ShaydDeGrai

I am sooooo glad I spent down my points and picked up Hogwarts Castle and the Bugatti Chiron before I left for vacation. If I'd gone into this conversion with $800+ dollars in rewards sitting on the table I'd be so stressed right now. My wish list is still missing (~100 items) but the few thousand points I had left over after "buying" the big ticket items seem to have finally converted over. I can understand localizing conversion rates between points and local currencies, and the _concept_ of redeeming points for VIP-only rewards has potential (though the offerings to date do not inspire confidence), but the whole voucher system just sounds like a disaster in progress. The old scheme was simpler, cleaner, scaleable and just plain worked. Would it kill them to just have a line pop up at check-out (on-line and in person) to that says "You have $XXX in VIP rewards! Would you like to apply some/all of of them to today's purchase?" and take it from there. Program the system to do what's it good at and stop wasting our time making us jump through hoops to claim rewards we've already earned.

If your designs are really stressing official (injection molded or extruded) pieces, I'm skeptical that most 3D printed plastics would offer any better performance. Like dr_spock and MAB, I recommend looking into metal alternatives (either find a third party stock item or make friends with someone at a university with a mechanical engineering department - a CNC or milling machine could easily turn an aluminum or steel rod into a suitable replacement for a technic axle in just a few minutes). If, on the other hand, you want to explore the more general question of designing and creating Lego compatible parts with a 3D printer, you might want to see if any schools, youth clubs or libraries in your area have "maker spaces." Where I live, this is the latest trend in keeping libraries relevant in the age of Kindle downloads and these maker spaces often have computers with design software, 3D printers, and people to help you get started. One place near me has a free sign-up (with a max time usage per session if there's a queue) and only charges (by weight) when you actually print something out. I've been using this as a way to check out different machines, software and materials before I commit to buying my own device. Also, my procrastination/indecision when it comes to buying my own printer has turned out to be a good thing. The machines keep getting better, smaller and more affordable, so taking your time finding the solution that works for you is not a bad thing.

I think we're talking about two slightly different things here: movies, and movie-tie-ins. Of course any kid-friendly movie from the past 40 years is going to have a strong merchandising aspect to it. For better or worse, that's been the norm since the days of Dinky toys selling Gerry Anderson production vehicles and the original Star Wars flooded the shelves with Kenner action figures. Naturally, a Lego film is going to be loaded with opportunities for Lego tie-ins. The question is, without those elements, would a given movie still hold up? Bond films are loaded with product placements (some subtle, some iconic) but they don't define the film or even drive the plot. The story needs [luxury watch reference] and the producers solicit bids from Rolex and Omega to see who'll pay more to get the mention. James Bond's [spy car] is cool because of its gadgets and the person driving it, not because its based on a Lotus, or Austin-Martin or BMW. The characters and story are the heart of the film, the branding is just filler. Similarly, the thing that makes (most) Pixar offerings so good is that they are good stories/characters first and animated features second. The animation is there to realize the story-telling (and in many cases is beautiful in its own right, but...) it doesn't replace good writing, character development, pacing, and all the other things that help define film as an art form. The animation is ultimately just a visual aid to convey a narrative idea that might be hard to get across in a live action medium, it might be what you're staring at, but it's not what you're seeing and feeling. I think that why the first Lego Movie actually worked. At its core there were characters and a story that _could_ be told with Lego, but didn't _need_ to be told with Lego. A clever writer could have adapted that basic script to be about some kid's fantasizing about his dad's model railroad collection or tabletop wargaming or any one of a dozen other hobbies that may or may not have lent themselves ready marketing and the core themes would still have come through. The other Lego films, in my opinion, have come up short in this regard. They are relying too much on being "a Lego story" rather than a good story rendered in Lego. Once you take away (or at best, dilute) plot and character in favor of brand recognition and product placement, you run the risk of not being a film anymore and just becoming a very long commercial. I'm not saying the Lego films have reached that point yet, but they've flirted with it and I just haven't been all that impressed with their follow-on efforts to date. TLNM was okay. TLBM squandered a lot of potential. TLM2 struck me as a bit forced and contrived, trying to get lightning to strike twice. All of them would have benefited from the writers spending a lot more time thinking about the character angles than the Lego aspect and respecting the idea that just because something looks cool/clever/marketable, doesn't mean it advances the plot.

I can't get over the tone of the article. Discovering a gang of bootleggers makes it sound like these guys were working out of a basement somewhere and selling their products out of the trunk of a car that never showed up at the same place twice, not a $30M operation that's been advertising their crap globally on the web for years. What is their next big discovery going to be? Middle East exports oil? Ocean water found to contain salt? Given the long history of cheap knock-offs and IP infringement in so many areas (toys, videos, games, fashion, cosmetics, etc.) I find it hard to believe that a) they didn't know exactly what was going on for years, and, b) this isn't just a token gesture with very little long term consequence for the "real" major players behind the scenes. Maybe its a bad analogy, but to me it feels like when the DEA holds a press conference to brag about a "major" drug bust that nabbed a suitcase-full of product and a few wads of cash that looks impressive right up until you realize that the cartel can afford to lose a hundred such shipments before it even makes a dent in the supply chain. Its better than them taking no action at all, but I have a hard time seeing it as the wave in the global end of fake Lego rip-offs.

