TomKraut

Well, we won't know for sure as neither of us is a manager at TLG I think I remember reading somewhere that the design resources at Lego where stretched thin this year because of NK (don't have a source ready right now). And comparing Chima and NK, I get the feeling that a lot more of the "System design capacity" went into NK than it did into Chima back then (with a lot of constraction figures and a lot of Speedorz). It just makes sense to me that with the release of NK, Lego doesn't want to distract their employees or their customers with other themes. They have a lot riding on this (as they had with Chima) and don't want to mess up this time...

I have: Nexo Knights. Looking at your list, I would say Disney D2C / CMF replaces Simpsons, Angry Birds and Ghostbusters replace Scooby Doo and Jurassic World and of course we have Nexo Knights for Chima. The three TLM sets seemed like stragglers who where purposefully delayed to get the buzz going a little bit longer. I guess they were designed with the rest of the sets and just didn't fit into the 2014 lineup. That leaves Pirates and Ultra Agents, both 100% in-house themes. I bet Lego decided to put all their design and marketing resources into Nexo Knights to avoid another Chima, which meant that there was no room for a new "Special" theme like Ultra Agents or Monster Fighters and another run of one of the classics (Pirates, Castle and Space). The results are two very large first-year waves for a new big-bang theme and a marketing campaign spanning almost every type of media (books, magazines, TV show, video game...). Cheers TomKraut

I would like a place dedicated to Lego photography as that is something I want to get into. I would suggest fixing the captions and using the Brick-Flicks forum for it, because BrickCurve is right: as of now, that sub-forum has no indicator whatsoever that it would be the right place for it whereas photography threads would get buried in General where there is so much going on. Cheers TomKraut

The premise of the original statement is of course wrong. We all know that there has never been a larger selection of "pile of bricks" offerings than we have now with the various Classic boxes (at least not in my lifetime of 35 years). One thing I noticed though when I came out of my dark ages about two years ago is that I found it much more difficult to get my collection to a point where I had enough parts to make something that doesn't look out of place next to an official set. When I was a kid in the 80's official sets were a lot simpler. There were only six "building" colours (red, blue, yellow, black, white, (light) grey) and the standard 1xN brick was used a lot more in sets. I don't think that the so-called "specialized part" is the problem, but rather the fact that there are so much more pieces that one would call standard now (like curved slopes). The plethora of colours amplifies this problem because the chance to have the right piece in the right colour is much smaller. This has nothing to do with creativity directly, but it might be off-putting for some if the thing you can create yourself (with a reasonable amount of sets = money) looks so much worse than the thing you get when you follow the instructions (of course, a child might see this a lot less critical than an adult). Cheers TomKraut

Even though, the castle is still almost 60m tall (according to Wikipedia, I have never seen it IRL). So, assuming Minifigure scale is somewhere between 1:60 and 1:30 (that's a year long discussion due to the fact that Minifigures have really weird proportions), it would be between.... 1 to 2 meters tall!!! My guess is, the only thing they can do to make this a set that anyone can afford to buy, it would have to be Landmark Series scale, like Tower Bridge and Sydney Opera House. Which is fine with me, as long as it looks good. It still works as a backdrop for displaying the CMF series. Cheers TomKraut

I always got a strong North America vibe from the Friends theme, so if it had to be somewhere in the real world, HLC would probably be located there.The name alone is a pretty strong hint. I really like that school building, but I think I can pass on this one. Store exclusives are usually only sold at Lego Stores and TRU here in Germany, which means it is unlikely that there are good discount opportunities. I still might build it though, shouldn't be too hard with a few BnP/BL orders. As for the school bus, I have to admit that the Friends vehicles are getting better over the years (which isn't hard...) but City is still much better in this regard. Doesn't matter though, I enjoy creating vehicle MOCs in Minidoll scale. As my cars are 6w+, a school bus would have to be at least 7w+, probably 8w. Cheers TomKraut

Don't use a RPi! Compared to even a five year old Core2Duo it's extremely underpowered for desktop use even without trying to emulate a whole x86 architecture with QEMU. Just get an old PC, either from friends or eBay, complete with a Windows 7 license and use that. Should be even cheaper than a RPi. Cheers TomKraut

My thoughts: Puppy Daycare: Love the husky, the building itself looks good. Will probably get this and use it as a small shop. Arcade: I like the Whack-a-frog machine. Mia's shirt is great, as are the stickers in this set. Probably a buy. Hot Dog Van: It's not a van, is it? I mean, it can't drive! The parts are great, but I will mod this so that the roof can be collapsed and the whole thing can be hooked up to a truck and driven to the next location. Riding Club: Damn! I thought I could pass on this, as it would be my third riding stable, but it has too many great things going for it. Horse blankets. Mia's jacket. Similar colour scheme to 3185, so one can build a large riding camp. Spice! Although he (she?) looks weird without a saddle... I'm a little disappointed that there are only two dolls included though. Vet Trailer: Pass. Nothing here but the blanket and the jacket which are both included in the Club. Might try to get the sticker sheet. Space Ride: Oh yes! The large dish will end up in a Black- or M-Tron MOC and that Friends CS logo means there is a Friends Spaceship(!) MOC with lots of translucent pink in my future. As for Friends as a theme, there are two things on my mind: 1. Stephanie needs a new haircut! It's getting really old... 2. Are Vet Clinics and Riding Stables the Fire Departments and Police Stations of Friends? Cheers TomKraut

It's ugly. But that Belle Minidoll is so beautiful, she might be worth the $50 all by herself...

It does, on the summary page for your collection. It's not really accurate though, because they rely mostly on Lego Customer Service's inventories which are often incomplete. According to them I own 68570 pieces and 588 minifigs, however these are only the sets I bought new since coming out of my dark age about 1.5 years ago. With used sets, loose collections and parts and my KFOL sets which are still on my parents' attic these numbers would be much higher.

I tried this yesterday and am absolutely blown away! It was rock stable for my little model (about 100 pieces) and although the workflow takes some getting used to, it is consistent so once you get into the mindset of how things work, rearranging parts and creating submodels is a breeze. Having a background in software development myself I know how much work must have gone into this and I would very much like to thank you for an amazing product! Cheers TomKraut

Even if City sets are (too) expensive, that $90 price tag for the gas station has to be a mistake, right? I know that piece count isn't everything, but usually in a set where the piece count is low and the price is high, there is something to warrant it. Like bigfigs, or huge parts as in airplanes, or (in days past) 3D baseplates. This set has absolutely nothing to make it stand out, and I don't even think that it will be as popular with the target audience as say a police or fire station. At $60 I would say it's expensive because they can. At $90 I say someone confused the numbers 6 and 9 when printing that sign.

My mind is playing tricks on me, I swear I heard a rim-shot right after reading this line... This thread is so entertaining, who would have thought that spam sparks so much creativity?

Is this measured in units or $? Has to be the latter I guess, because otherwise I can't imagine the Heartlake Hotel outselling the smaller Friends sets. I'm still amazed by it though and hopefully this means that there will be more big Friends sets in the future.

I use Brickset. They rely mostly on Lego's own inventories which are not always accurate, especially when it comes to recently introduced parts, but it gets the job mostly done. I don't know how good it is for older sets because I usually only catalog sets that I bought new. They recently improved their part tracking functionality so it might be worth checking out. It is possible to import your Brickset collection into Rebrickable, which is invaluable to my mocing process: I build a rough version in LDD, upload it as a private MOC to Rebrickable and can get an overview of which parts I might be missing. I can then hunt down which sets include these parts and make a decision to either get those sets, get the parts individually or change it to something I either have or is more easily obtainable.