davee123

I think certain aspects of LEGO are at their best right now, but not all... I'd probably break it down like this: Element quality Probably at its best in the 1973-1998 ballpark. Juniorization There's a good mix in the current sets (some good, some bad), but I'd say the best era was probably around 1978-1989. It only started getting noticeably bad in 1997 (Town Jr). Detail Level We're definitely at the peak right now. There are a wide range of really wonderful elements today, and fantastic SNOT and detail pieces that allow for truly amazing creations. Theme Specificity Ok, lemme explain what I mean by that-- basically, how much room is there for imagination within the scope of an individual theme? Sets from the 1960's didn't even have people-- there's plenty of room for imagination, maybe even too MUCH room. Sets in the 1980's by and large had "factions" (Black Falcons/Crusaders, and different color spacemen), but they weren't necessarily "good" or "evil". Then in the late 80's-mid-90's, we got distinctly "good/evil" factions, but with generic minifigures. And later, we got themes where *EVERY* single character was defined for us (the worst case offhand being Knight's Kingdom where there were exactly 8 characters and no generic "extras"). Anyway, things have gotten more and more specific to individual themes, and made less and less room for imagination. Personally, I think the peak for that was probably in the 1987-1996 timeframe-- I liked having subthemes that were loosely defined in terms of being evil or good, but didn't go so far to derive all the individual characters for us. Product Diversity We're DEFINITELY at the peak right now. LEGO has broadened its reach to extend all the way to AFOLs, and everything in between. Product Design Again, I think you could make a case that LEGO's at the top of its game right now. The themes it's coming up with are an excellent fit to the market, they're pretty original, and are mostly quite appealing. --- Anyway, when I try to look at it objectively, that's what I come up with. Some aspects are at their peak right now, others were at their peak back a long time ago. DaveE

Welcome to old age :) I remember similar requests from hobbyists back in the late 1990's, when I joined the hobby. Actually, in reading a lot of the ATL/RTL posts from 1993-1998 (before I was aware of AFOLs), it seems like most hobbyists seemed to get miffed at the style change starting around 1996 or 1997. Prior to then, I didn't see too much complaining. People used to complain that LEGO made a wrong turn when they started including "instructions" with their kits. Blasphemy! Other fans have complained about "minifig scale" resulting in non-realistic and incomplete buildings. People in 1997 were complaining about juniorization, and LEGO becoming too specialized. In 2004 they complained about the color change. Heck, we're told that people complained about the plastic change from CA to ABS back in 1963! LEGO is always changing. They have a pretty good handle on what kids want, and unfortunately, what kids want isn't what older fans want. Adventurers, loved them. UFO? Guh. I wasn't too keen on the UFO lineup except the body armor of the aliens. There were some handy pieces in there, but generally ugly designs. And 1998's Insectoids took the cake for worst space-theme ever in my book. Rock Raiders I actually liked, other than the horrid level of juniorization. But most hobbyists at the time couldn't stand Rock Raiders with their bizarro color scheme. Anyway, it's interesting as someone that was an adult hobbyist in the late 1990's to watch new hobbyists joining the fray that were kids when I was just getting serious about LEGO. I always had a hard time imagining how kids could be nostalgic for things like Insectoids, Life on Mars, or Fright Knights. But hey, I'm starting to see it pop up now and again-- amazing! It'll be interesting in another 10 years or so to see which lines from today are striking chords with kids and getting them nostalgic for good 'ol 2011 sets! DaveE

Nope-- a 2x1 LEGO brick measures: 16mm long x 8mm wide x 9.6mm tall (not counting the height of the studs) A 2x1 Modulex brick would measure: 10mm long x 5mm wide x 5mm tall (not counting the height of the studs) It sounds like you've never actually used Modulex before-- here's a picture comparing Modulex to standard LEGO (Modulex is on the top): DaveE

