MAB

https://brickset.com/sets/subtheme-Magazine-Gift Brickset keeps track of the sets / bags. There is not really much to discuss about the magazines. Most of them are fairly generic comic-type magazines. Some puzzles, a couple of stories, advertising, often a simple game like pairs that you can cut out and that is about it. The better ones as actual magazines are the "Explorer" ones. Each one is based around a theme and encourages kids to build around that theme, with both the Creator polybag they get and bricks from their own collection. The real reason for buying them (as adults) is usually the "free" set. Especially when they do gifts like Cloud City Luke...

Lady Liberty has sand green hair and tiara. And if you loosen your search to include headgear as well as hair, the other colours are covered.

At least that was all they were doing. When BAMs first started up I saw some kids sticking minifigure heads into their nostrils, then shooting them out. I opted not to get any that day.

Remember also the first time bricklink did it through the ADP they had just 3000 sets of each, and some took a long time to sell.

Clearly all three have a shot at winning. LEGO chose three great but very different designs. To me, the viking one is the ultra safe bet - similar to numerous past IDEAS sets just a slightly different theme. The underwater one is the slightly quirky one - a bit like ship in a bottle and birds. The golf is more of a gamble - it's like the maze - an expensive version of an executive desk toy. All three will probably sell if picked, if they manipulate the results then it is just down to what LEGO / Target want to sell. And if they don't divulge the results, nobody will know. I can see any of the three winning. If there is a fixed number to be produced no matter which wins, I can see Target wanting the vikings produced - the largest set will bring more revenue.

I doubt LEGO care about average incomes or what poor people earn. The incomes that matter are those of the people that buy LEGO. The speed that the recent BDP sets sold show that there are still plenty of people on incomes that can pay relatively high prices. I think they price to the local market, looking at local competition and sales outlets, which are different in different places. They will price to maximise income for a relatively fixed amount of product. They could sell more (to poorer people) if they lowered the price, but that would mean lower sales prices to all, plus becoming less of a premium brand.

If a solution needs a thick base but you want it to appear thin, one solution is to use two bases. Use black as the main thick base and have a thinner more colourful base on top. The black base tends to visually disappear as the eye is drawn to the model on the base on top. I've done this in the past when I wanted valleys or pits in build.

One thing with the model here is that there is a large flat area with just a little hanging down from the edges. The flat area does not have to be a perfect size, just slightly smaller than the flat area of the build. Being a few mm smaller is not an issue. Same with the height, so long as the plinth is very slightly higher than the overhang parts then it will take the weight and the overhang parts can be supported through their attachments to whatever is on the plinth rather than by the ground. Again if they a 1mm out they will just float above the ground surface and that will barely notice on something this size. The real issue is when you want to join supported sections together at different heights. That is when tolerances become more important.

I don't think these 'back from the dead' sets anything to do with being original concepts. LEGO cannot sell licensed sets this way, without permission of the license holder. So it has to be original concepts only by default.

If they are boxes for the ADP and BDP sets, you can get a fair bit for them.

That is only a pro if it makes you happy that only another 9999 people have the same bit of cardboard packaging as you.

And now you have to guess which price they will charge when they ship it. https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/support/main.page?utm_content=subnav They were planning to sell instructions for unreleased ones that didn't make it. That got changed to investigating releasing them. But nothing has come of it. It might be that they think there will be a backlash against them if they try to sell instructions when others are given away. Plus there is no way to protect them. It is probably easier to just release them back to the designers and let them sell them or give them away, whatever they prefer. I can imagine some designers giving them away, with a note along the lines of if you enjoyed this build then vote for my other IDEAS submissions here, here and here.

I doubt there is much of a market for a generic tennis shoe done in LEGO. Whereas there is a market for Adidas collectables including from non-LEGO fans. Similarly, I doubt there is much of a market for a generic sports stadium. But there is a market for Barcelona branded items again including non-LEGO fans. There is probably more of a market for an unidentified 60s car, but still not as much as when combined with James Bond. Personally, I think there is more of a market for Star Wars LEGO than generic space LEGO. It then comes down to does LEGO think there is enough of a market for generic fantasy vs branded fantasy and also whether this is long term or one and done. At the moment, it appears they don't think there is enough of a market for either branded or unbranded fantasy as a whole theme. I'd like to think that there is enough of a fantasy fanbase within LEGO fans to have an in-house theme rather than resorting to bring in another license to do their minifigures and use their branding, but then space fans also think that and look at how badly the space MOC faired in the bricklink designer program compared to MOCS aligned with other subjects.

