Mylenium

I don't think so. If the shoddy stability check function in Studio is any indication, it is doubtful they have anything advanced. I would even doubt they actually run their models through the simulation tools in a CAD program. At the end of the day it's probably quicker to just build prototypes, given the nature of the task. Current AI models are hugely dependent on the number of available samples. By that standard, even a few thousand official minifigure designs are a measly number compared to millions of regular images and if you figure in the fact that some elements have only been used on handful of figures at all, any AI algorithm will struggle to even properly "learn" how to use some of those bits correctly. Mylenium

Arguably that's LEGO's own fault/ problem. Competitors are selling castles, pirate islands and big ships by the bucket without media tie-ins. We're talking 70 Euro sets with 1200 pieces for some of them. Perfectly attainable as "starter sets". It's only in the LEGO world where things are that dire. Mylenium

Nothing to worry about. It won't melt. UV light is a much bigger threat to your stuff as it will inevitably cause the materials to degenerate. The point of keeping things within a certain temperature range with plastics is to avoid micro-warping and/ or in reverse not not lose thermal tension warping intentionally built in. For LEGO both can matter in terms of clutch power and friction when putting elements together. That said, LEGO is being way too cautious. Most ABS types can handle 60 degrees C without any sign of changing notably. Things only get a bit more critical after that with the gloss changing, but even then there's still lots of room before they actually begin to show signs of their structure changing. We're talking more long-term effects here than just a single day of summer heat... Mylenium

Absolutely. And by extension people seem to be oblivious to the fact that buying LEGO back then was a bit more special. Shelves were stacked differently back then and LEGO wasn't everywhere dominating the market. You had to be more proactive to even get it. Perhaps that colors people's perception as well as they may be under the impression that with LEGO occupying one third of a lot of toy stores there must be room for some of those "classic" themes to come back when in fact back then they were their only regular offering and they just sold what they had without thinking too much about it being special or something like this... Mylenium Yes, of course. Not every vintage car is a classic and the same applies here. Mylenium

I think you have to put it into perspective, though: A 200 million per year company in the 1990s vs. a 6 billion annually company now. I think that in itself is a point. Advocates of classic themes probably get a bit worked up over not getting their share when in their mind "LEGO could do it easily". That is of course true to some degree (they have the money), but at the same time also not true (inner workings of a big con-glo-mo and overall strategy). that doesn't invalidate any other argument in this debate, but perception really plays a big part, not just with that nostalgia thing... Mylenium As long as there is no clear distinction what constitutes a theme, sub-theme, sub-sub-theme, limited run special super duper edition or whatever you'll not get a satisfying solution to that problem. I don't think there needs to be, as most of this discussion on whether a theme is dead or not to me really revolves around that "...in the style of..." thing. People want to rebuild their classic space stuff or expand their collection, but I doubt that many would care what it's actually called as long as the parts usage, color schemes and overall design approach are similar. Mylenium

You can easily do the math with a bit of research outside the LEGO bubble. An industrial designer takes x amount of money to design the outsides of a fancy coffee machine. An illustrator takes x amount for a single image or page in a comic. A marketing agency takes x amount to write texts and do photos. I as a 3D and graphics artist take x amount per day for some shiny CG pictures. An OEM manufacturer takes x amount to build molds and produce a few thousand pieces of plastic if you want him to. You could continue this quite a bit, but at the end of the day it's not rocket science. You just have to invest the time to do the research. A theme like VIDIYO that had tons of new molds and graphical elements cost them easily at least 300 million. That's a minimum of 20 million development cost and the rest is actual production, manufacturing and distribution. Even if you spread it out across multiple years and consider that LEGO makes billions every year that's not chump change, given that you need to consider that at the same time they have cost on other themes to keep them running. You could repeat this for every theme and then you see how those numbers in their annual reports begin to make sense. And when you see that in 2021 VIDIYO wasn't even listed separately in those reports as a stand-out theme, you know how hard it fell on its face. Combined with anecdotal observations of full shelves, sets being still available BNIB en mass two years after cancellation and the insane discounts this stuff was/ is sold for you can only conclude that it was a total stinker. Mylenium