Yeah, Modulex seems to be the first "spin off" construction brand that LEGO created (in 1963), and didn't have compatibility in mind. Modulex was intended to be designed for architects and professionals, who (I assume) must have wanted something a bit more mathematically handy to work with. Hence, they went with 5mm x 5mm x 5mm squares rather than 8mm x 8mm x 9.6mm. Of course, you can line up 8 Modulex studs so that they fit evenly with 5 normal studs, but there's no way I know of to actually attach the elements (except maybe some totally unintended coincidences). Later "systems" were all compatible in at least SOME ways to the standard system like DUPLO (1969), Technic (1977), Primo (1996), Scala (1979 and 1998), ZNAP (1998), Clikits (2003) and Quatro (2004). LEGO Soft (1998) is compatible proportionally and dimentionally (6x normal bricks I think?), but I'm not sure if they actually can interlock with smaller systems. I think that pretty much makes Modulex unique in terms of being the most out-of-sync building system among LEGO products! DaveE

You can't expect us to tell you. First off, evolve. Practice. The key to building well is stealing ideas that you like. When you see something awesome, use the same technique in your own creation. Do that a lot. Don't start by building large, either. Build small things that your collection can support, and gradually build up as your skills improve. After a while, you'll know you're ready. How long that takes? Who knows. That depends on how much your practice, how well you learn, and how many other people's MOCs you examine. You might never be that skilled, or you might be that skilled tomorrow. DaveE

The English is a little unclear for me-- there are questions such as "I feel pressured when designing my own product", which COULD mean that I feel restricted (which would be true), but could also mean that I feel like I'm obligated to try it (social pressure or otherwise), or a few other things. I'm not sure I'm providing the intended feedback :( DaveE

I assume there are reasons for that, probably human ones-- but I'm still not sure why it's a problem? Offhand, I would guess that since it's both seasonal and sold out from S@H, they'll remove it. If it weren't a seasonal item, it wouldn't look so out of place on their website, and might continue to want to advertise it (even if sold out). Similarly, if it were stale enough, they might decide to get it off the website as well. I dunno, we can probably come up with a dozen reasons why LEGO might have wanted to take it off their page, but I guess I can't really fault them for the website's behavior. Seems OK to me! DaveE

Why not? We were at a LEGO store on Wednesday night, and they were still in stock (I'll bet they're still there). They probably takes them off the site because they're sold out via S@H and they also don't want to advertise them on the web any more. Seems simple enough to me. As for how long they're on the website for, I don't see why that's an issue? Does it matter whether they're on the website for 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days at the sale price? As long as what they're saying isn't erroneous, I don't think I have a problem with it. From a technical standpoint, it sounds like they have something automated in place to propagate through their systems. And it takes so-many-minutes to flow through the various automated jobs they have and get through various caches and databases. The price update comes through first, and the fact that it should get removed comes through second. DaveE

That's been proven to happen, actually. Back in maybe 2001 LEGO told us that they happened to find a hidden stash of 5184's and 5059's in their warehouse in the UK. We were told we could call and order them (if we happened to live in the UK, I think?), and you can believe they sold out pretty quickly when they opened THAT floodgate. That's not typically how sales work in retail at least. That's how sales work at "Mom & Pop" stores, but at a larger company they typically come down from above. The marketing group puts them on sale, and all the stores selling them have to mark them down, regardless of their current stock or how well they've been selling in their particular store. For instance, if the Solar Sailer were down to a quantity of 20 in the USA S@H stock, sold out in Australia, but still had 1000 units in the UK, I don't think they'd just cut the price in the UK and leave it alone elsewhere. My guess is they'd cut the price EVERYWHERE all at once, regardless of the particular circumstances in your particular area. Of course, you could check that by having your script call for all their available countries and seeing whether or not the availability changes in each one. But having just looked at their website, it makes perfect sense-- they say right there on the page: So, there's the proof of the pudding. They may not be for sale on the LEGO website, but the same sale prices apply to LEGO retail stores too. DaveE

