MAB

I ignore part counts until I know what the parts are. High quantities of 1x1 parts can be used in minifigure scale builds too.

Look at the inventory and see if the parts are worth it for your style of building. The figures are not selling very well. The prices have really dropped and there is years worth of stock at current sales volumes on bricklink.

No they haven't. You can still list complete figures as custom items and official parts under the relevant categories.

I'm sure the LOTR set will fall into that category ... for most other people. Just like most people aren't buying Hogwarts, Hogwarts Express, HP Icons or the Hulkbuster. I think we all realise that large expensive sets do not, and are not meant to, appeal to the masses.

There are fans of each of those models. No doubt they are happy LEGO decided to do them, even if many other people don't like them. I imagine the LOTR set will be similar. Of little interest to anyone that doesn't like LOTR and LEGO, and those that will not spend $500 on a set. Out of the 100+ sets that cost £100+ released in the past two years, I own 3. It is nice that the others exist as if they didn't, then I doubt the ones I like would exist either.

Use them for a City go-cart race track. Or MOC the Springfield Tire Fire from The Simpsons.

Also same here. This set is going to have to be great architecturally for me to buy it, I wouldn't pay the equivalent of $500 for 25 minifigures, especially if they are just updated versions of the same outfits for the same characters as before. Even if it is concentrating on Rivendell, I'm hoping that they shoehorn in some other characters even if they don't make sense if they go with 20+. So possibly a new version of Saruman with the updated dress piece, and some orcs or uruks. Even Faramir. Plus generic elves. Or, depending on which side of the fence you are on, the pandemic really improved the aftermarket for licensed themes! Especially LOTR. It is interesting how the market and collectors has changed so much in a decade. Back when the first sets came out, there were a lot of Castle builders buying sets for parts rather than for the figures. And the figures were so cheap. The Uruk-Hai army set was discounted to £12 here, and I bought six of them (what a mistake, I should have bought many more!). Some builders were parting the sets out, keeping many of the the bricks and horses and selling the figures for £2 each and £4 for the generic Rohan. I bought 24 or 25 Eomer figs from one seller for £40. Over the summer I sold off nearly all the remainders, even just the capes were selling for £4.50 each. Complete figures have been going for £25-30 over the past couple of years. The same happened with many of the smaller sets (Wizard Battle, Witch King battle, Elf Army, ...), they were so cheap and many people did not want the fleshie figures, especially the duplicated ones. At one point I was trading Team GB CMFs 1 for 1 and sometimes 2 LOTR characters. There have always been minifigure collectors, but it has gone so far the other way these days. Sometimes there are the complaints that you have to buy a huge set just to get an exclusive minifigure.

From Monkie Kid ... https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?id=205895#T=S&C=5&O={"color":5,"ss":"UK","rpp":"500","iconly":0}

Not only that, but also those designers never made a statement that LEGO has retired goats and will never make a goat again. There is no reason to.

Why would lego make such an announcement?

I'd worry more about the torso than the arms if they are tight as the torso is more likelyto crack than tge arms. The arms are easy to replace.

A very easy route to increasing the height is using a couple of extra layers of bricks per level. The tapering isn't right of course, but then it isn't in the original set and it is certainly no worse than that.

None, I'm not a fan of the Classic Castle figures / heraldry. I prefer the later factions (Black Falcons, Lions, Wolfpack, Forestmen, etc) and I'll be getting more of the new versions of Lion Knights when more widely available.

Most Hobbits and one Aragorn plus Arwen last time were a problem, but most others were OK. If you don't mind damaging a print, yellow sharpie on printed fleshie covers quite well. I usually go the other way, from yellow to fleshie and wish covering up yellow was that easy. I traded a load of the CMF elf hair, hands and heads with someone that was doing yellow characters years ago. I think he was putting them on Legolas' body to make generic elves. I kept the CMF bodies and capes for fleshies. Although in a large adult set, if you are buying it for the build then the minifigures will be valuable enough to sell on to people that want them but not the set.

You can always sell them for a substantial amount, or replace the heads and hands as necessary with yellow.

Ive got some of those Betta Builda parts. The ones with the green interlocking roof tiles with little pegs that fly everywhere when you put too much pressure on them.

