MAB

Even at the time there was a lot of discussion about The Hobbit being three movies as the reason for not getting Gondor or a third LOTR wave. And for the love of ships by kids as the reason we got the Pirates of Umbar ship and not Gondor. Obviously, we didn't know The LEGO Movie would kick off the popularity of LEGO, or that LEGO would start appealing to adults outside of the traditional AFOL fanbase, or that LEGO LOTR would become so popular. I wish we had, as I would have stocked up even more than I did. There were discussions and reports about the sets being heavily discounted though. Orthanc was the only set I wasn't able to buy at a decent discount. Everything else I got at between 30-50% off, and even more off towards the end. Although those were the days that most non-exclusive sets were available at some stage at 30% off and even then did not sell out very fast. Even retailers knew something was wrong, as some were giving 50% discounts on the final The Hobbit wave about a month after release. It is crazy to think what prices were available for some of those sets, you'd never get close to that now from a retailer. I remember posting Lonely Mountain and Battle of Five Armies on a LEGO deals discussion and others saying The Lonely Mountain at £50 was just about right, but that BOFA was still well overpriced at £30 and that it would be a poor investment. The LOTR game (50011) also wasn't selling well. I only picked a couple up for £15 each as I didn't think I'd ever use the parts and didn't really have any use for the microfigs, especially as I had already purchased all the figures at 35p each on the old online PAB. Then a clearance type place must have bought out the remaining stocks as the game disappeared completely then came back a few months later but only on their website and they had 1000s of them at £20 each (retail price was £30), even when they had been selling on ebay for closer to £100 by that stage. I miss those days!

The original set found room to have a cooking area, just not a complete stand alone kitchen. And also had plenty of food and drink to suggest a feast. I'm really not sure how much they will do next time, as the original set was substantial enough in size to depict a hobbit house pretty well. I don't think the size is the problem with the old one now, it is more the detail in the design. As you say, it looks quite basic now compared to modern sets. It was mainly a studs up box with a few SNOT parts for attaching windows. I imagine the next one will have a lot more small detail rather than the large slopes used in the walls. And using more small parts would mean it is not all that much larger in scale. It is a bit like doing a City house in LEGO or a building in Modulars, they don't have to be done to realistic scale or number of rooms to look good. I'd prefer fewer large rooms than many that are too small (and parts intensive for the walls).

I guess we will never know if The Hobbit performed worse at the cinema because it was three movies rather than being two movies, or just one movie like previous Hobbit films. Personally, I enjoyed all three and I didn't find it too bloated. In fact for the Hobbit I prefer the extended editions over the theatrical ones. It was not LOTR good, but I still enjoyed it and I think it would have been lacking compared to what was the final product if it had been just two or one movie. Similarly, we will never know if being three movies rather than one or two impacted on the sales of LEGO sets. If there was just one wave, or two waves, overall sales would almost certainly be lower than the three waves we had but whether that would be better for LOTR LEGO fans of the time. I know a lot of people blamed the rumoured change from two to three movies as responsible for not getting a third wave of LOTR sets and instead getting the third wave of The Hobbit sets. But LOTR sales were also not particularly good at the time. If there were just two movies for The Hobbit and no third wave of The Hobbit sets, LEGO might have cut its losses and not done the third wave of LOTR if one was planned. It was that difficult stage when LEGO had not hit the popularity heights, it was pre-LEGO Movie, pre-adult friendly sets, yet aimed at older kids and probably had a narrow audience because of it. The target audience was all over the place, some were 8-14, some 9-14, some 10-14, Orthanc was 14+, polybags were 6-12. They seemed not to know who they were aiming at. Which in one way was good for adult buyers of the time as it meant you could pick up the sets at a very good price, and you could also buy extra figures very cheaply too as Castle fans deprived of Castle for a few years were buying the discounted sets for parts and needed to get rid of the licensed figures.

Time is again important too. It seems that LEGO tries to keep prices at the bottom reasonably low, and this will naturally mean that an entry level set of 10 or 20 years ago will be different to an entry level set today if the price is similar. This is often done by similar part counts but smaller parts, so overall the final result feels smaller and worse than something that came before.

