MAB

For me, there is no point when the claim that LEGO only produces two unlicensed themes keeps getting repeated. Part reuse also doesn't matter to me, as a specialised part is still a specialised part. The Roman shield is a specialised part. That was introduced in 2012, repeated a few years later in a licensed set, then reused in an unlicensed set as late as 2025. It has longevity in use and breadth as it has been used in four themes (in four sets in total). But is no less a specialised design than a snitch or Vader's helmet.

They will probably aim to adjust the design a little and submit as a new project. Publishing instructions kills a submission in future.

It depends what they are but when it comes to new parts designed for licensed themes, I sometimes prefer them to be detailed to really represent the thing they are meant to be and have them license-locked ather than for LEGO to generalise the part so it doesn't necessarily represent exactly what it is meant to be as well as it could just so it can be used in other themes. There are so many new parts made these days, especially for minifigure hair, headgear and accessories that having some of them licensed-locked when detail is important doesn't matter. I'm not a big Doctor Who fan, for example, but I'm glad they did the sonic screwdriver to look like it should and only used it in Doctor Who sets rather than make a new unidentifiable long thing just so it could be used as some other long thing in another theme. Whereas something like Hobbit hair or Luke's hair and of course the lightsaber hilt, they look good enough in a form that can be used for other themes. But if they had done C-3PO as a standard printed head or Chewbacca as a printed standard head with long hair, they'd look terrible. Fake stats. And yes, I do now enjoy that you cannot enjoy LEGO.

I don't mind about minifig numbers for these. In fact, I think I prefer the sets having fewer figures and cheaper prices. The figures are all PAB parts so can be added a few at a time to hit GWP thresholds when placing other orders in the meantime.

No! If a licensed part cannot be used in another theme because it is locked to the license, it cannot be used in another theme because it is locked to the license. That does not mean that it is not used in another theme because of its design, it is the license stopping it being used and not because the part is not versatile to use elsewhere. There are parts that were introduced in a licensed theme but not locked to that license and have been used in other themes. The lightsaber hilt is one such piece, and has now been used in 67 themes. Then there are parts like this, now appeared in 95 sets, despite being designed for Star Wars but not licensed locked. Yes, it is very clear that you do not like licenses that use a very small number of parts that are licensed locked. Although I cannot understand why, because the licensed parts that are locked are locked because they are from that license, and you don't like the license. That old universe still exists. LEGO can make any mixed up theme and put in characters and use parts from another of their unlicensed properties. The vast majority of parts from licensed and unlicensed sets are versatile in that they can be used to build whatever EGO can image, but some are licensed locked and cannot be used outside that theme. However, all parts from licensed and unlicensed sets are versatile in that they can be used to build whatever a person can imagine as a license block does not apply to individual builders that own the parts. There are parts such as windshields from Space themes that cannot be used in Castle, and there are parts such as castle doors and dragons from Castle themes that cannot be used in Space. That doesn't mean they are not versatile, they just don't fit every possible theme. It is the same with licensed parts. It is fairly clear that you just don't like licensed themes and also that you don't like that other people enjoy licensed themes. That is your problem, not their problem and definitely not LEGO's problem. You have to accept that LEGO make products for other people to enjoy and that, in doing so, they might make products that you don't enjoy. If you cannot find something that you enjoy out of their now vast product range then that is your problem, not theirs. Because there are plenty of people that are buying their modern sets. Some because they enjoy one or more of the licensed themes, some because they enjoy one or more of the unlicensed themes, and some because they enjoy both unlicensed and licensed. LEGO can easily afford to lose stubborn past consumers that don't like their current sets and insist on them being the same as they were decades ago and refuse to buy if they are not.

So what you are really saying is that unlicensed parts can be used in other themes, whereas licensed parts locked to a particular theme cannot be used by LEGO in other themes. But of course the good thing is that if you don't like the license and never buy the sets as then you won't have any of those licensed parts that you feel cannot be used in other contexts and it won't affect you. The fact that they are licensed locked means they won't appear in any unlicensed sets. Where it is 1 part in 1000, I'd prefer they get the detail right (especially for a minifigure or accessory) rather than compromise the detail of a design so it is generic enough it can be used elsewhere. It would be different if every piece in a Star Wars (or other licensed) set was a specialised part and could not be used with other LEGO parts. But that is far from the case. I've got quite a few LOTR Rohan helmets, and I think they are great for both LOTR and also other MOC armies outside of Middle Earth. Similarly for wargs, they are license locked but great for other MOCs. They could have used a generic castle helmet instead or done a generic wolf but that have been too much of a compromise and ruined the official sets.

