MAB

They will need to add in Stanley or they will be accused of being anti-black. And Phyllis and Angela to get the female to male ratio as high as possible. By that time they couldn't miss out Creed. And then Darryl from the warehouse. ... whatever they do they are going to miss out some characters.

This time, The Office. They keep turning it down and this time reward a very similar design to the past rejected ones. I bet past designers are annoyed! And in the past I was quite surprised at the following: The Big Bang Theory - as this was the first time they went for a sitcom set that was fairly adult in nature. I thought it was shocking at the time, but now don't see it as a barrier to being selected. Doctor Who - as it was quite region specific. Maze - it was the first real world type stick-it-on-a-shelf object, and also a game (after LEGO dumped the games range) and not as good as a real maze yet 10x more expensive. Adventure time - non-minifigure based set with limited appeal. Ship in a Bottle - it may be a ship in a bottle, but it isn't a very good ship in a bottle that gets built around it so no skill like in a real ship in a bottle. TRON (and Wall-E) - if they wanted to do this movie, why didn't they just do it like other Disney (and Warner) movies before it. They already had agreements with the licensee.

Which parts are you after?

There are also quite a few "I can't see them doing that!" entries, which are often the ones they pick.

No, just the main two characters. Minifigs are a big selling point of some sets. Already having the main character from a theme or movie can affect sales of larger sets that are expensive and just add generic bricks. Yes, Jack would look better with longer legs, but given they didn't even give Woody those Woody legs last time around in Toy Story 4 sets, I doubt they will be bringing them back. And even with them, Jack would not be 100% accurate, no minifigures ever are.

And LED lights don't emit very much heat (via IR) at all. Whereas many incandescent bulbs emit most of the energy consumed that way rather than through light.

They don't restock old discontinued parts. Only current parts.

It is a reprint of CMF series 1 with extra lines. So those parts would work.

I doubt we'll get another castle like set through ideas this time, or next time, or the time after. I hope they don't do an instrument either. Piano, guitar, ... they don't need ideas to suggest instruments.

The Nightmare Before Christmas has been done through CMF already. Even though it is obviously a fuller set, that there are cheap key figures out already makes it less attractive at the high price the set will be.

That is an issue with Friends. They use stereotypical scenarios and some people don't like it. But then a lot of little girls want horses and stables, and shops and bakeries, vets, popstars on stages (just thinking of some of my daughters Friends sets!). They also balance it quite well though, in that that do vehicles, planes, boats, environmental sets, some sporty sets, science sets, adventure sets, and so on. I think Friends covers a range of activities way better than City does. They cater for all tastes. I guess the bias here is that the horses and spas and so on are only in the (girly) Friends theme and not in City. If they get rid of the stereotypical scenarios in Friends, they will lose fans that like those scenarios.

Yes, there are more 18+ sets, so less of a need for IDEAS sets these days as most IDEAS sets cater for adults. I don't think IDEAS is really fit for purpose now. There are too many passing to review only to pick a few and too many similar models again and again. Yet if the pick 5 or 10, then they are overlapping with their 18+ range. I wonder if they just keep it going because it means the community thinks it has a say in what is produced, even through in reality they have next to no influence since so many get through to the review.

(set 77944) to remove gender bias, it should of course be 6 fire fighters, 3 are female.

No. There is already enough of a backlog.

You are probably watching the wrong videos. There are plenty that make small builds, like this:

It depends what they try to do to change boys' views (and wider society views). It is seen as much more OK for girls to play with traditional "boys" toys such as City since they have made it more gender neutral over time. Clearly they still have some work and time to go to get some parents to notice it. Yet they have done little to make Friends gender neutral. It is still clearly a girls' toy. If they started including a lot more boy focussed elements (such as parity in minidolls) and change the theme, then it might start to be seen as more acceptable for boys to play with it. However, if they just say it is OK for boys to play with it then they are not going to change attitudes. Those boys will be made fun of. Take a look at what they have done with the adult sets. They didn't just say "It is OK for adults to play with LEGO" and just keep producing the same old sets. They have done their "Adults welcome" campaign alongside massive changes in the products that they produce. I think it is working, but not because they say something, it is because they have done something. They have started producing sets that are clearly for adults. Kids are not interested in bonsai trees or The Beatles, they are clearly new adult products. Then there are those weird decisions like Sesame Street. Lots of people have said it is a strange decision to label that as an 18+ set when a child can build it and it is of interest to children. What if their whole adult range had been only things like Sesame Street and Winnie the Pooh. I doubt views would have changed that it is OK for adults to play with LEGO. It would have just been seen as a cynical marketing ploy without any substance, slapping an 18+ label on what is still aimed at kids, LEGO saying these are for adults when clearly they are not. It is only making clearly adult targeted sets that has backed up the "Adults welcome" view. They could slap "Boys welcome" on the Friends page at lego.com. Would that make it more acceptable for boys to play with it? I doubt it when it is still clearly a girls' toy. Boys playing with it would be made fun of, no matter what LEGO says. Not that there is anything wrong with it being a girls' toy, and that doesn't mean that all girls have to like it either. If some girls prefer City or Technic, it doesn't mean Friends shouldn't exist. It exists to fulfill those people that don't like the other products but do like the Friends style.

I think the really big question is why do they need to change the mind of those parents? I think most parents will not buy a girls' toy for a boy, when there are perfectly good boys' toys in a similar style. They don't want their child to be picked on or made fun of because they are playing with girls' toys. Adults and most kids know the toys in pink boxes with five girls on the box are girls' toys no matter what LEGO says. I cannot see LEGO saying that it is OK for boys to play with this toy that we designed with girls in mind will change anything. If LEGO want it to be OK for boys to play with their more nurturing type toys, then put some houses, or a cup cake store, or vets, or farms, or another hospital, etc into City. Then it is in the "acceptable for boys" range and the boy won't be made fun of for playing with a girls' toy.

If they wanted to take a risk, they could decide that the next wave of Ninjago is based on a majority of female characters, or do some female only minifigure sets in City. Risking alienating their core demographic to promote social change would not give the impression of caring only about business.

Yeah. When I see those pictures I see a brother playing with or helping his sister or friend, not that it is his lego. But that may be my bias. Show a boy on his own or two boys playing Friends and it is more likely theirs. I'm not sure adding male figures to Friends is necessarily a good thing. Sure it balances what they are doing to City. But will it make boys want to buy Friends? Probably not much because it is still seen as a girls' toy introduced to make sales to the girls that weren't interested in City and similar. But it may put off girls buying some sets or see them as less attractive. My daughter must have about 40 or so Friends figures, 10 of which are male. The male ones rarely get used. She tends to populate her shops and houses with girls and women first and only use the male ones when she runs out. They could eliminate Friends altogether by making exactly the same sets but putting a City label on them, and including minifigs instead of dolls, with 50:50 male and female characters. That might make them seen as more suitable for both boys and girls and not seen as boys playing with girl toys. But it seems a shame for the (mainly) girls that prefer minidolls. I thought Elves was great but could have been better. If the main characters had been 2 boys and 2 girls, it might have been seen as a more gender neutral theme and stopped the minidoll being seen as for girls only/mainly. But that time has passed, especially after they also did superhero girls only.

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.