ShaydDeGrai

I have to say I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed at this point based on these previews. I was on the fence about 8-wide to begin with and now with six cars revealed there's really only two that I actually "want" (the black Lambo and the red Ferrari) and even then, the Huracan is bundled with a car I'm not even sure I'd use for parts (and overpriced at that) and the hood of the Ferrari leaves something to be desired. Honestly, I think the best thing to come out of this new line-up so far has been the new windshield designs - most of the models just don't strike me as "superior enough" (compared to last year's models) to justify the shift to 8-wide and the higher price points. Maybe I'll feel differently once I see them in person and build a couple, but at this point, I'm really not impressed with this new direction for the line. I really enjoyed sets like the McLaren Senna, both building it and admiring the finished look; the stuff this year almost feels like a step backward while also introducing an incompatible scale and (in 4 out of 6 cases) failing to take advantage of the potential offered by the larger form factor. Or maybe I'm just old, grumpy and don't like change...

It would be cramped, I'll grant you, but I think you could do a reasonable approximation in a building comparable to the Town Hall. You'd need a very vertical layout (like the Baltimore or New England Aquarium designs) but if they can release a movie theater in a corner building, I think they could convey the gist of an aquarium in a tight space. At least in the US, urban aquariums were first pioneered by P.T. Barnum in the mid-1800's. Some of the early ones embraced Classical, Georgian, Federal, Second Empire, Italianate and Neo-Classical styles. Twentieth century entries embraced Art Deco as well as various Modernist and Post-Modernist movements, so really, you've got a lot of wiggle room for picking a style even if you want to nominally say we're stuck in 1962 (or whatever). I'm with you here. I like to build 'em, my daughter likes to play with them. Neither of us really feels that vested in the subject matter so long as it's fun.

All this chatter about post offices. police stations, book store and coffee shops got me thinking. Why not something fresh that looks like a real purpose-built building on a large scale. Maybe an Aquarium with a multi-story central tank. a gift shop at street level and a rainforest greenhouse on the roof. It might make a nice change of pace. PS: The city I live in has three post offices, three UPS stores, a FedEx store and a DHL drop-off center. There's always a line at the post office window and the daily post mostly consists of bills and unwanted catalogs.

I think a lot depends on what you build, how you build and how much of a discount you're getting. By design, these bins give you a variety of parts in a variety of colors, which is great for a kid first trying to build up a collection, but not enough of any one color to build something big and (mostly) monochrome and in their efforts to include something for everyone, invariably there will a cache of parts or colors that just don't work for _you_. If you're really into building WWII tank MOC's, for example, you're first thought is probably not "I need more pink and lavender in my collection..." If you're into submarines, chances are a set loaded with screen doors and wheels holds little appeal. That said, sometimes there are "Don't Care" situations where you just need some bulk brick for internal structure and the color doesn't matter because it will never bee seen. I built a 1.5 meter MOC of Barad Dur from the Lord of the Rings - the outside was all skinned with black and grays but the inside was just an explosion of color. Bulk brick in any color was just what I needed in that case, I even used door frames and windows simply as structural elements because without the internal structure it would have collapsed under its own weight. Of course, even with these sorts of builds a typical Classic set will include at least one generous handful of parts that simply aren't useful _to you_ for _your current project_, in my case this is often printed "eye" tiles, wheels window sashes, brightly colored roof slopes, etc. its not that these aren't useful part or that I _never_ use them, but if start buying these sorts of kits in bulk, I start amassing a certain class of parts far faster than I employ them (not unlike my extensive collection of orange brick separators - might be useful to have 2, I stopped counting at 300). My usual rule of thumb is to look at the set inventory, deduct from the total part count pieces that I simply can't envision myself ever needing (even considering internal structural fodder) then calculate an adjusted pennies per (useful) piece ratio. If, after adjusting for "no value added" parts, I'm still paying less that 4-5 cents a part, I find picking up the Classic set is worth it. While I agree with Mylenium that the bigger sets tend to be the better/more worthwhile buy, I still rely on my PPP rule more than absolute size (especially if a plastic tub is involved, usually a big cardboard box is adds less overhead to the asking price than a bin).

