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MAB

Eurobricks Archdukes
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Everything posted by MAB

  1. MAB
    Why will you never be able to go to SDCC? What you really mean is that you choose not to spend money on going to SDCC. Lego also do highly prized Inside Tour sets, given only to a handful (~50) people that pay to go on their Inside Tour every year. These are not available elsewhere, only to those on the tour. Would you also have them either stopped or made available to everyone, devaluing the exclusiveness of the set for those that get it by going on the tour?
  2. MAB
    I have a lot of brickwarriors parts, and they are excellent quality. Although mine are all historical, not modern guns. I did once get a badly molded part (badly formed grip on the back of a shield), but they gave me a voucher worth 4x the part value for my next order. Their customer service was very quick to reply too. I also have a lot of brickforge parts, again always been happy with them. Go with who has what you want.
  3. MAB
    I see. I also doubt we will see anything new from LOTR if we don't get any new sets.
  4. MAB
    That is incorrect though. They have had a fairly major worldwide promotion with Shell throughout 2012-13, possibly this year too in some countries. For sets like this and the racers:
  5. MAB
    Glass paint (which I assume is the same as window colors) will work for the trans part. Paint a few thin coats, instead of one thick one. For the pillar, I'd go for a combination of a 1x1 brick, with 1x1 round bricks / cylinders on top. It would also match the door hinge pillar too.
  6. MAB
    Marge is definitely not nude underneath. Lego don't do yellow hips in any minifigures any more for precisely this reason. Same with fleshie hips too.
  7. MAB
    ??? There have already been three LOTR films. And there won't be a fourth, since the story is done.
  8. MAB
    It is only win/win from your point of view. If there was a win for lego by not doing exclusives, then they would stop doing them. The fact that they continue to do exclusives suggests that there is a good reason for them to do them. They don't do it just because they know it angers some collectors.
  9. MAB
    An assembly of minifigs. Works on two levels :-)
  10. MAB
    Yes, and lego have gone past basic level economics in making decisions about these. Letting everyone have everything they want at the price they want it is not always good economics. I don't have a clue of the finances of SDCC, and what lego pays for the stands. But I do know a large number of people attend conventions to get their hands on exclusives like this, sometimes for resale, sometimes for themselves. By offering exclusives lego gets punters in through the doors, that is, ticket sales. No doubt they have an agreement with the convention organisers that if they give away things that gets the punters in, then their advertising / stall rates will be reduced. These sort of figures will be very little value to them in the numbers they are produced, but no doubt give them a large break on advertising costs. I assume the break on advertising costs is more than the costs to produce the figures. They clearly don't want to give every freebie away to every attendee as that would be significantly more expensive, so there has to be a penalty to getting the figure (waiting three hours in line, for example). Having perceived high value freebies also partly justifies the ticket costs of the convention. Should they give up those sort of deals, so that everyone can get the minifigs they feel they should be entitled to in a regular set?
  11. MAB
    It's the striking a balance that is the problem. For you, maybe three years and a different version of the character will work, like for Green Lantern. There will still be people wanting all versions of Green Lantern, and wanting them now. Why should they have to wait, just because they are not willing to spend $500 on a figure? There will then be questions about why is lego holding back on general releases when everyone has already seen the figures? And there will still be exclusives changing hands directly after the conventions for $100s. Scalping by non lego fans will still happen, as well as genuine lego fans selling their minifigs for a profit to recoup some costs of their trip. Knowing something will probably happen in three years won't stop the reselling of exclusives. Plus then there is the problem of continuity of licenses, what if they no longer have the license three years in the future?
  12. MAB
    Greenpeace used their guerilla tactics to take out the UK customer services yesterday. https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/s/phone-lego
  13. MAB
    What would you have them do? Not make any promotional exclusives? Just have minifigs that were going to be released in sets anyway? Think about the consequences of that, as there are also unintended consequences to making everything equitable. Less people at the lego stands, since there is no point queuing up for hours to get something that will come out in a set anyway. For some less reason to even attend a convention. Less online discussion about Lego exclusives. Less point of Lego being at conventions. No fairly unique characters to be produced ever, just ones known to the general public since those are the ones that sell. So virtually every set will be a standard Batman or Spiderman. No Zurr-En-Arrh Batman ever, since most people buying lego for kids won't recognise him. The demise of rarer collectables for those that do want them. How many of those nice 2x4x3 promo bricks that used to be reasonably common at events at LDCs and Legoland do we see these days? Virtually none, except in Germany. People complain about not being able to get to the different Legolands or Lego events to get them, and they get stopped.
  14. MAB
    If it is theft and not just a prank to wind up people on the internet, then it is theft. It is not sanctioned by lego. It is no different to someone breaking into a collector's house and stealing their minifigs, whether they were affordable or not. That is not down to Lego.
  15. MAB
    Some of those will depend on the license that Lego has, especially the superhero ones. It also depends on whether they intend to keep the license open and produce more in the future. Missing out Gondor Soldiers, to me, is like not having any Scout Troopers or possibly even Storm Troopers in SW. As for IJ, they covered virtually all of the main characters as I remember them. Maybe Walter Donovan from Last Crusade (but not very interesting) and the chief Gestapo guy from ROTLA, although he is partly made up for by the number of German Soldiers.
  16. MAB
    There is a customer angle / problem with not "completing" the sets too. If Lego gets a reputation for not completing ranges and missing out really quite important chunks of film series, it may damage sales in the future for similar ranges. Say another film trilogy comes along, and Lego brings out a range to complement it. Do you buy into it, knowing Lego has a reputation of missing out important parts of the film but will put in fairly inconsequential sets later on? Or do you just think you'll get enough sets to get the key characters (maybe just the something like the Fellowship, whatever is appropriate to the film) or not even bother with the sets and bricklink the small subset of key minifigs and forget the rest, since the rest will not be complete based on past experiences. So in LOTR case, forget getting Haldir and Theoden, forget Eomer and Rohan Soldiers, since what is the point of those if you don't have a Witch King and Eowyn, and so on.