I might take this a step further and suggest that it is that very transient, ephemeral nature that makes "art" at once, both relatable and so precious for so many. It really is the case of "art imitates life"; it is created, it exists for a time, and then it is lost forever. Its "lifespan" may be short or long; the number of lives it touches may be many or few; and, yes, it might be possible to copy, record or otherwise reproduce - but that, original spark, is unique and fleeting. I had an art teacher (for perspective drawing) who once (circa 1980's) told me that at the rate computers were improving, it was only a matter of time before any robot with a camera and a flat bed plotter would be able generate diagrams and schematics of anything it could "see," but that, in his opinion, a robot producing "art" was still decades, if not centuries away. I asked him why and he said that a human will look with his/her heart, decide what is worth seeing and then do a uniquely imperfect job of capturing that vision. A dozen students painting the same scene will produce a dozen different paintings. Most will be trash and get painted over, some enjoy a brief limelight before landing in an attic or a cellar, maybe one will find new life in a stranger's hands. That's the nature of art. A dozen robots will give you a dozen accurate renderings, the value of each cheapened by the existence of the others. That's the nature of instance persistence as a function of mass production. Now that said, I also distinguish between "art" and "art technique." Finding one's sense of artistry is a personal journey that, at least from my experiences, has to come from exploration, experimentation, trial and error. I think everyone has the potential to be creative, ingenious and artistic in their own ways ( but sadly a lot of us give up in frustration before we realize where our own strengths lie). Discipline and technique, on the other hand, are things that can be taught. Any idiot with ten fingers and basic motor skills can learn to play a piano with proper instruction and practice - this won't make everyone a virtuoso, but it might be a stepping stone to unlocking musical genius that neither the student nor the teacher ever realized was there. I can teach someone how to draw a straight line, or a circle, or the math behind perspective foreshortening, but whether the student produces "art" or a lifeless schematic is up to them. I can encourage them to strive for "art," but I can't give them a formula to define it. It's the same with Lego. Lego is just a medium. Learning how Lego parts combine in clever, non-traditional ways is just technique. Sharing techniques helps creative people add more tools to their arsenal for making future original creations, "art" if you will. This is a great part of our community as a whole. Personally, I love learning new techniques and I'm always happy to share the ones I know with the curious - but that's a very different beast from feeling 'morally obligated' to diagram out every brick in a 15,000 piece sculpture. Following "the instructions" can be a learning experience, certainly, but it's "practice" and "imitation" not art. It might inspire "art" in the the right person, but art begins where the instructions end and the lack of reproducibility of the piece bring it to life.

First, let me confess that I am an old white guy who, spouse's permission not-withstanding, can afford to buy whatever Lego I like. This wasn't always the case. I grew up Lego-poor, always wondering why my friends' parents bought them far more Lego than my parents ever bought me. ( In later years, I realized it was because you can't eat Lego and the family budget really was _that_ tight - but enough about me and how I had to walk to school barefoot in the snow, up hill, both ways...) Suffice it to say that I understand and can still relate to the anguish of wanting to do more with Lego and simply not having the resources to realize that vision in physical bricks. Let me also confess that I never work on digital models. I've played with the tools from time to time, but there is no joy in that for me. I work with computers all the time and have been doing so since the days when people got excited about breaking the "Buck-a-Bit" boundary (that pivotal moment when chip manufacturers could finally produce one bit of memory (flip-flop) for less than a dollar - take that you terabyte thumb drive!) so, like Mylenium, I tend to shun the digital world in my off hours because tinkering with physical brick is my way to _get away_ from computers. The last thing I want to do is contaminate my hobby with artifacts of my professional life. When I build a kit, I want a physical instruction book. When I MOC, I want to surround myself with parts and tinker. But that's _MY_ hobby, that's where _I_ find joy in Lego; that doesn't make it better or more valid than how others enjoy the hobby. Some people obsess over customizing mini-figures and barely build at all. Others collect kits but never MOC. Just like digital design, these are all perfectly valid ways of embracing Lego and letting our creative juices flow. Not everyone is going to be into every aspect of the hobby (either by choice or due to external constraints) and that's fine; one person's passion for creating animations should in no way diminish another one's love for creating scale replicas of historic steam engines. Throughout it all, I think quality and creativity speaks for itself. I don't need to be a great painter, to appreciate a great painting. In fact, I think sometimes realizing that I'm not particularly well versed at a given thing makes me appreciate it even more when someone shows me something that is beyond anything I've ever personally tried to produce. Is there a bias against digital models here? I really don't know, I've certainly noticed biases over the years regarding featured builders and the types of MOCs that "make the cut" to be front page news, but I've never been close enough to the issue to really note if digital models have been singled out. I've certainly noted it on other sites with respect to contest rules, "likes," trolling comments and such. If someone with more intimate knowledge claims it happens here, I'm willing to believe the OP and hope that I wasn't contributing to it subconsciously. The lack of positive feedback on a MOC posting though, I can speak to, even if only to say that one shouldn't read that much into it. I've posed MOCs here; physical builds with tens of thousands of pieces; models that have won awards at large shows with outstanding competition; models that were featured on other sites like Rebrick, MOCPages, Gizmodo and BrickNerd; but most importantly models that I just wanted to share on-line with my fellow builders (and aspiring builders). Often I'd get a handful of responses in the first day or so, then nothing. Of the responses I did get, it was usually safe to expect at least one or two replies criticizing my photography skills while saying nothing about the MOC itself. It was also a foregone conclusion that several people would be asking for instructions and a parts list, again without so much as a "nice job" or "thanks for sharing" first. On one occasion in particular, I posted a MOC here and a week later saw my photographs show up on someone else's Cuusoo proposal, but here, the thread was largely otherwise ignored - one would think that if you're going to steal someone else's work, the least you can do is post something nice about it first. In the end, all this just encouraged me to stop posting MOCs here. So, if the OP is frustrated about the reception he's gotten, it might not be about digital vs physical designs, it may just be reflection of the audience that stumbled upon them. This is not to say that EB isn't something of an old boys club on occasion, just not necessarily a "bricks-only" old boys club. People will ignore (and occasionally troll) just about anything for any reason. Perhaps the best we can hope to do is to not personally be part of the problem. @ProvenceTristram Never let anyone else tell you how to have fun, your hobby is your own and if others can't appreciate it, it's their loss, not yours.

