Echo

I've decided that I no longer wish to collect or own LEGO and am therefore doing research on how to get rid of my collection. It consists of hundreds of sets dating back to the early '90s and continuing forward to the present day. My initial thought was to just donate it all to a charity or a shelter, but it is quite frankly too large for a charity to handle; it'd be just a burden for them. Thus, because the task of sorting all of it would be basically a months-long full-time job, I am looking into selling it all in one massive lot. I do know what sets are in the collection and I do have all of the instructions as well so I can easily catalog everything using Brickset and provide a very complete picture to potential buyers as to what is in it not to mention providing mysefl with an idea of how to price it. So I suppose my question to you is if you have any general advice on this undertaking. Shipping it is totally out of the question give the size, so my initial thought is an eBay listing with a set Buy It Now price with the Make An Offer option and with local pickup as the only option for shipping. Any thoughts? (And in case you're wondering, I may post another thread elsewhere explaining my decision to get rid of my collection.)

I think there was a missed opportunity with the Sky Police to go full futuristic. Call it City 2050 or something and just embrace the wackiness. What we got doesn't go far enough. It's too nonsensical to represent modern real life, but it isn't interesting enough to look at nor innovative enough to make for good near-future sets either.

Yup. Up until last Friday, the last time I bought Ninjago sets was around this time in 2013 when I picked up the Garmatron and Cole's Earth Driller on a Black Friday sale via Amazon and, shortly after, the Temple of Light, the Samurai X mech, and the Overborg Attack from TRU and Target. I'm very selective about the LEGO sets I get. Also, in the past, I had space and money limitations due to being a college student who still lived with my parents. I meant to get more of the 2014 sets, but I never did. Ultra Agents and Arctic really grabbed my attention and money that year. Since then, I've still admired Ninjago sets, but the space/money constraints still remained until I graduated and got a job. Now, I have the space and money to get whatever LEGO sets I want and right now, that is Ninjago. (And it will likely eventually include the aforementioned huge boat at some point.)

The Legacy sets hit me right in the nostalgias. They reminded me that it has been five years since I last bought a Ninjago set. I decided to try some of the new stuff and also to watch the show for the first time which has led to me buying a TON of the current stuff and some old stuff too. (The Hunters sets are very good.) So I guess the whole Legacy line is a massive success in regards to me because it caused me to get interested in the theme again.

I totally understand why Lego has been clamping down on leaks and from a corporate perspective, that is an improvement for them. However, as a fan, the lack of leaks results in a lack of hype. We are not that far off at all from the next release season and there is not much information available about what to expect so I am therefore not excited. I think the solution, if this even needs a solution, would be for Lego to simply release official images earlier. As far as the leak policy, I have been a member long enough to remember when Eurobricks allowed leaks and I recall twelve year-old me really enjoying it; leaks are why I joined Eurobricks in the first place. However, I understand that Lego would bring down the hammer hard if leaks were allowed here now so I don't feel the need to complain about them not being allowed anymore.

Well, they kind of did that already to an extent in the final wave of Hero Factory. Personally, I'd prefer mech vs. mech stuff like Exo Force; at least at first. Kaiju could be introduced later on.

I omitted it because it isn't really impacted by licenses. There may be an occasional licensed Technic car, but they don't really affect it positively or negatively.

Before I even begin, I will preface this by saying that I am NOT personally advocating for what I am going to talk about here. I grew up primarily with non-licensed sets from the '90s and '00s so I very much appreciate and even prefer original properties. Thus, do not mistake this as coming from any personal preference for licensed themes or dislike for original properties. Now with that out of the way, I shall begin. I don't know that there is much of an argument in favor of Lego producing non-licensed themes outside of City, Ninjago, and maybe another Big Bang action theme with an accompanying TV show and marketing blitz here and there. Simply put, the built-in familiarity with existing properties both increases the range of people a theme may appeal to and reduces the budget required for making the customer aware of the product and convincing them to buy it. For instance, what reason does an average kid have to be interested in a non-Big Bang action theme like Ultra Agents that has no accompanying TV show to market its story? Sure, the action vehicle designs may fit the mold that Lego goes to for its action themes, but a kid is much more likely to want the Ninjago or Batman set that he has either seen on the TV show in the case of Ninjago or is already aware of through the massive cultural penetration that superheroes have in the case of Batman. This applies even more so to non-action themes like Castle, Pirates, and themes along the lines of Adventurers and Pharaoh's Quest. We know that young boys are drawn to cool sci-fi vehicles as is reflected in the designs of the Big Bang themes like Ninjago, Chima, and Nexo Knights. More structure-oriented themes like the aforementioned themes are therefore already at a disadvantage and it seems to me that Lego seems to be aware of that as the most recent attempts at Pirates and Castle have been short term themes with only one wave released in both cases and they were both very broad strokes and nonspecific archetype themes; basically the most basic methods of executing the ideas with no attempt at stories or bringing anything new to the table. In short, I'd say that they were not very high priority as far as marketing or time spent on design because they simply were not gonna sell as well as other things and therefore did not merit any more effort or expense than what they got. Thus, I'd conclude that such themes probably won't exist anymore outside of the context of more structure-oriented licensed themes like the Wizarding World. In conclusion, I think it is very likely that going forward, we will only see City/Creator, (I'm combining those due to how closely they overlap) Ninjago, and a smaller TV show tie-in Big Bang theme like Nexo Knights as the non-licensed themes. Quite frankly, I unfortunately can't say that Lego is wrong to do that either. They've missed on some licenses like Speed Racer and the Angry Birds Movie, but they have also secured some really good licenses in Star Wars, the Wizarding World, Disney, Marvel, DC, the various car companies for Speed Champions, Minecraft, and Jurassic World. Those are consistent producers and should continue to be in the long term; much more so than any non-licensed theme they can come up with.

