Faefrost

The stage sets aren’t bad. But they aren’t the centerpiece of the line. The beat box’s were. Those needed to be at an impulse buy price point. The problem with Vidyo isn’t simply new unique parts. It’s an overabundance of them being delivered in sets that are wildly outside the consumer value calculation. The boxes needed to hit the $9.99 price point to survive. $12.99 worst case. Vidyo has too much, too many attempted expensive innovations going on to have a reasonable chance to hit profit margins. The sets are nice. They will be top sellers at a 30% discount. Don’t just look at the individual spends on the line. Look at the overall spends. New tooling, higher production cost printings, technology and app development, and failure to release at an appropriate price point, and a rather ill defined target audience or age range. It was Lego attempting to step outside their norms and appeal to the TikTok Roblox kids. Not a bad plan, but a badly flawed execution. (With some nice if weird minifigs and enough printed tiles that every AFOL is planning a Modular Record Store) those round and square pods, while single use parts, at least are amortized across several lines and are priced into/used for high margin impulse buy sets. I do wish they had a few useable connection points. I know I seem to be harping on Vidyo. It’s not that Vidyo is a bad or failed product line. It’s that the rather clearly visible nature of the failure points in Vidyo are something we have not seen from Lego management for the past 20 years. Something that they had had checks and balances to try and avoid doing ever again. That’s a bit worrying.

Vidyo appears to be a bit of a disaster. The sets and figs are nice, but the core "Beat Box's" are grossly overpriced so as to be completely unviable. They are finally starting to move at 25-30% discount or greater. The problem is even at their $20 usd msrp I suspect Lego is losing money. Just going through the Beat Box sets this is what I noticed. - a plethora of new parts that have no system use. We have the clear box. The figure stage and it's 2 wings. The rear tile storage box, the pointless rubber strap and the two white strap connector pieces. There is also the lid to the tile box and the 3x3 domes which at least can be used in normal sets. - a plethora of unique figure head sculpts and parts. This is viable in CMF's because of the insane margin on CMF's and the insane return on shelf space. (Profit per cubic foot is better than the $500 sets). But the Vidyo sets are already overpriced and surely low margin. - insane amounts of unique indivually printed tiles. Not the worst offense, but still an example of design cost over runs - the App. I'm going to assume based on what you like the sets for. You like most afols haven't messed with the app. It radiates "case study in bad development and pissing money away." It's a seizure inducing digital train wreck. That works really poorly. - the music. Above and beyond the visible costs there is a productionand licensing cost per song. Most games only produce a few minutes of music. But this is a music game. With lots of music. Professor Dave Robertson used to give a great lecture on why Lego nearly went under in the early 2000's due to uncontrolled bad innovation, and how they recovered via careful focus. Vidyo appears to hit almost every box on his bad checklist. It reminds me of those Micromotor Fiber Optic Light sets that Lego was selling for half of what they cost to make, because nobody realized it. Hopefully Vidyo is just a one off bad idea. City seems to be booming. While many AFOL purists hate the idea of named characters in City it does seem to have kid appeal. And the new Stuntz sets actually look to add a simple and fun competitive play feature to City. Kind of like the original Ninjago spinners. So long as the flywheel motors are sturdy. I think Lego will have a great Q3 and 4.

A price hike is inevitable. And it will be worldwide. The problem is there are a lot of inflationary forces right now. From costs of petroleum, to rapidly rising costs of renting commercial space. It will hit Lego, as a perceived luxury product hard. Add to this Lego will need to be amortizing some incredibly boneheaded expensive decisions. The Vidyo line being a stunning example of unrestrained development pissing money away that will likely never be recovered. From moronic single purpose limited reuse tooling for those bloodt beat boxes, to acres upon acres of new custom tile prints. Minifig parts and heads, and the crown jewel that abominable Augmented Reality wannabe TikTok App. Read up on the list of reasons Lego nearly went bankrupt in 2003. Then look at Vidyo. It's like someone looked at those problems and viewed them as a todo list for market success.

Friends is not mentioned either. Yet just from eyeballing a sampling of local retail they seem strong. If anything Star Wars feels weaker than it has been. Granted that is simply looking at a small local/regional sample. Also note these are Q1/2 results. Most Big Box retail lines see their best sales Q3/Q4. I again note the aisles at my local Targets appear looted. Creator Experts largest and most sales guaranteed release wave is normally Jan 1. Whereas most of the more kid focused stuff, especially the big stuff sells several orders of magnitude better than everything else around Black Friday.

