MAB

Ecto-1 also brought along a single set (GBHQ) that was 10x the part count. So here's looking at a castle set to complete the blacksmith's house with 10x the part count. Dreaming over ...

Regarding Schleich toys, do children actually buy / ask for and play with them? I don't think I have ever seen a kid interested in them in stores and if they want farm animals and so on, there are often other brands that give you 10x the amount for the same price although clearly lower quality. The detail and painting quality seems to make them look more like adult display models rather than kids' toys.

I'm in the UK. Quite a few stores near me try to sell Playmobil :-), I don't know how much they succeed. Especially after the movie bombed, there was loads of Playmobil Movie stuff sitting at 50% off, even in a store that rarely discounts anything.

LEGO did not set up CUUSOO. It was an existing company that ran crowd funding in Japan. They partnered in the early days of LEGO CUUSOO, first only in Japan then worldwide. However, I don't really know what you mean by it didn't really work out. Look at the sets produced once it went global: Minecraft, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters ECTO-1 and the Mars Rover.

They have always experimented. Introduction of maxi-figs in Homemaker type sets, minifigures, light and sound bricks, Bionicle, Galidor, doing licensed sets. Even doing plastic bricks instead of wooden toys was an experiment. Some experiments take off, others don't.I The problem with app based toys is that they are superseded very quickly as technology is fast changing.

She is essentially the female equivalent of the Swashbuckler, being a movie style pirate - something like Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island. Same coloured shirt, same coloured trousers, same coloured hat plume. I cannot tell whether her hat is black or dark brown. They look like they will pair well.

LEGO doesn't really care about LEGO fans, they care about LEGO customers. That is, fans that are currently buying their products. You said a year or so ago that you haven't really bought anything new since Bionicle Generation 2 and what you had bought had been a disappointment. You are clearly not a LEGO customer, even though your are a LEGO fan. And here that you have discovered old sets that keep you being a LEGO fan as you have quit buying new sets. LEGO has moved on, and so has its audience, from the 1970s, 80s and 90s. It moved on through the 00s and the 10s. It will continue to move on releasing what a majority of LEGO customers want and they will draw in new customers too. You can of course remain a LEGO fan without being a LEGO customer, as you have classic sets of the past available on the secondary market or you can just play with your existing LEGO collection. Similarly LEGO can keep moving on and you will continue to not buy their sets.

There were also Harry Potter sets that overlapped with 2011 Castle. Same in 2010, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, ... Then there are years with neither Castle nor a licensed castle-like theme. Together, this is why I don't think that there is a definitive castle slot that can be taken by only one of Castle or a licensed competitor branding.

Do you know how many people were downloading instructions/ designs before the change? For licensed MOCs of popular subjects I imagine it is quite high. For alternate builds of smaller sets I imagine less so.

Not at all what I expected when I clicked but very nicely done. And not a minifigure in sight!

I remember the days it was three regular ones a year. But then, they also were shelf-warming / peg-warming sets and recent non-licensed CMFs have been the same. Loads left over and then discounted to sell. I doubt it matters too much if the retailers made enough sales at full price, whether licensed or not.

Stone Clay, General Glarg, Lord Krakenskull.

There are Nexo Knights characters that are coveted collectors items too.

Another important resource is customers to buy it. If LEGO did Castle or Pirates in their own way like Ninjago, it would most likely overlap with Ninjago. And why take away Ninjago (again) to let something else in that has not been tested? After all, Ninjago is more about the characters than about real ninjas. Plus they very recently did Castle like they did Ninjago. Ninjago took traditional ninjas, made them kids/teens and put them in a less traditional feudal but more modern and kid friendly setting and made up a story about them and their interactions with baddies. This is similar to Nexo Knights, they took knights and removed them from the traditional feudal setting and put them into a futistic / sci-fi one, made it more kid friendly and made up a story about them and their interactions with baddies. They probably know that it was not as successful as Ninjago.

