MAB

When I look at that, I assume they ran out of light grey hinges and had to use black. I prefer changes in texture or depth (offsetting forwards or backwards) over abrupt colour changes.

That is not down to community, it is down to moderation on Eurobricks. We are told Nexo Knights is action and adventure - it is named in the contents - and off topic posts get moved. Plus there is no Castle forum on EB. There is this wider historic theme, but Nexo Knights doesn't fit into that being futuristic.

A lot of that is probably due to the growth in numbers of sets in the other unlicensed themes. While there are a lot of licensed sets spread out over many licensed themes, there is also a large number of unlicensed sets but they are spread over only a small number of themes. Look at the numbers of sets within the big three in-house kid focussed. minifigure based themes just for 2022 (excluding magazine foil sets): it is approx 30 Friends, 25 Ninjago and 50 City. If those 100 or so unlicensed sets were spread over 8 or 9 unlicensed themes with 10-12 sets in each theme per year (so roughly the size of Harry Potter or Minecraft). LEGO likes to spread licensed sets over many different themes, presumably to attract fans of the many franchises, but tends to have a a very narrow number of unlicensed themes but with a wide variety of sets within each theme. 10-15 years ago, City used to run at about 25ish sets per year, excluding all the "superpacks" of individual sets sold together. The dates in the growth of the numbers of sets in City and Friends corresponds to the loss of themes like Alien Conquest, Monster Fighters, Galaxy Squad, etc. Last year was similar (and data complete): City 59, Friends 47, Ninjago 45, Monkie Kid 12, Vidiyo 43, Creator 37, Technic 15. compared to: DC 13, Disney 32, Potter 17, Jurassic 9, Marvel 41, Minecraft 11, Minions 5, Star Wars 39, Mario 45. City plus Friends plus Ninjago plus Monkie Kid (163 in four themes) is just about the same as DC plus Disney plus Potter plus Jurassic plus Marvel plus Minecraft plus Minions plus Star Wars (167 in eight themes). It seems like there is a lot of licensed, with 8 themes, but in reality the overall numbers are similar as they are half the size on average. Those numbers from Brickset will be boosted by magazine gifts. Vidiyo and Mario will both be heavily skewed due to the small figure packs that were catalogued individually. And I have left out Art, Brickheadz, etc as they are a bit of a mixture, as well as CMF and DOTS.

I also had one as a kid. And still have it as an adult. The main unit is a nice enough copy of the shape but I'm not sure I'd want to display it. I don't display the real thing either. I'm not a fan of the 3D models from the games. The games were 2D, so a screen / panel with some 8-bit style graphics on it would have been preferable even if they didn't want to do a full TV with it.

My kids often watch YouTube tutorials at the same time as building. It can help with creativity, as they get to see methods and designs not used by LEGO.

I don't think the intention is that the two sets would be displayed together, so they did different things. Previous classic space recreations like Benny's space squad also used the classic heads. The good thing is that it is simple to go all smiley, all modern, and even all fleshie for most of the anniversary figures. I think one peasant has yellow on the torso, but other than that the parts are multi use.

I don't think you have to play with figures like dolls to enjoy interior detail. You can also pose figures inside a castle (or any building) to make it come alive. It just depends what side you want to display, the inside or outside.

The vegetation for fantasy settings, but not much else for me.

The are just not enough named characters to have a CMF and a theme. The variants and characters in licensed series we have had don't overlap and reproduce what LEGO was doing in sets.

It is slightly different in that LEGO have said these parts are illegitimate. To me they are a different product. They are not regular LEGO products but ones made to be expensive for collectors willing to pay the high prices. I don't mind the licensed parts like Vader's helmet since they are easy to ignore. It is when someone says that this colour monofig is now completable, when it turns out they use illegitimate parts that it becomes annoying to people that only use legitimate parts. Of course, my view might change if they were selling 'normal' parts in new colours for prices similar to legitimate production parts. It's that dilemma of should you use parts that LEGO did not sanction. While prices are so high, it is not a dilemma for me. It would be even harder if they made illegitimate parts that LEGO also made but are rare, when there is no way of telling looking at the part but only through knowledge of the source.

