AndyC

I just don't get why I would want to "like" a project as well as supporting it. It just seems like a fundamentally pointless duplication of things. Being able to say "I don't like this project, don't show it to me again and adapt your choice of promoted projects that I see based on that" would be preferential to showing numerical "dislike" counts too. Why shouldn't the CuuSoo projects I see be based on my personal preferences, rather than some universally fixed selection?

Great review. The side on views of both designs really show how much the redesigned front was needed to get a realistic look and it doesn't look quite so bad in many of your photos compared to the official shots. I was inevitably always going to buy this, it's Lego and Back To The Future after all, but I'm glad to see that I probably won't be disappointed by the result.

Sadly this is where some of the money you spend on sets goes, paying for parts that other people obtain through deceitful methods. I'm not really sure that's entirely true. A seller on bricklink has already paid that "brand tax" that when they obtained the parts in the first place, so it's inevitably incorporated into their costs too.

Another thing to bear in mind is that prices on Bricklink are more based upon a parts perceived value than necessarily what it costs to produce, so some reasonably common pieces may actually be selling at below what their real cost price would be. As long as Bricklink sellers are obtaining these from sets with particularly desirable pieces, such as rare minifigs, they can still make an overall profit.

Do any of them actually have the word 'CuuSoo' on them? As far as I can tell (and I haven't bought any as yet) they aren't actually branded any differently to other sets. I'd be genuinely surprised if TLG aren't performing that kind of analysis on the process anyway, it's a fairly obvious source of good data.

Well yes, but the same happens if you want to buy from several eBay sellers too. Bricklink isn't really a single store, as such, but more an overall marketplace that brings all the stores together, in much the same way eBay is.

Personally I think the best approach is only to buy sets you'll be happy to open if they turn out not to be profitable. No matter how hard you try, picking the ones that both increase in value and that you can manage to sell on at profit is never going to be an exact science. Which means either you go down the route of parting out sets and selling piece-by-piece (a slow and not necessarily profitable route) or you just open up those that you can't sell and enjoy them for what they are. Spending more than you can afford on the assumption some great profit will come out of it one day is a fools game, however.

If I can ever manage to pick my jaw back off the floor, I'll get this. Truly epic. And a massive improvement on the Death Star playset that it inevitably will replace.

8038 is the best so far, but the rubbish "walking" feature harms the design somewhat I think. It's not too hard to mod out, but that's kind of cheating in a comparison really. Here's hoping the next AT-ST is another leap forward.

Both of Solidbrick's baseplates are available in my Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s2ophgpthj83h4b/EvsjxPc29y

It's worth noting that Bricklink's "silver" colours are rarely very accurate, so the same "real" colour often get labelled in different ways dependent on who submitted the set information. And similarly buying silver pieces can also be a bit hit and miss, since they too are subject to misidentification at times.

As far as I'm aware, the primary reason for the change is because the old style bricks can lead to builds which get "out of system", since it is possible to place them at fractional offsets unintentionally. The new design, on the other hand, forces the build to remain in system at the expense of allowing certain kind of flexible designs that were otherwise achievable. As to the name, I think "macaroni" bricks is just an AFOL term and not a LEGO one, in the same way AFOLs refer to "slopes" where LEGO consider them "roof bricks".

Faefrost's explanation is correct, although extremely simplified. There are reams of other factors to consider, for example a direct currency conversion ignores the fact that wages differ across nations so whilst the cost may appear higher, as a percentage of typical wage it may well not be. You'd have a much stronger argument if you can find consistent examples where competing products, say Playmobil, don't vary similarly in price.

Definitely did it and mostly because I never had enough parts in any one colour to build consistently (not even in a way that could represent stripes etc). As a result, trying to get the 'right' colours was something not worth worrying about and I just ended up aiming for the shape of whatever it was I attempted to create. It's liberating in a way not to have to consider the colours. Of course I have a much richer selection of parts now and an adults appreciation of what looks good, so I'm more likely to focus on colours too, at the expense of some freedom alas.

10179 re-release, slim to none. TLG have been burnt in the past by re-releasing old sets and are unlikely to do it again. A redesign is more likely, but possibly not just yet. I think a UCS Tie fighter is possibly more likely next. I think it'll depend somewhat on whether TLG think they can improve upon the existing MF design to capture the collectors eye once more.