You might try sending a PM to Eurobricks member Gary Istok (Lego Historian). His knowledge of early Lego sets is quite extensive and he has written an impressive tome of a historic Lego reference. I'm willing to bet that if he can't answer your question directly, he'll at least have a few good pointers as to where to look next.

When I buy a set, I'll do the official build at least once, even if my "true" reason for buying it was for the parts. Most often, I build the official model and leave it assembled until it has an unfortunate run-in with my child, one or more of my cats, or some random incident where gravity overcomes friction, though there have been the occasional MOC sessions where I can't find a particular piece, then spot it on some dusty non-MOC just waiting to be scavenged. When an official model gets "abruptly disassembled" (i.e. "smashed") I rarely ever put it back together, the collection just absorbs its parts for MOC-ing. If, in the course of building a kit, I find it has a lot of interesting pieces, I might pick up extra copies, but those copies usually go straight to the parts bins (unless it's a Creator 3 in 1 kit and the B or C model look interesting) I rarely MOD an official set (I think the last one I did was the tiny Big Ben (21013) Architecture set about seven years ago). I much prefer to either follow the instructions or MOC from scratch rather than tweak an official design. I know some people are really into that (and produce some great results) but MOD-ing just isn't really my thing.

I'm with you. Every now and then the skylines series does something cool/unexpected, but they abstract away so much that it's easy to get bored with "yet another row of odd shaped towers clipped to a narrow base." I'd much rather see larger, more detailed builds of interesting individual buildings from around the world. How about a USECO World Heritage Site sub-theme for Architecture? Out of the the hundreds of castles, tombs, ancient temples, landmarks, etc. on the list surely Lego could cherry-pick a few each year with broad enough appeal to sustain the line (The Acropolis, Easter Island, Petra, Tower of London, Kremlin, Machu Picchu, The pyramids of Teotihuacan, etc.). They've already hit a couple items on the list (Great Wall of China, Statue of Liberty, Villa Savoye, pretty much everything they've done from Paris, etc.) so it's really not that much of a stretch and by branding things as UNESCO World Heritage Site it might be a way to side-step the current prohibition on "religious" kits and let Architecture release a temple or cathedral (or at least the ruins of such) for its role as an historic structure rather than as a center of worship.

Let's be real here. If you're driving an SUV to begin with, you probably care a lot more about stopping distance than acceleration. If you're going to have a mid-life crisis, do it properly in a vehicle that's thoroughly inappropriate for picking up a load of groceries, not something that looks like the bastard child of a Civic and a station wagon in a color that seems firmly stuck in the 1970's

Like most of their double packs, I think they're batting a little under 500 with this one. If the black car were a solo outing, I might overlook the whole 8 wide thing (I always think low and wide when I think of Lamborghinis anyway) but the green car and the starting gate just seem like an excuse to jack up the part count/price. The whole thing just seems a bit overpriced for one really cool model and a lime-green parts pack.

The 8480 Technic Space Shuttle is a great choice. That set was instrumental in bringing me out of my dark age. I still have it assembled on a shelf and I still remember putting it together and thinking to myself, "this is great, why did I ever stop doing doing this?" Then I remembered it was because I had to pay for college, but hey, that was then, this is now. Between the fiber optics and the micro-motor, I doubt they'd ever re-release a set like this (they probably lost money on it the first time and just weren't paying enough attention to realize it when they set the price point) but it was still a great set.

I had totally forgotten that the train shed was part of World City. At the time I recall I was just so happy to get a train shed to go along with my "My Own Train" locomotives that I wasn't really paying attention to where it was coming from. Sure, it could have been better (some of their own official train models don't even fit in it, but that kit made a truly unique contribution. While there have been many stations and train cargo cranes, Lego had never done something quite like it before and haven't revisited it since (maybe it didn't sell well, I don't know, I'm just glad I got one). Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. Oh, and STREAM TRAINS, rolling stock and related structures (sheds, stations, switching towers, bridges, turntables, water & coal towers, etc.) I'd like to see a modern take on the "My Own Train" theme called "My Own Railroad" that updates the old engines and introduces a broader range of model railroading-esque sets.

