Legoist

I voted for the Woodcutter but it was an extremely tough call among practically half of the series, so I'm still possibly changing the vote later on. All in all it's quite a balanced series... for me it's not as good as Series 4 or Series 2, but most of the figs are good. I'll probably end up getting only a bunch of these, and 1-2 max per fig.

I would also consider the Collectable Minifigures series for army building. Pros: - they are cheaper than getting discontinued minifigs from BrickLink - you only buy the minifigs, no need to pay for other bricks as in regular Castle sets - you can get them new & shiny - they have high quality prints Cons: - you need to hunt for them in shops (consider yourself if this is actually better or worse for you than hunting for old minifigs on BL) - some quality issue especially in the legs' plastic, but the same thing happens with the battlepacks - they are all identicals, so if you want variations on the faces or weaponry you'll need some further work - none of them is "generic medieval" but always more specific If you're thinking about armies of hundreds then getting enough CM will be very challenging, but if your armies are going to be up to 50 I think it'll be easy enough. Some CM which serve the purpose well are: - S1: Forestman - S2: Spartan Warrior - S3: Elf, Samurai Warrior - S4: Musketeer, Viking - S5: Royal Guard, Gladiator, Dwarf

One of the best interior decoration job I've ever seen!

I was not aware that Legends had been a line of its own, I thought it was just an occasional re-issue of an older set, but it does seem they were all released within a few years. This is a list of Legends from peeron: http://www.peeron.co...me/LEGO/Legends IMHO it makes no sense to re-release a set of the past if the parts and colours are not exactly the same as the originals. If it's not possible to do so, they should just avoid totally. Also those Legends were re-released after ~10 years of the original release, up to ~25 years. These are good time lapses IMO. The key challenge is clearly which sets to pick. Looking at the list above I believe the Metroliner was a no-brainer, but some of the others? To re-ignite the Legends line they would need IMHO to pick sets which are old enough, large size, and then make the effort of producing the parts exactly as they were including the discontinued colours. I believe that it is still possible for TLG to make a run of parts in the old greys for instance, it's clearly going to be more expensive due to the much smaller amount to produce for a Legend re-issue (still, not so expensive as re-creating an old mould tho), but then they could charge a premium price for that and it would make sense. For example if they re-issued sets like the yellow Castle, the Galaxy Explorer and the 12V Intercity Train* (3 real legends of the 80s...) I am sure that there are many AFOLs who would pay premium price for them, considering that buying a MISB of these on the secondary market costs an insane price! If re-issued with old grey parts to be exactly identical to the originals, there are lots of people out there who would pay twice or three times as much per piece to get these sets (note that generally 20+ year old sets don't have that many pieces...), it will still be convenient. But if re-issued with the new grey, most people wouldn't bother because it's not the same and at that point, you can probably just build it yourself buying all the parts for a much smaller price! what makes it difficult to do so normally is that parts in the original colours have never been made again (see the infamous problem with the blue windows of Diesel Shunter). Doing so just to keep the cost down, even if worth -30% which I hardly believe would be the case, it would turn the Legends re-issue into a non-premium product. *eventually, old trains are impossible to re-issue due to different power systems (and also, "wrong" power system would put many customers off), but I think it will be a good idea in that case to release them without motor at a lower cost, and then let the customer add its preferred motors

...but I really hope it's not going to be a licensed theme There's no need to pay Disney to make a princess/fairytales product, as long as you don't copy the specific look & clothes of their cartoon characters, and certainly Disney doesn't own the rights on the names of characters from famous fairytales but at most only the appearance used in their animated movies.

Nice layout! I like how you bundled the cables into some kind of aerial line! Have you made a yellow version of the red 7725 electric passenger train from the 80s over there?

Wow... the giga-buildings must have taken a while to build But my favourite shots are those with the custom locos of course!

