MAB

Yeah, although I regularly add them to bricklink orders if the seller has them cheap whether I need them or not. If under 5p each, they are not worth trying to resharpen.

Especially if you build mosaics with plates or tiles. Getting 1x1 tiles off a plate / baseplate can be a real pain even with the pointy end of a separator and they soon get blunt enough to not work as well. At least with 1x1 plates you can lever them with the other stud removal end.

I doubt there are that many fans of UK football, or even English football, or even Premier League football. Most people here support a team, not a league. And most people would not buy a model of a rival club's stadium. A significant proportion of football fans in Manchester wouldn't buy this. I imagine this is made to cater for the worldwide "fans" of Manchester United, the ones that buy shirts and watch on TV and have followed the club since the glory days of Alex Ferguson when they had a decent team. Although there are loads of much cheaper 3D buildable models of Old Trafford available and this has even been done at a similar scale in building blocks before by Character Building. I don't really understand the appeal of doing a single club like this, but no doubt LEGO have their reasons pairing with one of the richest / highest valued football clubs. To me it is more speculation than rumour. Although as you say, speculation with some background thought, so slightly better than my mate's mate's dad who works at a LEGO store said that ...

I have probably about 25-30 that I use as brick separators. They are handy to keep around a building area as if you keep only two then chances are you will not be able to find them when you need them. As for my other few hundred, they are LEGO parts so use them in MOCs. Look at these MOCs from others... And on here:

There were green ones of the modern version in Palace Cinema and Horizon Express. Plus dark grey and green were available in the old style of separator.

Even then, what would you rather display if you were an author and not into LEGO? A typewriter that you need to build and doesn't work or a real old one that does work (and probably costs a lot less)?

It depends what you call a set really. Some of the Bricklink AFOL programme sets were quite large and were packaged with a box and instructions like a normal set, and as there were largish production runs they can be found for sale (although heavily marked up by now). Most MOC designers/sellers will just sell the instructions though, as sourcing the parts in bulk is costly if the sets do not sell very fast.

I very rarely get logged out. Do you block cookies?

I like Star Wars because it is Star Wars. I like some in-house space themes. But yes, if LEGO do another in-house space theme there will be loads of complaints that LEGO did it wrong and that what they should have done is re-do all the old classic space sets and that they have wasted a slot on pandering to modern kids' views of space and not a 1980s view of space. They have done it before - look at AC and GS. Both were in-house space themes. At the time they were both criticized. What about the kid that wants a key ship like the Millenium Falcon? Should s/he have to wait five years as one was already made? In my view, there should probably be an X-wing and a MF on the shelves at all times.

I don't think they were, at least compared to SW and Super Heroes. Star Wars is very different to LOTR in that kids like it, and so it overlaps with LEGO's main demographic. True, and even that seemed to attract lots of complaints and it wasn't until AFOLs saw how bad the second wave was that the first wave was seen as a decent wave. I recall complaints about the Mines of Moria being just walls, that Weathertop was too small, that the Uruk-Hai set was just a bit of wall and the only set really praised was Helm's Deep.

I think all those parts have been available for months. I bought some of the tiles back in June.

Wasn't Great Uncle Bulgaria dressed in a green tartan in the 1970s? The blue seems to date from the 1990s. Once told what they are I can sort of see the resemblance, but the noses look wrong. Maybe a larger 2x2 cone would have been better.

Star Wars. Because any in-house Space theme will be criticised for not being Classic Space and will probably sell badly, along with complaints that it is all about war and not exploration.

Where do the terms differentiate between molded and 3D printed parts? I cannot see it anywhere in the seller terms. All I see concerning this is (1.2.1 of seller terms): LEGO Brand Only: All items listed for sale must be LEGO brand products unless they fall into either of the two categories listed below – 1.2.5 (Custom Sets) or 1.2.6 (Non LEGO Items). Other brands of building toys are not permitted. https://www.bricklink.com/v3/terms_of_service_seller.page To me, that outlaws both 3D printed and custom molded parts.

That is what is found when a journalist google searches for lego problems.

Rubbing or brushing with a paste made from fine grade silicon carbide or carborundum works well too, especially for parts where it is difficult to get sandpaper into crevices. Then a polish and they look great.

Don't you get a badge for that?

They have been using official images for a while now. It depends what users upload.

Where did LEGO ever say that nothing was going to change? It is funny really. BL allowed the sale of custom parts as custom items for many years and nobody complained. Then brickarms items got added to the catalogue, and suddenly nearly everyone is up in arms that custom items are allowed to be sold on BL and that the catalogue has been tarnished by this and that BL should be purist only. Then LEGO buys BL and has custom items removed from the catalogue and also bans the sale of custom items and again people are up in arms that custom items should be allowed. I sold brickforge and brickwarriors parts on BL. I reckon less than 0.01% (so less than 1 in 10000) of my sales were custom parts. I don't think I ever bought a custom part on BL. I can totally understand LEGO not allowing the sale of custom items. The majority of them have no safety testing. The majority have little quality control, and are definitely not approved by LEGO. LEGO should not allow the sale of parts they do not approve on their own site. The same with fake parts, be they capes or custom chromed parts, as they are both fake and possibly not up to LEGO's standard. Plus they drive sales away from sellers with the genuine LEGO parts. And what if someone buys custom train track then has a problem with it, they blame LEGO for allowing it to be sold via their site. Or a custom motor that overheats or a custom LIPO unit that they connect incorrectly that causes a fire. You can still buy custom parts, just not on a LEGO owned site. There are still lots of placed to buy custom parts though. How many custom parts do people buy through BL rather than direct from the seller anyway? He has been trying to offload most of his businesses for quite a while. When a big player comes after a small part that was not really going anywhere, I'm not surprised he got rid of it.

Watch out! Soon they will be removing all straight track from sets, saying that this is because their new wheels more are efficient than old wheels on curved track .. It also reminds me of washing powder/liquid adverts - wash whiter than ever - our new product is much better than the old. Or shaving razor adverts - 2 blades are better than 1. 3 blades are better than 2. 4 blades are better than 3. 5 blades are better than 4. ... so what they are really telling us is that for 30 odd years they stuck with an inferior system.

The other issue is what are you printing on? Some decal paper is really bad for small decals. Larger prints from a distance look fine, but up close cheaper decal paper can really bleed ink. So even if your decals print well on normal paper, they can look terrible on the decal paper.

You can already get Mordor Orcs, although these are direct fakes of the LEGO ones. They are LEGOing brand rather than Koruit. I still hope for a Witch King, although I guess the helmet rules him out. Although they do plenty of one-off (non-army builder) characters across LOTR, Hobbit, GoT, SH, etc, I guess these tend not to have new specialised moulds.

Now available at S@H in the UK.

This isn't a fact. It is also somewhat contradictory, like your other statement about nobody asking but you told them. If they have recently started and it has also grown to 40% then that suggests that before recently, it was ZERO. Otherwise it hasn't recently started. So it has gone from 0% to 40% "recently" whatever that means. Yet AFOLs that have been lego fans for many years know that LEGO has listened to AFOLs and produced sets for AFOLs for longer than "just recently".

I guess they need the 10 point stuff to make it look like they have rewards to give away. If they remove those and the "SOLD OUT" stuff, there would hardly be anything left.