MAB

That hasn't stopped them in the past! I have bought loads of licensed parts via B+P. Unfortunately they are getting better at keeping licensed parts off there, but some still slip through.

When you consider that ebay is a massive collection of sellers, it does not make sense to say one is better than anywhere else. There will be good deals on all sites, and bad ones on all sites too. Plus, no doubt, you have a fee for the VAT being added too. For example, in the UK our limit is £15 before VAT is applied. If something costs £16 to import, then we have to pay £16 + 20%VAT (£3.20) + £8 processing fee. So that £16 item actually costs £27.20. The VAT is small compared to the additional fee charged to process the VAT.

Bricklink sellers do :-) Paper bags are fine, so long as they are not torn when being processed. Plus the other good thing about the plastic ones is that they are clear, so you can see parts inside before opening them.

It varied depending on location. Google lego k-boxes and you might find an answer for your country.

I don't think it is anything to do with the political correctness and war. I think it is essentially down to advertising. Movie franchises sell toys. LEGO knows that.

Nice design especially around the front / hood area although I am not a fan of the door hinges. But I know having opening doors in such a small space is tough without using the old style door piece. I wondered why there were arches sticking out of the front windows!

They are the boxes used to supply the PAB walls. LEGO stores used to sell complete boxes.

Yeah I know, but they get everywhere.

It is mainly useful for parts sellers. Some people have an allergy to animal hair, hence some stores state that they do or do not have pets. Smoke can cause bricks to smell, whether it is caused by the smoker touching the parts or by them being in storage in a house where the seller smokes.

I think the problem there is the number of licensed CMF sets, especially Super Heroes, that do not sell well in Europe and especially in Germany (compared to other LEGO sets). That should be EU countries, rather than European. :-) It matters for us! We'll still be European, but not in the EU, soon (or in 2 or 10 years, however long it takes to sort it out).

I saw that and just thought .... EEEEEEEE

I'm surprised that there is not a skateboard or a surfboard in there.

Ask the seller first if they allow returns, or ask them about the condition of used minifigures.

I think it will age better than Fusion and Life of George. Without the app, the sets are still decent.

I remember PQ. What is it about PQ that you think made it creative, compared to what you think makes City and Ninjago non-creative?

There isn't a point where everybody suddenly stops buying them. They slowly increase prices, so they can probably tell when / if there is a downturn in sales before it gets to the point that nobody is buying them.

Not from a specific football club though. The advice from Man Utd would be to have their branding over as much as possible. Totally unnecessary within City. Probably because they don't think that there is a market for it or that it will not sell as well as their current City line-up. They put a lot into their Sports theme 15 odd years ago but I don't think it sold too well. Of course, it was more game focused than regular LEGO and there are way better football based games than those LEGO produced. Plus I think boys tend to want specific teams on football (soccer) shirts, whereas girls are more accepting of plainer shirts for sports (of course, this is a generalisation).

I would imagine a company the size of lego safety check their food grade products before putting them on the market. However, ABS is safe anyway. Have a guess why DUPLO is allowed to be sold for using with toddlers, who often chew on bricks or similar toys when they are teething. In fact, many baby teethers are made from ABS.

For the City sets, I thought they gave advice but have not actually partnered with them, in that the NASA logo is not on the City sets. Whereas the Creator sets are more genuine product partnerships, where they are NASA designs done in LEGO form. I expect the latter to be the case for the Man Utd deal - that they will want LEGO products with Man Utd branding on, to sell to Man Utd fans especially in the expanding Asian market (Man Utd's poor form over the past few years has lost the loads of floating fans in the UK). I would also prefer to see City stay as brand free as possible, outside of made up brands like Octan. I don't think LEGO need advice on how to make sports sets for City, after all they have done a lot of sports sets across various sizes from polybags to larger sets in a City style recently, just in the Friends range. With a change of colours and using minfiigures instead of minidolls, these could all make decent City sets (and this is ignoring the pool and horse riding ones). I don't think it is the knowledge that is lacking here, I think it is the (lack of) desire to make City sports themed sets that stops them.

