MAB

I used to write on my bricks with felt tips as a kid. I had a bucket full of bricks but very few with store or building names on. I recall writing "police", "fire", "train" and "station" on the sides of many 2x4 bricks. There was no need for stickers or official prints!

A while back they had lots of scammers signing up, leaving themselves feedback with one of their other accounts, then converting to sellers and listing loads of high value in-demand stock that didn't exist. Getting someone to supply a picture of their stock at least puts a (small) barrier to the creation of scammer accounts.

I think they still do. My own kids certainly do, as when they were growing up I tended to buy them lots of parts rather than sets. The larger sets they had bought for them have pretty much stayed as sets, but the smaller ones have been built, taken apart and all mixed up. The mixed up parts are the pieces that really get a lot of use for freebuilding. From collections I buy, I think many kids do something similar with their sets. I find if buying from an adult, they tend to sell complete sets and are often really easy to identify which sets are there even if they are al bundled together. Whereas when I buy a collection that belonged to a kid, the sets are nearly always mixed up with bits or figures missing and lots of other builds or fragments that are not official sets.

Extra handling charges per lot really put me off. I typically least favourite a store that uses them. I don't mind average lot values and so on, as running a store has to be efficient for the owner. But manipulating the prices by advertising low prices then adding on high per lot charges messes up wants list searches so I avoid those stores. I prefer a store to charge high prices then to use low plus a per lot handling fee. I don't mind stores charging higher than average, and I do it myself for some items and especially on cheap ones. If I have a part worth a few pence/cents, it is really not worth listing on its own. However I don't mind selling 25 or 30 of them for £1. If I have 10 of the same item worth a few pennies each, I might still list them at £1 for the lot. And amazingly they will sell but most likely to someone that is placing an order anyway and can save on postage by buying that lot from me rather than placing a separate order with someone else with extra shipping to get those cheap parts. Or maybe just not worth their time checking and removing items to buy them from someone else to save a few £ even if it is cheaper including paying extra shipping. Having higher prices is transparent. The buyer can see the prices when building their cart and choose to buy that lot, or not. It's when the prices look good while building the cart but then suddenly get ramped up at checkout that I dislike.

That is because all the cool kids are too busy playing with licensed sets to care. :-)

It isn't really a theme, but ET had the Dimensions set with minifigure and phone build and is now getting the large brickbuilt figure. I've got the first and will be buying the second. For me LOTR is both the best and the worst of the revivals. Best because they have done stunning large sets. But worst because they have only done stunning large sets, and not a proper theme with multiple opportunities to buy the minifigures or army build (like in SW or HP).

1. I don't. I don't find it any different to before the acquisition. 2. Agree, it is worse and it seems to be built for people that want mobile / tablet use rather than a PC. 3. As it always was. The problem with user input is that users don't necessarily agree with each other. 4. It isn't if you understand how to use wants lists. 5. It isn't if you choose sellers that use instant checkout and understand how to set up automated postage costs. 6. I'm not sure why this surprises you. Any complicated task becomes easier the more experience you have. Even building with LEGO is easier the more experience you have. So I don't find it at all surprising that people that have used BL for years find it easy whereas people that are new find it harder. BL has an incredibly powerful search, for example, if you know how to search for specific types of parts in specific colours. It takes time to learn, like any skill. 7. Lawrence at Brickowl is very good at responding to issues and always has been. But then Brickowl has a much smaller userbase.

