MAB

Because that is how they are branding the sets these days. Lego puts the Hotel under ICONS, same with Police Station.

I think that is a big jump from a reasonably small GWP.

It is a dead theme in the sense that it is long retired and incredibly unlikely to come back. If you think it is underrepresented and overlooked, then create MOCs around it. That is the only way anything survives once it is retired. People have different opinions. If others don't like something, they don't like it. It is not poor that they don't like something you like, it's just different tastes. For me, it was one of the worst space themes. Boring human figures, terrible aliens, horrible colours for the sets and boring designs especially for the alien ships. They repeated some of the mistakes (for me) in Galaxy Squad (although the ship designs were better), but fortunately they also did other themes like SPIII and Alien Conquest which were more to my taste. I only bought the Alien Mothership which was probably the best of a bad bunch of alien ships, and got rid of it years ago. I nearly went for the Crystal Reaper as it looked like the best of the land vehicles but didn't as I had decided against getting the theme by the time. This is partly why I liked the short lived themes we used to get. If you didn't like aspects of one, then another similar but different one soon came along.

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It might be that they are exclusive for the first three months.

The eagle banner and especially the back of the throne look great.

Some of the thresholds are high these days but then the quality of the GWPs is much higher than they used to be. That said, there is currently a UK offer, spend £35 and get a free Easter chick polybag. So there are still some low spend thresholds. And the rabbit in a basket for £65 threshold. I imagine the change was based on responses to surveys and the change in sales over the recent past. I remember them asking about GWPs in surveys and there were options for better GWPs at higher thresholds. And when their sales volumes are so good, they don't need to give discounts/ free gifts. Instead they use them as a way to encourage much larger orders. Higher thresholds also seem to help make them last longer as resellers don't place multiple low threshold orders and clear out the stocks. There is also a huge number of GWPs these days. It used to be we'd get 4-5 a year. We've had about 10 or 12 already this year, it is hard to keep up. Buyers not liking a GWP willing to wait can now skip GWPs knowing another will be along soon that they might like better.

The difference probably was greater. For new parts, BL prices naturally drop as more people buy the sets the parts came in and part them out or they get their PAB orders and sell them.

You can get a slightly twisting / lifting, especially in larger baseplates, if you have a brick dense region in one section and not much else in another. If you are attaching the baseplate to another with a wall, which will cause some localised stress compared to a free baseplate, are you also putting enough weight elsewhere on the other side to hold down the baseplate.

In the early days, torsos were stickered. Brickforge also used to sell sticker sheets that you could apply to old worn torsos and shields to revamp them. I have some that must be 10+ years old and they still look great. Would people accept stickered torsos from LEGO? Almost certainly not these days. Minifigure parts are handled much more than regular parts for play and so they need to be harder wearing. They are also quite hard to apply for kids, being small and also not square. And as kids will often play with them on the floor, carpet and other dust/dirt will get under the stickers making them less likely to stay on. Also, LEGO has printing equipment specifically set up for minifigure parts as they produce so many of them. Whereas for other parts, equipment has to be set up to change the part holder/mounts for printing each time they print on a different part. Hence it makes sense that they have specific equipment for printing on minifigure parts only but not have equipment permanently set up for every other part type. Having printing machines down while they are being reset for a different part is another cost. And like it or not, minifigures are now LEGO's premium product. Whereas they can get away with stickers in high priced sets, if they started using stickers for minifigures then it would kill sales. They would also be impossible to apply. While a torso sticker is relatively easy for an adult, can you imagine having to sticker arms, heads, and legs (and of course legs cannot be moved if stickered). This all comes down to how well you take care of parts. I have old stickered parts and they look great. I also have old printed parts and they also look great. I don't chuck either type into a bucket full of parts. But then I have bought job lots of tubs of old parts and found both printed and stickered parts that are in bad condition. Similarly I have bought job lots of reasonably modern parts and found badly applied stickers and heavily scratched printed parts. At least with a damaged sticker you can remove it and clean the part up, whereas with a print you have to do significant work to remove the damaged print from the surface. Although often it is not worth doing that for the price of the undecorated part, and they are only fit for the junk box. At that price, it sounds like you are buying a piece that has been well cared for and rarely played with, or possibly even new. There are of course many cheaper ones that will be less well cared for and scratched. If the pieces had been stickered, then well cared for parts would still be in as good condition as well cared for printed parts, and ones that had not been well cared for would be damaged like uncared for printed parts. It is interesting to compare sets from a couple of decades apart although of course comparisons are never perfect. But here, for example, these two are about the same size (although the newer one has double the amount of parts in the X-wing, making it less blocky). The older one has no stickered parts and 6 different printed parts, whereas the newer one has 2 printed and 11 different stickered parts. The main improvement to me (aside from the colour) is the appearance of the upper wings, and the detail through extra/modern parts in the engines. Would the new one look as good if they did not have so much decoration on the wings and engines. Personally, in this case, I find the stickers on the engines a bit superfluous. I think this is a set where they could have had no stickers and just a couple of different printed parts. Would people be happy with fewer specific stickers and more generic prints - like this one that appears in a huge number of sets My personal preference is to brick build the decoration like the red patches on the wings and maybe have one generic and massively reused part such as a tile with the red stripes, but of course that is not really practical for detailed images such as the hieroglyphs mentioned above. But in that case, would people be happy with the same printed part appearing in every set in that theme or would they prefer a couple of different stickered parts in each set? That is the type of thing that LEGO has to balance.

