MAB

I doubt most buyers of the train sets even knew the difference between plastic and metal axles or what the set contains at the time of purchase. If a kid wants a lego train set, they'll choose a current set off the shelf. And they will probably only buy one train set, no matter what type of axles are in it, but also buy more accessory packs. My kids, they were given one train set and later on packs of extra track, and a station. As they were only going to get one engine, and what type of axles were in it wasn't really going to affect the purchase of more train engines that year or the next few.

But how would we know it was meant to be a female if there was no stereotypical lippy that all adult females have to wear? Aside from the crop top, eyelashes and the beauty spot on the cheek, of course. :-)

The existing Retro Space Hero (series 17) already pairs with the Retro Space Heroine (series 26). And they did a granny/wolf for Little Red Riding Hood in the Pop Up Book IDEAS set. Repeating it in CMF would be a bit boring.

It might be that some of the parts are out of stock. In 'the good old days' before they were charging handling fees they used to ship what was in stock, then ship the remainder when it comes back in stock. Whereas now they seem to hold until the whole (bestseller part of the) order can be shipped at once.

You can still make a complaint via paypal if you want to if they are refusing to refund and also not shipping an order. You can put in a not received complaint. Whether LEGO would block you from buying in future, I don't know.

I think the simple answer is that it shouldn't be done. If people want candles, they can use the existing three candle candelabra and religion can be left out of LEGO. Religion shouldn't be in toys, the same toy could be seen as mocking or celebrating a specific religion depending on viewpoint.

"Fantasy nightmare visitor of unspecified gender" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the Bogeyman. Plus it leaves open the possibility of a Bogeywoman to pair up with him in a future series.

No doubt, but I think it is more than just that for a couple of extra reasons: 1) LEGO needs to keep improving the realism and organic shapes of builds partly to make (especially 18+) designs look good and partly to keep up with what clone brands are doing. 2) LEGO needs to create new parts (and also new prints) to get us to buy more LEGO and to keep it interesting. I have no issue with specialised parts, as they tend to be useful. So long as they continue to produce classic style bricks too, which they are doing. The only issue I really have with them is the storage as there are so many part types. I often find that I wish LEGO made a piece in a slightly different way as even a small change of 1 plate height can make a difference if you are trying to get a shape just right. And every so often they do.

Yet nobody forces you to build studless designs or to use specialised pieces. LEGO continue to make the Classic range which usually gives a choice of 5-6 new bucket type sets a year for those that prefer building using mainly basic bricks.

Black Friday in the LEGO store is probably not the time or place for regular kids sets. BF seems to be an adult event, a time to buy exclusive larger sets with discounts. Dreamzzz seems to do reasonably well, as well as other in-house themes, in regular toy stores and supermarkets. I wouldn't buy full price non-exclusive Dreamzzz sets to get BF offers when they can be bought from other stores with routine discounts like many other sets. How much child aimed LOTR merchandise was on the shelves before Amazon did ROP? Outside of when movies were current, I cannot really remember any toys. There were the action figures when both LOTR and the Hobbit movies were current and no doubt kids had them at the time. There has been more grown up merchandise such as mugs, T-shirts, and grown up collectables like statuettes. Funko did LOTR figures but I'm not convinced they are toys. I don't think ROP is keeping other Middle Earth toys off the shelves. If anything the ROP audience has been shown to be on the older side and so may reinforce the idea that the majority of kids are not into the franchise.

Sure there is child demand for LOTR, but that demand is very low compared to Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, Ninjago, Dreamzzz, etc. LEGO don't know or care about individual circumstances. But their market research will tell them that children in general are not interested to make it worthwhile for them to do LOTR playsets. And given how little LOTR and The Hobbit merchandise is available on toy store shelves currently, it seems most other toy companies agree.

Let's face it, if there is a minifigure with this set then it is going to be a repeat of Gandalf.