  17. MAB
    Free building for me too. Buy a load of cheap parts in cheap colours to start with too. Who cares about colour for practice. I will often build something without caring about the colour, then order the parts I want to build the MOC second time around. Chances are you will rip it down and start again many times anyway until you are happy, so having a range of parts rather than the correct colours really helps. The way I build, I also disagree with the "have a plan" route (although it is essential for LDD). Don't have too much of a plan. Just build and see what happens.
  18. MAB
    I am also a customiser that prefers gender neutral torsos (or male torsos as they are normally referred to, since if it hasn't got curves, then it normally isn't female officially). There is also another benefit of gender neutral torsos - and that is possibly more females in a set. If we got away from males have straight torsos and all women have curved ones, then lego could introduce a two sided face. One side with make up, one side without. Then the child / AFOL could decide on the sex of each character, where appropriate. So a set might have 1 obviously male character, 1 obviously female and 2 down to choice by turning a head around. If they are hat-less, then it might cost lego an extra hairpiece or two. That set is then either as high as 75% male, or as low as 25% male depending on how the person playing with it wants it to be. I'm not suggesting doing away with all curved torsos, far from it. Use them where it makes sense. So a buxom pirate woman, or a woman in a dress would keep them, but a police officer or scientist wearing a lab coat wouldn't need them. It's quite rare to find a printed female torso in which curves are not present in modern sets, but lego did let one slip through. Strangely enough, it is a scientist in a lab coat too. Is she still identifiable as a woman despite not having the "necessary" curves? I'd say yes.
  19. MAB
    In the UK, the whole of Wave 2 of the Hobbit has been 50% off. I think every Wave 1 Hobbit was also 50% off. For LOTR, 9471 (Uruk army) was £12 for a while (RRP £30). Elrond's Council I got a couple at £6 each. Most others in Wave 2 were 50% at least. Wave 1 was harder. I bought most at 33% off (3 for 2 deals), but occasionally they have been better. For example, mines of Moria was meant to be £70 RRP, but TRU had it at £44.99 and then did a 3 for 2, meaning £30 a set when you buy three. You just have to keep your eyes open, and know when to jump. I'm not really a reseller. I mainly buy for myself, or buy two/three and sell one/two to cover the costs of my one. Finding large numbers to be a proper reseller at those sort of prices is harder, but was perfectly doable for Hobbit Wave 2.
  20. MAB
    It is a real shame they didn't continue with the signs of the Chinese Year / Zodiac. 2013 brought us the Year of the Snake set, with the lovely door plaque. 2014 ... nothing. If they had brought out a similar 2014 set with the same style dated door for the Year of the Horse, they would have had my money for the next 10 years.
  21. MAB
    The whole series of them has been fantastic. I'm looking forward to a photo of the whole company together.
  22. MAB
    In terms of minifigs, army builders are the ones to go for, as people always want multiples. There are not so many in LOTR / Hobbit, as these tend to focus on the main characters, and normally most people don't want huge armies of the same specific character. The one that does do well is the Uruk-Hai army, 9471, with the Rohan Soldier doing well in particular. Even then though, the price compared to retail / RRP is not great. But the time to buy is when they are 50% off.
  23. MAB
    That sure is a crazy contraption. Now it needs a sensor, so it only starts creeping up on you when your back is turned.
  24. MAB
    There are also a couple of considerations not mentioned. - There is also a weight difference - That you need to also purchase the charger for the rechargeable one - another £20 in UK, probably $30 US? However, I prefer a third solution. A non-purist one. A rechargeable 9V battery and a cheap battery connector connected to a cut-up lego extension cable. It's light, it's small, it's easy to have a spare charged up ready. If you want to make it compatible with the other boxes, you can even build a 4x8x4 box to put it in. You can also easily add a switch and an LED if they matter to you.
  25. MAB
    There is a supply / demand ratio that causes the high prices, but that also exists for minifigs in regular sets too. For example, the exclusive minifigs to Ewok Village or Arkham Asylum are expensive to buy compared to other minifigs in cheaper sets. Should lego also address that imbalance, and make sure that everyone, even those that can only afford to buy $12 sets, gets a chance to buy whichever characters they want in a cheap set? Just like there are complaints everytime a CC comes around, there are also complaints about minifigs being exclusive to large sets and the need to pay a lot for a set just to get one minifig. Of course, it is not as extreme, you just have to shell out $250 or whatever in one go to get what you want. Personally, I don't mind the exclusives. They do a job in that they get lego advertised, they get lego talked about, they get people going crazy. If every exclusive came out in a set in the next year or two, I think the hype will still be there, but will be diminished. I know some people (and this is from the UK), that have traveled to a CC (NY instead of SD) in the past, just to see the lego stands and get a chance to get hold of the exclusives. If the exclusives were no longer exclusive, would people be as willing to go? I think a good alternative is to keep the exclusives exclusive, but for popular characters to later re-release the same character in a different print - like has been done with Green Lantern. That way general collectors get to have all the superheroes (or whatever range) they want in at least one form and the real collectors still get something special to aim for. But then, I'm also for keeping things like Marina Bay Sands in the architecture range special to the location, and not having it available worldwide at the touch of a button. Same with even little poly bags like the New York Taxi. Keep it exclusive to NY and it is a little more special (I know they later appeared at US TRU stores).
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