With respect to the last several posts (above) I think we're getting a little off-topic here in regard to the nominal question. People, of course, are free to embrace whatever opinions they hold dear. Anyone who disagrees with your opinion is not wrong, they just hold different opinions. Holding a differing opinion should not be construed as a personal affront or attack; we might like to think that we are "right" and that "everyone" agrees with us except that one dissenter, but chances are life just doesn't work that way. Certain facts, however, are less open to interpretation: 1) The Lego Company is in the business of selling toys - Sometimes they have good ideas, sometimes they have terrible ideas, but as far as a business model is concerned the quality of an idea is measured by its immediate profitability and its contribution to long term brand reputation. OUR opinions only matter as far as they impact TLG's bottom line. 2) Their primary customers are kids, AFOLs are just a sliver of their market by comparison - they consult us, support us and make an effort to keep us happy because we help advertise the brand, but our buying power pales by comparison to the parents and grandparents of half a billion kids. 3) Most kids outgrow Lego, so TLG's primary audience has high turnover and a short memory - _WE_ might recall that subject matter X has been done three times over and think that the latest rehash is boring and repetitive, but at any given time, for the vast majority of Lego consumers this "rehash" might be their first opportunity to get "subject X". 4) There are practical limits as to how many kits and new parts TLG can keep in production at one time. Selecting what gets made is often a question of managing risk rather than evaluating merits of new ideas. For most companies, TLG included, this usually translates to "mass produce the stuff that is guaranteed to sell, explore/experiment, in small scale on the side" I might be sick of Snowspeeders and A-Wings, someone else might be tired of police cars and fire engines, but those kits are being produced because they sell and the revenue they generate allows the company to dabble in garbage trucks, Saturn Vs and houseboats. Personally, I was never a fan of Bionicle, but if it hadn't been for the enormous success of that theme (with an assist from Lego SW), the Lego Group might not have survived the late 1990's; at the time, I didn't like Bionicle taking over 75% of Lego shelf space at my local Toys R Us (and I'm sure I complained about it to anyone who would listen - which I'm pretty sure was only my cat), but in hindsight, I'm glad they did, because ultimately TLG survived and eventually they embraced themes and kits that I really did care about. It's nice to think that our opinions matter and that our history and anecdotal experience with the product translates to guiding wisdom for the brand, but at the end of the day TLG has professionals for that (and yes, sometimes even professionals make mistakes) but armchair quarterbacking, bandying words like "apologist", and making a simple expression of an opinion sound like the opening volley of a flame war serves neither the best interests of the posters nor the community as a whole. Individually, there are things we like, things we hate, and things we just really don't care about, but collectively, we all share one passion and that commonality should not be trivialized even when our opinions differ. NOW BACK TO THE O.P. QUESTION: I would love to see a neo-EXOFORCE. Lego has come so far in parts and sanctioned building techniques since those early Mechs hit the shelves. Between the examples they've done in recent years for Ninjago and the assorted Hulkbuster variations, I've got to believe that an ExoForce revival would yield some awesome models. The premise was simple and clean, the subject matter allows for all sorts of inspiration from magna and amine without being too tightly coupled to any given IP and the theme had enough breadth to support a full line from low cost entry kits and polybags to high end flagship models. Maybe there's too much overlap with what Ninjago has become in recent years, but I bet, with a little planning and careful timing, they could make it work without cannibalizing the market.

Well. clearly this is a dead give-away. The next Modular is going to be an igloo. On a (only slightly) less ridiculous note, it seems that last few Modulars have all had something of a 1950's midwest urban vibe to them; it might be nice to mix that up a bit with something like a Contemporary Art Museum - non-traditional architecture and form language inside and out and three floors of Minifigure scale "outsider art". It would look thoroughly out of place next to most of the line, but that's kinda the point.