Notice that I said possible locations FOR SETS and the style of the set depends on who is buying them. Remember for the original sets, there were complaints about Weathertop being too small and the Mines of Moria not being mines but just a wall. The problem with a lot of LOTR scenes is that they are large and would need to be done at large scale, especially if aimed at adults. I don't think there would be a continued market for Rivendell or Barad-Dur sized sets, or even half that size, when the locations become less important or even recognizable, especially if done at smaller scale. They could do the Council of Elrond style sets instead of Rivendell, but they would probably lose adult buyers without gaining younger buyers. If they did lots of smaller LOTR sets I imagine they would become minifigure packs with grey/tan/green bricks without really doing the scenes any justice with just a little bit of rock or a bit of tree. In a sense, HP sets are a bit like that but with a lot of child interest LEGO can get away with it as the audience is frequently cycled as they grow up. Whereas adult collectors tend to remain. For the first rounds, that is great for minifig collectors but soon becomes tedious if they repeat the same characters in the same outfits. HP and SW can get away with it. A few characters (or the full Fellowship) outside the gates of Moria is going to be a very similar set to inside the mines, at the bridge, or on the mountain (Fellowship minus one, of course). Those sets would need to be about the location rather than the figures and doing lots of ~500 piece sets would not give any detail and looks very random if all sets are displayed together. Again this is more a problem of the audience, adults buying all sets, rather than children that get a few. It wouldn't surprise me at all. It is a way of making a smaller display set for adults rather than a smaller playset as (as we all know!) adults don't play with their sets. It also sounds a bit like the Disney Villain Icons set, that was essentially a display statue.

I tend to store mine not holding weapons, as they take up less room that way. When I have left something in hand, I've never had one break. The hands are made from a different plastic formulation that makes them less prone to cracking. But even if they do crack, they are cheap and simple to replace aside from a few rare colours.

I would think HP has more possible locations than LOTR for sets. They have been able to explore much more outside of Hogwarts, and those locations can be done as playsets and still remain obvious where they are. I think also a downside of LOTR is that many locations cannot be done justice without a high piece count.

You are right, it is not worth £60. Soon after I sold a new one for £60, someone else bought a used one for close to £80. So the market value was higher than I thought. That is what value is. I don't value things in terms of their production value as that is never the price you pay, especially for LEGO. I cannot turn 5c worth of plastic into what I want it to be.

They aren't bought in an instant. Everyone has the same chance to get to a new box and buy the boxes they want. There are many players involved in setting secondary market prices. Some blame collectors that want to army build particular figures, some blame collectors that want a full series just to be complete, some blame resellers and call them names like scalpers, some blame the collectors willing to pay more than RRP, some blame LEGO for producing them or for the way they are packaged, some blame retailers for not restricting sales or for allowing scanning.

If they have been done once and are then done again in a similar way, I'd call that a reissue. For me, the bigger point is still whether there is a market. I don't believe that there is any significant child (age 10-14) demand for The Hobbit as the movies are not current and there is no other merchandise on shelves. And for adults, are there enough fans willing to drop multiple hundreds of dollars on a 18+ set for a series of movies that are not well that received compared to LOTR and the other movie franchises they are currently doing? Although at best they might do like they did with POTC and do a one off Hobbit set including some or all the dwarves. And that would be good for resellers, as it would bring in new people wanting the other characters like Beorn, Bard, Azog, Goblin King and goblins, etc and of course Smaug and send prices even higher. And why isn't buy something else a reasonable option? For the palantir, for example, why is a lime/black version necessary? There are other cheap options available if you just want it as a palantir, you could buy a Zamor sphere in pearl dark grey or black, or a black minifigure head, or the new palantir printed head, or the head with the eye of Sauron. If people want the exact one that only came in one expensive set, then they have to appreciate that it is not just a cheap plastic ball and wont be be priced like other cheap plastic balls.

I did that. I had just over 100 Romans that I was planning to use for a huge MOC. I paid up and bought most on ebay for 1.5-2 times the RRP. But then I realised I only really ever used about 20 at most in my MOCs and would never make a giant MOC after all as I prefer to see detail rather than epic size. Luckily for me, by that time, they were selling for 4x what I paid for them.

There is another option. In fact, at least two. Go without or buy something similar but cheaper. There is also debate that continually putting re-released products onto the market is not necessarily good for consumers / users. In this case, for example, I'm glad they did a new palantir in Barad-Dur instead of re-issuing the old one again. Not only does it protect the rarity and hence value of what I already have, it also introduces something different to the market. And if anything, a plain black minifig head is more realistic in size and has the advantage that it can be held by a minifig. And the printed one can be used when you want the vision.

