Faefrost

If you want something a little less ambitious, and more in the standard Modular footprint, BrickPolis put together an excellent Central Perk with the BBT apartment above it and rooftop wedding. https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-34463/BrickPolis/central-perk-big-bang-theory-modular/#details I kind of prefer the outside color and texture choices on his.

It's not yet tomorrow somewhere

Bricksmax you can buy individual components ala carte and design your own setup. Single leds come in bright white, warm white, red, blue, green, pink and orange I believe. They also have various flicker or effect boards. Bricksmax is also 100% compatable and interchangeable with LightMyBricks stuff. That's important to know. Bricksmax components are generally cheaper. But LightMyBricks has some cooler and more advanced items. From micro lights, to the glorious "Wireless connectors" that let you put contact plates between the floors of your modulars. So you can lift them apart normally. Bricksmax has the much nicer strip lights. LightmyBricks has nicer quality everything else. Vonado uses the same compatible system, but the component quality is complete garbage. LED's fall apart out of the bag. For the Bricksmax and Lightmybricks system here are your basic elements. - single LED's in 15cm and 30cm lengths - self adhesive LED light strips normally the length of a 1x6. Bricksmax are on hard pcb. Lightmybricks are soft silicone flex strips. - connector boards in 6,8 and 12 port - connector wires or jumpers in 5cm 15cm and 30 cm lengths - USB power wire. - Various effect boards and LED's which will add flashing, flickering, animation, traffic light, etc. Also note while the Bookstore kit does not come with the hardware to split the two halves. With the Bricksmax or Lightmybricks system it's 2 minutes work and 1 extra usb plug to remedy. You aren't bound by the instructions. You can place and run the lights to your tastes and needs. Lightailing kits are strung together like christmas lights. There is really only one way to install them as the wire distance between the prelit bricks is specific to where it goes in the lego set. Many but not all Lightailing kits use a seperate string and usb plug for each floor of a modular. Lightailing kits are completely self contained and the components are not cross compatible. They are literally just like LED christmas lights. Lightailing Kits are the easiest for a beginer to install. The downside is if you break a wire you ruin a whole string. And Lightailing does not offer individual replacement strings. If you break a wire in a Bricksmax or LightmyBricks kit you can easily replace that component for $1-2. You just replace the wire or led. Of the three main Light kit manufacturers, I've used all three plus a few others here's my quick rundown; LightMyBricks - Most Expensive. But worth it for certain larger sets such as the Ninjago City sets ot especially the Dailky Bugle. The Daily Bugle set comes with the wireless connectors so you can take the building apart. LMB sets typically have more lights and more effect parts than its Bricksmax counterpart. You can only buy direct from their web site. Bricksmax. My current go to for most general kits. Good prices. High quality. I normally mix and match BM and LMB stuff.BM for the basic lighting LMB to add some animation and movement. Lightailing. Good quality easy to use kits. Decent Price. Produce great looking results for the kits they are designed for. Absolutely no flexibility. Bricksmax and Lightailing can be bought from Lightaings Amazon store or website. They routinely run some really good sales throughot the year. So you can sometimes catch the DIY components on a 1 day 50% off sale. Also for lighting minifig scale vehicles Bricksmax's kit for set 60231 Fire Chief Response Truck is a near perfect universal kit. Edit, here are some other examples of some various light kits https://flic.kr/s/aHsmWzsPV4 Lightailing Corner Garage Lightailing Diner Bricksmax Parisian Restaurant Bricksmax Detectives Office ala carte DIY Bricksmax and LightMyBricks Sanctum Sanctorum Light My Bricks Daily Bugle (Note one of the big differences between LMB and BM is LMB includes a lot of extra Lego Parts to create the various spotlights for signage. Plus Firestars animated flame effects have to be seen to be appreciated.But this does effectively double the price of the kit from the BM version) Light My Bricks Ninjago City Gardens install in progress As for the lights in the Bookstores Birch tree? Yes you could cut them back. But I wouldn't. They are really the only thing that adds the needed visual pop to the Bookstore's lighting. Without them it's a very boring lighted scene. They give it the needed burst of color.

That Monkey Kid city is designed as modules. So you can rearrange them as a normal street without the monorail. They look like they will even work with the newer road plates.

Spend the handful of change to send the correct part. Get receipts from the post office. Document everything in case he tries to pull ebay bs. And wash your hands of it. That third party reship to Hong Kong should raise enough red flags with ebay that they won't give you any grief. There's clearly no way for you to get your merchandise back.

We should probably remember that the technology Lego uses now has radically changed. Up until fairly recently color was provided via pre colored plastic tablets from Bayer. So the limitations on available color were how many plastic silos Lego had and how much part storage capacity they had in the warehouses. But now .ost regular nkn exotic colors come from a color on demand system. Lego buts neutral colored plastic and injects the color dye themselves as the plastic is melted on the factory floor. The downside is batch to batch color matching is not the 100% perfection it used to be. Upside is they can easily maintain a much broader color pallett and produce what they need as they need it. Which is HUGE. There are a few colors that are still done the old ways. I suspect the trans clear polyacrylics are one of them. Those pearlescent might be another or might involve a more elaborate color process.

