davee123

As usual, it comes down to how much LEGO you have, how much more you want to spend, and how much time you feel like taking on your model. Using the 1-half-plate offset surrounding your bricks looks AMAZING, but it means you have to design around it. For instance, what do you do when you have a 3-wide section of wall? And, what do you do when you have a 2-wide wall corner? There are always various solutions, but it will take planning and innovation to tackle them. Also, most of your "bricks" will be attached with only a single stud, making them re-angle themselves with a slight touch. You'll constantly be finagling your bricks to get it just right. Finally, you'll need lots of bricks with studs on the side, small technic beams (1 and 2 long), headlight bricks, etc. Depending on your collection, you may need to invest in more. Using 1x2 tiles with NO offset between them is also occasionally used. It looks pretty good, and takes planning of a different nature, since it requires you to build ON something, making corners more challenging. On the plus side, it's less fragile and less special-piece-intensive. Anyway, it comes down to what's best suited to you. DaveE

Yep, that's why LEGO only ever produced Maersk blue in Maersk sets. LEGO had to get everything approved by Maersk that used their color of blue before putting it on the market. That's why LEGO was using the same stockpile of Maersk blue ABS pellets for years-- once LEGO bought it, their only chance to use it was in Maersk sets, which are few and far between. So their ultra-large stockpile was just sitting there in storage until it finally got used up in the Maersk ship sets. My guess is that this may be why Maersk blue was expensive-- not that the dyes used are more pricey or anything, but that there's more logistics in terms of getting Maersk to agree that the color's JUST right. DaveE

I haven't ever heard of LEGO being damaged by heat or cold within the range of the weather. I know when LEGO gets in excess of 150 degrees or so, it might start to deform (somewhere between 150 and boiling temperature of water). But cold? I haven't ever heard of it happening. The two things that I've heard of affecting LEGO are humidity and sunlight. If your LEGO was in very humid air, and THEN went below freezing, that could be disastrous. But typically, it's not very humid, so you shouldn't have to worry about it. I guess the real test would be to put a LEGO brick in a freezer for a few days and find out, but I don't think I've ever actually done that... DaveE

Thanks, all :) Yeah, the roofs are really what I was showcasing with this model. If I had had the time, I think I would've planned this MOC a little better with a more sloped landscape and a more appropriate-sized ship (or something) to fill the river space. But as KielDaMan said, the real focus for me was the roof design, since I didn't recall ever seeing this style before, and it really looked nice in the mock-up models that I was playing with. DaveE

Here's a Viking Village I built recently for KidsFest 2010-- mostly I was just playing around with a new roof design for a thatched roof. Turned out pretty well, but it sure eats through lots of dark tan and tan tiles! DaveE

Really? I've never heard that one before. The reason that Jake McKee told us for Maersk Blue being discontinued was that they simply ran out of the Maersk Blue ABS pellets, and their promotional deal with Maersk was unlikely to continue. However, Maersk and LEGO worked out a deal to produce one last batch for the re-release of the Maersk ship back in 2004. Here's Jake's post: http://news.lugnet.com/lego/?n=2879 From what I heard from Jamie Berard (I hope I recall correctly), he said the most expensive color to make was red! I thought that was strange considering that they make many of their test pieces in red, but that's supposedly because red shows up very well and allows people to see more detail on an element than if they made them in other colors. I'm also assuming that's not counting other bizarro colors like the blended elements, chrome, trans-glitter, etc. I'm guessing he meant the most expensive of the *standard* solid-color ABS colors-- and I think he told me that back in roughly 2007/2008 or so? I DO know that they stopped using chrome as much for cost reasons. The chroming process was simply too expensive to be used a lot. They can still use it, it just uses up a good chunk of the budget for a set design, so the designers avoid it more than they used to. And of course they now have their new chrome color which isn't really shiny, but is MUCH cheaper for them to produce. DaveE

My wife worked for LEGO Futura at one point, and the thing she realized is that LEGO has pretty much thought of EVERYTHING. Someone would come up with an idea, and presto, you could go down to the basement and pull out some proposal for your idea that had been suggested years ago and never implemented. Often, they would supposedly go down to the archives in order to look for inspiration-- a new twist on an idea that had been turned down before. DaveE

