Questions and Concerns for TLG

[paanjang16]

I have some questions regarding the availability of Power Functions items:-

1) Will TLG release a set containing the IR receiver and IR remote control like the Monster Dino and motorized bulldozer?

2) Will TLG come up with an "IR control" add-on pack like the current power function pack?

3) Is it possible for local distributors and stores to sell Power Function motors, IR receivers, extender wires like on Shop At Home?

I am asking this questions coz here in Malaysia we do not have Shop At Home and the only way to get such items is either:-

1) Hunt down a monster dino or motorized bulldozer- both hard to find and the latter is expensive.

2) Go to Bricklink and buy them second hand - very risky since we do not know if it will work, also need to ship it half way across the globe

We already have a Lego Shop of sorts, managed by Brickboy and sells nothing but Lego. But obtaining power functions parts such as the IR receiver is extremely hard as they do not sell PF motors and receivers.

[cagri]

I have some questions regarding the availability of Power Functions items:-

1) Will TLG release a set containing the IR receiver and IR remote control like the Monster Dino and motorized bulldozer?

2) Will TLG come up with an "IR control" add-on pack like the current power function pack?

3) Is it possible for local distributors and stores to sell Power Function motors, IR receivers, extender wires like on Shop At Home?

Hi,

1 & 2 - They don't reveal new products unless it's ready to announce. So it's not possible to tell.

3- Yes, it's completely up to the distributors. They can choose whatever they like and TLG didn't have any major supply problem for them so far. But they only ask for certain items they think would sell. So you should contact your distributor and tell them fans are looking for those items. TLG can't force them to sell things. If they don't want PF parts then they won't sell them. Simple as that..

Besides you don't have to buy them second hand and Bricklink is a great community. You are very unlikely to end up with something that doesn't work. In that very very rare case, you can always file NSS and ask for a full refund from Paypal. There are thousands of people who buy globally so you shouldn't worry if they'll reach you. Of course you must check customs duties and post regulations in your country before following such ventures.

[Seijitai]

Ok, browsed the nine pages to see if the following questions have been asked... and no, so...

Why don't we have any official informations from Lego about upcoming products ?

Here's some facts :

- January line is already available in some parts of the world, have been sold, bought, re-sold, reviewed, and... we don't have yet a single official picture from TLG. Furthermore, they will be officially available worldwide starting january 1, and yet, no pics.

- I know they don't want to reveal new products until "officially announced", and what did we have yesterday ? A video from a room full of 2010 sets, not the january line, but the mid-year line ?!?

I can quite understand that they don't want to tease people with products that might not reach production, but I'm talking of products revealed by the leaked retailers catalog, so products that will certainly be produced.

I also undertand that some of them are not ready, but some others are, just as we saw these boxed trains sets, General Grievous Starfighter, Slave One poster... in that same video.

Sorry if this sound like a pure rant. It is not my intention, but I truly don't understand TLG marketing department, and I think that we, the various communities desserve really better from a group we praise and buy from, year after year...

[CP5670]

I agree, and I will also say that TLG's approach to this is very old fashioned and shows that their marketing executives are still living in the pre-internet era. Many other companies are starting to understand how these things spread on the internet and how to use it to their advantage as a form of advertising, instead of trying to fight it.

[Rick]

I agree, and I will also say that TLG's approach to this is very old fashioned and shows that their marketing executives are still living in the pre-internet era.

I like my Lego old-fashioned and pre-internet era (shows what kind of company they are)

But I guess you're right with 4 year-old's browsing the internet nowadays, they could also take advantage of the internet and their brand name among their main target group. They are getting there with AFOL-oriented sets, which are announced at AFOL events and of which pictures are spread (under embargo) among major AFOL blogs and sites.

[Mörs]

I don't like the new redish brown colour that has replaced the usual brown one. Why... WHY DID YOU DO THAT?! *Breathes heavily*

Please bring back the old brown.

[Seijitai]

I agree, and I will also say that TLG's approach to this is very old fashioned and shows that their marketing executives are still living in the pre-internet era. Many other companies are starting to understand how these things spread on the internet and how to use it to their advantage as a form of advertising, instead of trying to fight it.

I agree. TLG marketing makes some fantastic works in some departments. The Lego advertisings which air on TV are well done (Star Wars, City theme,...) the 3D comics are hilarious, but when it came to direct, "specific" communication, there is nobody on the line. I don't understand them.

