MAB

I guess the problem is that most kids do grow out of their interest in lego, and never come back. And they have to keep attracting the younger fan base anyway. If they didn't have new themes and new media to help promote it, then it wouldn't surprise me if families made more use of old lego. For example, if there were castle sets around now that were similar to those from 6-10 years ago, then why buy new when the old ones are essentially the same as current? I agree with you there, I don't think lego promotes creativity that much - most of the advertising is about specific sets that remain as built models, rather than addressing creativity. Very little is really about creativity. I wonder what the sales volumes are like for the classic sets (the random parts boxes). I'm not so sure about that - I guess it depends on the type of competitor. In the 80s and 90s, there might not have been so many building brick company competitors, but there were certainly other competitors in the toys market.

Clone brands are completely legal, and remember LEGO originally copied the design anyway. I have no problem with clones, so long as they aren't fakes - putting the LEGO name on their copies.

I don't think that is true. I think it is that they are not currently interested in (Classic) Castle as a theme. They have released Castle sets in the near past, and they are still producing Castle type figures in the CMF ranges. But they cannot do everything all the time. It makes no sense to have Castle and Nexo Knights available at the same time, as they would compete for sales. So traditional Castle gets put on hiatus for a while, while NK runs it course. That doesn't mean the traditional Castle theme is of no interest to LEGO. I'd prefer that it remains on hiatus a bit longer and that they do other historical themes (which again would compete for sales) - Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, Vikings, Ancient Chinese, etc. Even there, just battle packs without regular sets would be great. If they stick four or five Roman soldiers in a battle pack, I'd pay £12 for it. I don't know how well they'd sell to the general population though.

Finally, Team GB gets to win something! Shame the Ocean King came up against the Roman Soldier.

Maybe they will celebrate both Space and Castle anniversaries at the same time - combine them together and make ....

Finn's hair in the original black is also in Ghostbusters (Winston), Batman Movie (Aaron Cash), Super Heroes (Karl Mordo and Falcon), DFB series (Boateng). So all licensed, but wider than SW. And also in dark brown for the new CMF Gladiator.

What do you mean by in tandem? Together with or alternately? As they are probably doing the latter, alternately trying something new (NK "space castle") after doing classic castle before and probably doing classic castle again in the future. If they did them together, then there would be conflict between two similar products on the shelves, space castle (backed by story and media) and classic castle. It wouldn't surprise me if NK sold better than classic castle to the general population, given the push it would get through the associated media (and as noted above, all the ancillary products). What should LEGO think then? We've tried both and classic castle doesn't hold up any more to our own in-house pseudo-licensed theme, so it is time for it to go completely. It wasn't 40% discount, it was about 40% RRP (so 60% discount). :-) Dol Guldur Ambush (and in fact all of the Hobbit wave 2 and 3 sets) could be had at with least 50% off RRP here. DGA was 60% off (£8 from £20) and Mirkwood Elf Army was the same 60% off (£12 from £30). The best discount for me was Dol Guldur Battle though, I paid £25 each (from £70) and that was about two weeks after release. That was a very expensive day, and took up a lot of space. :-) LEGO and Playmobil can be compatible if you build to the scale of the figures. I used to do that back in the 1970s. I also used to use Kenner Star Wars figures with LEGO, long before LEGO SW came along. Sometimes they even joined in with Mattel's Battlestar Galactica ships too.

A problem with that type of modular stuff is what happens when one of the sets proves to be much more popular than predicted. If LEGO produced such a series of modular sets, and AFOLs started buying up all the walls, for example, then it may harm the sales of the other sets if the walls are never in stock. Parents then complain that they bought their kid the centerpiece set, and now they cannot find the walls anywhere. Or maybe the great hall would sell out, and nobody would want the walls and towers without anything to put into it. LEGO would need to try to predict what was going to happen with sales and balance them very well if stores are not going to be left with loads of unsellable stock. Another problem is that the sets individually might not be very interesting (the LOTR wall set - the Uruk-Hai army set - was critized quite a bit on release) and so not sell so well, especially if left over at the end. In the UK we were lucky as the Uruk-wall set sold so badly stores were selling them at about 40%RRP to get rid of them.

