MAB

http://www.peeron.com/inv/colors

How much more would you be willing to pay for that? It requires different machinery to seal the gripseal and seal the plastic with heat. There is no benefit to lego to double seal the bags. If you want large ziplock bags for storage or reuse, then buy them separately.

Possibly. Most modern female heads have (two) eyebrows, so they could have joined them together with ink.

Presumably a custom job, it looks like it could be an existing head with the eye brows joined together to make Frida Kahlo.

Good one. But don't you also have a load of the technic 3/4 pins in tan for the top? While not as common, I still seem to have loads of those.

Sorry, but it looks dreadful. There are some good stop motion LEGO videos out there, but this is not one of them. You can even see someone walking around in the background at one point.

If you are not building them, you might as well avoid getting any track. The track boxes are not much to look at.

All the fan sites reporting it had that as the end date.

They have been available in Europe for some time now (at least two months). That is why there are many sellers with large quantities available on bricklink.

I think that is one possible change that could be made to increase the use of printed parts and reduce the use of stickers. It would lead to less decoration overall (possibly with more brick built detail where the scale allows) and presumably the use of more generic prints that don't look as good as unique specific stickers but allow the parts to be reused in many sets. Would those be good things? I'm not sure. It may make individual parts nicer in that you don't need to apply stickers, but it would reduce details or increase duplication between sets. Another alternative may be that only certain parts are printed, so that they don't have to continually reset the printing machinery to hold different parts, reducing downtime and calibration time for the printing machines. So for example, get more printed 1x2 and 1x4 tiles and 2x2 and 1x4 bricks but less other shapes with prints. As I understand it, one of the reasons we get so many new minifigure prints is that they have dedicated machinery for printing each of the minifigure parts so don't have to constantly switch machine parts each time a different shaped part is printed. It is hard to compare the prices of printed vs stickered parts, since so few exist in both printed and stickered versions. And even if a decorated part does exist in both forms, demand for one over the other might be higher if it is required to complete an expensive set rather than the intrinsic value of the part away from the set. It is interesting to look at prices of prints vs plain parts. Of course there are plenty of parts where the unique print is worth significantly more than the plain part where the plain one occurs in huge numbers and the printed one appears in just one set, and this is highly dependent on the set the part came in as well as its reusability in MOCs. If it is unique to a set (especially an expensive licensed set) then a printed part is likely to be much more valuable than a plain unprinted part. But then there are also counter examples of printed parts like this where printing makes the part worth less. The (new) six month sold prices by quantity on BL are 6p and 4p, whereas even though the printed ones came in a single set and the plain one came in 29 sets, the plain has a 6mo ave of 20p. Those parts would have been more valuable if they had not been printed! Although of course the textured surface here would make applying stickers hard. There are also vintage examples that are similar. For example, the plain one (used) has an average of about £4.20, whereas the printed one is just 15p. The plain one only came in the Black Seas Barracuda (and the reissue) whereas the printed one came in three Fabuland sets (including two very small sets, so there are loads of them). Scrubbing the print off makes that part more valuable. When it comes to desirability, in some cases printed parts are better and in some cases plain but stickered parts are better.

Clearly the thread means different things to different people. Preferring prints to stickers is not the same as hating stickers.Yet there are posts saying exactly that. I prefer prints to stickers, but not if there is a significant cost difference. That could lead to more expensive sets or loss of decoration (so maybe just 1/5th of the decorated parts in a set, but all printed instead of stickered) or repeated use of the same printed parts over and over even if they are not quite right instead of unique decorations via stickers.

This goes back slightly further, as a young kid I had one of these and used to get hours of fun out of it. I also longed to get the Weetabix windmill set but wasn't allowed, although did frequently build something similar out of basic bricks. I think now I slightly prefer the more modern equivalent of the bus that is also made out of pretty basic bricks although the play value is equivalent, the difference being I don't really play with it driving it around like I did as a kid. Personally (again through adult eyes), I prefer topping it off with tiles on a model so small although don't mind exposed studs on larger models. I think kids can have just as much fun with modern LEGO as I did with vintage LEGO if they are keen to play with it. One main difference is that kids have so many more toys these days. Having fewer toys makes you appreciate them more.

