MAB

A big reason lego bought BL was the engagement with the AFOL community and BL's experience with doing the AFOL design program sets. They will never stop custom parts, but that is such a small amount of the secondary market anyway. It was also clear that BL was not owned by lego before the sale. It said unofficial right under the logo.

Hypothetical idea .... If you don't mind the hubs being physically linked together, then there is another way that might work freeing up one of the two required for the optical connection. If the hubs are "bolted" together, then any motion of the transmitter will be felt by the receiver and since they have gyros inside, then a predefined sequence of motion of the first could be read as a signal by the second. You still need to use a port to connect to a motor to, say, rotate the combined hubs in a certain sequence so it would save one port only. Then you'd have to determine what the gyro output was for say a 5 deg left, 10 deg right, 5 degree left "shake" of the hub and call that signal 1. Do 10 deg right, then 10 deg left for another signal, and so on and so you have a "fingerprint" of different motions that each can be read and mean something different. Of course, this motion would need to be independent of any other motion of the larger model, or at least occur at a faster speed than any other similar motion (so simple rotating will not work if the whole model also rotates at similar speeds). And it clearly won't be high speed comms. It is probably too impractical for most builds that move.

Call centre staff can work from home, it's just that it costs the company more and they cannot keep an eye on their workers.

As already noted, space exploration and research is already covered in the City space sets. A separate space theme covering even more space exploration and research would be competing with that and so somewhat redundant.

I think i paid about £2.00 or so per box although that was about four years ago, back when torsos were about 50p each.

So long as buyers know, that shouldn't be a problem. In the listing comments just put "includes instructions and flattened box" and the buyer knows what they are getting.

I cannot really see the castle being a companion as such to the blacksmith, given the sizes of the sets. Castles are surely significantly bigger than a blacksmith. No doubt there will be similarities in figures though.

I find on the cool/blue end of whites is better than on the warm/yellow end. You can get smart bulbs that allow you to tune the colour. You could get one of those and use the setting that works best for you.

I'd also like them to just do a "yes we will sell that to you" or "we don't sell that part" type reasons rather than them trying to explain reasons. Plus it may help consistency. I once wanted a load (40) of dark green standard capes and the only set that had them was the Ra's al Ghul set. The first time I asked, I was told they were licensed. I tried again about a month later and the rep said it was fine to buy, so I asked if they could be bought individually as all the capes in that set come in a pack. The rep said they cannot split them but I could always sell the ones I don't want on ebay or bricklink!

Isn't that pig also in the Harry Potter Burrow set? Which may be why it was originally flagged as licensed. But often I think saying something is licensed is just an excuse to get rid of a customer's question.

Make sure you have shipping boxes for any sets that you might sell (especially for new sets). If you have a box list it as having the box but let any customer know that you can quote for postage with or without the box if they ask for a manual invoice. Often buyers will say to not send the box if postage costs are lower without the box. I wouldn't flatten a box without the customer knowing about it first, and definitely not mail it in a bubble mailer. Did you pay? I'd avoid that store. The shipping in their terms: Base price for package with signature 4.99 For the weight including packaging, 1 euro per 100 grams For the insurance, each started 100 euros worth 2 euros. Example order 250 grams order weight with a value of 78 euros: 4.99 euros + 5 euros + 2 euros = 11.99 euros They add on 1 Euro per 100 grams, 2 Euros per 100 Euros for insurance when you have already paid for signed delivery too. So while they have "no fees", they are very restrictive in the types of orders you can place and then have high shipping costs to offset the "no fees" side of their business. That is without the 1 Euro minimum lot value, minimum order of 20 Euros, and other restrictions (at most 100 lots).

Yes, it should be a decent parts pack at the very least, so long as they keep the castle like colours. I imagine torsos will be existing ones (like in the pirates set) but I'm hoping for at least one new one (like the pirates set got). I imagine the Black Falcons torso will be on bricks and pieces, so I would not buy a set just for more of those. An old faction torso brought up to date like the Black Falcons one would be great.

I use mainly fleshies in my MOCs, so I like fleshie CMFs if they have decent heads and hands. But the problem with superheroes is the masks or other weird face prints. I think the DC one had maybe two unique plain-ish fleshie heads and they were not that different to existing ones. And most wear something on their hands so they don't even have fleshie hands that can be reused.

