ShaydDeGrai

1) According to Brickset, I have about half a million pieces from unique, "new" sets. That number doesn't include duplicate copies of sets, bulk purchases of random bricks, donations from friends whose kids have (sadly) "outgrown" Lego, Pick-a-Brick and Bricklink purchases and bulk buys of k-Boxes (single piece, single color the crates used to stock the brick wall at Lego stores). If you add in those sources, I'd estimate that I have somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million parts. 2) How long to sort? I'll tell you when I finish. I started half a century ago and have more "to be sorted" parts today than I probably owned in my first twenty years of collecting combined. When I just need to chill out for a bit I'll sit down with a movie or two that I've already seen, and will spend a few hours a week sorting. My actual sorting process starts with a scoop of random parts, a well lit smooth sorting surface and two dozen cups in a tray on the floor and a "reject" bin on my lap. I'll dump a pile of parts on the table, and just start pulling out parts. If the part aligns with one of the cups on the floor (say, Technic, MiniFigs, assorted colors, etc). I toss it in the appropriate bin, otherwise it goes into the "reject" bin to get sorted later. I find I can keep track of about 24 categories/cups of parts "to look out for" in my head at a time so that's a practical limit as to how broadly I can filter things in a single pass. On a second (or third, fourth, etc.) pass, I basically repeat the process, just with a finer level of discrimination. I first pass might have produced a cup of Technic. A second pass would start with that cup and then pull out even length axles, odd axles, assorted pins, gears, etc. while also filling up a "reject"/random Technic bin on my lap for all the odd-ball shapes I don't know how to categorize. It's repetitive and largely mindless/meditative activity best suited for otherwise taxing, stressful and/or frustrating days. 3) How to I sort/organize things? That depends on the nature of the piece. For Technic pieces, I sort by shape/function. Mini-figs and accessories get lumped together in a big bin (I don't do much with these but my daughter likes them). For common colors, I sort by both shape and color and organize by family in easy access trays (like a tray of white clips or black 1-by-X plates) or zip-lock baggies in bins (red slopes, tan bows, etc.). For less common colors, I usually just sort by color and throw them in a bin as I'm usually not building with them, they're just there for accents and greebling. I think anyone who has a collection of any really size and maturity probably has some pretty strong feelings about how to organize and curate those parts, and, from my personal experience, I think the most important thing to remember is that, if someone is happy about how their collection is organized, then they are doing it "right" - but remember, what is right for them might be entirely wrong for you. If the way you sort, organize and store your collection doesn't parallel how you actually use it to build with, then you're wasting time and energy on an illusion of organization that will break down in practice. 4) With respect to automation, from time to time I've built color sorters with Mindstorms and purely mechanical, dumb (i.e. no microcontroller) axle length sorters and vibrating beds to separate tiles and plates from brick/thick stock but these have been more "interesting exercise in mechanics" than "practical solutions" for me. I always tell myself, if this works, maybe I'll hit the machine shop and build a real robot that does this, but I never do. The mechanical solutions always end up being more trouble than they're worth (jams, mistakes, not granular enough for my tastes, machine takes up too much room to do too small a job, etc.) As someone who used to teach courses in machine vision and robotics I think it's a fascinating challenge to tackle, but they really pale in comparison to simply embracing the Zen of manual Lego sorting. 5) How much space? HA! To quote my wife "Is there any room in this house that _doesn't_ have Lego in it?" To which I reply, "well the bathroom doesn't have _very much_ Lego..."