For me, I find the Creator 3-in-1 models to be somewhat hit-or-miss, though, in their defense, when they do hit with me, they usually knock it out of the park. Just looking at the ones in current release on the shop web site, about half of them I either own or have on my wish list and about a quarter of the ones that own, I have multiple copies of. The other half that didn't make the wish-list cut have no appeal to me whatsoever (other than, perhaps, as a source of parts if the price were right) Pluses from my perspective include: * Focus on the build * No stickers / very little use of printed parts / strong reliance on form language and color alone * Cheap source of basic parts * Good father/daughter activity fodder * No IP tie-ins / No tight coupling to pre-defined storylines * Emotionally a throwback to my earliest experiences with Lego Minuses from my perspective: * The 'B' and 'C' models are often 'lacking' compared to the 'A' model * When the subject matter doesn't appeal, getting three variations on a theme triples the offense * Bitter reminder of the days when I couldn't afford much Lego and had rebuild as much as I could from a limited supply of parts Neutral issues as far as I'm concerned: * Minifigures, I come from a time before minifigs and I usually don't care if they are there, absent, generic or anything else * Molded animals vs brick built - the former look better in context, the latter offer more part selection for MOC-ing - it's a wash These, of course, are just my opinions. There's a line in one of the episodes of The Big Bang Theory where one of the characters complains, "They were having fun wrong." I think it's important to remember that, at the end of the day, Lego is a toy, and the proper way to play with a toy is whatever way that brings you happiness/joy/amusement/etc. We all have different tastes and priorities and just because we might not all share the same opinions does not invalidate the legitimacy of others' feelings on the matter.

If it were me, I'd just keep everything, you never know what you'll need when (if I have to guess, I'd say I've got around a million pieces in inventory (and yes, I'm just a consumer, not a vendor) and I still run up against the "wrong color" and "if I only had one more of..." beasts on a regular basis). If you really want to sell though, consider selling out in bulk to another Bricklink store or a high volume customer with whom you have history. If the parts are organized and cataloged, you'll likely get a better price from someone who see this as added value over dumping everything in a shoebox on eBay for quick liquidation. I negotiated such a buy-out (for my personal consumption) at a BrickFair show a few years ago and have since met several bricklink vendors in person that have swallowed up inventory from former Bricklink vendors who'd either shut down or were planning on getting out of the business for various reasons (often new children or college, but occasionally estate sales). It's more work to find the right target audience for such a sale, but you might get more of your original investment back if you're not pressed for a quick cash-out.

I'm afraid this falls into the category of "tried and rejected" as far as TLG goes. Lego CUUSOO (the precursor to Lego Ideas) used to support submissions for new parts in its very early days, but the "feature" was dropped as part of a general overhaul of how the site worked (and in anticipation of what would become Lego Ideas). Having had some part designs posted under Cuusoo, I was disappointed when they dropped the concept and, the next time I had opportunity to meet with members of the Cuusoo team in person I asked why they'd made the move. The answers I got varied slightly from person to person, but in general it boiled down to: * Marketing / Cuusoo concept - Most people just didn't get excited (enough) about new parts to be able to compete on the same playing field as pop culture inspired kits. The original Cuusoo allowed submissions of stand-alone kits, multi-kit themes and parts. It failed to produce anything but kits. The premise of the website was really built around apples-to-apples comparisons and kits-themes-parts was more of an apples-to-oranges-to-banannas kind of operation. * Financial risk - New parts represented a larger risk for TLG than kits. A limited production run of a Cuusoo/Ideas kit is 10,000 units (and for argument sake let's say the MSPR is $50/unit). So if the whole run sells out it generates, at most $500,000 in revenue, from this we need to deduct the cost of parts, packaging, labor, shipping, wholesale versus retail price, and the royalty for the original submitter/designer. To keep things simple let's say that amounts to half the total MRSP, so a modest sized kit only represents about a $250,000 investment and if the kit is successful, they can make more for the same or even lower cost. High precision, multi-plate injection molds can cost three to four times what they'd invest in an initial run of a single kit (depending on the complexity of the part). If there's no real demand for the part, it could take years to recoup/amortize such an investment. * International intellectual property rights issues - when a part is designed in-house by someone under contract specifically to design parts it is a much easier case to say TLG "owns" this globally, pay a flat fee and make as many copies as they want for years to come. Unlike kits, that have limited production runs and the designer is given a percentage of the sale (a royalty), after investing in tooling new molds, parts are something TLG wants to be able to produce en masse without paying a recurring licensing fee. Law governing flat fee for IP ownership in perpetuity varies by country and is more of a hassle to lock down than a simple royalty based structure. * Liability for previously existing intellectual property - part of new part design is ensuring that any new part is not infringing on existing patents owned by other companies. Lego kits are usually "protected" by trademarks and copyrights, but the raw parts themselves are (or at one time were - patents expire) often protected by patents. This, in many law abiding countries, limits what clone manufacturers can legally produce. Unfortunately, several of the first new part submissions on Cuusoo were basically rehashes of bricks unique to Mega-bloks and other clone brands and TLG didn't want to go to the time and expense of exhaustive patent searches for every user submitted idea, nor did they want to be lax about such searches and commit to an idea that might result in a law suit somewhere down the road.

