They could support an app as well for those who wanted it (just like the online alternate build instructions I've ignored for every Technic 2 in 1 kit I've every purchased) - but out of the box, it should be physically complete, screen-free, and any software it actually _needs_ should be burned onto a chip and buried in a shell of ABS along with the rest of the parts.

The question you really need to ask yourself is: Is Lego my investment strategy or my hobby? Where does the "joy" lie for you? As @howitzer said, if you bought the set speculating that it would go up in value and you'll feel good about selling it for a profit after it's sat in your closet for a few years, then lock it away. If you bought it because you'd enjoy building it, sharing it with friends/kids, displaying it (or playing with it - no judgement ) then by all means crack it open and have a good tim. If you're in it for the experience of collecting/owning/building it then the question of being "rare" or "retired" doesn't really matter (though, as a collector, I have to admit sometimes I get a little extra enjoyment out of cracking open a long retired kit, savoring the moment, knowing that I'll likely never have another chance to build that particular kit again straight from the box.)

My point was simply that there is no absolute "right" answer to the sorting issue (which I suspect you can agree with) but your wording implied otherwise. I intended no offense (though _my_ wording might have implied otherwise, if so I'm sorry.) This is very true, sorting by both color and type does increase the number of containers (and the size / complexity of any automated sorting machine) but is occasionally a necessary evil with respect to time to find the part later (sort time versus seek time where space tradeoffs are the leeway that allows you to optimize one or the other). I happen to have eight 6-litre bins of 1x4 bricks, all full, each a separate major color for my collection, in addition to the dozens of baggies of 1x4s in assorted minor colors. Throwing all these bricks into a common 10 gallon storage tub might save a little room but I'd end up spending more time looking for the right color part while building than it currently takes to maintain the system as is. (and for the record, I'm no Jeff Bezos, I've just been amassing parts for the better part of a century while my peers were squandering their income on silly things like houses, cars, clothing, food and entertainment.) I wouldn't say it's "free" but I actually find sorting to be a mindless task that can be relaxing. I often do it while also doing something else just to clear my thoughts. As for sorting machines, I find the problem they are trying to solve fascinating (I've taught courses in robotics, machine vision and AI so as far as academic geek exercises is concerned, this is right up my alley) but in practice, I've yet to see a solution that is practical for the general case, let alone commercially viable. What would be really cool from am automation standpoint for me would be a machine that could take a parts list and fill a bin with exactly those parts from my collection (a bit like putting together a BrickLink order for a complete build from a single vendor, only with immediate gratification and no postal charges). If I had that, I wouldn't care how my collection was organized so long as the seeker-bot knew how to find something for me when I wanted it.

"Agreement" is probably too strong a word, I think saying sorting by type is "popular" is likely more accurate. How you sort really has to be driven by how and what you build and how large a collection one is dealing with. (I sort by either or both depending on the color and type of part in question, but that's beside the point...) Personally, I'd go crazy (okay, crazier) if I tried to find a 1x2 plate in teal (of which I probably have a handful) in a giant bin of mixed 1x2 plates because I have several cases of those particular parts in common colors (black, white, light bley, tan) and likely at least a few samples in every color they've ever been cast. I'd need to dig through the bin with a trowel just to find the bottom of the box if they were all mixed together. So I think the only universal position we can agree on here is that one solution does not fit all cases. If you're happy with the way your collection is organized, congrats, you did it right; if someone else did it differently but it works for them, well, they're right too. Getting back to the OP, I _might_ find use a machine that sorts by color (I often do a color-based pre-sort anyway) but to do something really useful for _my_ collection habits it wouldn't be worth paying money for unless it had a really good color discriminator. My eyes are getting old (just like the rest of me) and under artificial light I can often misfile small parts by color (Black v. Earth Blue v. Earth Green, Old Brown vs, New Reddish Brown, Old Light Grey v. Light Bley, where to draw the lines between the twenty or so shades of blue and blue-green TLG has introduced and retired over the years, etc.) so a device to accurately split those hairs might be nice. Overall, though, it's really hard to envision a machine that can be as dexterous as a human hand, as discriminating as a human eye, as adaptable to fuzzy logic constraints as a human brain and mobile enough to reach for that sorting tray at the far end of the table while not taking up more space than, say, a human.