That's not quite accurate, first off. A part is never "discontinued", although its mold may be destroyed. As I understand it, when a mold is old, or is being replaced with an updated versrion, the mold is destroyed and is no longer available. But that's not to say that the resulting part can't be brought out of retirement with a new mold. Nothing is "final"-- if LEGO thought it could make gobs of money by reproducing classic space motorcycle helmets, they'd do it, and you'd have discontinued parts being made again. However, what they do want to do is stop producing a zillion different things all at once. That costs money. From what I understand, the big cost in injection molding is up-front cost. The initial cost of the machines and the time it takes to SET UP a production run. I heard from one person in a related field that it can take days or even weeks to set up a production run, making sure that everything's JUST RIGHT. Once it's set to go, it starts churning out elements at lightning speed, and each element's individual cost is virtually nil. You just have to recoup the cost of setting up the run. As a result, you want to reduce the amount of preparation time that you're spending, because that's your big cost. So if your plans were to produce 100 million elements of 50 different types, that's WAY more expensive than producing 100 million of 20 different types. So LEGO looks to consolidate as many piece types as it can to save money. LEGO tries to design sets that are released in a similar timeframe with similar elements. A designer "can" do effectively whatever they want. They're given a budget, an age range, and some guiding principles for each model they make. For example, they might be told they have to make a $30 set that's for 6-10 year olds, it has to be in the "Town" theme, and it has to be a fire truck. So, if they want to, they could go nuts and include an old spruce tree in there. Except that it would blow probably $25 of their budget, and the remaining $5 wouldn't buy you any sort of fire truck that any parent would buy for $30, and so marketing won't approve the model. But that's an extreme example. A more realistic example might be that, you might have 10 1x3 red plates that have a cost of $0.05, and you're $0.20 over budget. So by switching to use a combination of 1x2 and 1x1 red plates that have a lower cost, you can bring down the cost to $0.03 over budget. And so forth. Designers will tweak again and again, often fighting against the ever-changing list of production elements, and the list of changing prices for those elements. A piece that was only $0.02 yesterday might suddenly jump to $0.08 today, because some other design group took it out of their model, meaning that it's no longer in production, and you're the only one using it, so your model has to eat up 100% of that up-front cost of the production run. That said, though, you can do whatever you want as a designer. But elements that aren't already in production will cost you more, and eat up more of your budget-- so you have to be sparing. Sort of. BrickLink and Peeron have inventories that you could use to determine when elements appeared in certain sets, which you could thereby use to determine when production was being done on those elements. Peeron will actually give you a visual representation of the in-production years for each color of an element, which is handy-- but its data isn't as up-to-date as BrickLink's. BrickLink doesn't present that data as comprehensively, but you could derive it if you felt up to the task. And neither site will give you a comprehensive list of "discontinued" elements, because the definition of "discontinued" is extraordinarily unclear, and the resulting list would be so ridiculous that you probably wouldn't find it useful as a list. Typically, the question would be "is piece X in color Y still available?", and then you look through that element's particular list of sets to get an idea of the history of the element. DaveE

This doesn't make sense to me in terms of reaching "levels of skill". After a child has completed the program for the first year, what's to encourage them to sign up again the following year? Do they get demoted back down to the lowest level? What happens if they don't actually perform the "tasks" necessary to achieve the high level of skill? Does that portion of their $100 go to waste? Or do they get "achievement minifigs" regardless of whether or not they've ever done anything at all? Personally, I'd probably try it for a year and see what it was like. But for the company, I'm not sure I quite understand how they envision it working. [edit]PS, I can vote both "yes" and "no" on the poll.[/edit] DaveE

