davee123

What are you stuck on? How big is your part library that you want to dispense? And what sizes of parts are you looking at dispensing? It sounds pretty straightforward until you get to the different types of mechanisms you'd need for each element to ensure that exactly X pieces are dispensed. Like, dispensing an exact number of 2x4 bricks is reasonably easy, but if you need to dispense an exact number of 1/2 technic bushings, you might need a different mechanism. DaveE

Some people speculate, some rely on sparse evidence, others on *more* solid evidence. Almost nobody (if anybody?) in the hobbyist world has access to "hard" evidence. Generally speaking, there's no way to tell if people are pulling numbers out of thin air, or if they're relying on some form of evidence. People will often say something and act as though they know what they're talking about-- it's rare that someone will say something with the caveats of "I don't really know, but I think XXX". Mostly, people just skip that step, and say what they wanted to say. That's the internet for you :) As far as LEGO in particular, people typically make their claims on a few different sources: 1) Reduced prices. If people see slashed prices, they sometimes assume it's thanks to a set not selling well. Might be the case, might not be. 2) In-Stock quantities at local retailers. If people don't see them on the shelves of their local retailers, they assume the sets are doing well. If they see the shelves packed to the brim, they might assume that the set is doing poorly and isn't selling. Again, not always a good indicator. 3) Availability online. Similar to #2-- And again, not the best indicator. 4) Retailer reports of good/bad sales. Sometimes, the retailers will make a comment to a hobbyist like, "That set? It sold out REALLY fast!" Again, not the best data, since the person being spoken with is generally not talking about a trend that they've seen across ALL the stores nation-wide or world-wide, but just at their particular store. 5) Word-of-mouth from LEGO employees. This usually is a good indicator, but it's not usually chock full of details. LEGO knows what's selling and what isn't, so they're informed-- but sometimes the details are misleading. For instance, someone might get told that a set is exceeding its sale expectations, but those expectations may have been set artificially low. Also (and this is important!) there's a HUGE difference between a LEGO representative from a LEGO Brand Retail store, one that answers the phone sales at Shop @ Home, and one that works in Product Design in Denmark. 6) LEGO annual reports. This is typically the best indicator, but it's disappointingly vague as well as infrequent. You can't say "How is theme X doing?"-- you only get told about the themes that they decided to mention, which are typically only the REALLY GOOD ones or the REALLY BAD ones. That's pretty much it for sources within the hobby community that I'm aware of. LEGO doesn't release its particular sales figures to anyone outside the company (at least not that I know of). That would be the best information, but is sadly lacking. The other places to check would be major retailers like Target, Wal*Mart, or Toys R Us. If their sales reps say a particular set/theme is doing well or poorly, it's probably pretty good evidence. But I don't think I've ever in my 12 years as an AFOL seen anyone use other retailers' data as a source (unless it was some J. Random store manager, cashier, or stock boy). Anyway, if you see many of the above indicators being true, then yes, you may be on to something. But any one of them individually is probably not all that good on its own. DaveE

Hard to say. LEGO declared the Cypress Tree mold to be retired back in late 2001 or early 2002. So they won't do any more Cypress Trees without creating a new mold-- and to date, they don't really look too fondly on creating molds expressly for AFOL use. The only example that I know of was the wheels for the Emerald Night, which were a new mold created for an AFOL-targeted set. ... And unfortunately, that set didn't sell very well :( So... my guess is that they won't come out with Cypress Trees ever again, unless one or more of: 1) They decide to start including Cypress Trees in other non-AFOL sets 2) They get a cheaper way of creating the molds (China, maybe? In which case AFOLs may object) 3) They come up with a new, efficient mechanism for production other than injection molding I'd vote for #1. AFOLs have infiltrated the ranks of LEGO set designers, so it's possible that they could conspire together and try to pitch the idea of using the Cypress Trees again-- it's not overly LIKELY, but it could happen. DaveE

As for whether it would work? I would think it would be very tricky-- the biggest problem being clutch power. If you tried to print a stud, it has to be VERY exact. I'm not sure if 3D printers are quite accurate enough? I know LEGO *DOES* use them in Denmark to make prototype elements (AKA "rapid prototyping"), but they're typically more for shape comparisons rather than for sturdy building. Legally, as stated, you can't print out the LEGO logo, that's one thing. But you also can't print out elements that LEGO has a patent on. For instance, you probably couldn't print out a replica of a 1x1 cheese slope, because I expect LEGO still owns the rights to that design. But you COULD print out a replica 2x4 brick, because the patent on that element expired back in the 1980's. The other issue you might have is the quality of the brick. When Jamie Berard tried to show us some of the prototype elements that he had brought along (done with 3D printers), they had all deformed during his plane trip! Also, I believe there are small "groove" marks along the surface of the plastic, where the lasers draw their lines. So you might see a slight texture or ridging on surfaces that you might otherwise want to be flat. You'd also want to check other things like the plastic consistency-- the particular breed of ABS plastic that LEGO uses may not match the type used in 3D printers. Will it deform any more quickly than LEGO when clutch is applied? Will it behave more brittle-y than LEGO's ABS? Etc. Color consistency might also be an issue. LEGO has enough of a problem with this as it is-- I'm not sure what flexibility there is color-wise in 3D printing. DaveE