While I appreciate the flexibility that these hubs and app-based control gives us (I used to teach a course on robotics and worked on the original RoboLab software), on the whole I've been unimpressed by the move to PoweredUp and Control+. I wish that, in addition to the current offerings, they also had a IR-based smart hub that paired with simple physical controllers. Where I live, bluetooth signals have become the EM equivalent of dust bunnies and I've given up on Bluetooth mice and keyboards because there's just so much EM interference from competing devices they are unreliable. My (admittedly limited) experience with PoweredUp thus far has amounted to dropped connections and dead batteries. With the old Power Functions IR remotes, I could run train layouts and Technic Models for hours on a single charge with no range issues (my house is only 14 meters long, and given doorways I occasionally needed strategically placed mirrors to maintain line of sight but...). With Control+ I can hold my phone an inch from the hub and still only have a coin flip's chance of getting the model to respond, then, the hubs' batteries go dead from trying to maintain a connection rather than from driving motors. A decade ago, a Bluetooth / App control system would have been innovative, now it just seems like a gimmick (and a buggy gimmick at that). I appreciate what they are trying to do with these new hubs, but there's an old mantra in engineering design, "Make the fringe cases possible, but keep the simple things simple" I wish someone in the PoweredUp design team would remember that.

Thanks @Bob De Quatre for the review. This looks like an okay build on a decent scale. I'm still on the fence about it through. I have been wholly unimpressed by the Control+ system thus far and would probably like this far better without motorization at a lower price point. I might consider ditching the the Control+ elements entirely and try using PowerFunctions stuff instead ( I'd take an IR remote over Bluetooth and an App any day when it comes to Lego ) but then I'm paying for "features" that have no value to me. My Lego dollars are probably best spent elsewhere.