I find I often want to avoid reviews of sets that I intend purchase. I don't want to see someone else build it first and reveal any interesting features or build techniques. And since I usually want a discount and I never feel the need to buy it on day 1, I try to avoid looking at reviews of the set. And if I want to know what parts are going to be in it, bricklink inventories will do just fine and will probably be available online when I come to purchase. Or even the LEGO inventory online. Sure, it would be nice if they included the sticker sheet in those inventories and even better still if you were able to purchase them direct with a PAB order without phoning up to order one like you used to be able to do (but often quite pricey). I also cannot really think of an adult interest set that hasn't had a review out on day 1 for many years now. They are usually up often weeks prior to release for the freebie LAN reviewers (and it is this that has really killed off the more independent reviewers that purchase the sets themselves, as they cannot compete for clicks and revenue). If the site or reviewer you prefer hasn't got it up yet (like Brickset have only just reviewed Minas Tirith, way too late to be of any use for early purchasers), chances are another reviewer did have it up on time. And for little Friends or City sets that are not likely to be of interest to adults, does it really matter if they have stickers or there is a review available to indicate this? Kids don't seem to care too much about applying them. As a kid, I used to build lots of airfix models with waterslide decals and one of the fun parts was applying the decal decoration there, turning it from something plain to a finished design. If anything, for kids sets, I'd like it if LEGO included more 'free placement' stickers that the kid can have fun applying to other parts to customise them. So a Friends house could have extra bedroom, bathroom or kitchen stickers so they could decorate a room how they like. When younger my daughter used to love sticking letter stickers on her LEGO parts with her name, or a pet's name and even sometimes drew her own stickers to stick on builds to customise them. It is just another form of creativity.

Stickers aren't meant to be attached to studded surfaces, so the AI generated campaign logo is misleading.

I don't know. Making a mistake, then constantly ignoring people when they tell you that you've made a mistake because you think you know better than everyone else is a good indication of human behaviour. Especially for a person that is focussed so highly on one thing that they define themselves by it.

And then all the other metrics that might matter to other people. The entire box would be full up with disclaimers. For anyone that really cares about it, surely they can do a few minutes research if having stickers in it is going to stop them buying a set.

I agree there have been complaints about the item upload page, but many larger or experienced sellers use brickstore anyway for inventory purposes so won't be affected by the change for uploading. As for auto-search, go beyond using easy buy if you want to apply constraints to your search.

I find this one of the strangest suggestions ever. You have chosen the design based on your bias against stickers. You've used green and a tick for 100% prints, yellow/amber for mixture and red with a warning sign for 100% stickers. LEGO are never going to implement a not exactly subliminal system showing that the inclusion of stickers is bad. The biggest problem though is that your system is completely useless. Pretty much every set will be amber unless it is fully printed (probably Creator where there is often minimal decoration as parts are reused) or no decoration to the parts. Any set with a minifigure in is not 100% stickered if it contains a minifigure with a face and so the traffic light system is useless. A set with a huge sticker sheet and a single plain minifigure with a classic smiley face is "both" as it has a printed element. You would not know how much of the set is stickered or printed. It could be a single part printed and a huge sticker sheet, or a single part with a sticker and loads of printed parts. They are both amber. Unless they do a metric such as 37% of the decorated parts in this set have stickers, then the amber box on most sets won't tell you anything. If a set has a sticker sheet, LEGO only needs to put in one printed element such as a minfiigure head or a 1x1 round tile with a single printed dot on it and the red image with a warning sign can be removed from the box. And from a consumer point of view, they would be leaving themselves open to complaints putting terms like "100% prints", as this will mean different things to different people. One person might read it as all decorated parts are printed, whereas others will read it as 100% parts are printed. As noted above, it also doesn't indicate how many prints you get. A set with 1000 pieces with 1 printed part and no stickers is 100% printed so gets a green tick. A 1000 piece set with 100 printed parts and a sticker sheet for one part is not so doesn't get a green tick, just the amber box. Yet which is likely to be popular is you like printed parts? It might also be that if people start using warnings against stickers as a way of deciding which set they buy, then LEGO just does away with sticker sheets AND decorated elements. So a Friends set where they have a sticker set to show a bathroom background, they just leave the decoration out. It is still obviously a bathroom as it has a toilet and a shower and loads of brick built accessories, but the kid loses the decorative sticker in case some adult whines about it. Is that really a win for consumers? I don't think so. This is 100% printed, as there are two printed elements. This is "none". But if they stuck in a printed eye element, it gets the green tick. This one is 100% printed and gets a green tick , as it has a printed 1x1 round tile element in it (the coins). I'd be really annoyed if a box told me something was 100% printed if there was one or two tiny elements in it that have a print.

Is Shadowfax the same white horse as in the Marvel set? If so, it is Aragorn with his wings pulled off.

It looks fine, and what I'd hope most GWP should look like. There doesn't appear to be anything unique or important that is not readily available so anyone can build something similar easily enough while it comes with the box that shall not be opened for those that need something exclusive.