"Banned" is probably a bit harsh, but I think there is definitely a right and a wrong way to go about self promotion. I'm always suspicious when someone with under 10 posts starts touting their proposal, and if the pitch is their only post, I usually won't even bother following the link. I've been on the Internet since the days of DarpaNet and Usenet (before the web existed for any of you so young that you've never heard of those) so I appreciate that "standards of conduct" can be very subjective in cyberspace, but going to a place like Eurobricks just long enough to beg for support and move on never to return (unless you post another entry on Ideas) just strikes me as rude, even by cyberspace standards. On the other hand, if someone comes in (even if it's a fairly new account) and creates a genuine MOC thread in the appropriate sub-forum and sticks around to respond to comments on his/her MOC then I'm fine with that posting including a line or two like "If you've enjoyed this creation please consider supporting it on Ideas" with a link. It's still self promotion, but it is respectful of the community. The designer has taken time to participate in enriching the site with his/her unique contribution and makes reader aware that there is _also_ a posting on Ideas; this is a far cry from cutting and pasting the same pitch on a dozen different sites and expecting strangers to take time out of their day to go visit Ideas when they don't even know what the proposal is about. I also don't have problem with someone advertising their body of Ideas work in their Sig so long as the signature isn't bigger than the messages they are contributing. If someone is actively participating in threads on assorted non-Ideas topics then sure, I might do them the courtesy of checking out their various ideas projects (especially if they have interesting thumbnails) when I have the time. Personally, I don't _browse_ Ideas anymore; I'll look for specific things, follow links to specific projects, maybe checkout entries in a contest now and then; but as far as general Ideas proposals go, I don't have the time to wade through the swamp looking for the gems. If someone shows me something interesting without my having to go out of my way, _then_ gives me link directly to it on Ideas, they stand a much better chance of getting my support. Banning self-promotion here entirely is a bit harsh for "real" Eurobrick members/contributors (who, like most of us, could probably use all the help they can get these days) and detrimential to the underlying workings of Ideas in the first place. And let's face it, Lego Ideas, like Cuusoo before it, isn't really about the kits that "win" as far as TLG's business model is concerned; it's about generating buzz on social media and getting free brand advertising in non-traditional media - like articles in Gizmodo, Popular Mechanics, Hollywood Reporter, New York Times and People. We AFOLs are the ones who really care _which_ sets run the gauntlet successfully, TLG wins just by holding the "contest" and getting non-AFOLs to notice. If we want to make sure beautiful AFOL-centirc proposals get noticed amid all the easily hyped, pop-culture tie-ins stuff that's out there (that can get 10k votes just by having the right person drop the right buzzword at the end of a TikTok video) then we either _need_ a bit of self promotion within the community or accept the fact that we've surrendered any modest sense of control of the process to the non-AFOL masses. I guess for me it all comes down to respecting the community rather than carpetbagging. There's a distinct difference between making one's peers aware of a situation where they could chose to help out versus walking into a stranger's house and expecting them to do as you command solely for your benefit.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not a mini-figure guy and in the past decade I think I've pick up all of two CMF's (used), both incidental inclusions in odd bulk lots. That said, I have always enjoyed and indeed looked forward to Whitefang's outstanding reviews with every new CMF release. Both well informed (with respect to history) and informative, they were funny and engaging even for someone like _me_ who has no intention of going off and buying any of these in the first place. I've skimmed others' CMF reviews and sat through assorted video reviews from time to time and, honestly, Whitefang's reviews, writing style and photography brought something to the table that was unique and compelling, even for an audience that wasn't chomping at the bit for _absolutely any_ information about the latest CMF series. His contributions in this area will be sadly missed and the Eurobricks community be diminished by their absence.

The "problem" with including the spare parts is that it might not be a _reliable_ source for anyone else trying to reproduce your work. Spare parts come in two varieties, intended spares and incidental extras. I base this conclusion on the fact that I've bought multiple copies (say 6 or more) of certain sets from time to time and found that every copy of the set had a certain group of redundant parts, but some copies had a few unique extras not found in the others and occasionally one set only had the "extras" that were common to all the other copies. I _suspect_ (just a theory, never confirmed it with any official source) for exceptionally small/light and or fragile pieces (like the polycarbonate visors for minifig helmets) that they just include extras because doling out a spare is a lot cheaper than having to replace it after the fact through their service department should it be missing or damaged in transit. Also, when putting together an assembly line for a kit, the release engineers need to figure out which filling stations are going to used to fill each bag. Different stations are calibrated to handle different ranges of part sizes (a machine optimized to handle 6w diameter wheel hubs going into a big bag might also be able to process 8w windshields or large Technic turntables, but is ill-suited for counting ski poles going into a tiny bag) and sometimes the "optimum" machine isn't available but the next closest will work if you configure it to drop a couple parts at a time rather than one (because one part alone is too light for the machine's sensors). So the economy of logistics says its cheaper to ship an extra part than to go to the expense of getting extra equipment to optimize the packaging process for this one production run. Logistic practicality and planned redundancy probably accounts for the "uniform" extras for a given set. For the _random_ extras, it's probably just that, random. The way filling stations work (in general, not Lego specific), a bag comes in, it gets weighed, one (or more) pieces are dropped into the bag until it has gained some specified amount of weight and then the bag moves on to the next filling station. Since the criteria for being "done" is "bag weighs _at least_ X milligrams more than it did when we started" the machines effective err on the side of "an extra is okay but one short is not." For larger parts, it's fairly easy to configure a machine to drop parts one at a time and check against weight changes after each, but for small parts, it's entirely possible that it might accidentally drop two at a time before tripping the weight limiter. There's no facility for removing the extra once it's in the bag, so you get a random extra that can't really be predicted on an official inventory of the set.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, decent GwP items are about the only reason I buy from Lego directly these days. I've been genuinely unimpressed by their "new" VIP rewards program (and more than a little annoyed by the way they've over hyped it) If it weren't for interesting bonus sets, TLG would be loosing all my sales to Amazon, the shipping is free and faster and the discounts often more than make up for any VIP voucher rewards I'm missing out on. So, perhaps, maybe it's a clever thing on their part to get people like me to pay MSRP on a big set from them rather than settling for wholesale revenues when I buy the same set from someone else.