While I can understand fear of plagiarism problems in some themes (City, Pirates,...), they can't have the same fear on licensed themes, as these (SW, Indi, Prince of Persia,...) are part of (we can be sure) heavily armored agreement with rights owners .

Talking of Star Wars, I don't think it's part of the license agreement with Lucas, as Hasbro communicate 10 times better with websites and fans (example here : http://www.jeditemplewarroom.com/forum/ind...hp?topic=1903.0 )

As I said, if, at least, we could have clearer pics of sets coming out one or two months after, I would be already happy... It's almost as if the retailers themselves were having a hard time getting the pics, as we have seen with Amazon Japan switching the battlepacks pics for progressivly larger versions... Sic...

Ambassadors, could you please raise this subject to TLG ?

[CopMike]

Ok, browsed the nine pages to see if the following questions have been asked... and no, so...

Why don't we have any official informations from Lego about upcoming products ?

Here's some facts :

- January line is already available in some parts of the world, have been sold, bought, re-sold, reviewed, and... we don't have yet a single official picture from TLG. Furthermore, they will be officially available worldwide starting january 1, and yet, no pics.

- I know they don't want to reveal new products until "officially announced", and what did we have yesterday ? A video from a room full of 2010 sets, not the january line, but the mid-year line ?!?

I can quite understand that they don't want to tease people with products that might not reach production, but I'm talking of products revealed by the leaked retailers catalog, so products that will certainly be produced.

I also undertand that some of them are not ready, but some others are, just as we saw these boxed trains sets, General Grievous Starfighter, Slave One poster... in that same video.

Sorry if this sound like a pure rant. It is not my intention, but I truly don't understand TLG marketing department, and I think that we, the various communities desserve really better from a group we praise and buy from, year after year...

It´s been explained a lot of times. I also think that they´re not doing the best of a job with it, and that the policy is outdated. But the thing is that you have the whole scale within TLG of people who wants to have it "the old way" and those who want to show it early. Until that internal struggle is sorted out, we can only keep pointing out the craziness of today´s way.

I don't like the new redish brown colour that has replaced the usual brown one. Why... WHY DID YOU DO THAT?! *Breathes heavily*

Please bring back the old brown.

Won´t happen . Here´s the story, told by Jake McKee in may 2004, behind the change:

First off, I apologize for bringing this issue up again, but a promise is a promise. I said I would deliver more background info on the color change, and here it is. In an effort to reduce the almost certain flood of responses to this post, please understand that I am only posting the story, and won’t be debating the color change merits. My goal here is to simple share the real story of how the color change to be. Sorry for taking so long to get this out to you. In an effort to be 100% accurate, I wanted to fact check like mad before posting. I know that some people won’t believe this is the “real” story, but if you have a stack of Bibles, I’m ready to swear on them.

Now, on with the story! First a little background.

The Design Lab is an internal group at the LEGO Company who is responsible for overseeing the “system” aspects of everything the LEGO Company does. They’re the ones that maintain the element library, element history, “own” the element design process (working with others in the company), own and guide the growth of the element library (ensuring the element selection doesn’t get out of control like the late 90s), own the color palette, and many other tasks. Basically, they work to ensure that the system works long term, and is the most robust, consumer (kids and adults) friendly it can possibly be.

Around the beginning of 2000, we found ourselves with a color palette that was growing far too quickly, and far too organically. There wasn’t enough vision put into how we were expanding and adding new colors. The decision was made to apply the same type of thinking we now use in approaching the long term element design process to the color palette. The desired outcome was to create a color palette that would work effectively for years to come, and that could scale easily and correctly. We didn’t want to end up with the same out-of-control color situation as we did with elements in the late 90s – that was a hard lesson to learn, but we learned it well.

This initiative led to a revised color palette. This new color palette included some deletions of low-use colors, additions of new colors, and some tweaks to the existing colors. The goal in all these changes was completely and totally focused on creating the absolute best set of LEGO colors possible.

There has been a great deal of assumptions posted about the reasons we made the changes. Everything from trying to copy MEGABloks, to trying to save money on recycling parts. I know it seems hard to believe (unless you really think about the long-term history and attitude of this company), but it really is as simple as trying to create a sustainable and consistent color palette for the future.

As one part of the process of defining this new, long-term color palette, we tested the new color palette with children in the US and Germany. I won’t get into the details of how we actually tested, as I don’t have those details. But suffice to say, the tests came back overwhelmingly positive.