They have in the past, with similar bags containing the visors/helmet attachments for Boba Fett in SW and kitchen equipment and small animals like ladybirds in Friends.

There are too many people using it now. I used to get orders in 6-8 days back when I first used it. And those were actual days not working days!

That's good value then. Round here they insist on you getting one of each type per figure. Not bad value although the heads are usually not worth so much.

I found Helm's Deep was a decent compromise between detail and size and certainly did it justice. I assume if they re-released a similar sized set today, it would probably contain a lot more 1x1 greebly details and be $240 / $250 now. They could have done it larger overall but I'm not so sure that it would be twice as impressive if it cost twice as much. I also found sets like the Black Gate had enough detail even though it lacked in a bit in the other half, but for that one I liked that customers could decide to buy one or two if they wanted a full display. I also think they did a good job on the Shelob, Mines of Moria and Orc Forge sets. Even though these should all be enclosed I don't think they lack too much by not been much larger piece counts to take into account a load of wall. The ship was also a decent build even if the set itself was not loved so much. The original Council of Elrond was a bit miniscule although very easy to expand if you wanted a larger one. I also quite liked the Wizard Battle set. Again it was small and lacked all the surrounding room but had enough detail to be a fun set. Weathertop was similarly small, but the small price meant it was practical to buy enough to have a full set of nine Ringwraiths and horses. But I guess that is the issue, as it seems LOTR is no longer a fun, play-set theme but a detailed model theme. And that will limit what we get to big locations only, and it means smaller scenes (like Shelob) will not be done again unless they go for an Assault on Hoth style set with lots of small and not necessarily connected builds.

No it isn't a toy designed for children, not any more. It used to be that all sets were aimed at children but they have recently embraced not just AFOLs but also 'normal' adults and designed sets for adults. That is why they have 18+ on the box. There are many sets that are clearly display models, not toys for children. Much of the product is for children, all the 4+, 7-12, 12+ etc type eets. Those are toys for kids. The 18+ sets are models for adults. They keep making $500 sets which suggests that they think there is a market for premium adult models (or toys if you prefer to call them that.) For anyone wanting colourful boxes, there are plenty of sets to choose from. There are plenty of AFOLs that specialise in one theme.

They are brickheadz sets though. There have been plenty of licenses that got brickheadz sets that were not replaced by small playsets from that license once the brickheadz retired.

Does your local store allow just 15x shields per pack, or do they insist on complete minifigs?

