MAB

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.

#7065 Alien Conquest

To sell something for profit is what I call business. If resellers were not able to make a profit, that retired stock would never be available again, not even for the people willing to pay higher than RRP prices. I don't think it is possible for a reseller to create scarcity. It is impossible for an individual to suck up all the stock worldwide or even nationally then control the market straight away. Someone tried it here in the UK with the limited edition Technic Crawler, and it appeared to turn out badly, travelling the length of the UK buying up what they could at retail then paying secondary market prices to get as much stock as they could. Then prices didn't increase further for years, if anything they dropped after the initial jump. And that is for a truly limited product, not somethingwidely available in many stores. For something like CMFs, it is impossible to corner the market. There are simply too many made and are so widely distributed, it is impossible to stop buyers that want them from getting them. It is also hard to make a quick profit on them if the seller wants a quick flip, because there are so many and so so many sellers. Holding stock for years is a better way to get high prices but of course it means money is tied up for a long time. There is also a risk of price crashes or no price increases. Holding back stock is also not necessarily a tactic just to create scarcity. I frequently hold stock to get longer term profit. For example, I bought loads of the Wizard Battle and Witch-King Battle at clearance for £5 and £6 each. I sold some quickly at about 2-3x what I paid. That gets cash flow back. I could have flipped all of them quickly, but the rest were longer term investments. I dripfeed them into bricklink not to create scarcity but to monitor price and maximise my return. If I had put them all on in 2014-5, they would have sold and possibly to another reseller who then gets to ride the market. Once they are sold, I can no longer profit. Whereas if I release one at a time as they sell, I can monitor pricing and slowly increase my price as the demand to supply ratio changes.

Remember history is written and often later re-written by the victors.

Same here. Good times. I think it was more exciting then than it is now as it was something new. Rivendell is beautiful, and the architecture of it far outweighs everything from the original sets, but it doesn't feel as exciting.

I imagine it would be a collaborative build at an event. Just the 144 48x48 baseplates are going to cost about 1000 Euro, assuming about 6 Euro a piece for second hand, and that is not considering shipping. To cover 48x48 studs in something interesting is likely to be at least 100 Euro, probably multiple 100s of Euros for buildings or forests. But it is not just the cost of the parts, but the need for a large space to display it.

It is funny really how time repeats itself. The same discussion was had about 10 years ago when these images were first released.

Yes. Builder, collector, reseller, buyer.

For whatever reason, if you did not buy a set while it was out, you have two choices: buy it from someone that did buy it, or go without. If resellers had not bought stock to save, you'd get one choice: go without. Secondary market pricing is not really down to greed. It is down to what buyers will pay for the stock available. If there is limited stock available and demand is high and some buyers are willing to pay 10x RRP, why would a seller sell for 2x RRP. Chances are the buyer will just flip it at 10x RRP. The reseller did not create scarcity by buying up all the leftover stock. If it was leftover, it suggests it had sat on shelves for its run, and needed to be sold off. If resellers had not bought it, it would have been sold, probably to consumers, then opened, mixed up with other sets, and disappeared into bulk on a kid's floor. If your budget is limited and you cannot afford no longer current items on the secondary market, then choose from the 100s of sets currently on shelves.

I no longer have the original boxes for the pirates one, but the parts seem fine to me after all this time. I know some of the early CMFs and some other parts were made in Chinese factories, and if you put them up to a very bright light they appear very slightly translucent. Whether that means that they are lower quality is another matter. I don't even think it was down to cost-cutting, but more because they had to use Chinese locally sourced raw ABS rather than importing it into China. Back in the day, I remember buying this battle pack. You get one generic pirate and a pirate captain. If you buy a lot of battle packs, you end up with a lot of pirates that wear clothes that make them look like captains. The same thing with the Imperials. And even though you can swap the legs around, they all end up losing their right leg unless you start pulling legs off other hip joints. If they did two generic pirates, it might be better for army builders but less good for kids that don't have a pirate captain. For licensed ones, it depends if they wear an outfit that is so famous it cannot be used elsewhere. For example, for the Uruk vs Rohan "battle pack", I bought quite a few. But I also purchased I think a further 10 Eomer figures as they were so cheap (about $3). Once people had one Eomer they clearly did not want more, making him very cheap on bricklink. This torso is so characteristic of Eomer, it cannot really be used for other Rohan soldiers. However, the helmet, head, cape and legs are fine for reuse with another torso. And the torso, I still use it for a castle faction, not connected to LOTR.

If you have used someone's design and modified it, and copied wings from an official set, it is probably best to make it free. Charging for it probably won't make you much money but will get you a lot of hate for charging for it when you copied parts from someone's free instructions and an official set.