Aanchir

Well, this year TLG did follow up on the modularity of 7946, in that both 70402 and 70404 are compatible with it. 70402 is nice in terms of being stylistically compatible with 70404 while still being unique enough not to feel like "just another wall segment". It'd be nice to see more modular expansions, though, with more of an emphasis on different interior details. Yeah, Hogwarts Castle definitely had more interior details than a lot of LEGO castles. And it's somewhat noteworthy that like some other licensed themes, the Harry Potter sets were included in the "Building Sets For Girls" category on shop.LEGO.com. So it's clear that even before LEGO Friends, TLG recognized that these kinds of details were things girls tended to like. One wonders if some of these details were included in the sets to cater to a more diverse audience or whether the sets were advertised to a more diverse audience because they included these details. A real chicken-and-egg question, and I'd be willing to wager that it was a mix of the two. Obviously some of the interior details like the great hall were just inherent to the Harry Potter franchise, but the set designs still had something of a dollhouse feel that surely anticipated the interest girls would have in the theme. This is the kind of multi-demographic appeal I'd like to see in LEGO Castle sets one day. The question that arises is how feasible this is. With licensed themes like Harry Potter and Spongebob Squarepants, courting an audience is not as much of a challenge because an audience of boys and girls alike is basically handed to the LEGO Group on a silver platter. Boys won't start thinking Harry Potter is girly just because girls happen to like it as well; that just comes with the territory. There's more risk of that kind of stigma arising in a non-licensed theme that has to generate its own appeal from the ground up.

I hardly think Hero Factory was a terrible story idea. The idea was generally to be a more intuitive story with less dense mythology. And I think they've carried that out fairly well. The only place I'd say the Hero Factory story media really suffers greatly is the TV episodes, where action scenes sometimes feel somewhat disjointed and jokes often fall flat. But the core story is generally effective, and a lot easier for kids and adults to understand than the complex mythology and universe mechanics of BIONICLE. I don't think a lack of ideas was what caused BIONICLE to end, either. Faltering toy and media sales were the chief reason, not helped by the fact that older fans were leaving the BIONICLE fandom faster than new fans could enter it. Plus, the set designers apparently wanted to move onto something new and different. BIONICLE was not planned to last beyond 2011 anyway, and the design process for Hero Factory's new building system began as early as 2008. So its grand finale was really only pushed ahead by about a year. It's interesting to speculate whether gear functions and the like would have a chance of returning in a BIONICLE reboot. This year's Hero Factory sets do have some functions, including swinging-arm and flapping-wing functions, even if these don't rely on gears. So it's clear there's still appeal in action figures with these kinds of action features. Overall, though, I doubt we'd ever see gear functions of the sort featured in 2001-2004 BIONICLE sets, just because those typically relied on highly-specialized gearboxes, which are the sort of part TLG does well to avoid these days. I imagine torso styles for a BIONICLE reboot or for any new action figure theme of that sort would be closer to the Toa Inika or Hero Factory torso designs: very simple Technic-based torsos designed with useful connection points in mind, with any additional volume and detail added in the form of separate armor pieces.

