MAB

Yes, and also before minifigures came along lego was also about making anything we wanted, often paired with small action figures from other brands. Sometimes we even drew figures on card and cut them out to play with our lego, trains and die-cast cars all at the same time. And today kids still play like that. My kids have sets, but they also have a big sack full of lego they build MOCs with. They have continued to play with LEGO to an older age than when I first gave up as a kid, I think mainly due to the parts range allowing so much more detail in their creativity than was possible in the 80s. I think I got a bit fed up with the narrow range of colours and blocky parts, and moved on to other building materials (plaster casts, balsa wood, card, paint, etc) to satisfy creativity because leho wasn't good enough. Instructions have changed but then play has changed and sets have changed. In the 70s and 80s some sets didn't have as many parts as a polybag now, so instructions could be straightforward. And the bigger parts meant it was easier to see where the parts were going in each step, plus there were far fewer different parts then too so mistakes were easier to spot. And play has changed in that kids have more distractions these days. When I was a kid, we didn't have anywhere near the amount of toys kids have today. If they get something wrong in a build because the instructions were not clear and have to remove most of it to correct it, there is a good chance they play with something else more satisfying. That said, my kids have built vintage sets perfectly fine, even though they are used to modern instructions. I find the challenge of finding the right part(s) slows down building these days, something that didn't really happen in the past when there were often many of the same part in a set so it was easier to find the parts you need for each step quite quickly. That is also possibly part of the reason behind smaller numbers of parts per step. It is of course possible to build a polybag or small set from the picture alone if you want a challenge similar to old instructions or back of the box suggestions, or if you have a big set then you can skip five steps at a time if you like the spot what is different route to building. I also used to role play knights with toys, and cowboys, trains, police and so on, making up our own stories. But then we'd also role play Star Wars, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Grange Hill with our own stories. We knew what characters were likely to do just like we knew what police or knights were likely to do. I don't think LEGO police has really evolved with time. Police sets of today look different to those from 40 years ago only really in that the build style due to the changing bricks and design principles. But they are very much similar for role play. Cops, robbers, cars, helicopters. They keep doing them as kids like role playing action, and also parents see it as reasonably safe. If they did sets based on modern policing rather than stereotypical cops and robbers in whatever setting, I doubt that would be the case.

And no doubt that at the time, there were people that hated Power Miners and Space Police because those stupid new themes knocked the so much better older themes they loved off the shelves. Yes, Ninjago has sort of consumed many of the ideas that new themes might have used. They have covered traditional architecture to dragons to fantasy technology with antagonists varying from snakes to robots to sky pirates to skeletons and more. I have no doubt that any one sub-theme or year could have been done as a completely new stand alone theme with new heroes each time but keeping the same enemies and builds for the sets. But of course for every new theme they do, there is new advertising, kids have to get used to the new characters, and then they disappear just as quickly and there is no continuity from year to year. A theme like Atlantis or even Monster Fighters could easily have their humans replaced by the Ninjago core characters and be essentially the same storyline. Or the other way, any Ninjago sub-theme have its core characters removed and replaced by something different. I think continuity is important here, as kids buy into the franchising just like they do for licenses. Once they know the characters, they want more of them and with continuity can use them with past sets that they already own. So I understand why LEGO has put so many quite different ideas into the one theme, even if it means the core characters get repeated so often.

But then is it creative to do police and fire sets year after year? They might change the settings from town to forest to swamp back to town, yet the builds and play are frequently very similar. And the important thing is that it sells. Once Classic Space or Castle had been done for a year, was it still original after that? Is Ninjago or Friends still original? Yet so many kids will have played with castle repeating stories of Robin Hood or of Arthurian type legend. Even though the characters are not necessarily licensed or named, their backstory was already partly in children's heads from cultural stories. Having some knowledge of who a character is can actually help a child understand them and build their own imaginative stories around them. Give a kid the choice of either a plain minifigure or one from a selection with some printing on them, and I reckon in most cases, they'd go for one that is printed as the print gives them a hint as to how to play with it. Licensed sets are also popular with AFOLs. Look at the sales of Star Wars, look at the volume of discussion on EB in the Star Wars forum. Look at the volume of discussion about LOTR in the historic forum, look at the amount of discussion in the licensed forum. LEGO needs both licensed and unlicensed to retain its popularity. If it suddenly decided no more licensed themes, they would just lose customers. The people buying them won't suddenly decide that they will buy Dreamzzz or Ninjago or City instead. Other brands would take them up and produce similar sets to what LEGO does now, and LEGO would lose market share. The wide product availability within unlicensed LEGO themes may even go down as people become used to buying other brands as they are the ones with the popular licenses.