Yeah, in the US the "Sales Tax" is a different beast, it's really a "consumer" tax and varies by state, county and, in some cases, even city. Some combined rates are as low as 0%, others get into the 10-12% range, depending on how many other ways the local government is trying to separate you from your money (real estate taxes, excise taxes, income taxes - basically whether you have assets, acquire assets, liquidate assets or trade assets with someone else, the government wants a piece of the action) Also, the tax code is so convoluted that the same item may or may not be taxable based on circumstances. For example, if I buy a can of Coke at the corner store, it's tax free (no tax on "grocery items" locally). If I buy it in the next town over (ten minute walk) there's a 25 cent "junk food tax" because it's mostly sugar. If I buy that same can of Coke from a hot dog vendor in the street, it's subject to a 6.25% Meal Tax because I was "served" it even though it's the same can and I have to open it myself. But that's just the start of this bizarre journey. The really weird part about the way US local sales tax laws are worded, is that the tax is on the consumer spending money (the type of item being bought dictates the rate) and where that person lives, but where it is bought _from_ is supposed to be irrelevant (aside from the above question of whether a prepared food item is a "grocery" or a "meal"). For example Massachusetts (6.25% sales tax on most items) abuts New Hampshire (no sales tax). If someone from New Hampshire buys something in Massachusetts, they have the right to save their receipt and file an out of state income tax return with Massachusetts and get their 6.25% tax money back at the end of the year. If someone from Massachusetts drives up to New Hampshire to buy a big ticket item "tax free," they are supposed to disclose that purchase on their own tax filing and pay the 6.25% anyway; Around the holidays, Mass Department of Revenue agents have been known to look for Mass plates on cars in New Hampshire mall parking lots just over the border, and approach people as they are loading up their big screen TVs and bags from jewelry stores. While they can't do much on site (outside their jurisdiction) they have been known to "educate" shoppers about tax evasion and let people know that they "know who they are" and that they'll be "expecting" to see an unpaid sales tax filing on that year's return. This mindset of "the sales taxes I pay is a function of where _I_ live not where I buy it" can make for a convoluted mess, which is why the sales taxes are usually a separate item over and above the base price (one exception being fuel taxes; if you're buying petrol in a given state, they assume you're putting wear and tear on their roads and, whether you live in that state or not, should contribute to their upkeep) so that accountants and lawyers can figure out what taxes are owed where - If I buy something in Maine, the tax is 5.5% so I, technically, should file in Maine to get my 5.5% back and then pay Massachusetts 6.25% on the same item, unless it was an article of clothing which is taxable in Maine but exempt in Mass... If you travel out of state and follow the letter of the law, it all gets very ugly, very quickly and in most cases would cost more in accounting fees (to you) and processing fees (to the governments) to itemize everything, not to mention the clerical hassle of saving all your receipts for seven years as evidence should your claim be audited.. If you follow the exact letter of the law, it ends up costing more money to process the forms and cut the checks to balance the books, than it would to simply assume it will all average out in the end and call it a wash. Technically, if I buy something at a yard sale, I'm supposed to pay sales tax and if the seller made a profit, s/he is supposed to pay capital gains taxes on the income and file a return to give all collected sales taxes over to the state, but, realistically, no one wants to spend $10,000 processing paperwork for a yard sale with gross sales totaling at best a couple hundred bucks. Most states are fairly lax on enforcement for all but the most glaring of gray market abuses and offer a standard deduction and exemption amounts for people who don't want to split hairs. Some people DO itemize and file, but usually this the case when someone lives in one state, works in another and the accounting works to their advantage. For casual consumerism, it's just too much of a hassle for everyone involved. As for internet purchases, a lot of states in US are still trying to work things out. The rise of Amazon and eBay really caught a lot of states off-guard and 20+ years later the legislation still hasn't caught up. The vendors didn't want to be collecting sales taxes (especially given that the rules varied so much from state to state and were always subject to change). The states were seeing noticeable declines in revenue. The brick and mortar stores were getting crunched enough just on basic price competition before you slapped on tax free versus taxable surcharges. And the federal government, which does not collect sales taxes to begin with, was lobbying heavily for states not to interfere with budding eCommerce (at least for some grace period - like Jeff Bezos' first $10B in bonuses). The legislation is still a bit of a mess today. For Massachusetts the rule has become, "if you have a physical presence in the state and you are delivering to Massachusetts address, you collect sales tax at the same rate as a physical retailer." So now, if I buy from Amazon (which has a distribution hub in the state) or Lego (which has several stores, here) I pay sales tax. If I buy from a certain independent toy store in Maine that has no presence in Mass, they don't charge me sales tax (they only tax Maine residents, the rest of the world is free). And if I order a Coke with my pizza from Grub Hub it gets hit with a meal tax; if I buy a Coke and a frozen pizza from Amazon Fresh it gets the grocery tax exemption). This gets confusing for the consumer; it must be a far worse for a vendor who needs to know what surcharges apply to whom, when, and how to pay each state, county and city their due at the end of the quarter/year. I realize this is bit long-winded (I'm sorry, I have a Ph.D. I've been trained to run out of room on postcards just expressing "wish you were here" sentiments - which BTW is better than running out of room while _literally_ writing that, as sending a note to the effect of "Having a wonderful time, wish you were her" is a very different sentiment) but this is really just a round-about way of saying that I have no idea how the new Bricklink will sort this out. Do they expect individual shops to know all the local tax rules? Will they provide software to sort it out? Will every transaction have to go through Lego Shop USA's tax calculator to ensure that the proper duties are being applied? Will the individual shops be collecting taxes (which means they'd need to file sales tax statements with each state that they ship to) or with TLG collect the taxes for them and add it to the filings that they already need to do for their own eCommerce ventures. If TLG manages the tax collection side of things, will they increase their own commission to cover the cost of the extra accounting they need to do? Who does the bookkeeping for refunds and cancelled orders with respect to wrongfully taxes collected? If I'm buying from an out of state vendor (currently tax free) do I now get charged taxes because TLG has an instate presence and is brokering the sale? If so, is the tax applied to the full purchase price or only on Bricklink's commission? This could get real messy, real fast.

