vexorian

Can someone tell thinkgeek people about the barcodes ? :/

Practical concerns with stickers : Hard to put correctly with only one try, piece becomes un-washable and they wear off easily greatly reducing the set's life span. Specially now that LEGO seems to use only white stickers instead of the transparent ones. My Tuma's stickers are already wearing off and also the white border has become noticeable, I am really considering to get rid of them. In technic sets they are usually ok because technic stickers usually add no detail whatsoever so you can get rid of them anyway. Nevertheless, I have a couple of parts from technic sets that were printed. Oh and for things like slizers, bionicle and HF they will completely blow because of the heavy use the sets will get by kids playing with them. The use of stickers in villains is very liberal and I have seen plenty of them in spots that will be vulnerable during a kid's usage. I think plenty of kids will lose their stickers the first year... assuming they actually manage to put the stickers correctly in the first place... I agree that stickers are good when the design is awful and you don't plan using the parts for that set, but then again maybe the better approach in that case is not to buy the set anyway. If you just like the idea of being able to use the parts in MoCs then wiping the prints works just as well, considering that once you remove a sticker for more than a couple of seconds it will never be usable again for that part anyway.

Unlikely The opposite actually (I hate licenses , but the truth is that more often than not they are profit for TLG).LEGO is probably not going to risk losing their Disney license again so that MB takes them over again. It was not positive news for TLG when it happened. The collectible minifigs line is a market test, but not for prospect theme but for the idea of LEGO collectibles.

This sounds like pointless nitpicking!

In this thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5020&st=30&gopid=773553 there are pics of serious crack issues. Apparently his medieval market village has cracks in 1/3 of the pieces only from standing on the shelf.

It is pretty bad, those pieces are not holding any weight, it seems like it is just the single use. Either the molds are wrong and the studs are slightly larger than they should be or they didn't do a procedure of the plastic production correctly. Somehow we have reports from 2009-2010 sets only so I really wonder if it is because of a failed batch.

That's strange considering how those years were the start of the minifig thing. Without minifigs LEGO sets would rather become generic model things. I think I would have stayed with Rasti if it wasn't for the figs which help turn the sets into something that can be played with rather than just constructed. And I am a guy that cares more about construction. I think that kids for example love the minifigs because it gives them something to relate with, instead of a pilot-less ship. It is two points out of 10, it could be worse, like making the set drop to 5 points. When reading eurobricks reviews you shouldn't really give too much value to the final rating but the pictures and the paragraphs, because everybody gives different values to things. For example, I remember a revent review that gave something a 9/10 even though there was a grave plastic quality issue when looking at the pics . The review was still very helpful but I tool a different conclussion than that of the reviewer. I would if the set was large. Less minifigs = less playability and that's very important as you know, it is a kid's toys. Large sets shouldn't get away with having fewer mini-figs than their price would imply, i thin low rating hammer is deserved in those cases.

Although quality has been decreasing, your story is hard to believe. Were the bricks on extreme weather conditions? Were the village buildings used as support for your chair? Post pics also, and I'd try complaining to customer service. Plus verifying authenticity. It is a very extreme case.

How would an ancient theme be harder to sell than the current kingdoms line? They are both history based with no fantasy elements whatsoever. And just like some kids manage to like knights, I see no reason why wouldn't there be kids that like centurions or gladiators. I really did remember TLG saying the minifigs in the collectable series are exclusive to that line. Even if they didn't say so, it would be quite obvious that they wouldn't release them in sets as that would kill their collectible value. That should not mean that, for example, they would not make a different fig with other accessories that represented the same thing as one of the collectable minifigs. IE The cop in series 2 won't prevent town to have cops in the future, the scuba diver didn't stop atlantis from happening, etc. It should also not prevent the new molds from being reused in sets. Edit: LEGO did say that some pieces and accessories created for collectable minifigs won't be ever used again. The Minifigs are the pieces they talk about. Weapons and tools are accessories. In the case of representative figures like centurions or ninjas that would appeal to kids more for being centurions and ninjas than for the specific molds. It does seem unlikely LEGO would release a theme soon that had even other ninjas and centurions. -- Meh I wish I never had playmobil as a child. When you are a kid you think it is cool at first, but then, you can only build the main model (which is actually hard for a kid to build without breaking) oh and lose one of the giant plastic parts and your set has become useless rubish because you can't build anything else but an incomplete boat or castle tower with it. I think megabloks do it better at competing with LEGO. Saying playmobil is a competitor just because the target market is the same, is almost like saying that Barbie is a competitor. Parents would usually not limit themselves to an exclusive kind of toy anyway.