Multi-colored parts are especially common in themes like BIONICLE, but there are several examples of multi-colored parts in LEGO System. One of the earlier System examples I know if is Fawkes the phoenix from the 2002 LEGO Harry Potter sets, who was a blend of red and orange plastic. The technical term for parts with this quality is "co-injected" — that is to say, there are two injection points in the mold for injecting two different colors, and the colors blend together in the middle for a marbled look. More recent multi-colored parts include the dragon wings that have been used in LEGO Castle since their introduction in the Vikings sets of 2006, the parrots in the 2009 Pirates theme (which are indeed single pieces of ABS made with both red and green plastic), various BURPs, the two-tone flame pieces and lightning pieces, and the rubber-tipped spears in the Collectible Minifigures. Last year's Hero Factory sets introduced a brand-new innovation, a lightning weapon piece molded from three separate colors (Bright Yellow, Transparent Light Blue, and Titanium Metallic). Most recently, co-injected parts have been used for the "evil brains" in this year's Hero Factory villain sets, the sword blades in this year's Ninjago sets, and the sphere used for the Palantir in the Lord of the Rings Tower of Orthanc. Co-injected parts are listed in TLG's parts database with the color name "Multicombination", though this name is also used for several parts pre-assembled from separately-molded sections. Prior to the introduction of co-injection molds, marbled or "flame-colored" parts did still exist, but these were usually an unintended consequence of a mold being changed over from molding one color of part to molding another color of the part without the vats of plastic being cleaned out in between. I hear they were fairly rare and highly sought-after by collectors, much like misprint trading cards. But this is more or less hearsay because I only found out about this phenomenon by reading about it after-the-fact.

Yes, but even when it lights up there won't be the same glowing "haze" around it as you see in some of these photos. It'll just light up the piece itself and anything that's within reach of its light. Just look at some of the antennas that stick forward against the backdrop and you'll see what I mean. There's some definite retouching to emphasize that effect. And that's not something I personally have a problem with.

To be fair, professional video cameras actually used to be that bulky decades ago! I just as often thought of that as a camera (in sci-fi settings, maybe a futuristic heat-vision camera or scanner) or a weapon, usually depending on who was carrying it. Well, I'm often conflicted about that kind of thing. Kids might not find as much use for these kinds of parts as more basic plates. At the same time, as an AFOL I have learned to celebrate NPU (Nice Part Use), and the use of those wing elements (which were originally airplane tails) is a good example of that. It's not that much different functionally from how a lot of older Space sets used parts like this, this, or (getting closer in scale) this as wings. On the whole, LEGO Space has a long-standing heritage of using specialized parts, either those specifically designed for the theme or those borrowed from other themes. And I think that most Galaxy Squad sets still maintain a good balance between very specialized detail elements and more versatile building elements. Those wings on the Swarm Interceptor are easily the parts with the most limited usefulness on any of the human vehicles, and I think only the Crater Creeper and Swarm Interceptor are especially limiting in terms of what you can rebuild them into.

Definitely, and it wouldn't be the first time some countries have had to wait a full half a year for the release of a theme. I believe some countries were waiting for quite a while on the first wave of Galaxy Squad, this year's Space theme. Then again, we in the United States sometimes have to wait a half a year before we get certain sets available in Europe: the final waves of Power Miners and Atlantis were released in Europe at the beginning of 2010 and 2011, respectively, but in the United States we had to wait an additional six months before the release of the two largest sets from either theme's final wave. Also, I'm surprised to find so many people who had that Mega Bloks castle! It was not an especially good set but it still comes to mind whenever I think about what LEGO Castles are still missing today. Since the new LEGO Castle, like the Kingdoms one before it, has a modular design, I wonder if anyone will design new modules for it that incorporate some of these features. I haven't collected LEGO Castles for a long time, but I know my way around LEGO Digital Designer and wouldn't mind giving it a shot myself!

Well, there's something of a question here since the Brick Testament could potentially be defended as parody, whereas an original story might not. But I think it does demonstrate something significant: The LEGO Group is fairly lenient when it comes to letting people publish work that uses LEGO as an artistic or narrative medium. Now, that doesn't mean you get an automatic go-ahead. Why don't you ask TLG directly, through their customer service department's e–mail or through one of the LEGO Community Coordinators like Jan Beyer or Kevin Hinkle, whether you can use photographs of LEGO models in your project? I'm sure that even if they couldn't answer your question directly, they could give you the contact details of somebody with more insight into the matter.

