Flak Maniak

In most builds and settings, I'm not enamored with the ultra-smooth, only-slopes-and-curved-slopes-showing terrain. But for Aquazone, it matches the catalog backgrounds! And dark blue wasn't even a color back then, so it wouldn't make sense in the main submarine builds... But in the terrain, it looks very good!

Ninjago has to be recognized as the king of action themes, for being the longest-lived, but my personal nomination is... Aquazone! You can say that's because of the very specific time I grew up; that's fine. I'll admit I am in a small age-cohort of Aquazone fans. But that doesn't make me any less of an Aquazone fan!

These guys; well, I'm looking for the torsos basically, but I wouldn't say no to the dark bluish gray + black double-injected legs too: Wanted to get some from my local Lego store but they ran out. I'm just looking for a dozen at a reasonable price; I don't wanna give in to the BrickLink resellers! Surely some of you, who found these at your locals and bought many, perhaps hundreds, can spare a dozen? I'm in the US (hence I couldn't get them on the online Build-a-Minifigure, since it isn't available here!), but I'll pay whatever the actual shipping-costs are.

Wait really?! They were on the website? Now THAT I will be looking forward to! Such a cool part! I've only seen the copper ones on the website before, and only briefly too.

A juicy phone-order? Managed to get Uruk-Hai swords, even? Wish those would show up on the website...

It will only make it harder to do large orders if parts stay on PaB&P for less total time, right? If they stay buyable on it for about the same amount of time (if they get a similar amount of total stock?), then it's just shifting the whole thing by three months. Which is fine with me. I'll be patient for new parts. If this policy means that we get a good selection of the most-interesting parts, then... It's a great resolution to... Well, whatever Lego's primary concern was. From their statements it sounds like it was stock of actual replacement parts about which they were concerned. Obviously I hope we get an even-broader-and-greater selection of weird parts. If delaying their buyability on PaB&P lets us have that, it's a great trade I think. It's JUST the following four months that will be annoying and hard to wait, this gap. But once that passes it'll be, well, every month we'll get new and interesting parts to buy again.

If it was a website order, it was almost certainly that those parts are out of production and gone-forever (and any remaining stock is allocated specifically for missing/broken). Which means that between the time you ordered and now, they ran out of what they were willing to sell. Happened to me too, a couple days back, with minifig parts from that 2021 Monkie Kid bike-duel set. (By contrast if you phone-ordered stuff that can't be bought on the website, well, it may be canceled from your order if it wasn't supposed to be sold in the first place... Or it may sneak through.)

What are the minifigure heads for the orange-on-orange guy, the white-hair guy in the middle, and the grey-civil-war-hat guy next to the white-haired guy?

Even on the old version, not all parts would be shown. It would usually be most of them. Some others you could call in for... Depending on CS rep. The new merged version seems to have a very similar selection to what was on B&P at the end of 2021. For now, all 2022 parts (yes that's right, all, not just weird and esoteric stuff) have been removed, pending... Whatever policy decision Lego will make about which super-interesting elements will make it on there, and when. So, now is the time to pester Lego and tell them "please sell us all the cool and unique minifigure parts and other weird stuff; we will buy so much of it that it will be worth it to you."

For the fig with the big dark bluish gray/copper-printing armor, the turquoise torso underneath... That's that 2021 Eternals torso, but with DBG arms added by you, right?

The updated/merged B&P/Pick-a-Brick has been available in the US for a couple hours now. I dunno if there are significant new/exciting parts that weren't on the old one. But, plenty of exciting parts that WERE on the old one, aren't on the new. I think the fears that the merged one would curtail our access to neat parts were warranted, but it remains to be seen how much. Also remains to be seen if phone orders are still the same "roll the dice with the CS rep" grey zone that they were, where you MIGHT get sold incredible jewels, or you might be told they can't sell you anything interesting at all, or the coolest parts in your phone-order might get canceled. Who knows; maybe they'll clarify things with CS reps and we won't be able to order any more over the phone than on the website.