And what if they hadn't changed and only continued to do the same as the mid 90s? What if they didn't do Bionicle and Star Wars, changes that saved the company when other changes didnt work? Standing still is often just as bad or worse than change. If they weren't trying other ideas such as Galidor and Bionicle, or going for licensed products, I doubt they'd be here today. Other companies would have done similar licensed products while LEGO produced the same thing again and again, never moving forward. Not every idea has to be successful, but they need to find success with something. It is OK to try something and fail so long as some are successful. Just like introducing product ranges for adults, with increased part count and prices, highly detailed sets using a wide range of parts and colours to get excellent detail. This has been very successful, the proof is in the sales and the number of people buying LEGO these days. Some people don't like having the option of big sets that appeal to adults, but others clearly do.

Toys change though. When I was a kid in the 70s, we were perfectly happy with the buildable maxifigs of the time, yet they still introduced 'slabbie' minifigs. And then they changed them and made legs and arms that moved and even gave them faces. Then used stickers and eventually printed on the torsos to indicate what the characters are and made different types of hats and hair to customise them. Then increased the detail and range of character types. Then introduced some realistic fleshtones for licensed characters. Then increased detail in faces all the time increasing the range of character types available through body and also leg printing. Then introduced an even wider set of realistic skin tones for some sets. If people want only classic smiley heads, plain torso and legs in maybe three colours, and the choice of one type of male hair, one female hair or a cap, then it is straightforward to restrict yourself to only those parts. If you want only printed torsos but not legs and the choice of a couple of helmets, then stop there. But I think kids these days want much more variation than was available in the 80s and 90s. Would kids of the 90s have been OK with the generation before saying we had maxifigs and we were fine with it, so you should be too. Just as would kids of the 70s have been OK with the kids of the decade before saying we only built vehicles and buildings with very basic bricks and didn't need figures so why are you focussing on maxifigs?

If the library was packed full of people reading books and book checkouts were increasing then yes, it would be. But libraries rarely are that busy. If many other people are buying, building and enjoying LEGO, both official LEGO sets and their own or others' designs, what do you mean by the LEGO idea is dead? The company is alive and well, and probably more people than ever are enjoying it whether they are collecting minifigures, collecting sets, building and displaying sets, building their own designs, displaying their designs, attending LEGO fairs, reading LEGO books or magazines, creating or viewing LEGO content online. There are many ways to enjoy and interact with LEGO and surely that is the idea of it. All that suggests the LEGO idea is alive and well.

Fun idea. You can get close with just CMFs. Cowboy and Roman, Pharaoh, Tribal Woman, the Hun, the pilot with a female head for Amelia Earhart (or go outside cmf), the janitor for Cecil, Roosevelt would need a tan suit from outside cmf but fairly easy, similarly for Larry, plus the chimp would need to stand in for a monkey. The Easter Island head would need to be brick built.

Yet the number of MOCs shown at fairs and online (here, rebrickable, Flickr, and many other sites) suggests the idea of building what you like out of LEGO parts is alive and well and probably more popular than ever.

I guess part of the problem is that they need to be somewhat generic without being country or era specific and have 'action' (such as implied warfare). Castle is fairly generic in that it is sort of European but not more specific to a place or time. I also don't think it is meant to be historic (as in realistic / accurate). The more specific the subject, the less freedom they have.

Variation in Star Wars is higher than that in City. Count the number of police cars vs X-Wings, or the number of fire trucks vs Millennium Falcons. But yes, it is the same argument, new buyers expect to be able to buy the exciting sets when they enter the store whether that is a police car or X-Wing. As above, it is about churn of the fanbase. However, if they remove the exciting sets and replaced them with boring ones in the correct ratios, the theme would probably die. If they only did houses in City until they get the civilian to emergency services ratio to a realistic level, new fans would not join in the same way as if they did Vader, Luke and Han then only made sets containing stormtroopers and anonymous rebels for 20 years to get the ratios the same as those in the movies. They pick the exciting bits of the stories and are not aiming to be realistic reproductions of life or movies. Indeed. Yes, there are. LEGO has changed. They have learnt that adults will buy a few expensive sets for themselves if they build into objects they will display. So there is not one audience forbthose sets. The people buying the shoe will be different to those buying the flowers or the camera or the consoles. Those are sales they would not have made if they didn't produce that type of set. Their financial reports suggest otherwise. LEGO might well be fading into oblivion for those fans that want their output to remain similar to what it was in the 80s or 90s, but those days are gone. LEGO wants to maximise their sales by having some individual sets that appeal to small groups but overall appeal to many more people rather than just a very small demographic. LEGO making an adult aimed shoe or a theme of flowers sets does not stop today's children enjoying the 100s of unlicensed playsets they still release every year.

