davee123

6388 Holiday Home with Caravan (1987) DaveE

For the record, I'm blanking on the name, but one AFOL was able to discern the COLOR of LEGO bricks based on their smell. I remember watching it at a BrickFest back in ... uh... 2001 maybe? I don't think he could differentiate ALL the types of LEGO colors, but a few of the basic colors he was able to tell the difference. Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that those with sensitive noses could tell the difference in plastic odor-- I certainly can't! -- but others seem to have a much better sense of smell than I do. DaveE

6598 - Metro PD Station: http://www.peeron.com/scans/6598-1/19/ DaveE

I believe that's true-- I received an amazingly discolored one of these in 5868 Ferocious Creatures. And for the record, just one! The other one (the set comes with 2) was just fine, and was normal green. I'm not sure if that's the new coloring technique that LEGO's been using, or if it's a different manufacturing facility or what-- but I don't believe it was made in China. But it was FAR worse than anything I've ever seen before in terms of color inconsistency. It put the differences in purple from 2004 to shame! Sounds like what you were seeing was just another example of this-- It's been a complaint about new dark gray for a while, and even sometimes tan. Plus, there were known issues with purple and dark green. But more recently, the problem seems to be spreading to other colors too! DaveE

Yeah, this isn't a project you'd do to save money. This is a project you do if you're rich and have money to burn on something cool. Under $1000 USD is unlikely, unless you want to do a lot of legwork re-selling LEGO. In theory, you could do that if you buy LEGO secondhand (usually very cheap), remove the bricks you wanted, and then re-sell the OTHER bricks online. You'd probably even turn a profit, since most people actually don't WANT the standard bricks. ... But on the downside it might take you months to acquire the necessary bricks, and MORE months (even years) to make your money back, not to mention the amount of legwork involved in being a brick seller. I don't think anyone here can answer that. There isn't as developed of a community around other brand bricks, so there aren't a wide variety of easily accessible routes for getting bulk bricks. For LEGO, hobbyists have many avenues open like Pick-A-Brick at retail stores and Legoland theme parks, LUGBULK (for those that qualify), and BrickLink. For things like MegaBloks and Best Lock, there just isn't a sizeable hobbyist community to look for bulk options. From what I know, it's mostly second-hand via eBay. DaveE

Honestly, I'd recommend a thin wall frame made from wood, and a LEGO facade. LEGO, while cool, may have issues when you (say) lean on it. While it's possible to build a solid LEGO wall that's sturdy enough to do the job, I'm not sure it would be practical. Similarly, I'd recommend you don't use LEGO as a door mechanism. It might work fine for the first few months, but my guess is that some of the elements would start to wear out, fall apart, or otherwise. And doing repairs would be very difficult, especially if the mechanism is hidden behind the solid wall. Another thing to watch out for is discoloration. LEGO (especially white, blue, gray) has a tendency to discolor and turn yellow/brown after exposure to sunlight and UV. And it does so differently for each element. So even though you might have a wall full of 2x4 bricks that start out the same color, you might have one piece that's still pristine white, and another that's almost tan in color after months of being in direct sunlight. There are treatments to RETROACTIVELY remove the yellowing, but I'm not sure how expensive that would be in bulk, and would probably be annoying to apply regularly (depending on how much UV light you'd be getting). Another thing to check on is fire code. Here in the USA (not sure about elsewhere) there are a lot of regulations regarding fire safety, and a door (or wall) made out of LEGO might be an issue. A great source to check into is Top Gear's James May and his LEGO house. They had to jump through a lot of hoops in order to build a "temporary structure" out of LEGO. As for a source of LEGO, it may be tricky. By a quick calculation, I get that you'd need roughly 68,432 1x4 bricks (2x4 bricks would be identical) to do both facades, and that's not including any bricks connecting them together, or door mechanisms. Cost-wise, I'd guess that would be around the $5,000 USD ballpark depending on your source. If you don't care about color consistency, you could probably get it much cheaper ($1,000 ballpark), just by hunting down the cheapest sources of multi-color standard brick. If you ARE planning to build a door out of LEGO, I'd probably go for a sliding (hanging) door design rather than anything that swings out. Most of the stress on a swinging door would probably be up at the top, and the door would be pretty heavy. A sliding door could distribute the weight more evenly along the top, I would think. DaveE