From the auction description: "On a side note, this does not mean I am desperate, so I will just put it in storage if it does not meet my price." Sounds like he's moving overseas and can't take it with him. So he doesn't WANT to sell, but he's not desperate for the money. There are plenty of AFOLs that I'm sure could afford it if they wanted to. But most that COULD afford it already HAVE plenty of LEGO and aren't looking for a big random pile of stuff. If they're going to spend $20,000, they're going to buy the specific things that they want. One candidate I could think of would be BrickLink sellers. If I were a professional BrickLink seller, I could see buying the lot-- although probably not for $20,000. I could see $10,000 ... maybe. There's a lot of nice stuff, and I'm sure that 15% of the pieces or so would sell VERY quickly for a good $5,000+. But the REMAINING pieces really aren't much of a draw for buyers. More white slopes? Blue plates? Meh. FWIW, if it's 1000 lbs of LEGO, the ~typical~ weight of LEGO per pound is about 300-500 pieces per pound, I believe. I recall doing some research with BrickLink weights and getting that your average system sets were about 350 per pound, with technic sets being a bit more. So it's likely in the ballpark of 350,000 pieces, which would be $.057 per piece. That's a decent price, but again, it's a lot to spend at once. Really, I think the likely target market might be a group of AFOLs that pool their money together and do a draft. If you got 20 or so local AFOLs together, each spending $1000, each person would walk away with about 17500 pieces, which isn't too bad. It's not great, but it's not terrible. Our group actually did this recently with maybe a 150k piece collection or so, but we spent a lot less. Granted, it was a lot less sorted, and had a chunk of yellowed and some used elements. Anyway, I could *maybe* see that happening. DaveE

I made some a while back with some custom stickers: Ideally, there'd be a nice white hat for the women, but without modifying elements, I couldn't find a decent solution... DaveE

I think it would really depend on how much LEGO you have-- if you've only got a 50,000 piece collection, it's not that big of a deal to let your kids play with it. But if you've got 500,000 pieces all nicely sorted and organized, you're not going to want your kids to have free reign. My friends with large LEGO collections seem to pretty much have rules about what their kids can do and what they can't do-- like, "Dad must be present if you want to play with the LEGO", or "You can do whatever you want with these unsorted bins". DaveE

Honestly, I don't really care whether or not LEGO cared about it. *I* care, and that's what makes it a quality issue. Note above, I explicitly stated that LEGO may or may not care about it. And it's irrelevant to me what they do and don't consider to be a quality issue. If enough customers care about it, then they'll care. I haven't really noticed a difference (not that I've tried too much). If true, then yes, that particular aspect could be superior, and I'd be fine with calling it such. But the other problems with tolerances, color consistency, translucency, "clicking hands", and now the re-attaching arm problem all make the overall quality in my book far lower. Unfortunately, I think this actually means my BrickLink purchasing will forever be changed (I just had my first experience interchanging arms this past weekend). Before I ever buy another minifig on BrickLink, I'm going to have to ask the seller whether or not it's a made-in-China figure, and I simply won't buy the Chinese figs. I probably won't buy the Chinese style battle packs either. As it stands, I already have all the collectible figures set aside from my normal collection, and it'll sadly have to stay that way. DaveE

I totally disagree that it doesn't count as a quality issue, although I WOULD agree that LEGO might not see it as such. LEGO in the past has gone through great lengths to provide that little smidgen of extra quality, like making sure you can reattach arms and legs without problems. This is evidence that LEGO isn't going the distance that it used to. Perhaps you can argue that it's not "sub-par" quality, but it's certainly "sub-LEGO" quality given their history. DaveE

So, ok, I wanted to go back to this-- I spoke to the person I heard it from again, wanting to clarify whether or not it was kosher to reveal the source. He told me that it wasn't solely relayed to him through the source I was attributing it to, but that it was primarily presented to AFOLs at a Danish LEGO event a few months ago by the Vice President of Quality Control at LEGO in Denmark. He supposedly made it clear that while it wasn't impossible to get the same plastic in China, it wasn't going to be worth the cost and hassle to get the supply line going without an in-country source. Anyway, there's the source, for any still curious. DaveE

Earliest I see it is 1998 by Tom McDonald: http://news.lugnet.com/off-topic/fun/?n=433 DaveE

We've actually got somewhere in the ballpark of 1 million now. I've got a confirmed 680,564 parts and 5128 minifigs in my collection, but I'm also adding in my wife's collection, who probably has in the vicinity of 200k-400k pieces (she has no idea how many). We're trying to tally hers to mine as we combine collections, but we'll see how that goes. But the rough guess is that we have about a million between the two of us. If you asked me way back when I started collecting, I probably would have foolishly told you that I'd NEVER have enough LEGO, but now I honestly have to say we have too much. In addition to our collections, we acquired a large chunk of about 100k-200k that we pretty much just don't have a need for, so we'll be giving it away (or maybe selling it) in some manner or another. Most likely to our fellow AFOLs in the local area. So yes, you really can have too much! DaveE