My local Target accidentally put these out today. But the system would not let them be sold yet

“Sales rose 46% compared to same period 2020!” The world was under a lockdown during same period 2020. I’m not sure using 2020 as a sales metric is particularly valuable? The rise of Creator Expert to top 5 status is a little worrying. Mainly because it has the high potential to teach Lego Marketing people entirely the wrong message. Creator Expert is a line that concentrates profit into fewer higher value customers. In video gamer terms, it is a line based on “Whales”. This is a nice profit point to have, if you can achieve it as an add on above and beyond your core business. But attempting to make ever fewer whales the centerpiece of your business either intentionally or by chasing the wrong marketing numbers will eventually lead to ruin. Hopefully Lego is smart enough to keep a well balanced product portfolio and while they should continue to service and market to the whales (us!) they should not overcorrect chasing them. Some of the other top 5’s feel strange. Although granted it is worldwide. Has Technic ever appeared top 5 before? The fact that we are seeing 2 lines that primarily exist in the Direct 2 Consumer space, Creator Expert and Technic, may be a reflection of overall weaknesses in regular brick and mortar retail worldwide during the pandemic.

A few of the remaining undone Elemental Masters seen in the Tournament of Elements and Hands of Time story arcs. Like Camille, and Jay’s birth mother. Cole’s Father. The Kids from Darkly’s School.

A few certain specific Lego stores are used to clearance out “Damaged Box” merchandise. (One of them is the Sugarloaf store near Atlanta). I managed to score a Damaged Box Spring Lantern Festival set at a decent discount. Damage Box stuff is normally 20-30% discount I think.

A key question regarding the Kickstarter boardgame is did they negotiate a license BEFORE soliciting funds via kickstarter. Because a lot of ip owners are starting to take issue with that sort of thing. But yes there likely would be some decent interest in a nice TLA set.

If you haven't burned your free trial for Paramout+ it's worth using it for LCA and Star Trek Lower Decks (if you are into that sort of humor) (Star Trek Picard is just depressing and Star Trek Discovery may actually give you brain cancer. But thats just my opinion and I have no peer reviewed science on that. Yet.)

I'm sensing a whole new fun and exciting Lego City Subtheme. Lego City Kaiju Attacks! (Don't look at me that way. The way 2021's been going we can expect it to be a "non-fiction" subject by Christmas the latest.)

The silver suit was a recolored of the series 4 CMF Mazmat suit figure. Which was originally yellow. There was also a white suit version released in Ultra Agents.

They've released a few fuel tankers over the years at least one in great vehicles. A Fire tanker is that in red. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=60016-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

The next major Fire Rotation maybe we could see some other fire vehicles? A Heavy Rescue Truck with tools, plus Scuba gear and a trailer with a zodiac type boat. Or a fire water supply tanker. Basically the Octan fuel truck designs but in red with fire stuff. For Police? Maybe a lab truck with a pair of CSI techs. They will solve the donut mystery!

We AFOLs somehow manage to get the pricing all wrong. Our beloved Price per Piece is a really lousy metric and has almost nothing to do with actual set pricing or value. In fact the only thing it is a decent metric of is set complexity. A better ppp ratio = a more complex set. We also get it backwards. They don't look at a set and decide how much. They decide the price point first and then design the set too that. The designer is given a design budget. A sort of point system. Every element or part has a specific cost assigned to it. The biggest determinant is weight of plastic or costs of production. Does a part need extra steps such as hand assemply or handling? Every extra production step has a cost. Such as a color change for an element. Prints have a cost. Minifigs have a cost. Parts that need a factory run have a higher cost than parts already in inventory. Etc. Really the better judge of value is to look at the sets weight vs cost. And even with that some high production cost parts will drive up the budget. For example the floating boat hulls. Which are 2 pieces of different plastic, which need the largest mold machines that then need human handling to bond. Or Bigfigs and large animals. 2-3 pieces that need gluing than hand insertion for printing. So price vs weight = value Price vs piece count = complexity/age range

Explore www.bricklink.com It will be your best friend. It is a peer to peer Lego Buying and Selling Platform. You can find any minifig, any set, any part, any quantity, and any quality, easily. It connects buyers and sellers. It was originally created by a Lego fan who was also an amazing coder. I believe he passed away a number of years ago. Most recently Lego themselves bought and operate the site. Once you figure it out you will be able to get any parts you wish easily and typically much cheaper than buying them from Lego Bricks and Pieces service. And generally much faster.

