MAB

And that is fine if it meets your collecting goals. When I restore old sets, I prioritise authenticity over appearance. I aim to go for only genuine LEGO parts and ideally of the right era so long as they are not too expensive so I'd take used genuine snickered parts over modern reproduction stickers that aren't genuine. Large stickers across multiple parts can be especially problematic.

I would be fairly indifferent but saddened that they failed to get anywhere near full potential again, even though I haven't bought any new sets . I have the original sets and a lot of MOCs, so the new releases don't do a lot for me. Rivendell is beautiful but I didn't buy it as I already had a smaller MOC that fits my display space although I did use LEGO 's design to add the white gazebo type structure. The minifigs did nothing for me. Barad-Dûr is again great but I already have a MOC and the ony thing I bought from that set was Sauron. I like the new ringwraith so I bought some torsos and capes and use Wolfpack's hood to add variety to my existing ringwraiths. The Shire is a massive disappointment for me as I already have an extended Bag End , I think the only thing I'll take from that set is the printed window frames and maybe a minifigure part or two. I would buy a decent minifig based Minas Tirith as it would provide long needed minifigures. I have a bit of a MOC that I never completed partly as I thought we'd never get the minifigs for it to look complete. Denethor was easy, but prints for others are really necessary to fit in with the styles of other figures. And of course the Witch King's helmet.

Yet play will still follow a fairly conventional path with these unlicensed sets. Most kids with a forestman set will have played out a Robin Hood style storyline with the forest men being on the side of good, probably rogue like characters. Similarly a kid with a City police set will have the crooks do something bad and the cops chase them. These sets work because kids know how to play with them. The characters they invent will likely be stereotypes based on existing books, movies and other stories. This is no more creative than coming up with stories based on licensed characters. There is a huge amount of fan created fiction around Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Disney, and so on. Yesterday my daughter and two of her friends were playing something to do with Disney Princesses, but not acting out any storyline I recognized. That is just as creative as a cop chasing a robber. Whereas if you try to build a theme where there is no reference material for a kid to fall back on, then I expect they will struggle to play with it rather than be able to come up with truly creative characters. That is why kids and especially adults want printed minifig parts, because it tells us what the character is and partly how to play with it. You have been reading too many conspiracy theories on reddit. That is not a point, it is made up nonsense. LEGO is not going to kill off one of its best selling themes in CITY, it will not be killing Creator, it will not be killing Friends, it will not be killing off the Modular buildings, and it will probably be creating at least one new unlicensed theme in the next five years. I hope Dreamzzz ends fairly soon, as if it continues it will become boring like most unlicensed themes based around a fairly specific gimmick. Ninjago proved to be different because it was not constrained so narrowly by a single idea and could evolve to cover multiple ideas.

What are they doing wrong, and how exactly are they destroying "the community", whatever that is. If a seller is charging high prices for common stuff, then buy from a cheaper seller.

It depends what you want to do with your sets. If for personal use and will never be for sale, get reproductions. If selling, don't do it. If it is possible they will be sold in future the stickers should indicate that they are not original. Any company producing exact replicas is probably breaking the law. An alternative is to buy the used parts with stickers on bricklink. For many sets the snickered parts are quite cheap, especially compared to an unused sticker sheet. But of course it depends on the set.

They may be similar, but the originals were definitely better in the past! Before they were licensed by Reddit.

The alternative view is that some people don't value minifigs as much as they should! The reality is different people value minifigs (and parts) in different ways. People valuing minifigs is great for parts collectors as they pay high prices for them. I've bought multiple copies of a set in the past and sold off all but one set of minifigures to enable a bigger build with the extra parts. If you buy in at the right price, the extra parts can be free thanks to the people that value minifigs so highly.

It's actual value is what people will pay for it at the time it is sold. I imagine the value of the Smeagol GWP is quite high because of the poor perceived value of the main set to get it. Some buyers wanting those exclusive minifig heads or the packaging but not wanting to pay the rather high value for the Shire set may be willing to go higher than others. If I had one to sell, I probably wouldn't let it go for less than $70 US, just to offset the high price of the set. And buyers will decide if that is justified.

Or, alternatively, you are completely out of the loop on what other customers want and you make stuff up to justify your own stance.