I guess I'm torn-- I don't really like the idea that you'd list ANYTHING on a sale page that you didn't actually HAVE for sale (assuming that you knew you didn't have it). I don't really care whether or not you ever actually had it in stock or not. Realistically, I understand from a technical perspective-- it makes perfect sense. Item #1234 is listed as being "on sale" for countries X, Y, and Z, regardless of the fact that only country Z has them in stock. And some time later, they say "You know what? We should remove item #1234 entirely." Makes sense to me. The other thing to note is that stock is variable. At the drop of a hat, they might discover a secret stash buried in the back, or they might get a returned shipment, or receive overstock from Brand Retail. Who knows? So the website really doesn't mesh well with the inventory. Basically, the way to interpret it is "If we happen to have this item in stock, here's the price we'll sell it to you at". That last bit is the thing that makes me tolerate it. I can see from their perspective that if there was a chance that your inventory would fluctuate on a given item (IE, sold out today, maybe in stock tomorrow), you would still want to keep the sale price in front of your customers, even if they couldn't buy it at that price. Effectively, keep them interested in buying, in case you get it in stock. DaveE

How are you checking? Are you just downloading the "sales/deals" page? I recall when I polled their site for top sellers, they basically were only updated hourly (with some exceptions). It could be that they get put "on sale", but they don't get added to the "sales/deals" page immediately. Could be that they build up the sale/deal page based on a cache, and you won't see it in real time. I'm not sure I see a problem with that, other than the fact that it's actually listed on the "sale" page. That's annoying for customers-- seeing something they can't buy. But you could make the argument that it's all part of a sales campaign whereby people are encouraged to check back frequently, since they can see what they may have missed out on. Also, keep in mind that you're probably pulling the page for your country's availability. When I set up my script, I noticed that other countries had different things going on. If (say) the "sale" price gets generated across multiple countries, then each country's prices may get updated, even though the availability obviously won't get updated. The removed which items from where? From the whole site? Or from the sales/deals page? DaveE

Just to clarify-- are you saying that the items were never available at the original price? Or that they were never available at the sale price? I can see the problem with saying "New Item", but I don't understand your complaint about the prices? DaveE

Yep-- I'm not an aggressive poster by any means these days, but I'm still around on various sites :) We've been running a BL store with actual *sets* for a while that we didn't need-- probably more effort than we'd be up for. Of course, the other issue is that the pieces we'd get rid of are most likely the ones that nobody would want! For now, we've got overflow bins. I think if the overflow bins ever get out of control, we'd likely just give them to our local AFOL friends in the area. DaveE

I think the connotation of "critical mass" in my book is when your LEGO collection got TOO big. But sounds like what you're asking is when it got "big enough to do what you want". For the most part, I found myself desperately wanting more bricks until I hit maybe 150-200k. At that point, I could pretty much build whatever I wanted (size-wise) without worrying terribly much. There might have been a few things here or there that were outside the boundaries of plausible, but I wasn't interested in doing projects that large. When I hit about 500,000, it started becoming TOO much. Every time I buy a set, I now look sadly at all the useless parts like 1x4 red plates or 2x3 black slopes and think to myself "they'll never get used". There are still PARTICULAR elements that I want, but in general, the raw "stock" of brick is simply daunting. Before I married my wife (fellow AFOL), I had around 600,000, and now together we've got around 1,000,000. It's really too much. Of course, if I kept my creations together, I think the critical mass point would be higher. A 500,000 piece collection with half of the pieces being used in MOCs is quite a different thing than a collection where most of it is loose brick. DaveE

Based on Bricklink data, I guessed there were about 760 pieces per kg, or about 350 per pound: http://news.lugnet.com/general/?n=52892 But that depends on what types of things are in there-- if you buy Technic sets, you'll probably get more, and if you buy "basic" brick sets, you'll get less. But that should be a rough idea. DaveE

