MAB

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a limit when the time comes. BL often use language that is ambiguous. The relevant question in the FAQ is: How many sets can I pre-order? There is no restriction on the number of pre-orders unless products are sold out. To some, that may mean they can pre-order as many of each set as they like. However, it might also mean that you can pre-order as many of the 31 designs as you like, so long as they are not already sold out. It wouldn't surprise me if there are limits put on the numbers of each set that an individual can pre-order, and that could even be scaled back if over ordered. That is, maybe allow an individual to pre-order two, but allow up to 5000 people to pre-order. If 5000 people do, then only allow one per person. Otherwise, I can imagine some people will order 100 or more of each. If a set is £200 or $200, £20K or $20K is not that much of an investment for some BL and ebay dealers.

Not always, vehicles are (inaminate) things that carry people or items, hence ruling out dragons. Especially if an airship is a vehicle, then why not boats or carts with four wheels.

Which is a problem when people use different definitions. To me, large builds that are designed to carry people are vehicles. They don't have to be sci-fi.

I'm not sure how good it is. Often during promotions they run out of stock completely and do not allow you to backorder product. Yet a day later, stock appears. So either they don't have a good real time inventory knowing when items are in transit or, more cynically, they purposely don't allow popular sets to be backordered during promotions to stop so many promotions being ordered.

I think the use of minidolls in Elves was fine. The theme used Friends-like parts, from minidolls to horses and animals to Dragons' heads. They are all the more rounded, somewhat cutesy type designs. Of course, it would have been nice to get minifigure versions of the characters to use body parts with other themes but for use with a self-contained theme, I think it was the right choice.

There are others with substantial vehicles such as: and others with smaller vehicles. It wasn't, it is sold worldwide.

Great, thanks for the update.

Out of interest, which Elves set was the only one to contain a vehicle. I can understand missing out the dragons, even though they are the equivalent of the swooshable spaceships of Star Wars, but what about all the rest of the boats, sleighs, airships, carts, and so on.

It can, but currently it is not. They could make every theme require an app to use it but that would be ridiculous since they know many people don't want that. However, that doesn't mean they shouldn't devote a percent or two of their output to cater for people that do want to combine physical play with apps. It is not really any different to devoting a small percentage of output to those who want to build flowers or collect but not play with minifigures. Vidiyo can also be played with off app too. My daughter has half a dozen of the bandmates and she is currently half way through building a stage for them. Brain rot or inspiration?

I guess it depends what you learn about in school as a kid. Here (UK) children do ancient Egypt and Romans at ages of about 6-8 so an ideal time when they are into lego. They are also slightly more grown up than Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Mike the Knight, two franchises younger kids often associate with pirates and knights and possibly the reason kids of that age still dress up as pirates and knights at parties. Whereas slightly older kids might want to leave it behind. I would hope not. There are too many odd shaped heads and body shapes to be done right, and any torsos would be cartoonish. And do kids read it these days?

If the entire population of the world decides it doesn't want to play with toy bricks, then yes, I think it would be fine if lego stopped producing toy bricks and any websites about them stopped publishing information and eventually disappeared to archive only. However, I do not think that vidiyo will cause that to happen.

They did one for Harry Potter, one for Toy Story, one for The Lone Ranger, one for Disney, they put one in Monster Fighters, and one in the Winter Village series. Even outside of traditional themes such as City where you might expect trains to appear, they come along so LEGO knows they are popular. I'm surprised there hasn't been one in Friends yet (they've done many cars, boats, buses, planes, etc), I guess they think trains are not of interest to girls.

Yes, but then this would only happen if everyone that currently loves playing with plastic bricks suddenly stops buying plastic bricks. And there would be no need for any brick sites as nobody is interested in them any more.

I'm not sure what your point is here - why can you get away with some as they are stereotypical and not based on history. But then get away with all in the CMF? LEGO could make other historical eras if they wanted to, that they don't is probably lack of perceived demand (and that may be a true lack of demand). Playmobil do Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian. And LEGO has done Egyptian before. And they need not be an entire theme individually. For example, if they did a historical (as opposed to Castle) theme, then they could do a number of different eras within one theme. A company called Worlds Apart teamed up with Horrible Histories in the UK, and made a nice set of historical figures back in about 2012/13 that was linked to a game (they were British, so they focused more on British history). If a more popular global history franchise ever came along and LEGO paired with them (like they did with National Geographic while back) then there may be some influence on sets. It is all highly unlikely anyway of course, as LEGO tend to focus more on modern action than historical these days (as seen in Ninjago and Monkie Kid, taking old ideas and making them up-to-date).

