MAB

Star Wars. The ships justify the scale and the number of adult fans justify the price.

Very unlikely. Given Harry's presence in the last wave of sets, and in all the 2010/11 normal retail sets, it is highly unlikely he won't be in just about every set in future too. Harry sells. I can only think of a few of the small sets from the early 2000's where he wasn't in them.

I imagine he is going in with a rather biased opinion though ... There are typically more unlicensed sets than licensed though, especially counting all the Ninjago movie / LEGO movie etc as unlicensed since LEGO has input into the creative freedom over those. So it cannot be a problem with licensed sets, and more a problem with the unlicensed sets that LEGO do create.

Or just scrub the printing off the torsos and not apply the stickers. :-)

Even then, not really, as people are interested in quite different things being available. Plus many of the interesting parts are not strictly licensed but the more general thread on B+P died while this one thrived so this has been the goto thread for all parts not just licensed. It would be good if he / users can keep it up to date with new parts added though, as that is what is really needed. Trawling through all the old parts is one of the most annoying things about buying at bricks and pieces. Knowing what had been added would be really beneficial.

It is also very surprising that they would show the Harry Potter sets at the London Toy Fair, but then not show them at the later Nuremburg Fair where photography is also not permitted. Have they ever revealed a wave of sets before at London, then hidden it at later shows? I cannot think of any. That's the thing with rumours. Fan sites pick up things written here and elsewhere, then relay the rumour. Then people here say they've read them elsewhere too, so they must be right. And the rumour becomes fact.

I do know something about it. I, and everyone else, can see you lied in at least one post about your source and have now changed your story. You also said you don't 100% believe the source, but the source was right before. Yet your source is now the London Toy Fair. Most people can guess at sets that are likely to come based on past sets from a decade ago and the recent wave. Some of the guesses will be wrong and some will be right. I imagine some of your presented ideas will eventually be shown to be right, but then most people can predict a list of 5-6 sets and some of them will be right. If any are wrong, you can just say they were changed in production. As with all leaks from unknown sources, especially new accounts set up only to promote these leaks, they should be taken with a huge pinch of salt.

You know this is all just speculation though. Someone else that likes to use the word "facts" to mean opinions. Yeah, I was just looking at 2019 so far, and counting TLM2 as non-licensed (or discounting it completely as it is somewhere in-between). Either way, there are a larger number of in-house sets and so the idea that there are more licensed sets is wrong.

I can see exactly what you wrote. You have lied in at least one post.

Something is not right here. The London toy fair was in January. Yet on 2 Feb, you were claiming you got this information from a source/friend, who you don't 100% believe. That date is AFTER the London Toy Fair. But now you claim the information you have is all from the London Toy Fair, which happened before you posted saying this was information from a source/friend and you didn't want them knowing it was you.

While that is normally true for yet to be released films, they are less strict over ones where movie spoilers are not going to be given away. I find it quite strange that they are not in a position to show the sets in much detail / finished detail, yet were willing to show a new mould when for example an Elves Pegasus-style horse with wings could have been used as a stand in.

No, Megabloks are Megabloks so not real LEGO.

It is not comprehensive at all. That is why it is called "Highlights". It is a tiny fraction of the parts available through B+P. It is also likely to be out of date, as although things tend to get added in batches, things disappear from stock daily. To compare stock, you have to do it part by part. Once you know that most torsos cost roughly the same amount at B+P, you can make approximations but need to be aware of dual molded arms or specialised hands and so on that will change the basic price. For non-minifigure parts, it is much harder to compare. You either get a feel for prices across parts you are interested in, or take ages doing the comparisons.

Not only that, but unlicensed and licensed are not mutually exclusive. It is perfectly possible to like Castle and Harry Potter, or Castle and LOTR, or Classic Space and Star Wars, and so on. I imagine there are more people that like some licensed and some unlicensed themes than there are that like all unlicensed (or all licensed) themes and hate all licensed (or all unlicensed) themes.

So what are you saying? Less in-house sets as they currently dominate the product line.

It is a nice MOC, but I wouldn't pay £300 for it. I doubt it is very playable, as large four legged creations like that are notoriously unstable unless you pose the legs just right. I think I prefer the molded animal ones, but they are not really suitable for Ideas.

To add to aanchir above, what I really mean by play features is that it shouldn't just be adding bricks to make something bigger but to make it playable too. So it isn't just a set that needs to be built and the play ends there. If course some kids and more adults like to build to display, but a flagship set should have more than that. A ballista to fire something, a siege engine, a dragon, something along those lines. I think Nexo did that well, without taking away from the main build.

And it is also the reason people want more licensed sets.

Yeah, I also have some terracotta warriors from aliexpress. The modulars sell very well in Europe, so presumably they appeal to Europeans too. A number of them are European style, then there is Palace Cinema which is Westernised Chinese architecture. If you want Asian style, look towards Ninjago. A number of those buildings are modular sized, and can be enclosed to make them more like a modular. And of course, Ninjago City looks very modular like. The first Ideas / CUUSOO sets were Japanese, the Shinkai 6500 sub and the Hayabusa satellite. Ideas sets are based on what people vote for. If non-American spacecraft (or other) ideas are not voted for, then they will not be produced.

You can currently do that for all non-licensed themes produced up to today. So using that logic, presumably LEGO can stop doing non-licensed sets and the non-licensed LEGO community can continue and there is no need to complain about licensed sets. If you stop producing something, then it slowly dies. If kids are not exposed to it, then new fans don't emerge and the community shrinks as AFOLs die off.

I hope that means they release them worldwide unlike the current Chinese themed ones.

There is no theme based evidence - only the evidence of the profits across the whole company every year. I can barely think of a normal retail (non-exclusive) set that hasn't been discounted in some way. The fact that something is discounted is not an indication of failure, more an indication that the store wants the shelves cleared to get the new product in. It is better to oversupply and discount the remainders when necessary than to undersupply and have shelves bare before the new sets arrive.

That is just the title sequence though. In the cartoon itself it says FLINTSTONE, so they are correct:

This is not only true for licenses though. A string of spectacular fails for non-licensed themes could also hit LEGO hard. The types of plastics being banned in most places are single-use, disposable plastics. LEGO hardly fits that, it is multi-use by definition. Plastics will not disappear, they are the right material for many jobs. They also happen to be a bad material for some jobs, especially for items that are used once then thrown away. The fact that it takes a long time to degrade are what makes it a good material for long-life toys. Yet LEGO are masters of pricing for individual markets. They know how to price items that will still sell at RRP, and what will sell once reduced. It also depends how you measure price / value, as with some measures, they are more affordable and better value today than 30 years ago. They have a new press release: https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2019/february/annual-results-2018/ 2018 sales up 3% compared to 2017. Revenue up 4%. Operating profit up 4%. Market share growth in all major markets. The top selling themes in 2018 in no particular order were LEGO® City, LEGO® Technic™, LEGO® Star Wars™, LEGO® Friends and LEGO® NINJAGO®. LEGO® Harry Potter™, LEGO® Jurassic World™, LEGO® Classic and LEGO® Creator also performed strongly. Look at that, a diversified portfolio of licensed and non-licensed themes are top-selling or performing strongly.

It's also not the sort of thing English kids get taught at school (at least outside of the Black Country). When washing LEGO, allow at least 5 days air drying time in the UK. In summer! A day in a washing up bowl of water and a bit of washing up liquid normally helps to shift thick dust/grease with minimal agitation.