Yet if people are willing to pay the prices, then they are realistic prices as they are the market rate. Like anything that is sold, the value is what it is sold for, that is what it is worth to the buyer and seller at the time. What other people value it at is irrelevant. Just because other people don't value it as highly it does not mean the price paid is disgusting. If someone offered me £6 for something that I can sell for £60, then their offer is no less disgusting or ridiculous than the price someone else is willing to pay and the low-baller clearly doesn’t know the market or possibly even appreciate what the object is. Their offer of 1/10 of the price that someone is willing to pay is just as disgusting as the 10x more than their valuation that someone else is willing to pay. Why is £60 a disgusting and ridiculous price for an incredibly hard to find collectable item? As that is what the palantir Zamor sphere is, not just a small plastic ball. If someone wants a small plastic ball and only sees it as a small plastic ball, they can buy a cheap small plastic ball instead of a hard to find collectable. The cost of the raw goods may be similar for both, but for those that appreciate what they are and know the market, they will know they vary massively in value. Just like the Rivendell set is worth significantly more than the equivalent weight in random LEGO bricks, random clone bricks or other plastic objects of the same weight. Or like a Sauron minifigure is worth significantly more than a Harry Potter minifigure.

Are kids buying these? The only people I've seen in shops interested in them are adults and older teens. If someone only buys 3 or 4 that isn't really different to buying 6.

I've used various non-LEGO motors a number of times in the past. They are dirt cheap, especially if you take them (and lights / LEDs, wires, etc) from old toys from a goodwill type store. Rather than trying to fit them into an old broken LEGO motor case, I tend to just build them into a small LEGO box made of plates and bricks or brackets. Then once assembled, glue a small gear onto the motor shaft. It is best to assemble the box on a larger plate to ensure it is the perfect size, then just dump a load of hot glue into it around the metal casing of the motor (away from the moving parts) to keep it centred in its new LEGO compatible case. They are ugly, but if buried in a model anyway it is not a problem. And as they are custom, you can have any LEGO attachments you like for the motor box - studs, technic holes, technic pins, etc and they can be different attachments on different sides.

And the older ones rarely sell, but do occasionally sell. Most HP and the more popular Star Wars sets are not worth investing in because they will be done again and dont hold their value if selling on as used once you are done with them. The weirder ones that won't get a remake can do better but there are always other cheap sets from the franchise available. But those old (sealed) ones do sell if the right collector comes along and has to have it, and in that sense it is worth just setting a high price and stashing away. I'm not sure I'd want LOTR to become like HP. On one hand, is great to get a huge range of sets. But on the other hand, when you are getting 10 different Harry Potter (or Frodo) figures a year with slightly different prints, or you buy a (insert scene) set here and two years later they do the same scene again, looking better at 50% bigger and 75% more expensive, then a long awaited figure in a huge set where all the other figures are repeats, it just becomes tiresome. I never really collected HP (but have some sets) although I used to collect SW but not as a must-collect-everything type collector. I think I had something like 35 Lukes of which about 20 were slightly different but just five main outfits and in the end got rid of all the duplicate outfits, keeping two of each type for display/MOCs. I don't really care about variations in creases in his white tunic. While getting new outfits and scenes is great, I already have the four different Frodos from the first round (in reality just two outfits) and another 4 MOC figures in other outfits. It is even worse if the sets are all adult priced and duplicate the past. Despite being beautiful, I didn't buy Rivendell. I have all the named characters already (aside from old Bilbo and his parts were on PAB) and I used its design to build a smaller version (but bigger than the old Council set) that fits on my shelving so it was not worth buying. But then, it would probably be just as annoying to get smaller sets of Frodo with Sam, Frodo with Gandalf, Frodo with Gollum, and a mid sized set of Frodo with Sam, Gollum and Faramir, and a really large set with repeats of everyone plus a single Gondor soldier. There is the feeling of missing out if you are not buying the small sets as they are duplicating figures or repeating scenes, when in reality you don't actually want them as it is all duplication.

They just shipped my order from mid October. Shame, I could have complained and got more points!