Unsold LEGO that's in the possession of retailers typically gets marked down until it's dirt cheap. But if there's still too much of it lying around, I think most retailers will offload it to OTHER retailers who specialize in things like overstock and fire sales. I don't think LEGO would take them back, unless they were defective. As for what LEGO does with ITS unsold LEGO, that's another story. AFAIK, if they repeatedly won't sell after being marked down, their destiny is to either be destroyed, given away, sold in bulk, or turned into "play table brick". I know at one point Steve Witt set aside a whole bunch of unsold LEGO that was destined to be destroyed, and he tried to manage it himself with AFOLs-- that is, he tried to sell it to AFOLs and give it away to them as donations/prizes. DaveE

I think there are 4 mentioned on the board, not just 3: You can also see the larger map on the Heroica website: http://heroica.lego.com/en-us/BookofLore/map.aspx I'm not sure if it's a good indication of future sets, though. People claimed the same thing when Knight's Kingdom talked about the "home kingdoms" of the 4 central knights, as well as mention of 'the elflands' or something in the fantasy-themed castle sets. Neither ended up being sets. In those cases, it was just mentioned to add some extra "spice" to the background story. I would think this instance is a *little* stronger case for having future expansions, only because they're mentioned on the gameboard so prominently, with very specific (and orthogonal!) directions. If it was solely for the purpose of an increased background story, you'd think they'd sort of arbitrarily make some hand-wavy directions for those labels that looked neat, instead of very deliberate and orthogonal ones. But it's still pretty weak, IMHO. I don't think it's enough evidence to really get your hopes up at this point. DaveE

From what I understand, they'll consider it, but: 1) You must order 1 or more crap-tons of the particular element 2) The element can't be a licensed element (Darth Vader head is a good example) 3) The element must still be "in production" 4) You need to order a long time in advance 5) They may still tell you "No" I've known of only a few instances where LEGO has done a production run for a specific need (I'm not sure if I'm aware of any particular instances that were done for people OUTSIDE the company, though), and the amounts were staggering. Like, many K-8's worth of brick. DaveE

Well, it may sound small, but the cost is in terms of: 1) Time/effort to reset the mold for the new color 2) Time/effort to adjust inks for printing 3) Loss of raw material during molding change (dunno how much) 4) Addition of new Part Numbers (new bins for storage, additions to part availability) 5) Additional time for bin switching during packaging and assembly processes Basically, injection molding is made cheap by gross volume of the same thing over-and-over again. The more time you spend changing things (colors, molds, prints, etc), the more it costs. That's why, during a particular year, you'll see a lot of the exact same part/color combinations appear in multiple sets across LEGO's entire lineup-- they're trying to be efficient, and save as much money as possible. If the savings were negligible, I'm sure you'd see a lot more variety in parts produced. DaveE

Part of why they do that is to save money. If they change the colors, it's a different element, and needs to be treated very differently. It also helps allow them to include MORE minifigures per set if they're using figures that are already in production. What they *could* do would be to include different combinations of heads, torsos, legs, and hair/hat elements. That would probably cost them very close to the same amount of money. But it probably doesn't solve the issue for you, because you're really just looking for a wider variety of elements, not distinct minifig combinations. DaveE