The form language is lovely but I'm particularly taken with the color scheme, you made some really great, if occasionally unconventional, choices there and I think it really pulls the whole things together in a very balanced way; catches the eye without being garish, while at the same time muted without being understated. Excellent work, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for this. I was pretty much ready to write this set off but based on the parts and the details you highlight in your review, I think I'll give this one a second chance and keep an eye out for sales - with the right discount it might make a nice set to do with my daughter. Thanks again, this has been quite helpful.

A while back I played with using the LDraw Parts library from MLCad to get wireframe models of various pieces. I rendered the wireframes as black and white line drawings in various orientations and applied a 2D fast fourier transform (FFT) to the images to convert them from a spatial domain to a temporal one. The resulting image just looks like noise to a human but is more tolerant of orientation and scale variations for computer comparisons. This became my reference catalog/training set. For my test piece, I took a picture, desaturated it (gets rid of color), and ran an edge detection filter (only wanted to compare hard edges). The FFT of this image became my test candidate. I then convolved the test FFT with the FFTs of the images in my catalog, looking for the strongest overlap. The results were better than I was expecting, but nothing to write home about. It sorted pieces about as accurately as my cat, but not as fast. What I did wrong but never had time to correct and try again: 1) I was comparing complete wireframes to detected edges, I should have removed edges that were facing away from the eye and modeled each peice from more angles. By including the "hidden" edges I thought I was creating more versatile reference images; In practice, I was just introducing unmatchable noise into my FFT reference catalog. 2) I should have created some sort of catalog index (like number of studs, visible edges and/or vertices) to act as quick elimination tests to avoid wasting time on expensive comparisons that are doomed to fail. My test system tried to compare the test image to everything in the catalog and that took way too long to be practical. 3) I should have varied lighting conditions when taking the initial photos of my test piece, sometimes glare on a curved surface was being misidentified as an edge, making the piece harder to match. I suspect that if I'd taken several shots from the same eye location but varying the light source location, I could have imposed a quick "majority rules" heuristic in my edge detection algorithm to distinguish hard edges from glare on shiny curved plastic. 4) I wasn't using a Neural Net or other generic ML algorithm library, I was hand coding everything and just looking for the best signal to noise ratio as my indicator of a match probability. This gave me a lot of control over how to tune the heuristics, but also rapidly ballooned into tens of thousands of lines of C++ that became increasing harder to maintain and update, I eventually abandoned it altogether. I don't know if any of this gives you any ideas, but best of luck in any case.

That's a very good point. I remember Legends of Chima being all the rage a few years back. Now you go to a convention and people (half my age) are saying things like "where'd that cool head piece come from?" or "Is that one of the latest collectable minifigs?" I guess collective memories are short when the bulk of the target audience is only exposed to decade or so of the products' evolution per generation. Okay, I'm feeling old now, time to log off, sit in my rocking chair, take a nap and dream of the good old days when gray was either dark or light and you didn't need a full spectrum lamp to figure out which ones were "bluish"

I think Aanchir has a very good point, most themes, licensed or in-house, don't really _demand_ a large, high fidelity set. _Could_ they do more with more parts? Of course, but in many cases I think you run up against diminishing returns. If I build Superman's Fortress of Solitude and get the point across with 1500 bricks, it there real value in building a 5000 block crystal cave instead or have I just added tedium for the sake of scale. The UCS Star Destroyer 10030 suffered from this; sure it was big and impressive to look at, but truth be told it was pretty tedious to build, ridiculously fragile and sagged under its own weight. By volume, the Super Star Destroyer 10221, is smaller even though it's modeling a much bigger ship, its about the same part count and was both more enjoyable to build and more stable to 'swoosh'. The 75190 First Order Star Destroyer is tiny by comparison, half the parts, quick to build and something a kids can play with afterwards. Don't get me wrong, I like when themes have big flagship models, like Orthanc for the LOTR or Ninjago City, but when themes are predominately aimed at kids, I think you can reach a point where a kit stops being fun and starts being big for big's sake. Something aimed at AFOLs and adult collectors in the first place seem like the easier sell. Now what should they sell next? Personally, after the re-release of the Taj Mahal and the revamp of the UCS MF I feel a bit cheated on the high end (already owning the originals). Something in landmark architecture would go well with my existing collection (The Taj, Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, Statute of Liberty (3450) sculpture on MOC base, etc) I want something fresh, challenging and done on a scale we've not seen before outside of a theme park or convention. Neuschwanstein Castle would be cool. Edinburgh Castle is another that leaps to mind. Abu Simbel would combine sculpture and architecture, but does an ancient Egyptian temple violate TLG ban on religious kits? I'd also be open to mixing Archtecture with other themes, like Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit: Minas Tirith? Golden Hall of Edoras? Barad Dur? Erebor? If we're thinking of a vehicle instead, it's the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, how 'bout a 5000+ piece lunar lander with brick-built astronaut taking "one giant leap" As I said in my opening, most of the subject matter from the current themes don't _need_ to be big so it's hard to think of large scale model that isn't contrived, but maybe Asgard and the Rainbow Bridge from the Thor movies?