^^ LEGO's order system is often 15-60 minutes behind. Probably much worse today given they've just taken another 50000+ orders.

I don't know if other countries had the same but some were under priced for UK users, the Observatory was £180 but got changed to £246 once the threshold was reached. No wonder it sold so fast. But what price will they charge on dispatch?

I'd also go with duplo, using 8x16 duplo plates for the top layer covered in 2x4 regular bricks. An even cheaper non lego solution is a piece of wood or MDF or similar flat plinth on short legs, with the edges / rocks cascading down the sides.It doesn't even need to be cut too accurately, so long as a large area is supported so gaps near the edges don't matter.

Look at what the used set values are on bricklink. You can then probably half those values unless you decide to sort it all out. Where the sets have figures, make sure you show them. You might find someone willing to believe they are complete but you won't get the market value when mixed up like that. When buying second hand, collectors tend to want sets that have been looked after and mixing them all up suggests that they have not been looked after. Plus if they are sorted, then collectors can buy ones they want and again will be willing to pay more than for a mixed up job lot.

I also had just a bucket of lego in the 70s. A lot of my MOCs back then (never called them that at the time) were partly display models as they were buildings for railway tracks. I thought nothing of writing on my bricks too. If I needed a sign, I just wrote it on with a marker pen. It was that and really bad red and blue spaceships for Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, to be played with using other toy brands, totally out of scale but who cares.

Isn't it amazing how things change with time. Something that would never happen has happened. It just took slightly over a decade.

Modern interpretation is incredibly important. When those original wooden toys were being painted, did they think in the future kids would sit in front of TV screens immersed in a virtual game against someone on the other side of the world. When creating those first LEGO bricks, that kids (and adults) would be building with virtual copies of them on a computer instead of using the physical bricks. If they stuck with one definition of what play is, they probably wouldn't exist in the same way today. LEGO caters for way more interests now than they did 30 years ago, 60 years ago or 90 years ago.

Or you just buy three copies and display all three at once! No doubt some people will display Optimus Prime but I imagine some people will also enjoy transforming him and playing with him just like if he was a real toy transformer.

I think half-and-half is probably more likely than cutting the size of a series to 6. There is presumably a point at which it makes no sense to do a series with so few characters in considering sales are likely to be significantly lower unless they put in army builders (and those licenses are not really army builders). With so few in a series, they might as well just release them as a minifigure gift set like the TRU packs, Target cubes, or even their old in-house minifigure packs. It wouldn't surprise me that if they had only six characters for more Muppets or Sesame Street and nothing else to pair it with, then we would get repeats of previous characters in different outfits. Just like they did with Simpsons S1 and S2. For Muppets, Kermit in a tux and Miss Piggy in a space suit and so on would probably still be popular enough and reuse the moulds.

Defining what 'play' means in terms of lego is hard. Play is something you do for recreational pleasure. For some people, playing is continually taking something apart and rebuilding into something else. For others, building something once and storytelling with it is play. For others, building and then displaying it gives them pleasure. For others, collecting something is their playing. Different people play in different ways. There are hundreds of different sets produced every year. I think most people should be able to find a product that they can play with, however they like to play.

LEGO changed the reveal date, so BB have a partial excuse. I feel the same. I'm just too old for Transformers the first time around so I have no affinity for them. So to me this looks like a "dust catching shelf item" or whatever the phrase is that is used to describe the typewriter, globe, plants, consoles, etc... it us clearly a good rendition of the object but if you have no link to the object, it is less appealing. The fact you have to look twice to see it is made from lego shows how well each of them is designed.

By the brick, I mean the plastic items they produce. What do most people think of when they think of lego? Is it plastic bricks, or wooden toys? I think lego is more famous for plastic bricks than wooden toys. Invention has nothing to do with fame. Is Elvis famous for rock and roll? Or is he famous for furniture assembly.