Unfortunately plastic "quality" isn't quite definitive enough. The plastic used in Chinese production is *different*, and we know that LEGO wanted to use its 'normal' plastic initially, reportedly because it was of "higher quality", but as stated, "quality" relates to many different aspects of the plastic. 1) Finish. That's a tricky one. The plastic has a different finish on it thanks to many different factors, but it's ultimately unclear to me whether or not the finish is due to the plastic, the mold, or the molding process itself. 2) Translucency. Clearly, the Chinese parts are different, and more translucent: However, again, it's unclear if that's due to the plastic, or the molding process. Since roughly 2006, LEGO has been introducing a process by which all their ABS is initially translucent, and dye is injected into the plastic at the time of molding. Hence, this could be due to the plastic, or due to how the dye is applied during molding. 3) Tolerances. We suspect the tolerances are worse in Chinese production, thanks to things like stiff minifig hands that sometimes resist rotating. Whether that's due to tolerances or residual flashing is unclear, but that's likely not an aspect of the plastic, but of the process itself. If it's residual flashing (unlikely IMHO), it COULD be an aspect of the plastic being more/less brittle than standard ABS, but again, unlikely. 4) Rigidity/Elasticity. The Chinese plastic appears not to "bounce back" into its original form as well after being deformed, as is noted when removing arms from Chinese minifigures. The arms appear to deform slightly and fit less well after being removed, unlike more traditional minifigures. And that's likely due to the plastic (I would say it's lower quality, but others have argued that this isn't an aspect of "quality") As for Chinese production in general, the benefits are really cost and supposedly printing quality. Chinese production can reportedly print at better quality, although what defines "print quality" is yet-another-matter. I suspect that the Chinese facility can print at a wider number of angles, and possibly with greater precision with multiple dyes, but that's just a guess. As for volume of production? Meh-- That's just another way of saying "cost". In other words, they wanted a facility that could produce so many parts at a certain level of quality, and China's cost associated with producing that volume level was lower than other contenders. You could also spin it as "growth potential", where China had the potential for volume GROWTH beyond what LEGO initially needed-- but again, that's just cost, because if they needed the volume in the future somewhere else, that just translates to more money elsewhere. DaveE

I think those trends have been pretty general. Technic's been going studless since the late 1990s. Also, play features have been getting more complex pretty gradually too-- but that's been a trend since as early as the late 1980's. Figure detail has also been pretty gradual-- sets from the 1980's had very idealized printings on torsos, but slowly in the late 1990's and early 2000's, torsos started getting realistic touches like wrinkles in clothing (started becoming very common with Star Wars and Harry Potter). So would we! It might be good to cite some specific examples from "before" and "after" so that we can see exactly what you're talking about. But in general, it's mostly been a gradual trend rather than a sudden one. There were a few things that happened-- LEGO started looking to the hobbyist community in the early 2000s. They started hiring set designers from the pool of LEGO hobbyists in roughly 2005 onward, but the number of hobbyists employed by LEGO has been gradually growing-- it wasn't a sudden change, really. When Jorgen took over in late 2004, he also changed quite a lot of how the company operated. The company was entrenched in a lot of age-old practices that were keeping quality levels pretty high, but were costing the company tons of money. They were also obsessed with certain "value" principles which slowly started getting weeded out, like more modern weaponry being allowed in sets (see Batman theme). As for the community's reaction, it's been all over the place. Hobbyists were OUTRAGED (they don't make a font large enough) at the color change in 2004, to such a degree that I don't think we'll ever see it again. They were also pretty disappointed in 1997 with the advent of Juniorization (and have complained about it mildly ever since). But the fans have been really happy with the increased complexity and detail level of set design that's been introduced over the years-- as well as the increase in the variety of the color palette (it's a far cry from what it was back in, say, 1992). Each new trend in LEGO has had a reaction from fans (there's almost nothing that goes by unnoticed), and most of the time, it's pretty variable depending on who's doing the talking. Things like Power Functions, Fleshy-colored minifigs, Pick-A-Brick, etc, mostly get a pretty varied reaction. Other things like the end of 9v trains, the VIP program, get pretty consistent reaction. So the reaction really depends on which of the kazillion changes you happen to be talking about. Yep! Again, market research. LEGO tested the new colors with kids, and the old colors with kids, and the new colors won hands-down. LEGO simply neglected to consider the fact that the hobby community is focused on continuity of the LEGO system. LEGO didn't consider AFOLs as even being really affected much at all by the change (or didn't care about our reaction), so they went ahead and changed the colors because they felt that it made an improvement in the product. ... And they were pretty much correct-- the new colors ARE probably better than the old ones-- but the disconnect it made for AFOLs was immensely strong compared to the small benefit of color improvement. DaveE

For the record, I don't believe that's true-- I believe LEGO opened up more production in China because it was cheap to do, and they believed they could get reasonable quality. That is, they were aware that the quality would drop, but they believed that the drop in quality would be small enough to be worth the savings that they'd get from Chinese production. As for whether or not the drop in quality is sufficient for you to complain or not is a matter of how picky you are. Some fans that are obsessed with LEGO's near-perfect quality levels are clearly upset and find it unacceptable. But most AFOLs seem to have the same attitude as LEGO-- they know it's slightly lower quality, but it's not so bad that they'll stop buying the product. And I expect that most of LEGO's actual customers (not hobbyists) are largely unaware of the difference in quality. DaveE