Not me, for unlicensed series. To me, series 14 was a CMF series more than something to go with Monster Fighters or any other theme, Series 18 was a CMF series more than a celebration of 40 years of minifigures and series 26 was a CMF series rather than something to go with the Space theme. I no longer display CMFs as a complete collection, but if I did those themed series would be with the other CMFs and not displayed separately with MF or Space. Whereas Ninjago Movie, Batman Movie, LEGO Movie, they were true themes and the CMFs are part of those themes. Similarly Harry Potter CMFs are not really CMFs but part of the HP theme, and so on with Marvel and DC. If anything, the skin colour distinguishes the licenses CMF as different to the unlicensed CMFs. To me, Seires 26 is a numbered theme and not part of Space, even though there was a link to Space. Same with series 14. So for Witches, I'd count series 2 and 14, but not DND or the Scarlet Witch and for Wizards, I'd count both series 12 and 13. So I'd say there have been 2 classic witches and 2 wizards. I also wouldn't count BAM, as they are not CMF, and nso ot part of any series so would not display with the CMF series if you display them that way.

I agree. And it wouldn't surprise me if a Castle series was not really any more useful to a Classic Castle type collector than a normal CMF series because of the variety in such tangential figures. .

BL is getting better with things like this. At least they are now recognizing the difference between molded and printed "boots" patterns and using molded as a keyword in titles.

To me, LEGO CITY equates to the more exciting bits of semi-realistic life in LEGO form, without meaning to represent a realistic city. It would be incredibly boring if it was, as we'd get endless similar but slightly different houses, apartment blocks and cars, with the occasional bus and store. But not much else. Even when they don't do volcanoes, space, farms, etc, CITY is not exactly representative of a real city or even just a city centre / CBD / downtown, and once you have a couple of police cars and a firetruck, you don't really need many more and so it is understandable that they portray other exciting bits of semi-realistic life in CITY. But I don't think I'd want them to rebrand CITY as LEGO LIFE.

It is fairly standard for selling used items like books, CDs, DVDs, etc. There are lots of companies that use this model for other items. I imagine they are legitimate. But I don't think the prices offered are that great (just like media buyer sites). But then they cover postage so no wonder their offers are a bit low.

Alternatively, one is removing as many of the minifigures as they can from the community and hoarding them, the other is temporarily removing them but making them more easily available albeit at a profit. If the community want reselling to stop, then the community shouldn't buy from resellers and the business model is broken. I don't think this is true. Some collectors and army builders will also hit the stores from day 1 and clear out as many as they can to build their collection or army. I don't believe army builders are so altruistic, waiting for others to get what they want before they buy more than one of a figure.

With the way that stock is being split between different warehouses giving different availability for different regions, it might be that we will need separate threads in future depending on where the stock is coming from.

It is out of stock for UK/Europe so they might have spotted it.

It's even worse when they are just widely available PAB parts. The build really needs to stand out when the minifigs are nothing special.

What difference does it make, whether they are a collector or reseller? The result is the same, they have cleared out the stock of specific figures.

There is also the issue of time. Previous Hobbit sets were plasets aimed a kids issued when there was typically one minifigure for every approx 80 parts in mid range sets. That ratio still is about right for smaller playsets although for mid range I think it is more like one figure per 120 parts. But for adult display sets with minifigures, the focus seems to be more on the build than minifigures and the ratio jumps to about 1 in 200 or 250. I cannot see them putting lots of minifigures into a mid range set (which is equivalent to a top end set of a decade ago), especially where new single-use parts are necessary.

That looks better than window / wall panels!

They have done play features in adult sets, the fairground collection especially Haunted House is probably the best example. But that sort of fits with the theme. For LOTR I imagine they will continue to do display sets with hidden Easter Eggs if you move something rather than proper play features.

There were reports of brittle brown parts breaking in contemporary newly opened sets back in 2012. More in the US than in Europe. I don't know if it was down to where they were made or temperature / storage conditions. I've found some parts have broken since, 2x4 plates, bigger plates and horses are especially bad, but still relatively uncommon for it to happen. Fortunately none of my LOTR or Hobbit figures have broken, although they don't really get heavy play, just display.