And to think he could have stuck to making useful products like ladders, and not switched to toys. If the kids of that era no longer want anything to do with plastic building bricks, and LEGO cannot survive by making adults' building brick sets, then yes.

Well if people stop buying bricks even though LEGO keeps making them then that suggests that people don't want to build with physical bricks any more. And in that case, it would be good (for LEGO) if they had explored alternative products since people no longer want to play with plastic bricks.

They look like painted clear figures to me.

The seller should refund if a package they sent goes missing. The design about how much a risk they are willing to take before they force tracking / confirmation (and its costs) onto the buyer is down to the seller. Paypal would side with the buyer if there is no delivery confirmation and they complained there.

What makes you think these are complicated to pick? The original designers need to redesign the sets based on a palette of parts that TLG say they can use. Those parts will go into hoppers and the inner bags will get put together then packed into boxes. You don't get a refund. There is no guarantee that you will enjoy any set or that it will meet certain design standards, whether a LEGO one or an ADP one. It depends what you mean by profit. LEGO wants to be seen engaging with the AFOL community, both through its own sets and through BL. Getting AFOLs on board, thinking positively about the company as well as the product, would be profit to them. Of course, they do other small run sets too, such as comic con sets. Here, they profit in the word of mouth and advertising from such sets. Would you be saying that if, for example, three train MOCs had made it to 10K on IDEAS and were involved in this ADP? The Polar Express and The Canadian train have recently made it to 10K. If rejected, those and any other trains may well go into another round of ADP, if non-licensed. It may be that as it is company branding, then The Canadian is licensed. However, if there were other popular non-licensed train MOCs, then it may be a route for them to be made. It is unlikely that Bricklink are doing the real grunt work here - which last time was manually picking and packing them. They have said these will ship from Europe, and BL staff are in the USA. So it is unlikely that BL is doing that work this time.

No, you need to understand that is exactly what LEGO is - a company that tries to stay relevant to people. LEGO is mainly a building / construction toy but for many years has dabbled around the borders of it, trying out new things. If you don't want to play with apps, then you don't have to. The vast majority of LEGO's output is still construction. LEGO choose to invest in many different themes in the hope that they are of interest to, and hence sell to, as many consumers as possible. If someone doesn't like one theme as it is app based, then they can chose from the rest of the product ranges. This is no different to if someone doesn't like City, Technic, Star Wars, or Ninjago. Really? So what will they do with all the factories they have and are continuing to invest in? They will be manufacturing toy bricks for a long time to come. It does need to stay relevant so it needs to change. If children want to combine their screen time with LEGO themes, then why not allow them to do that, and sell even more LEGO in the process? Children only get as much screen time as their parents allow. If kids play LEGO on their screens then keep playing the same stories with their bricks, then what is the problem?

If Castle is dead, then other historical themes are more likely (even if still unlikely). Would we get Chinese or Persian or Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Greeks or Romans or European Renaissance or Mesoamerican, or even a return of Vikings, if Castle was on the shelves? Those figures that got labelled as Crusaders in some territories didn't get to fight to free the Holy Land though, didn't they just fight the Forestmen.

It can be both. Why not appeal to both old fashioned style play for brick builders and app play for those that want to combine building and tech. Not every LEGO product has to appeal to every LEGO consumer. There is room for both in their massive product range.

Or they jump to other toys that are doing the broader and more modern themes that they want to play with. I'm not going to buy it (unless as an investment) as it is not really a Castle set. You can get similar parts packs from Star Wars, sell off the minifigures and end up with much cheaper parts. Without anything historical in it, it is only really for people that cannot MOC or are willing to pay high prices for a MOC. Castle being dead might even be a good thing if it means they start to explore a little more than just a small section of European history, widening it in both date and location. Although I imagine any new historical figures will only really be available through the CMF for the near future, but hopefully parts from other themes will continue to be useful.

There were Muslim pirates operating along the Barbary Coast (North African) in the medieval era. One of the last Crusades was against those pirates, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Crusade. There were also pirates acting in the Baltic Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Slavic_piracy. Of course, these are not the pirates of the LEGO theme, which tends to be based on European pirates and soldiers in the Caribbean and American coast.

It would depend what you build on it. A sealed boat hull may well float but it will capsize due to toppling if large structures are built on top of it.