I've seen several articles now claiming that the VIP rewards center is going to be revamped this week but somehow I suspect that the revamp is going to be far less than sweeping changes. When it comes to "integrating" the system it seems like they can't even get Single-Sign-On down (for the non web geeks out there this just means you shouldn't have to login in twice, if shop.lego.com sends you to the rewards center, it should already know who you are and vise versa. Core web technologies (SAML, OAuth, REST and JWT, etc.) solved this problem years ago and it just looks like a lack of interest in integration that TLG hasn't bothered to implement it). I don't know what TLG has planned, but were I running the show the first update I'd make to the rewards center would be to eliminate it entirely. Have all non-voucher rewards show up as regular items for purchase on the shop at home site as their own theme; gray-out purchase options for non-VIP members, anonymous users and users with insufficient points balance to "afford" the item; and update the main sales system to accept points directly for VIP Rewards items. Reward items simply become something you add to your cart and pay for in points at check-out. As for vouchers, I'd ditch them entirely. When checking out, the system knows who you are and how many points you've got (after any reward purchases) so it should be able to come back with a simple slider, spinner or text box control that says "How much of your current rewards balance of: $XXX would you like to apply to today's purchase?" where you enter some number between zero and the max allowed value (either your max reward or the total purchase price whichever is lower) and the system deducts regional adjusted points accordingly. Having worked with computers and web application (and NASA for that matter) I can assure you that this is not rocket science. I don't see the point of making the VIP Rewards center its own little isolated fiefdom. It feels like a lack of commitment to the program by TLG as a whole and it looks like TLG's internal political/organizational divisions are artificially creating distinctions without differences at the expense of the user experience. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll log on tomorrow and a brilliant ew website will make me forgot all the prior flaws, but I'm not holding my breathe.

There's a lot to be said for this. ^^ A lot of people just don't get the idea that intellectual property is something to be respected (I used to be a professor and even at the college level I was constantly berating my students over their lack of citations and skimpy bibliographies even when taking direct quotes - as a generational culture they just didn't seem to take such things seriously). Some people see "their own" contribution as so valuable that it outweighs any attribution to original sources (but if I offer the best kazoo rendering of the theme to Star Wars you've ever heard it doesn't change the fact that John Williams wrote it, I just played it) Still others can't even identify the original source because reposting on social media has destroyed the pedigree (I'm not on Twitter, but I once had a friend forward me a picture of a cool MOC he'd found and thought I'd like, and it turned out to be one of my own from Brickshelf years earlier.) Of course sometimes, it's just coincidence. If I make a model of the Flying Scotsman (a famous train), the scale of the model is dictated by the size of the wheels, the color scheme and overall shape are fixed which limits the parts I can use (if a real world build) so if my model looks a lot like someone else's it could just mean that we're both really good builders using the same (limited) parts to render the same subject. That argument falls apart however if the subject is more subjective. I designed Lego Ornithopters from the _book_ Dune (by Frank Herbert - got to get that citation in there ) that looked entirely unlike their design from either the David Lynch film or the Sci-Fi mini-series, so when I found photos of my MOCs (taken at BrickFair) on someone else's blog where the author was talking about "his" design and how he'd be making the plans available for sale "soon" (which I interpreted as, "he hasn't figured out some of the SNOT yet") I was less than kind when he claimed it was just a coincidence that "his" ships looked so much like mine. After several less than polite exchanges he finally admitted that he was using the photo as "inspiration" for his _original_ design (which "would be better" than mine, because, apparently, mine was just barely worth stealing in the first place) moreover, he hadn't even personally taken the photo of my MOCs that he was using on his blog (he'd grabbed it from a random Flickr Stream of someone who'd actually gone to the show). Finally I stopped trying to reason with him and just started leaving public comments on his blog pointing to original sources. A week later the entire posting was gone and I never heard from him again. I hadn't thought too much about that incident until reading the OP here, I don't like wasting headspace on that sort of petty behavior. As others have said, I, too, like it when my creations inspire someone else to tackle the same subject matter and add their own twist on it (lord knows TLG itself has cooked up enough variations on SnowSpeeders and AT-ATs over the years...) For a while, I was having a fun little contest with someone building Architecture-style versions of Helm's Deep from the Lord Of The Rings (I built one, he saw it and made his own improvements, I saw what he did and rebuilt parts of mine, he then offered his own rebuttal to my innovations, etc.) It was fun, we both finished with better models than we'd started out with. It's a nice way to build community, pick up new techniques and discover cool, nice parts usages. In my experience, most people are in it for the fun and that's what makes the few who aren't stand out so much as personal horror stories. So I'd say give the guy the benefit of the doubt until its obvious where he's coming from, then in the words of the great Maya Angelou, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

