AndyC

I'd imagine Hasbro would be unhappy with a 'cheap' Star Wars Chess set (or anything similar like the Tic Tac Toe sets) because they're pretty much minifigs with a baseplate there as little more than an excuse. It'd be pretty much the same deal as the magnet sets. A big, expensive set with a more substantial building element, like the Giant Castle Chess Set, would be less likely to fall foul of that but as others have said I suspect there is already a license for collectors Star Wars Chess sets elsewhere. Whether they too would get upset over a Lego version is a whole other matter, but it's probably a big blocking factor. Which sucks. Because Lego Star Wars Chess would be fantastic. Thankfully it's Lego, so we can always build our own (just need to stock up on a few more Storm Troopers/Rebels for Pawns, I guess!)

I'm not sure that's entirely intentional, since every part in the non-extended mode does have an element ID (the combination of Design ID and colour) and they are only allocated when a part is produced. It's most likely that those parts have been produced in that colour but only for testing or specialist use by TLG staff. The DbM team probably picked parts based on the existence of Element IDs thinking they were all available somewhere, thus accidentally allowing some otherwise unavailable pieces to sneak through.

Probably related to production rates, they can't instantly create enough sets to fully satisfy all demand so they have to stage the rollout to markets to ensure the can produce enough to supply retail outlets for the initial demand. Other factors may also come into play with licensed sets, as the licensors may have specific demands about when and where products should be available to maximise their tie in with other marketing efforts.

Well hopefully if they got as far as designing all the models then they aren't exactly 'scrapped' so much as 'postponed' and we might yet see an AC line next year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed personally, it's certainly been one of the best original themes in some time and I'd love to see more of it.

Glad to see they've been confirmed, although I was kind of hoping they might not all have gold medals as it would have been a good opportunity for some silver/bronze ones too.

Strictly speaking they were pre-WW2 (although only just), except for the stupid one with Russians and Aliens in it. I think it's fair to say that was skirting about as close as TLG are ever likely to get and even then they didn't make the tank that plays a pivotal part at the end of Last Crusade.

Interesting, albeit a bit unexpected. Curious to know what the fig quality is like. I'm not normally one to buy into the whole "chinese plastic" scare stories as I've rarely seen a noticable difference in most cases. However I bought the last Pirates Chess set and the figures in that were a very noticably poorer quality. If the same is true of this, I'll pass but otherwise I would quite like it (though that cheapo plastic basepiece would need to be modded out, plus some rearing LotR horses maybe....)

The world is just more complicated than that. Do the AUS prices include tax, for example? US prices generally don't include sales tax, wheras here in the UK prices pretty much always include VAT. Then there are shipping costs and import duties, also the size of the US audience combined with the fact there are factories in Mexico make it cheaper than delivering elsewhere. Then there are issues like variations in typical household incomes to consider, not to mention the placement of a product in relation to it's competitors. Now, if you could demonstrate that the price difference was substantially different to similar products like Playmobil and so on, you'd have a more interesting argument. Just doing a straight cost conversion rarely reveals much.

I would. It has a hardcore fanbase like a lot of niche sci-fi shows. It was still a financial disaster though, so I reckon they'd not charge too much in licensing fees to TLG as it might just bring them a bit more cash.

Well the license to a flop movie spinoff from a failed TV show has to be cheap, I guess.

I just checked. you can attach the end of a lightsword blade to either side that hole (as if it were a hollow stud on each side), but you can't place one going through it in the way you should be able to. So yep, there is still a bug there.

Superman's hair looks like one of these, just closed. Not sure which bit you're referring to on Robocop.

Lovely collection, great to see it still pretty much all in reasonable shape. Alas my parents appear to have got rid of all my childhood Lego sets (I was gutted when I found out). BTW the yellow astronaut from 6823 appears to have swiped the grey 'metal detector' piece that's missing from the back of 6844. He's supposed to have a black one. :-)

Because of security concerns around the webgl api design, it's only enabled on a tiny number of whitelisted graphics cards/driver versions. So even having the right browser isn't enough to ensure you'll be able to run it. Shame as it sounds like an interesting project otherwise.