What would make a company like MegaConstrux or Cobi or one of the others a serious competitor? I doubt any clone brand will take away significant enough market share to get anywhere near LEGO's sales. To be a serious competitor, they'd have to have a huge licensed portfolio, as well as cover more niche themes like trains, as well as everyday type stuff like City does. LEGO does have some serious competitors, albeit in a totally different way, in other types of play (especially online/gaming) and changing attitudes towards toys in general. Toys, especially at the expensive end, are becoming adult collectables rather than something for kids. There are big competitors out there for collector items. The man in street probably didn't hear about it and if he did, he didn't care about it. Outside of LEGO train fans, and LEGO fan forums, I doubt the story even registered. And I also imagine many LEGO fans don't see an issue with LEGO protecting its image. I also doubt LEGO cares if he pays his own court costs or if he gets them paid by his supporters through crowd funding. Over the years vocal fans have left the hobby either after a spat with LEGO or with rival fans, yet LEGO continues to grow. Even apparently big influencers really don't have much influence. If someone disappears, someone else soon replaces them.

LEGO wasn't insanely popular all around the world in the 80s though. It is way more popular now than back then. People buying licensed LEGO sets are just as much fans of LEGO as people that buy in-house sets.

It wouldn't surprise me if they were listed on ebay before ordering was open. That happened with sets in the last round.

Yeah, it is going to be an interesting race. The train station was lagging behind a little but suddenly overtook the mushroom house. Why they suggest 24 days is anyone's guess. They could make it just 2 days, the panic would be the same.

The speed the bars are filling seems slower than last time. I imagine there is slightly less hype and less rush to buy this time. Whether there is less demand or not, I'll guess we'll see. I imagine most will sell out again.

It really depends on what you want to compare: the number of in-house vs licensed themes, or the number of in-house vs licensed sets. LEGO has consolidated a lot of its ideas into a few core in-house themes. Look at how many sets Friends, City and Ninjago each get these days. Then there are Monkie Kid, Dreamzzz, Creator, etc. Looking at brickset data, last year the three big in-house themes got 48, 62 and 47 sets respectively. Compare that to when they were doing many more themes that lasted a year that came and went. Avatar got 5, Fortnite got 2, Gabby's Dollhouse got 4, HP got 18, Indy got 4, DC got 13, Marvel got 40, Sonic got 6, Minecraft got 22, and even the big SW only got 48. There might be a lot of IP based themes, but the number of IP based sets is not actually that high. I looked a couple of years ago, and it is about 50:50 in-house to licensed in terms of sets if you ignore all the magazine bag sets and all the education/service type packs. I'm not going to buy Mario, Sonic and Zelda sets. I don't really care how many there are of those or how many themes they are counted as, just as I am not going to buy any of the 10 Monkie Kid sets this year. What matters to me is that they are producing things I want to buy. For me 50:50 overall in terms of sets is about right for the general population. There is plenty of choice of in-house stuff for those that like that, and there is plenty of choice for licensed sets. If LEGO didn't do those licenses, chances are another brand would pick them up. LEGO wouldn't make more sales by dropping the IP based themes, those IP based sales would just go to the other companies. Wicked and Zelda sets are likely to be bought by fans of those franchises. Does it really matter that those two themes exist? If they didn't exist, it is not like LEGO would be making more in-house themes. The fans that would have bought the Wicked sets probably won't be buying other LEGO.

Can't you straighten any slightly bent parts? Replacement parts will be the same material and probably more likely to get bent if posted in an envelope.