Huh? I can't really see the feminine aspect. The set looks all right aesthetically but I didn't figure out it was "Natalie" Breez until I read the thread title and remembered that the girl this time is not the blue one but the green one...

Since it is a rather unknown brand you should try interlocking the parts with LEGO parts. Usually the very bad clones will have tons of issues when interlocking with LEGO parts, and will either be too loose or too tight. Usually good clones will have worse plastic quality but mold quality will be all right and interlocking will work. Since the wheels don't work it does sound like a bootleg...

The robot and the spaceman are the only figs I am interested in. (series 1 or 2). To be fair, I did hear stuff about the toy story figs. Plus from pics it is clear to me that squeeze aliens have the typical bad plastic quality gloss. The same happens with recent battle packs. My theory is that minifigs cost a lot more to produce than 2 USD. But often times, their cost is amortized by the rest of the set, but when you try to sell minfigs only, it is too much. Whether it is related to the plant being in China or to the plant itself. Quality control has been terrible so far with slight improvements over the years but there are still many complaints about the collectable minifigs.

Aw come on, it is not like they are dropping the original themes altogether. In fact, there are a lot more themes and sets that are not licensed than licensed ones. Plus we have creator and the 16+ sets which are aimed 100% towards construction. A lot of us actually fall into the mistake of giving too much credit to nostalgic value. I mean, although I guess forestmen had good sets, it is not like the recent medieval themes didn't have great stuff, I am personally impressed by the latest king's castle. We had pirates back for a year last year and they released the incredible Imperial flag ship.

All the hero torsos are black.

All the figs have an issue of terrible variance of quality. That said, I remember such thing was not mentioned in the robot review we had like ages ago. I think you just got unlucky and got one of the robots with that quality issue :(

I wouldn't think the alpha team is ever worth buying considering how the much more superior rookies are available at the same cost. The leg armor actually is one of the parts that remind me the most of bionicle as it looks like a combination of the glatorian leg decorations and the metru small armor pieces. It does look much better than any impulse set we've seen in bionicle so far. Though the weapon piece design really has to go, it should be different parts for different colors, really. You may want to change "Bionicle figures" with Bionicle av-matoran/agori/impulse sets.

Are you talking about the Galactic enforcer? In that case, which cheaper sets exactly? Cause I've seen pics of it next to minifigs and I can't think of a cheaper SP3 set that is larger than the galactic enforcer.

Hmnn I am not sure if it is because of lighting but the stickers' color does not seem just 'slightly off' but clearly off. I think I would just not put the stickers on it as the design speaks for itself, really. I think that it really does look like a tank. Btu what I find rather sad about this set is that I can't picture LEGO doing it better, in fact I imagine that if LEGO would either decide to bring a modern day tank set they would replace all those tiles with much larger tile pieces and probably do other things to greatly reduce the piece count and take some of its bricky look away... Well I just like how the tank looks overall. I think I've seen oxford sets somewhere but I am not sure (due to the Korean characters) I have also heard that there are Chinese bootlegs that have much worse plastic quality, so I want to know if I can be sure about it being legit oxford if it has that yellow ghost logo thingy in the box? Edit: Is the canon a single piece ?

Maybe he did.

It is no surprise how mos sets since 2002 used at least one mold from bohroks. Their teeth and eyes are almost ubiquitous, their shields and what in them was the trans canopy are also very useful. There is a reason why they are still strong in hero factory and I don't really seem these molds going away any time soon.

