MAB

Yes, it wasn't a bad start but there were too many that had poor gameplay and weren't that good to play or were copies of traditional games and way more expensive than normal versions. If a game is not fun to play, being made from lego doesn't make it better. You can of course use the parts for something else, but that doesn't help the game. Some people may see the "make up your own rules" that they all seemed to contain as being flexible about gameplay, although I thought it was more that lego didn't play test the games enough to determine the rules / gameplay. Is the HP set actually a game? I thought this was sold as a scene from the movies. They have tried licenses before too in games. LOTR is not bad, Batman was a bit rubbish, Hogwarts was OK, SW was OK. But all of those seem to be more about collecting the microfigures than being a good game. Similarly various chess sets based on Castle and Pirates. Chess is chess. When I play, I prefer a real chess set than a Lego based one. But again, they were good for army building when discounted. Same with the recent LUDO set that went 5o 50% off through lego.com, good parts pack but no better than regular ludo set and still overpriced if used as the game even when heavily discounted. I imagine many of these were bought for parts rather than as a game to play. I think hard-core gamers ignored Heroica as it was pricey (even compared to role playing games) and fiddly to play. And lego fans ignored it as they weren't into that type of game. No doubt there was some overlap in the Venn diagram between those groups but yes, it is rarely spoken about now. I think there is another issue there too, longevity. LEGO have a reputation of not sticking with something and will often miss out things if they don't fit with the brand. Look at The Simpsons, missing out Skinner but putting in Edna. No Moe, Barney, Lenny or Carl. Or LOTR, no Eowyn or Witch King, but put in Mouth of Sauron. No Gondor. The best role playing games are developed over time, with new adaptations to keep people interested. Lego treated Heroica as here it is, a complete game and you'll never get anything else to expand it or add to gameplay. That is probably a big reason it is rarely talked about now. They are not an RPG company willing to back their game longer term. They are more in and out. Would people still play D&D or MTG if nothing further was produced after the first couple of years? I doubt it. The companies believed in and backed their games. Lego doesn't.

And if you do cook breakfast in City, it will almost certainly lead to a fire!

I'm not sure I do know what you mean by dolls in this context. To me dolls are humanoid characters in toy form. Minidolls are humans with somewhat realistic body shapes. Minifigures are humans with a more blocky shape. They are all forms of doll. Which of these are dolls ... All have somewhat realistic body shapes and depict human(oid)s. To me they are all dolls. Of course boys would call the last one an action figure as they don't want to play with dolls, as they are for girls. But it is still a doll. How many boys would play with Ken in the middle? Is he an action figure or a doll? Call Ken a doll and he is for girls. Call him an action figure and a boy would probably play with him. And that is partly what the article was about. It is OK if a boy wants to play with a minidoll. They might not be primarily aimed at boys, but it is still OK if a boy wants to play with it. And their is no need to call the inhabitants of Heartlake min action figures or similar to try to change the appeal.

The price really depends on what the pieces are. Sometimes it can be reasonably cheap to buy wall panels and trapdoors, especially as many adults don't want them. As to creativity, it again depends what you mean by creativity. If kids are moving on from duplo castles then large wall panels (with or without windows), BURPs and so on are great, as they can be built into a castle relatively quickly so the kid does not lose interest. A big pile of small bricks may lead to a more creative build if they are skilled enough but you don't want to put a young kid off, especially if they want to build fast then creatively play.

Yeah, the same person got it to 10K three times!

So what do you mean by get rid of minidolls? Do you mean actually get rid of them, or just rename them. Plenty of dolls are bought for boys. They just have the name action figure.

That doesn't make sense. To get people to buy Friends for boys they should cancel Friends? Friends are minidolls. Get rid of them and you get rid of Friends and you end up with just a pinkish City line.

