MAB

It is personal choice, but often sorting by type is more efficient than by colour when it comes to finding parts. If you look for a red 1x2 brick in a pile of red, it is hard. If you look for a red 1x2 in a pile of 1x2s of all colours it is much easier. Even in a cruder sort of 1x1,1x2,1x3 and 1x4 bricks of all colours it is still easier.

Plus it doesn't stop them doing it in future. The ruling only applies to those products in the case, not current and future ones. If the fines remain relatively low, the fakers will continue to fake sets, make their money during the court case then finally lose the court case and cease selling those sets and move on to the next batch.

Doing this teaches you the "LEGO way". It is also worth having a look at other people's MOCs to see any unofficial techniques. One way is to look through flickr (or here) at designs you like or tutorials on specific boards here. Another tip is to not worry too much about colour to start with, build with what you have for design / form / function. Maybe try to recreate something you have seen, this helps you try to understand techniques as you build, rather than just following instructions without necessarily thinking about what you are doing.

Why do you need a storage box for a set? I use a tray. No depth issues, but easy to sort parts into colours or types and leave in a pile.

Your design could be improved using the newish 1x3 double jumper. along with two 1x3 tiles. It will give perfect centred alignment for the minifigure on a 3x3 base. Plus, as two feet will be attached, they are less likely to come off when moved.

In store, they had instructions sheets for the Sting that were laminated and attached to the parts stand. So I guess not many of them ever escaped.

Why can you not remember how you found it, even if you cannot remember what the part is? I used to find it could take a long time to find parts at bricklink, but as I did it more and more my LI (LEGO Intelligence, or maybe BLI BrickLink Intelligence) grew. That is, I learned what features of what I am looking for makes a good search term.

Yet two of the most consistently popular themes are City and Friends. Very little advertising is done for those, outside of the catalogues and the LEGO Club magazines and website (which also cover other in-house themes).

Also, short legs are likely to be cheaper to produce than medium. One part vs three that need assembling.

I notice you include Dimensions minifigures and the game tags. There are other similar non-retail set items, such as the keychains, magnets, loads of video games, and there was also a Sting sword available from LEGO stores as part of a treasure hunt. Also a storage box (project case). Plus they gave out stickers too and various posters.

I guess any theme could have introduced them. But new molds for short legs to be introduced for TLBM might have not been possible if they had already allocated the budget for new parts, or it was decided that the new parts needed for just one figure was not worth it. Whereas for HP, the cost of the new mold is spread over many figures, that is, the new part is reused many times straight away. I imagine the cost is quite high, as it is not just a new part design but they would also need to set up the jigs necessary for printing them.

Thinking about it, I wouldn't mind at all if LEGO got rid of all non-licensed (minifigure based) themes except for City. So long as City has subthemes based on historical reenactors, futuristic enactors, etc.

It has never happened to me. Just contact the seller and tell them, and take it from there.

It's funny actually. My daughter saw some of the Friends cartoons and really didn't like them. They were different to how she played with Friends (she has invented her own personalities for the characters) and got quite upset after seeing them thinking she had been doing it wrong and she stopped playing with them for a while. I had to explain to her that her making up her own stories was better than the cartoons as she could decide what they do. Eventually she made up new characters too to help get around this. Plus the Elves seemed to have moved in too.

I imagine they will become more widespread, slowly eating away at the number of short fixed legs that we see.

My son liked Ninjago, then Chima, then Ninjago again and NK too. Yet he didn't see any of the media / TV shows until quite recently. Similarly my daughter likes Elves and has never seen any of the media. I don't think the sets need media to sell. They need to be attractive to kids.

Is this the prototype for a new online delivery service from replacement parts or online PAB?

I thought I had seen something similar before, you already posted it:

Nice, but I have one suggestion. Lift your ground level so it is level with the black surround. As it is it feels constrained, almost in a box, that there is a barrier to the characters leaving this area. Whereas lift the level slightly and it will look like the characters have somewhere to go. I'd also lose the green baseplate underneath.

I'm not familiar with the story at all. Is she an evil mermaid that draws men to their death?

If they were selling them and they sold out very quickly, I'd say they did it perfectly. They would have sold all their stock at the advertised price.

It would probably mean a new theme as the previous stuff was Dimensions and Ideas branded. I've never watched it, who is it aimed at? The Ideas set doesn't really seem to be play friendly (for kids) as no minifigures, but more of a display set (for adults?). Also I don't think sales of the Ideas one have been that good (at least here). LEGO is currently trying to get rid of it at 30% off via S@H in the UK. 10 or 20% for them is more normal to shift excess sale stock for sets, but this one doesn't seem to go even at 30% off.

Nice. Does she have a tail extending under the water, I cannot really see it.

No you cannot. If the designer sells these then he is breaking the Ideas rules.

If you read more than the headline they are reporting that one of their readers replied to a comment saying that a cashier from a Lego Discovery Centre that was running a booth at Brickworld was clearancing their Brickheadz and said the line would end. They could well have been clearancing the items as they didn't want to transport them back after the convention.