MAB

Everybody won't try to make the same stuff though, as there is typically lots of material to choose from. And in unlicensed themes there is not full creative freedom. In castle, aside from the original yellow castle, the output tended to be grey and occasionally black bits of building, horses and carts, the occasional dragon. There is very little creative freedom to design something genuinely different as if it doesn't fit the theme, it won't be accepted and also probably wouldn't sell if customers didn't understand what it was meant to be. One of the downsides of BDP is the similarity of so many castle offerings, series after series. Similarly with classic pirates, it was really quite a narrow theme conforming to "Boys Own" style or Hollywood style swashbuckler pirates. Kids having those sets would know the traditional storyline and how to play , just like with a licensed set. Classic themes were much narrower than Ninjago, Nexo Knights or Chima but even they draw on traditional storyline although the themes often appeared rather disjointed where maybe there is too much freedom.

There are not too many licensed themes though. If anything, there are not enough as LEGO is missing out on sales to fans of other licenses. The number of licensed themes is irrelevant to the number of unlicensed themes. The number of retail sets of each is about 50:50 and has been for a while. The reason there are few unlicensed themes (not sets) is that the popular licensed themes have swallowed up the smaller themes. City covers so much more than it used to including realistic space. Ninjago covers a lot of light fantasy, some historical architecture, historical-like wooden ships and space-like futuristic technology. The shorter lived themes of Dreamzzz, Hidden Side, Vidiyo, and even NK and Chima have mopped up the rest of the ideas although often overlapped in some places. Creativity in those themes is responsible for killing off the classic themes. Remember also people's views of Castle in the final years. LEGO gave fans a big castle and small medieval sets yet those fans dissed it as boring and repetitive, it sold poorly and was heavily discounted. Something similar happened to Galaxy Squad with complaints about it being too aggressive and not Classic Space. So LEGO used creativity in story telling to weave some aspects of classic themes into the themes that kids actually like today, and no longer do the classic themes but instead make big, expensive classic style sets for nostalgic adults that only want things like they had in the past.

The various hoods and keffiyeh are all quite thick, presumably a hijab would also need to be a similar thickness. It probably wouldn't look any different to the old style hood.

To me, that is the worst of both worlds. Microscale gives the overall shape of the city but not really any detail, and the minifigure scale interiors would be rather irrelevant as most scenes occur outside. Rooms inside Barad-Dur work as it is a tower and you expect rooms in a tower (even if the scale is off). Whereas having rooms inside a City (rather than a building) would be weird.

Whose creativity? Is there any difference in creativity between a consumer buying a City set or a Modular and following the instructions and a consumer buying a licensed set and following the instructions. I see many second hand sets for sale and many consumers build sets once and keep them together. And for those that take sets apart and rebuild into something else, there is just as much building creativity in licensed MOCs as for unlicensed. From the LEGO designer point of view, they can use creativity in build styles just as much for licensed sets as for unlicensed. And the same for unlicensed? So no more Classic Space grey and blue, as the endless repetition of those got boring, no more repetition of fire or police in City, no more repetition of castles and wagons in Castle, no more repetition of ships in Pirates, ... Star wars is about 5% of LEGO's output in terms of available sets. If someone doesn't like it, there are plenty of other themes. Many unlicensed themes have the same now, with named characters and storylines.

So buy Dreamzzz or vintage stuff on the secondary market. And let others that want to buy Star Wars, HP and Ninjago buy what they want. If LEGO only made themes like Dreamzzz, they'd soon be bankrupt and you'd only be able to enjoy old themes from the secondary market.

And what about City, Ninjago, Friends, Technic, Creator,... should they be time limited too? LEGO will produce what people buy and for new themes what they think people will buy. They keep producing Star Wars and City because they sell very well. Killing a top selling theme would be bad for all themes, as LEGO would lose market share and revenue.

Sideshow Bob looks a bit strange. Maybe it is the angle of the photo.

So which licenses and the associated fans would you want to get rid of? If LEGO cut out a small licensed theme, chances are there would be zero extra unlicensed sets made as if there was a market for those unlicensed themes, they'd be filling it. For a few years now, it has been about 50/50 licensed to unlicensed in terms of sets. More licensed themes, but much smaller number of sets per theme than in unlicensed themes.