I agree that Lego Space means something specific. And it shouldn't be something that's hard for Lego to satisfy, even if they don't pick Space for this thing. I think you're exactly right about the colors. I've thought for years that too many windscreen pieces are ONLY made in trans-clear, trans-light blue, and trans-black. I think that Lego should do two things, neither of which is "make sets branded Lego Space", and these two things should be sufficient: First, they should make modern minifigure prints that feel like cool space characters. I think they're doing a reasonably good job of this of late. Basically a modernized space-torso in that Creator rover set/Cyber Drone. They could do better, and give us some more brightly-colored space characters. More minifigure designs that make you think "this should be a whole space faction". Second, they should take more modern canopy pieces, and just... Make them in trans-red, trans-dark blue, trans-bright green, trans-neon green, (trans-neon orange if it were still around ;_;), trans-purple, trans-dark pink... Just, for each cool-looking canopy piece, make sure it's made at least once in ONE of the above colors. (Okay fine or trans-yellow, sure.) There are plenty of great recent ones. I mean we all remember that pointy Nexo Knights canopy that was only in trans-neon orange. That one was great! It was an excellent successor to the old long-nose windscreen, 2507. Wouldn't it have been amazing to get in more of these bright colors? I think that the "bring back old molds" crowd is really misguided in general. Look at Benny's 2014 spaceship; that isn't built around some ancient piece. You don't need old molds. You just need to take the right modern equivalent and recolor it. As you say, the feel of old-timey space is, having a bright main color, and a contrasting bright transparent color for windscreen parts and some other details... There's slightly more to it than that, but that's most of it. If we have good access to a reasonable variety of windscreens and other parts in these bright transparent colors (through Bricks & Pieces/BrickLink), and we have access on Bricks & Pieces to minifigure parts that spark our imaginations for our space factions... That should be enough. A big D2C set with no new molds or recolors is much less-valuable to me than just... Having more canopies recolored over time, in pedestrian, non-space sets. And as for the minifigure parts... Just give me brightly-colored sci fi Lego-original minifigs, that as I said, spark my imagination. "That could be a space faction" is something I said about Mei from Monkie Kid. Just... Make cool sci fi minifigures, and eventually some of them will be the right thing.

I think that "easiest" and "most cost-effective" are at odds. If you spend a lot of time shopping on BrickLink/Bricks & Pieces, hunting garage sales, blah blah blah... You can get a lot of parts for very cheap, and maybe even ones you're interested in! But if you want to get parts for cheap on BrickLink you gotta be patient and be prepared to accumulate things over the course of a bunch of orders. I'm not sure where on the "easiest" scale it falls, but, if the wall at your local Lego store DOES have parts you want, then it can't be beat. But what it has on it is up to fate. If you want to buy with the largest selection available, and get very specific stuff, then Bricks & Pieces has got you covered. But for many many things it won't be the cheapest, not by a long shot. It gives you the most flexibility (out of currently-produced elements); you can get a LOT of stuff together in one order. But it's not gonna be as cheap per-part as some German BL seller. For myself, I tend to accumulate parts over time. I don't buy sets for parts very often; most of my Lego-buying is on BrickLink and Bricks & Pieces, opportunistically hunting for things that seem cool or spark my imagination. Sometimes I'm building X thing and I need parts ABC for it, so I go to BL and I find a seller with those parts for cheap... But obviously I'm going to buy a whole bunch of those parts, right? Or maybe I look at parts in a certain color, a color I use often... And I just look for cheap and useful parts in that color. I think a big part of building a collection is tailoring it to what you tend to build. What colors and part types you accumulate most of... This will be informed by your interests. If you're patient, then yeah, the garage sale or equivalent will be a very cheap source of mixed parts. But it has the least choice.

I know I say this every time anything vaguely related comes up, but: If I were in charge, I would make sure that the 18+ black-box sets have goofy alternate builds depicted on the back of the box (remember those?), and a giant "What will you build?" in between them. Would this be popular? Very possibly not! But I would do it. I have my convictions.

I'm not concerned about shipping time; I'll wait as long as it takes. I didn't expect this Dec 17 order to be here by now or anything. I've just never seen this new mysterious order-status before, and I want to know what it means. And it's concerning that I can't check contents! I want to be sure it will get to me with everything it's supposed to have, even if that takes a long time!