That wouldn't be a set with mermaids though, it would be a set with merpeople and the male ones would be mermen. Otherwise it is like saying a figure is a 'policeman' with a female torso. Far better to use the term policewoman or the unspecific "set with police officers" where there is a mixture of genders . The original castle sets should have been fine then, as there were no male or female heads, just generic smileys. Unless the person assumed all the soldiers/knights were male based on their roles. The female characters had the same faces as males, so if anyone wanted to believe that the some or all soldiers were female, there was no barrier there. It was only when they went from this to this that genders were more heavily suggested.

I believe it was one of the original ideas behind CUUSOO and IDEAS, but also the AFOL/fan engagement side has become just as important, as in "LEGO are great, they listen to what we want and then make those sets". I can't comment on the sales or popularity. I've heard of the series, never watched it, no interest in it and not bought the set even as a parts pack (and I would be no different if it was straight men dressing and styling other people). But LEGO did get quite a bit of press coverage out of the Queer Eye and Everyone is Awesome sets, releasing them around Pride celebrations and that may have been enough for them to justify the release, as there other other positives than sales volumes. To me, IDEAS has just become a random theme and I don't see it as a theme. I'm not interested in IDEAS sets (as a whole) but I will buy ones that I like. Some people used to collect IDEAS sets, but for me it is way too diverse for that. And that is not necessarily a bad thing, it shows that they are producing fan submitted sets across a very wide range of interests. I have no problem with licenses appearing in other themes. Technic and Speed Champions get a lot of licenses now, and I think that makes sense. I'd prefer to see a real car / vehicle done than a completely made up one and this is probably more true in Speed Champions than Technic. Elsewhere in the more minifigure based sets, we have the big guns - SW, HP and Super Heroes (I'll lump DC and Marvel together) and Disney seems to be coming a fairly evergreen theme, possibly JW and Minecraft too. And of course we get the current movie tie ins that appear and disappear just as quick. They all make sense to me. I think the reason we don't get as many interesting themes in non-licensed is not due to licensed, but due to the popularity of the non-licensed themes they currently have. We used to get a lot of variation back when themes had a one or two year run and that was it. And if they did a theme you weren't interested in, it didn't matter as it would soon disappear and another one would come along soon. Whereas now, City and Friends are solid "town" evergreens, and each have really quite large numbers of sets per year. The same with Ninjago. Even though they are the major non-licensed themes, they get a huge number of sets between them, and all have some form of rotation of sub-themes year on year. Then add in Monkie Kid. I think it is the rotation of the sub-themes especially within Ninjago that stops / covers a lot of the themes we might have expected to see 20-10 years ago. Pirates, steampunk, historical / oriental buildings, sailing ships, cool futuristic vehicles, jets, fantasy and dragons, fast cars, weird and wacky villains in all sorts of forms, they've even got what looks like an Islanders set, Ninjago has covered them all. The popularity and longevity of those ninjas seems to suck in all the ideas that would have been one-year-and-done themes of the past. And that is why people probably look for one off scraps of more distinct unlicensed themes that could have been done outside of Ninjago but never were in IDEAS, as it is the last home (along with Creator) for them in the non-licensed pages of the LEGO catalogue. It's not that Ninjago is a bad theme, it clearly reinvents itself well enough to remain popular year after year, but that is where I often see a huge range of ideas that could have been something else but were translated into Ninjago. The diversity of set types, even within a year, covers way more than any in-house theme used to.

Yeah that is a lot of old CMF parts including Sherlock / detective's torso, gladiator legs and the classic king's hair/crown. I wonder if his beard was also there - as that bit is hard to find and valuable now. It is interesting to see Leia's Endor hair there too, I remember that appearing in the BAM back in about 2015, but haven't seen those since then.