Yeah, I definitely agree that kids are smart enough to know the difference between an effect on a product's box art and the actual functionality of the toy. At least from my experience, if a toy has special functions like electric light and sound or glow-in-the-dark elements, the product will actually advertise these features in a callout that is clear and legible. It'd be a much different issue if TLG were the ONLY company adding digital effects to their product images, but as it is kids today are raised in a consumer climate where they learn not to expect more from a product than what a company has explicitly promised them. And this is hardly something TLG has started doing in the past few years. Look at any M:Tron package. All the fluorescent elements in the sets have been retouched to show a glowy effect. Even if the parts are fluorescent and glow under a blacklight, there is no lighting effect that will create the glowing "aura" that surrounds the parts as seen in these product images. This effect was more subdued but still present in subsequent space themes.

You're probably correct. It goes to show that even working with a licensee that is known to be cooperative with TLG is a huge risk for LEGO Cuusoo projects, since those licensees often also tend to have a lot of clout in deciding what becomes a set or what doesn't. I disagree that there's no merit in the comments on scale, though. If you remove the lighting system and mechanized innards... then you have a large, empty model that a lot of people will be unwilling to pay the necessary price for. Even if piece count is a factor in how high the price of a set is, there's more to value than just a model's size: a big model that lacks detail will not have nearly the same appeal as a more detailed model with the same piece count. With that said, none of the LEGO Cuusoo staff comments make any connection between the size of the model and the reasons it couldn't be made a set. They simply call it "a project of epic proportions", which is a compliment more than anything else. Only then do they go on to mention the conflict with Lucasfilm.

Alternatively, perhaps the designers think that the new structural elements in the Thinking with Portals project could be achieved with existing parts, or parts that are already in development for inclusion in other themes. This has been answered in detail by Mark Stafford in the comments here: "Cuusoo sets are produced in batches of 10/20,000 whereas retail LEGO sets are produced with a minimum of half a million sets each. Sales pay for the mold which is a very expensive item - until Cuusoo sets go on sale demand is considered hard to predict, so the rule of no new molds was introduced." In other words, putting new molds in a Cuusoo set as a part of that set's budget is gambling on the likelihood that the set will sell well enough to justify multiple production runs. It's possible that a Cuusoo set could include new molds if those new molds were appended to the budget for another theme that would use them. But the smaller budget for a Cuusoo set simply cannot allow for that kind of upfront expense. Molds with the level of precision that TLG demands tend to cost at least $15,000 and potentially over ten times that for molds that are more complex than a simple two-piece mold. That's not even considering the cost in factory floorspace of putting parts into production for such small batches of sets.

Oh, right, it was a bar, not an anti-stud. I was confusing it with the Brickforge electric guitar, which my younger brother got at Brickfair one year. On the whole I think it's a bit disappointing that mini-dolls' hands can't rotate, but having seen the concepts for mini-doll arms with rotating hands during a presentation at last year's Brickfair, I can sort of see why a lot of girls might prefer arms without rotating hands, just from an aesthetic point-of-view. The finalized arms work equally well for sleeveless or sleeved outfits, whereas sleeveless outfits with rotating hands would look somewhat out-of-place compared to the sleek, naturalistic look of other mini-doll parts. I do kind of wonder what other changes we might see in mini-dolls in the future, though. Even the classic minifigure, which has not changed much since its debut, has had new variant parts introduced such as the shorter legs used for Yoda and other smaller characters. Now, creating "child" figures compatible with mini-dolls could require more molds, again, because the mini-doll has a more naturalistic appearance rather than the exaggerated proportions of minifigures. Just a shorter legs piece would not suffice because the arms would look terribly out-of-proportion. I'm not sure whether we might ever see significant improvements in mini-doll articulation, and if so how long it might be until then. Separately-articulated legs would be a great improvement, but I think because of the decision to include molded skirts this might be ineffective in practice. Articulated hands would be great but of course they run into the issue mentioned above. The only easy solution I can think of would be to make the hands and arms out of a more rubbery material, and even that would only be practical for play, not display. One of my personal disappointments about the mini-doll was that they could not twist horizontally at the waist, which I thought would have been an easy articulation point to incorporate (just use a standard minifig bar instead of the current connection point between the upper and lower body). However, the improvements this would make for play and display would likely be minor, so I don't anticipate this change ever taking place. But anyway, back on-topic, I'm glad we're at least seeing more body types in LEGO Friends (with the boy figures in this set and the Dolphin Cruiser adding a fourth torso style). And since LEGO Friends has been popular, I anticipate at least seeing a greater variety of outfits in the future.