Probably a piece of the sprue where the string would extend to the next part in the mold

Whatever they are paying the "Character and Minifig Naming Person" it's too much.

Lego is really good about replacing missing parts. You just go to the web site and enter in the applicable information. So long as you aren't trying to scam something rare or valuable such as minifig parts they will send it right out. It does typically take 2-3 weeks to arrive though.

It's probably also one of the first main European Markets that Lego really got established in outside of Denmark. With one of the broadest sweeps of Generations that grew up with Lego products. So there is a lot of Lego there, and a lot of Classic Lego.

Lego actually has a much bigger and better study. One they spent millions on and that involved thousands of kids over several years. Studying how kids actually play. On the basis of that study's findings the minidolls were created and Lego leapfrogged from #3 toymaker to #1 in under a year. That study will always be the authoritative one. Because it drives actual sales. This other study? This whole "removing gender bias" concept? This is someone at Lego, someone almost certainly not involved in actual peoduction decisions, giving lip service to a darling idea of the media. Lego's not going to serriously do it because everytime they try it they lose lots of money. Minidolls aren't going anywhere. Because actual girls like them and ask their parents to buy them. At the end of the day Lego either provides the product the customers actually want to buy, or they fail as a company and brand.

The hands and arms are long obscoleted finger hinge parts. Seen in many things such as old school space and divers. These are the hands https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4221&idColor=11#T=C&C=11 plus these https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4220&idColor=9#T=C&C=9 These are the bulk of the arms https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3612&idColor=9#T=C&C=9 plus https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=6048&idColor=11#T=C&C=11 and https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=6217&idColor=11#T=C&C=11 Be warned that these older finger hinge parts are quite fragile. Which is why they were discontinued 25 years ago.

He's poking fun. Jamie Berard is the Lego Lead Designer who personally created the Modular Line, He designed the first 5 Modulars himself. Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, Fire Brigade, Grand Emporium and Pet Shop. Starting with Town Hall he switched off doing every other, than just the special ones like Assembly Square. He runs the whole Creator Expert/18+ line these days. But to explain his poking fun at you Jamie Berard is sort of the Patient Saint of Modular sets and builders. To us there is only 1 Jamie

It's pretty clearly retiring right now. It's out of stock at shop.lego.com, and is on the Clearance Shelves at the Lego stores near me. I snagged one for $80.

Licences get very complex. And each is different. But here's a safe up front assumption. There is a substantial up fron cost for the license. This is typically an annual cost for the lifespan of the license. There is also typically a %of sales price goes to the licensor per unit sold. This can be anywhere from 3-15% on average depending on value of the license and other underlying considerations. The higher priced ones are also licences with greater complexities. For example actors are owed royalties for toys based on their image, so that is factored into the license.costs. (they get paid by the licensor from the money paid by the licensee). So stuff like Marvel Movies and Harry Potter cost more than Mario. While we will never ever know any terms of any licences (the first rule of IP licensing is nobody talks about IP licensing) we can make a few informed guesses based on the sets we see. Either Marvel Avengers or Disney Princeses are likely the highest unit cost license Lego has right now. Star Wars and Harry Potter actually seem quite reasonable.

Most likely because they are set to store planograms over a year before release. And they can’t change the planned shelf/peg layout for Target or Walmart now.

Well three at the moment until they hunt down enough cardboard to make boxes for the rest.

That's a Ninjago Stone Army head. Probably from this guy

Keep in mind they are being replaced with a multimedia linked competitive play theme that just happens to be hidden in a City Subtheme. The Stuntz line. The impulse buy offerings are meant as a short term high turnover product offering. Looking for a pattern in an individual sets lifecycle is the road to madness. Their shelf life is determined more by whay comes next to fill that impulse buy slot.

It's probably they tossed in a wheelchair, much like they have added bicycles and baby carriages. Although we can't rule out a peg legged artist with one eye and a hook.

Thats not surprising. Many of the impulse buy and $20 Great Vehicles sets only have a 1 year lifecycle.

Git Outa Mah Lego Store ya damn hippies!

Take projected EOL dates for D2C sets with a grain of salt. That is the anticipated maximum lifecycle. Because they are produced in large batch runs, when a production runs stock gets low they will evaluate whether to do another run or just let the set retire on sell out. They look at all the sales data. How fast was the sell through. Anticipated remaining market. And whether a similar product is far enough in production to replace it. So if Seinfeld, the friends apartment or queer eye sell out in late 2022 The Office would probably simply replace it. .ost D2C sets only get 1 production run. Unexpected hits may get 2. True Legends such as the Modular Fire Brigade got 3.

Fair point.

When lego sets are backaged the numbered bags are filled using precise weight, not actual part count. The smallest of parts are inside the possible margin of error of the filling stations. So the machine will always dispense an even number of those parts. With a minimum of 2. This happens with 1×1 studs, technic pins, very small minifig parts suck as helmet visors, etc.