So, in other words, LEGO shouldn't try anything new? That castle has to remain classic only, and they cannot do anything else in a similar style but more up to date? I prefer them to try new ideas, then occasionally go back to the old classics, then try more new ideas, and so on. Just doing the same old stuff again and again is not so interesting for some.

Why not? Kids like this mish-mash. At least, my kids do. And so do many of their friends. There is a problem with that, in saturation. If they did Castle Modulars, and Pirate Modulars, and Arabian Modulars, and Space Modulars and the standard City / Creator Modulars, then that is a lot of competing product. Some people that used to be into the Modulars would no longer purchase the Creator sets, but instead go for history or space. Five times as many AFOL-aimed competing sets will not correspond to 5x sales.

That seems unrealistic to me. We don't really need rehashes of existing sets, just because you didn't buy them at the time. Buy them, or BL them with substitutions for cheaper builds, or make similar MOCs. Fun in the Park is a 15 minifig set with 150 pieces and costs $40. You want a bigger 450 piece set, 18 figures (plus another say six for the band) and two dogs for $35? You are probably looking at double that cost for what you are suggesting.

That sounds very much like an old AFOL favourite ... It was available for three years. Obviously, LEGO have the data on the sales figures for that set. The fact that they didn't choose to supplement that set directly with further sets suggests that they thought other products would do better. Obviously, it was also preceded by the large King's Castle, and lots of small and medium supplemental sets such as the tower rescue and attack sets, prison carriage and knights' showdown. Then there was the King's carriage, which sounds a lot like the carriage set you want ... (Mixed) faction packs ... My kids were too young for it at the time, but I cannot think of any other families with older kids where it was bought for the kids.

For anyone in the US, you are better off buying Chell on BL. They were virtually given away when the Dimensions sets were on sale for $1, so lots of BL sellers have large quantities of them for next to nothing.

I don't see the point of temporarily stopping new registrations. It is hardly a new thing, these spam posts have been coming for years, haven't they. The only way to stop them would be to permanently stop new registrations, which is not a good thing.

I imagine it is because it is cheaper to make them all together on a sprue and have a single part number for the whole bag and include the extras as free, than it is to make single bags of the same part (but lots of the part in the bag) and need to include multiple bags if they have more than one of the items in a set. Why do they need multiple parts in the bag? Due to the weight. They need the bag of tiny parts to register when they weigh the larger bags they are put in to ensure there are no missing parts.

Yes.

Coin toss, or knock them both out. Or next vote wins ... (no pressure on that person!)

Sure, as adults, many of us would like loads of variety in both torso prints within a faction, and lots of different factions as we amass huge armies of all of them. But as a parent, not so much. Kids are different to adults. I prefer my children to have sets rather than minifigures due to the amount of play value in them. And when they get minifigures in sets or battle packs, I think I prefer them to have two large groups of similar (although not necessarily the same) troops. The problem with having lots of different factions is that kids don't always know who the odd looking ones goes with, and sometimes this means they get left unplayed, or they have to keep asking their parents who they are, or the kid doesn't care too much and you'll find them fighting along with the dragon knights and some random City figures anyway. Have two factions and having them lasting for more than one year is good in this sense, as sets (and hence armies) can be bought over time and still fit together and be played with together.

It really is neck and neck with the Cyclops and the Chef, close all the way.

Yes, but then SW fans complain theirs are weak, as they are just padded with odd bricks forming a rubbish build to make up the parts count and all they really want are the minifigures.

They have sold Castle battle packs before. 850888 and 850889 I got the impression that they were not very good sellers. And before that packs of trolls and dwarves, etc.

It depends what you do with them. If you sell the minifigures and any unique licensed parts, then they can be good value for castle builders. Especially if you buy at a discount.

The watermelon has been in the recent Arkham Asylum and the Friends Horse Stable. Probably in other newer sets too (check BL), but I know those two from having built them.

Printed watermelon slices already exist ... and a stickered one ...

I prefer the way Character Building did their single box set, ... Much less duplication, especially as many of the torsos will not be very much use for anything else. Of course, they also did the blind packs with the Doctor in too. Then when it comes to monsters, they could again copy Character Building and do a blind bagged series, as here duplicates are more likely to be useful ... If they did it though, I'd hope they do historical ones from the 60s-80s too, not just since the series was rebooted.