MAB

That looks great. Can it collect bricks as well or do they just slide instead. I imagine sports balls / Zamor spheres would be quite difficult to collect.

Very nice. Could you not have used a brickforge helmet or sticker just to make it six! A record surely. :-) Is the crossbow from the Koruit Orcs range? I have some on order but am still waiting for them.

There is no Police theme, so they cannot go under Police. And if you look at the boxes, the police sets are not subthemed either. They are all just City. I don't think City has subthemes. You cannot filter based on subthemes on the website for example. Many have the location in the title but that is not a subtheme. For example, a number are called things like Swamp Police Station. The "Swamp" in the name is just describing where the Police work. It is not a subtheme. This one came out at the same time as other "Swamp" sets but it is not called "Swamp Police Crooks' Hideout", it is just "Crooks' Hideout". There is no Swamp Police subtheme branding on it. There is no formal subtheme. Of course, people tend to lump together similar things that came out at similar times and so talk of subthemes. But these are all just City sets. Swamp Police sets can be played with alongside Sky Police sets and alongside standard Police sets and alongside all other City sets.

Yeah, but you cannot exclude Jack Sparrow and still do POTC! It seems to me that LEGO will make something if they will make money from it. Modern weapons bad, unless they are in a licensed theme. I've seen where the "rule" is, it is on the IDEAS website. But then, when LEGO themselves do the waiter with his bottle of wine grape juice: then surely any depiction of a bottle or can in a modern context can be explained away by saying it contains non-alcoholic contents, so long as there are not other elements to the set design that would highlight alcohol use.

Plus they did the wine cellar in Barrel Escape from The Hobbit. Plenty of wine barrels, bottles and even the drunk chief elf who has his keys stolen by Bilbo.

I also cannot really see why they would do it, as they use figures to sell sets. That said, they are also doing the DC Superheroes line (in addition to the HP series) and almost half of those are characters that are new to LEGO, with variants on existing characters for the other half. I imagine they would need a similar ratio for SW. If they were all essentially unknown to kids, then the series would not sell well. They need the well known characters to sell blind packs. And one problem is that there are not that many outfits they can be done with. Vader is Vader, Luke, Leia and Han have been done so many times there are no screen outfits they do not come in. Of course, it would be interesting if Hasbro do stop making figures, and LEGO suddenly starts, as it would show if the Hasbro deal has stopped LEGO producing individual minifigures for sale all this time.

Brickset logins are usually fine if you allow cookies. I typically need to login once every 20-30 days or so.

The thing I thought was really attractive about that hall at first is the pattern on the side. I nearly voted for it. But looking closer, it is impossible to achieve. The parts that form the design are overlapping with each other so this is impossible unless the design is no longer flat or the parts are cut. The render from the sides shows them clearly overlapping in a flat design. The roof also looks a bit weak (big gaps in the sides). It is strange how some parts of the wall have the masonry brick pointing brick side out, other parts brick side in. The seats inside are also a bit strange. They have used the Friends feet holders, but I wonder how the minifigures sit at the very low tables. Yeah, I use brickforge ones. Much nicer!

I assumed this was to build and display as a set rather than the dimensions of the box.

I agree with it being a moot point, as you don't have to buy it to be a fan of something or be part of a community. If gets get LEGO as presents and talk about it, or if they attend LEGO fan days, etc they are still part of the LEGO community.

If you are only buying one, then go for the City. The base area is 31x42 cm. It even tells you this in the LEGO description. https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/ninjago-city-70620

Plus zombies need killing, Shaun of the Dead style.

I don't think the Old Trafford set provides anything new that could be used in a sports theme. Although I would like to see a minifigure pack containing summer sports players - many sports have been done before if only as one-offs in the CMF, so things like football (as in soccer), rugby, american football, golf, tennis, some athletics (track), maybe basketball and baseball. Although it would be nice to see a new part for a cricket bat and that would be ideal if LEGO wanted to expand sales in India. All with generic tops / outfits. I'm not sure I'd want to see a whole theme though. After all, it is really the figures and their sports accessories that are important here, so as long as they provided two different style football tops (red vs blue, or stripes vs hoops, or similar) that would be fine for football (plus the ball obviously). Same for any team type sports. Whites for tennis and cricket. Bibs for athletes. I'm not so sure they need lots of building parts to go with them like you might get in a theme. Unless each set came with a small part of a stand / benches / bleachers that could be assembled into something larger if you had more than one set. And past Sports themes often have those awful pitch parts to turn them into games, I'd hope if they did Sports in City they would be avoided. There are much better table top games like Subbuteo for LEGO not to try that again.