A mech line could have potential as a Big Bang theme. Exo Force was very ahead of its time. They didn't really have the parts needed to execute the mech suit idea back then, but they certainly do now with things like the Mixels small ball joints and friction adding ball joint components. Ninjago dragons show that kaiju could be done well too if they wanted to go in that direction for the antagonists.

They masterfully demonstrated that there were some significant limitations to the Piraka/Inika body formula once it moved beyond the initial uses of those molds. In retrospect, I assume it was probably an early attempt at some type of CCBS system, but those torsos and limb parts largely worked best when they were used as originally intended as seen in the original Piraka and Inika. By 2008, not only was the format getting stale, but they seemed to have run out of ways to make it look different with the parts they had available leading to the spindly, oddly proportioned muddles that we got. (They turned it around a bit in 2009, but it was of course too late.) Of course, to me, a hardcore old school fan at the time, the utter lack of resemblance to the original characters of both the Phantoka and Mistika was utterly awful. I think what made it so bad to me when compared to the Inika was that the original Mata and Nuva designs and characters were iconic by that point and it just felt insulting to see those characters return and look totally nothing like those iconic original designs.

I definitely agree with the idea that they have self-cannibalized their own sales with too many products. Two oversized movie lines plus Nexo Knights plus Star Wars plus Superheroes results in a lot of action theme items competing with each other. Probably need to diversify the offerings a bit to make them different enough from each other to not compete with each other. The licensed stuff can't really be changed, so I'd recommend that the next non-licensed big bang theme be a constraction theme. I don't have any recommendations on the specifics of how it should be done, but constraction is an established successful model when it has the proper marketing and a well-conceived story and it is different from, say, Ninjago so it therefore would not be a competitor. Like, why buy Chima or Nexo Knights when the already established and popular Ninjago is already there with similar styles of sets and recognizable characters? Make something different.

I wonder if there is perhaps a compromise to be made? Not every non-licensed action theme needs to be a big bang theme like Nexo, Chima, or Ninjago that is expected to be a flagship brand for the company, but the concept of the archetypal themes doesn't seem like it works super well these days either as evidenced by the lackluster 2015 pirates and 2013 castle themes. Maybe some sort of middle ground; a "medium bang" strategy, if you will; could work for the archetypal concepts. Say a castle theme with defined characters and an ongoing storyline, but without a TV show or some of the other really extensive marketing done for big bang themes. A more minimal, streamlined approach to presenting the story through online/mobile content might suffice for a more short term theme that only lasts, say, two years and awareness of the brand could be increased by promoting it in ads on the big bang brand TV shows.

I'll wait to see larger images before passing full judgement on Arctic, which is the only part of the entire catalog I care about. I still have all of the 2014 Arctic sets assembled and displayed and I consider that to be a (kind of surprisingly) perfect theme so I don't know how much interest I'll have in adding any new sets to those, especially considering the larger scale and seeming lower levels of realism. (I'm just assuming that. I know nothing about actual arctic/antarctic expeditions. Maybe they really have stuff that looks like that mobile base thing. I don't know.)

Basically, to answer the author's question, I don't think Lego is entering a dark age. The only real holes in the product line that jump out to me are the lack of shorter term unlicensed action/adventure lines and the lack of a buildable action figure line, but those are not too terribly significant. I would like to know the financial success of the larger non-licensed lines that have lots of resources pumped into them like Chima, Mixels, and Nexo Knights, but I do not possess that information. If those types of lines are under-performing, then I would say there are some issues that need to be worked on, but even that circumstance wouldn't be enough on its own to cause me to declare that Lego is entering a dark age; merely that they need to make some tweaks to the formula used to create major lines like those.

I find it interesting that there were so few non-licensed themes released this year. I am not opposed to licensed themes at all and I know they often sell well, but the lack of focus on providing a handful of original properties seems like a missed opportunity to me. The lack of a non-licensed buildable action figure theme also seems like a pretty notable oversight.