Actually, not quite. To my knowledge Silver Flip/Flop has not been seen in sets since 2002, when it was used for the silver BIONICLE Kanohi masks that came in the Krana packs. A lot of sites seem to conflate Silver Flip/Flop with the color Bricklink calls Flat Silver, but that's a misconception. You can recognize Silver Flip/Flop because it has a somewhat sparkly appearance compared to other "pearl" colors, and if you hold it up to a light it is VERY translucent (and this is deliberate — otherwise you could not see through the visor of the silver or gold Kanohi Kaukau). The Roman Soldier's helmet was officially just 194 Medium Stone Grey with silver paint: this is an odd trait of the Collectible Minifigures, in that the parts with metallic surface treatments usually do not get separate Material IDs (they are basically treated as decorations, like any part with painted or printed details). However, the color it comes closest to in regular sets is 298 Cool Silver, Drum Lacquered, which Bricklink calls Metallic Silver. The Roman Centurion's helmet is officially 315 Silver Metallic, which Bricklink calls Flat Silver. Not all Flat Silver parts are this color: 315 Silver Metallic replaced the earlier color 131 Silver between 2010 and 2011, so any pre-2010 flat silver parts are generally the earlier color, and they simply look darker than the parts Bricklink calls Pearl Light Gray due to differences in the type of plastic or random variability. Confusing, I know! It doesn't help that TLG replaced 131 Silver with a new color, 296 Cool Silver, in 2006, then brought 131 Silver back the very next year. Or that prior to 2006, parts with metallic paint (like some Technic parts) were typically just identified by their base color, much like the ones in the Collectible Minifigures. But once you commit these things to memory, you can usually hazard a fairly accurate guess regarding what color a silver part is. To sum up: 315 Silver Metallic: pearl silver color from around 2010 onward. Bricklink calls it Flat Silver. 296 Cool Silver: pearl silver color from 2006. Bricklink calls it Pearl Light Gray. LEGO Customer Service inventories list this color for a lot of sets from 2002-2006, but I think this is just for replacement purposes, just like how sometimes newer variants of parts appear as replacement parts for older sets. 179 Silver Flip/Flop: Silver color with unique properties used for silver Kanohi masks in 2002 BIONICLE Krana packs. 131 Silver: Pearl silver color from all other years. Bricklink calls it Pearl Light Gray or Flat Silver, depending on its appearance. 298 Cool Silver, Drum Lacquered: "matte" silver surface-treated color from 2006 onward. Bricklink calls it Metallic Silver. 309 Metallized Silver: "chrome" silver surface-treated color from all years. Didn't have a name or number for a long time. Bricklink calls it Chrome Silver.