My point was it used to be 3 series of 16 generic unlicensed characters. Now we get just one lot of 12 per year, so there is very little discussion throughout the year about what they might be. The licensed series might have the odd part that is interesting, but typically very little as they tend to be highly licensed character specific.

What does that mean? As they frequently "cancel" Ninjago in "the current form". Storylines change, locations and villains change. One person's "cancelling the current form" is another person's "new series". Changing storylines is different to cancelling the entire theme. LEGO games - especially ones without LEGO pieces in them - seemed to fail miserably. They also cancelled the games line (the ones with real pieces). Cards and board games might be relatively cheap to produce compared to LEGO parts, but if they go down the route of cheap cost, the games will fail again. If a game has little thought in gameplay, it will be a dud. If they don't invest in producing a decent game (using LEGO parts or not), the fact that a crummy game costs little to produce is not that important. If there are no actual pieces, it won't even be bought as a parts pack when they need to slash prices to clear them.

Why would they phase out the minidoll, when their own research indicated that they were filling a missing area in their product portfolio? Why does Friends need to be cohesive with City? They are different themes aimed at different groups. All the bricks already are cohesive, just that the figures have a different style. No.

Yeah. In the past it was 3x a year for 16 figures each time. Now, once a year for 12 figures.

The length of time it ran for is probably less important than what was in the approved submission. If a UK The Office set got to 10K and was approved, it would be outrageous if they later changed it to the US version. Not that there is that much difference between the characters by the time you have minifigurised them. And decorations around the office can easily be changed if they use US graphics (Froggy 101, etc)

That's fine, of course people will buy what they can use. But to say Friends and other minidoll themes and Minecraft has failed because you don't use them is incredibly short sighted. Why do you think these themes still exist? It is not because they fail when it comes to sales. Personally, I find Minecraft sets a good way to get 2x4 and 2x2 bricks in greens, greys, browns and so on.

https://www.brothers-brick.com/2017/10/12/right-tool-right-job/

Although they will represent specific characters in the set, the figures are likely to look rather generic in that you probably wouldn't recognize them outside of The Office branding. Michael Scott is someone in a suit. So is David Brent. So just get a head with a beard, then you can switch Michael Scott to David Brent. A head without glasses turns Dwight into Gareth. Blonde hair and Pam becomes Dawn. Jim won't need changing to become Tim.

Why not? Elves worked very well, and was both minidoll and action.

When BAM were new, some stores used to put the minifig parts from broken down store displays in there. I remember buying some expensive SW complete minifigs on one visit.

No. There are loads of other boring ideas (especially if you are not interested in the subject matter) in the list that were rejected.

In your case, it is not a leftover. It is redrawn and so a new (and different) part. They produce a lot of old CMF designs for BAM. Sometimes they change the prints slightly, and sometimes print them on different coloured parts.

They chose the bigger of the two The Office sets in this review, so I reckon there will be a decent number of figures in the final set. If they wanted to do a smaller set, then they would probably have gone with the smaller submission given how similar they were. A lot of the prints need not be new, as many of the City style torsos would fit office workers, so that could keep design costs down if they do go for a large number of minifigs.

Tell that to the builders of the modulars that spam every type of building they can think of.

On the positive side for The Office, there is probably not much that needs designing. They probably don't even need to do much work on the minifigure designs as they have a number of suits and office type clothes already. A few decorated tiles to brighten up the walls with notes and posters and they are done.

Concerning the number of minifigures in The Office - I reckon they are going to go large with it and produce an IDEAS set with the largest number of minifigures ever (and what a good press release for it right there). They selected the bigger submission out of the two in the review panel. If they were going to go small and just do 4-5 figures, they would have selected the smaller version.

Pink tax isn't anything to do with the colour, aside from linking the colour pink to female. The pink tax is gender based pricing, the pricing of items for women higher than items for men or more general items used by both genders.

Given the shape of the house, the placement of the chimney, the windows, the door, even the external timbers, I think it is pretty clear the designer wanted this to be the Disney version.