MAB

It will be interesting to see what happens to the idea of the minifigure, and whether other brands start using the term. Many brands call these microfigures, or miniature figurines, figures, microaction figures and so on. Yet now LEGO bricklink (although not LEGO corporate) use the term minifigure and minifig to refer to just about anything that is a character. The cars from Cars - all minifigures now. Trains and cranes from DUPLO Thomas the Tank Engine - all minifigures now. A LEGO owned company have diluted the meaning of the word and so they might well lose future court actions if they claim that the term minifigure corresponds to something specific, when in reality they use the term to refer to large train and car models.

No, but I know an independent toy retailer very well and have also run a BL store for a decade. It's interesting what he finds sells well from the general retail sets. It is not always what you expect and by the time you know, it is too late to order more.

It is not as easy as that when you don't know how many will sell beforehand. And getting reliable sales data when they are on shelves takes a long time, especially when you consider sets are typically on shelves for 18 months or so, and you have to add in manufacturing time for subsequent production runs.

I don't think they believe otherwise. LEGO still manufactures and sells physical brick based building sets.

LEGO already did this and failed. And that wasn't just a little bit more expensive than the equivalent set price. Real sets have economies of scale savings. Picking individual MOCs does not.

There is always a downside that one set sells out causing disappointment when parents cannot buy their kid the part they need to complete their castle. If one set had animals or good army builders for example, that might get stripped from the shelves due to bulk buying, affecting sales of the rest of the sets. Managing stocks of multiple sets that link together would be difficult. BURPS and panels are great when playing "attack the castle" with kids. You can knock their castle down and they can rebuild it very quickly. Especially if they put panels on top of each other so they have no interlocking strength.

I think either base is fine. I'm looking forward to seeing the other baddies from this wave, they will pair nicely with the Atlantis creatures and some of the Ninjago movie guys heads. I never really got into the snake themes but this looks great. Yes, I know, sea creatures often have trident, whether they are a sea god, Aquaman or fantasy fish monsters. My point was it looks like a very similar minifig to the one in Atlantis, so they will mix nicely.

Strictly speaking most of those weren't new parts or made from a new material. All that changed is the source of the material, from derived from oil products to derived from plant products. There is no difference in the material, just where the components that made the material come from.

You can get five if you click on his about me page.

Ninjago goes to Atlantis. It looks very similar to a hybrid of the squid warrior and the swamp monster from MF/TLM2/Scooby Doo. The squid warrior even came with the trident.

Loads of stuff retired as normal in the past year. Within City - a lot of the space research stuff, the garage, the fire stuff (plane and dockside), people at the funfair, ski resort, donut shop, etc. The roadplates also retired, as did PF M-motors.

Creator > Model > Building picks up most of them I think. https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=S&catString=171.682.425

That doesn't mean they cannot change things long in to the future. They changed figures dramatically from the homemaker style ones I knew as a kid. It may be in 40 years time that people won't put up with inaccurate versions of the movie figures that LEGO makes for the licensed sets that they produce then, after giving up with in-house themes. They may want them different sizes to match their true representations. They may want them to be proper but miniature action figures. Just because they chose not to go with full articulated Friends figures in their kids' sets of today does not mean LEGO won't do that in 40 years time when it is not producing toys any more, just collector models for adults.

There is a keep in the one I posted (the throne room). Kids don't care whether it is free standing or attached to a wall. Putting it into the wall gives more play space inside the castle walls. Of course playmobil castles have more interior, they are large molded parts so can easily be assembled. To make a lego one at the same scale would be cost prohibitive as a kids' playset. Expansions are also available for LEGO castles. This for example can easily be incorporated into the 2013 Blue castle.

Yeah, this was detailed LEGO for grown-ups just prior to when the real Modulars came along.

I'll go for 4954.

Why not just do it anyway? LEGO are not going to sue you if you start selling instructions, they will just kick your design out of IDEAS, which is not a big deal as you won't win anyway if it is already being made by a third party (with or without your permission).

Yes those playmobil sets are very similar to what lego offered in 2010 and 2013.

For physical toys, if they are going to change minifigs, then I'd expect a major change more towards realistic body shapes and articulation. So micro action figures or more articulated minidolls. For non physical toys, maybe holographic building sets, perhaps built using a device (whatever replaces PCs and tablets) then displayed using the holographic projector that every home watches 3D movies on.

Does the Blacksmith and POBB sell OK without new parts? I imagine yes. Sure a goat would be nice, but a goat is not going to drive the sales of the set to most people. Would Sesame Street and Pooh sell if the minifigures were built out of existing parts only? I imagine they would look terrible and not sell at all well. The figures drive the sales of those sets. Sesame Street without any characters (or with bad renditions of them) would be pointless. This is one difference between licenses and non-licensed. If something doesn't look like the license, it won't sell. Whereas there is more freedom for non-licenses. Leaving out a goat is not that big a deal for the set overall. Leaving out Tigger would be.

It looks way better than the original submission, but that is mainly down to the new molds for minifigs. Nice looking set, but not for me. And not at £90 either. Pooh does look weird standing up, Very tall and thin with a crop top rather than fat.

It is typically about two times RRP, but that doesn't mean you will make twice RRP if you part a set out. If you are very early, it might be three times RRP but that is often because newly released minifigures go fro crazy amounts to start with and so have an high six month average price for the first few months, and it takes obviously at least six months for any new release bias to be removed from six month averages. But you have to remember very few sets have 100% desirable parts. Many parts simply do not sell. Even if priced very cheaply, some parts have years worth of stock on BL (measured as qty available / six month sales). Plus parting out sets and then picking parts for orders is slow work. It is not hard work, but it is time consuming.

Those parts are still 3-4x the price of BL sellers though. If you are buying more than a couple of them, you'll be better off at BL.

Right, but then technic / RC car people talk about metal axles, other people are into custom minifigs, how to use decals, customising parts, etc. LEGO fans have been using custom items for years. It sounds like you have a business plan.

Presumably LEGO knows how well the blister packs sell when paired with normal Castle sets on the shelves, as they have released many such packs in the past. And yes, LEGO doesn't see AFOLs as a large enough market to release just relevant minifigure packs. Plus their core business is selling bricks, hence the presence of the structures they typically sell in boxes alongside the minifigures. If the outfit is generic enough to also be used for a carpenter, builder, baker, and so on, more than just one. I don't think they were trying to copy their old designs, more that this is what many kids would think of as a castle. They want towers, a gate and/or portcullis, they want a large area inside the "castle" to play. So give a kid the choice between castle walls with some interior, or just a castle keep made from the same number of bricks, and I imagine many would go for the walls instead of the keep.