So Vikings and Dwarves are as unavailable as Ninjas (not anymore due to NinjaGo) and Indians. Why should it matter to TLG if AFOLs know how to find old minifigs (for high prices...) on the secondary market? If officially there are no Vikings and Dwarves sets on sale, then making these minifigs available in CM makes sense. Everyone has its own potential use (or no use) for these minifigs of course... Nevertheless they're all at the very least variations on existing minifigs. I don't know your preferences, but for me the ideal would be better to have all different figs in a diorama (except eventually grouped figs like those wearing the same uniform), so every time there is a new urban [surfer, skater, dancer/singer] minifig in CM for me it is a sure-buy because it provides me one more variation. Admittedly, I only buy 1 each so I'm not the type that provides huge revenues to the CM line

Uhm... while it is totally possible that at some point the CM series will come to an end, let's not forget that Lego always has one factor to its advantage: demographics Until the day people stop making children, there will always be new customers! It would be nice to know how much of the revenue for CM comes from KFOLs and how much from AFOLs. We know that KFOLs > AFOLs in terms of number, but I imagine that the average KFOL wants to collect all the 16 figures so they end up buying maybe 20-25 to complete a series, while the average AFOL interested in CM buys a case. So maybe at some point the average AFOL just realizes he bought 1000s of minifigs and decides to take a break because he's not using them, and CM sales may decrease. But this coupled with more difficulty in coming up with new minifig concepts may (hopefully) result in having less series per year, maybe TLG will only lower down to 1 series / year and could settle to that for many years to come.

That's actually a very good idea, I should think about stea... ehm... be "inspired" by it

I like your uncle. I think what saves me from spending too much on a set is also the idea that there are so many thousands of Lego sets existing, that not a single one - however cool it looks - is really necessary. I'm a huge fan of trains and missed the BNSF and SantaFe because I was still in my dark age, and for a while I contemplated the idea of getting one for the current extortionate prices. But ultimately I don't really need it. Why should I need exactly those by the way? There is always an alternative. And as an AFOL, what I actually need is MOCing not owning a certain commercial set.

Also, a bottom line about the nostalgic feeling of "the world is not as nice as it used to be"... Past the young age, everyone has its own version of this feeling. It could be focusing on toys/hobbies or the look of your old alley/suburbs/town/country, or the TV shows or the icecreams and the snacks, and so on... Truth is, everything changes but what we really miss is not the stuff, it's ourselves. The stuff was not really better then, but we were. Because we were kids, and there's no way to get that back.

It was so hard to decide what to vote on question 2... Really, did we need that question?

Only until they added wheels: those devilish modern inventions...

Good analysis! Tho I don't understand what you mean with "element quality", do you mean the currently made parts are not the best in terms of durability/robustness? Or design-wise because they are not always very reusable (but that overlaps with juniorization)? Or something else? Also I don't agree very much with the "theme specificity" as being a negative quality. For instance I definitely preferred the classic space theme of exploration with no enemies and no factions, and personally I think that always insisting on good guys vs bad guys/monsters/alien is even educationally questionable (it kinds of teaches the dread "black & white world" scheme that on one hand can be a fine simplification for children, but at a certain point of age it should be left behind for a more realistic view of the world...), but anyway KFOLs will play good vs evil games and battles and accidents and other gory things even if you just give them Bellville sets And on the other hand, AFOLs will simply ignore the whole theme background story because they're interested only in building (at least officially...). Of course the theme story reflects the design of the sets, and also viceversa, but in my opinion it's so optional that it becomes a non-issue. (edit) Also the juniorization aspect is debatable... In terms of single parts, definitely in the 70s-80s there were very few giant specialized pieces. Today we have an occasional horror (personally I loath the airplane cockpits and 1-piece wings, and the boats hulls tho these are dictated by floatability), but the mid-size parts such as windscreens and car bases existed since the late 70s, we just have more variations on them. There is then juniorization of the parts (which I agree today is higher than before) and juniorization of the builds, which instead was at its worst in the mid-late 90s and early 00s. Today sets have some large part but at the same time a lot of miniature details which compensate and make the typical overall build definitely more complex than before hence less <insert that tiresome argument>.

I was not aware of your minimization series. It's a very original idea and with great results!