Why is it a stretch? The accusation I was responding to is that there is no creativity in suggesting a model based on a concept that was designed by someone else, with the concept being the characters/location of a sitcom. LEGO came up with the idea of Classic Space/Castle/Pirates, and came up with the standard for Modular buildings. If someone suggests a model that they have designed based on those existing concepts, why is it different to a model that another person designs based on the existing concept of the characters / location of a sitcom that LEGO has not thought of? If LEGO wants to say that they have done enough sitcoms, TV shows, movies, etc through IDEAS then that is fine, they can ban them from IDEAS (like they already ban repeats of specific themes they have already covered to stop copy-cat designs and add-ons). The fact that they haven't blanket banned the wider "all TV shows" or "all movies" suggests that they still think there are good ideas out that that they have not thought of doing that will continue to appeal to people that already enjoy LEGO and also appeal to people that don't regularly buy LEGO. There is this idea that sitcoms sell themselves and there is no work necessary to promote them. Yet there are quite a lot of submissions on IDEAS that look like very little effort was made to design the set, and little effort was put into advertising it and they get very few votes. The important thing is that LEGO maintains a balance between the types of sets. It would be terrible if all they did in IDEAS was sitcoms. But then it would also be terrible if all they did was life sized replicas of objects, or modular style buildings.

Given the first six CUUSOO/ IDEAS sets were all based on non-LEGO IP, I don't think it has become that. It has always been that, with a few unlicensed sets along the way. Yet the same could be said for the objects, the "Wow, that's made out of LEGO?" sets. The maze, the pop up book, the globe, the typewriter, the ship in a bottle, the next object that is name out of LEGO. They are similarly following this apparently unheathly route of doing something a bit like before to get success just varying the object that is made to scale from LEGO. If all sitcoms are the same and should be banned, then the same should go for any pattern that starts forming. Possibly even more so for "objects" since LEGO is producing a lot of those by themselves these days (today's Atari, the Nintendo one, the plants, the adidas shoe, etc). I'd much rather see a range of sets, licensed and unlicensed, than all sitcoms, or all movies, or all modulars, or all objects, or all NASA, etc. And even if they did ban sitcoms from IDEAS to start making their own sets in a sitcoms theme (or just under ICONS) it wouldn't surprise me if there were complaints of why are they doing sitcoms as mainstream sets when they could have brought back Classic S/C/P instead ?

LEGO already came up with the idea of Classic Space / Castle / Pirates and Modulars, etc, and people that submit those ideas aren't coming up with original content any more than someone that builds a MOC based on their favourite TV show and submits that. They were through IDEAS. If they had been banned due to there already being a space set (the satellite) done in IDEAS then I somehow doubt LEGO would have ever made them by themselves. And they both went on to be very popular. The same with sitcoms, TV, etc. Just because one has been done, it doesn't mean others won't be popular or that LEGO would be able to decide which one to make next by themselves. They apparently need fan input.

I got the The Big Bang Theory as I like TBBT. It does have nice prints, but it is also a fun set for fans of the show. But it is not good for fans of The Office, FRIENDS, Seinfeld, Queer Eye, etc. Whereas The Office set is not so interesting for fans of TBBT, but it will be of interest to fans of The Office. Just because they are things that happen to be on TV, doesn't mean that they are the same thing or indeed that LEGO can just pick any show and make it work - if sales for Queer Eye are as bad as you think, then it shows LEGO cannot pick winners without fan input through IDEAS. As for The Office being very American, while the show is set in America, it is shown in many parts of the world. I've seen the whole thing I think three times all the way through, and the early seasons many more times than that. Even though I prefer the original British version. There is a difference to you, but not necessarily to someone that is not a fan of classic LEGO themes. They can just see something that has been done before and not interesting to them and if any of those themes were popular before then LEGO should be able to make similar sets again by themselves without needing to be told and wasting an IDEAS slot. Just like to you sitcoms are the same, even though they are quite different appeal to different groups of people. That sets might look similar to somebody that won't buy them anyway is not really important. What is important is will they sell (especially to people not into LEGO), and would LEGO be able to pick the ones that will sell. They did TBBT and it seemed to sell well. Should LEGO have picked up on the popularity and produced their own versions of other very popular comedies? Maybe, but they didn't. They needed IDEAS to give them the idea to do FRIENDS, Seinfeld, The Office, and even The Flintstones. Same with Sesame Street and Winnie the Pooh. Same with Steamboat Willie. Ghostbusters. BTTF. Tron. LEGO didn't come up with any of them. They did have the idea of doing another FRIENDS set by themselves after the IDEAS one was a proven winner. But then they decided to do Queer Eye by themselves too. The same could be said for movie based sets, do they really need to be told what movies are popular enough? Their choice of movies for some of the recent one year themes seem to be very kid focused, so maybe they do need IDEAS input to know which ones to do for nostalgic adults. And the other big thing here is fan engagement. If they removed all TV based IDEAS because TV shows have been done before, and removed all cars from movies as they have been done before, and removed all buildings from movies as they have been done before, and removed all NASA related IDEAS as they have been done before, and so on, then there would be very little to draw people (and not just AFOLs) to IDEAS. And if they remove the buzz around "this TV series / movie / whatever licensed item might become an official set" that is a load of free advertising lost. I think we have to accept that IDEAs is not the Bricklink Designer Program. It is not for creative parts use in MOCs that are interesting to people that like LEGO. It is partly to make sets based on ideas that LEGO did not realise would sell well, ideally to people beyond the consumer base that already buy LEGO. It is also to get fan engagement - not just people looking at licensed IDEAS, but getting people designing models using LEGO based on subjects they like.

