More stickers than needed? Why?

[ChrisXY]

Recently I stumbled on different of my sets and saw that some sets have stickersheets where stickers are more on it than actually needed.

E.g.

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=6653-1

Here you only use the green oder blue ones; but for the stripes you have just two parts that get stickered

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=7668-1

Stickersheet has 6 stickers, you only need 3.

I also noticed that some sets here 6653 from above, do have different coloured stickers from the same part. Also when talking about Police stickers, they come in green, blue, black...it´s super confusing for restauration?!

[Mylenium]

Well, imagine it's 1982 and digital plate setters, digitally controlled printing machines, precision die cutters and all that fancy stuff that today allows to produce sticker sheets with maximum precision didn't exist and you always wanted to have a backup just in case something went wrong. Same for the actual quality of the foil, the glue, the backing paper. It's probably as simple as that. Also on a side note all printing and processing machines have a minimum and maximum sheet size (technical requirement due to how the sheets are grabbed and transferred) so just printing a few extra items may simply be an efficient use of what otherwise would simply have been just empty space.

Mylenium

[Lyichir]

13 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

Well, imagine it's 1982 and digital plate setters, digitally controlled printing machines, precision die cutters and all that fancy stuff that today allows to produce sticker sheets with maximum precision didn't exist and you always wanted to have a backup just in case something went wrong. Same for the actual quality of the foil, the glue, the backing paper. It's probably as simple as that. Also on a side note all printing and processing machines have a minimum and maximum sheet size (technical requirement due to how the sheets are grabbed and transferred) so just printing a few extra items may simply be an efficient use of what otherwise would simply have been just empty space.

Mylenium

Yeah, since sticker sheets are printed/cropped at certain sizes, printing extra on them doesn't add much expense/complexity (at least when you're not adding any additional print colors that would need to be aligned and applied separately). Especially when the stickers have fun logos like the ones in the Star Wars set the OP listed, kids are pretty likely to find their own uses for the stickers if they don't need them as a backup for the set itself (either on other Lego parts or just to decorate papers/folders/etc. like they might with non-Lego stickers).

Recently they've started doing that sometimes in modern themes, where some sets in themes like Dreamzzz, Ninjago, and Hidden Side have had "bonus" stickers to apply wherever and however you like (on these modern sticker sheets where the stickers are numbered, these are marked with a "+" sign instead).