Hmm, a lot of posts coming out in defense of panels! That's interesting and certainly not the response I'm used to. Perhaps wall panels' acceptance in the Castle community is just a result of them being so central to LEGO Castle designs from so very early in the theme's existence, or perhaps it's for more practical reasons (after all, the more sections of your castle are pre-assembled, the less advance planning has to go into building a castle of impressive size). I'm a fan of wall panels myself, having grown up in that era (Dragon Masters/Dragon Knights was one of the main castle themes of my childhood, though I recognize the castles of that theme were far from the most impressive of the early 90s). Back in the day I would try to assemble grand castles of my own, sometimes turning to David Macaulay's Castle for guidance and inspiration. As such one of my consistent disappointments with LEGO Castles was the lack of realistic details to make them "livable", such as a dining hall, bedrooms, and kitchens. Ironically, I did have one castle toy that incorporated several of these features: A Mega Bloks set from their "Legend" series which, needless to say, was of absolutely wretched quality (stickers galore, a giant shell/carrying case forming the entirety of the castle structure, rudimentary figures, and mediocre brick quality), but which somehow did surpass many LEGO castles of that time with regard to interior furnishings. Yesterday I finally found some pictures of this set: 1, 2. To be honest, I'm not sure if we're ever likely to see a castle with this sort of livable interior in a set. Perhaps with the success of LEGO Friends, the LEGO Group may at some point try to create a medieval fantasy set aimed either at girls or at a gender-neutral audience, which I think would help the chances of such a theme emerging. After all, LEGO Friends has gone a long way in providing a level of interior details which were previously almost unheard of in sets not aimed at AFOLs. Ideally, it'd be great to see castle sets that are well-rounded, so they have livable details but also a lot of the more action-packed details boys tend to prefer like catapults, a dungeon, and an armory.

My worst toy shop experiences are any time I see kids debating with their parents about whether they can get a LEGO set and then eventually settling for a clone brand. Often, I find this is a compromise between a parent who doesn't want to spend much and a kid who wants a BIGGER set, whatever the brand. Whenever I see a kid begging their parents to get them a big set and it seems like a losing battle, I try and find a smaller set I can recommend as a good value for money. That way, the kid will end up getting a LEGO set they like and the parent won't have to worry about "caving" to their child's demands for expensive gifts. It's a win–win. In general, it's important to remember that LEGO is an expensive hobby. I don't think it's wrong for parents or kids to buy clone brands if they're willing to settle for lower quality. But at the same time, as a devoted LEGO fan I try to recommend what I think will get kids the best building and play experiences, and more often than not that's authentic LEGO. Plus, once a kid has enough proper LEGO to know the difference, hopefully they'll be able to understand that greater quality is worth paying more for what is effectively a smaller toy.

Beautiful song right here. If all the rest of the songs on the new Aviators album Mirrors are this good, then I'm very much looking forward to that album's release.

I think part of the reason space themes tend to be combat-driven in today's sets is that the majority of sci-fi space-related media (at least, the stuff kids are exposed to) tends to involve space battles, so that's naturally what they're inclined to act out in their play. Even in Classic Space, the designers added forward-facing "radio antennas", "scanners", and "cameras" with a perfectly clear understanding that most kids would be using them as guns. They just weren't allowed to be forthright about that in the marketing materials, which portrayed a more sanitized and less controversial play experience so as not to offend parents, particularly in very sensitive markets like Germany. This trend continued well into the 90s to downright ludicrous degrees: there are some ships from 90s Space subthemes where it'd be almost impossible to recognize that the "radio antennas" were supposed to resemble guns. Niels Milan Pedersen, one of the creators of LEGO Space, confirms this in the Summer 2009 issue of Brickjournal. In his words, "There were a lot of disagreemnets about the aerials and other elements that pointed forwards on the ships because of the 'no war' policy. We were not allowed to make weapons, and those things we built looked aggeressive, so there were a lot of 'radar dishes' and 'sensor probes', but to us they were really guns!" Jens Nygaard Knudsen, another LEGO Space creator and the inventor of the LEGO Minifigure, also confirms in that issue that the red and white classic spacemen were originally designed to be enemies (other sources suggest that the white spacemen were meant as astronauts and the red ones cosmonauts). Jens also confirms that the black classic space minifigures were imagined as warriors, even if they were not allowed to say this explicitly. Really, if the sets are going to be designed for combat play regardless, I see no reason why TLG would benefit from going back to that older policy. A lot of kids want combat play, just as they did then, and if parents and the media aren't going to raise a huge fuss then there's no reason to try and hide what could be a strong selling point. Now, at the same time, should The LEGO Group at any point look into designing a theme that's actually non-violent? Perhaps they could. Perhaps they have. The possibility of such a theme making it any farther all depends on how focus groups react to the idea.