Even if it did, there are 1000s on BL at little more (and with LEGO's recent price increase often less) than the PAB price. I imagine the early days were dominated by resellers buying out the stock, as large numbers were appearing on BL and some customers were paying silly prices. While those that waited were soon able to buy from PAB.

Especially when the "other stuff" includes the license that you have just dropped to concentrate on your own designs, but they are being done by another manufacturer whose sales are rapidly increasing as they managed to get hold of the license to produce brick building toys for the largest entertainment company in the world. Not only would the rival's sales of Disney licensed sets be huge, but as people get used to buying their products when shopping for brick sets then sales of the rest of their in-house products would also take off. It would be a huge marketing fail if customers saw that LEGO lost the rights to Star Wars and other Disney brands, Warner Bros, etc and other companies started to produce them.

Other people would have a problem paying that much though. A better solution is a smaller official set that sells well to many people, and people that want a huge display build a moc.

Aside from the early days when for a few months of coming in and quickly going out of stock, I think BF minifig parts haven't been out of stock for a few years now.

No. So you would cancel some of the best selling themes and let other manufacturers pick them up, while LEGO tries to produce similar style sets that won't compete. And dumping an important Disney property is likely to make Disney to shift all their properties to another brick building company. Losing big sellers would make buyers shift brands, market share would drop and you'll get less variety of unlicensed sets available. So you are happy with licenses in Speed Champions?

Not really, as the book nook is not a large ICONS set. We have also had Brickheadz retail sets but those are not counted in the three.

I did last week. Copied above.

But ... look at my hoard. Look at my hoard! Just as bad are the 'deals' ones where 10% or 20% off counts as a massive deal and is "great value" and you should follow these affiliate links to buy these great deals. Yet people watch these "I bought LEGO" videos and the creators get paid commission by youtube, which they then spend on LEGO and the cycle continues. Someone must enjoy the content.

I thought LEGO were not operating in Russia due to payment sanctions over the war.

I've still got some of the Atlantis squid warriors. I wonder if they will become sought after for statues soon.

They don't need to appeal to everyone, they need to appeal to enough people that are going to buy enough of them. They are perfect army builders and that type of figure appeals to people that would buy lots of them. Not only that but every figure would be of interest to the same person, so there is no worry about what they get. So fans of the figures would buy complete boxes in the knowledge that every single figure is useful.

I just realized for The Shire, 9 minifigures are included but none of them have traditional minifigure posable legs. I doubt we'd get 5 horses in a big set let alone a relatively small set. The much larger LKC only got two horses and a cow.

Licensed ideas are fine for IDEAS. Many of them are licensed.

If they did the Grey Havens, I'd expect it to be a very nice boat and a bit of dockside. LEGO still loves boats.

LEGO aren't currently doing small/medium sized playsets for LOTR and I doubt that will change when the big adult sets are a success. If we get Minas Tirith, I expect to to be a big all-in-one set rather than spread out across multiple sets. They have shown with "The Shire" that they are willing to do one location in detail (Bag End) with other parts of the wider location done as separate builds. Thus it wouldn't surprise me if they did Minas Tirith as the facade of the hall and courtyard / tree as the main build, with a separate little rocky build with the beacon, and a bit of wall and the gate as a further separate build. One main build, two smaller side builds but all in the same adult focused box. When it comes to the White Tree of Gondor, I hope they use a different designer than for The Shire for obvious reasons.

I find Eowyn and Denethor are generic enough that you can make decent minifigures from existing parts. Faramir is not too bad but really needs a Gondor torso to be done well. Obviously the Witch King is the hard one here as the helmet is so iconic, it essentially is him. Fortunately you can buy third party helmets (well, complete figures, but it is the helmet that is important) on aliexpress. I don't have any issue with my original Gandalf the White, Saruman, etc. All are as good as the day they were new. For me, the point of LOTR was the storyline of the (mainly) named characters, not just big battles and army building. I typically use about 5 Gandalfs and 2 Theodens at once, as I prefer small vignettes of different scenes. I have probably another 30 Gandalfs as they were dirt cheap about 12 years ago and the body parts make good generic rangers. That is not to say some Gondor and Haradrim soldiers would not be welcome but even then so long as they did a torso with enough detail on that woudl be fine for building a small army. Personally, I find huge armies lined up on a baseplate rather boring.