MAB

Wasn't Lobelia only onscreen for a few seconds in the extended edition of FOTR? There were complaints when they did Mouth of Sauron in the Black Gate but at least he had a scene. Other hobbits had more significant roles at the party.

There are many parts, especially technic, where the old moulds did not have the lego logo whereas the more recent versions do. You have to be careful saying something is obviously fake when you are not comparing like with like, even more so when it came from a sealed lego bag inside a sealed lego box. And even more when it came from an established lego seller with a long history of selling genuine lego.

Yes, but many people use the number of minifigures as a metric and expect a decent number and LEGO have shown they are willing to reuse prints even though they are not really appropriate. Pippin's torso has already been used in HP and as Shackleton and has been available in PAB. Presumably adding existing minifig parts is minimal cost but high perceived value in the minifig count.

That is not my experience when selling on BL. Most of the sealed sets I have sold are from about 2008 onwards, but I have sold probably 25-30 sealed sets from before that. In a few cases, buyers have said that they wanted to build them since they were a kid. For some people, the price doesn’t matter too much and it gives them the joy of opening and building the set.

It wouldn't surprise me if they reused Merry and Pippin in their outfits from Rivendell, like they already did with Frodo and Sam in Barad-Dur.

To me it does make sense that the tires are a bit dirty. They are a couple of decades old and have been stored rubbing up against other tyres, parts, cardboard and paper. That dirt looks like a combination of paper and rubber bloom. The paper fibres are most obvious on the black tubing. That really looks like the tiny fibres of paper it would have picked up when it rubs against the edges of the manual and inside the cardboard box. Remember those manuals were probably cut with a guillotine style cutter that leaves lots of little fragments that will fall off when the contents of the box shift. Scratches occur when the box is moved and the rubber tires rub against the digger bucket. The dirt is on the edges and treads, whereas if used then the dirt would be on the treads and there would be proper wear of the rubber. Dirt on edges is consistent with rubbing against parts and bags as it shifts inside the box whereas wear on the tread would be consistent with use. For its age, I'd say that box was pretty decent condition. The tab looked genuine and there are no tears on the box near where it should be. It seems you are not that knowledgeable about vintage sets. You didn't know about the tape around the hoses, the way boxes with flap lids were sealed, the way that numbering for bags was only introduced later, perforated bags, you didn't know about the lego logo not being on all parts, ... You should prbably familiarise yourself with one of the bricklink rules about new and sealed sets: Sealed - Set is brand new, with unopened factory seals intact, all inner bags and contents presumably sealed, intact, complete and untampered with as shipped by the manufacturer. The seller cannot guarantee that a sealed set is complete. Note that the seller cannot guarantee contents of the set if it is sealed. To do so, they'd have to open it. Similarly, they cannot tell you the condition of the parts inside or the effect of aging if it is still as originally sealed and not tampered with (which this one appears to be). You are probably best off sticking to modern new sets from retailers or second hand sets rather than buying vintage new/sealed sets.

I cannot see hairs on them, but it may be that the photo is not showing what you see up close. The scratching and discolouring could be due to what they have been next to in the box. Similarly, the "hairs" could be paper or card dust from inside the box. The edges of instruction manuals when cut often have thin paper filaments that could stick to decades old rubber. I'm also not surprised that the different sets of wheels have aged differently. Different thicknesses, slightly different materials, they age differently but similar to the other ones the same. Remember that these were nto meant to be stored away for decades and rubber degrades even when kept in a sealed box. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not mean that they are a shill. Again, just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that they are delusional. It means they have a different experience to you and may well have come across many similar parts in newly opened old sets. In the past I've opened sealed 1970s sets where the small tyres have looked like they have almost melted, being quite flat on one side, presumable from being in the position in the box and not moved for years or where the tyres have been quite sticky. But again, they were not meant to be stored for 40+ years before opening them. It is a risk you take when buynig new sealed sets.

That is very nice, especially the curl on the motion of the wings. It is also good to see the test models.

Like most things though, the hate comes from people used to the things that came before. No doubt the sequel trilogy will also be loved in 25 years time.

I think you are jumping to a lot of conclusions. The perforated bag looks genuine, as they were used at the time. For a 20+ year old set, rubber tyres can have some degradation whether used or not. They get a sort of white bloom on them in some cases. Some larger sets with flip open sides had a tape in the middle to stop the box opening. I don't have this set, so cannot check. A lot of their non-system product at the time was hand packed so errors of taping the tube are not that surprising. I'm not going to change your mind though. If you think bricklink is a scam, then don't use it.

LEGO's prices for really basic electronic devices such as this are truly terrible. But as to your claim ... you can always trust apple to gouge even more.

Ill received. Yet the trilogy took over $2.9 billion worldwide.

Which one do you think is too close to being British, as I wouldn't recognize any of the current vehicles as a British ambulance. This one, the wheel base looks a little like a British one based on the little checked type pattern but aside from that stripe it doesn't look like a UK ambulance. Here, white usually means it is patient transport rather than an emergency vehicle but mixing with the aqua colour doesn't make much sense. I think they have tried to take bits of different designs and stuck them all into one.

