MAB

Are the hands plastic, or just wood dyed yellow. They don't look plastic to me.

Why is it apologism? I am not an apologist for LEGO. However, I do support common sense. I just cannot see the point of City doing ONLY civilian based sets for an entire year. Take a look at 2019. There are about 32 or 33 sets in the City range, excluding smaller polybags and so on. Within that there are quite a few civilian sets. Excluding anything that is emergency or space, we have: So just over one third of the output of City for 2019 is civilian - although some of the emergency and space sets also cover civilian aspects too. And remember as well that there are Modulars which are civilian, plus sets in Creator that cover similar material, plus probably another 15-20 civilian sets in the Friends range. I think it would be completely stupid for them to have NO emergency and NO themed sub-theme (like space this year) and concentrate ONLY on civilian based sets covering shops and transport in a theme that is mainly still targeted towards boys. They could put out 30+ sets, all based ONLY on civilian themes. And they would compete with each other. The size of the market for them would be similar to the size of the market for the civilian sets of 2019. On average, each would sell less. They would lose the sales of emergency and the themed sets, which might go to other areas of LEGO, or might go to other brands. Alternatively they could focus ONLY on civilian sets by just cutting out all the emergency and the sub-theme, and do just a smaller range of City sets. Killing off police, emergency, science, space, explorers, etc as you seem to want won't mean you get more civilian City. None of this is an excuse or an apology as to why LEGO don't or won't do ONLY civilian sets for a whole year in City, it is based solely on common sense, the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" type common sense. Why do you think they keep making emergency sets? Surely your own language here is also that of your City Apologists Corp. If saying they make emergency sets because emergency sets sell makes someone an apoologist for LEGO, then saying they make civilian sets such as the Donut Shop or Bus Station because they sell is also the act of an apologist.

Why focus only on civilian? Surely focusing only on one particular aspect such as shops is just as bad as focusing only on emergency. If there are only shops on the shelves, what are people going to buy if their kid wants an emergency vehicle? If City has proven successes with civilian based sets and they keep making them, then they don't need to focus only on them. They are doing well as part of a mixed line-up. If they focus only on them for one year, making more similar sets on the same theme then they are likely to perform less well on average.

Why don't you check the prices on a marketplace such as Bricklink to get an indication of value? A new and sealed 4439 can be had for about $50-60 from a number of sellers. So $80 seems high, but then you will also need to factor in postage. Ask for postage costs and you can decide whether $80 locally is higher than the global marketplace price including postage. If you are building it, it is overpriced compared to the parts it contains. But then many boxed older sets are. Only you can decide if it is worth $80 to you.

I guess we like what we get used to, and get used to what we like. After all, a very odd head is this one: It just doesn't look right - because it actually has a nose like real people!

The real cars rely quite heavily on decals too. Remove all the advertising stickers from the lego versions and they look like the real car without any advertising stuck on.

Although this is one of the oddest in-betweener heads ... with freckles across the nose space where the nose should be. I've seen a couple of these in used lots where someone has drawn the nose on, dot-to-dot style.

If you miss 6349 then you can buy a used one on bricklink for about $50 US.

That was loads of the Christmas Build-Up sets that were stolen.

So how would you sticker a dome?

I think there have been worse minifigure heads, especially in the difficult years between going from the classic smiley to more modern designs. Take divers for example ... Ones with big pupil-less eyes with really thick eyebrows and moustaches, weird female eyes that look lifeless, one that as a mic that has his ears in a strange place, sunglasses that imply eyes are too close together, the introduction of some heads with pupils that are yellow and some very strange stubble ...

I agree for minifigure parts print quality is not great when the design goes over more than one part, but I rarely see misaligned parts on other pieces. At least nothing as bad as not quite aligned stickers.

They donate LEGO sets to hospitals, so it could have been nicked from one. It might also have been a prize in a raffle or similar although it seems strange to put a donation sticker on it then.

Yes, I know that LEGO won't do printed pieces for every set. But if you look at the post I responded to it claimed that Speed Champions would suck if they were printed. I don't see how they would look any worse than stickered versions.

Because a printed one would look very similar to a stickered one without the hassle of having to align stickers carefully.

Why would it suck if they were printed?

Same here. The skater girl is (and was, even at the time) a bit similar to others. The mechanic and flamenco are OK. But the rest were really quite strong / unique characters, especially at the time of release.

Are any of the trolls light flesh though? They all seem to be very brightly coloured, so light flesh hips would seem out of place here.

They have released TWO £650 sets. I don't think collectors need to keep up with everything they release. Collectors set their own parameters for their collection, and can buy what fits with it. How many do you feel you need to collect? Buy one, if you want another newer one, then buy that too. If you are happy with just the one, then stick with what you have. Just because you have a model bought some years previously, why should that stop others from buying a new version?

I'm still waiting to see what the sets look like. The minifigures are useless to me, but I might still get the sets if heavily discounted like Angry Birds and they contain useful parts.

You can if you already have or buy the unprinted parts.

The good thing about the hole being a bit small is that the bearing stays in place well too.

Really? They are £11.99 in other UK stores. LEGO is frequently cheaper in the UK than Germany, especially as we have quite a lot of competition between stores and so get decent discounts. I rarely pay more than 70% of RRP for any normal retail sets (ones that are not exclusive to a particular store). LEGO has been adjusting prices, for example the new Dinosaur fossil set is £54.99 / $59.99 / 59.99€ - so here our £55 set should cost you Eur 62.70. You get it cheaper. Whereas 75229 (Death Star Escape) is £24.99, 29.99€, our £25 set should cost you Eur 28.50. We get it cheaper. Plus the realistic price is probably £15-18 due to many sales. I don't know what the realistic sale price is in Germany to compare to though. I think this is more to do with LEGO's use of fixed price numbers and charging what they can get away with charging rather than trying to make prices "fair" across different countries. However, back to the PAB cup. If they tried to increase the price from £12.00 to £14.50 (equivalent to your Eur 17), then they would simply not sell as well. To make such a price jump on an existing product is hard. As for the GBP sinking, it depends what time-frame you look at it. GBP:Eur has been relatively constant for the past two years. It has risen if you look at only 2 months. If you compare it to ten years ago, it is about the same value. If you compare to five years ago, it has dropped. But then you could just say it peaked in the middle of the decade when the Euro lost significant value in the 2013-15 period. https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=EUR&view=10Y

Even when Coast Guard has been and waiting to come back, then chances are there will be something with a boat / ship in between iterations of it. That was my earlier point, that even though sub-themes change within City, the types of vehicles within them remain fairly constant. There might be different colours or insignia, but the vehicles themselves are constant. So even though there are individual sub-themes that are short lived, they don't feel as short lived since the types of sets are repeated so often, almost yearly. This is where City sub-themes are quite different to the old one-year themes. For example, this Volcano set: Change the trans-orange to trans-blue and switch out the minifigures, and it is essentially an Arctic set just with lime green vehicles.

For me, he has the most versatile pieces in the whole series!