My only data point is several years old at this point (back when Cuusoo was just becoming Ideas) but I had the chance to talk to members of the Ideas team at a convention and I recall one of them (It might have been Tim Courtney - at my age memory is the second things to go...) saying that part of the review process was to go to the various design teams for existing themes and ask "Is this the sort of thing you're working on or might consider doing in the future" and if they come back and say yes, the chances of the proposal passing review go way down. In evidentiary law, they have this concept of "Eventual Discovery" which (to over simplify) says that evidence obtained under questionable (but not clearly illegal) circumstances can still be entered into a court of law if, by following "normal" procedures, not subject to interpretation, the evidence would have come to light anyway. I think much of Ideas, operates under a similar principle, if TLG's "regular" design teams have a reasonable likelihood of producing a set that would compete with an Ideas set for the same audience dollar, TLG goes with the internal design and shoots down the submission. So i don't think it's really a question of quality, complexity or scale, I think it's just the fact that modular buildings are an established "thing" and the team behind them doesn't see value added in letting the Ideas theme create a limited edition "competing" set that blurs the lines of their territory, release schedule and marketing strategy. Of course, one can also turn their well defined niche against them to offer something that would force them to say "no" when asked if this is something they'd release themselves. Consider the Old Fishing Store (21310). When most people think "Modular" they think of a layer cake stacked design of an urban building with a fancy facade, plain sides designed to connect to other building via technic pins, and some sort of minimal back ally rear. The Old Fishing Store, while being on a scale and complexity on par with a Modular, defied these expectations and allowed Ideas to offer something unique with a lot of appeal to Modular fans, without stepping on the Modular theme directly. Personally, I wish more talented Modular MOC'ers would consider mixing up basic design premises and pitch things like the Old Fishing Store or the Monster Fighters Haunted House (10228) (another official offering that defies "Modular convetions" - 360 degree design, doll-house-style hinged reveal - but looks fine (give or take some deferred maintenance) on the outskirts of a Modular town). Non-urban/non-tenement designs, stand-alone structures, buildings with open backs or hinged panels rather than stacked floors, etc; there's enough room to play and come up with something cool, Ideas-worthy, and outside the fiefdoms of established themes, without abandoning the concept of compatibility with a modular city entirely. It just seems like a lot of time and talent goes to waste creating awesome proposals that would fit in "perfectly" with the Modular line, only to have them get shot down specifically because they are such a seamless fit with those in-house offerings.

The coolest "axle issue' I've ever seen was a 6L axle that was over-torqued into a ~5L screw with a good 15-20 or so full twists turning the lengthwise ridges of the axle into 4 spiral inclined planes; all very uniform. Shockingly, the thing never snapped and remained dead straight even as the winding shortened the length. The application that caused the damage was a very large GBC that was pushed to run faster than designed.

I've kept (for artistic accents) every Lego piece I broken in the past twenty years. I have one black plate, one gray gear, two black axles, two red bricks, one yellow brick technic beam, and a couple zip lock baggies full of dark red and reddish brown of all different shapes, so YES some colours do seem far more prone to cracking than others.