Yes, that's the issue I have here, basically 20% of the plastic used on the hero sets goes to a flashy package. I've been there (storing the set) but it gets dull. I am more the guy to put things on display. Also, many of the Glatorian just didn't fit in their canister without destruction. It was clever with slizers that had even a storage transformation. But the usefulness of canisters has since faded... I could throw them and I guess many people do. But one of the reasons I liked LEGO was how it was rather green regardless of the fact it was plastic. If we all threw our canisters out that would be a lot of plastic waste... I currently am barely able to get space for my collection and the issue keeps growing. I guess it is solvable by not getting the hero sets, but I kind of wanted to get furno.

I wish LEGO would stop it with the canisters. I initially thought they were great for storage, but the piece amount in sets even as old as roboriders were never that large. So I eventually ended having too many canisters and too little pieces to use them. I eventually even used them for system bricks and still, too many canisters hanging around. It got worse when I figured out that there are much better storage options... Tupperware are arguably more useful because you don't need to spill their contents to look for pieces, they are also a lot more space efficient in regards to the volume they take... Plus much cheaper. I think that measuring the amount of plastic, heroes could have been at least a dollar cheaper without the canister... Canisters have now become a storage issue rather than a solution, I really have no idea where to put all my canisters, I might actually get rid of them. But then they become an environmental issue, that's a great con of canisters, they are plastic, not paper can't be recycled, yay... -- Regarding the story. Well, it is not like Bionicle's story was that great, I mean they managed to put a Deus Ex Machina (And suddenly a Red star turns matoran into inika!) into it and it didn't look odd to the fans of the story...

If it is not broken... MB has a wide variety of minifig styles, something that seems more like an identity issue. For example, the HALO figs are just small action figures and although I guess kids like them, I find them very dissappointing cause I could just really put action figures in MoCs if I wanted that stuff. The nice thing about LEGO figs is that they are cartoony and even the peach skin ones are consistent in design with things dating 1980s. So minifigs are part of the construction and identity of LEGO rather than just an action figure you put in the vehicle. If TLG really wanted to add articulation, I hope they do it in a way that parts are still interchangeable and the overall look of the fig remains consistent with the original ones, specially the size and the accessories. In fact, I doubt the attempt would be successful if they do not do that. That's the reason I also dislike technic figs. Anyway, the ears of that pirate one are just too noticeable, I doubt you will be able to use a helmet on that head. Again, it was rather unsuccessful in comparison to Fabuland which lasted 10 years. Even so the count of AFOLs that use Fabuland figs is very small. Plus the scale makes it very unlikely. I think I've seen more fabuland figs being used by AFOLs than technic figs. Where are those things in MoCs? I cannot really remember a single MoC with them. The only thing that comes to my mind is that CopMike sometimes uses a technic body for his sig fig.

<- Big PoP 1 and 2 fan. Hated PoP after wards. Will keep hatin' after the crappy movie.

Yeah, I have never been a fan of fabuland figs for the same reasons. But at least their size is compatible with the other figs and MoCs. I think this is really the main issue with 4+ figs. Anyway, fabuland lasted for 10 years and 106 sets. Jack stone, and 4+ have lasted for so little time each that it seems that TLG had issues selling them. It does not seem these themes had enough market penetration. In my attempts to google these figs I kept finding FOLs that were completely regretful of getting those sets due to the figs being incompatible with 'real' figs... Mark my words, Jack Stone figs are not going to get more legitimate unless somehow LEGO makes new themes with them and finds a magic recipe to be able to sell them. But it seems like they have stopped trying by now. It is right that in many ways this is due to people preferring what's more familiar to them. And that's exactly the reason the 4+ figs were a mistake. Familiarity is a force to be reckoned with. If TLG wanted to introduce new figs to the market, the least they could have done was to keep the size close and accessories compatible. There is an inherent issue with the minifig being currently so iconic to LEGO products. My little cousin thinks that minifigs are called "Legos". That's mostly due to a new wave of cable commercials and marketing (ie hose LEGO Starwars/Indy/Batman 3D shorts keep getting played at a certain cable channel we have in here) that was successful in selling LEGO to him and kids his age but also in tying the minifigs to LEGO's identity.