There was an older color called Light Yellow which appeared in sets prior to around 2004, which was used extensively in Belville, the LEGO Island Extreme Stunts theme, and the Duplo Bob the Builder sets. That is slightly different than Cool Yellow, which replaced it. There's a reason Bricklink calls the classic color "Light Yellow" and the newer color "Bright Light Yellow" (though Bricklink also does a shoddy job differentiating between the two in certain instances... ah, well). Neither should be confused with Bright Yellow (classic yellow, which has some quite noticeable variability in recent years but has never technically been replaced with a new color) or Brick Yellow (tan).

That kind of mistake can still happen with photos, though, so it's not really the fault of using renders. The Pirates of the Caribbean sets are a good example. The official pics are photographs, but the gold bars and coins in the photos are metallized gold rather than the warm gold the first batch of sets was actually packed with. I think the grass skirt piece was probably changed because the individual strips could be torn too easily. If they didn't tear during production or shipping, then feeling the package to find out which fig is inside or even just assembling the figure could do a real number on them.

Actually, they can. There's an anti-stud on the back of the guitar, and that can attach to one of a mini-doll's hand-studs while the other hand is held above the neck of the guitar. In this respect, it's even better than the guitar from the Collectible Minifigures, on which the neck of the guitar was the only attachment point, and around as good as Jimi Stringer's guitar-cannon in this set (which likewise only attaches to the hand by the back of the guitar because Hero Factory "fists" lack open or articulated fingers).

Lately I've been trying to build a house for Mia on LDD based on its appearance on the LEGO Friends products page. It's been immensely difficult for a number of reasons: I'm trying to keep to the "dollhouse" scale and standards for modularity as seen in Olivia's House, Heartlake High, and Summer Riding Camp. I'm trying to incorporate as many details from Mia's Bedroom as possible, though I've given up on including them all in one room. Even if I put them in a downstairs room with around 11 studs by 14 studs of floorspace, they'd be way too compressed. That house's design, with a steep sloped roof covering an attic and dormer, is very difficult to build, particularly in any type of green. All the designs I've come up with really limit the amount of usable upstairs floorspace (and ideally I'd like the bedroom to be upstairs). I feel like the colors I'm working with are too dull. I originally wanted classic green (Dark Green) as the roof color over a tan building, which would be fairly vibrant. No dice. It's next to impossible to make the roof in that color due to a limited selection of slope bricks and wedge plates. The most usable color option for the roof is Earth Green, which just doesn't feel very... Friends-y, even if I were to add some brightly-colored accents. On the whole, most of these problems probably boil down to me being too strict with myself. But I think some of them are also indicative of how difficult a "dollhouse"-style build can be in general.

