tedbeard

Love to see a revival. I don't recall much, if any, moonbase @ BrickCon last year but there was plenty a few years ago. And just FYI, your module doesn't actually meet the standard. You would need to build a connecting section as the hatches need to be raised to the correct height. Hatches at "ground level" are optional embellishments.

This is fantastic. Any chance of a short video showing how it functions when it is installed at Fanabriques? Pretty please.

Took another picture for detail: click to see larger size

Don't forget the grill on the rooftop patio of the Green Grocer.

A picture of my regimental band: I really should get some detail pics but I think you can see I used string woven into the drums. The side drums are easy but the bass drum was done using a 2-long technic pin to reverse the stud directions so both sides are flat.

Welcome from the Left Coast where we even we are bilingual enough to recognize "Marc" as a a common spelling.

Thanks for sharing. The whole thing is great. I love the well and the brickwork on the taller house. The breakfast in bed scene also caught my eye and the stool is something I don't recall seeing before.

If I may venture a suggestion. The nature of retail in the United States is very different than elsewhere. Notice the MSRP of sets in the US is significantly lower than anywhere else even though the productions costs are the same? Now, some of the differential is always blamed on different tax regimes but I think what is often ignored is the insanely competitive retail market in the US. Thanks to the kind of cut-throat competition that gives us the Wal-Marts of the world, American consumers expect to pay less than those elsewhere. So, if you are a wholesaler having to sell your product to Wal-Mart, Target, TRU etc at a lower price than you sell to Harrod's, (sorry I don't know Euro chain names beyond that) how do you make more money in that market? Answer: you become a direct-to-consumer retailer and keep more of the profit in-house rather than leaving it for the retailers. That also means that while they could do the same in Europe they are more profitable in Europe on the wholesale side already so there is not the same incentive. As well, I think that European retailers are more likely to fight back if LEGO started competing with them more directly. Pure speculation on my point of course but it makes sense to me.

Welcome aboard. I enjoyed a trip to BrickFest PDX what feels like many years ago now. Go Timbers! Please, please win! Meow, meow, meow!

Well, here's where personal preferences come in and rabid fandom might actually be useful. You might not like the Minecraft set but it looks good to me and has garnered many positive reviews for being a clever adaptation of the original proposal. It will sell for the reasons I elaborated previously AND the rabid fanbase will eat up a well-crafted set based on their franchise. This fanbase skews young and overlaps the LEGO target market. Sadly I disagree with you and find the BttF DeLorean really awful and certainly as it stands I have ZERO interest in a single copy. I enjoyed the movies when I was younger but they hold no more than a quirky nostalgia factor for me. I think this nostalgia, rather than actual rabid fans, put this idea over the top. I think this set is far less likely to engage the smaller BttF fanbase than Minecraft in part because it skews older, well out of the target market. Boys aged 6-11 do not care about Marty and Doc brown, sorry.

Looking forward to seeing it all (again) in person in August. :)

If that is true then I think somebody does not understand how marketing works. The "controversy" surrounding the Friends line is unlikely to have any negative effect overall on sales. If anything the free publicity will increase sales of the line thanks to the exposure in mainstream media. For every activist who decides not to buy the set (assuming they ever would have bought a corporate, plastic toy in the first place) there will be 10 or more adults who knew nothing about the line previously and will purchase a set or sets. Controversy of this type for a SotD set would be a net plus for the bottom line whereas creating a system that will now be seen as a sham by many of its' customers is a net negative.

Odd, I generally agree with your thesis. I think the danger of the rabid fans inflating numbers may be real but on the question of the Minecraft set in particular, I think you may be off base. I think the Minecraft set they have produced is appealing to both fans of the game and general LEGO fans as well because it is practically a creator-style bucket of basic parts. Whenever I am at displays with my LUG the #3 question (after how many pieces and how long did it take) is "Where can I get a bucket/bins/box of bricks?" My kids love Minecraft so I am probably in for 3 sets for them, but for me the sets look like a cool source of basic brick with a whimsical build of an 8-bit world. I may pick up one or more just for parts. I can see this selling well to adults looking for presents for kids. That does contrast deeply with the Eve ship. No one in my family is familiar with the game and while the ship may be a great representation of something in the game to me it is nothing special. Lots of better looking, iconic Star Wars ships have been produced so the chances of me buying any are zero. The chance of any non-fans buying it: slim to none IMO.

That is fantastic! Great effect. Now if they could be reset remotely somehow so it could be done inside a ship's hull...

Exactly! Issue the set as "Zombie Hotel" without the gun and the Simon Pegg fig and I bet it would sell just fine. I am sure BrickArms would be happy sell a "conversion kit" that include the fig with the rifle.

Exactly! This is where I call megablocks on the whole project. These sets are never going to be more than niche products and there are more than sufficient numbers of fans to warrant a small run set. This rejection makes the whole project suspect and indeed is a slap in the face to every single person who signed up and supported this idea and more generally a repudiation of the crowd-sourcing model. This set, in an of itself was not any more violent than LoTR or Batman. Further the source material may have been "R-rated" but why do people forget that "R" means a kid can see a movie with a parent? Who is going to buy these sets? Parents. It was not NC-17 or "X" or whatever the equivalent is in other jurisdictions. Add this rejection to their total unwillingness to fix the major flaw in their activity feeds preventing smooth member-to-member communication on projects and this whole thing is turning into a farce.

Wow, really nice. How did you do the blue mosaic on the side of the building?

Hi from the Left Coast! What part of the Great White North are you from? -Ted

Sweet mother of god! I NEVER said that and I am getting rather tired of the total misinterpretation of what I wrote. What I was saying was this:

As in The Great Train Robbery? That would be a great set. It would provide adults an interesting train and kids would have a story to build around. Of course, without getting into licensing a 30+ year old movie they could do something similar in an "Old West" theme. Possibly tying into something like the Modular Western Town project on Cuusoo. Train and horse-riding bandits, oh the possibilities!

Actually Ralph, it does. They started with a "brick" that was proportioned to mimic real bricks that have been used for thousands of years. They were not concerned at the time with how it would be subdivided. Eventually they broke the 2x4 brick into smaller chunks until they started manufacturing 1x1 "bricks" and by then it was too far along in the process for anyone to stop and say, "hey, we should make the 1x1 a cube."

I love them. It was especially nice when I got Public Transport Station (8404) and could build whatever vehicle/section I wanted and save the other sections for different days as I had limited building time and space available at the time.

I beg your pardon? I was not talking about the 1x1 but replying to the statement about, "the original reason why a non-cubic design was chosen". The "original" brick, the source of all LEGO was not a 1x1 but was, I believe, a 2x4 "brick". The rectangular shape was the starting point not a result of calculations based on the 1x1 and some sort of design question whether it should be a cube or not. We got the dimensions of a 1x1 by chopping up a 2x4 in a metaphorical sense. That was all I was trying to say. Certainly I never said anything about anyone wanting, "all elements being 1x1 cubes".

Nope, pretty sure it was due to the fact that rectangles make better construction components than cubes. I believe bricks have always been rectangular since the first cities in Mesopotamia. Can you imagine trying to build a house with cubes?

There are Hero Factory fans? Who knew?