MAB

The only time they increased the number produced above what was advertised is when they messed up and took orders for too many. They increased the numbers for the other sets in the same round to make it fair to other designers.

I think they do. They did the Rebuild The World campaign just before covid. They still have pages of young fan creations in the lego magazine. They have play tables in stores. What they don't do is have pictures of alternate models built from individual sets like they used to. I imagine that is partly down to complaints about lack of instructions and partly because now there is a much larger range of bricks and designs are far more detailed than in the 90s, making alternate models much harder to design and decipher from a picture only.

I don't really believe this, based on my own kids, many of their friends and I dread to think how many large mixed up boxes and bags of (modern) LEGO I've bought over the years. Adults might tend to keep sets together, but kids still mix up their lego and build what they like.

Build up a list of missing parts, then go to BL. Otherwise you can end up spending a small fortune on postage.

Years ago, I dyed the flexible rubber tail part and the brick from a Duplo zooter. I left it in warm but not hot dye for a couple of days and it eventually went black. Just reheating it every few hours. I also tried some 60s train wheels (the treads) but they fell apart. I'm not sure I'd try Smaug's wings though. Maybe a fake one but even those are expensive.

That is standard for pre-orders.

Apparently they did boost their configuration in anticipation. But obviously not enough. The silly think is the bit that was broken just took you from the front page to the BDP series 1 page on Bricklink. But you could still get there selecting it from the menu instead without the server error. The link to lego.com was fine.

We actually provide a good service for the community. We swap our unwanted yellow heads and hands and any skin printed body parts for your unwanted fleshie parts. You need us! ;-)

For me, fleshie. But so long as torsos don't contain skin coloured print (whether yellow or fleshie) where it is not necessary, I'm happy with yellow skins as fleshie heads and hands are common enough now that they are almost as cheap as yellow.

^ In this case, you have quite a few built structures. Keep those together as identifying the set and checking inventories is much easier if they are still together. I can see you have a Pharaoh and Lady Liberty CMF in there and some older castle figures.

Yes

If you are going to black, RIT dye can be used to dye the parts. It works with other colours but colour matching is hard. However, given the price of them, just buy replacement used ones!

Presumably legislation. Or to make it clear that it is a kit that comes in pieces and so requires building and does not come pre-built as in the picture.

Yep, they were the original baseplates. We frequently used them both as bases and flat roofs.

I remember 10x20 baseplates, that were 1 brick high.

Microfigs / trophies and the slightly larger games figures also make good statuettes.

Another way of doing it is a 1x2 plate or brick with a 1x2 jumper on top, then a 1x1 brick with studs on two opposite sides on that, each with a cheese slope on the side, then the head on top of that. You can also get some fairly plain faces in the right colours if you want a bit more detail, like the recent LOTR statues (and many before them). The other good colours to look out for are sand green and black.

I have experience of the genuine lego versions. They are not very bright, and will be a pain to turn on multiple and turn them off again. Plus the batteries won't last long if you have them on for a few hours a day.

You might also get a temporary charge at the point of ordering, depending on how you pay. This is refunded though.

A downside of a 32x32 (regular) plate is not so much when used as a baseplate but if it is used with bricks attached underneath such as an upper floor. I imagine such large plates would sag considerably if there are no supports except at the edges if there is a significant mass of bricks on top.

If your display is not near an electric socket, use a 5V light system and link it to a power bank. You can cut an old USB cable to connect to the lights, then plug into a power bank, computer, charger, whatever without needing to change anything.

Which brand / colour paint did you use for the weapon handles? It looks like a good match for reddish brown.

I doubt there will be any. I don't think anything was done for the first series.

It depends how many parts you have to sort through and how much space to spread them out. This is where long term storage is different to sorting out a bulk lot. If it is one big tub, I'd sort roughly by colour (all blues together, all greys together, etc), and within each colour pile sort roughly into bricks, plates and tiles, everything else. Any minifigs or unique looking parts, put to one side to help identify sets. You can normally split a huge pile quite quickly into about 30 piles to make finding things much quicker when sorting into sets, without needing to do a full sort into 100s of piles of individual bricks which often needs more space and a lot of sorting time before starting to sort into sets. Whereas for storing a (much larger) collection, I'd never store 1x2 bricks mixed with 1x3 and 1x4 etc. There it makes sense to do a more detailed sort by part type.

It is a fairly common thing to do, known as a MOD.