Well, as noted above, I'll buy LESS LEGO :) With the Minifigures lineup, I probably would've bought a whole bunch more of them if they were higher quality. As it was, I bought one of each, and then stopped. I also won't be buying any more "battle packs" as I did for Kingdoms and Castle, because of issues with the torsos and arms. Oh, and I also would have bought more of the "vintage minifigures" sets (as is I just bought 1 of each). Volumes 3 and 4 had some great torsos and other parts, but just weren't good enough quality to justify me buying more copies. DaveE

In my book, LEGO quality has dropped from something like a 9/10 to an 8/10 in recent years. I'll still buy a product that's an 8/10, but I'll also complain that the quality is lacking. If the quality ever gets to the point where it's a 5/10, I personally would probably stop buying it. But until then, I'll probably keep buying the products, even knowing that they ARE of lower quality, and I believe I'd be justified in still complaining, even though I bought them fully expecting lower quality. DaveE

I disagree with that sentiment. Our opinions as customers are important, even if they're negative. For me, LEGO hasn't gotten such awful quality that I won't buy them (actually, I guess I bought far fewer collectible minifigs [just 1 of each] thanks to quality issues). But even though I'll still buy them, I still disapprove of the lowered quality levels, and I don't intend to stop complaining about it. I want to be sure that LEGO is aware of my (and others') disapproval. DaveE

Exactly. The reaction should be to the low-quality pieces, NOT to the fact that it's made in China. Or, conversely, what makes you so certain that European or Mexican facilities can't produce as poor quality elements as China? :) Quality's dropping across the board, and Chinese manufacturing is taking most of the blame, even though they only manufacture a small percentage of the parts. DaveE

Well, it's rather outdated (it doesn't like PNG images, apparently), but there's always LUGNET's Mosaic Maker: http://www.lugnet.com/cad/mosaic/ DaveE

What it's worth probably depends on what you want to know :) - Curiosity: how much is my LEGO worth? Am I sitting on a gold mine? - How much money can I get for my LEGO when I sell it? - How much should I insure my collection for? Pretty different answers to those. The easiest way to figure out a value is to look at BrickLink prices for sets that you have, and go from there. On BrickLink, look at the last-6-month average price for "used" versions of the sets you have, and that'll be a pretty good idea. DON'T look at the "currently available" prices or the "new" prices, or you'll think you're a lot richer than you are! Sets are difficult to sell-- You have to be incredibly meticulous. A set that's 95% complete may SOUND impressive, but in hobbyist terms, that's ludicrously terrible. 99% complete is probably ... acceptable ... maybe. It's still a far cry from 100%. So you have to be sure (when selling) that you absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, have ALL the pieces. Also, be sure to report exactly what's missing, or what condition it's in. And doubtlessly, people will ask for pictures and more information, so you'll have to spend lots of time answering questions and sending images. In theory, you can also sell on a per-piece basis, but this is very misleading. A 1x4 blue brick may have an average price of $0.05 per piece, but good luck selling it! It's got "value", but there's no market. So even though you may have 100 of them that are "worth" $5.00, you won't actually GET $5.00 for them. You'll just be able to sell the really sought-after elements that everyone wants, like old gray elements, minifigs, special printed parts, etc. So you may have a "value" of $5,000, but only $500 of it might be actually sell-able. There are some automated utilities that work with BrickLink to pull those prices for you, but I'm blanking on the names at the moment. I haven't really used them, so I'm not quite sure. But there ARE some programs available for download that can probably help you to get a figure. DaveE