By Jorgen's accounts, the word is more like they stopped making quality their top priority. Jorgen specifically cited "quality" as something that he had to actively encourage people to stop caring about so much-- he specifically quoted something along the lines of employees "using 'quality' as a crutch". What it says to me is that Jorgen went around making changes left-and-right throughout production chain. Things that used to be checked-and-re-checked-and-re-checked-again were now only checked once, or something similar. Effectively, LEGO was doing things that were producing ludicrously high levels of quality, but were also costing a LOT in terms of money and time. And if you want the corporate terminology, you call it "efficiency". Exactly. When they developed the new molding technique, they took a risk of churning out lower quality elements. I'm not sure what happened exactly-- possibly they eliminated the groups that were in charge of checking further up the line, skipping expensive and lengthy workflow cycles, such that the problem was identified after it was too late. Or, they discovered the problem and decided it would take too long to fix, so they just said "oh well", and knowingly lower-quality parts. Regardless of the details, the effect has been lower quality across the board, from color consistency to translucency to instruction printings to shipping errors with partners, etc. The difference is that LEGO now views lower quality as an acceptable cost to running the business. Rather than catching an error BEFORE it happens, they're now more likely catch an error AFTER it happens, and fix it retroactively. DaveE

LEGO has acknowledged that they don't use their standard ABS plastic in Chinese produced parts. Supposedly it was too difficult, impossible, or too expensive to use their standard ABS, thanks to some aspect of Chinese law, presumably something about importing foreign sources (I don't think we've been told the particulars). The Chinese plastic doesn't seem to have any significant weight difference or density, but it DOES seem to be slightly more translucent: This translucency is somewhat visible even without exposing it as seen above, although it may not be immediately noticeable. It's sort of like telling the difference between new gray and old gray in bad lighting-- you can stare at them and not REALLY be sure if something's different, and then in the right lighting conditions, it can become obvious. IE, the difference in translucency isn't very noticeable, unless you're really picky. To my knowledge, Chinese production has not been on "normal" bricks, and haven't been around long enough to know whether the actual clutch quality is better or worse than normal bricks. We DO know that minifigure arms produced in China seem to deform slightly when removed and re-applied, indicating that the plastic COULD be more malleable, and thus have less clutch over time, but so far, I don't think anyone's noticed such a problem anywhere except minifig arms. Fans have also indicated that Chinese production may also introduce other, as yet unknown problems. For instance, some people have reported that SOME minifig hands/arms will not allow the hands to rotate, or will experience "clicking" when doing so. It's not consistent, however, which implies that there could be tolerance issues, or mold assembly issues with respect to small amounts of flashing on the completed parts. However, further difficulty has stemmed from lower quality parts from LEGO itself in recent years, some of which is thought to be possibly attributed to LEGO's new method for injecting dye into the plastic at the time of molding, rather than using pre-colored ABS as they used to. Details on that method seem to vary, as LEGO still releases literature stating that they use pre-colored pellets. But reports from Steve Witt expressly acknowledged this method being problematic, and resulting in more translucent elements in the 2007 Castle lineup. It is possible that this is responsible for increased variations in color (this technique was supposedly first used in 2006 or 2007, as I recall, and is therefore probably NOT responsible for color variations that fans noted between 2004-2006). This lowering of quality in "regular" LEGO bricks NOT produced in China has made it more difficult to distinguish Chinese bricks. If all you had to compare were pieces molded from 1973-1998, you could probably tell the difference more easily between Chinese elements and non-Chinese elements. But otherwise, it's difficult. Ultimately, the drop in quality isn't all that bad (except, IMHO, the minifig arm thing). On a scale from 1-10, this might mean a drop in quality from (say) 9 down to 8 or something, with Mega Bloks being around a 5, and Best-Lock being around a 4. LEGO quality is still quite high, although it's disappointing to learn of drops in quality. In the past, LEGO endeavored for HIGHER quality, not LOWER quality, and it would seem that LEGO's change in management in 2005 has resulted in LEGO lowering its quality levels in order to ensure its survival as a business. DaveE

