MAB

I just saw this in the other army thread. Truly beautiful.

That horse armour looks fantastic. The wings on the helmets look familiar, are they cut from the flying warrior's helmet?

No, I'm not a fan of lots of things the company do. But I think they got this one spot on. Two decent and really exciting models to celebrate two of the most popular older themes from the minifigure age. To me that is way more impressive than rereleasing one of the lower priced sets from each theme they have done - a few impressive sets beat loads of unimpressive repeats. If you want a few old smaller sets, you can buy them on bricklink or ebay. It would have been nice for them to revisit something like an old Town Plan house or similar from the 1950s to go back a bit further in history, reproducing the old style graphics on the packaging, but I really doubt something like that would sell well.

If you want a modern throwback set for Town, you can buy a City set. If you want to go further back into the history, before minifigures, then you could buy a modern Classic set. Or are you after one small $20 set for every theme they have ever done? If they did one from Aquaraiders, then they better to do one from Dino 2010 and Jack Stone too, to be fair to fans of those themes. I think I'd prefer two great (even if big and expensive) sets to lots of small sets from the history that kids these days won't be interested in (they have plenty of modern playsets), and that don't work well together without context of the rest of the sets in the theme. If they made everything for the anniversary fairly small and spread thinly, and single sets from each theme like these were available: would people really care that much about them? Even if they went bigger and sold, for example, 25 different themed sets across the portfolio at the standard of the modern hideout GWP and charged $30 a piece for them, would people really be that interested? Great, you can buy a Pharoah's Quest set (but nothing to go with it), or a space buggy like the one that was in TLM2 (with nothing else from classic space that goes with it), or a couple of forestmen in a hideout (but no other castle to use it with). That hideout is nice, and will work well with the big castle. But if that is all they did in isolation then it is pretty uninspiring if you have no other Castle figures and sets to combine it with. It is only two years since they did this: and you can still buy them new and sealed for about £15-25, the same as when they were released. So I doubt if a $30 train would go down too well. I'd take the choice of a couple of things that are big and exciting rather than loads of small sets from many past themes that don't go together.

There were 1000s of Deadpool heads that appeared on the market in about 2013/4 in the Far East, with no other body parts. They were bought up by many sellers worldwide and you are possibly looking at ones from that lot. Are they custom prints on LEGOparts? Are they stolen parts? Who knows. If you want to be sure of buying genuine, you are more likely to be successful if you buy a complete figure or better still a sealed set. That said, if nobody can tell the difference, does it matter? That will be down to the individual.

I doubt LEGO care too much about counterfeits of old figures that they no longer sell. The ones they seem to be targetting are modern figures from current sets.

More likely you will continue to get what you get now as that is what sells well to kids at the low price points, and DC fans get nothing (or sets from another manufacturer when LEGO indicates they want to break their relationship with DC). While the $20 Marvel sets are a bit lacking, I thought the recent $30 sets are pretty decent for the price (like Gargantos Showdown). Same with the $40 ones.

This is the one from the UCS Landspeeder, and they wanted to flag up the C-3PO from that set. So I'm guessing they just put the two minifigures from the landspeeder set in the email. There has been a lot in the BL forum recently about one seller (a $1M + store) that had lots of Joker figures and someone couldn't understand how they could have so many. The seller posted images of pallet loads of sets but he was still suspended by BL for weeks but is now allowed back, with the Jokers, but in a lower number. It could be that this all blew up from there.

DC only gets about 5 play sets per year anyway these days. If LEGO take them away, you would not get anything else extra for Marvel. But even worse, the DC license would likely go to another brick manufacturer who would produce more sets than LEGO do that would take toy store shelf space.

The full email is available for everyone to read on mail chimp. https://mailchi.mp/eac856c8810e/counterfeit-minifigures-immediate-action-required There have been probably fake parts for sale on bricklink in the past. As always, you should always check the seller's feedback and reputation and look at what else they currently sell. If they have 1000 of an expensive figure but no other stock, then beware. If they have 100 of an expensive figure but loads of other parts, or incomplete sets the figure came from, they are more likely to be legit. It is further complicated if the seller sells incomplete sets elsewhere or sell just the figures fast but keep back the parts or incomplete sets for some years before selling them. Do bricklink think before they send the messages? They write "highly desirable LEGO Minifigure in hundreds or thousands from a single source" but the first figure they bring up to be aware of is sw0778, a cheap, common figure that has been around for some years in many sets including in the advent calendar and in a foil pack from a magazine. There are loads of those magazine foil packs that don't get sold with the magazine and so large numbers of them or the figures in them find their way to bricklink. The unique C-3PO in the UCS set is understandable, but not common Luke.

