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What doesn't make sense to me is that if you don't get the pieces you need when bricklinking then how are you going to get them buying sets? Buying sets will leave usually leave you with a bunch of un-needed parts. Unless you want to run your own store to get rid of them, and make it a decent sized store to get enough traffic, then you'd probably be better off just bricklinking the parts. So, why don't you get the parts you need when bricklinking anyway? Are you just not disciplined enough and buy all the shiny things? I find that hard too.

Two of the Minecraft micro worlds have good colours in small plates and tiles. EB Games in Australia still have them.

That's fair enough. For some things you could quickly touch them up in Photoshop but the parts still need to be pretty pristine overall.

Yeah, I pretty much refuse to ever do the looking through huge box of LEGO for 1 or few parts ever again. Even tipping it out on a large surface is not enough. All of my stuff gets sorted and put into tackle boxes or similar in a logical way. It takes a while but once it's done once I can find anything I need fairly quickly and it doesn't interrupt building.

Good review. Thanks. However, it's a little odd reading so many times things like "I don't know about this, I've been away....".

I'm confused by two things. Firstly, your words sounded quite positive throughout the review until the end when suddenly the scores are 6, 6 and 5. These are pretty low scores. Secondly, the average overall was 5.7 but then you say you gave it a 3. What does this mean? And if you give it a 3, why so low? That's not even 1/3rd marks. I would reserve that kind of score for a set that was really terrible, yet your text does not paint that picture.

That sounds very plausible. Not many sets have that much orange.

Yeah, I guess they should probably stick to bright colors so it stands out in a pile of parts. Like orange, yellow, lime, medium azure, bright pink, white.

Yes, it's a shame as that tree usage is quite useful but then it messes with arch shapes for buildings. Can't win. Oh well.

They introduced the version of the arch with the 1 stud wide flat underside to replace one that was a smooth curve but then seemingly realised it was a mistake. So they have apparently gone back to an all smooth curve. They may have run out of the flat bottomed ones so substituted the new ones (or the older ones). They probably should have contacted you to confirm if this was OK though.

The largest baseplates are 48x48. Almost nothing in LEGO is in sizes that end in a 5 (5, 15, 25, etc). BrickLink is definitely the way to go for bulk bricks, often from German stores. But if you are working on such a large project it would be a good idea to at least make a rough version in Lego Digital Designer and use it to tell you how many bricks you need. From experience building my first big MOCs it is very easy to grossly under estimate the amount of parts needed. If there is a lot of repetition in the build you can use copy and paste to quickly build up a rough version in LDD and then you can have a much better estimate. Humans are often good at extrapolating distance and area but not volumes and the volume of something grows much more quickly than the area. So as a build idea gets bigger it can quickly get out of hand without you realising it. The positive dreaming and scheming side of our thoughts may come to the fore at the expense of the more negative critical and analytical side.

It's a real shame that the video for this kickstarter was a bit unprofessional. Guy in a t-shirt, weird collections of random colored blocks. It didn't do a great job of selling me on the idea. I'd have made some decent MOCs and shown them with and without lights, shown them moving with lights still on but no wires, shown builds that would not be possible before as there was no where to fit the wires. He also didn't show what the power source looked like under the base.

Other elements that are "missing" from their range surprise me more. E.g. a 1x8 brick in Orange would have been perfect for the large Chima Tiger tribe vehicle out now. Along each side it uses 2 1x4 bricks since there are no 1x8s. Then there is the 1x2 tile. I really thought they would produce those in Olive Green for the Chima line. Nope. Lots of other weird olive green pieces but not that simple tile. A more specialised peice is one of my favourite pieces: 51739 Wedge Plate 2 x 4. Dying for this in tan, olive green and a pale to medium blue or azure. Nope.

Yep. That happens far too much.

The colour from the Simpsons House has limited use though. That part was made in white too and thankfully there are 3 2015 sets that contain it in white.

You have to remember that your experience is probably representative of about 0-5% of customers. Most customer's don't buy anywhere near enough sets, let alone larger sets, to get this number of brick separators. When I was a kid we were reasonably well off and Lego was my favourite toy, I collected all the catalogs, and every time we went to the Kmart, Target, etc., I spent ages in the Lego aisle dreaming of what I would do with the sets. But until I left high school the number of sets I owned that would be the equivalent of a set that today would have a brick separator is about 6-10 at most. And given that people with shoe boxes full of these are probably 0-5% of customers TLG can't be expected to base their policies on those customers's experience.

Me too. I do multiple versions of things in LDD until it's right, then BrickLink the parts. Learnt my lesson early on though about designing in LDD without taking care to ensure everything was actually connected together soundly and that only parts that actually exist in plastic were used. Once I designed a fire truck and only found out after finishing it that the very solid looking model in LDD had a section in the middle where there was nothing actually joining the sections fore and aft.

I think old licenses from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s that don't have new content are not a great idea as kids won't necessarily know about them. If it's ubiquitous that's fine but not things that older people just reminisce about. I'd like to see: - A hard fanstasy styled theme, like D&D, LotR, Elder Scrolls, WoW, etc. but not licensed. - A more hard sci-fi styled theme as well, something aimed at a bit higher age group, say 11 and up, so it's not so silly with giant guns. Something more along the lines of Mass Effect, Galactica, etc. with a good story line to back it up. Star Wars is cool but it feels like it stifles other opportunities. I guess we have to live with that for the greater good of Lego. - A science theme that teaches chemistry and let's you build molecules. - Improvements to Technic to make it more high tech with better LED lights, RC and/or Bluetooth control bricks, high power motors for making fast vehicles, and associated Apple/Android/Windows/Linux apps. Luckily third parties are working well on some of this. - A natural world theme with models of animals, plants, fish, environmental concepts, more like the Lego Ideas birds set.

I feel part limited all the time because I'm very picky about what I build and how to build it. I don't just build out of whatever parts I have or change the build to accomodate different parts. I build models and try to build as accurately as I can. So I'm always needing an exact part and more often than not, with my smallish/newish collection, I either don't have it or don't have enough. My collection is also so small that I don't even have enough of basic bricks, plates, tiles, etc. to do buildings of 'modular' size.

Amen!

Thanks for the history lesson Deathleech. I really wish the sets would work together more to build something bigger. We often get a small set that connects to the a bigger one, like in current pirates sets, but I really wish they would have more sets and continue a line over 2-3 years and if you bought them all you could assemble something epic.

I like the new Elves stuff too. I've got 4 of the first wave of sets. I wish the Friends/Elves minidolls had legs that articulated individually and were a little less skinny and big-eyed, but they are still cool.

But the last castle sets used lions again which were used before... I'm not that knowledgeable but it seemed it was pretty much a rehash of a prior idea...

Very nice work! Thanks for sharing.

I think this is an issue where AFOLs lose perspective a bit. It's best to step back and re-evaluate. The experience of AFOLs is not the experience of most kids. Many kids don't get any expensive sets, their parents can't afford them. When they do get a more expensive set it may be the one and only time they get a brick separator, or they may get a handful over 5 or 10 years. AFOLs who spend a couple of hundred dollars a month are really far from the average user. You also can't just walk into Target and buy a brick separator by itself, at least not in Australia, and most kids are not going to go online to the S@H and order one. So it's not that useful to point out that they can be bought sperately. However, I think it would be a great idea if every LEGO stockist had to put these on the shelf for $3 or so. LEGO could then remove them from the sets and it would probably lead to more kids having them.