OK, ask yourself: how much WOULD you pay? Put it on your BrickLink "wanted list", and wait. Someday, maybe you'll get lucky and someone will put one up for cheaper. Or maybe not. Apart from eBay and BrickLink, your only options are really more like dumb luck. Hunt on Craigslist, visit yard sales, ask fellow fans. You probably won't get lucky, but it's possible. But meanwhile, you'll either have to decide whether or not it's worth it to you to shell out for the set at the higher prices! DaveE

You realize of course, that if you took him to 45m deep, in *MINIFIG SCALE* he dove to more than a mile in depth! DaveE

Well, if they fill with water, they could go REALLY deep I'll bet. Only question is how water-tight are they? DaveE

What's your source? Before 2003, almost all minifigs were yellow, with a few exceptions (Jar Jar Binks, Darth Maul, UFO Aliens and robots, and a few others). LEGO decided to make its "humans" be yellow back in the 1960's or early 1970's, supposedly by voting between "white" and "yellow". Chances are, if they had had tan, flesh, or other colors available back then, they would NOT have used yellow. In 2003, when LEGO got the NBA license, it was decided that yellow NBA players would not quite look right. As a result, LEGO also decided to adopt a new policy on *LICENSED* figures. All licensed minifigures, or minifigures that were otherwise intended to represent actual people, were to be done in actual flesh tones, rather than in the standard yellow. From 2003 onward (with a couple exceptions), this was true-- all licensed "human" minifigures were produced in flesh tones, and non-licensed "human" minifigures were still made in yellow. To the best of my knowledge, LEGO has no plans to change this in the forseeable future. You will likely see a mix of yellow and fleshy figs for some time to come. DaveE

IIRC, he could only fully assemble the model *AT* BrickFest, so it's not likely that you'll find any pictures apart from BrickFest attendees. He had a special room dedicated to it, which he had been using for at least a few days before the event to set it up. DaveE

The tallest one I ever saw was probably this one by Steve DeCramer at BrickFest 2005: It wasn't really fully fleshed out as a CASTLE (the adjacent faces were other scenes), but it was huge, and very tall! Probably in the ballpark of 4 feet tall? Most expansive as in wide? There have been some pretty large displays at fan events, but I'm not sure they count as *single* MOCs, but are rather collaborative projects. Dunno on that one! DaveE

It sounds like your dad is afraid for your sake. He probably sees that you're not "normal", and doesn't know what to think. He doesn't know how to encourage you. Honestly, it's not the LEGO that's the issue. I was a high school nerd. Kids teased me for playing with toys, for being a weakling, for not knowing anything about sports, and whatever else. But hey, other cool kids still played with toys. Some of them were just as skinny. And some other kids similarly didn't know anything about sports. But THEY didn't get teased. The real problem was me. I was introverted, socially awkward, and generally uncomfortable around others. And it showed. So kids would just find some aspect of me and make fun of it-- all the sports knowledge in the world wouldn't have helped; they would've just found something else to pick on me about. Your real challenge isn't whether or not you share your LEGO hobby with others. It's to figure out how to deal with other people and life in general. To put it in perspective, there's the *creepy* guy that still plays with LEGO, and there's the *cool* guy that still plays with LEGO. The creepy guy will, without warning, talk about his LEGO hobby without any regard to others' reactions. He'll jump into unnecessary detail that others can't understand, and not notice when the other person becomes uninterested, and also not notice when it goes one step further and the other person starts to get creeped out. The cool guy (by contrast) only talks about LEGO when it's relevant. And when he does talk about it, it's at a level that others can relate to, and only delves deeper into detail when others are genuinely interested. But you can replace "LEGO" with anything-- even something "cool" like Nascar. You can just as easily be the "creepy guy that likes Hockey a little too much", or "the creepy guy that likes computer games too much", or "the creepy guy that likes Twilight too much". The real issue isn't LEGO, it's learning how to interact with others. DaveE