I never paid much attention to the characters or the story, but I did rather enjoy those kits. I must admit, I kinda miss it (and Agents), I'd love to see a revival along these lines. As for other themes, it's hard for me to distinguish "underrated" from simply existing in a time before social media. I mean, does _not_ reaching a certain level of fame/(non-internet)brand awareness (a la BlackTron, Rock Raiders or Bionicle ) in the days before we had places like this to compare notes constitute underrated? It's getting harder and harder to remember a time when popularity wasn't measured in clicks and bytes. I remember Aquazone fondly. I was also a fan of Exo-force, which I'll argue was underrated on the basis that a) I liked it, and b) it was discontinued before it had really lived up to its potential - it could have been better, but it kinda tanked before it got the chance. Discovery is another theme it seems like no one talks about, which is odd the way real space inspired vehicles seem to race through Ideas proposals these days. I have the entire line (all six). It was a sort of "blink and you'll miss it" wave back in 2003. I don't know how much (if any) these things appealed to kids, but they made nice desk toys for an engineering office.

To bring us back to topic a little bit, when you are talking about the health and long term viability of a company, there's a difference between a bad venture (such as a licensing what turns out to be an unpopular movie IP) versus a bad corporate direction (such as not tracking your expenses versus returns - looking at you monorail, fiber optics and a myriad of half million dollar molds that produced specialty pieces most people didn't need). Confusing the two is like confusing weather with climate - one is a short term blip that you can recover from once things change slightly; the other is a long term trend and the longer it lasts, the fewer options you have to recover. TLG does have the advantage of being privately held by a very small number of controlling interests (and this really is an advantage). It means it takes a lot less for them to reach a consensus on corporate directions and can make long term plans far more easily than publicly traded companies. The difference here is really accountability and debt management. Publicly traded companies are essentially operating on borrowed money and stockholders (who are more emotionally attached to their portfolio as a whole than any given company they may happen to hold this month) want to know how their money is being used to bring them a bigger return on investment. Such companies not only need to watch their balance sheets, they need to make them look good every three months for fear that their stock price will drop and investors will abandon them. This makes short term losses harder to absorb and long term investments harder to justify. With just a handful of private equity holders, TLG has the freedom to manage cashflow, reinvest and reinvent itself with far less external oversight. It can plan on much longer time horizons and mitigate risks on new ventures. IF DONE WELL, negative short term consequences are less likely to become long term liabilities. That said, TLG we know today cannot remain static and expect to remain successful. It does need to reinvent itself and it products. Meccano, TinkerToy, Lincoln Log, and K'Nex all learned this lesson the hard way; tastes change, patents expire, material science and manufacturing techniques are constantly evolving. TLG needs to keep a weather out to avoid becoming stale and to step in where opportunities present themselves. They've already done this on multiple occasions: going from wooden toys to plastic, expanding from blocks to Technic elements, introducing minifigures over brick-built characters and then turning collecting mini-figures into a hobby in it own right, licensing IP, coupling in-house IP with media outlets (film, tv and comic books), adding programmable logic chips (Mindstorms, Boost), embracing on-line communities and apps, licensing the brand to theme parks and tie in merchandise. This is not the same Lego that I played with as a child (that stuff was made by Samsonite and I'm not sure it was even ABS). Things will continue to change. TLG will research/embrace new materials; they will likely continue their search to find/invent the next Lego Star Wars or Bionicle IP powerhouse (and will likely have a fair share of missteps along the way); they will continue to look for ways to remain relevant as an analog toy in a world gone digital; and, they will no doubt be looking to communities like us to cultivate the next generation of AFOLs and keep brand loyalty alive. Who knows, maybe eco-friendly obsessed public tastes will change to the point where wooden toys will even make a comeback - my daughter certainly enjoys her (mostly) wooden Brio trains over the all plastic ones. We all like to play armchair quarterback when it comes to how our favorite toy company should be satisfying our desires (and to make dire predictions over the fate of the company if _I'm_ not spending _my_ $200/month on Lego because they're producing the "wrong" stuff) but imagine, if you can, what it is like to be one of the handful of heirs to the TLG empire. You've got a $14 billion dollar asset to manage, a family legacy to maintain and your own financial future tightly coupled to that of the company. You might not make the perfect decision everyday, but I have to imagine that after nearly losing everything a couple of decades ago, you're going to try to make the best decisions you can to ensure a long and healthy corporate future - that means hiring (and listening to) talented, informed people; making long term plans; being willing to invest/reinvent as tends evolve; taking risks (and knowing when to cut your losses); and, most of all respecting your customer base, however they may change as well.

I keep them in a couple of 4 drawer office filing cabinets. I've tried organizing them a few times; I used to sort them by physical page size, then little sets vs. big sets, then I tried sorting by theme, finally I realized I was just driving myself crazy and started sorting everything by set number. I'm not good with keeping up on my Brickset inventory so I find it helpful sometimes when I'm asking myself "Did I built this already?" about some set from years earlier to be able to go to the files and see if the instruction book is there. When I filled my first filling cabinet I thought maybe it was time for a purge, but I decided just to buy another file instead - after half a century of collecting it's hard to let go. If I've picked up redundant kits for whatever reason (amassing parts, more rolling stock for my trains, fleet of snow speeders, etc.), though, I don't keep multiple copies of the instructions. I can't quite bring myself to recycle the spares, but I set them aside and give them away when the opportunity arises (LUGs, Conventions, School & Library donations, etc.)