Aftermarket sales are rarely a good thing for any manufacturer. Whilst it's true they do benefit from speculative purchases initially, the aftermarket effectively becomes a competitor for all new products. It's particularly troublesome if the original product effectively had to be "dumped" at heavily discounted sale prices since the resellers are then operating with much larger room for margins than TLG themselves can achieve.

Looking at the sticker, I think "Hey Babe" is actually referring to the builder himself, in a sort of ironic humorous way. Note, for example, the builder is in a "sexy" pose. Clearly as a joke it doesn't really work as it's not really very obvious what it's supposed to mean. And even then it's not really very funny anyway.

Collectors of pretty much anything would like their particular aftermarket to stay healthy and thus guarantee the value of their collection. But the world is a fickle old place and you always have to accept that might not be the case - even without big sales you could never really know that Star Wars won't suddenly fall from fashion and the demand for sets dry up entirely. It's always going to be pure speculation.

That's your prerogative of course, but there will always be some people who'll buy anyway - either because they're big enough fans to not wait, or they're buying for a specific occasion (birthday etc). And there's always the possibility you sit around waiting for some massive discount, maybe passing over other opportunities like 10% off or double VIP points, only for the grand discount to never arrive, leaving you to buy it full price or miss out entirely. Like others, I suspect the B-Wing just wasn't shifting the expected number of units in the states, for whatever reason. I seem to recall picking up the JSF at similarly discounted prices over here. I doubt it marks some sort of ominous end to the UCS line's profitability. Though it may change TLG's strategy in more subtle ways, not having quite such a high price bracket for the less mainstream models or introducing exclusive minifig into sets to bolster their potential appeal (we've already seen that with the SSD for example)

Pretty sure Jamie Berard was once asked about the possibility of re-releasing the earlier modulars. The basic problem with that is that many of the parts involved are out of production and the molds retired (the panels for the windows and the 5 high doors for example). So any re-release would end up having to be a somewhat revised design. Experience with trying to do that in the Lego Legends line proved to be rather unsuccessful - people who wanted them weren't really satisfied with a near copy, if they were they'd probably be just as likely to have bricklinked a version already. At the end of the day, it's probably much easier for TLG to produce and market an entirely new modular building, which will sell to the people who've already got all of them as well as those interested in starting a collection, than it is to try and revive one of the older ones. You're probably better off hoping TLG bring out a new model with some of the rarer part/colour combinations (much as Pet Shop did with the dark red slopes) so that bricklink prices of the rarer parts come down somewhat.

Given enough time, skill and CPU power, yes. After all you can just keep iterating small changes till you eventually end up with exactly the same image. Though in truth there is probably a law of diminishing returns when it comes to trying to mimic tiny details. FWIW I think the problem with digital entries in most competitions is less that they don't look as good, but more that they allow you to construct things which would simply be impossible in reality.

That kind of misses the point though. Cuusoo is giving you a place to make your pitch where it is guaranteed you will be heard by TLG, if you can demonstrate their is sufficient support for your idea. It's entirely up to you to make a good pitch and to convince enough people to put their support behind it too. Simply building a model isn't, and really shouldn't be, enough on it's own. I don't really see that as a 'commitment', ethical or otherwise and I don't see how it could be when TLG themselves don't commit to making a product just because it reaches 10,000 votes (and even if they do, don't commit to making it as-is). Rather that is about estimating what the base-level price would need to be before people start to go off the idea. So what you're saying there is "For a set like this, I'd be prepared to pay up to $X" This helps the review process because if a massive set, like the UCS Sandcrawler, get's 10,000 votes but they typically wouldn't pay more than $50, it's more likely to be a non-starter. Nobody has committed to buy, so they're really only going to be considering whether people are undervaluing the set in general, which might affect saleability.

As a kid back in the eighties, one thing you could guarantee looking through anyone's Lego collection was that it would contain a fair few broken clips and usually a few of the Classic Space helmets with a broken chin strap. As much as people say the quality has gone down, I'm not so sure that isn't a slightly rose tinted view. Maybe the cheese slope is just the modern equivalent, a little too close to the point of tolerance. I can't say I've noticed any cracking on mine, though I haven't exactly studied any for signs.

Genuinely brilliant. St Paul's is a gorgeous building and you've done a fantastic job of recreating it.

A single battery box can only handle 2 L Motors, and then only with the V2 receiver. If you're planning on a four motor vehicle you're definitely going to need at least two battery boxes so that's probably the place to start.