Latest news about Lego animal moulds

[williejm]

43 minutes ago, Rolyat24 said:

I’m still trying to get ahold of that elephant body! They changed it from $0 to an actual price, but it’s still been out of stock. Tried calling a few times too, but no dice.

Yeah that one is weird. Like why have they even made so many heads and no bodies!?

[jonwil]

Ultimately you have to remember that the parts for sale on Bricks & Pieces are made because a production run of that part is done for a set that needs it.

If LEGO are not doing any more production runs of, say, the City Wildlife sets then they likely won't be doing more production runs of parts like the elephants (unless there is another set planned that contains them which is unlikely at this point in time)

 

 

[williejm]

13 minutes ago, jonwil said:

Ultimately you have to remember that the parts for sale on Bricks & Pieces are made because a production run of that part is done for a set that needs it.

If LEGO are not doing any more production runs of, say, the City Wildlife sets then they likely won't be doing more production runs of parts like the elephants (unless there is another set planned that contains them which is unlikely at this point in time)

 

Indeed, but it makes little sense that the heads exist and are purchasable, but the corresponding body isn’t. Going forward I would assume the elephant might be revisited with a new head mould for an Asian elephant, which makes the lack of the body (which could easily be reused with a new head) even more odd. 

[Lion King]

I think panda mold is not that far since there is a Friends panda mold showing up in Jungle Explore subtheme in 2020. So I would hope to see a City panda mold showing up in Lunar New Year or City set next year. 

Also, I hope there would be an improvement for a tiger mold. It would be odd to see a 2017 tiger mold without stripes printed dow its back (where the studs are). Along with tiger cubs in Wildlife Rescue Missions set. But this may be ruled out easily. 

[williejm]

4 hours ago, DBlegonerd7 said:

I think panda mold is not that far since there is a Friends panda mold showing up in Jungle Explore subtheme in 2020. So I would hope to see a City panda mold showing up in Lunar New Year or City set next year. 

Also, I hope there would be an improvement for a tiger mold. It would be odd to see a 2017 tiger mold without stripes printed dow its back (where the studs are). Along with tiger cubs in Wildlife Rescue Missions set. But this may be ruled out easily. 

Yeah, I just don’t know if it’s possible to print on the ‘studded’ surface of the animals back … 

[Lion King]

4 hours ago, williejm said:

Yeah, I just don’t know if it’s possible to print on the ‘studded’ surface of the animals back … 

Exactly, but nothing is impossible. 

[williejm]

2 minutes ago, DBlegonerd7 said:

Exactly, but nothing is impossible. 

Unless it is. 

Just now, williejm said:

Unless it is. 

But yes, now the new Rajah tiger in Disney makes this really stand out 

[Lion King]

25 minutes ago, williejm said:

Unless it is. 

But yes, now the new Rajah tiger in Disney makes this really stand out 

Exactly! I sure hope a City tiger wil get improvement for justice just in time for Year of the Tiger.

[alvinofdiaspar]

20 hours ago, williejm said:

Yeah that one is weird. Like why have they even made so many heads and no bodies!?

I think all the bodies got snapped up by "scalpers".  I bought a set of two for the rest of the pieces and sourced the body from someone on BL (with a really large inventory of bodies) at a fairly reasonable price.

Edited January 25, 2022 by alvinofdiaspar

[AmperZand]

21 hours ago, williejm said:

Yeah that one is weird. Like why have they even made so many heads and no bodies!?

So you can have the heads stuffed as trophies on the wall of your hunting lodge! I’m tempted to MOC that with the explanation that I would have had living elephants but LEGO won’t sell me the bodies. I wonder how LEGO would react to that? 

[williejm]

8 minutes ago, AmperZand said:

So you can have the heads stuffed as trophies on the wall of your hunting lodge! I’m tempted to MOC that with the explanation that I would have had living elephants but LEGO won’t sell me the bodies. I wonder how LEGO would react to that? 

Do it 

39 minutes ago, alvinofdiaspar said:

I think all the bodies got snapped up by "scalpers".  I bought a set of two for the rest of the pieces and sourced the body from someone on BL (with a really large inventory of bodies) at a fairly reasonable price.

Again though - why have them in disproportionate numbers? 

[alvinofdiaspar]

34 minutes ago, williejm said:

Again though - why have them in disproportionate numbers? 

My guess (and this is just a guess) is that the scalpers bought the bodies disproportionately - it meant that whoever wanted to build an elephant through BaP will have to go third party to source the bodies (instant market!) - and buying the bodies alone minimizes the amount of cash one have to spend on inventory. 

Edited January 25, 2022 by alvinofdiaspar

[JamesBenjamin]

Honestly its probly more about manufacturing quotas than scalpers. What scalper would buy just a body? For those not in the know, this is how normal factories work:

 

Company wants to make 100,000 of some item. Lets say its a Lego Elephant. And for ease of discussion, THIS elephant is two parts: head and body. Well factories don't actually do quotes by # of items manufactured, they do them by time. So ahead of time Lego sends over their specs and the factory says "judging by scheduling and labor and ingredients availability, we would need 5 days (24 hours each) 4 weeks from now to make approximately 100,000 elephants, BUT because we sell time and not items, the contract says we can produce +/- 10% of that number and you get/have to take them all (this 10% is pretty much an industry standard).