Especially when dealing with printing on LEGO, getting the "right" colours is fairly meaningless anyway. LEGO's white might be white, but once printed on even a light colour like tan it is clearly not white as shown on the left. I'm glad they have moved towards alternatives such as the one on the right, as this covers up their inability to print light colours on darker ones properly.

And what if they haven't seen the show? My kids played with Nexo Knights and Chima sets making up their own stories without seeing the shows, but knew their names. It took him quite a while to work out how to play with them and how they interacted but he made up his own stories, mainly based on cultural heritage he already knew - so for example at first the Nexo Knights were enemies as they had different crests and he acted out stories of knights fighting for their castles and so on, but later became allies when he got some of the villains. Similar with Chima, the lions and crocs were enemies, then friends, then enemies again, and so on until he decided how he wanted to play. He wasn't told a storyline but he soon assumed storylines based on stories he had heard before. Knowing they were called Laval and Cragger as it was on the box didn't stop him making up his own stories. But also, what if they have seen the show? Once my son saw Chima cartoons, he still played out his own ideas. In fact they were probably more detailed than before he had seen the cartoons. Just like fans (of any franchise) can write their own fan fiction, kids can make up stories about what happens when (insert character) does (something). Knowing what the characters are like doesn't stop them telling stories, it may even help. LEGO are already filling in details about storytelling when they have the word police on the side of a car or put a minifigure in a police uniform or in a stripy sweater. Does that undermine storytelling? They have already given the storyline a huge steer by telling the child it is a policeman in this case. They are unlikely to act out him being a knight (or a duke, given his name), they are more likely to act out him catching a thief. In fact, many kids need some sort of idea about how to play / act out a story before they can start making up their own stories and usually this comes from memory of other related stories they have heard. Give a child a character in an outfit that they know absolutely nothing about and they are less likely to play with it, as the character has no significance whatsoever. Ask them to make up a story about some type of person or a job role they have never heard of and they will likely come up with nothing, even though they have a completely blank canvas. Did this guy ruin storytelling for pirates fans, as he was named - Captain Red Beard. To me, his outfit defines the storyline much more than his name. I imagine most children would act out a pirate story similar to one they have heard or read before if they had that character but did not know what his name was. Now tell the children that he is called Captain Red Beard and that he is a pirate captain. Would they play in a different way? I doubt it. Now show them a cartoon with him in. Would they play in a different way? I imagine the cartoon has a bigger effect than telling them a name. If they see a cartoon, they will copy stories they see in the cartoon. But if they didn't see a cartoon, they would still copy stories they had heard before, whether or not they know he is called Captain Red Beard. However, even after seeing a cartoon, some kids will make up their own stories about Captain Red Beard about how he became the captain or what happened after the adventures in the cartoons and so on. Others, with less imagination, won't.

I suggest that you buy torsos with arms and hands (or torso assemblies). So for that torso, get these instead... https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=973pb0801c01#T=S&O={"rpp":"500","iconly":0}

I don't think any of them are really realistic. But they contain all the essential play features a kid would expect in a toy police station. They move bits around from design to design, but the features are very similar - the jail cells (always placed to be broken out of), the glass office areas, the barriers. The main difference is the floorspace, which is in line with the gradual reduction in the number of larger plates. The other obvious difference is the lack of the pull down garage door. Personally, I think there was a bigger jump between the 2011 and 2014 sets than 2014 and 2020 sets. But then there was the intermediate 2017 one which again had that more substantial building section, but again the feeling is mainly down to space. If I was in the market for one, I'd go for this one now rather than wait for the new one next year.

It is funny, I had never heard the term English Bulldog before. Here, they tend to be called British Bulldogs, and are often accompanied by the British (not English) flag. There was even the WWE wrestler Davey Boy Smith, known as the British Bulldog. But an English inspired modular would be fine for me. As to the police station: "It includes four jail cells with a bed and toilet in each cell." Given how many toilets LEGO tend to put in buildings, this seems very suspicious!

I think he just crashed as part of the police chase. The buckets / tubs etc are great if you have kids but they often make the sets seem expensive. I don't think the 2020 one (bottom) is that different to the 2014 one. In terms of play features it is very similar. One difference is the depth, which is mainly down to using smaller plates but that is simple to fix if you want a deeper building. Although it doesn't actually add much to the play.