Fantastic review, best I read in months. This is clearly a "Must Buy" for my collection, I was on the fence looking at the official marketing photos (they just don't do the set justice) but you review clinched it for me. BTW, I suspect the concept of Schrödinger's Lego kit shall be with me for life now... Thanks for that.

I'm both, though scope and scale varies. I buy and build sets on a regular basis. If I pick up a set, it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to build it according to the instructions at least once - usually when I first open it. Depending on what it is, it might sit in that state for a few days or a few years depending on its appeal as a display model. Then, over time, other pressures move in (gravitational disturbances, cats, my child, my own boredom with it or a lack of display space) and sets get scrapped for parts for my MOCs. I'm a very deliberate (and occasionally over ambitious) MOC'er. I can spend months designing/tinkering/prototyping/agonizing over a piece before I start the build in earnest and, then the builds themselves tend to be far bigger than most sets, so for me, MOCs are really _projects_ that might span months of effort and hundreds (if not thousands, but don't tell my wife) of dollars in bricks whereas sets are just _activities_ to chill out with after a long day at work. Since becoming a dad I really haven't had much time for big MOCs (though I'm trying to ween myself back to more modest efforts to squeeze some in) so sets, particularly ones my daughter can join in on have become a more common weekend hobby.

Very, very true. Even when you don't see a single Technic element, the strength of those connections may be essential to builds that would otherwise collapse under their own weight if relying on clutch power alone. A case in point, my Titan of Braavos MOC is build around a Technic skeleton and 'skinned' with system blocks. There's no way system blocks, even with clips and hinges could support the weight of his shield (or balance on his ankles for that matter) without pin and beam construction at the core. Hey, I remember being very excited to get a window frame that wasn't red for the first time - not to mention getting a piece in green that wasn't a baseplate or a shrubbery ( as I think about the days of Lego before they even had minifigs, you kids have it easy - and get off my lawn )

While there's a lot of overlap between the Technic and traditional System audiences, I think that Technic also has a pretty sizable "Technic only" audience as well. While an extension to the traditional Lego System, Technic is really a head-to-head competitor in the Erector Set/Meccano play space. Meccano and Erector sets beat Lego to the market by half a century (Meccano being invented by Frank Hornby in 1898 in the UK and Erector being (supposedly independently but very similar product wise) invented by A.C. Gilbert of Gilbert Toys USA in 1911). Those were steel beams and axles with brass gears, all held together with actual machine screws and nuts (Gilbert even had to file for an exemption to stay in business during WWI because the government wanted to ban metal toys to free up material for the war effort - in the UK Meccano had to stop production during WWII for precisely the same reason). Erector sets were THE number one construction toy on two continents for much of the early half of the 20th century and inspired a number of other construction sets along the same vein (the biggest probably being Tinkertoys - a wooden alternative) It wasn't until Gilbert died in the 1960's, his company was absorbed by Ideal, and the new owners started cutting corners in the quality and strength of materials department that it's popularity really started to wane. On the other side of the Pond, Meccano had similar problems having grown too fast too quickly and overextending themselves financially until they too were bought out by a company that sought to improve profit margins by cutting quality. People still wanted that sort of construction toy but they wanted something with fewer sharp edges, was easier to work with and it wasn't made of flimsy plastic. While it's pure conjecture on my part, I strongly suspect that this dissatisfied Erector Set/Meccano audience growing up to have children of their own and complaining that their kids wouldn't have a the same sort of Erector Set experience they had had informed TLG's decision to introduce the Expert Builder series in 1977 (not to be confused with Creator Expert, this was actually an early Technic line). The beam and pin construction was very much a sturdy plastic analog to the old Erector/Meccano style of building. The new system introduced gears, dedicated motors and, over time, vastly exceeded the range of parts once supported by the Erector Set catalog. Obviously it's compatible with traditional Lego, but as a construction toy it was really competing against the latest incarnations of Meccano (which eventually reorganized and bought the Erector brand) and modern Erector competitors like K'Nex) not Megablocks or any of the many "clone blocks" that have cropped up since Lego's original patents expired. So yes, I'm not surprised that Technic is a top seller nor am I surprised that its popularity may come as a shock to many 'traditional' Lego fans. I know people who ONLY do Technic sets (I also know people who ONLY do robots with technic and mindstorms - so you have specialties within specialties) , it's a different style of building that also appeals to a different audience (in addition to its overlapping appeal to many).