A planned roll-out plan of these new colors was planned and implemented for all products produced starting January 2004. The thinking was that it was much better to simply make a quick switch to the new colors, assuming (correctly, from what little we’ve heard from non-AFOL sources; incorrectly from what we’ve heard from the AFOLs) that the change would go fairly unnoticed. Changes are made regularly to the bricks, to make them better in some way. Improved clutching power, easier part separation, and many other things I don’t begin to claim to understand are regularly tweaked to help improve the elements. With the LEGO Company’s desire to keep their decades-long reputation for quality, we’re constantly working to improve things that almost all the time, consumers won’t even notice. I know a statement like this will open a can of worms. The point I’m making is just that we are constantly improving little small things trying to make the overall system even better.

Of course, one thing that Design Lab was unaware of at the time of implementation was the incredible impact on the AFOLs. It’s hard to remember, but when this “color palette cleanup” process was first initiated, LEGO Direct was one person – Brad Justus. The LEGO Community Development team was more than 3 years away from being formed. My role was both the Community Liaison (30%) and Web Producer (90%) – an amount that adds up to more than 100%!

Unfortunately, I simply wasn’t able to carry the AFOL message to the Design Lab in time. For that I apologize. I know I’ve let you down, and because of it, a good number of people no longer trust me and/or the company.

Right or wrong, agree or disagree (yes, I know that you all believe it was the wrong decision and disagree with it), please understand that we fully acknowledge and apologize for our poor implementation. I know, I know – many of you believe that the change should never have been made.

Because I’ve been working closely with Design Lab (together with my LCD Team colleagues) to help carry your message of frustration and concern, they now understand your concerns probably better than any group in the company. Again, I apologize for having not done a better job, earlier, in getting the AFOLs introduced to this group.

Many, especially those in the 1000steine community, have voiced their concerns with my/our efforts to help find a bridge between old and new. Some feel, as was posted on LUGNET, that efforts like the colors bags are “tranquilizers”. That was not at all the intention. Since we still believe in the changes (not the implementation, mind you), and the costs would simply be incredible prohibitive at this point (we lost a bit of money last year...), we’ve tried to do our best to help deliver to you as much as we can to help this transition. Is that trying to “keep you quiet”? Not to me… to me, it’s trying to respond to your needs. Those things include:

Admitting that we made a mistake in our implementation

Defining in writing, what colors have been locked i.e. defined as “universal”, thus being “untouchable” (will have a full list once it’s ready in a few weeks)

Agreeing to consult core consumers (AFOLs and child enthusiasts – Club kids) when making future core changes.

Working on solutions to provide either old bricks or new bricks to help ease the transition.

I don’t begin to think that we’ll never make another mistake again. After all, the company is made up of humans, and humans make mistakes. What I do hope you know, or agree is that we will do a better job of trying to ensure this type of situation doesn’t happen again.

I hope this helps clear things up.

Jake

---

Jake McKee

Community Liaison

LEGO Community Development

[Mörs]

After reading that letter, I still can't understand what's the problem with the brown colour... Basically, the old brown was too high a quality and too expensive, or what?

Well, I suppose the old brown bricks will soon become a very rare thing... or even worse, people will start hating them because they would stand out in their overwhelming collection of redish brown bricks.

[Matn]

I really don't understand people who are mad because there have been some colour changes. Okay, I also don't like to mix old and new grey, but it can come in handy when building for instance some ruins. And I love both old brown and reddish brown. They give a perfect natural mixture of wood in medieval houses!

[CP5670]

I really don't understand people who are mad because there have been some colour changes. Okay, I also don't like to mix old and new grey, but it can come in handy when building for instance some ruins. And I love both old brown and reddish brown. They give a perfect natural mixture of wood in medieval houses!

It depends on what kind of things you build. I build modern and futuristic MOCs and I want them to look pristine and perfect, as if they had just been constructed or come out of the factory. So any color variations look bad for such MOCs.

[The Cobra]

This is probably a known problem, but it keeps coming back

This piece is a totally different (acid greener) yellow compared to other (oranger) yellow pieces. It happened in last year's Police Mobile Command Center and it's happening again in the City Advent Calendar.

[snefroe]

This is probably a known problem, but it keeps coming back

This piece is a totally different (acid greener) yellow compared to other (oranger) yellow pieces. It happened in last year's Police Mobile Command Center and it's happening again in the City Advent Calendar.

yes it is an old problem that dates back to the 80's... back then it always a bit darker in grey than the normal grey pieces... Interesting to hear it has the same problem with other colors too...

