MAB

I was under the impression that many brickheadz were both aimed at and bought by adults rather than kids. Not necessarily AFOLs interested in building but more towards adult collectors of "things" that like a bit of LEGO.

Presumably that is because you don't like Minecraft, with its blocky designs. The simple remedy is not to buy themes you don't like. Remember also the license for Minecraft came before the minifigure based sets. Many people (including me) couldn't see the point of the Minecraft theme when it fist appeared in Cuusoo and then got regular sets, but it has gone from strength to strength over a decade, so presumably fans of the theme do like it.

Weren't the green legs cheaper on BL (aside from shipping)? I got rid of loads over the past couple of years, green always go quite cheap as demand is not very high.

Very true. It is all very well saying people are willing to pay high prices for LOTR minifigs, when the reality is a tiny group are willing to do that. Take a figure like Grima, for example. He has recently gone over £100 (new) on average on BL. But only 13 people worldwide were willing to pay that so far (last six months). Of course there would be higher demand if he was £5 or £10 or if he was in a £30 set with Saruman. And if they do a range of small sets, is the demand big enough to justify it? Their sales statistics from last time probably indicate no. The prices for minifigs on the secondary market tell them nothing about wider demand. But the sales for 18+ sets for adults will no doubt indicate that was the best route to take.

Most of LEGO 's output is still aimed at kids. Look at the colourful boxes instead of the black ones.

Yeah, it looks like a great design and generic enough not to be obviously D&D. I'm at the point where I have enough bricks so buying large sets with even more (basic) bricks is not really worth it for me. I'll still built it or a mod of it from existing parts and save the £300 or whatever it will be. Better still if any unique parts or minifig parts appear on PAB.

Do you really think the LOTR Brickheadz are going to outsell Star Wars, Harry Potter and Disney Brickheadz? They will probably outsell the Brickheadz from The Minions Movie and maybe The Spice Girls.

The best of the four won, although I imagine this will be another very expensive castle set so I'll probably skip it.

I'm not boycotting them, I'm just not buying them as they are not of interest to me. No different to how I don't boycott about 98% of LEGO's output, I don't buy it as it is just not of interest. There is no protest that boycotting suggests. Like other licensed brickheadz, to me these are brickheadz first and the license second. I'm happy with my collection without having these. I was complete except for the sword you could buy through the in-store hunt in the US, I didn't think that was worth getting. I did get the sticker sheets though. Some BH look OK. I have Darth Vader and Boba Fett on display as they look good. Whereas the LOTR ones do nothing for me so I can still be happy with my collection without them. If they had done the whole Fellowship and if they looked any good, I might have bought the BH.

I think I must be totally out of touch with what other LEGO fans want. To see Indy sets described as no play value and nothing to put on a shelf is unbelievable to me. I thought those sets were packed full of play value. To see sets like these described as "no good play value", I really cannot understand what good play value is. 8 of the sets had two or more vehicles, often done with no extra or minimal filler scenery to increase the costs, just the vehicles and minifigures necessary to recreate a scene. Other sets are location based packing in play while also having display value. The Temple Escape set is both action packed and a decent enough display piece of probably one of the most iconic scenes in the movies. To see it described as terrible is just unbelievable. My unpopular opinion here is people need to be very careful what they wish for, unless they want only a single highly detailed but expensive $500 D2C set per franchise.

If they increase the number of printed parts per set and hence their internal costs, prices will go up even more (relatively). An interesting experiment would be for LEGO to sell sticker sheets full of Classic Space logos in various sizes, past castle faction logos to fit on shields, panels, and similar. They'd be great for purist MOCs and could be put on a wide range of parts. Especially if die cut on transparent sheets.

By buying LOTR brickheadz the message being sent is that you like LOTR brickheadz and presumably want more LOTR brickheadz.

We cannot be 100% sure. But they are not licensed and most unlicensed prints end up on there. If / when they do demand will be high and it wouldn't surprise me if they go out of stock frequently.