Based on ONE set that you don't like. There are plenty of decent 18+ sets. It is far more likely to be well received than not well received based on all the other 18+ sets they have produced. Will some people think it is too expensive and probably give it negative reviews because they cannot afford it and feel excluded? Almost certainly. LEGO also make "mistakes" according to adults when they do sets aimed at kids. Off the top of my head, ones I recall from the original waves of LOTR included: why do you keep repeating Gandalf; why do you keep repeating Frodo; ditto for Gimli and Legolas; why is Eomer in the army builder set, it should be generic soldiers only; character X should have been in set Y instead; why give us Wizard Battle, then release Orthanc covering the same location; the Mines of Moria isn't a mine, just a bit of wall and doorway; Weathertop is too small; the Orc Forge should be enclosed; Orthanc is too expensive; the Council of Elrond is too small to fit even just the Fellowship; that ship was only on the screen for a few seconds; Mouth of Sauron was only in the extended edition; and that is before we get to missing characters and scenes. There are pros and cons (to collectors) for a theme of small sets vs one big set. Clearly a pro of small sets is that you buy what you want and cover lots of scenes but a con is that if you buy them all because you need the exclusive figures in some sets, then you will get duplicates of popular characters. This happens in SW, Superheroes, Harry Potter, and unlicensed themes. You also end up with a display of lots of small bits more like Assault on Hoth than a large complete and coherent model. As they are going big, I'm hoping the build itself is actually an interesting one, and not just a series of small and boring builds to push to the back to show off a collection of minifigures. Some adults will love big build like that. Others will just want the minifigures and feel hard done by that they were forced to buy a big 18+ set to get them.

Kiddicraft bricks occasionally show up at boot sales. Although if the seller knows what they have, they are usually priced accordingly. I remember playing with my dad's and uncle's old kiddicraft bricks when visiting my nan's house I was a kid, along with their old Bayko building sets that were from the early 60s.

Some examples: https://brickset.com/sets/60324-1/Mobile-Crane £39.99 / $39.99 / 44.99€ https://brickset.com/sets/41720-1/Water-Park £54.99 / $49.99 / 59.99€

A clear indication of what? Poor sales after just a couple of weeks or that they had already planned to use 5x VIP points as a way to make sales by pricing it slightly higher than they would have otherwise done. There are people that want it, because they have bought it. And why would people buy it if they didn't want it? Sure there are plenty of people that don't want it or can't afford it and won't buy it, that leave negative reviews about it to highlight their objections to LEGO making such sets. That also happened with Queer Eye and Everyone is Awesome. LEGO even removed some of the reviews of those sets because it was very clear they were left by people that hadn't purchased the sets. Maybe we should wait and see what the LOTR set actually looks like before saying that LEGO doesn't understand the AFOL and LOTR audience because they have made an expensive adult LOTR set and not a full theme for children. LEGO has made plenty of adult sets that sell well (whether your store employees confirm it or not) and are well received.

Again you have used this phrase that they are not selling well. We don't know that. We also don't know how well they were meant to sell or what their sales targets were, or what discounts they had planned for them. Most sets seem rather over-priced for what they are and this may be LEGO's strategy for maximising revenue from initial sales followed by continued sales at a lower price level through a discount. Plus many of these sets will have been planned and priced before the recent rise in the prices of basics due to global inflation. With the lego buying public having less freely available cash or just being more cautious about luxury spending, this may cause sets that would have sold perfectly well to become harder to shift. Not just licensed D2C sets, but across the whole range. The Hulkbuster has been out for, what is it, 4-6 weeks? I think a set needs longer than that before it becomes a named "situation". Looking at the reviews on lego.com, there seem to be three types of ratings: negative ones from people that have not bought the set that are complaining it is too big (so why not buy one of the other smaller Hulkbuster sets in your price range then), negative ones from people that were willing to buy it and complaining it is flimsy and positive ones from people that bought it and love it. That indicates that there are people willing to pay for a set like the large Hulkbuster, and that it is the design that is either good or bad - that is, the product idea is a good one (for people that can afford it), just that some people do not like the design. When there are reviews that claim it is very weak and breaks easy yet also claims that no-one asked for or wanted it, you know they are fake and negative for the sake of being negative about a set they probably cannot afford.

Outrageous pricing goes both ways. There are some and you think how can they justify such a high US price, but others where the European prices are way out of line with the US ones. I think some sets are priced ready to discount. The pricing on PAB tends to be somwehat clearer though. There are sometimes outliers, but many parts tend to be priced with very similar exchange rates.

It is not clear that they are out of touch with the adult market. Apparently many more adults are buying LEGO products now than in the past. I'd say that they are in touch with the adult market. Specific fan groups that don't get exactly what they want might feel they are out of touch, but across the whole range of 18+ products LEGO seems to be doing quite well.

Presumably they don't think there is enough of a business case for a physical store compared to online.

I know those modified bricks (as BL calls them) have existed for almost a decade now. My daughter has a fair few of them from Friends and minidolls sets.I bought her six of the Frozen ones! I don't recall people complaining about the prices of that type of plate though.