The Eurobrick Ladies should chime in here and tell us what did THEY like (or would have liked) to do with Lego when they were children. My daughter is still too young to give me clues... she loves playing with the minifigs and tries to build some small stuff, but nothing of what she builds is particularly "girly". Of course girls don't actually need a girly theme, they can build and play any other theme, but if TLG is releasing something specifically girly, I have a hard time imagining anything else than something similar to Paradisa. Although a fairytales parallel to Kingdoms would be also a good idea. Edit: actually all of a sudden having a daughter feels so convenient... 'cause I would love a fairytales theme

How much more expensive could it be really? How much cheaper are these minifigs compared of what they would be if they used normal ABS plasic? From those minifigs I already have, it's always the legs that seems to be using lower-quality plastic, and sometimes the torsos (but some other times they seem normal to me). If they made all legs in normal, high-quality ABS, how much would the minifigs cost? I have a hard time believing they will increase by more than a couple of dimes... judging by the price of other themes and sets regular minifigs don't seem to be that much more expensive. Collectable minifigs receive more investment in the design, but then they are also manufactured in very large quantities anyway so economies of scale should apply to CM also. I'd be fine with spending 0.50e more for each minifig in exchange for a quality improvement. Haven't you really noticed anything different? I think it's easy to "feel" that the plastic is not the same in the legs and some torsos (e.g. Hockey Player, Werewolf) at least. However other torsos (especially the heavily printed ones) feel quite normal to me. I'm not sure but I wonder if this is related somehow to the minifig rarity distribution, is it possible that TLG uses more parts in low-quality plastic for the more common minifigs? That said, the "feeling" itself is not the problem. But it does raise questions and concerns about the durability: will these legs break easily is a couple of years of playing with them? will the prints fall off more quickly from CM compared to normal minifigs? I think these are legitimate worries!

It would be interesting to know your age, because almost all of us at a certain point have been into the "Lego is not as good as it used to be" phase For example around 20-25 years old a lot of people have a "nostalgia crisis" when they start missing childhood stuff that they hastily dismissed in their teenager years, and now they look back and overestimate its objective value. I am 35, so for my own nostalgia tells me Lego were best in the 80s. But when I objectively look at the design and the variety of the sets, I have to admit that the best era of Lego is NOW. Sure there are some themes which are hideous from my point of view, namely those more children oriented (e.g. Power Miners, NinjaGo, ToyStory and now Alien conquest), but you have to judge the Lego offer by looking only at what YOU prefer, don't look at ALL themes available, which by the way are so many that no one can possibly be interested in all of them. Just think of what YOU want from Lego and ignore themes that are just since the start out of your interest range, and you'll still find plenty of stuff, and then judge only that stuff. For example, as an AFOL I shun all the action-oriented themes, I just don't even look at them unless for parts useful in MOCing (actually, almost all I buy is for MOCing anyway). So to me it's irrelevant if the SpongeBob theme sucked hard like it fact it did, because to me it's just supposed to suck But I look at the last 3-4 years of the City theme and it's better than it has ever been before, and so are the StarWars theme, the Creator theme, the Kingdoms theme (except the castles themselves perhaps), the Train theme, the modular buildings...

If it's not a mistake (I doubt) then it must be a marketing decision. Like the different countries prices in S@H.

Very small, great work! Thanks a lot for sharing your solution! Ditto, this is pretty much as essential feature if you ask me

Great pic... I was not aware there were so many colours for minifig parts. I did know that at least the head piece exists in many colours of course, and some transparent ones as well. Does anybody know if legs and torsos have ever be made transparent?

Very nice! The Köf locomotives have always been among my favourite shunters, and I have been planning for a long time to make one, so it's nice to have someone else's rendition as an example.

That's a good build, I really like the crowded interiors :) ...when I looked at the first two pictures, the first thing I thought was that the guy in green goes inside to buy himself... a face! The guy in tan just got one, and is fairly pleased with the results. The two inside are banging on the glass to run out because they are next customers who just learned that the process will be a bit too painful. I need more morning coffee now

This is already a great job! If you integrate it later on a larger layout, perhaps themed as a yard for repairing/cleaning the locos, it will be superlative. Please embarass yourself and let us know! I'm curious...