Series 1: Diver, no question. Series 2: Motorcycle cop. Series 3: Race car driver or Pilot Series 4: Skateboarder Series 5: Snowboarder So, looking at the votes above, it's looking like: Series 1: Diver (Crash Test Dummy a close 2nd) Series 2: Ringmaster, far and away Series 3: Race Car Driver (Pilot a close 2nd) Series 4: Skateboarder (Ice Skater and Surfer Girl not far behind) Series 5: Fitness Instructor, the clear least favored! DaveE

Are they assembled? If they're assembled, and if the heat gets too high, it MIGHT create some minor warping and loss of clutch power. But if the locker's temperature controlled, you should be OK. If they're not assembled, you probably have to worry about heat even less, because your elements probably aren't under as much stress. Either way, probably not anything major. Generally, you want to avoid light (really UV light) and excessive humidity. Oh, and cigarette/cigar smoke. Heat alone generally doesn't do much-- we've had LEGO up to 120F or so, and it's been fine. Same with cold-- even in sub-zero temperatures we haven't had any problems. However, that doesn't address stickers. I honestly have no idea how applied stickers are affected by heat/cold. I haven't heard of anyone having problems with them, but it's seldom raised as an issue, so I'm not really sure. DaveE

Well, you could also do something like this: Each time you defeat a monster, make an additional roll to see if there was any gold on the corpse: - Shield (+2 gold, or +3 if a Thief, or have dagger) - Sword (+1 gold, or +2 if a Thief, or have dagger) - Skull (No gold) - Skull/Shield (No gold, or +1 if a Thief, or have dagger) DaveE

Yeah, there are a lot of considerations, some of which may also not boil down to direct paychecks, either. Like, what health benefits are required for workers? What safety regulations have to be met on the premises? What levels of insurance are required for the factory? What social services are expected to be met? (Cafeteria, air conditioning, parking, etc). DaveE

If you can find any detailed information, I think you'll be the first. LEGO has stated this for many years as being why they mark the element count on North American LEGO boxes. But I've never seen any specific regulations governing packaging that cover this. I'd be interested to see if you could find anything. DaveE

If there's a wheel around it, then you could use 2 technic half-bushings (or one half-bushing and a 1x1 round plate if you need the stud on the end). Or (depending on your setup) you could use the 3-long axle with end-stud, and attach the 1x1 round to the end. DaveE

Unfortunately, nobody can agree on a standard. A lot of people have tried to create standards over the years (like "class A", "class B", etc), but it's very difficult to hold people to any such standard, and then similarly difficult to arbitrate that (especially when all the parties are remote). Hence, "used" is anywhere from PRISTINE to UNUSABLE. A good way to check is to: 1) Check out the seller's feedback. 2) Ask the seller how the parts were sourced. 3) Ask for pictures (this can get annoying for sellers) 4) Ask for detailed descriptions 5) Look at the nature of the items they're selling. If they're high-quantity and available within the last 5 years, chances are the elements are pretty good (most high-quantity sellers just buy new sets and part them out for selling). If a lot of what they're selling is low quantity, older parts, then be wary and ask more questions. And of course, keep in mind that while you can't restore broken/bitten pieces, you CAN restore yellowed pieces! DaveE

I know of a few AFOLs that have *wanted* to do something like that-- and there's Joe Meno's upcoming book The Cult of LEGO (although I'm not sure if that focuses more on the company than the fans?). But other than LEGO: A Love Story, I don't know of any that have actually been published that are about the hobbyist community in general. DaveE

There are a lot of books by hobbyists if you count things like Mindstorms-- I remember having a trivia question along the lines of "name one author of a LEGO robotics book", and I found about 40 authors (and that was in 2004!). Otherwise, I can think of: - Getting Started with LEGO Trains (Jake McKee) - LEGO: A Love Story (Jonathan Bender) - Brick Testament (Brendan Powell Smith -- several iterations) - The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide (Allan Bedford) - Cool Cars and Trucks, Cool Robots, Cool City (Sean Kenney) - Virtual LEGO (Tim Courtney, Steve Bliss, Ahui Herrera) - LEGO Software Power Tools (Kevin Clague, Miguel Agullo, Lars Hassing) And of course a slew of Mindstorms books, and a few books that were written by former LEGO designers, like the "Forbidden LEGO" book. Not sure if those are written by hobbyists or not, though. DaveE

I think I know the problem. You're probably posting the wrong URL. What's the EXACT URL that you're trying to post? This IS admittedly annoying because you can't always determine the file type based on the URL, but IP Board thinks it knows better, even though it doesn't (although, in your case, I think it actually DOES know better, and prevented you from putting in a bad link). DaveE