When I last posted on this thread, I had no kids of my own; now, my daughter is nearly five (my how times flies...). I started her early with Duplo (which she still loves and now uses to create some very elaborate builds). Over time, we evolved the concept of her Lego (technically, her Duplo), "Daddy Lego", and "Daddy and M Lego." "Daddy Lego" live in my office and includes my MOCs, display models and all my sorted parts. Our joint Lego are regular kits that we do together (she's fond of Lego Movie 2, Trolls World Tour, Dots and City themes, though, unlike her dad, most of her models don't stay together very long as she scraps them for parts and goes for free form builds on a regular basis) of small kits that she can handle on her own (anything rated to about 7+ and below she can assemble with no problem, though she needs to work up more finger strength and manual dexterity for most Technic kits. We set the ground rules that early on that have really helped keep things safe and orderly: Rule number one is that Lego never goes in the mouth, nose, ear or any other orifice. We started this with Duplo bricks when she was one. If tried to put a piece in her mouth, we'd stop her, end play immediately, and remind her of the rule and explain it was all about safety. Four years later, not only do I feel comfortable letting her play with Dots kits and tiny parts, she occasionally lectures _me_ when she catches me holding an axle or technic pin in my lips. The second ground rule is that "Daddy Lego" is only to be played with when daddy is around and says it's okay. This was a harder rule to get her to embrace because "Daddy Lego" can be very tempting (and nannies and babysitters can be lax on enforcement) but things got easier when we instituted an additional rule: Daddy can only play Duplo when she with me and says it's okay. By giving her a sense of ownership in her "exclusive" bricks, she's developed more of a respect for my collection. Often, we'll either work together on the same kit, or engage in "parallel play" where she'll be doing her stuff and I'll be working on a MOC or a far more complex kit and we share table space and conversation as we build. Occasionally, she'll be working on something and ask for a particular piece in a particular color. We'll head into my office and check the stores of "Daddy Lego" and (usually) she'll leave happy. One time she asked "How come you can always find exactly what I'm looking for so quickly?" "Because I'm careful to always put my toys way where they belong," I answered, thinking I'd found a teachable moment. She then walked over to my bin of unsorted parts, looked at me, looked at my parts bins then said, "looks like you still got a lot of work to do, you should get on that in case I need..." she plucked a random part from the bin,"this part later." then she dropped the part back into the bin and stirred things around a bit. "Betcha can't find it now" she said with a grin. So much for teachable moments. When it comes to Lego, I spoil her, I know it. I grew up "Lego poor" and it's a parent's job to want a better life for their child than he or she had for themselves. Fortunately (or un- sometimes it's a mixed blessing), she realizes that her Lego is something special. I recall one playdate when a classmate came over and, from the other room I heard him exclaim "WOW! You really DO have more Lego than the school!" To which replied, "Yeah, I have the best daddy ever - and you should see HIS toys he's got SO MUCH Lego, let me tell you..." Kids, sigh, let me tell you...

I really appreciate the complexity and mechanics of the original build, but I'd far rather have a soundless, brick-only, manual action model for a lesser price than another bluetooth battery hog that couples to an app. I just don't see the PoweredUp/App addition as a value added, quite the opposite, it's a gimmick that detracts from the design in my mind. As much as I like the original proposal, I think I'm out unless I see this so heavily discounted that I don't feel like I'm paying for "features" that I will never use.

I'm going to go with...