I was reviewing my collection of SC models last night and the more I think about it, the more I think I dislike the move to 8 wide. I get that it makes for a higher fidelity model at that scale given available parts and tire sizes, but 8-wide is just an odd duck; it's too big to play well with City and Modular Building displays and too small be a "real" display model. If they are really worried about being able to render a higher fidelity model, then they should ditch any pretense of minifigure compatibility and just do one as a Creator Expert and jump to 12 or 14 wide so the finished product looks "reasonable" next to other large brick-built cars like the DB-5 or the Mustang. I'd be fine with a slightly disproportionate 6-wide SC Lamborghini as well as a high fidelity 14-wide CE version of the same car - I'd buy both. I pretty much did that already with Ferraris and Mini Coopers so why not? TLG needs to figure out if SC are "swooshables" for mini-figs to zip around town in or if they are display models that don't need to "fit" with the rest of the mini-fig world. If latter, then scale them up and pack them with so many details that they look good even without stickers; if the former, then stick to 6-wide and be creative about the proportions and give us a "close enough" model that actually fits down a road or in a garage designed for City vehicles.

The 8880 Supercar. I've had no shortage of Technic Muscle Cars since then, from the 8448 Super Street Sensation to the 42083 Bugatti Chiron and pretty much everything in between, but something about that beautiful, brick-built, black, studful car will always speak to me with a very unique voice. It was leaving the shelves just as I was coming out of my dark age and if they re-released it today I'd happily buy several.

Thanks for the wonderful review. I especially liked the comparisons to/contrasts with prior variations on the theme. When it comes to ships that have been done and redone so many times, it's really helpful to have some side by side comparisons to decide if yet another outing is really worth it. Personally, I'm not too keen on the sticker sheet, but I like the form language (and the green) compared to some of the prior models that (with or without stickers) weren't really that distinctive. My prior favorite variation was the 75003 from 2013, but this one seems just different enough to be worth picking up.

In general, I don't think stickers make sets "awesome" I think they make mediocre sets more tolerable (same goes for printed parts). For my money, if a set _needs_ printed surface decoration to "sell" the subject matter, then it isn't really that "awesome" in the first place. In most cases, I think of stickers (and printed bricks) as a crutch to make up for weak form language in the basic shape and color choices for the model. I've often dinged TLG on this point in reviews where if you leave off the stickers and take away the minifigures, what's left rarely speaks for itself, so for a change, I'll point out some cases where I think they did it right: Look at #70668 Jay's Storm Fighter (a Ninjago kit but that doesn't really matter) Yes the set has stickers, but if you leave them off, you lose almost nothing. The form and color of the bricks themselves tell a complete story. The #10193 Emerald Night is another example. Yes the gold pinstripes printed on the green bricks and various decals _do_ add a bit of finishing to the model, but without them, it's still a beautiful train. If you left the stickers off the coach entirely, most people might not even notice; that's the sort of form language that makes for "awesome" sets. Surface decorated parts, be they printed brick or decal, should be just a finishing detail, not a crucial part of the narrative. As you may have guessed by now, personally I don't like sticker sheets and I ( usually - more on this in a moment ) don't like kits that _rely_ upon them. My daughter loves them, but as @dr_spock pointed out, that's common nature for little kids. Usually, I don't even bother applying them on my own stuff. I don't mind the occasional printed element (like the name plate in an Architecture set) because you very rarely see those types of parts "overdone" in the same way that sticker sheets are sometimes abused. If forced to pick one, I think I'd rather have printed elements, but both take a back seat to good old fashioned form language in my book. The one line where I actually don't mind stickers (and actually DO use them) is on the Speed Champions theme. And yes, the irony is not lost on me; SC has some of the most complex and tedious to apply sticker sheets around. Psychologically I think the reason I don't mind stickers in SC kits is just because, if you've ever seen some of these racers in person, the real cars are plastered with stickers as well (as are the drivers sometimes) - that fact somehow makes slapping stickers on a tiny model okay with me, while using a stickers to make up for a lack of surface greebling on a larger set is still just a cheat.

I'd set down my Scotch, take a deep breath and quietly exit the room. If they were still there in the morning, I'd start checking the fine print disclaimer on my medication...