It depends what you mean by customization. It seems that there is still plenty of purist customization going on, where custom figures are made without destroying parts. There is also a much wider range of purist prints and colours available these days so there is less incentive to paint or draw on figures. The increased number of licensed themes means that there is a lot more variety in minifigure parts than there used to be. There is also a wide range of weapons and so on, so I think that has had an effect on the use of third party parts. I used to buy a fair bit from brickforge and brickwarriors, but LEGO has made their own versions of many of the parts I used to buy from them. I imagine the number of licenses LEGO makes minifigures for, and also the rise of the custom printed minifigure companies or other IPs from the Chinese clone brands, has meant that people tend not to make one offs these days as just about anything you can think of is available.

My recollection is that Assault on Hoth was not criticised because it was an incoherent mess, but that it was essentially a big collection of smaller things that they had already done before and so AOH added very little. If the smaller LOTR sets don't exist, a big combination set is less of an issue. Especially if those sets are not likely to be wanted as multiples.

The previous Bag End was a little over 600 pieces. These days, an equivalent sized 18+ set would be at least 1000 pieces due to the use of small parts. A 2000 piece set probably wouldnt be much bigger than the original. Not that that is a bad thing. I thought the size of the original is about right. It doesn't need an entire shelf or display cabinet to itself.

That's fine if that is what he believed, but it turned out he was wrong. He now knows that he cannot modify LEGO bricks and still sell them calling them LEGO bricks. And now he will pay for that belief, although the crowdfunding may help him out. That is totally unrelated. That was an in-house business decision that does not impinge on another company's trademarks. Companies change suppliers or in-house processes all the time. Sometimes due to cost cutting, sometimes due to other practical reasons. If customers don't like it, they can shop for other brands.

I would hope not. They already did Lisa in her Sunday Best outfit. They did Homer and Marge in their "date night" clothes. Bart in Sunday Best would look just like Homer's torso from that. Homer in Sunday Best would just be a different colour tie. Marge, a slightly different design dress, and Maggie would be the same as before. If they did the family again, I'd prefer some new costumes such as Bart as a daredevil or one of his Treehouse of Horror outfits, Homer in so many different possible outfits, Marge as a witch, business woman, etc and so on.

He could have stopped doing what he shouldn't be doing when he was warned a couple of times about it. There are enough clone brands out there. He could have continued business by agreeing to stop modifying LEGO parts and selling them using the LEGO branding and instead started to modify unbranded parts for sale. That way, he could have kept his business going whether it was the hobby aspect or profit that was the motivation. He wouldn't be able to piggy back on LEGO's reputation but then many small companies that make products that enhance LEGO building are able to thrive without using LEGO's trademarks. Especially if he was already established and known in the community, if it filled a niche for products that didn't exist before then it would still fill that niche after. Yet instead he took the alternative route of refusing to stop, forcing LEGO to take it to court and he lost.

Yes, it makes perfect sense. And if HA Bricks refused to stop, they have themselves to blame. It will for sure put the frighteners up anyone else doing similar if they are contacted. I can also understand the customer data part. No doubt many knew what they were buying. But if even just a minority were misled into thinking it was a LEGO product (and so safety certified), then a recall makes sense. They cannot force buyers to return but they can make it known that there are safety concerns if they have not been tested properly. By using the quotes, I mean 'fair' in the sense that they are not being the bad guy from the outset, as in fair in what people/users/AFOLs/LEGO train fans think in the court of public opinion rather than a court of law. Some here are making out that LEGO went in heavy handed from the start.

Yes, but my response was that they should C&D if they wanted to 'play fair' and get the seller to stop in the first instance. If the seller ignored it or refused to cease at that point and LEGO decided to go all in subsequently then I'd say they had played fair and that the seller was at fault for refusing to stop when warned. There may well be other options but if they already gave the seller the option and he refused, then why not go all in. There are cases of people suing (or taking to social media) over injuries caused by toys, including LEGO. It is not the loss of a part if it breaks but tge possibility of an injury due to it being broken.