We have more unlicensed sets now than in the 80s and 90s. So the increase in licensed output is not at the expense of unlicensed as there is more of it. It is just that LEGO has changed direction for the unlicensed output. I find it a little strange that some people complain that LEGO is not creative / imaginative as in the past, when their current unlicensed output is way more creative than the stereotypical castle, pirates and to some extent space. If anything their output is too imaginative for these people.

Because it doesn't fit with what you want to collect / display or because you cannot really afford the big set but can if you can offset the cost a little by selling the GWP. It is possible to be a fan and not have everything. It may also be someone is a richer fan and wants two or three different hobbit holes to make a better Shire and they sell off the additional GWP they are given and the minifigures from the additionalsets. Just because someone sells something doesn't make them greedy, money loving scum like they are often portrayed here.

Based on the last round, anyone wanting to buy a set should be able to get one just fine if they remember the date they go live and are not unavailable on that date.

Or they are a fan and want to offset some of the cost of the large sets by selling the GWP to someone willing to pay that much but didn't buy the big set to get it.

That also sounds a lot like Alien Conquest, Galaxy Squad and Castle of 2010-14. A lot of people seemed to put those themes down as they weren't as good as the space and Castle themes they had in the past. But kids of that time got on and happily played with them. And later, when there was nothing space and castle available, people revised their thoughts and they weren't so bad after all.

Yes, the two are quite different. Although Barad-Dur is microscale it still looks fine with minifigures posed in front of it as well as inside it as there is nothing really showing the scale compared to a figure. In fact, there is one window that is minifig scale. So it looks like a tower that figures can interact with at the same scale even though in reality it is much much larger. Whereas if they did a microscale city with identifiable small buildings, then minifigures would look like giants next to it. Same here, the size is OK. The price is not. Plus that awful tree.

Plus media companies want to be associated with LEGO. It is the number one toy company in the world. To be associated with LEGO promotes their IP. It wouldn't surprise me if licensing costs per unit sold are lower for LEGO than other companies as media wants that reach. Monster Fighters would have got boring very quickly once they had done the full classic roster of monsters. It was a perfect one year theme. It might have stretched to two. But longer? No thanks. Because the health of the company is important to a fan that wants to continue to see new products. Look at the huge range of sets available now compared to 10, 20 then 30 years ago. The popularity of TLM and the growth after that, the initial forays into 18+ sets, trying out botanicals, buying bricklink to get the BDP running at a much larger scale. If they suddenly start making financial losses and lose market share, I wouldn't expect anywhere near as much choice any more.

Nothing is stopping you building like that. You can use regular torsos like that if you want to. You can also buy plain heads for little money or wipe the prints from printed heads.

Those that used to use the brickset forum may remember the theft from Fairy Bricks. They had £400000 worth of LEGO stolen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-53408525

Those other companies are able to give some people what they want. LEGO's financial report suggests they are still giving many people what they want.

In official sets LEGO has inspired creative play for kids by recently doing the mashups of lightside/darkside. If it is creative to put a bit of helicopter on a fire truck, then it is just as creative to mashup an X-wing and a Tie fighter.

Again it depends what you want to show. If you want to show the building, you don't need all that many soldiers to attack it. If you want to show off the size of the army you almost lose the build. At a show over 10 years ago there was a guy displaying a Helms Deep MOC and he had bought about 400 orcs to attack it. I had a chat with him near the end of they day and he was disappointed that nearly all of the comments and questions he got from the public were about the size, the cost and the time taken to pose all the figures and very little about the build.

Although that leaves out the more interesting scenes that happened outside. To me, the most realistic option is minifig scale buildings / scenery representing the location rather than the whole thing, like they did with Rivendell and The Shire.

Why is it a bad example? It is a perfect example. It is a CITY set. The clue is on the box. And we've just been told that CITY is 100% creative. And just like license haters seem to cite the repetition of the X-wing or Millenium Falcon from Star Wars, what is creative about yet another fire truck? LEGO keep making them as kids want them and they sell, not because they are creative or imaginative.

It depends what you want to do. If you want a detailed vignette of a battle in action, then 12 soldiers vs 12 soldiers on a 32x32 stud area is often plenty. Whereas if you like to line up formations row after row on multiple 48x48 baseplates then you'll need a lot more.

I'm glad for some uncreative licensed themes then if this is what you call 100% creative... Firetrucks are so creative and LEGO has never done anything like that before, and cars that look just like formula one cars and even have real world advertising on them. So creative.