Personally, I prefer prints to stickers. Although I'd also prefer any decoration to be brick built where possible. As to expensive sets being "better products", I don't think this is true. £100+ sets are not necessarily better products, just more expensive and bigger products. The price does not necessarily mean better quality (however you define it.) If anything, the expensive sets are the ones that adults or older teens buy, so they tend to get played with less vigorously than sets for younger kids and instead are often just fairly static display models. In that sense, stickers in those sets are likely to be put on by an adult that should be able to take the time to align them neatly in a clean environment and stickers are less likely to get worn off due to heavy play. And of course, these sets are likely to have much smaller volumes than small sets. So I can understand stickers in expensive sets, even though it feels that the higher priced premium sets should not have them as they are expensive. While I'd prefer to have all printed in the bigger and 18+ sets but, like those other "corporate shills" of the same mindset that can understand that there is a cost associated with it, I don't think I'd want prices to increase further if such a change was made. I think if anything, I'd prefer to see less decoration overall within sets than increased costs. I'd also like to see decoration used where it really needs to be, and not where it doesn't add much. I think Modulars and some sets like Haunted House are doing quite well here: in 2500-3000 part sets, there are typically only 10-20 printed parts (excluding minifigures) and while some are unique to the set, quite a few of the prints appear in other sets too. Whereas sets where lots of unique pictorial details are packed in like the Sanctum Sanctorium (45 stickers) and Ninjago City (56 stickers), tend to have stickers. Would people have been happier if there were half as many decorated parts in the Sanctum Sanctorium set. but they were printed instead? What if there was just 4 or 5 unique printed parts? I'm not sure I would.

I'm waiting for them to hit PAB. It took a while for BF to have steady stock, but once they did getting torsos that way is easy and much cheaper than the set.

Splitting prints across multiple parts is no better than splitting individual stickers across multiple parts. As they are printed individually, chances are the prints wouldn’t align properly, there is a gap due to the print not going to the edges and then there is the issue with varying print density. At least with stickers, the print density across a single sheet is consistent. And the user is able to get good alignment if they are careful.

I think we will get Rings of Power sets. It would be weird for LEGO to specifically mention the series in their theme description and not do anything from it. Minifig and set prices for LOTR are quite high, but volume is quite low now.

That's a funny scene. The goofy expressions are great.

Many people put together old sets, typically in a similar way. Some also buy old instructions and boxes.

I doubt buildable dolls would be very popular (with kids). When I look at how my daughter and their friends play dolls, it is mainly about dressing up and role play. If you had to build the dolls, then build the clothes, I doubt it would be as popular as regular dress up dolls or Scala type sets. The constraction SW humans were fairly ugly looking and not great articulation. If they went Galidor style body parts with printed clothes, it is assembly and disassembly rather than dressing up.

They didn't produce them before the orders were taken and nowhere did i say they did. It was crowd funding - they didnt know which ones were going to be funded. They originally decided five sets would be produced, limited to 5000 units per set. Presumably they plan a period of production when the five chosen sets would be produced, and they'd know how long the packaging / production process would take as they limited the numbers.

You can call it ignorant of other people, and no doubt they think you ignorant of not understanding how LEGO (the company) works. There are sets that I have bought with stickers that I probably would not bought if they were even more expensive due to having prints. If it was guaranteed that prices would not be higher still if no stickers were ever used again and we still got the same decoration, I'd be in favour of prints. But I reckon they'd charge more or reduce decoration if they went all printed. Personally, I'd prefer a slight change, a move to decently printed clear stickers only, so that colour matching is not an issue.

That is not how it worked. They set a limit of how many sets they would produce. The plan was to stick to that limit. They screwed up and took too many orders so had to increase the planned number to produce. Producing more BDP sets than planned bumps something else further down the list. Not knowing how many to produce when taking orders means less control over future production planning. They are doing a new iteration, but again restricting the number of sets that can be funded. Doing this "leaves money on the table" in the sense that why restrict to five sets, when 55 could get large enough numbers of orders to produce. But of course, if they produce 55 sets through this program, that is production capacity - and probably sales - taken away from their other products. It is also necessary to pay designers outside of the company rather than already hired employees. And if you actually read what I was replying to, you will see that the BDP was being compared to PAB orders. That is, people could buy at any time, and LEGO couldindividually hand pick the set. That would lead to much higher prices. They did try something similar about 20 odd years ago. It failed even when demand was low, now popularity of LEGO has grown, they wouldn't be able to cope with personalised orders for the same selection of parts. Automation will be more efficient than PAB style hand picking. But even automation has to be planned.

They just found some old stock. Valuable packaging, common figure.

There is a danger in that line of thinking. LotR and Hobbit sets sold poorly, if you use the discounts offered as a way of judging how well a theme sold. The last wave of The Hobbit, I got 50% of most sets and slightly more on The Battle of Five Armies.