MAB

Two decades later, and more than 99% of their output is still brick based. Even their tech stuff is mainly brick built. That tells me that they firmly see themselves as a toy building brick company. LEGO does need to keep up with the times, and there are many positive ways they are doing this. Wider representation (disabilities, gender), licensed products, AFOL products and, yes, tech linked products. Why do you think hidden side was the beginning of the end. Why not Nexo Knights or Life of George or Fusion? Why not Mindstorms or the 1980s electronic bricks? LEGO produces a huge range of toys for people with different interests. A small portion of that is based on current tech, for those interested in it. The day LEGO decides to stop doing new products using new tech is the beginning of the end. I think vidiyo is pointless but one of my kids is enjoying it, which suggests that it is interesting to its target market.

Yes, it is United Kingdom (en-GB) The prices on your website are showing GBP prices. But emails have the $ sign. Is this just a format error rather than a regional error? It could be that I am too slow, but often I go to the site within minutes of a stock alert.

There have been pieces of software external to BL written to do it. It is not a new problem, I remember using atxdad's MATLAB scripts years ago. Take a look here, for example:

Don't use easy buy. That is for people that don't care about price. If you keep getting expensive sellers, then least favourite them and exclude those sellers from searches. Follow slegngr's route of identifying stores with expensive parts first and buying anything they have on your wants list that is reasonably priced from them.

They are not allowed to use the word LEGO in the name, as it would indicate that it is supported somehow by LEGO. However, look at the tagline directly below the name, "Uniting LEGO (R) fans around the world ..."

This isn't correct. LEGO are going to be continuing to use plastic, not "all natural" materials. They are hoping to be able to source the components of the plastics they use from renewable sources (that is, plants) rather than oil. Both plants and oil are natural. Plastics synthesised from the chemical precursors derived from both plants and oil are not natural.

I find a regular craft knife is fine. However, don't chop. Locate where you want to cut, put it on a cutting surface and roll the tube using the blade. This will score the surface all around. Keep going and you will cut through without any crush type marks. Although even if you do cut through hard downwards and you get a slight deformation, a quick blast from a hairdryer soon has it circular again.

Which Castle theme has no conflict? This area of the theme park has not be claimed by Elves fans, but as Castle. On the other thread, we have been told loads of things Castle cannot be. It cannot be outside of Europe, has to be medieval and not before or after, no gunpowder, only swords, no Vikings, and so on. Yet here we have an area of a theme park that has apparently only mythical animals. No castles, not medieval, no humans yet it is claimed as Castle. I cannot see how this area of a theme park shows LEGO that Castle is popular. Even if they make sets, this is no more Castle than Elves was.

Sticker sheets, cloaks, foam pieces. If you want plastic parts then any plate, baseplate, tile,...

Yet many complaints about 2013 Castle was that they were lazy copies of 2010 and so on. City can afford to repeat ideas as it is almost the default LEGO range for younger kids that people will buy. I don't think Castle can get away with it.

It doesn't look very Castle like, with no knights. If the land is about the mythical creatures, why have armoured humans with swords there unless it is to kill them? Plus the mythology seems to be far wider and earlier than European medieval. Plus don't they already have a Castle area?

My meaning there was that fantasy is not so narrow and rigid compared to realistic, they can bring more varying elements into a storyline in different yearly waves as they do with Ninjago. Dragons one year, trolls another, sea serpents another, skeleton armies another, centaurs and satyrs another, and so on. Enough to keep it looking a bit different and not just good knights in blue/red vs bad knights in black, year after year. Otherwise if the story is somewhat limited to traditional Castle themes, it is essentially one year and done. That may be OK if LEGO starts going back to what they did a decade or so again, where the standard fare was short, one (or maybe two) year, in-house themes (Atlantis, PQ, GS, MF, and so on), but recent history points against that happening and that they tend to go for longer running in-house themes. From that point of view, Castle is probably dead if it doesn't expand to more than just repeating what has already been done, with token sets in other themes (as in CMF, IDEAS and Creator) instead. The CMF has possibly been the best Castle (and Historic) theme for the past 7-8 years from a minifigure parts point of view.

Fantasy possibly is the best route to go if they were to do anything for more than a year. At least that way, there can be more interest than just a couple of human based armies against each other sticking to a few hundred years of mainly English and French history, obviously avoiding overlap with Scandinavia and a couple of hundred years of English history to steer clear of Vikings. Instead bring in trolls, dwarves and elves, skeleton armies and dragon powered flying machines as in the past. Or open up to the wider sword and sorcery genre to include cyclops and centaurs and so on, so influenced by more than just Arthurian style myth or dragons. In a time when LEGO is trying to broaden worldwide appeal, it would seem strange to me if they focussed only on a small portion of North West European history year after year, and if a theme would be longer running it has to be more then just repeating the old sets. Otherwise, I can't see Castle ever being more than once every ten years or so.

So what is the non-vague definition of Castle?