I don't think he was talking about the stadium as much as the people / atmosphere inside the stadium. And imagine all the tan baseplates to go with them.

I pretty much agree with all of this post. LEGO made a substantial change, but it was a sideways step not a step forwards. If anything, it is backwards slightly. If just exchanging for money off, it is not a big deal but you do have to decide before time if you want instore vouchers, especially if you have no internet connection in store. But for the gifts, I find it quite pathetic. They used to give colouring sheets away for free on the kids site. Now they charge VIP points for them. They show you (brick based) awards you cannot have as they do not stock them. What is the point, it just irritates customers.

So why rule out kids? Many follow Lego news and read the Lego life magazine or other Lego comics

BL is composed of individual sellers, most of which are excellent and take care of the parts they sell. Look for one with good feedback and you will be fine.

Yes, although if you look at the system scale ones ... 2020 Poe's orange / white, RoS. ( 2019 chibi Ep 4, not really comparable) ( 2019 one off Christmas employee gift (not retail) ) 2018 Ep 4 2016 blue / grey, TFA 2015 Poe's orange/black, TFA 2012 Ep 4 The Ep 4 X-wing has a 6 year gap in modern times too. Of course, this gap was filled with other X-wings, to tie into the then current movies. Bad for anyone wanting an original trilogy colour scheme but having both the original and current on the shelves at the same time is probably too much. And of course the SW sets also coexisted with the in-house Galaxy Squad (2013), Alien Conquest (2011), SP3 (2010) in the last decade.

Where does that come from? I know the weapons is modern context but had not seen it for alcohol use. Although surely Futurama is a future context, and much like blasters and other weapons are allowed in Star Wars because this is not warfare in modern context, any alcohol use in Futurama will not be modern context. Plus there is the explanation that Bender uses alcohol as a fuel, like some modern day vehicles. Although, of course, he takes/drinks way too much more than he needs.

LEGO will need his agreement, if they are going to want to continue selling to him. Personally, I don't want to have to pay higher set prices for better protection against scammer, since we have all the protection we need here. If the set does not contain what it is supposed to contain, we can return it within our consumer rights. All customers here are protected. Why pay more to have a worse product (one that is damaged permanently when opened). Some people like to open their boxes carefully and display them.

Yeah, they seem to use the spanner wrench / screwdriver in place of a proper tool kit in many sets. It is a shame the other tools don't get put in more sets. And of course the obligatory crow bar for robbers.

Not having popular ships on the shelves also has costs too. If a kid wants a MF or X-wing and none are on the shelves, they might well just turn to a manufacturer that does make MF or X-wing toys and forgets about buying into LEGO SW as they don't make the popular items (at the time the kid wants them). The line is what is on the shelves at any particular time. LEGO cares about sales now, not sales of what was on the shelves 2-3 years ago. Having two different X-wings at the same scale reduces the diversity of the line. Always having one doesn't.

That brings me back to my first answer. I don't think it is possible to define what the LEGO community is, let alone determine its size. You think a fan is someone that follows everything new that is being released. That is rather narrow as it excludes fans that follow only technic, or only architecture, or only system sets, or only a specific license such as SW sets, or fans of LEGO in general that do not follow everything LEGO produces. I doubt that most people that consider themselves AFOLs follow everything new that is released. I have no interest in DUPLO so I do not follow that. I have no interest in the new DOTS range, so I will not follow news of that. I have no interest in quite a few themes, so I do not follow them. I do not actively follow everything new, so I am not a fan by your definition. Although I consider myself a fan of LEGO. So yeah, I don't think it is possible to define what the community is, let alone determine how big it is.

Probably because LEGO doesn't have to show Bender drinking alcohol. Homer drinks a beer in many Simpsons episodes, but that didn't stop the Simpsons. Norrington is drunk in PotC (Dead Man's Chest) and there are bar fights, but they still did PotC.

Not really. I didn't mention every child in the world. I mentioned every child that looks at sets on supermarket shelves. There are about 80M children in USA+Canada, and about 80M in Europe. There is something like 2.25 billion children worldwide but about 2 billion of those are in developing countries. So my guess of 100M is based on the developed world, and not those in developing countries where the majority are unlikely to be LEGO fans. Of course, there will be fans in developing countries, especially those where there is poverty but a rich middle class.