1) I think there's an issue with ball joints at that scale from a technical perspective. Getting them that small, and in such a tight space is probably pretty difficult to do consistently and well. My guess would be that you'd get really floppy hands (or really inconsistently floppy hands), and possibly a lot of broken hands and arms. They might be OK for hobbyists, but children play pretty roughly with their minifigs! 2) At this point, it's unlikely that LEGO would alter their minifigure design. If you had asked back before 2005, they might have considered it. But since then, LEGO seems to have realized the paramount importance of the minifigure to their success, so they're not likely going to screw with it. It was probably true even *before* 2005, but the last few years have really solidified the image of the minifigure even more! DaveE

Does anyone know the approximate values of global market share for the other major players? I'm guessing Mattel, Hasbro, Bandai, then LEGO? I see several reports listing that LEGO now has the #3 spot in the UK and USA. DaveE

I'm not sure if mold will actually hurt the LEGO. It'll hurt LEGO *boxes*, and it'll be a pain to clean for sure. I'd recommend a dehumidifier. DaveE

That's certainly a result of my point :) Effectively, my guess is that some parts are so large that they require multiple injection points, and figuring out where those points go, and when they should get flooded is extremely complex. Yep-- that's why I mentioned only parts that I didn't think would be likely to be re-used. And of course they may not do it at all, but it could always be one way that they're saving money to bring us more new molds every year. Well, that part I'd be curious about since they can do the blended molds, and because they supposedly inject the dye at the same time as the plastic nowadays, rather than the pre-colored ABS pellets. Again, as you point out it might be more trouble than it's worth, but I believe it's feasible given the technology. Well, we know that for some elements (like the steam train wheels), they indeed do both sets of wheels in the same mold, so they manage to sort them out somehow. Anyway, I'm not trying to imply that they do it, or even that it's probable (I honestly doubt that it's true) but more that it's another possibility that might make new molds effectively cheaper on a per-part basis. DaveE

Well, that should be relatively easy to test theory-wise. Cost of ABS is reportedly $1-$2 per pound, and 1 pound of LEGO is typically about 350 pieces, IIRC (assuming you're talking about system sets). I've seen other quotes as low as $0.50 per pound, too, so I'm not sure what the ACTUAL price is, but we should be able to get a ballpark figure. That would mean that: at $2/lb, 1 element is about $0.0057 at $1/lb, 1 element is about $0.0029 at $0.50/lb, 1 element is about $0.0014 So, less than 1 penny per piece. The set you linked to has 221 pieces, meaning the raw ABS cost is between $0.31 and $1.20, which is between 1.5% and 6% of the set cost. So... no, that doesn't work, since the current cost of the ABS isn't even 10% of the set. That's still not factoring in how much of a percentage cost the oil is of the ABS, either. I'm not sure if oil is 5% of the ABS cost, or 99% of the ABS cost. That's not to say it's not a factor, of course-- just that it's not more than 6% of a factor. DaveE

I don't really know about BA per se, but I believe LEGO has a pretty wide range of mold complexity. The most difficult being things like the "chain" element, where plastic elements wind up interlocked, and the plastic is delivered to links in such a way that the mold can cool JUST RIGHT. That's supposedly one of the most complex, and likely most expensive molds that LEGO has. I don't know, but I also would expect that element size has something to do with it. A small element will probably cool pretty quickly, whereas a larger element probably won't. So if you've got to inject plastic from one edge of the element to the other edge, that gives the plastic time to change slightly-- temperature, consistency, color, sheen, etc. So if that distance is large, I would think (again, I'm just guessing here) that you're more likely to get things like color discrepancies, and thus, would need more careful attention to the actual process of the plastic injection. I would think that would make larger elements' molds more expensive, unlike smaller elements (like the minifig accessories we're seeing in the collectible Minifigures lineup). One thing that also occurs to me is that for the Chinese molds, if they're doing 1-offs for the Minifigures, why not make ONE mold that does (say) the clown's bugle, the nurse's syringe, and the cheerleader's pom-poms? That way, you're only buying ONE mold. That would make sense (and save money) assuming that those elements are ONLY ever going to be used in the Minifigures lineup. DaveE