Speaking as the father of a four-year-old girl who is constantly raiding my parts cabinets for 1x1 tiles for her "mosaics" I think it's pretty obvious where the idea for this product line came from and that, yes, it will sell to a certain audience and no, that audience is not most AFOLs (at least not in bulk). While I'm not sure I'd even pick one up as a parts pack for myself, my little one has already already seen the ads and is pestering me to "make sure the Easter Bunny knows" she wants the big set ( and maybe a few bracelets too).

I _think_ the term you might be looking for is "Cabover Design" (or COE - Cab over Engine in the US, or in Britain I think they call it Forward Control Design). That's when the front of the truck is very flat and boxy, the driver is literally sitting directly above the engine (and usually has to climb up a ways to get there), and there's no horizontal engine hood (or bonnet, depending on which side of the Altantic you're on) to speak of. You often see this in the design of Fire trucks, Grabage trucks and long-haul Tracker-Trailers. In the US. you see it most on really big vehicles, but in Europe there are quite a few smaller examples as well. It that the look you're going for?

I actually own both of those. 60182 was definitely the better kit. For a tracker-trailer rig, I thought the cab on the 60254 was a bit small and lacking in details. I would have preferred something more along the lines of the cab from 60027 the monster truck transporter or something more like the 60254's thematic predecessor, the 60085 4x4 with Powerboat. @ks6349 As for more towing cabs/transporters, I think the heyday for these was really the Great Vehicles sub theme of CITY circa 2014-2015. They had quite a range of Transports, Semis and dedicated utility vehicles (tow trucks, cement mixer, garbage truck, logging truck, snow plow). It was quite a refreshing change from the usual cadre of fire and police vehicles. Of course they've always done these sorts of vehicles off and on, but it was nice to see a lot of variety hitting the shelves at the same time rather than being the token "non-first responder" truck option on a shelfful of squad cars, ambulances, rescue trucks and emergency helicopters.

There's the 60183 Heavy Cargo Transport from 2018 but still available on Amazon below MSRP and (the similar, but more non-truck stuff included) 60049 Helicopter Transporter from 2014 (but still available on Amazon at only $10 over original MSRP. There's also the 60151 Dragster Transporter from 2017, but that involves more shopping around as it originally retailed for $30 and some vendors are asking for nearly twice that (mint in box) which I think is a bit ridiculous for a 300 piece City set (the same goes for 60079 Jet Transporter ). The 79116 Big Rig Snow Getaway had a nice looking Semi (and actually the other truck wasn't bad either) and despite being from six years ago (and a licensed set at that) the price wasn't bad and hasn't really appreciated/inflated over time (one Amazon vendor was selling at MSRP, several others were <$10 over MSRP as of the time of this writing). In part you're paying for TMNT mini-figs, but you could probably resell those individually to recoup some money if all you're after are the trucks (which, to be honest, was the only reason I got one back in the day).

Simply Marvelous. Brilliant work on the designs of the domes using the 1x2 rounds, truly excellent.

To give credit where credit is due, I felt episode 4 was a marked improvement over the first three. It still wasted a bit of screen time on personal drama when it could have been focusing on the builds (and they kinda spoil the ending giving far more screen time to the (soon to be) departing team and the eventual winners than the middle of the pack) but the needle was definitely pointing the right way this time. I hope they continue to improve and keep the focus on the process and products rather than personalities. @KotZ as always, great job on the set dressing and thank you for your contributions to this show.