Given the images, I still can't quite see how the head was attached, though. At first I was thinking it was a black 1x1 plate with a vertical clip, holding onto the white horizontal clip, but I'm not sure that would allow space to attach the minifig hands. How's that part working? DaveE

Racers Less for girls, but build cars and race them down a ramp (you probably want a specialized ramp that will race multiple cars at a time). I've done this with some kids at an event-- it was fun, and an interesting challenge. You can also get kids to see whose travels the furthest, or whose can go the straightest or whatever. Tower Topple Each player takes turns adding one brick of their choice to a tower, which they then must balance without it falling over. Never tried this, but it's an idea. Mosaics If you've got enough of them, LEGO mosaic kits can be a fun activity. We've done these at a couple events, and it's pretty neat. Only caveat is that kids can build these at extremely different rates, so be prepared for some to finish early or late. Lazy Slide Each player/team builds a "thingy" out of LEGO. A minifig (or whatever) is dropped onto it. The minifig MUST slide, tumble, or fall all the way to the floor. The winner is whoever's minifig takes the longest to do so (no intervention while tumbling of course!) Never tried this either, but it sounds kinda fun. Collaborative Creative Builds Everyone builds (say) a small house, and everyone's houses are all placed into a gigantic town. Repeat with everyone building a car, a tree, or whatever, until you've got an impressive display that everyone's contributed to. They've done these at various LEGO events, although I've never really paid much attention to how the kids find it-- might be worth a try. Collaborative Planned Builds Similar to the mosaics that LEGO does at events, everyone builds a pre-planned section of something larger. A model, mosaic, or whatever. Then, at the end, everyone gets to behold the awesomeness. This can be pretty fun-- we even did this at our wedding with a large LEGO mosaic :) DaveE

Cool! Would you mind if I snatched the code and incorporated it into my LEGO scale converter? (I should re-write that to be pure JavaScript, too) DaveE

If that's how you read it, I'm sorry-- it wasn't intended to be condescending, but more of a... jokingly surprised tone. Ahh, the medium of internet posting. Honestly, I like the image, I just wish there were a little more accompanying information-- IE what each is based on. Hmmm. Makes me wonder if you could make a dynamically sized image that would resize elements to show scale based on input. DaveE

Indeed. From what I understand about ABS, it's a really fuzzy area, since the molecules don't form a rigid, symmetrical structure. It's more of a blob of waviness. I really can't say-- I went back and re-read Nabii's post, and he does say that they purchase it from the same manufacturer, which is pretty indicative that it would be the same plastic. Although, granted, the manufacturer may be doing their production in multiple places as well. Anyway, people aren't always thorough-- it makes me question Nabii's source because I can envision many different ways in which one would mistakenly conclude that the plastics were the same. I don't think either source was lying per se, but obviously one or the other was misinformed, in whole or in part. And I can easily imagine someone concluding that the plastics were the same if they were told one or more of (A) that "both are ABS", (B) that "both come from the same manufacturer", © that "both are subject to the same standards". But what I can't see is how one would *invent* a story about running into a supplier issue with Chinese law, forcing a choice in lesser plastic. Now, I could believe that it's since changed (IE it's no longer relevant, the sources are now the same), that it's restricted to certain elements (IE some elements have the same source of plastic, others do not), or that it's only applicable to certain ASPECTs of the plastic (IE other ingredients are added in addition to dyes that are similarly variable). But any way I slice it, I can't see how the story wouldn't have happened. It just may have different relevance. In the end, I guess it doesn't much matter. The resulting Chinese product is of lesser quality, as evidenced by the translucency and part tolerances, both of which I've experienced firsthand. Whether it's the fault of the plastic, the dye, other ingredients, the molding machines, the process itself, the workers, or the facility, I'm not really sure. DaveE