So the first 2.5 days everything is going smoothly and they are able to make 109,476 elephant heads. Then there's some sort of problem when they switch to the bodies and they loose 3 hours in set up. So they end up making only 92,398 bodies. Their contract with Lego is fulfilled and they ship off 92,398 complete elephants and 17,078 lonely heads, because both of those numbers are within 10% either up or down of the original number requested (100k).

Now Lego has been in this for awhile and they knew that they really only needed 90,000 Elephants to fulfill their order of the "elephant chase" set for this year, and now they have all those extra bodies and heads. Pre-internet, those would go in the trash or get harvested for local projects, or given to charity, held till the next elephant set, or whatever. Now they put them on bricks & pieces instead.

Now obviously Lego owns some of their own factories and has a tight grip on the scheduling, and when they do next year's "elephant boat trip" set they can take those extra heads into account when they schedule factory time. But in general, that's why you might end up with a lot more heads than bodies on a service like Bricks & Pieces.

Although in this case if the body had a $0 price for awhile it might also just be a glitch on the site.

[Lion King]

2 hours ago, AmperZand said:

So you can have the heads stuffed as trophies on the wall of your hunting lodge! I’m tempted to MOC that with the explanation that I would have had living elephants but LEGO won’t sell me the bodies. I wonder how LEGO would react to that? 

And I’m against trophy hunting/poaching…. Call for justice for Lego bodyless elephants!

[AmperZand]

5 hours ago, williejm said:

Do it 

Despite the fact I’m into System animals, I’m not into City (my LEGO collection is almost entirely centred on speculative fiction of one kind or another). So I’ll gift the idea of the hunting lodge with elephant head trophies to anyone who’s more into City (in all its forms) than me.

Still happy to add volubly to the call for elephant bodies. In fact, I would love to draft the email to LEGO explaining how it celebrates hunting elephants and asking it why it thinks that’s a good idea - lashings of sarcasm included.

Edited January 25, 2022 by AmperZand

[Lion King]

That reminds me….does any non-licensed aniamls happen to have asymmetrical prints?

For example, Toro the Carnotaurus from Jurassic Wold (licensed) theme has scar, which it makes an asymmetrical appearance. But it seems there is no non-licensed aniamls having asymmetrical prints. 

[williejm]

14 minutes ago, DBlegonerd7 said:

That reminds me….does any non-licensed aniamls happen to have asymmetrical prints?

For example, Toro the Carnotaurus from Jurassic Wold (licensed) theme has scar, which it makes an asymmetrical appearance. But it seems there is no non-licensed aniamls having asymmetrical prints. 

Yes, for sure some of the pigs do (the one that came in CMF definitely). Also the winking owl. The bulldog with one gold tooth. 

[Lion King]

28 minutes ago, williejm said:

Yes, for sure some of the pigs do (the one that came in CMF definitely). Also the winking owl. The bulldog with one gold tooth. 

Ah, yes! I competely forgot about CMF pig, bulldog. Speaking of pig…., i competely forgot about cow! How could I forget about them…

but i am not aware about a winking owl?!

[AmperZand]

1 hour ago, DBlegonerd7 said:

Ah, yes! I competely forgot about CMF pig, bulldog. Speaking of pig…., i competely forgot about cow! How could I forget about them…

but i am not aware about a winking owl?!

The snake from one of last summer’s Wildlife sets has asymmetric printing along its body. I think the big cats that have body printing may be asymmetric too.

[Megbricks]

On 1/25/2022 at 11:02 AM, alvinofdiaspar said:

I think all the bodies got snapped up by "scalpers".  I bought a set of two for the rest of the pieces and sourced the body from someone on BL (with a really large inventory of bodies) at a fairly reasonable price.

I think you are right. When they forst becaume availble over the phone there was a big mix up a lot of poeple i know were told that the body number also included the head piece for some reason. When i called i found it fishy and odered the body and the head and was told by the lego rep that the body had the head included and that i would end up with two head for each body.  Sure enough it didnt and I got bodies and heads separately and no extra heads.  If scalpers were told the same thing then they now have a whole lot of headless elephants:)

Edited January 27, 2022 by Megbricks

[Lion King]

Out of boredom, I was reading the Page 1 here and I was surprise there are no recolored rabbit molds since the folks started talking about it in 2017 here…

The farm subtheme better have a darn recolored rabbit mold or we start a mob with pitchforks!

[williejm]

1 hour ago, DBlegonerd7 said:

Out of boredom, I was reading the Page 1 here and I was surprise there are no recolored rabbit molds since the folks started talking about it in 2017 here…

The farm subtheme better have a darn recolored rabbit mold or we start a mob with pitchforks!

It’s like the goat, they are playing us 🤣

[Lion King]

17 minutes ago, williejm said:

It’s like the goat, they are playing us 🤣

[jonwil]

I hope the sheep appears in more sets than just that one Disney set.

 

[CastleRail]

3 hours ago, jonwil said:

I hope the sheep appears in more sets than just that one Disney set.

 

Isn't it supposed to be in the summer farm wave? It wasn't available on LUGBulk this year, not sure if that is a good sign or not.