I used to teach at a university that had a school of early childhood education and we were lucky enough to have a Lego lab. Every year TLG gave us thousands of dollars worth of parts and, in exchange we sent them reports on curriculum development, kids' levels of interest and attention span, demographics of the kids involved, etc. We even had a big play room with a mirror/window for unobtrusive observation of free play (and reps from Lego Education - with prior notice and parental authorization could come and covertly observe how kids in various age groups where relating to various elements/animal designs/story narratives, etc). Most of that work just went into what sort of teacher curriculum suggestion cards where going to get bundled with a given Lego Education classroom kit. I have to believe that if they went to that level of expense and effort just for a few printed bits of card stock to stick in a tub of bricks destined for a pre-school (or a high school in the case of our robotics stuff), they must be taking the question of market research and focus group seriously when it mainstream commercial products. As for the actual question at hand, I think there's certainly something to the argument that they don't want Star Wars to cannibalize Space or Castle to undermine Harry Potter, but, as has been pointed out, that can't be the whole story because there's nothing competing with Pirates and Nexo-Knights managed to co-exist with Star Wars for years. Personally, I think it all about controlling the narrative. When I was young(er) and mini-figures were new, they were all generic, the only backstories they had were the ones I invented for them. Outside of CITY, we've really kinda lost that these days. Everything seems to be heading in the direction of a pre-packaged franchise. Generic pirates were a blank slate, but TLG seems to be gun-shy about making large commitments to blank slates. They've found a formula that (generally) works for them (hell, Bionicle probably saved them) of controlling a standardized narrative with shows, comics, merchandizing and kits. That level of world building takes time, and once you've down the groundwork you want to reap the rewards for some time as well. They don't want to be fours years into development for a new pirate theme/show/movie with the first kits hitting the shelves in a years and then find out that the year after that a new PotC movie is coming out and if they want to license _that_ IP Disney wants them to drop any in-house pirate stuff for the duration of the contract. Personally, I'd love to see a return of Pirates, but I'm afraid that if it ever were to happen, every crew member would have a name and a backstory and the kits would center around recreating popular episodes of the obligatory Nickelodeon show. Free play just ain't what it was anymore. On a side note for the Thomas followers: I think "Big World Big Adventures" is too hyper, I appreciate the more diverse (gender/ethnicity) representation of the various engines, but I strongly prefer Thomas and Friends seasons 15-20 (CGI animation without going over the top) and miss Toby, Henry and many of the recurring characters from Sodor.

I would totally go for an "Acquaintances" theme. This reminded me of bad translations of English movie titles on bootleg videos (and to a lesser extent to a cement mixer I bought from China once that had, shall we say a colorful, metaphorical mistranslation for the word "screw" throughout the assembly directions). Can we also have a Velocity Victors theme? Buccaneers might sell. I wonder what TLG would have to say about non-Architecture, Edifice Erections? The way things are going I think SOMEBODY'S going to have a lot of work to do - recreating a viable alternative to BL. If I decide to rage-quit my current job, perhaps I start my own company - I know a lot about software engineering, databases and web app design (and have a contact list of very smart people who know lots of things I don't) but I don't have the time right now and don't really want to be in the business of running and maintaining something on that scale. Still, the more TLG "honors" their pledge not to change anything, the more I think the community needs a new alternative. It was really a strategic blunder for TLG to buy BL directly. Invest in, partner with, okay - maybe - but assuming a controlling interest puts them in an impossible position. They can't turn a blind eye to the actions of a wholly owned subsidiary and they can't bring BL in-line with the rest of the corporation without fundamentally changing what BL is to the community. They lost their buffer of deniability in buying BL and I don't really see what they are getting out of fostering all this ill-will and anger. It's not like BL was a multi-billion dollar cash cow in the first place.

@KotZ Thank you for all your hard work, the set looks great and your MOCs definitely add to the product as a whole. Sadly it feels like your behind the scenes experiences are more interesting than the show itself. I'd never seen any of the international versions of the show before so I wasn't sure what to expect, but what I've seen thus far has left me a bit disappointed. I'm not a fan of "reality" tv in general, but from what little I've have seen I think the show runners should have spent more time mimicking the formula of a show like the SyFy channel's Face/Off (a SPFX makeup/creature design contest). Between the casting and the cutting, I'm not sure if the show wants to celebrate talented AFOLs as artists or put them up for public ridicule as a bunch of weirdos with poor coping skills who get stressed out while playing with toys. That sounds a bit harsher than I intended but to date it's hard to know where the show's heart is. I really don't want a show about "interesting personalities/stereotypes" hosted by a guy acting like drunken frat-boy. I want to see MOCs front and center, not simply as an excuse to get partners bickering or freaking out about time constraints. On Face/Off, the host is there to get the ball rolling and get out of the way. The judges and guest experts are there to critique and advise. And the show itself is about the artists' creative process of vision, design, execution and final product. Sure, there are the obligatory meltdowns/conflicts, but 30-35 minutes of each 42 minute show is focused on the product and process, not the personalities. So far Lego Masters seems to have flipped the ratio, barely giving the MOCs any screen time while focusing on the antics of the host and the interpersonal dynamics of contestants. Maybe I'm just a boring old dude myself, but I'd rather have the show filled with ordinary people producing great MOCs that speak for themselves than a cast of made-for-tv personalities that seem (thanks to the cutting room decisions) to spend more time talking about their art and their feelings than actually creating anything. The MOCs should make the audience want to understand the artists, the artists shouldn't be a spectacle in their own right. Should any contestants be reading this (or judges, or production hands, etc.) I mean no offense to any of you, I've caught glimpses of interesting MOCs and I'me sure that over the course of these marathon builds there has been no shortage of footage that shows the design process, works in progress, on-the-fly redesigns and all the other aspects of the creative process what could really showcase the talent everyone has brought to the show. My disappointment is really with the way the show is cut, mistaking conflict and stress for "drama", reducing complex personalities to cliches, and shortchanging rather than showcasing the creative process itself. Perhaps once the crowd thins out, there be more time to focus on the MOCs.

