MAB

It has been one of those days where you find a bag of stuff hidden at the back of a storage drawer...

So what it meant was that they could not fulfill all my PAB order and have marked various now out of stock parts as backordered which I guess means that they will eventually be cancelled.

My order (UK) from 22nd November has finally changed to "in process" rather than "in warehouse". I don't think I've ever seen that status before. My orders always go from "in warehouse" to "shipped".

That wouldn't be fair. I'd have to dress up to qualify, whereas my brother would easily pass as a hobbit without trying. :-)

I agree, short games are fine. It was more the "aimed at young kids" part. A game of 'Love Letter' is very different to a game of 'Pop to the Shops'.

So do I, and in fact I don't think many adults are "kidults" in the sense of being interested in stuff that is marketed towards children. Especially in terms of LEGO, many of the products adults are buying are now specifically marketed towards adults not children. LEGO may have traditionally aimed products at children but that doesn't mean that all their products are toys or for children. An adult creating a MOC or following instructions to build a model using LEGO is no more a kid than an adult doing the same thing with Meccano, or scratch building, or creating art with felt tip pens. I also play a lot of board games, often aimed at 14+. Those are also typically grouped in with toys yet they are very different to kids playing a 15 minute game aimed at young kids. But then, video games often get classed as toys too even though some of them are 18+.

Adult sets are obviously more expensive, but there are huge numbers of adults buying LEGO with very different habits. I know of adults buying one or two sets a year. I don't think the adult market is necessarily all stereotypical AFOL that spend $1000s a year. Just like there are kids that get maybe a couple of small sets a year through to the other extreme where the kid gets large numbers of sets. For every $700 set, there are about 400 sub-$50 sets, and about 300 of them will be aimed at 5-12 year old kids.

There are various reasons to do it. It used to be quite a community type feeling on day 1 for a new big set in a store, and it also used to be that if you wanted it first then you had to get it from the store rather than wait for delivery. But I think that has diminished now since LEGO gives out so many copies way in advance of release day to people they know will give positive reviews that people that purchase to review cannot compete for the youtube review income. And there are so many big sets, it is not really a special event any more.

Definitely, it is a bit of that. I still enjoy building LEGO but I really don't like the buying side as much now because LEGO news is everywhere. Sets are built and reviewed months before they are released and sometimes I'm bored with them before I've actually seen one in store, let alone bought it. And even worse are the youtube experts that keep getting recommended to me that have been into LEGO for a whole year. But there is the advantage that I still have plenty of sealed sets from back then that those people that have driven up the price of LEGO are willing to pay way more than I ever expected they would be worth. I think I prefer buying used LEGO at bootsales / flea markets more than buying new sets these days. At least that way there is some excitement about what might be in there.

Customers already let it work. People set alarms for internet shopping and take a day off work and queue for hours for in-store shopping. Just to get the precious.

Nice. The BF legs go surprisingly well with the blue arm torsos.

I'm going to go for 2012. This was a sweet spot between middle and modern times. It was the start of LOTR. Modulars were now taking off and becoming detailed - it was the year of Town Hall but past ones like Fire Brigade were still available. Advanced Models / Creator Expert was doing well, sets like Emerald Night were still (just about) available on shelves often heavily discounted, there was the Winter Village collection doing well by now but all still available (just), Sopwith Camel, VW Van, Maersk Train. Friends gave something for younger girls. There were fun but cheap Super Heroes (DC) sets. A lot of decent small Creator sets. CMF was peaking at Series 6-7-8. Ninjago had some decent sets. Star Wars had relatively cheap swooshable ships. There was Joust for Castle fans plus battle packs and Kingdoms Chess - the ultimate battle pack. Some of the better games were released. Cuusoo / Ideas was taking off. Monster Fighters, Dino. PQ and Alien Conquest were still available, . There were some fantasic GWP with low thresholds. Here, it was easy to get lots of great polybags with a newspaper purchase. And best of all, LEGO wasn't all that popular (still before The LEGO Movie) so there was no rush to buy, easy discounts available, and often heavy discounts and LEGO was not over-saturated like it is today with seemingly everyone into it.

With the official reveal of Blue Scaled-Up Astronaut Minifigure today, I have already seen a couple of comments wishing the CS panel was done with a clear sticker instead of printed so that it would be possible to do scaled-up CS minifigures in other colours. The printed blue panel will no doubt be ideal for creating bases or ships, but if someone wants other colour large figures then it is useless. It shows there are often two sides wanting different things.

This depends if you are thinking about individual sets or in the longer term. If a customer misses out on a GWP because they are too slow, then yes they will probably wait until they can get a better offer on that set such as double Insiders or some other more general GWP. For that set, they might wait or be annoyed they missed the GWP. But what are they going to do next time and the time after that? They know they must buy on the first day or in the first few hours, so they end up buying on day 1. It wouldn't surprise me if LEGO are slowly increasing the numbers of day 1 GWPs, slowly changing the behaviour of buyers as they are conditioned into purchasing on day 1 at full RRP. They need some to miss out to keep the hype or FOMO, while slowly getting more people to change behaviour.

Unless you want the unprinted piece on show. If you are hiding it inside, chances are you can use a different part or colour anyway.

And the Pokemon one.

Kids are different, as are adults. At one extreme, some like to build but then don't really play whereas at the other extreme some like to play but don't like to build as much. If a kid wants to dismantle these sets into basic parts to rebuild into something else, nothing is stopping them, just like a normal set. But this also gives kids that prefer play over rebuilding a chance to quickly mashup their set into something else.

Minifigs are for display too! :-)

Without a new mould, the shields were always going to be a compromise. Personally, I prefer the ovoid to rectangular, especially from a distance.

It depends on the options. If no battle pack vs one battle pack (exclusive as a set but all parts come from the big set, so nobody misses any exclusive minifigs if they are not day one buyers), I'd go for one!

If I was designing a GWP I'd also go for a battle pack. Maybe 2 Gondor soldiers plus 2 orcs, or 4 Gondor soldiers. Nothing exclusive (aside from the packaging for sealed box collectors) but still something useful and valuable for anyone wanting to fill their display / army build.

Some kids enjoy mashups. Many of vehicles in Dreamzzz are mashups so presumably their research shows enough kids like it. It is not like there aren't enough regular vehicles in City for those that want realism. I guess these are for the kids that want imaginative rather than realistic play. If that fire engine needs to put out a forest fire, stick on some wings and it is suddenly a fire plane. Having them modular also means it is quick and easy to switch bits out or add extra sections in, without needing to totally take the model apart then rebuild. So good for kids that prefer the play to the building side.

Like doing a free LOTR brickheadz set but announcing it will be released on general sale later? If it is $650, $30 is about 5% so similar to waiting for double Insiders points. It really takes away the early 'must get'. I think one of the reasons Rivendell has lasted so long is because of the poor opening offer which has led to long consistent sales rather than a strong initial peak. Of course, that is either good or bad depending on viewpoint.

Bingo!

They both feel too important to be the GWP and likely to cause complaints if not available. But I guess as they are missing from the main set, it could be one of them. The Stranger Things GWP wasn't really part of the main set, same with Bag End, Death Star it was but fairly minor. Whatever it is, it will cause complaints.