Pirates means something quite narrow to Pirates fans too though. It is about pushing boundaries. So to me, early Tudor would still fit into medieval - axes, swords, bows and spears. Late Tudor, gunpowder through cannon and muskets came in . So I can understand why some would see a crossover there. Although still too early for Pirates based on naval uniforms. Plus pirates does really need to be mainly at sea. I don't know. They haven't done Vikings again so it is unknown. LEGO designers have indicated that internally they considered Nexo Knights to be a castle theme even though it wasn't badged as such, so if they did a Roman (or Vikings) theme and it was called Romans (or Vikings) and it kept the Castle badge of the shelves but gave us sets with some historical warriors and some locations, then I wouldn't care that Castle had gone away. Of course some may complain that there needs to always be a European based medieval theme available and that other regions or eras do not count even though LEGO may decide internally that such a theme replaces Castle for a while. In the same way, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Harry Potter are not badged as Castle, so none of them should be considered as Castle even if they look similar to differing amounts

Yes, I know both of those. Having more Persian and North African style, especially now we get so many more parts in dark flesh / dark nougat would be great. There were some great torsos in PoP. And again, it is not strictly a castle but has the Castle vibe, it is a fortified residence with soldiers.

I also don't play on the LEGO apps. But then, I am about 40 years older than the kids they are designed for. Whereas my kids do like playing on them. My son really enjoyed the scanning tiles in the Nexo Knights game and seeing what they did in the app, so I can see why it is a hook into buying actual sets. Although fortunately LEGO is so bad at that sort of thing, you could just scan pictures of them, instead of actually buying the real thing. Same with Vidiyo, scanning pictures of the built sets is enough and they released pictures that work on their website. They have now taken them all down although it is too late as many fan sites already have them. My daughter also started playing with the vidiyo one at the weekend. Looked rather annoying to me, but she seemed to enjoy it.

For me, anything really that is (land) soldier based. English civil war, Tudor times, Musketeers, American revolution and Civil War, French revolution, Napoleon, I'd include it all. Obviously it is not all set in actual castles, as stately homes became less fortified but as long as there is a castle vibe to it (a couple of factions and some location) I'd be up for that. Probably anything prior to 1900 to keep it out of the modern warfare era. Obviously I would not expect them to do specific wars where the factions are identifiable and may cause offense, such as the Indian Rebellion or Boer War which may push back the date further (earlier). Or the other way in history, to more ancient times. So for example (just sticking to UK type themes) if they did a theme that was more Tudor clothes in a palace or English Civil War style with muskets or going the other way, Vikings or further back Saxons, Romans or Celts, I'd be happy with any of that style, even if the building they are associated with is not a formal castle. I don't think LEGO would ever call a theme Warfare or Military, so some catchall more kid friendly term such as Castle could cover other eras and importantly locations. If they labelled a 16th Century Japanese castle with contemporary Japanese style soldiers as Castle, I think it would be as popular as a European style, especially if we had already had a round or two of European style. Similarly doing a theme with muskets instead of swords might help not keep repeating medieval ideas if Castle was to go on for more than a year or two at a time. I'm not saying no medieval, just if something is to last then a bit more variation might be good.

They are allowing incomplete sets to remain. Although they are removing some incomplete listings when reported if they are only standard parts but missing all the unique important parts for the set. For example, one guy got together all the parts for Yoda's lightsaber apart from the important display tile (and box and manual) and was selling it as an incomplete set. BL admins decided this was against the spirit of incomplete meaning a set that had lost a few parts and was rather a collection of common parts put together to make money of a apopular set that was missing the one thing that makes that set the actual set. I can understand that too. It undermines the value of real sets if ones missing anything expensive can be sold in their place using the same listing.

Castle doesn't have to literally mean a castle though, does it. We rarely get a true castle within Castle. They could do forts, palaces, and so on. As above, extending Castle to mean not just a couple of centuries in one region, but to cover more of the world and history, might make it a little less boring to buyers. They could do a stately home facade like Highclere or Castle Howard or Balmoral. Obviously Windsor which is still used along with Victorian era soldiers. Any era could contain soldiers and have the Castle vibe. Or they could do a twist. They could do romanticised castle, more fairytale like (Neuschwanstein and so on). Or Victorian style follies. They could even do something like Belvedere Castle in Central Park to get American appeal. Or they could do something towards Monster Fighters, vampire castles and so on. Personally, I'd prefer some non European ones though. Persian or North African or Chinese would be a nice change.

Not true. It is against the IDEAS guidelines, but not their own guidelines. There is even a modern example right there. A Catholic cathedral, right in the middle of a skyline set.

I can see the positive side. It really messes up the price guide when people sell just a head and torso using the minifigure entry and you cannot later find that out. Some people were listing - and getting away with - listing expensive figures put together from bricks and pieces parts but minus the capes as they could not get hold of them. Others were listing them but including fake / custom replacement capes. Now at least you know if a figure has been sold then it was the complete figure.

There were fortresses in ancient Roman and Greek times and outside of Europe too. Personally I don't care if something is formally a residence or seat of power or administration or just a military base.

That is because minifigures are either complete or they are not minifigures, just a few minifigure parts. Bricklink has stated that they will not allow incomplete minifigures, so sell the parts you have as parts.

I got another stock alert for both black falcon torso and shield, but both OOS within a couple of minutes of the email being sent. Although I note the price is in USD (I'm in UK), so it may be that it is checking a different region so not so useful.