Ah yes, welcome to the debate :) There are those out in the Star Wars community who are quite passionate that UCS has an exact scale (I forget what it was), and "to heck with the LEGO company if they call something else 'UCS', it's not REALLY UCS." Really, "UCS" is a branding designation that LEGO hands out to particular sets. But in the hobbyist community... it's occasionally regarded as something else. And when referring to UCS as a "scale" (which I'd argue it really isn't), fans tend to mean "at the scale of the UCS X-Wing, UCS TIE Interceptor, etc". Generally, it seems among fans (for those that care to debate these finer points) that LEGO sets themselves aren't really "minifig scale", but that they're instead "something else". The houses only have facades, the cars only fit one person, the airplanes used to only be 4 wide, trains are 6-wide, etc. Their proportions are just generally ... off. They're designed to be toys, sort of the way that the Kenner X-Wing fighter had shorter wings, a shorter nose, etc, but a "figure-scale" cockpit. It's more of a *style* than a scale. Yeah, it's sort of an accepted standard that's based on vague concepts. For example, people have been building at a scale that uses 1x1 round bricks as people for a long time. People would refer such constructions as "microscale", and it sort of became a convention among hobbyists. But there aren't any formal rules-- it's effectively arbitrary. But generally speaking, when someone says "microscale", that's what they mean. Basically, a guide to LEGO "scales" is really more like a guide to etiquette and culture rather than a textbook definition. DaveE

Generally speaking, I think "micro" scale is bigger than "nano" scale. Micro-scale would probably be cars that were 1-2 studs wide, and in nano-scale, you wouldn't even SEE any cars :) Also, System Scale is often regarded not so much as a *scale* per se, but as a style of building. LEGO builds things with what's known as "selective compression"-- certain things are shrunk proportionally, and others aren't shrunk as much. As a building style, it's probably about as disproportionate to reality as a minifig is to a human. Building at a particular "scale" however, implies that you're obeying the proper rules of proportions on your model. Miniland scale (the scale for things at Legoland theme parks) is about 1:20, but often times, larger objects are still selectively compressed to fit into the space. "Ultimate Collector Scale" is just about as widely disputed as "minifig scale", but is roughly to scale with Technic figures (roughly 1:22 I think?). Minifig scale is centered around 1:38 and 1:44 (wide berth) System "scale" is ~sorta~ the same as minifig scale, but typically a little smaller (1:44-1:55) Mini and micro scale I guess I see as "smaller than minifig scale", but usually have people represented by 1x1 round bricks or thereabouts... so, ballpark 1:190? (another really wide berth) Nano scale generally is reserved for things like capital ships and such that are supposed to be super-large. I'd guess anything in the 1:1000+ range would be nanoscale? DaveE

Call it whatever you want :) If it's between 1:38 and 1:44, you'll likely get NO complaints from anyone. If you do, that's ok, nobody listens to those complainers anyway. If it's between 1:32 and 1:50, you MIGHT get someone that will call you on it. If you do, that's ok, you shouldn't listen to those complainers anyway. If it's between of the 1:25 and 1:60, you probably will get a few people questioning you if you call it "minifig scale". But so what? They're not an authority on the matter. You can still make an argument, and it ultimately it still doesn't really matter. If it's outside of the 1:25 and 1:60 zone, yeah, I guess that'd be pretty silly to call it "minifig scale". But again, there's no accepted scale, it'd probably just look wrong. DaveE

I think the error is in the question-- there is no "correct" or "incorrect", there's merely an accepted convention among hobbyists that has a wide berth. Some people would probably tell you that the Speed Racer cars were NOT minifig scale, and others would tell you that the 6623 police car from 1983 is too small for minifig scale. And then there's things like the 600 police car from 1978, which won't even FIT a minifig, but is arguably "minifig scale" because it includes a minifig. Basically, minifig scale is generally accepted around roughly 1:43 or so. The further away from that you get, the more hobbyists will start to disagree. By the time you get to 1:32 or 1:55, it's in the iffy ballpark. But there's nothing exact. Some people like 1:38, some like 1:44, some like 1:43, etc, etc. If you want to ask the *community* whether something's minifig scale, you're asking the wrong people! Sometimes, it's important to be consistent. If you have a bunch of 4-wide cars on a layout, and then you throw in an 8-wide sedan, it'll look out of place, even though it might still be "minifig scale" according to the builder. So if you're planning a creation, you might want to agree on a scale with all your participants. But general consensus among hobbyists is pretty all over the place. DaveE