Nope. It's 2023, not 1984. I could elaborate on this endlessly, but that could end up offending too many people. Classic Knights, Western or whatever ain't coming back and that is that. Mylenium

Not really. And it's not that you need to even cook up something convoluted like @SpaceM. At the end of the day it simply comes down how much you want/ need certain parts and how available and accessible they are. Just like MAB I study the inventories and digital building instructions and then simply go by gut feeling. Thinking about this too hard and trying to be "economic" is just driving you insane. You end up obsessing about fractions of a penny and never commit, which at the end of the day could even work against you when you miss the window of opportunity when the prices were most balanced (not necessarily lowest). I have quite a few such situations where I could kick myself in retrospect not having bought a set when it was around and now have to get its pieces the hard way on Bricklink... Mylenium

This could be a million things, but I'd assume they are completely legit. A few things to consider: LEGO have been thinning out walls and supports with new parts revisions they have been dialing down the pigment amount and also messing with the base ABS mixture they continually experiment and use different pigments older bricks may use mineral-based pigments and fillers like chalk that are simply more opaque in-machine pigment mixing causes variations, anyway Mylenium

The UCS Falcon was never LEGO-exclusive. It was only "exclusive" to some retailers. And those will simply offload it to other resellers when stuff clogs up shelf space. Normal practice in the retail space. Similarly, most LEGO stores are independent franchise operations (here in Germany they are GmbH, meaning LLC) and in theory they could sell their stuff for any price. They may just not be able to do this in reality because they sold their soul to LEGO and no doubt the contracts are pretty strict. Still, even they will eventually filter surplus stock to secondary markets if they can't sell it themselves. the rest is probably that grey area in-between where just driving over the border into another country changes the formula. Perfectly possible that you could load your van just on a day trip from Germany to The Netherlands or similar. Sets that are exclusive here could be sold in regular toy stores over there. And of course reputable sellers have all sorts of connections to other sellers and exchange stock all the time. Mylenium

Depends. The real point probably is that it's cheaper than having to deal with tons of returned products every time a 1 x 1 plate is missing. You know, they'd have to reimburse the vendors and all that. Anyway, here in Germany you have the right to "cure the contract", in turn meaning you are entitled to have your defunct stuff repaired or replaced. It's also a common rule under EU law and while consumer protections in the US may not be as stringent, I'm sure there is some rules that at least cover scenarios where a product is completely unusable, which based on the OPs story would be the case with a damaged actuator. Mylenium

Get in touch with whatever customer rights organisation in your country/ area and ask them what can be done. You have a faulty product and are entitled to getting the situation rectified. Mylenium

They've gotten really pissy towards customers at B&P. They will cancel even the simplest order for defective or missing and you have contact them again and appeal your case. Mylenium

It might be worth adding some questions for internal electrification (e.g. USB ports for turntables and lighting kits) and labeling/ displaying plaques. Personally, if I were ever to purchase a custom shelf, I'd also look for customizeability by ways of having ramps to display models at an angle or being able to have custom inserts that can fit into standard pattern holes like on professional exhibition showcases in museums... Mylenium

Probably just a standard matte acrylic paint. Printing with UV-curing paints wasn't really a thing in those days and enamels don't respond to isopropyl. Any modelling acrylic like the one @MAB suggested will do. Mylenium

That's not illegal and your post illustrates the core problem of the discussion: People perceive things as "illegal" that aren't and on the other hand will happily accept techniques that actually are damaging to the material and model as being non-illegal. Yes, of course it's nuanced and the conditions under which certain connections and techniques are used can influence this as well. A connection can be perfectly legal one moment, but turns illegal when you add a wrong element next to it. There's potential for infinite discussion here. Mylenium