HS is Hidden Side. MF is Monster Fighters. This is a specialist site and so specialist language is used. There is a balance between using jargon and spelling out everything every time it is used so someone without any knowledge of the subject can understand. Hidden Side was a new theme in 2019 when the post was written and HS was a common abbreviation used for it. Knowledge of LEGO themes of the previous few years at the time means MF is Monster Fighters. Anyone reading other posts on this site at the time should have been able to understand it fine. But jumping in without context years later could be a problem. But that is the problem with a forum with conservational type posts and when people can read and reply to things written five or ten years before.

But then a canoe can only be used as a canoe, a forestman's hat can only be used as a hat, a sword can only be used as a sword. Of course a part made according to a licensed design and agreed to be exclusive to that license will only appear in official LEGO sets for that license. But that does not mean other people (or, at least, people with an imagination) can use that part in other ways in MOCs. If the World Cup part is cheap to buy multiples, then I'd use it in a City stadium for people in a crowd holding it up, I'd also use it in a pub window advertising they show live football, and I'd also use it in a man-cave style room. My son has a nice MOC of his bedroom, and he uses the Darth Vader minifig helmet, a Boba Fett helmet and a Luke Sywalker Pilot helmet on shelves, representing the Helmet Series of sets. I've seen other people using those and things like The Simpsons heads in City MOCs as masks or full figures in Modular fancy dress shop windows. Similarly some people use movie characters as advertising mannequins for the Palace Cinema, or replace heads with generic ones to look like cos-players at a convention. The famous SW weapon, the lightsaber hilt, has been used in 1091 sets across 67 different themes according to BL. Not at all bad for versatility. There are other things like the Classic Dragon that LEGO has only used as a dragon in Castle sets, but others have used it in other ways.

It is a slow process that is sped up rather than caused by UV.

What does it matter how many themes they were used in. If they are used for the same reason in those themes, it is still the same reason and it is a specialised part. LEGO made canoes, ship sails, aerials, and huge numbers of parts that were specialised. It doesn't matter how many times they are reused, if they are still used as a canoe, or ship sail or aerial they are a specialist part. Classic Space and Castle minifigures are just as specialised as modern minifigures as they are printed to show what they are. And look at the post I was responding to.. Classic sets that suit those who want this building experiance. The "new" way, where it is more about the looks and having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use. There is the clear implication there that new sets are not about the building process and are dominated by specialist parts that cannot be used outside of what they were designed for. I've built modern sets and MOCs with modern parts, and I enjoyed the building process.

I don't really see what point you are trying to make. The HP Snitch appears in 14 sets and is often combined with 100s or 1000s of other basic parts. If you want to complain about the large Vader helmet, then complain also about all the Bionicle parts that are single use and wipe out the history of Bionicle. The football trophy, again it is one part in a set of almost 3000. One part in a set of thousands of parts does not mean modern sets are just a bunch of specialized parts with no other use. You might not be able to understand it, but LEGO clearly understands that small details help sell sets especially in today's market when consumers want more realism and just a few tiny details can help them sell 1000s of basic parts. This was also the same reason they started decorating torsos and faces for minifigures. Plain ones were OK but printing it to make it clear it is a fireman or a knight heavily restricts its use but makes it more enjoyable for the user. It is the same with things like the Darth Vader minifigure helmet, without that there would probably be no Star Wars. Yet think how many basic parts LEGO have sold in the last 25+ years because of Star Wars sets and how many other things those parts have been used to build. Any modern set can be used to build more than just the intended model. Just like vintage sets. And as to your claim there were no specialised parts in the past, why do you not recognize parts such as monorail track and motors, train tracks and other associated parts like the steam train drive rod holder (in my mind as I bought one last week), various Homemaker parts, and so on.

Alternatively they could do "for adults" and "for children". Which is essentially what they do through the pricing structure. I totally disagree with your analysis of the new way as "having a bunch of parts which serve little purpose outside their intended use". The majority of modern parts can be used in more than one way.

So that shows that the Blacksmith wasn't that popular despite the already reasonable price per part and if it is still available for less than that now then people don't value it very highly. So why would LEGO want to do a similar regular retail theme if people are not buying a Castle(ish) set with a PPP of 7.5c when they can use the BDP way of selling 50000 units of a $200-400 Castle set 3 or 4 times a year to AFOLs, with no new parts necessary, no designer salaries or associated costs (aside from the designer fee), and produce just enough copies. Clearly it is better to get a fixed number of sets ordered by people that want them, then produce the right number without needing to advertise or block shelf space for years while they don't sell particularly well to the general public. And then they can concentrate on producing what does sell to the general public for their retail sets.

