MAB

I don't see why not, he is a bus driver. Sure he smokes dope, but then probably so does the hippie in Series 6 CMF. They decided not to give him anything related to dope, so it's fine. They may even go as far as doing Rev Lovejoy, as it is a character they are doing rather than a generic priest. He could just wear a shirt and tie, that way there are no parts available for making generic priests. Moe, sure, is a bar tender. But they could just put him in regular clothes (or a Pin-Pals top) and have him in some other scene.

It is actually saying that they oversold what they have left, and it is not profitable enough for them to make extra sets to sell at a discount, not when they are at capacity anyway. Why make discounted sets when they could make full price sets that are still flying off the shelves? Only the best is good enough ... so long as it makes LEGO the largest profit. What they have done isn't right. Unfortunately many retails make similar errors, not controlling stock effectively. But they get away with it as if you stop buying from them, someone else is in your place ready to buy.

They aren't randomly packed though. We know that because if you open a sealed box and do the counting, every box is the same. Whereas if you take packets from an already opened box, then what you get depends on what someone else has already taken. If they chose packets truly at random, then your distribution will not be the same as Whitefang's but probably not massively different. If they cherry picked, then you could find that you have zero probability of finding one particular minifig - if they took all of them. I could go and get an opened box and have completely different statistics, as someone else cherry picked a different minifig. Open boxes do tell you something - what other people have left, not what was there originally. Of course, there is some information in there. You can tell if a particular figure was cherry picked for example, if the percentage of that figure occuring was way below Whitefang's statistics for the complete box.

That experience can be factored into the cost per hour. It's what most businesses that charge by the hour do. For basic work that anyone can do, the cost per hour is low. For experience work that only an experienced professional can do, the cost per hour is high.

I did wonder about that 5000 pieces, there is no way that is correct. Also think about the weight and volume of the box. It would be a struggle to lift it. In fact, by law it would probably be a two man lift for the whole display due to the weight.

Personally, I wouldn't sell. But it has got to be cost of parts (including postage costs if yuo did it through bricklink, etc), plus time spent on it as a minimum.

Have you got proof of that? Since virtually every sealed box of 60 that I have ever opened has had exactly the same distribution as reported in Whitefang's reviews. The only difference was for Series 3, where the distribution was changed to increase the number of fishermen.

It is probably too minifig heavy for such a small build. Maybe with one knight at the front and one at the back carrying the chest. There is also a bit of a lack of action in it. If you take a look at set #70400, it is essentially the same subject - knights/soldiers transporting treasure. But they are under attack. Attack = action, and in a standalone set. However, it is too similar to an existing theme (and set) for me to vote for it.

I don't really know why anyone bothers submitted huge MOCs like that. Sure it is nice, for a MOC site. As an ideas project, useless.

For comics / photos you don't need a big army at all. Just set up the shot and camera on a tripod, place your 10 minifigs (or whatever) and take the shot. Then move them, take another shot, repeat and repeat. Then stitch the photos together to create a large army. The size of an army you need for a physical display is really up to you. If you concentrate on a 32x32 part of the battle, then 10 a side is perfectly adequate, for a 16x16 vignette even smaller numbers still look fine. Something small can be spectacular too, if you concentrate on the detail of what you are showing. As you get bigger, detail is often lost and the spectacular part comes from just sheer number of figs (or money spent on them) rather than necessarily what you do with them.

Well the set is Blu-ray plus DVD plus Digitial, so it is likely to be expensice - two minifigs for the price of five :-)

Concerning te storage problem - another option is to get into microscale builds. Get a collection of about 400 smaller parts, and you can still have fun. I have a small box that I take on the road with me. Ideal if you are staying a hotel or similar and want some building fun while away.

You cannot really gain any significant statistical information on packets from already opened boxes, other than what someone else has left. Whitefang's review contains the correct statistics for sealed boxes.

The cyclops has only one eye, so it looks a bit silly. There is also "Mutated Dr. O'Neil" which is just about OK, although shame about the pink nose. Some of the SW Neimoidian heads are OK too. Crawley from Chima is not too bad, although a bit too toothy. OK for a bit of variation in the background. And if you don't mind going to sand green, then there are loads of options.

Why not use Lego Digitial Designer then? MOC virtually instead of using bricks. For me, it is a second class choice (I much prefer using real bricks) but if the choice is not there at all but the urge to MOC is, then LDD is a good idea.

It's two waves worth, at £600.

It has happened to hundreds of people. They sold way more than they have. At least you get to keep the flower cart if they already sent it.

Yes, for such a large company it is disgraceful that they don't have real time stock control. They cancelled a lot of sale items this year.

Probably not. It has been a while since they were available in retail stores. Kids interests change as they change age, much more than adults. My interests are pretty much as they were 1, 3, 5 or 10 years ago. Could the same be said for a teenager? In the same way, some kids interested in Harry Potter now probably do not know of the existence of Harry Potter lego, if they were not interested in either lego or Harry Potter or both it when the sets were out.

The City Arctic theme (as well as Agents as noted above) provides a good setting for them.

An alternative is that stores do not want them, given the past discounting needed to get rid of many of the sets in earlier waves. They may have already had agreements in place to take them, which would explain some stores having them earlier. But then not re-ordered once the small quantities they had were gone.

LEGO S@H has them, also available in Germany.

Hasn't that been the problem with LOTR and the Hobbit sets - kids don't buy them. I cannot see kids wanting to buy into a LOTR / Hobbit CMF line when the characters supplied are just add-ons to sets that haven't been in stores for three years. Yes kids, you can have Denethor, but not regular versions of the Fellowship. I think that is exactly the type of problem Lego addresses with availability. They have to cater for multiple audiences and have done reasonably well in the last few CMF series to make the army builder ones come in higher numbers. No doubt they do this not primarily for the good of the fans, but because lego wants them to remain fans and keep buying future series. If you think of the questions that need to be asked about a CMF line: Characters - you need the Fellowship in there if it is going to sell to anyone that hasn't already bought into LOTR lego, bearing in mind the amount of time between wave 1 of LOTR and now. Otherwise, they are restricting this series to a small subset of possible buyers already. It's interesting to see what they did with the Simpsons. The complete family is in the House set. The complete family is in the Series 1 CMF. The complete family is rumoured to be in the Series 2 CMF, in different outfits. If they did LOTR, it wouldn't surprise me if they did something similar, so no matter when you start collecting, you can always get the Fellowship as a minimum. Which really cuts down places for the extras. Distribution - go for a lot of popular characters so general fans can get what they want, or go for larger army builders so existing fans can cherry pick the armies they have been calling for, or try for balance? Past sales - based on assumptions on how many times LOTR and Hobbit sets have been discounted, and the availability of wave 3 of The Hobbit, they haven't been that great. Why produce a CMF line for a series that hasn't been that good in the past? With the problems highlighted above, I'm not sure I'd release a CMF line if I was in charge. Sure, as a fan I'd love it. But financially, I'm not so sure.

I've glued lego to wood before. I made my kids a castle diarama board, about 3' x 2'. The board was painted green and brown and I stuck plates in greys, greens, tans, browns, etc. down to the board at various points, to make one large buildable diarama. There are large spaces with no plates for free build or battles, carts, whatever takes their fancy and then areas of glued plates for building castles, forests, etc. It is ideal for play since it can be lifted and carried without the builds shifting. They tend to build what they want off the board, then attach them to the board. I also went to the trouble of making sure every stud is aligned and positioned perfectly, so in theory they could place plates in the blank areas and build all the way from one side of the board to the other seamlessly.

The simple answer to both those questions is that it is their game and their rules. They will do whatever is best for them.