Even at the time there was a lot of discussion about The Hobbit being three movies as the reason for not getting Gondor or a third LOTR wave. And for the love of ships by kids as the reason we got the Pirates of Umbar ship and not Gondor. Obviously, we didn't know The LEGO Movie would kick off the popularity of LEGO, or that LEGO would start appealing to adults outside of the traditional AFOL fanbase, or that LEGO LOTR would become so popular. I wish we had, as I would have stocked up even more than I did. There were discussions and reports about the sets being heavily discounted though. Orthanc was the only set I wasn't able to buy at a decent discount. Everything else I got at between 30-50% off, and even more off towards the end. Although those were the days that most non-exclusive sets were available at some stage at 30% off and even then did not sell out very fast. Even retailers knew something was wrong, as some were giving 50% discounts on the final The Hobbit wave about a month after release. It is crazy to think what prices were available for some of those sets, you'd never get close to that now from a retailer. I remember posting Lonely Mountain and Battle of Five Armies on a LEGO deals discussion and others saying The Lonely Mountain at £50 was just about right, but that BOFA was still well overpriced at £30 and that it would be a poor investment. The LOTR game (50011) also wasn't selling well. I only picked a couple up for £15 each as I didn't think I'd ever use the parts and didn't really have any use for the microfigs, especially as I had already purchased all the figures at 35p each on the old online PAB. Then a clearance type place must have bought out the remaining stocks as the game disappeared completely then came back a few months later but only on their website and they had 1000s of them at £20 each (retail price was £30), even when they had been selling on ebay for closer to £100 by that stage. I miss those days!

The original set found room to have a cooking area, just not a complete stand alone kitchen. And also had plenty of food and drink to suggest a feast. I'm really not sure how much they will do next time, as the original set was substantial enough in size to depict a hobbit house pretty well. I don't think the size is the problem with the old one now, it is more the detail in the design. As you say, it looks quite basic now compared to modern sets. It was mainly a studs up box with a few SNOT parts for attaching windows. I imagine the next one will have a lot more small detail rather than the large slopes used in the walls. And using more small parts would mean it is not all that much larger in scale. It is a bit like doing a City house in LEGO or a building in Modulars, they don't have to be done to realistic scale or number of rooms to look good. I'd prefer fewer large rooms than many that are too small (and parts intensive for the walls).

I guess we will never know if The Hobbit performed worse at the cinema because it was three movies rather than being two movies, or just one movie like previous Hobbit films. Personally, I enjoyed all three and I didn't find it too bloated. In fact for the Hobbit I prefer the extended editions over the theatrical ones. It was not LOTR good, but I still enjoyed it and I think it would have been lacking compared to what was the final product if it had been just two or one movie. Similarly, we will never know if being three movies rather than one or two impacted on the sales of LEGO sets. If there was just one wave, or two waves, overall sales would almost certainly be lower than the three waves we had but whether that would be better for LOTR LEGO fans of the time. I know a lot of people blamed the rumoured change from two to three movies as responsible for not getting a third wave of LOTR sets and instead getting the third wave of The Hobbit sets. But LOTR sales were also not particularly good at the time. If there were just two movies for The Hobbit and no third wave of The Hobbit sets, LEGO might have cut its losses and not done the third wave of LOTR if one was planned. It was that difficult stage when LEGO had not hit the popularity heights, it was pre-LEGO Movie, pre-adult friendly sets, yet aimed at older kids and probably had a narrow audience because of it. The target audience was all over the place, some were 8-14, some 9-14, some 10-14, Orthanc was 14+, polybags were 6-12. They seemed not to know who they were aiming at. Which in one way was good for adult buyers of the time as it meant you could pick up the sets at a very good price, and you could also buy extra figures very cheaply too as Castle fans deprived of Castle for a few years were buying the discounted sets for parts and needed to get rid of the licensed figures.

Time is again important too. It seems that LEGO tries to keep prices at the bottom reasonably low, and this will naturally mean that an entry level set of 10 or 20 years ago will be different to an entry level set today if the price is similar. This is often done by similar part counts but smaller parts, so overall the final result feels smaller and worse than something that came before.

And what if they hadn't changed and only continued to do the same as the mid 90s? What if they didn't do Bionicle and Star Wars, changes that saved the company when other changes didnt work? Standing still is often just as bad or worse than change. If they weren't trying other ideas such as Galidor and Bionicle, or going for licensed products, I doubt they'd be here today. Other companies would have done similar licensed products while LEGO produced the same thing again and again, never moving forward. Not every idea has to be successful, but they need to find success with something. It is OK to try something and fail so long as some are successful. Just like introducing product ranges for adults, with increased part count and prices, highly detailed sets using a wide range of parts and colours to get excellent detail. This has been very successful, the proof is in the sales and the number of people buying LEGO these days. Some people don't like having the option of big sets that appeal to adults, but others clearly do.