True: inks fade; paper rots; many bugs and nematodes think of paper as a food source; contact with earth, wind, fire, water, sunlight all shorten the lifetime of a physical book. But in most cases, these are things that can shave decades off the useful lifetime of printed media. Digital media is lucky to have a useful life that spans decades in the first place. For cost effective longevity, paper is hard to beat. Now, I suppose if you're really worried about the long term you could emboss the instructions into thick sheets of solid gold (largely non reactive chemically, resistant to many radioactive energy sources, insect resistant, unique enough not to get mistaken for advertising flyer from the Sunday paper and tossed out with the recycling, etc.) but it would probably raise the price of the average kit by several hundred thousand dollars so you get longevity, but not cost effectiveness. For all of our innovations in computer technology in my lifetime alone, solving the issue of long term storage and backwards compatibility of past media is probably one of the least addressed areas. I have an old PDP-8 paper tape system in storage and I work with (young) professional engineers who didn't even know what paper tape was until I showed them a few spools one day. I'd actually brought the samples in to give our interns a history lesson. I brought in paper tape, punch cards, 9 track tape, 8" floppies, 5 1/4" floppies, 3 1/2" stiffies, Bernoulli discs, Zip disks, glass WORM discs, etc. To illustrate how things had changed, I dared them to find a machine that could read any of that media in our data processing center and they couldn't even find a laptop with DVD player. As an industry, we just keep copying our old drives to our new ones and hope we haven't forgotten something along the way; then pray that we never actually need to restore a backup. it made me wonder where the world would be if we got hit with a massive solar flair/EMP that wiped out 99% of the hard drives in the world simultaneously. It's an unlikely scenario, but if it ever comes to pass, I'll be ready with a filing cabinet full of printed Lego instruction books. And (if anyone cares) I have a stack of 50 year old (paper) punch cards that (aside from a little yellowing) have aged rather well and still read correctly in equally old equipment, I can't say the same for floppies that are only half as old.

These are all excellent points. The "out of the box" experience HAS to be COMPLETE. Just imagine the PR nightmare that would arise if kids are excitedly tearing open birthday/Christmas presents and the first thing they get told is that they can't actually play with it until the instructions get delivered in 3-10 business days. For that matter, e-instructions have a similar problem, "here's your toy, you can use my phone to get the instructions as soon as I'm done taking pictures of the party, but give it back if anyone calls or texts me..." Not quite the same as "here's that kit you wanted, go have fun!" On the other hand, the basic suggestion did make me wonder if there's a market for Print-on-Demand perfect-bound copies of B-Model and retired model instructions. Not everyone has access to color laser printers. Downloaded PDFs lose a lot when printed in black and white and printing something like a Modular Building or flagship Technic Model tome would run most inject printers dry. I wouldn't mind getting a nice hardcopy of certain instruction books for a modest fee. I doubt the market would be large enough to make volume printing worth while (too few paper book lovers, too many books to chose from) but a print on demand service for (otherwise unavailable) instruction books over 100 pages long might be interesting - but only as a supplement to the existing paper-in-box system.

@GeorgeMendes Congratulations! I've been sorting for about 30 years now and I'm starting to think my "to be sorted" bin will outlive me. As for the age old question of how best to organize a collection, I think the only true answer is "whatever works for you." An awful lot depends on how you build, what you build and how many bricks you're talking about. Personally, I sort Technic stuff by shape and system parts by color (and usually shape as well if its a high volume color); that's because, when you're only taking about finding a 36 tooth gear, often you don't care what color it is as few will ever see it and, if you _do_ care, finding a tan piece in a bin with a few dozen gray ones is pretty easy. On the other hand, if I'm, say, working on a building and need 100 light gray 2x2 tiles I don't want to be picking them out of a bin of 5000+ tiles in 20 different colors. Much better to sort by both color and shape at those volumes. For rare colors, I find sorting by color alone is more than sufficient because if I only have, say a few hundred purple parts, its enough to "browse purple on hand" for accent parts as I'm unlikely to actually build anything that is predominately that color. But again, this is just me, this scheme works well with respect to the way _I_ build. Everyone's mileage varies.

