MAB

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.

We may think LEGO has made a mess of it. But these will probably fly off the shelves at full RRP now.

The set isn't branded for the movie though.

I found the beat boxes a bit unnecessary given the bandmates. The bandmates take the impulse buy slot, so I understand the price point for the next sets up. But you don't get the value in those sets at that price point.

Not guaranteed but likely given what they have done with similar large Creator Expert sets recently.

Maybe the stock is in China and they predict sales won't be good enough for them to bother shipping them to retailers worldwide. So they'll just dump the lot in Singapore/Malaysia/Taiwan and let resellers sort out the exports instead.

Why would anyone argue against it? There are alternatives and no doubt most people know about them. I only have a small number of non-LEGO products that are a similar toy (MEGA, K'nex, Cobi, Character Building, unbranded blocks, and some fake figures and my kids have Playmobil too). Some are as good as LEGO, some are trash, some are inbetween. All were cheaper than what the equivalent LEGO set would be. I don't think colour consistency is any worse for LEGO over what it is for Mega or Cobi. Whether I'd buy more is down to the license really. If I was into Star Trek, I'd buy the Star Trek sets of a rival company to LEGO.