It is a nice enough MOC for play set but to be honest looks rather boring to build with all those curved panels (1/4 cylinders) with stickers used for all the decoration. There are enough brick built castles on there that most adults buying IDEAS sets would tend to go towards those instead.

From the evidence so far, we aren't getting new play sets. If it was a larger set, they could also include some white walls, with Gandalf, Witch King and a Fell Beast. Like what they did with Rivendell, I don't think it geographically has to make sense. They could have everything on one level even though different scenes occur in different parts of the City. Similarly they could include Grond and a gate at minifigure scale near to the great hall.

Or, they aren't interested in toys designed for children but are interested in models designed for adults. Having clearly distinguished packaging splits the toys vs models range. I hope that as the general population see lego producing two types of product, one for kids and one for adults, this will eventually lead to more adult themes that lego would not have done a decade ago, so things like horror franchises. They do have leg printing in $100s sets.

Were the packets creased? As some people seem to feel the packets in a very heavy handed way, possibly scratching parts inside.

I guess it depends which scenes you want from Minas Tirith. Personally I'd prefer a facade of the great hall, a bit of courtyard with the white tree and small version of the beacon. With Denethor, Pippin, and a Gondor soldier or guard.

I agree. It comes down to a how strong is the preference, what that preference is worth to you and not just a simple this or that preference. If you absolutely hate sets with stickers, then you have a much smaller pool of sets (without stickers) to purchase from. Or, if you just prefer prints to stickers, then you have to sometimes buy sets that go against your preference and contain stickers, or you get the choice to miss out on that set completely. If the majority of people prefer prints enough to not purchase sets with stickers, then LEGO will eventually change. Whereas if it is just a weak preference and enough people still buy sets with stickers even if they prefer prints then nothing will change. Throughout the thread, in posts such as this one we have been told this is a simple question of preference and that costs don't come into it, and bringing up any other factors outside of a simple preference is weird. Yet in reality, these other factors are immensely important when it comes to buyer behaviour, especially if you want to send a message to the company to change and the only message that is really important to them is whether a set sells and not just to you as an individual but to the population. I (normally) prefer prints to stickers, but that doesn't mean I'd pay significantly more for a set with the same amount of decoration if it was only prints and no stickers, or that I'd accept the set at the same price but with significantly less decorated parts because they were printed instead of using stickers. I prefer a cheaper set with stickers to an expensive one with prints. I usually prefer to buy a set that has stickers than to miss it altogether. A simple preference doesn't mean I wouldn't buy a set with stickers. There is no way to send a message that you prefer prints to stickers if you continue to buy sets with stickers. That tells LEGO that although you might email them to say that you prefer prints, you (and many other people) are still happy enough to continue buying sets with stickers. And by using stickers they keep costs lower and so cater also for people wanting lower prices than they would be if there were only printed parts and no stickers. The only real message is sent if you refuse to buy a set with stickers in it. But that individual message will be drowned out by many others that continue to purchase the set with stickers. So to send a message, someone that prefers prints would have to convince many other LEGO buyers to stop buying LEGO until they do prints only. If I prefer cheese pizzas but the pizza company rarely makes cheese pizzas as they nearly always make pepperoni pizza, then personally I'm OK with pepperoni most of the time. I prefer cheese when I can get it, but pepperoni is good too (and definitely better than no pizza). I could refuse to buy pepperoni in the hope that they will stop using pepperoni and go to cheese only pizza but that message will be lost due to the large queue of people happy to buy ANY pizza. If there is another company that makes cheese pizzas exclusively then I could buy from them instead. Although then I wouldn't be able to get my pizzas in the shape of Darth Vader or a Classic Space helmet.

The issue here is many people will continue to buy sets with stickers, presumably because they don't mind stickers enough to stop them buying lego sets with stickers. They might prefer prints to stickers but not enough to go without the sets that have stickers. When large portions of consumers don't mind something that much, things don't change for a minority that want a change.

Vote with your wallet. Don't buy sets with stickers. Only buy sets with prints. That will send them a message that you don't like stickers.