OK, but I'm not sure what you think the comparison shows. Blacksmith 2164 parts (4 figs) £160. Released 2021. Price adjusted after inflation - now, £200. Alchemist 2319 parts (9 figs) £180. Pre-order closed but not yet released. But yes, if LEGO did retail Castle sets then they would probably kill off their big ticket sets sold though BDP. Why would they want that? It is working fine for sales to adults. And their current in-house themes sell well to kids. Why change something that is working well? They can be a replacement for regular sets because that is exactly what they are. LEGO has grown the market by having the adult market separate to the kid market.

For modern sets, yes. For vintage sets, rebrickable. And I think there were cases in the in-between years sets where LEGO published incomplete inventories and so they were supplemented by existing data that was from other sites (including rebrickable).

It doesn't matter if it is a theme or not. Some Castle collectors spend $1000+ a year on BDP sets, probably more than they would if they bought one of each set and a few extra battle packs from a regular retail Castle theme if it existed. So it is good for LEGO and those adult buyers are fairly satisifed with what they can buy when they want Castle products, even though they don't have the Castle badge on them.

That part was only in sets in the early 2000s. An identical torso under a different element ID was in other contemporary sets and later sets but it came with a different name of "1205" in those. There is also no image of "614" on brickset. You have to be a bit careful with those older inventories as sometimes they are wrong and get copied from site to site and they cannot be corrected by checking in the instruction booklets as they did not have a parts list in the back. It would seem weird to bring back a very old part number and name for a BAM part when exactly the same design with a different ID and name had been used only just before.

Yes, LKC and BDP has shown that Castle in particular is very popular with adults, and that is why LEGO is concentrating on making such sets at price points for adults and their sales data no doubt shows this works. And they are supplemented by one off sets in other themes like Creator, CMF and PAB for army builders. If they do a regular retail theme using the same ideas in cheaper sets, they start to cannibalise their expensive set sales. Well yes, they could have loads of small themes instead of large ones. But where there is no existing fanbase it causes confusion as to what can be played with what. And as I noted on the other thread just now, LEGO is looking to license its properties to other companies (or co-producers). I imagine that it is far easier to license a few very popular IPs to companies producing clothes and homewares or movies and TV series, rather than trying to many properties each with a smaller number of fans.

You can also get UV film to put on windows. It depends on the window size, but that can often be cheaper than a bespoke UV filter acrylic case.

Licensed and unlicensed are very different in the way they can be marketed though meaning it is not possible. It would be an absolute mess if LEGO had 20 unlicensed minifigure themes each with just a few sets in each running concurrently. Every LEGO set has the LEGO logo on and every set promotes the LEGO brand and, more importantly, makes money for LEGO. If LEGO only sold unlicensed sets, they'd lose a significant portion of their customers. Being a Fan of LEGO Lord of the Rings or LEGO Star Wars is not any different to being a Fan of LEGO City or LEGO Modulars. They are all customers that buy LEGO sets. And LEGO makes money from them all. They need tgem all. If LEGO cut Star Wars and all the Disney properties, fans of LEGO Star Wars won't become fans of LEGO Raven Knights, they will become fans of Mega Star Wars or whoever partners with Disney to make brick building sets of their properties. And LEGO will soon lose market share as consumers see that Mega produce all the licences now and that would probably hit their budgets for unlicensed sets too. Go to a LEGO show and look at the popular MOCs on display. There will be lots of unlicensed builds and there will be lots of licensed builds. There is plenty of space for both to coexist. And LEGO know that for their sales too. LEGO concentrate on making sets that will make them most money from as many customers as possible, not on trying to make people fans of their unlicensed themes.

So why do you keep going on about how many licensed themes there are? It is a complete irrelevance to the unlicensed side. LEGO's output is about 50:50 when it comes to sets (not themes). 20 licensed themes works OK because small themes of one or just a few sets are sustainable and even sensible because they can easily advertise those few sets to existing fans of that franchise by using the franchise name. Such small themes aren't really even themes, it is just a badge on the box to highlight the set to fans of that franchise. Whereas marketing for unlicensed themes is different. There are no existing fans for a new theme until that theme is created. And so it makes no sense to have small unlicensed themes of just a couple of sets as they don't seem to fit into any bigger plan and it makes it look like they are incompatible with other sets if they are from a different theme. And that is the strength of combining unlicensed themes together, so if a kid likes a set in Ninjago, then they get to choose from 50 or so other sets with a lot of variety in styles between those sets. Whereas if one set was in a theme called Ancient Architecture and another is in a theme called Future Tech, it appears that they are not designed to go together and there is less for the kid to choose from. I imagine that is why LEGO consolidated their themes. So rather than counting and complaining that there are too many licensed themes, you should be complaining that there are not enough unlicensed themes. Although it is simply not realistic to expect the number of licensed and unlicensed themes to be the same due to the way they are marketed. For the number of sets required for a theme to "work", you can sort of look at recent past data. Monkey Kid has had just over 50 sets in 5 years, and ran at 13-12-11-10 then 9 sets per year (then 2). Dreamzzz has been at similar numbers per year for 3 years (excluding small bag sets). So LEGO seems to think that an unlicensed play theme needs to have at least 10 sets per year over at least three years to be worth doing. So to do a new theme, LEGO has got to be confident that they can sustain probably 30-50 sets over 3-5 years. That is very different to a licensed property where they can do just one or a couple of sets and then leave it at that.