Yeah, I was one of those people. Some of builds were actually quite interesting, but the whole AR gimmick (IMHO) only served to drive the cost up and the quality down. I'm not surprised that it didn't appeal to me, but I am surprised to learn that there were enough likeminded people to me that they killed the theme early and abruptly after all that hype. I can't exactly say I'll miss it, I suppose that's really another way of measuring the impact of a "Big Bang" theme. Is it really only about how popular it is today, or can we learn something from how quickly it fades away and whether or not people actually care when it's gone? Perhaps I'm just old and cranky, but I don't see a lot of the current offerings inspiring cult followings among collectors a decade from now the way, say, Bionicle gets its own MOC display section in a lot of conventions these days and mint in box/canister kits are grossly overpriced compared to original MSRP. Obviously the secondary market is of limited interest to TLG and its immediate marketing goals, but as a yardstick for measuring truly big, "Big Bangs" I think it does say something about how the consumer community reacts/relates to them (and the brand) over time.

My problem with a lot of the third party lighting solutions _designed_ for Lego is just cost (true to my ethnic origins, I can stretch a copper pence into a length of wire). Instead, I've gone with cheap LED christmas lights, usually picked up on clearance after the holidays, fifty lights and a battery box for just a few dollars is hard to beat. If a whole strand isn't needed or desired, I just snip off what I need and do a little soldering. As others have pointed out Bulbs that fit in Technic holes and inside 1x1 bricks and rounds aren't hard to find and for tight form factors you can make your own battery box out of a 2x3 brick, a resister, a paper clip, some tin foil (or the tear-blade from an empty tin foil box) and three hearing aid batteries. BTW @dr_spock, thank you for reminding me that I haven't used my wire wrap tool in ages - why have I been soldering all these years when I could have just wrapped the darn stuff? It would have been so much easier. Oy. (insert palm to forehead here...)

I can appreciate that established IPs (be they in-house or licensed) are easier to market, especially to new customers. Going the "Big Bang" route gets the brand out there and has kids that are just growing into "prime Lego age" thinking: "I love the cartoon! Mommy, Daddy, can I have the play set?" and the fact that "the play set" is Lego is almost an after thought, but it gets new kids discovering Lego and (hopefully) the joy of building when otherwise they might of skipped over the Lego aisle in Target entirely whilst playing a video game. So as a, for lack of a better term, "gateway drug" strategy it's a pretty solid concept. Still, I kinda agree with @TeriXeri, we're knee deep in named characters with defined backstories. Unless you are new to Lego, the whole thing seems pretty tired and worn at this point. I miss the days of the old evergreen themes with lots of generic characters and plenty of opportunity for open-ended story telling. Even when they did introduce a named character here or there, the predefined "history" was easy to ignore (scrap Cap'n Redbeard and redistribute his parts across four or five other minifigs and you have a motley pirate crew to call your own). I liked that a lot more than today's mindset of "everybody knows _this_ is who he's _supposed_ to be" and "that's not how the story goes..." It constrains creativity and, for me at least, that gets old fast. I'll admit miss the old evergreens. It's a shame that they are harder to market these days, and it's annoying the way things like Ninjago have spilled over/swallowed up space and jets and mechs and sailing ships, etc., under their umbrella because I used to be able to skip the Ninjago section entirely, confident that I wasn't interested in anything offered under that theme. Now I have to wade through all the things I don't care about to find the occasional gem I really want, despite it being marketed under Ninjago. I'm glad we still have City and things like the City-Space to offer a more generic open-ended world for inventive story telling. The Big Bang Blitz might be great for marketing, but as the father of a young child I don't think its very good for imaginative play and cognitive development. And as an AFOL, I think it's a bit tedious at this point.

Man, that piece takes me back to my old Sampsonite days. As I recall, that was a trailer hitch for an old fire engine kit I once had. I think they also used it as a train coupling, but I never had those sets.

I hear you. If it requires an app, I'm out. My Lego hoppy is intended to get me a break from electronics and software - integrating that crap into builds takes all the joy out of it for me and just reminds me of all the work deadlines I'm missing.