I'm probably the wrong person to ask about mini-dolls vs. mini-figs. It took me decades to warm to the idea of articulated mini-figures replacing my old "slabbies." I appreciate the role mini-dolls fill in drawing girls to Lego (and frankly, speaking as a former engineering professor, anything that gets young girls interested in building toys, design, 3-D visualization, etc. is a good thing) and I especially like the fact that the building experience offered by Friends and Elves, etc. is not "dumbed down" as some construction-toys-for-girls have been in the past (both in general as well as from TLG). That said, I have to side with the voices that found mini-dolls in Elves to be a bit of a turn-off. I was fine with the color schemes, the designs, even cutesy dragons, but the lack of articulation and limited customization options of the mini-doll compared to the mini-figure just struct me as a lost opportunity for the theme; not to mention the added factor of perpetuating a "Lego for girls/Lego for guys" mentality as opposed to "Lego for everyone." I realize that the design of the mini-doll was very well researched and it has been quite successful in its goal of appealing to girls, but on the flip side, but I think it is a mischaracterization to think that mini-figs only appeal to boys and girls aren't interested in Lego without mini-dolls. My daughter (3.5 y.o.) loves posing mini-figs and complains both that they don't have knee joints and that short legs don't articulate at all. I gave her a mini-doll to play with to see what she'd do with it and she decided it was mannequin and put it in the window of a store. In her world, posable mini-figs represented people, more rigid mini-dolls were props. With all the clever things TLG has done for its collectable mini-figure line, I have to believe that they _could have_ done Elves with regular mini-figures, retained a strong feminine appeal to the line, and opened it up with more unisex appeal as well. Figures aside, Elves had some very nice offerings that I could very easily see appealing to children of both genders, but then you add the figures back in and few 9 year old males want to be seen as the boy who plays with dolls; "action figures" sure, that's cool, but dolls? Stigmas die hard, both in society and in the minds of children. I think TLG saw dolls vs. figs for Elves as being the safe bet for appealing to the female market (at the expense of the male demographic - which, granted, was pretty well served by a lot of other themes) but I think it was also a missed opportunity to create a bridge between the two demographics. I suppose "separate but equal" (Friends, Princesses, Elves, etc. v. Nexo-Knights, Ninjago, etc.) is a step up from "separate but not on par" (Belville, Click-its, etc. v. Pretty much anything but Galador), but the mini-doll is something of a double edged sword, it draws girls into the product "experience" but then risks isolating them in female-targetted themes rather than integrating them. I remember playing with Castle themed sets as a kid. My best friend, his sister and I all played together. Even though knights are thought of as a guy thing, there was room in our narrative for princesses (and female knights) and elves and whatever else we wanted to imagine. The sets were universal enough to have both male and (at least some) female appeal. Looking at themes today, such as Elves versus Nexo-Knights, and things just seem a lot more gender polarized. Mini-dolls play a big role in this. The Elves line could have been a bridge to migrate girls who were introduced to Lego by Friends to get interested in other themes like City and Creator rather than consigning that audience to "doll-centric" offerings (DC Superhero Girls v. DC Superheroes, anyone? Do we really need both, or is this a "solution" to a problem of their own making?) Elves had a lot to offer and I'm sorry to see it retired, but I think going with mini-dolls rather than mini-figures was a missed opportunity; creatively, artistically and sociologically.

I don't really "collect" mini-figures, I more sort of "accumulate" them, so I'm not really that up on what is "rare" and what is not. I DO know which figures people from the local LUG have gawked at and/or offered to buy from me (at, IMHO, rather inflated prices - sometimes for more than what I paid for the whole set originally ) from time to time. These include: Boba Fett from the 10123 Cloud City set, I have several Boba Fetts but I think this is the only one I have with printing on the arms. "Puny" Hulk - A regular minifigure sized Hulk, shop-at-home gift with purchase from about 6 or 7 years ago. I doubt this is actually all that rare (I have several still in bags) but I've gotten several offers in the $20-$30 dollar range; not bad for a freebie, but I don't see the appeal. The Heath Ledger style Joker from the 76023 UCS Tumbler set - a Batman fanatic friend of mine claims it's the only version of The Joker based on the actor, but again, since this was part of a regular set I assume there are thousands of them out there somewhere Pearl Gold and chrome C-3PO - a stowaway in a Star Wars kit about a decade or so ago. I assume it was was some sort of promotion I wasn't paying attention to at the time and he wasn't on the parts list, but his polybag said it was one of 10,000 so I assumed it was something special (a bit like the old days of getting a prize at the bottom of your box of Cracker Jack...) Maccus - the hammer head shark guy from the 4184 Black Pearl. Again, how rare can be possibly be (I have three) but people keep asking to buy him from me. Fleshy Snape from the 5378 Hogwarts - I've amassed several Severuses over the years, but the fleshy version (as opposed to grey or glow-in-the-dark) always seems to catch people's attention. I also have a few Sig-Figs from various current and former Lego group employees, but I don't think selling a "Kevin Hinkle" minifig is going to cover my daughter's tuition even if I threw in two Saras, a Bali, a Tim and a Jamie