I was thinking that but it would be approx 2L in the middle, so they'd need to be cut then glued. It is doable for one but to do it in a reproducable way for a quantity would be difficult. Plus they would be weak.

An issue there is did they manage to pick a winner when they chose Queer Eye, or have the ones produced through IDEAS have better sales implying they do need to use IDEAS to judge demand. Now there have been a few classic theme revivals through IDEAS and they’ve done some more by themselves, it could equally well be said that no more classic themes should appear on IDEAS as LEGO don't need to waste IDEAS sets on things they can do themselves.

Queer Eye is not IDEAS, that was LEGO's choice outside of IDEAS. They also did the second FRIENDS set that way. It wouldn't surprise me if all those sold to more people that are not into LEGO / hadn't bought any LEGO for let's say a year, than sets that appeal to AFOLs.

I imagine it will run out of stock in stores very quickly on day 1 simply because stores won't have much stock but stock will get replenished if you are prepared to wait.

It could also apply to unlicensed ideas. We've had a pirates set, a medieval set, a classic space set, we've had a non-Modular Modular in the Fishing Store, we've had numerous objects, we've had animals, etc. To anyone that doesn't like those themes, they might all look the same just like sitcoms all look the same to people that don't want TV based sets. Would LEGO have really done Curiosity Rover, Saturn V or the ISS by themselves if they had been banned after the first space exploration set, Hayabusa? LEGO seems not able to choose what franchises will be popular as sets, as they keep on resorting to IDEAS to know which one to go after next. Although they did get the idea to do Queer Eye by themselves.

I'm not bothered by that. This is presumably not a massive production set given the price. To have a new mould for the set would presumably have meant cuts to what else we did get, and for me the reappearance of a goat is not that important. And even if they did a goat in this set, note that they included a lamb not a sheep. I guess they chose a juvenile animal as one of the shots show the lamb being played with / fed by the children. So if they included a goat, then they might well have given us a kid and not an adult goat. In fact, a goat kid looks pretty similar to the lego lamb anyway so it could well be a baby goat if you want it to be.

Because it is a better solution to spread over two sockets than both on one. It might work fine in your case, but then it might also shorten the life or fail in 1 in 10 or 20 or 50 cases. It depends what you are buying. I buy loads of DC motors and "knock off" electronic components (arduino and microprocessors, etc) direct from China. The motors especially are often the same as ones sold by hobby stores here. The micro processor boards are not original branded that you would get from the Arduino store online or official component resellers, but again are the same as the knock off ones sold by UK/EU sellers (but charged at 4-5x the price). For 5V - 12V stuff, there is not really much that can go wrong (aside from failing).

If they lied about that, when a simple apology and handing over a pile of parts could have helped overcome what was presumably an accident, then they will also lie about stealing money or jewelry or clothes or other possessions.