They are in the sense that they put stress on the plastic and affect stability of the models. Whether you care about that in any way is of course entirely up to you. I do to a certain extent, but that's just my engineering mindset shaped by my work bleeding into my hobby, I guess. Mylenium They rarely do, though, and when they do, they're quick to declare it an unfortunate accident. Mylenium

Hard to center those little buggers if you print a few thousand of them per hour. I'm sure the holding notch is very flat and there's a lot of unwanted slipping going on. Mylenium

SRSLY? *lol* Using stickers is a decision not a "problem". You still incur extra cost. Technically of course it's not at all an issue to manage even the biggest inventory in the day and age of computers, but you still have to transport the actual physical product. See above. Managing it is one thing, actually moving stuff another. Mylenium Depends on the subject, I suppose. I never considered it relevant for Technic sets for instance when I was still into that. Price or how "precious" a set is is not necessary a criteria. To me it's usually about whether or not a print would add to the model. Sticking with the Technic example I for instance always cooling gills or fuel hatches to be printed, but at the same time I couldn't really be bothered with the branding. At the end of the day a panel plastered with advertisements is also unattractive and kinda useless for other stuff. Perhaps in the end that would be a line of thinking to pursue: Rather than wanting to have everything printed, consideration should be given how it improves the base level rudimentary appearance of a model. Mylenium

They won't. With soon to be ten production facilities across the globe they just won't transport a bunch 1 x 4 x 3 bricks from Vietnam to Billund to print them or whatever people imagine would happen here. To me that's the biggest point people are always oblivious about - LEGO's internal production flow and logistics. And you can spin this however you want it. If they don't want to transport plastic pieces, they have to share molds and transport them around or create duplicates in every factory or even more critically they'll have to build a printing department in every one of them. It really is one of those things where no matter what they do they can't get it right. They've simply grown beyond a point where you can sensibly handle everything in a single place like pretty much all their many times smaller competitors. I dislike stickers as much as the next guy and never use them, but once I put on my production manager/ engineer hat, I totally get why things are as they are. Yes, certainly. Even with 4+ sets or other sets aimed at the youngest kids there is no stringent logic as to what gets printed and what is a sticker (aside from the technical stuff). Mylenium

They are not. You need to insert a bracket or a lamp brick for a half plate thick offset. Mylenium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_cosines The rest is a quantization problem, which is the hard part. It's one of those things Studio should have a panel for perhaps... Mylenium

Nobody can have a link because LEGO never said any such thing. Even the mere assertion that they won't do big figs anymore sounds ludicrous. Why would they not? This may have come up as a point in the recent battle over the minifigure trademark/ design kerfuffle (diluting the design, infringing and usurping other companies' designs etc.), but otherwise there's no rational reason for them to never do a big fig again if they see it as the viable solution for representing a specific character. It was never consciously destroyed. They simply "lost" it, meaning they didn't store it properly and then it was damaged beyond recovery. Why they never created a new one is of course another question entirely. Mylenium

Probably not. Dark Red will just turn into pink because it doesn't have the grey-ish undertone Sand Red has. And I can't imagine other approaches like "greying" Bright Pink plates or applying a red tint to Dark Tan, either. Sand Red has some very specific characteristics that are hard to capture. Ultimately that's why so many people would love to see this color come back. Mylenium

Food for thought: Said plate would get pressure from both sides without being able to "evade it" by bending ever so slightly, so ultimately the forces need to be absorbed by the intra-structural elements such as the (hollow) studs themselves or the anti-stud rings. It's perhaps not a problem on some models, but since such stuff is cumulative and tends to be quite damaging, the long term repercussions could be notable. It's the same thing like when you build your model all too solid and then people wonder why after a few years their precious MOC crumble. Not meaning to turn this into an endless academic discussion, but from a engineering standpoint these considerations matter. In fact even your brackets example could be mentioned here because it's the same problem. Don't get me wrong, personally I wouldn't care and the lack of straightforward direction inverters drives me up the wall just as much as anyone else, but I do understand LEGO's reasoning from this side of things. Mylenium