I'm not sure that's strictly true. I'm pretty sure anyone can vote (or maybe it was 13+), it's only actually submitting proposals that was limited to adults. And whilst it's disappointing that it didn't make it past review, I can't say I'm entirely surprised. SotD is by no means the most violent movie out there, but it's not exactly typical Lego territory either. I dare say this won't be the last Cuusoo project to fall at the final hurdle either, all those trying for Hasbro products are pretty much dead before they even begin.

Either the 8886 or 8871 extension wires, one end has an old-style connector on the bottom that can connect to old electric parts and a PF connector on the top (the other end is PF both top and bottom).

You can use a Power Functions extension cable to connect PF parts to the older 9V electric parts, as one end of the cable has an adapter on the bottom. That will ensure the PF pins are wired up correctly too.

LDD is already multithreaded, as can be seen in Task Manager. However I don't think the algorithms they use scale well beyond about 15K pieces. LDD on my Quad-Core i7 starts to struggle around then, despite the fact that the machine is barely feeling the strain. I suspect it's calculating the connection points that kills it, as you see similar problems moving moderately large constructions over each other. There's a lot more to getting perf on modern systems than just "use multicore" and I don't think LDD is really designed to scale to that size (it was, after all, meant for DbM models).

Tale from a recent interview: I didn't have any personal interests on my CV and one of the things the interviewer mentioned was that he didn't like CVs which didn't tell you something 'real' about a person beyond their skills. So we talked about hobbies in the interview and Lego collecting was a big part of that. I got the job and I don't think it made much of a difference either way, other than to show something of a more human side - nobody really wants to be working with personality-less robots all day.

The forum software serves broken HTML to IE9, which causes this and a few other problems. You can fix it by telling IE to render the site using it's compatibility renderer. The button to enable it is in the IE address bar, just to the left of the Refresh button (it kind of looks like a page torn in half).

I think it's also worth remembering that for many kids, LEGO is something they get as a gift for xmas/birthday. If they're going to get one 'big' present and a few smaller ones, the little LEGO fan is going to be a bit disappointed that the big one isn't a LEGO set. There's also something more desirable about a complete model. I vividly remember looking at LEGO catalogues and dreaming of how cool it would be to own one of the big castles or police stations and so on. I'm not sure a bunch of smaller 'bit of a castle' sets would have had quite the same impact, even if they could eventually be put together to produce the same thing.

I think it looks brilliant. Sure there have to be a few compromises here and there, because R2 in the movies seems to pack an almost unlimited amount of stuff inside such a little droid. It's definitely looking like one of the 'must have' sets of the year.

Well if the aim is to sell the most sets, a ten year old boy is probably the ideal person to ask. And I think that looking at a shelf full of sets, the velociraptors will win the ten year old's attention far more often than a zoo full of animals. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but it's probably the way it is. At that point it would be a matter of whether an exclusive set, which inevitably will have lower sales, can justify the creation of a lot of new molds for the animals? I'm not sure it could, to be honest. If lion molds existed from some kind of jungle/safari based theme and then penguins from an artic theme, then you'd be looking at a more likely proposition as it would be feasible to do a zoo with a few new prints here and there. Well, either that or release a zoo that has velociraptors in it!

The dolphin and elephant, maybe, but the sawfish was seen as recently as 2010 in the Imperial Flagship so I'm not sure that's actually retired. It's probably more a case of there not being many sets suitable to use it in than anything else. It'd be nice to see some more animals, although I think you'd really need some kind of Zoo or Safari theme to justify a significant number of new molds in any one go.

Creator sets are often really good parts packs, the houses in particular tend to provide a good source of suitable bricks in a single colour. Aside from that the big models like Tower Bridge and the modulars themselves (you could always buy a second copy!) are similarly good sources of parts. As to planning something out, LDD comes in really handy but also sometimes it's just easier and more inspiring to have a few bricks in your hands and just play around with them a bit. If you're lucky enough to live within range of a Lego Store the Pick-A-Brick wall also seems like a great way of getting very cheap parts (sadly I don't).