The Uruk-Hai blade in pearl dark grey appears in unlicensed Ninjago, Monkie Kid and Hidden Side sets as well as in licensed LOTR/Hobbit (and one SW) sets. The copper one also appears licensed themes (SW) as well as mainly Ninjago. The pearl dark grey may well have once been licensed, but clearly is found in unlicensed sets now. Maybe they didn't update it in their database.

Personally, no. I'd use two existing half arch pieces plus a filler in the middle to make it an odd length, if that is what you meant by bow. I'm OK with customs for minifigure parts, but only those.

It might be that they have only catalogued based on the parts that appear in retail sets. For example, dark blue heads have been sold directly by LEGO in the past but not appeared in retail sets.

Obviously it will be Pirate Centaurs from Outer Space ... pirates, fantasy castle and classic space in one car crash of a theme.

It's an interesting point, but I imagine it is what many BL users want. There was huge outrage when BL decided to add brickarms parts to the catalogue, so they could be added to wants lists, be compared between sellers and have prices of sales recorded. It was probably more than 99 to 1 people complaining to people supporting. Many people claimed things like Admin Dan would have been spinning in his grave at what they had done and didn't even realise that they had always been allowed to be sold there when it was run by Admin Dan as custom items and just were not in the catalogue. It is a pain as I used to sell brickwarriors and brickforge parts there, although I reckon less than 0.1% of my sales were non-lego parts. At the same time, Brickowl was profitting from it by attracting new users by making it clear they were pure LEGO only, and that no custom items could be sold there, only genuine LEGO. It is a bigger issue for things like capes where people used to sell fakes/customs individually or list minifigures that were missing these but added fake ones (or customs, or clones, or replicas, or whatever you want to call them). But of course these items are often exactly the same size and shape as LEGO ones and were not only infringing LEGO's IP, they were also keeping down the prices of genuine items and may not have been safety tested. LEGO cannot allow the sale of items on it's bricklink site to be sold if they are not safety tested. LEGO knows all the items that are allowed are approved for sale with full safety testing. For third party items, it does not know this. Similarly it cannot vouch for painted or modified items, that may have dangerous paints or sharp sections, and hence these are also banned now. It is also difficult to allow some custom parts. So for example, if they allow brickarms, why not brickwarriors and brickforge. And if they allow those from American companies, why not Chinese companies too? And some of those parts will be modern warfare related items, which is something LEGO does not support so it would seem odd for them to take a stance against it by not manufacturing their own modern warfare items but allow third party modern warfare items to be sold on a LEGO owned site. So while it is a pain that we cannot sell / buy good* customs, I think the reason is clear why. *Good as in not infringing on LEGO's parts, such as the various brick arms/warriors/forge items.

I doubt there will be much castle-ish in the Creator set, aside from the colours of the parts. Creator sets tend to concentrate on brick-building rather than theme specific items, so while the pirate ship got the odd cannon and cutlass, the parts do not really scream Pirates! at you. I imagine the same will be true of a castle based Creator set. If we're lucky we might get a new torso print but I doubt much else that is new and unique.

A lot of it comes via Germany/Netherland/Belgium. The DPD routes are opening up again so even though there will be delays, they seem to be getting through now.

I'd hope that LEGO fails to win any protection claim based on that, especially when a company is already using and can prove that they have been using for some time something that LEGO later invent for themselves. They do. Sometimes it is 1, sometimes 2, sometimes 5, sometimes 20 or 50. However, a store can always refuse to sell their stock if they wish to keep it on the shelves. Most stores won't refuse a full priced sale though, as their intention is to sell it rather than display it.

Is that kitchen real? It looks too clean! That would be a great way to hide ugly but functional table legs, much like some people cover columns/supports with LEGO.

Minecraft / mojang posted it in their social media.

That was a long time coming! Its nice to see pictures of the technique, I was wondering how to do this myself a few weeks back.

Mega Construction had cmf style Minions series, and went on for 10 or more series, although they were smaller than LEGO cmf series. They must have been popular enough to go on for so long. It is probably too late to cash in on them now, but I wouldn't totally rule it out as lego are not always on the ball as to what is currently hot.