Gorgeous. And while I know you're not using them, but just looking at your work makes me think those new road plates might make it much easier to make elevated roadways and bridges.

One newer Lego World Brand that is starting to creep into sets is the fictional Lego Sports Drink "Vita Rush". It shows up in the Lego City Adventures Cartoon and a few of the newer City sets. Of course some other recurring in world business branding includes City Pizza, City Coffee, City Bank, City Diner and TOYS. There is also the newer Blue and Orange signage for Octan Electric Vehicles. 2017 City also had some interesting and fairly unique ones, in some smaller cheaper sets. UTrans Trailers, SMOOTH Racing Oil, GEAR, Monkey Kid has the Panda Store, Ninjago has some great signage and branding, but most of it is in the Ninjago Language.

I think a hospital would be tough to pull off at a Modular scale. You could do an early 20th/late 19th Century "Plague Ward" style one, but modern Hospitals are so dense and sprawling it would be sort of hard to capture. The other thing with Hospitals is they have evolved so much in the past 75 years that they look entirely different decade to decade. So kind of hard to capture that vague "A Christmas Story" era feel of the Modulars. I think we will get one at some point, I just can't imagine how they will condense it down? Other stuff that I imagine have got to be in the pipeline? A much asked for Post Office (do kids even know what those are anymore?), A (new) Grocer of some sort, A downtown Office Building. Maybe with several small offices, so a Doctor, A Lawyer, an Architect etc? Something a bit more industrial, a small factory or machine shop? Maybe a Bicycle Factory? That nice drill press in the Tuning Workshop got me thinking. Some form of School would be nice.

We have Huskies. They released them with one of the City Arctic themes. They also show up in Ninjago as Wu's Dog from time to time. Granted they are not perticularly menacing to use as wolves. There's one in the new Marvel CMF's. It comes with the female Loki fig, Sylvie I think she's called.

If you are looking to be MOC’ing buildings part of it is looking at the world around you, spotting interesting shapes, and thinking through how to simplify and recreate the feel of them using Lego pieces. Part of it is practice. And building some sets. Just learning some basic tricks that add depth to buildings, such as Windows are never flush with the wall. And from that learning how to use things like 1x2 offsets to slightly recess them. These two books are fantastic for learning how to do some basic tricks and combine them for ever more detailed MOCs. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084SNYXVJ?searchxofy=true&binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1631661929&sr=8-1 But much of it you can just learn from practice.

In the event the President Business Golf Club isn't available the City Hockey Stick is. It's in at least 3 sets currently on shelves. And it would make an acceptable Putter.

Don’t feel bad. Actual Scale Modellers and Model Railroaders are worse for what you describe than AFOL’s. They glue stuff shut so their wonderful detailing can never be seen. Because they know it’s there. I think the most spectacular for this was Eji Tsubaraya, the main model maker and special effects guy for the Toho monster movies, such as Godzilla. He would get insanely obsessively detailed. His true Masterpiece was the movie Rodan, where he recreated an actual department store and shopping district in Tokyo, perfectly replicating reality down to posters, and clothing on racks, and designed everything to crumble and collapse as a real building would. The buildings even had bath fixtures. Rodan is worth watching just for those scenes. Even though you never see 99.9% of his actual detail work. But the strange thing is, it does somehow make the scenes much more believable. You compare Tsubaraya’s detailed work with the cheap work on a Gamera movie and you instantly know the difference. Even though you can technically only see the same amount of visible detail in each movie. Your brain extrapolates and maps it out. In the case of you doing this with Lego you can at least design in some access panels so you can show off the details when you choose to.

All of the older Modulars, pretty much everything pre Palace Cinema can stack the middle floors seamlessly, and it looks organic on the outside. Palace Cinema really only gets odd because of the arches around the windows. Of the post PC sets some stack very well. Such as Parisian Restaurant. And Corner Garage, some look odd if you do it like the Diner and the Police Station, and some just don’t really work at all, such as the Bookstore and Bank. One of the other problems you start to get into with modular stacking is weight. We don’t often think of how heavy these things can get.try lifting and carrying Ninjago City as a single unit. How many AFOLs have robust enough bench work or shelving to support things of that size. The next time you watch the Lego Movie pay attention to the live action scenes and take note of just how heavy duty the tables that the Dad’s City sits on are. That’s what they had to be to support those buildings. The number of AFOL’s with the space, skills and patience to go that hard core with the bench work is a tiny niche of an already small, if growing niche.

ooo! Maybe one of the World Famous Bowery Flophouses?