I never claimed this "problem" was unique to licensed themes, simply more prevalent there While very similar and theme and design I will grant you, the big difference I see between these two is that the LOTR set costs 50% more ($30 vs. $20) A more apples-to-apples comparison (price wise) for these same themes/waves might be to look at 6918: A $10 stocking stuffer (Price per Piece 9.6c) that features a water wheel driven automatic hammer (hammer actually pound on anvil as you turn the water wheel) and forge. OR, for 30% more ($13 msrp) you can get 20% fewer parts (PPP 15.7c) and opt for 9469: These two kits were the low-end price point for their respective waves when they came out (not counting poly-bags and promotional freebies). In the grand scheme of things I think a cart is a bit better than some of the "minifigure support" builds that have come out from time to time; but I think it's an overpriced cart and, even for a ~60 part build, the build experience and play factor afterwards is a little "blah". The forge from #6918 doesn't look like much (how much can you expect from a small set?) but it has a cleverness about it than made it more interesting (at least for me) and, again, was only 2/3 the price of the LOTR cart. And now for something completely different: On the issue of "bad" licensed properties, I'd just like to say that _sometimes_ you get good kits that TLG might not otherwise market if it weren't for a license, even if the property in question is a dud. Case in point being The Lone Ranger. As a film, I thought it was terrible; I saw it on cable while working on something else and I still felt that I'd wasted two hours of my life - BUT - I really liked the 79108 Stagecoach and the 79111 Constitution train. I don't really care that they were inspired by a (bad) movie, I just liked the coach and thought it was overdue to get another stream engine design. Would I have bought them if they'd come out of a generic Western theme and/or train theme? Of course, but there hasn't been a "western" theme in 20 years - licensed themes (such as Lone Ranger and Toy Story), in the mean time, have brought us two trains, some buildings and some army builders (and, if nothing else, kept very useful parts in production for more (non-licensed theme) MOC'ing). So, even if you prefer original themes and a licensed property turns out to be a complete bomb, _sometimes_ some good still can come out of it. (As I recall, I even got a good deal on my stagecoach because the movie was so bad the all tie-in merchandise (including Lego kits) had been moved to the discount bin at one of my local retail haunts just to get rid of it).

For me, it's less about the theme than what they do with it. Too often I think licensed themes give into the temptation to become excuses to sell (collectable/exclusive) mini-figures and less about the build or play features. Particularly at the lower end of the price ranges, it seems like they always offer one or two cool figures bundled with just enough bricks to qualify as a "building toy" and not infringe on any "action figure" license some other toy maker might be holding. This certainly doesn't _have to be_ the case (Star Wars, for example, has has some great models), but it feels like it happens a lot more with licensed themes than original ones. One of my litmus tests for a "good" set versus a "the build was an afterthought" one, is to build the kit without any mini-figures or stickers and see if what's left stands on its own. From my experience, licensed theme kits fail this test far more often than original theme ones. Take the knights out of Nexo-Knights, the Elves out of Elves, the pilots and robots out of Exo-Force and the Agents out of Ultra Agents and you're (usually) still left with cool vehicles, interesting buildings and a lot of open-ended play options. Take the figures and stickers out of many low-end (by price) licensed sets and you're (too often) left with a wall or a shrubbery or some undersized generic bit of backdrop that makes you wonder, was this LOTR?, The Hobbit? POTC? Maybe Harry Potter? Without the figure or custom printing, the set has no character of its own (at least not until you get to a higher price point). I think original themes, particularly when they are just getting established and no one knows the characters or the storyline yet, have more "to prove" and probably get a sterner planning review cycle before getting release, whereas licensed stuff gets more of a "is it consistent with the brand?" box to check off. This is purely a theory on my part based on anecdotal evidence and personal preference; I've found that the first wave or two of a new original theme usually has the highest percentage of sets that appeal to me compared to the first wave of a licensed theme or subsequent waves from an original theme that has grown very popular. When demand for a particular group of mini-figures goes up, it seems like lines get diluted to include cheap ways to get a favored character at the expense of a richer construction and open-ended play experience. Again, this can happen with either original or licensed themes, but it _feels_ like it happens more with licensed stuff.

Welcome! Lovely MOC. I used to be a professor and also used Lego as a teaching aid (though I was teaching courses in Robotics and Sensor & feedback device design for VR ) I look forward to seeing more of your creations.

You confuse volition with circumstance. If there is any volition involved at all, it's not that I choose not to open a set, it's that I choose to keep buying them even though I could be building a set I already own. In my case, it really boils down to money and time (and maybe a wee bit of emotional scarring+++). The shorter answer is, it only takes a few minutes to buy Lego, but, if done properly, can take hours to assemble it. I like building and try not to rush, but I also don't have a lot of spare time. When you buy a couple hundred kits a year but are lucky to find time to build one a week on average, after a couple decades you have quite a backlog. Perhaps when my daughter goes off to college (a while from now, she's still in Duplos), I'll retire and have more time to build. There are some sets, however, that I've deliberately set aside to build _with_ my daughter when she's old enough. According to various sources, many of these sets have appreciated considerably on the secondary market since I moved them to my "reserved" pile, but I have no intention of selling them, I just want to share the experience of building them with my little one. --------------------- +++ I grew up with Lego envy in a family where, if you were lucky enough to earn some extra dollars, you contributed most of it to the household for food and clothing or saved for college. Lego was a treat bordering on a luxury. When I got Lego as gifts, they were little stocking stuffers and when I tried saving up for specific larger sets, it usually took so long to save up the money that the kits I wanted would be discontinued before I could afford them (eBay, Amazon and even Bricklink wouldn't be invented for several decades so when the shelves were bare, you were pretty much out of luck). Years later, when I was finally in a financial position to make up for childhood sacrifices, I resolved that if I wanted a particular Lego set, I would buy it before it got discontinued out from under me. And so, today, I have a significant cache of discontinued sets that I simply haven't gotten to yet. Space is becoming an issue, but buying a larger house would cut into my Lego budget