Playmobil have had Ghostbusters sets on the shelves for three years already, so it is not really recent. I don't know how long their products last at retail, but I imagine they might be on their way out and it might also be that their license period is coming to an end. Or of course, it might be that neither company has an exclusive license although that would seem strange given what happens with other IPs. Whereas the Scooby Doo Playmobil sets have only just been released (at least, in the UK, at Argos), and are not for sale at Amazon (UK) yet. I will be really surprised if Playmobil and LEGO have Scooby Doo sets out at the same time, released within months of each other.

I don't think it has much to do with it. Harry Potter seemed to sell well in 2004-2010. The new sets have also done well. LOTR (combined with the Hobbit) didn't seem to sell so well first time around. So would it the second time? I don't think there is a castle slot. There have been years with multiple themes that people like to call castle. HP + Castle, LOTR + Castle. There have been years with none. I don't really see any overlap between LOTR and Harry Potter, any more than overlap between Star Wars and Super Heroes. They are completely different franchises, with different fan bases. Harry Potter is relatively kid friendly and very popular among kids. LOTR is neither. If there is a good business case to make LOTR sets again, they will make them again.

I agree. And Star Wars is not really just about sci-fi space travel. Harry Potter is not really just about wizards. Star Wars has succeeded and continues to succeed where other sci-fi has come and gone. Harry Potter has succeeded where other wizard-based franchises have come and gone. These stories are (or at least, have become) so much more than their simplistic theme. And Ninjago is about so much more than just ninjas.

Not really, as Star Wars is heavily driven by merchandising today just as it was in the 1970s. Star Wars is so much more than just futuristic space.

Because Star Wars is more of a cultural phenomenon rather than just futuristic or sci-fi space. Kids know about Star Wars from a very young age and not because it is sci-fi space, it is because we pass it down to them. Why do they know about SW from the late 70s / early 80s and not another similar age sci-fi space brand such as the original Battlestar Galactica? We show them SW characters and ships in many ways. My kids knew who Darth Vader was probably 5-6 years before I first let them watch Star Wars. It is similar with Batman, many young Western kids will know who he is without having seen a movie or read a comic book.

I guess it depends on whether they break their "rules" for new parts in an Ideas set that may be high volume, or if they allow a long time between the first use of a new mould and the second use. If they know they will reuse moulds a year or two later then they might still offset the costs of them for an Ideas set.

Playmobil are currently doing Scooby Doo sets that have only recently hit shelves. I doubt both companies would have Scooby Doo toys out at the same time.

Town space selling well and the NASA sets selling well suggests that todays kids like realistic space rather than futuristic space (especially futuristic views from 30-40 years ago.) Star Wars is still a popular license, even if merchandising is not as exceptional as it used to be for the recent movies. Harry Potter sells well because it is Harry Potter, not because it is a fantasy / castle theme that also happens to be licensed. You can put a Harry Potter logo on a stick and it will sell well at $30.

You are posting models with parts lists that can be bought through LEGO's bricklink. So if LEGO allow you to post a third party IP MOC with instructions and parts lists, then both LEGO and a BL seller profit from the sale of parts if someone creates it. Similarly if they allow you to post a LEGO IP, then it send the message that it is OK for other third parties to make money from LEGO's IP in a form that LEGO have not approved. I imagine that is their lawyers' stance, and they are just strong handed when it comes to removing anything that looks like it might infringe. Personally, I don't see why they don't just remove all possibilities to download and let other sites do that.

And what if the thing that made them successful was just because they were good for the time / all there was at the time. People also change. Exactly the same product 40 years later may bomb now, not because the product is suddenly worse but because the target audience has moved on. Prawn cocktails used to be seen as an exotic starter in the 1970s. In the UK, a glass of orange juice was often served as a starter in restaurants and was fashionable at the time. These days the same offering would be a bit crap. Even though the product hadn't changed, the audience has.

I wouldn't mask the area at all. I'd do it this way: 1. Get the base colour painted. 2. Put the wheel on an axle. 3. Put the axle in a holder. 4. Hold a paintbrush off centre and slowly twist the axle / turn the wheel. Let the rotation create a perfect circle instead of trying to cut perfect circular curves at that scale. You might even want to create a jog that holds the brush in the right place, so you can move the part to the brush.