Yet you are complaining about the ratio of the number of licensed to unlicensed themes, and have even said that it would be good start if the badging and hence number of license themes were reduced to reduce that ratio even if all the sets stay the same. If you want to complain that the number of unlicensed themes is too low, then go for it. But that is not what you are complaining about. You are complaining about the ratio of licensed to unlicensed themes and the number of licensed themes. Reducing the number of licensed themes changes that ratio but does absolutely nothing to solve your problem and increase the diversity in unlicensed themes. The problem is not the number of licensed themes, or the number of licensed sets, or the number of unlicensed sets. The problem is that the evergreen unlicensed themes have grown and swallowed up the themes you want. Ninjago is a very diverse theme and it has replaced the 'action' themes of the past. You are getting diversity in unlicensed set types, just within one theme. You seem to want diversity in unlicensed themes and an increase in the number of unlicensed themes. Yet you hate on the licensed side because they have what you want - a larger number of themes and so diversity in the themes offered. There are two ways to increase the ratio of unlicensed to licensed themes. Increase the number of unlicensed or decrease the number of licensed. Why do you focus on the latter and not the former when that does not solve your problem? The ratio itself is not the problem. Making others worse off does not make you better off. The real problem you have is that children into unlicensed sets these days appear to be happy with the current core themes as those themes all sell well. They don't miss the variety in themes of decades ago, because the variety in the types of sets they want are available, just within a few modern themes.

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean nobody wants them. And if they didn't make Wednesday or Wicked sets, then fans (predominantly younger girls) interested in those themes might not buy LEGO at all. So LEGO lose selling to that part of the market. Have you seen how much shelf space Wicked and Wednesday take up compared to Ninjago? It is tiny. And yet you want to exclude those fans from buying LEGO in the belief that LEGO would make more for you to buy? LEGO has expanded to cater for others, not just fans of the classic themes. Just because you refuse to believe that people different to you should be allowed to enjoy LEGO does not mean those people do not exist.

The unlicensed side of LEGO don't get many themes, and so yes, there is little diversity there. But this is not the fault of licensed themes. The licensed side is actually doing things far better, with lots of themes with small numbers of sets. That is, there is good diversity in licensed themes. This is something you seem to want for unlicensed sets, but are constantly hating on licensed sets for having what you want. It doesn't work like that though. People tend to be fans of a franchise and not any franchise. Just like some LEGO fans are a fan of a particular theme not any unlicensed theme. I've said it many times before, the real issue is that LEGO has merged all the unlicensed ideas into their core themes of City, Ninjago, Friends and Creator. They are making sets similar to those of the 80s and 90s, but they don't get their own theme. And this is because the market has changed. It is far easier to get sales of the unlicensed themes that have long-lasting branding and existing fans across multiple years compared to one year themes that need to start again every year. This is where licensed and unlicensed are different. They can do a one off set or small theme for a franchise with an existing fanbase and it will probably do well for the year or two it is on the shelves, because of the existing fan base. LEGO knows that fans of the original minifigure themes tend to be adults, and has decided that those fans are better catered for through BDP, IDEAS and ICONS. Yes, but then that is why LEGO is more popular these days. They make sets designed to appeal to other people, not just young and early teen boys. I don't see why that is a problem. In a toy store that sells lots of different toys, I am usually only interested in a small part of the store. If LEGO stuck to just a core of original themes, there might be more of what you like in each LEGO store but there would be far fewer stores and they wouldn't be in prime locations. How many LEGO stores where there in the older days?

And I am surprised as to why people think the ratio in the number of licensed to unlicensed themes matter. The problem is not the number of licensed themes, but the number of unlicensed themes. LEGO not doing small licensed themes like Wednesday, Wicked or Fortnight is not going to make any difference to the unlicensed themes they offer. Hating on themes you don't like is not going to introduce things you want. I don't understand why someone wanting an unlicensed theme that LEGO doesn't think is worth producing would be happy if someone else is excluded from enjoying something that they like in LEGO.