MAB

Indeed. Some of my sets I enjoy because they are sealed. Am I playing well with it by displaying them? I also play the market. I enjoy picking sets I think others might want in future, especially if those sets are not wanted now and need to be discounted to sell.

Thanks, I hadn't seen those, at least it is a start getting their message across that they think Friends is for both girls and boys. Now they need a couple of boys playing it, with no girls around. LEGO is still partially / predominantly to blame though. They should acknowledge that their past advertising was wrong. They used to have a gift finder on their website until about two years ago. Friends was often brought up when you entered it was for a girl, but never for boys. That view will probably remain in the population at large for another 10 years. And most likely forever. I wonder if they will get very far this time. This was their attempt 50 years ago... They believed it then but a decade afterwards came out with highly gender biased toys.

The sheep is already on bricklink. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=74188pb01 with the 74188 number. But as it is printed it has the pb01 extension, so it can be differentiated from any future print patterns on the same base part.

LEGO can do little to change society aside from the way it designs and advertises their products. There have been big changes in gender bias in City, with many more female figures overall, as well as female figures in what were traditional male roles. There are already a lot of images of women and girls playing with sets on the website / advertising. We'll know that LEGO believe what they have written when some of the main advertising photos for Friends show boys playing with it. If they don't do that, then they are not challenging the societal bias that boys should not play with "girls' toys".

Bricklink uses a hybrid system of lego numbers where known, peeron, ldraw, etc and its own numbering for minifigures and prints. A lot of the early information was never released by lego and so BL introduced numbering based on part IDs for prints. Obviously minifigures do not exist in lego Inventories (just as parts) so they introduced numbering for those. But most parts do use the official part numbers where these are on the part, and most modern element IDs link to the correct part.

You don't need most AFOLs to be rich to make a sale. You only need a few rich collectors to want something. I don't really see any difference buying a set for investment and selling at 1.5x RRP or selling at 10x RRP. In both cases, you have removed a set from the primary market to sell later. The only difference is how much profit you make, which is typically down to supply and demand. Purposely creating a market unbalance by buying 1000s of sets and leaving shelves bare and quick flipping is unethical but the vast majority of sets are available for a long time on shelves. If people didn't buy when it was available at retail, it is their fault not the sellers fault. If the reseller had not bought it, someone else would have and it still wouldn't be available on the primary market later. I don't think I have ever missed out on a regular retail set I wanted due to resellers. If I have missed something it is more typically because I was waiting for a better price.

The books are typically on shelves for a few years. The magazines a month. That might be why they don't put exclusive parts in the magazine bags. Of course they could do an exclusive figure each month. That would be like doing an extra CMF series each year, devoted solely to history. When I was a kid, it was common to dress up as cowboys and indians. Kids frequently had cowboy and Indian birthday parties. The Milky Bar kid was a cowboy. I have photos of me dressed as an Indian, with a homemade feather headdress and beads sewn on a suede waistcoat. Do that these days and we'd be ripped apart. Very different times.

They aren't necessarily getting more expensive. Some of the recent SW models have been stripped back down to smaller designs but much more friendly prices. The gradual creep in price and part count may have been affecting sales, since they have cut back size and hence price point, while leaving perfectly good renditions aimed presumably at kids / families. It might be that the 18+ sets help here. Now adults get their own sets, kids sets can go back to being for kids at more sensible price points.

Many of the cyclopedia had unique minifigs with unique prints. Green Ninja ZX, electrosuit Batman, Luke and Han with medals, two Harry Potters, toy soldier.

Aimed at kids? The market is already pretty full with LEGO magazines/comics. And the figures given with them tend to be ones from retail sets anyway, so I doubt they would actually provide anything new. Lone Ranger wasn't Classic. It was tied to a movie, and so had scenes from the movie. I thought they sold reasonably well at the time, and especially when put on 20 or 33 percent discount. They were cleared once the movie disappeared from cinemas, like most one off themes tied to a contemporary movie release.

They already do an educational magazine - at least in some countries - LEGO EXPLORER. The third issue was on medieval history. My kids have had a few of them, and it is quite nice that they change the subject matter so they can inspire different things and do not get stale. They have had robots, castle, deep sea, space, birds, insects... This is probably far more interesting and educational than only history along the lines of this is what a castle looks like, this is what another castle looks like, this is what yet another castle looks like, ... Of course they could change eras, but that would mean disparate figures that don't necessarily go together like random ones in the CMFs (if they did figures instead of polybag builds with the magazine).

Same here. It is a nice model and I'm sure would look good in a museum. But the size means I won't buy it so that knocks off points.

You rated the value for money twice!

They do sell well on the primary market, just not in the top five themes. They are not as good as other themes on the secondary market as they tend to be relatively basic sets and there are no exclusive parts or minifigs in them.

Or just glue them. At least that way it is easy to later identify which parts are modified to change their clutch properties.

Something else my lad used to use a lot of in castles - trap doors.

I doubt it. If they wanted to do that, they'd have the same thickness for 1x2 plates that are much more common.

Looks great compared to the real thing although I think the solar panel is too dominant. Maybe go to a 1x2 instead. It would also really benefit from a grey base, even if just 2 plates high, to define the structure / location / sea area.

For Classic Castle, surely you are missing lots of yellow bricks or at least use old greys! :-) I'd add reddish and dark browns and parts for leaves so they can build some trees, some cart wheels and a horse, blue plates for a river or moat, black and white 2x2 plates for tiling a floor, lots of flame parts, and then a king, soldiers and a wizard and other appropriate minifigs and accessories such as goblets, treasure chest (and treasure or gems), swords, etc.

It is teal isn't it? The green one has green hands, and I've not heard of a dark green one.

I didn't even look at the figures, I was referring to the packaging. If one person on Instagram is claiming to have this, then it is probably faked. I'm not sure what the point would be though, on such a cheap set where the minifigures are almost worthless.

Genuine. US vs worldwide issues.

It seems totally different to early 2000s to me. The problems then were spiralling costs across all themes. One dodgy theme like Vidiyo is not going to kill lego. Look at their half year report, they are doing fine. Christmas sets sold very fast again. Fan numbers (as in actual buyers) and sales are at an all time high.

Plus the plain black one for when they are switched off!

Minifigs can hold them when closed. Otherwise they sit unconnected on a table or similar.