My reaction so far is basically: It's early, judging all of 2019 based on a handful of teasers and leaks is a bit pre-mature. Every year has its hits and misses; on one hand I can see where ElectroDiva is coming from in that my own shopping list for 2019 is pretty short (so far); on the other hand, I already _have_ a shopping list of new kits I plan on picking up (mostly Technic, Architect, and Creator Expert) so the offerings can't be _that_ bad. So far (again, it's early) I haven't seen much on the licensed IP front that jumps out and screams "buy me!" Then again, (with a few notable exceptions) 2018 wasn't exactly a banner year either. They could have done a lot more with Black Panther. Most of the Marvel sets felt like they were more about collecting the infinity stones than enjoying the builds. I enjoyed the UCS Hulkbuster, but do we really need three variations on the hulkbuster in as many years? As for DC, I'm getting pretty tired of Batman and while Aquaman was a visually stunning film, the sets have been few in number and far less compelling. And speaking of tired and rehashes, I feel like Vader's Castle and the Porg are the only SW models I haven't done at least twice already (and in some cases, a lot more than twice). The Jurassic World sets weren't bad, but they did feel a bit like more of an excuse to buy dinosaurs and minifigs than classic builds in their own rights. Harry Potter? The mini-scale castle was a standout, and the rest of the line was pretty solid, but, like Star Wars, the bulk of the offerings had a bit of a been there, done that, feel to it. "Native" Disney properties do nothing for me, and neither do most of the licensed tie-in sets. With Elves and Nexo-knights retiring, there'll be a void in TLG's line-up, but we shouldn't assume that this void will go unfilled throughout the year or that any such replacement in the line-up will be of inferior quality. I will confess that, for my money, neither theme really appealed to me, but I appreciated the creativity and felt that they were some of the best sets when it came to sourcing parts. They each did a great job of introducing new molds and unique recolors even if the builds themselves were of limited appeal. My _hope_ is that we'll see a resurgence of a classic castle offering and some equally "out-there"/fantasy/sci-fi offering that will pick up the mantel of interesting models incorporating new parts in new colors, but we'll just have to wait and see if that happens in 2019. As for TLM2 vs. The Lego Movie, I'll side with the original poster as far as saying that, Benny's Space Squad is the only kit in this wave that made me think "I should grab a few of those" and that thought had nothing to do with the movie, I just wanted some classic space people in various colors. I'm not sure I'd say this wave is _inferior_ to the kits offered for the first movie, though. I picked up a few of those earlier offerings and, truth be told, Benny's Spaceship (spaceship, spaceship!), was really in a class by itself, most of the line was forgettable (just as, sadly, I think much of the new wave is). To put a more positive spin on things, I think TLM2 offerings as just as good as the first wave of TLM kits were. Imagining the older kits as being "better" is more a function of kind memories and nostalgia for TLM itself and less an objective assessment of the builds, part usage or playability. Also, when comparing year-to-year, it's important to realize TLG likes to play things close to the vest for a long as possible and we rarely go into a new year knowing what the "really good stuff" is going to be because it simply hasn't been announced yet. The Technic line, traditionally, rolls out its "flagship" models in early to mid summer (Porsche 911 GT3 and Bugatti Chiron - first sold in June for example), Summer roll-outs have also been big for Star Wars ( Death Star Playset, Super Star Destroyer, UCS Millennium Falcon, etc). Creator Expert's Modular buildings typically see two per year, one early (which we know about already for 2019) and one held in reserve until fall. The Disney Castle and the mini-scale Hogwart's Castle are other examples of great kits that didn't go public until the year was mostly over. According to Brickset, there were nearly 800 sets released last year and, to date, we have details about less than a quarter of that number for 2019. In general, January is a terrible time to roll-out new sets, too much thunder gets stolen by after Christmas sales, clearance items on last year's stuff and people still scrambling to pick up the "hot new" toy of the year that just came out in December but was back-ordered until after the holiday. New items have difficultly getting noticed in that climate, I _think_ that why TLG often waits until at least March (and sometimes much longer) before rolling out its more memorable sets for the year. Looking back through Brickset release dates for 2018, by this time in 2017, only 5 of what I would consider the "memorable" kits of 2018 had been announced, so I wouldn't worry too much about the shape of 2019, the best is (usually) yet to come.

I'm in the same boat as Blondie-Wan, I've got a backlog of about 25 years worth of purchases I just haven't had time to get to but fully intend to crack 'em open and build them eventually. It's a construction toy, it was _designed_ assembled, not to sit in a closet in pieces in a sealed box. (That said, I must also confess that I do keep all my instruction books and most of my boxes after I've built things). As for the question of being "bad for the community" and the impact of opening a rare/hard to find MISB item in the eyes of collectors/investors, allow me to share a story from a different world of collectables. My dad was a stamp collector and told me about one auction he'd attended with a friend of his who was a professional buyer/dealer. The centerpiece of the auction was some stamp that was worth more than my dad's entire collection, but his friend was there bidding for it on behalf of one of his clients. The friend won the bidding (to the tune of several tens of thousands of dollars) and, upon taking possession, made a show out of taking out a lighter and incinerating the stamp. My dad, like half the bidders and reporters in the hall, was shocked. On the ride home, my dad asked him why he paid so much for the stamp only to publicly destroy it. The friend told him he was just following this client's orders, his client already owned five copies of that same stamp and figured that the public destruction of one of the few known remaining samples would make his others even more valuable (above and beyond the money he'd just spent for the privilege of incinerating what some might term an historical artifact). So, when it comes to collector and investors, I'd say don't worry about it; do what feels right for you (though I would discourage incinerating any Exo-force set (MISB or otherwise) that just seems like a waste and would likely smell really bad...)