Darn, now I'm gonna have to start doing this for EVERYONE! DaveE

From what I can piece together, the order of events is something like this: 1) You're annoyed because "horses" are out of stock, and you wanted to buy some, presumably from S@H, although you never said that. 2) You emailed customer service and asked when "horses" were coming back in stock (presumably on Pick-A-Brick?) 3) You received an email saying "items become unavailable when quantities are low". In other words, they didn't really answer your question, because they didn't know the answer. IE, they might NEVER come back in stock, or they might show up in 2 months, they don't know. But maybe they didn't tell you that they didn't know, it's not clear from your description. 4) To compensate, they managed to locate the "horses" you were looking for, and sent you some for free. 5) You had "major issues" with an order, but what those issues were is unclear. Presumably something about shipping, but maybe something else. 6) You emailed customer service again, and asked them which shipping companies are used. 7) They responded back saying that they weren't sure which shipping companies were used in your particular order, since DHL and/or Fedex may be used, presumably based on where your order is coming from (US distribution center vs. Denmark, and which leg of the journey you're talking about). 8) To compensate for your apparent frustration with the order, they sent you "6 free figures and a keychain". Although to hear you tell it, it sounds like they sent you these freebies just because you asked about the shipping companies, which I expect is NOT the case. 9) You emailed customer service again, this time asking how to use some sort of "5 dollar credit" once you "reached it", by which I assume you mean VIP points, but again, is unclear. You also apparently said in the same email that you no longer wished to deal with S@H after the last order, and didn't want to visit the LEGO store. In other words: "How can I use a credit with your store? And by the way, I refuse to shop at your store." 10) They credited you the additional 18 points you needed to bring you up to the full 100 VIP points, so that you wouldn't have to buy anything else in order to get to the $5.00. It's unclear whether or not they sent you an email to that effect, but I assume so. But you didn't ask a question that really has an answer-- I mean, really, how are you going to redeem credit with a company you're refusing to deal with? 11) You emailed customer service again, this time asking whether or not you could stop receiving the LEGO catalog, because "prices are ridicilous" (your spelling). 12) They apparently responded by telling you what you needed to do. So, really, I think you've been misleading us terribly with your posts. You're not mad because they sent you freebies. You're mad because you had some sort of problem with your order, and since there's not much they can do about it, you feel like the freebies don't make up for their lack of knowledge as to the cause of the problem, and/or their solution to it (if any). IE, "thanks for the freebies, but really, I wanted better service". Not "screw you for sending me free stuff!" which is what you make it sound like. DaveE

Just to clarify-- 1997 is when Town Jr started. The rumor (I'm not sure if it was ever confirmed publicly by LEGO?) was that LEGO wanted to fill the gap between DUPLO and System, and so very consciously produced very <insert that tiresome argument> sets in the town theme, reducing the age range. I expect it was part of their strategy to become the "top brand with families by 2005", which was already a public policy by 1999 (not sure when the initiative started internally). Before 1997, I think there was a lot more consistency in the level of juniorization between Town, Trains, Space, Pirates, Castle, and Aquazone-- I believe they were all supposed to hit the same age range of kids. But in 1997 and after, LEGO started diversifying the level of juniorization to more directly target specific age ranges of kids, depending on the content of the theme. The target age range of the "Star Wars" theme (for instance) may have been different than the target age range of "Knight's Kingdom", etc. IE, they started paying attention to age range within their target demographics. Additionally, AFOLs of the time (1997) noticed an increase in the level of conflict play within LEGO themes. The "evil" factions started becoming "more evil", and *particular* characters started becoming more commonplace (Timmy & Professor Cyber, Willa the Witch & the Bat Lord, etc), eventually with subthemes having ALL their minifigs be "named" (Adventurers, Rock Raiders, Knight's Kingdom, Alpha Team, etc). This began taking the "generic minifig" flavor out of SYSTEM sets. So, yeah, pretty much starting in 1997, it seems LEGO made some very conscious changes to their lineup, which hobbyists were mostly critical of, until more recently (maybe 2005-2007 ballpark?) when hobbyists have started to become increasingly happy with the set design of LEGO (although now more quality issues abound that weren't as much of a problem before). Go figure that the pretty much the first* loss in the history of the company was in 1998, and that trend of losses started taking hold until about 2006! DaveE * I remember at the time that LEGO said it was the first loss since 19xx, but I don't remember exactly when it was-- it was very early, though, possibly even 1932, when the company went under and was later revived thanks to Ole's family that lent him money.