GWP are always one per household but that is rarely enforced as their order system cannot handle it properly. As always, if you place a qualifying order and they say you are getting one, then don't get one, complain and return the whole order at their expense.

This might also give them a good indication as to why animals should not be on PAB, or animal prices should be increased further to help set sales.

That is pretty much the point. Big companies know they cannot do it. But the same rules apply to all. And this is LEGO reinforcing it. To me, it is about endorsement. If Eurobricks (or a LUG) advertise they are giving away Eurobricks branded LEGO minifigures it implies that LEGO has endorsed them. The same applies whether it is a fan group, a huge gambling website or a small, craft beer company.

It still depends what they are doing with them. If McDonalds prints it's own logo on a LEGO minifigure torso and gives these away without permission from LEGO (even if they don't claim they are LEGO or use LEGO logos) LEGO would likely step in and stop them. The other party (here McD) is implying there is some sort of endorsement or agreement in place if they give away LEGO branded items.

LEGO already does all that. Not every product they produce should necessarily appeal to a large number of existing buyers though. When they produce 100s of sets a year, there is no harm in having a small number of them based on new subjects or licenses to keep attracting new buyers too.

What do you mean - toys? These are precision building parts from adult models! The main backlash against plastics here is not against reusable plastics but single use plastics. I cannot really see lego being able to monetise virtual building, given the amount of free software for it.

I'm surprised to see these described as just plain terrible. It shows the issue LEGO has if they are to bring anything back, as I like the heraldry on those ones.

It is not really that they are only making expensive sets for classic themes now, more that they are making one expensive set for each of Castle and Space (not too bad for space). For those on a budget, it will probably be a case of using bricklink to buy the more common figures and building parts of it (or smaller MOCs) with existing bricks or buying those parts too. If they become true themes again, I'm sure we will get smaller sets too.

Everything LEGO does tends to be subjective, as it depends whether you like it or not. Fantasy based Castle sets were good for historical castle fans, if you remove the dragons or the trolls and all the other bits that don't fit with what you want. I guess it depends on whether you focus on what you can use or what you can't. Yeah, someone else posted about it about a month ago. Let's hope it appears on online PAB.

Knock off CMFs came out and were available on aliexpress but it was some years after the originals. I bought a few to see quality, they are very different quality feel plastic to genuine ones.

I'm not surprised. It has probably damaged sales of all hard to find parts now people know that many of them are made to order rather than prototypes or tests or whatever people want to call them.

Was HISTORIC ever considered though? As Nexo Knights is clearly not historic, even if there was a great big Castle logo printed on it. In that sense, a LEGO theme can be split between different EB forums (it happens with City having a home in both Town and Train). The Historic category for a community that builds outside of the constraints of LEGO themes is much better than aligning with LEGO themes. If this was Castle instead of Historic, there would not be a place for things outside of what LEGO calls Castle, so LOTR would need to go presumably into licensed, fantasy builds would need to go elsewhere, there would be no home for Vikings, Romans, or Ancient History, same with Chinese and Japanese style builds. There are even some people that complain if you put a musket in the hands of a minifigure and call it Castle. Whereas Historic gives so much more freedom. There was quite a lot of good in Nexo Knights, especially on the villains side if you like fantasy. Jestro's volcano could easily fit into a fantasy castle theme, if the heroes' vehicles were removed and replaced by horses.

That is why I tend to stick to the (relatively) common parts. If hands in a specific colour only appeared in one minifigure from 15 or 20 years ago, I'll pass on that one. Does it mean I am not complete? Sure. But then I am fairly pragmatic when it comes to collecting, for me the fun is in the collecting rather than the having, and I am not so interested if a figure will cost me $50 or $100 to complete. I don't think the illegitimate parts makers would bother doing them in current production colours, so even if I need to buy on bricklink then I am fairly sure I am getting LEGO produced parts. If they decide to flood the market with plain parts that are worth < $1, there is not really anything in it for them.

They could not have enough and have to produce more. But that is not really what I meant. I meant if someone presented that as a MOC, it looks like they ran out of the right colours. I know that is not what happened, and it was a design feature in many of the castles of the time, putting in black bricks around those big panels. To me it is not random (the regular placing of four black splotches around each window as below) so doesn't look like stone decay or variation in colour, but an intended decoration. But I guess it was the only way they could try to add interest at the time. To me using dark grey would at least have tied it into the decoration printed on the panels although a mixture of dark and light would have looked better still. That said, the red bricks used in Knight's Castle looks even worse.

Yes, perfectly allowable for private use. This is more about other companies (including not for profit companies, AFOL conventions, etc) doing it as a commercial activity.