My Lego hobby is my way of escaping from computers and screens (which I spend far too much time in front of to begin with) so give me a paper instruction book any day. As much as I love some of the designs, I can honestly say that I've never built a 'B' model simply because forcing me to look at a screen (even just to print off a PDF version of the instructions) rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky but I want as much separation between my building experience and my job (computers) as I can get. I don't do digital design, I don't like online instructions and, now, I'm actually holding off on buying sets that use the new Powered UP Control + App and Hidden Side kits because I absolutely do not want to Apps to be part of my Lego experience. As for the environmental impact, a printed book that's going to live for years on a shelf or in a filing cabinet actually has far less of a carbon footprint than you might think. Considering that the BTU content of a stack of instruction books doesn't produce enough energy to fully charge a single laptop or that, by weight, the environmental impact of recycling a smart phone battery vastly exceeds that of recycling clean paper, it's hard to say that having thousands of consumers spending several hours each draining, recharging and ultimately replacing batteries when they could have been reading a book by natural daylight and not burning any electricity at all is a slam dunk win for environmentalism. Ideally the books would be printed on recycled paper using soy (or other non-toxic, biodegradable) inks, but even if they are not, Lego instruction books are not like the Sunday Times that uses two pounds of paper per copy (most of which is to print ads) and most people look at all of five pages before tossing the rest in the trash. People can spend hours with an instruction book open in front of them, they read it cover to cover and when they are done, most of of the books get saved, sold or traded to others who will spend hours with them. I hope TLG never abandons paper instructions (and I wish they'd drop their fascination with Kit-App tie-ins)

Well, I think for some this is a perpetual condition. Every toy company has to face the reality that most of their customer base will outgrow them over time and that, to survive, they need to attract new kids to the brand on an ongoing basis. Historically, I feel TLG has done a pretty good job drawing in "the next wave" of Lego fans. While I haven't seen Primo/Lego Baby bricks around for about 15 years, Duplo is still going strong and acting a gateway to Lego Juniors/4+ and the full line of Lego System products we all know and love. There are decent, interesting and reasonably priced kits available to allow kids to "discover" Lego at any age range. Certainly we all ooh and aah over the flagship models of the line, but I bet most people's first experience with Lego starts with something far more modest. Now maybe I've brainwashed my daughter, but she really likes her Lego (and still plays with her Duplo) as one of her few evergreen toys (the others being her play kitchen and Thomas the Tank engine trains) while other toy wax and wane in popularity. At school, her classmates have access to Lincoln logs, Magna-tiles, KNex, simple wooden blocks, etc. but its the Lego they always go after and complain there isn't enough to go round. So, anecdotally, I'd say still appeals to young kids, creating the next wave of consumers. Where TLG has had much more mixed results is in chasing fads and trying to find gimmicks to keep kids from losing interest in Lego as they age. Sometimes they open an entirely new market and do really well there, like Lego Expert/Technic and Mindstorms. Sometimes, its a fiasco, like back in the 1990's when they went mold crazy to downplay the "construction" aspects of the toy in favor focusing on playing with "built" models after the fact, or Lego Galidor trying to break into the dedicated action figure market, or pushing Lego Universe to jump on the MMOG bandwagon. The latest "reinvention to retain interest" in my opinion is the new emphasis on making everything "app enabled." Gimmicks like the apps for Hidden Side and the new PoweredUp replacement for PowerFunctions undermine the timelessness of Lego. Will TLG still be updating those apps 10 years after the themes are discontinued/replaced or will it be like the Lego Studios line where you can't even get a modern driver for the camera and the software (if you can track down an old CD) strongly prefers to be running on a Windows 98 PC? My daughter plays with 50 year old Samsonite Lego that I played with as a kid and it integrates just fine with the modern stuff, but when Lego goes high tech with the software, the longevity goes right out the window. It might have _some_ short term appeal to keep kids interested _today_ but, for my money, its the one aspect of Lego that's guaranteed to depreciate over time. IMO they are the world's best construction toy and they should really focus on that rather than chasing side markets in areas where they know they've not done well, but what do I know, I'm just a consumer... And getting back to the OP, I think the "value added" of these tie-in apps just serve to make Lego less affordable than straight "bricks in a box." Families that are having trouble affording a $15 Lego set probably aren't running out to replace their smart phone(s) every two years so they may not be able to run the software in the first place, but the cost of developing and maintaining that software is folded into the product line whether you use the app or not. As for PoweredUp, just give me a damned battery box with an on switch.