[Rick]

yes it is an old problem that dates back to the 80's... back then it always a bit darker in grey than the normal grey pieces... Interesting to hear it has the same problem with other colors too...

I only noticed the issue with the yellow clips in recent years. It almost looks like the 'light-yellow' used in the Island Xtreme sets. I also noticed a similar problem with the 1 x 1 orange pieces in my City tow truck: they also look a lot 'paler' than the rest of the orange bricks and plates in the set.

[Ratshot]

The only problem I have is stickers. They look terrible on my sets.

I have really big hands which makes it hard to put them on the pieces. I really would like to see more printed bricks in upcoming ssets rather then there sticker counterparts.

-Ratshot

[Jiggo]

Does somebody know why my credit card wasn't accepted?

How could this be?

[Legoliner Pilot]

Does somebody know why my credit card wasn't accepted?

How could this be?

There is a million different answers to that, but it is probably because it is invalidated.

[Enilder]

I haven't played with LEGO for more than 10 years so I don't know if I was unlucky to got the wrong set.

This may have been discussed but here it goes.

Why can't LEGO securely attach instructions and sticker(s) to the box? I have bought about 8258 and a tractor sets and specifically, 8258 (the one with sticker) sticker set was folded and stickers were taken off of the sticker sheet and they were on the side of the box. Also instructions are ripped (minor). I will see what condition I will receive 8041 tomorrow but it'd be great if they can somehow secure them onto the box.

I am glad that customer service is the best out there but I am guessing I will have to call them whenever I get my set due to poor assortment.

[soc399]

This is probably a known problem, but it keeps coming back

This piece is a totally different (acid greener) yellow compared to other (oranger) yellow pieces. It happened in last year's Police Mobile Command Center and it's happening again in the City Advent Calendar.

Over the last few years, I've noticed a similar recurring problem with yellow clips of this type:

It was especially noticeable in my 4939 Creator Cool Cars.

[Rick]

It was especially noticeable in my 4939 Creator Cool Cars.

Exactly, same here, that was the set I had in mind above (although it was this type of clip, not the one above)

[RocketClone]

What about the quality?, a bit more information please if I´m going to relay this to TLG.

Oh right sorry about that, one of the things that are wrong is that the hands look like there made in china, (remember the pirate tic-tac-toe issue?) and the paint on the head connecter is missing. (look at KimTs signature and you'll know, and plus ive noticed this in the make-a-minifigure selection at the LEGO stores)

Edited January 14, 2010 by RocketClone

[Oky]

Will the rest of the board games such as Ramses Pyramid or Pirate Plank ever be released in the US? How about the two Power Miners sets Lavatraz and Claw Catcher?

[Minifig Lecturer]

I placed a big PAB order last year, in November, worth nearly €400 but only recently did I start to use the order's pieces and then notice that for a large number of 1x4x7 window/door frames I am missing the glass door/window pane. By large number it could be around 80.

Not sure where I stand, it has been along time since I got receipt of the shipment (think I received it in December). Have yet to contact TLG about this, is there any hope or even better, a way they can recheck their shipment compared to the order shipped? Or is it a lost cause.. ?

I should add I have made numerous large orders from PAB, may or may not have missed pieces as I could not tell as most were plain bricks in very large quantities (> €500) so I cannot tell how common an issue this could be.

[CopMike]

I placed a big PAB order last year, in November, worth nearly €400 but only recently did I start to use the order's pieces and then notice that for a large number of 1x4x7 window/door frames I am missing the glass door/window pane. By large number it could be around 80.

Not sure where I stand, it has been along time since I got receipt of the shipment (think I received it in December). Have yet to contact TLG about this, is there any hope or even better, a way they can recheck their shipment compared to the order shipped? Or is it a lost cause.. ?

I should add I have made numerous large orders from PAB, may or may not have missed pieces as I could not tell as most were plain bricks in very large quantities (> €500) so I cannot tell how common an issue this could be.

Hi Calvin!

Sorry to hear about your issue ! But DO contact TLG asap and check out what they can do, I´m a bit curios to why you didn´t do that directly. Get back with the result !

[jonwil]

Can we get an answer from TLG as to whether the new train sets (passenger train and cargo train) contain a rechargeable battery box or a battery box that takes normal batteries (and if it takes normal batteries what size and how many)