There are also 18 corner panels, bringing the total number of big wall panels to 39. Nothing to sneeze at. On a note somewhat related to that question, a recent comment about 41005 Heartlake High's eight 1x6x5 wall panels led me to look up some of the history of LEGO wall panels, and I was surprised at what I found. I never realized wall panels were a staple of LEGO Castle sets since near the beginning. Apparently, according to Brickset, the only big castle sets before the introduction of wall panels were the two versions of the Yellow Castle. Wall panels started appearing in 1984 when there were two big castle sets: 6073 and 6080. 6073 had 17 wall/window panels total, and 6080 had 30. Two years later, 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress introduced corner panels. It had 10 wall/window panels and 12 corner panels. Now, what really gets interesting is when you look at the number of wall panels as a percentage of the sets' total piece count. 6073 was 4.15% wall panels. 6080 was 4.45% wall panels. 6074 was 5.12% wall panels. And today's King's Castle? Surprisingly, just 3.92% wall panels. Certainly not as low as 7946, of course, which has 22 wall panels in a 933-piece set, making it a mere 2.36% wall panels. And not quite as low as the well-regarded 6085 Black Monarch's Castle, which clocked in at 3.56% wall panels. A lot of the reasons this might be are similar to the reasons price-per-piece tends to be better for newer sets when adjusted for inflation. Today's sets use a lot more small detail elements than "classic" sets, on which many of the pieces were purely structural, so there are a lot of pieces that cost very little to include. Older sets also often had more minifigures than today's sets relative to their size, and the heavily-decorated and pre-assembled nature of minifigure parts means those run at a premium in any era of set design. Fewer minifigures in todays sets means that there's room in the budget for the inclusion of details made up of cheaper parts. Still, it's a bit shocking to see how big wall panels, often perceived as one of the key components of "juniorization", were a key part of LEGO Castle design even in its early years. This was not the mid– to late 90s, often regarded as a "dark age" of LEGO design (6097 Night Lord's Castle surprisingly only had around 13 big wall panels, though there were plenty of other large pieces in its design that could be considered large or overspecialized like prefab columns and battlements), but rather the mid-80s, which many people consider the start of a golden age of LEGO design. I'm not saying that those older sets aren't as good as people think them to be, but it really makes me question why the number of prefab wall panels are still being used as a measure of a set's complexity in this day and age. Looking at all the things the LEGO Castle theme has moved past in recent years (the prefab battlements and giant raised baseplates of the 90s and naughts, for example), if anything the LEGO Castle theme has moved closer to its roots with many of the set designs of the past four years.

Very nice. I'm always a bit wary about Witch Doctor revamps because I've seen so many where the builder just threw on a bunch of inconsistent armor pieces and called it done. The fact that you actually went so far as to modify the skeleton shows a level of effort that far surpasses those kinds of "revamps". The added armor on the hips is the biggest improvement, I'd say. There are some areas where I feel this design is weaker than the original, though. The changes to the armoring of the chest and sides make the figure's hollow chest cavity feel very insubstantial, and makes the torso very bottom-heavy. The skeleton's torso proportions are just great; it's just the way it's armored that hurts its appearance. The design of the elbows seems to have more points of articulation than are really necessary, and additionally it makes the arms far too long (this is most evident in the pic of the skeleton by itself). The original set's arms were also somewhat gangly, but here it feels that much worse. Both the upper and lower arms could afford to be shorter. That head build is ingenious, and would be that much more brilliant if you could find a solution that didn't involve any modified parts. Overall, this MOC shows a lot of potential, and I think you could probably continue making improvements until you have something truly magnificent.

My MacBook Pro doesn't have that problem. Does it have anything to do with the filename? If you can't get it to work, perhaps try using File>Save As (shortcut keys: Command+Shift+S) and saving it with a new name. Even if the filename isn't the problem, this could perhaps let you save your changes: it just adds a couple extra steps (saving it to a new name and deleting the older version of the file). Also, you're building with LEGO at work? How scandalous!

No, but I thought it went without saying that people tend to want more content for more money. Perhaps I was jumping to conclusions. I apologize. That's a matter of opinion. Creativity is great and all, but even as a builder who doesn't have any obligation to keep costs down, I think efficiency is an important design value. The LEGO Creator theme tends to emphasize much different design values than other themes because the emphasis is on showing off how many different things can be built with basic parts. There are a lot of things that the LEGO Creator theme tends to avoid which aren't necessarily problematic in other themes. Additionally, let's not ignore that if basic bricks were used on many of these walls, any wall decorations would have to be STAMPs. The LEGO Group has done very well to avoid STAMPs in most recent sets and I'd like to see them continue that, even if it means using larger parts instead of multiple smaller parts. Again, that's a matter of opinion. I personally think stacking basic bricks in a repetitive fashion is not that much more interesting than putting a panel on.

Decent review of an unusual set, but I think it's a glaring omission that you didn't mention how well its action feature works. That's what I'm personally most curious about.