MAB

All the wooden stuff might have been where LEGO started but to me, it is not LEGO. That's why I'm not that bothered about the 90th anniversary. The 60th a few years ago was more important to me as it was the anniversary of what LEGO is famous for - the brick.

That isn't the hotdog knights faction. That is the hotdog with mustard knights faction, after they split from the hotdog with ketchup knights. Yeah, it has been up a day or so, with many interesting pieces gone. That may be why that guy's post back in April had the order so messed up with many knight pieces missing. Maybe they were never meant to be there in the first place and they didn't have stock, so those parts just got scrubbed from his order. With CMF at £3.50 and these at about £2.00, I can understand why they don't want to allow online bulk purchasing of cool army builder parts. But the service does become a bit useless then.

I wouldn't imagine that many people into LEGO but not into D&D wold suddenly start playing D&D and buying other non-LEGO D&D items if LEGO did D&D figures/sets. Whereas I can imagine some players of D&D would start using more LEGO figures (both D&D and other existing and future fantasy themes) if D&D specific LEGO figures/sets existed. In that sense there is an unbalance in what the two companies bring to the table and would also get out of it. LEGO fans would buy D&D LEGO and D&D fans would buy LEGO D&D. When they have some official LEGO D&D characters, the D&D fans might buy more non-D&D LEGO characters to supplement their use and not use other styles of D&D miniatures. But would LEGO fans buy more non-LEGO D&D items to facilitate their use of D&D LEGO? I can see D&D fans buying elves or wizards or trolls or Ninjago or Nexo villains to create their play characters, especially if they match the style of their official LEGO D&D characters, but I cannot really see LEGO fans buying rule books or paintable miniatures and so on to supplement their use of D&D LEGO characters/sets. That is where it is different to one off Optimus Prime. Neither company has anything to lose there. Transformers fans are not likely to stop buying Transformers as there are no other similar LEGO products that would take the place of their Transformer purchases.

The social media teasers from LEGO are now out.

This may be unpopular, especially with the 90th anniversary. But I don't like old LEGO toys. Wooden ducks, elephants and sewing machines. Inflatable turtles and fish. Diecast cars, trucks, bikes and people. Even old CA bricks. LEGO bricks are the best out there, and that is what interests me. There are far better wooden toys, diecast toys and so on than those produced by LEGO. Plus they are not compatible with the LEGO I like. Sure they are part of LEGO history, but whenever I come across a vintage pre-ABS LEGO item, I sell it. I don't keep it just because it has LEGO written on it.

Not really. You can sand the thigh area before applying, but decals are likely to get scratched or peel right off if you do a lot of posing the figure as they are still quite thick (but thinner than most vinyl).

Yes, I know. A big issue here though is that they (WOTC/Hasbro) currently sell both the game/rules/books and (very expensive) miniatures to collect, paint and play with alongside the games if you wish. Would they be willing to undermine the miniatures side of the model by officially suggesting people purchase and use LEGO figures instead. This feels a bit different to LEGO selling a large, one-off and probably more nostalgia driven model of Optimus Prime, rather than releasing many Transformer sets that could replace regular Transformers toys.

Probably because a theme is more than just the style of the minifigures. It is fairly clear the dragon-like characters are antagonists against the core Ninjago characters. Presumably there will be a leader and then soldier types. One thing that let Chima down in the story telling was the large number of tribes with many named characters each. It was quite hard to follow who was who, outside of the main characters. Even worse, if you didn't watch the show, it was not always obvious what the sides were, which tribes were against which others. Whereas the Ninjago sets make it quite clear without knowing the storyline. Then there was the change of allegiances, again confusing for kids. Although some may say not defining the storyline is good as it allows kids to use their imagination as to what is going on, it is important for the initial buy in. If you are given a load of different tribes, how do kids know how to start making up stories if they don't understand which are allies or opponents (and why). Ninjago frequently rotates the villains, and we have had snakes before. The dragon heads look good, but to me they are an extension of what has gone before in Ninjago rather than the recycling of Chima.

I really hope they don't do Dungeons and Dragons. I don't see the need for it. I would much prefer them to do an in-house fantasy theme with elves, warriors, rogues, wizards, trolls, goblins, and the odd dragon.

It is interesting to see how girls of different ages play with them. With my extremely unrepresentative sample of one (my daughter), she wasn't really into LEGO that much when <5 year old even though her older brother had it. But did get interested in Friends and later Elves. When playing with them, she wasn't that bothered by the building experience but much more the role play afterwards. They could really have been any toy brand with a pre-built house or boat or whatever. She didn't seem to worry about articulation at all, and would just "bob bob bob" the figures along and sit them down or stand them up. But she would nearly always pick up a minidoll rather than a minifig. Whereas now she is older ~10 years old, she does take note of the posability of the figures much more and has virtually wiped out all the minidolls in favour of minifigs, but retains the Friends builds, along with new builds she has created. On this very small sample, it seems to me that minidolls do a very good job for attracting younger girls but that there are issues with them as they grow older. Not that minifigures are perfect in any sense, but no doubt the posability and the customization possibilities help here. A downside of Friends parts is due to one of their benefits - a range of skin tones. It is great multiple skin colours are represented but at the same time that really limits the ability to customise them as nearly all the parts have a specific skin tone when compared to minifigure parts. Of course, minifig parts are often yellow skin (for in-house ranges) which helps create some uniformity but even then legs and torsos often don't have skin tone printed on them so can be used for "fleshies" and vice-versa.