Very true, not all stores are created equal. I live in the Boston area so I'm lucky to have four stores in easy driving distance plus a Discovery Center gift shop (the latter being about a half hour walk, 45 minutes by train, or an hour's drive away - welcome to Boston traffic) My preferred store is actually rather small as store fronts go (more than a little cramped and it's best not to try and shop there during a build event unless you want to wade through a sea of kids to get to the registers) but their back room is larger than their retail space and is usually very well stocked so the only real place size matters is in room to display "floor models" and the Pick-a-Brick wall - which is always too small and sparsely stocked for my tastes but with five walls to choose from I feel a bit ashamed if I complain.

Not to belittle the role of social media in general (if it weren't for social media and their fondness for playing fast and loose as to what constitutes a "reputable source" or total inability to distinguish fact from fiction, the US would probably have a President who knew the difference between Mexico and Monaco, could spell "Afghanistan", realized that Puerto Rico wasn't a third world country, could pass an 8th grade Civics test and knew that he couldn't redirect hurricanes simply by scribbling on a map with a Sharpie - but I digress...), but what little Influence Marketing (IM) literature is out there doesn't suggest that it would have a major impact on TLG bottom line (at least not in its current form). To begin with, there are a lot more people out there who consider themselves influencers than people who actually impact sales in a noticeable way. As marketing firms are now discovering, simply having followers doesn't mean the masses agree with you or take your advice - some studies have even found contrarian effects (e.g. "If you like it, and I know you have terrible taste, I'll avoid it completely. If you hate it, it might be worth checking out") Several studies have also shown that Influencers are far more likely to hurt sales than encourage them. This is not the same as the contrarian effect, above, (and entirely different from a celebrity falling from grace and hurting the brand by association) but rather it seems that currently social media consumers are more take a bad review to heart than a positive one. If you tell me you loved something and I should try it, statistically speaking, I'm likely to ignore you. If you tell me something is crap and you regret ever wasting money on it, I'm far more likely to remember your comment and ultimately decide not to repeat your mistake. Further, if 10 or 20% of your sales really were to adult influencers, by definition, you'd already know who these consumers are. Influencers are just celebrity endorsements in a new medium. You can't really be social influencer without a certain level of notoriety and clout (at least within a certain community) and that just doesn't mesh with mass sales to anonymous adults. The people who really do have that sort of clout often aren't buying sets, they are running web sites and YouTube channels and getting evaluation copies of sets for review directly from Lego because TLG has noticed _them_ and recognized the marketing value of _their_ opinions before the kits ever hit the shelves. If you don't have the "brick-cred" to qualify for a few free kits from Lego in exchange for a some blog postings, you're probably not as big an influencer as you think you are (at least not with respect to the the Lego consumer community). Certainly some of the over-the-counter sales are to adults with strong reps in the AFOL community or to mainstream celebrities who might help make the vague argument that "Legos are cool" to non-Lego consumers, but if only 10% of your revenue is coming from adult consumers in the first place, the amount coming from adults who really _could_ impact Lego's social acceptance overall is likely miniscule. Finally, IM has been shown to have the most resonance on late teens and 20 somethings. Maybe I'm projecting too much but I think that age range really overlaps with most people's Dark Ages. Could IM help delay the onset of a dark age or encourage some one to come out of one earlier (or at all) - maybe, I really have no clue. At least personally, lack of interest wasn't what forced me into a dark age to begin with (It was lack of money and time as I was getting ready to go to college and had to figure out how to pay for it) so if someone I respected told me about a great Lego set they'd just gotten my reaction wouldn't have been to think, I need to get that too, I probably would have just been bitter and jealous - fortunately I'm much more mature now and can focus on being a grumpy old man regardless of who has the most toys. Embrace it. Clarity will just give you ulcers. A little recognized and compartmentalized confusion can be a liberating thing.