I don't really think you can look at these things in isolation and make an absolute judgement about "Lego-then" v. "Lego-now" even with simple adjustments for inflation. I grew up Lego poor. Sets were rare and precious gifts and even then, they were almost always the lowest-end of the line or used thrift store finds. I think I was in my early teens before I got a MISB set that retailed for more than $20 US. I _did_ have lots of other toys and comic books and art supplies, in no small part because, by comparison, those things were cheaper than Lego and my folks could get me a lot more variety of things to play with for the price of a single lego kit. Now I would have _liked_ to have more Lego growing up, but even I recognized that for the price of one $10 lego kit I could get a half dozen comic books, a good sized pack of crayons, a couple action figures and a candy bar or two. Now I'm the dad looking to buy things for my child (or perhaps more often, trying to get my child out of the toy store without either buying a load of crap or risking a public meltdown) and, by comparison, I'm not seeing a lot of cheaper, quality alternatives to entry level sets. When I was a kid, comic books were twice as thick and proudly advertised "Still only 35 cents!" now they are on glossier paper and sell for 8-12 dollars per issue. Action figures that I used to get for $1.98 (I know, because I still have a couple in original packaging) are now $12 (and all look like they OD'ed on steroids). What used to be a $2 pack of crayons is now $14.50 if you get it on sale. A plastic model car kit (formerly $3-4) now sells for $20-25 (paint and glue extra). So when entry level lego kits effectively double their price over the same period of time, I actually think it still makes them a better buy than when I was growing up. Now I'm only talking about the low end kits here because, to be frank, my folks were never in a position to spend $100+ on a toy (Lego or otherwise) and even today, your average kid is not going to find a UCS Star Destroyer under the tree this Christmas. The high-end of the line are luxury items and we should just accept that and recognize that those kits aren't accessible to a lot of adults either. I'll also admit that I'm biased based on where I live. There is one MSRP for Lego across the US but the buying power of the US dollar (and household income) varies widely by region. Where _I_ live, it costs $10-15 dollars to buy a quick, unsatisfying (probably unhealthy) lunch. Head to some places in the mid-west and that same $15 will buy you a steak dinner and a cocktail. I have a coworker in Wyoming who recently bought a house for less than what I pay in a single year in real estate taxes on my place. So when _I_ look at a $30 kit, see the price and think "that's pretty cheap, just what I'd spend for parking if I drove to the office one day this week" whereas someone in Nebraska might look at the same $30 asking price and think "That's ridiculous! I could fill a bag of groceries for that!" It's all relative.

The new VIP system works so well, I find myself increasingly focusing on sales at Amazon instead of dealing the Lego shop at all. And is it just me or has there been an increase of non-set Gift with Purchase offerings (Lego-logo bling instead of bricks) since the printed calendars went away and the new VIP system kicked in? While I could always find a use for multiple copies of a small set or or polybag, I don't need ten totes or a dozen picnic blankets or pencils or lunch boxes, between useless (for me anyway) bling and making it harder to use my VIP points for cash discounts, they are really driving away my business. Yes, I'm still buying Lego, but I have a lot less motivation to actually go to any of their physical stores now and I'm sitting around with a full shopping cart at S@H waiting for a GwP that makes buying from them worth while. Meanwhile I'm picking things up at 20% off at Amazon and saying forget the points. If the goal was to make buying direct from Lego more competitive vs online retailers, they missed the mark big time. I think they could learn a thing or two about how to run a VIP program from my favorite ice cream shop: I stop in, I buy something; I earn points that never expire; and, when I go to check out, if I've earned a reward they ask me if I want to redeem it (the reward is my choice of cash off my current purchase or a slightly larger credit (which never expires either) toward anything else they sell) Simple, clean and all I need to do is carry a bar code or tell them my email address. Come to think of it, it sounds a lot like the system Lego just retired. Sometimes I just really hate change...