No, I don't miss the point. They are not targeting you. You are not in court. They have not contacted you. They are targeting the person that is taking LEGO parts, modifying them and then selling them as LEGO parts. That might have an impact on you as you can no longer buy the parts the seller has modified, but they have not targeted you. It is the seller that they have dealt with. They are not doing it because they want you to be effected, they are doing it to protect their safety and standards reputation, as well as their trademark. It wouldn't surprise me if they also continue to try to order him to contact his customers to say that the parts he sold where not genuine LEGO but modified in such a way that they no longer meet the strict standards that they were tested against and do a recall. Toy standards are incredibly strict within the EU. People buying LEGO products would know they have been tested so that they can be used by children. If that ball bearing can drop out then it could lead to a safety hazard if it found its way into the hands of a young child. It is similar to adding magnets where they are easily removed. Even if the seller says that he only sells to adults and customers are aware they are buying modified items, he was using the LEGO branding and its reputation to sell them. If you were to pass on the modified parts to someone else and their child choked on an untested part, they would probably try to sue LEGO for producing a dangerous part. So if TLG know that someone is modifying their toys and selling them without certification, you think they should just continue to allow that to happen? We don't know if TLG had contacted this seller first to tell him to cease and desist. It seems likely that they would have, as that is usually the first step to stop what one side sees as illegal activity. But we don't know. If they have done this then they have acted differently to what it appears, and if the seller ignored it and continued to sell then LEGO have taken the right action trying to get him to stop first. We don't know if they have gone for "harder" targets first. I imagine they go after all sorts of targets. It wouldn't surprise me if they targeted this seller as he was modifying the parts but still claiming they were genuine LEGO, meaning that it is not just a trademark issue but also a safety issue. As for the hobby aspect, just because some people want the modifications for their hobby does not mean that a seller should be able to produce them without permission or certification. If they allow it as end-users want it for hobby use, then anyone could set up a company producing substandard toys based on LEGO, call it LEGO and sell it.

Here, the authorities do not class making stuff to sell for profit as a hobby, even if you enjoy it and use the proceeds to fund purchases for yourself. Buying equipment with a loan and selling stuff produced with the equipment to pay off the loan to fund its purchase is what many businesses do. Even if you don't ever make a profit, it is still a business. There may be no tax to pay if no profit is made, but that doesn't mean it is only a hobby. It is the production with the intention to sell that makes it a business, not whether profit is made. And if you are printing replacement stickers that are LEGO's copyright, then they could take action against you too. I know it has gone on for years with LEGO seemingly not taking notice, but maybe this step is the first indication that they are going to slowly stamp out the smaller scale production of reproductions / unauthorized copies / fakes (name depending on viewpoint). They are not going after you, you are not in court for buying the disputed items. They went after the person making and selling the items. If you want to buy LEGO and adapt it, there is nothing stopping you. It is the point at which someone adapts LEGO parts and then sells them, especially calling them LEGO, that LEGO is disputing (and winning). It may have a knock on effect on you as you can no longer buy them but have to make them yourself, but LEGO are not targetting the buyers, they are targeting the person making and selling them.

This was not a hobbyist individual. They were selling items, and using LEGO trademarks to sell them. Producing and selling the items makes them a company, not someone doing it as a hobby. LEGO are perfectly fine with a hobbyist buying their items and adapting them for their own personal use.

That is how I started. I had quite a lot of unwanted duplicates from early CMF series that I either traded for ones I wanted, or sold on ebay.

Only the retrospective story by LEGO.

Presumably they think the torso is generic enough to be reused in other themes. There have been other torso designs used in both licensed and unlicensed sets, and sometimes in more than one licensed theme. It probably helps that both HP and LOTR are Warner properties, so if they had been involved in agreeing the design then it is not like it is being used to represent another company's properties.

They are two different systems. In The Simpsons, yellow is meant to represent Caucasian/white people hence the need for other colours for Carl and Dr Hibbert, and others still like Pedro the Mexican bee guy. In LEGO, yellow in in-house themes is meant to represent all people. For example, the Mexican Mariachi is yellow.