Toys change though. When I was a kid in the 70s, we were perfectly happy with the buildable maxifigs of the time, yet they still introduced 'slabbie' minifigs. And then they changed them and made legs and arms that moved and even gave them faces. Then used stickers and eventually printed on the torsos to indicate what the characters are and made different types of hats and hair to customise them. Then increased the detail and range of character types. Then introduced some realistic fleshtones for licensed characters. Then increased detail in faces all the time increasing the range of character types available through body and also leg printing. Then introduced an even wider set of realistic skin tones for some sets. If people want only classic smiley heads, plain torso and legs in maybe three colours, and the choice of one type of male hair, one female hair or a cap, then it is straightforward to restrict yourself to only those parts. If you want only printed torsos but not legs and the choice of a couple of helmets, then stop there. But I think kids these days want much more variation than was available in the 80s and 90s. Would kids of the 90s have been OK with the generation before saying we had maxifigs and we were fine with it, so you should be too. Just as would kids of the 70s have been OK with the kids of the decade before saying we only built vehicles and buildings with very basic bricks and didn't need figures so why are you focussing on maxifigs?

If the library was packed full of people reading books and book checkouts were increasing then yes, it would be. But libraries rarely are that busy. If many other people are buying, building and enjoying LEGO, both official LEGO sets and their own or others' designs, what do you mean by the LEGO idea is dead? The company is alive and well, and probably more people than ever are enjoying it whether they are collecting minifigures, collecting sets, building and displaying sets, building their own designs, displaying their designs, attending LEGO fairs, reading LEGO books or magazines, creating or viewing LEGO content online. There are many ways to enjoy and interact with LEGO and surely that is the idea of it. All that suggests the LEGO idea is alive and well.

Fun idea. You can get close with just CMFs. Cowboy and Roman, Pharaoh, Tribal Woman, the Hun, the pilot with a female head for Amelia Earhart (or go outside cmf), the janitor for Cecil, Roosevelt would need a tan suit from outside cmf but fairly easy, similarly for Larry, plus the chimp would need to stand in for a monkey. The Easter Island head would need to be brick built.

Yet the number of MOCs shown at fairs and online (here, rebrickable, Flickr, and many other sites) suggests the idea of building what you like out of LEGO parts is alive and well and probably more popular than ever.

I guess part of the problem is that they need to be somewhat generic without being country or era specific and have 'action' (such as implied warfare). Castle is fairly generic in that it is sort of European but not more specific to a place or time. I also don't think it is meant to be historic (as in realistic / accurate). The more specific the subject, the less freedom they have.

Variation in Star Wars is higher than that in City. Count the number of police cars vs X-Wings, or the number of fire trucks vs Millennium Falcons. But yes, it is the same argument, new buyers expect to be able to buy the exciting sets when they enter the store whether that is a police car or X-Wing. As above, it is about churn of the fanbase. However, if they remove the exciting sets and replaced them with boring ones in the correct ratios, the theme would probably die. If they only did houses in City until they get the civilian to emergency services ratio to a realistic level, new fans would not join in the same way as if they did Vader, Luke and Han then only made sets containing stormtroopers and anonymous rebels for 20 years to get the ratios the same as those in the movies. They pick the exciting bits of the stories and are not aiming to be realistic reproductions of life or movies. Indeed. Yes, there are. LEGO has changed. They have learnt that adults will buy a few expensive sets for themselves if they build into objects they will display. So there is not one audience forbthose sets. The people buying the shoe will be different to those buying the flowers or the camera or the consoles. Those are sales they would not have made if they didn't produce that type of set. Their financial reports suggest otherwise. LEGO might well be fading into oblivion for those fans that want their output to remain similar to what it was in the 80s or 90s, but those days are gone. LEGO wants to maximise their sales by having some individual sets that appeal to small groups but overall appeal to many more people rather than just a very small demographic. LEGO making an adult aimed shoe or a theme of flowers sets does not stop today's children enjoying the 100s of unlicensed playsets they still release every year.

Not me, for unlicensed series. To me, series 14 was a CMF series more than something to go with Monster Fighters or any other theme, Series 18 was a CMF series more than a celebration of 40 years of minifigures and series 26 was a CMF series rather than something to go with the Space theme. I no longer display CMFs as a complete collection, but if I did those themed series would be with the other CMFs and not displayed separately with MF or Space. Whereas Ninjago Movie, Batman Movie, LEGO Movie, they were true themes and the CMFs are part of those themes. Similarly Harry Potter CMFs are not really CMFs but part of the HP theme, and so on with Marvel and DC. If anything, the skin colour distinguishes the licenses CMF as different to the unlicensed CMFs. To me, Seires 26 is a numbered theme and not part of Space, even though there was a link to Space. Same with series 14. So for Witches, I'd count series 2 and 14, but not DND or the Scarlet Witch and for Wizards, I'd count both series 12 and 13. So I'd say there have been 2 classic witches and 2 wizards. I also wouldn't count BAM, as they are not CMF, and nso ot part of any series so would not display with the CMF series if you display them that way.