Depends on the circumstances of LEGO's demise, really. A) Global oil supplies drop making the cost of plastic skyrocket. Consumers can't afford sets at 5+ times their normal cost, so LEGO goes bust. Prices for existing plastic goes up, and prices of old LEGO products increase as well, possibly very sharply depending on the market. B) Global economy takes such a dive that people can't afford LEGO. LEGO goes out of business thanks to phenomenally low demand. In this case, the price for older LEGO probably DECREASES, because the economy has started flushing out LEGO. Millions of people are looking to sell their LEGO to get some extra cash, and far fewer people are looking to buy it. C) New advances in plastics manufacture (IE non-injection molding or something) allow other brands to produce higher quality plastic bricks for cheaper. LEGO for some reason can't get in on it, can't compete, and goes out of business. Old LEGO goes up in cost, but not very dramatically. None of the above are likely to happen in the foreseeable future, though. For the next 10 years, LEGO's good. Once you get to the 10+ year mark, though, it gets a little more difficult to predict. I expect LEGO's future is pretty solid for the next 20 years or so, but I could see an outside chance that there's some sort of global crisis in the 10-20 year ballpark. DaveE

1:60? Who's building at that scale? That would assume a minifig is 8'3" tall (2.5 meters)! Typically, I find that people use approximations of: 1) 1 stud = 1 foot (roughly 1:38.1) 2) 3 studs = 1 meter (roughly 1:41.7) 3) Minifig = 6 feet (roughly 1:43.5) 4) Train rails = 1435mm apart (unsure of the exact scale, but between 1:38 and 1:45) Where do the scales on the image come from that are "commonly used"? I can see anything between 1:38 and 1:44, but what's the basis for using a scale of 1:35, 1:48, or 1:60? They seem like they're out of line with "normal", and the 1:60 is GROSSLY out of scale. [edit]Never mind, on the image comments, I see that he's suggesting that it's based on 6-wide trains, and some trains in the range of 9-10 feet wide. Wow. I never realized how terribly wrong 6-wide actually was![/edit] DaveE

I don't especially like naming particular sources (unless it's someone that does public relations for LEGO like Steve/Jan/Tormod). They're accustomed to delivering LEGO information to the public and to AFOLs, and they know quite clearly what they can say, what they can't say, and what they ought not to say. But I've been friends with other LEGO employees for several years now at Billund, Enfield, and LEGO retail of course-- but they're not really involved in dealing with the public. IE, what I've heard from them hasn't been pre-screened by lawyers, and it's not their job to have such information treated in such a way. They mostly have a good handle on what to say and what not to say, but it's not really the focus of their job to handle releasing information. As such, I'm not technically under any NDA's, verbal agreements, or otherwise to keep information that I've received in such a manner quiet. And since I'm pretty open about such information, and I'm also often vocal about it online, I frequently will share it. But there have also been instances where I have NOT shared such info because I have believed that it OUGHT to be under NDA or otherwise. But in this instance, I didn't feel that this fell into that category. Besides, we all knew that either the plastic or the process was different anyway. So-- we already knew it. If you want to do some chemical analysis tests on it, I'd guess you'd probably find out some more specific differences. Additionally, if you performed stress tests and tolerance checks on it, I'd guess you'd find out the same information (IE, that there are differences). Certainly, we've seen it proven that the plastic is more translucent (that's easily verifiable). Anyway, this information isn't really new, it's just a confirmation from within the company that what we already strongly suspected is correct. Nevertheless, I would feel uncomfortable naming names. And I don't have it in writing. And as it turns out, I wasn't told directly, I was told by a mutual friend that recently heard it firsthand. But I know the source, and the source is from LEGO, and is very reputable. And furthermore, it makes perfect sense, and it doesn't conflict with anything I've heard. I would interpret it to mean that: 1) Yes, the Chinese plastic is a type of ABS 2) No, the Chinese plastic is not the same ABS that is used elsewhere 3) Yes, the Chinese plastic is knowingly of lower quality than LEGO would like, but they had little choice*. DaveE * I obviously don't know the particulars of the choice involved if there was any. Supposedly, it has to do with Chinese law, which I interpret to mean that importing foreign plastic for manufacture was either illegal, incredibly costly, or presented other legal problems (government oversight or otherwise) that made it an invalid option. I haven't done any supporting research, and if you'd like to, I would encourage it. But I would expect that information about foreign suppliers to Chinese factories is publicly documented in some form-- although given their government's tendency for secrecy, it may be difficult to track down, I don't know.