Well, really that's just one of many costs. But keep in mind that while that may be the cost of producing the FINAL mold, there's also the cost of designing the mold, testing it for things like safety, color distribution, and piece integrity, and how many elements it produces in a single shot. But to actually equate a high set price SOLELY on the presence of a new mold would be silly, unless you have the data to back it up. There are so many costs that go into a set that NEVER get mentioned, like the size of the production run, assembly cost, and other wacky stuff. And then there are the factors that get discussed a lot, like licensing fees, design, currency strength, target audience, element diversity, etc, etc. I think one reason that mold cost is mentioned so frequently is because it's something consumers can understand. There are a lot of other factors that people simply "don't get". You absolutely, positively will NOT get LEGO to explain all the intricacies of their pricing system to you. And you probably wouldn't want all that data-- they have an entire staff dedicated to pricing whose job it is to figure it all out. But when it comes time to explain it to John Q. Public, you'll get a partial explanation like mold cost. Another reason you see it come up is probably because when you actually TALK to set designers, they'll flat-out tell you that new molds ARE a major consideration. Whether that's because of the COST of the finalized mold, or other factors, I'm not sure-- but sit down with a designer sometime, and they'll tell you that new molds are considered pretty hefty in terms of cost. Um, $20,000 isn't the maximum. From what I understand, that's closer to the minimum. I've typically heard a range of $10,000 to $100,000, depending on the complexity of the mold. DaveE

My guess was that there's probably extra flashing, possibly around each element, which gets in the way when rotating. But it could also be a misaligned mold assembly that's occasionally triggered. That would also have a similar result. I suppose there are other possibilities, like the plastic cooling differently and expanding/contracting beyond normal bounds, although I wouldn't expect that to be the case since they typically cool sufficiently before being ejected from the mold... plus it's a pretty small part. Hmmm... maybe I'll see if one of my few duplicates has the problem, and take it apart in the name of curiosity. DaveE

Actually, that was me :) And I followed up after verifying the source and the fact that I could make it public, but it was several weeks later. Isn't that already true? I wasn't aware that any heads currently in production for the past few years have had any neck printing? Too late :( I do hope they can straighten out their production issues in China, which I'm *guessing* is mostly caused by the discrepancy in plastic. There are several other issues with the Chinese figures, but they could all very well stem from using the lesser plastic. Yep. I've heard essentially that the facilities in China are better at doing quality printing. Honestly, I haven't seen any difference in terms of the quality of the prints themselves, but certainly they're able to print in a variety of ways that we've never seen before, like printing on the sides of legs and bizarre angles. Huh-- I wasn't aware that they didn't own the facilities. That might explain the requirement for the lower quality plastic, actually. If the factory only used one of a certain number of pre-existing mixes of ABS, that would certainly have forced LEGO into using it, rather than their normal ABS supply chain. As for LEGO QC, it would be interesting to see what that would entail. I heard rumors that supposedly originated from Steve Witt that various Chinese production problems were resolved back when the 2nd wave of minifigures was produced, although I don't know which problems those were. My main issues with the Chinese products are the translucency (probably fixed by the plastic?) and the deforming of minifig arms when switched out (probably also fixed by the plastic). Other issues have been reported with more defined flashing (that could be a QC thing), minifig hands not twisting correctly (don't know what that's caused by), and surface sheen (also not sure what causes this). Possible that those would be fixed by LEGO QC, but I don't really know... DaveE

I believe it's usually just a single mold-- each mold can be used to produce millions of elements over the course of its lifespan. Sometimes, for common elements, I believe LEGO produces several copies of a mold. For instance, I wouldn't be overly surprised if LEGO had as many as 10 copies of their 2x4 brick mold actively in use. I think that's one reason why some 1xN bricks have hollow "rods" in the underside, and others don't-- there's just multiple active molds, with slight variations. DaveE