I read quite a few lego forums and I find there are lots of positive comments about Friends these days, especially concerning the range of builds and their designs. These seem to get more love than City these days. Of course, the colours and minidolls still get some criticism but I think that is mainly due to incompatibility with other City style ranges. When it first came out, quite a bit of the driticism was from women rather than just men, due to the stereotypical nature, both stereotypical roles and colours. But the roles have changed, with sports, sciences, space, tech and so on and not just shopping and spas.

It may also be that they can produce more parts per cycle by changing the orientation of the parts within the new mould.

Heavy machinery, manual labour and emergency services are also over represented. If you want realism, prepare for office buildings and shops and of course rows upon rows of similar houses before you get anything different.

Why is it confusing? Do all LEGO women have to have a visible bust and a narrow waist (which is narrower than their daughters' ?)

Yes, I know. That is why they are there - to show that in many cases gender neutral ones typically look just as good as gender specific. Of course there are situations where it makes no or little sense to be gender neutral, and in that case there is no reason to make it as gender neutral. Like these: They could then go towards more multi-purpose sets like these by including an extra hair and head (or use dual sided male / female heads if needs be) .... If they did this in a City set, and someone had just that set and wanted the two adults to be a mum and a dad, or two mums, or two dads, and their single child is a boy, or a girl, then (nearly) everyone is happy. You want all the police to be male? No problem. You want them all to be female? No problem. You want them to be mixed? No problem. It doesn't have to be every set, where it makes sense they can still easily do male specific and female specific characters. To me, this female minifigure is no less of a female because she does not have a female specific torso. It is also used for a male. And in fact that torso has been used in 10 figures, only one/two (it depends how you make the figure in the birthday set) of them male (above).To me, prints like that are ideal when possible.

So out of interest, which of these feel off?

What a collection. They would look even better all hanging from the ceiling!

I was pretty much the same. For MOCs, I still preferred to use BL as most parts I buy in quantity tend to be cheaper there than on B+P.

Yes. You need to buy opaque (white) waterslide paper instead of clear. One issue with waterslide decals is that you still need to be neat at cutting out, even with transparent backgrounds. You still see the cut edges like you do stickers.

It might have also meant that they allowed you to order bricks they didn't have in stock (it has happened before, but not to that scale) or they wanted to slow down the number of orders to clear the backlog so reduce the number available. Closing it completely without notice would have started even more rumours, so I guess that is why they don't go down that route.

It could be that they are re-evaluating the bricks and pieces type side. They are probably realising how many people are ordering parts there for MOCs, resale, or just collecting. Those parts were/are hand picked, hence the massive delays now. For years, it has taken a few days to pick orders before shipping. Now it is weeks. It may also have an impact on their ability to handle the missing parts / broken parts orders. And of course, it means you don't need to buy sets to get (unlicensed) minifigs.

Why is it castle vs replicas and not castle vs The Muppets or castle vs Star Wars or castle vs plants or castle vs Super Heroes or castle vs space.... there are many themes that LEGO makes that are not castle. That they don't make many castle sets right now suggests that they don't think there is a good business case to make many castle sets right now.

That's not really true, is it. LEGO release many sets that aren't shoes, consoles, globes, typewriters or maps. To me, they prefer to try to reach as big a market as possible and this means that they will release niche sets, especially where they don't do anything else remotely like it in their range and more so if it means another big worldwide brand will cross promote LEGO.

Totally different times. LEGO is almost a different company now, so popular that they can charge those prices and enough people will pay to buy what lego can produce.

Then the issue is should they hire more staff to manually pick parts if they don't make much money from it, or should they just run a more automated service for a much narrower range of basic parts and not offer the wider range for sale. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up shutting down the bricks and pieces sales side of the operation, keeping the old PAB style selection and retaining the missing pieces section for what it was originally meant to be, for replacing missing and/or damaged parts in new sets. Or of course they could increase prices even further if they need new facilities and staff to man it. The delays have become a bit of a joke and customer services seem to have to deal with queries about when such and such a part will become available. Killing off the sales of new parts would reduce the amount of queries about part availability, speed up the service for missing parts and also encourage people to buy full sets for the parts they want or buy parts from bricklink, where sellers will often have bought the new sets for new parts at full RRP and LEGO takes a second cut through fees too. I hope they don't close it down permanently, as it has been a useful source for parts, but it does seem to have grown way larger than it used to be (in terms of customers not parts) and hence broken itself. It also does seem to have shifted habits from buying sets to parts. I know of quite a few MOC builders (myself included) that rarely buy sets now for parts when you can buy the necessary parts direct.