In case anyone hadn't noticed, you can get the 30644 Vintage Car Creator polybag for 500 VIP points (so equivalent of just over £3 worth of discount). I've not seen this one anywhere else in the UK yet, although presumably it is out in Europe as there are lots available on BL from German and Dutch sellers. I got one that came in an order at the weekend, it is not a bad little build. It also has a couple of the fairly new gold crown coins in it, handy for Castle builders wanting some more money if you don't want to keep them in the car.

Fun build! There is a very similar one in the Jorvik viking centre in York.

There are occasional Easter Eggs or links between themes. For example, the Vidiyo shark appears in the graffiti in this City set, even though there is no real connection between the themes. You could take that to mean that Vidiyo was a theme within a theme in City. Or you could take it as a fun Easter Egg

I'm saying that not everyone hates stickers so much that they won't buy sets with stickers. Even if people prefer prints to stickers, for many people stickers are not a deal breaker. For those that do hate them to an extreme, there are sets they can buy that are sticker free. Why should LEGO make every set sticker free, when people don't care about it that much? Those that do hate them to an extreme have a series of sets to buy from. However, by putting stickers in other sets (which I assume is to keep costs down) they are also creating sets that are more affordable for those that really don't care either way. If they do away with stickers, then set prices will presumincrease hitting the purchasing behaviour of people that didn't really care about going to prints only.

While we don't have completely free choice, we have lots of choice. We have just heard that there are many sets that don't have stickers. So those that hate them so much can choose from those sets, whereas other people that don't mind them so much (especially if stickers mean the cost is lower) can choose from a wider range.

People preferring prints is not the same as people hating stickers. People are buying sets with stickers. They might prefer prints, but they are still buying sets with stickers. And that sends the message to LEGO that they don't mind them all that much.

I thought the football stadiums were part of the ICONS range, not their own theme. And in that sense very similar to one off narrow interest sets like the Eiffel Tower and the Titanic. The fanbase of the clubs chosen is absolutely huge (as in people that buy merchandise, not actual fans that go to games), they only need to make sales to a tiny fraction of them for the set to be a success. And of course it helps bring in people new to LEGO. If a Barcelona fan buys the stadium, enjoys it and then goes on to buy an Atari 2600 then the set has done well as an advertising piece. If the fan cannot afford the stadium but goes on to buy the brickheadz instead, it has done a job of bringing in a new customer.

That looks really good.

How many people buy the Eiffel Tower, Titanic, Coloseum, or Queer Eye, or the botanic collection, or Marvel or Star Wars or any theme. Everything is niche in that more people won't buy something than will buy it. So long as enough buy it, it is fine.

That's why they have chosen clubs that have a huge international following. Ask a random person somewhere in the world outside of the USA to name a football club (or a soccer club if in the USA) and it wouldn't surprise me if the most popular choices align with what LEGO have produced. They are missing Liverpool and possibly Juventus, PSG and maybe now Manchester City. It wouldn't surprise me if many of the stadium sets didn't sell to fans that attend matches, but to followers of the club that have never been.

If they did a new space / castle / pirates theme with modern parts, then is that a revival of a classic theme? If they did the same using new minifig parts as well, does that count of a revival of the old, as those parts were not used in the originals as they didn't exist? If they did the same using new character parts that didn't exist at the time, would that count as a revival? To me, Friends is a partly a revival of the old Town or City sets as it covers similar subjects just with more modern parts (both regular building and figure parts). The same if they did a blue and grey space theme with minidolls wearing different coloured space outfits, I'd say that was a revival of Classic Space, even though minidolls didnt exist when the original sets were made.

Classic also needs to be defined, as a lot of themes mentioned here are not what I'd label as classic, but instead either vintage, old or retired depending on what they are.

This is the problem when it comes to getting new themes. To do new themes, they have to retire others, or have an ever increasing catalogue of current themes. If they retire others they are seen by some as a flop. They used to do decent themes for a year or two - Monster Fighters, AC, PQ, Atlantic, etc. That was possible because they retired when another comes along. The downside is having to advertise and get a new tgeme up and running every year. Whereas advertising Ninjago or City is much easier.