LEGO community team AFOL survey

[Captain Green Hair]

This is a great approach from Lego, i completed it just now.

I asked them to put pirate minifigs in the PAB, and my biggest concern is the color difference in pieces.

Thanks for highlighting this CM!

[mania3]

I wonder how big the grain of salt will be that they take our advice with

[Holodoc]

So I´m done with the survey as well.

Main issue for me was the color inconsistency.

I would have liked to add some more problematic topics, five is quite limited...

But nevertheless the survey was great!

Thanks, CM!

[Big Pete]

good initiative ... I hope the comments actually get to people that can change things.

I added my major gripe about USA exclusives!

[hollisbrick]

So I can't do it?

[kidcharm]

Completed it!...

Eurobricks was my top site pick!

I also mentioned, we need to lose the stickers.

[CP5670]

It's nice to see that they are paying attention to the AFOL community.

Color saturation and quality was easily at the top for me in the concerns list. I would be buying far more Lego if the bricks were the same as they were 10 years ago.

[kidcharm]

It's nice to see that they are paying attention to the AFOL community.

Color saturation and quality was easily at the top for me in the concerns list. I would be buying far more Lego if the bricks were the same as they were 10 years ago.

You're right. ...I didn't say anything about it on the survey, but just in the past 24 hours I've seen how bad it is. Yesterday I received pieces to complete a 4up 2x4 red lego brick. All the pieces were listed as 'new' and indeed they looked new, but after I combined all the parts, it was very apparent that there was differing in saturation on my 1x16 reds and my 1x6 pieces. This sucks when you're try to make large scale objects and want to illusion of everything being one large piece.

[Legoking]

Finished. I think this is a well put together survey.

[L-space]

Good idea to (finally) put together a survey. Lets hope they keep this up and give us the feedback from this one.

But I think Cm will see to that

[legobear]

Thank you for this Questionaiire, very helpful!

I have one criticism though.

This is targetted for AFOLs right? Then why would we have to rank questions such as "Price is too high" or "Target AFOLs more" into one questionaiire?

If you think about it closely, this is targetted for AFOLs so what is important is pricing, not "Target AFOLs more" - this question should not exist. If you rank this ahead of pricing

it says that I don't care about pricing as much, just give me the darn products (but Lego will do this anyways).

Lego knows there is a huge market, they just don't know how much to spend on this market or how much to demand in pricing.

If we don't rank "price is too high" as priority, they will release things that are Death Star pricing which marginalizes some AFOLs like me.

That's just my two cents.

p.s of course I picked Eurobricks as my top pick, you guys always have new info FAST! plus you guys don't censor as heavily as Classic-Castle in terms of new products. I love classic-castle to death but jeez, all the information is classic X_X !!! no pun intended.

Edited December 12, 2008 by legobear

[Joebot]

I sorta feel like I do when my employer does a big company-wide survey: I appreciate them asking ... but I'm skeptical that they'll really do anything with the results. Or maybe I'm just a cynical old bastard.

p.s of course I picked Eurobricks as my top pick, you guys always have new info FAST! plus you guys don't censor as heavily as Classic-Castle in terms of new products. I love classic-castle to death but jeez, all the information is classic X_X !!! no pun intended.

Totally agreed! This place rocks, especially when it comes to people scrounging up juicy info on new sets. I have never understood the cloak of secrecy around some of the other fan sites.

[CP5670]

You're right. ...I didn't say anything about it on the survey, but just in the past 24 hours I've seen how bad it is. Yesterday I received pieces to complete a 4up 2x4 red lego brick. All the pieces were listed as 'new' and indeed they looked new, but after I combined all the parts, it was very apparent that there was differing in saturation on my 1x16 reds and my 1x6 pieces. This sucks when you're try to make large scale objects and want to illusion of everything being one large piece.

Some of those were probably from an older production batch, before TLG switched to clear ABS pellets in late 2006. It's common for Bricklink stores to stock both types of pieces. The color differences are especially glaring if you look at identical pieces from four or five years ago and compare them to current ones.

This is something that consistently annoys me when I open new sets these days and has really diminished the fun of building new sets for me. Some of these pieces look just like megabloks, and when I first got some in a BL order in early 2007, I thought they were in fact a clone brand that was copying the Lego logo.

p.s of course I picked Eurobricks as my top pick, you guys always have new info FAST!

EB is a great place and certainly the most friendly and open Lego forum I've come across, but I put Bricklink above it as realistically, none of my larger MOCs would have been possible without it.

[yellost]

Done it too. really interesting to know TLC is at least intrigued by what we think.

thanks for the intel', Copmike

it was indeed very scary coming up with a figure on the amount spent on LEGO this year. I'm not even going to say I'm that embarrassed.

Same here... I think it's the first time I tried to add everything I spend on LEGO over a year... Really scary, considering what very little income I have...

I added that I would like less store exclusives. The closest TRU is five hours away, and there are so many good TRU exclusives.

Damn, I forgot about that one... We don't even have TRU at all here in Belgium...

[kidcharm]

"This is something that consistently annoys me when I open new sets these days and has really diminished the fun of building new sets for me. Some of these pieces look just like megabloks, and when I first got some in a BL order in early 2007, I thought they were in fact a clone brand that was copying the Lego logo."

...I get the 'Mega Bloks' feel from newer bricks too, but I had no idea TLG swapped ABS in the past few years! It kind of feels like a lighter, less rugged plastic.

[Corvus]

I'm just worried that I can't take the bricks apart with my teeth anymore. I used to have endless fun hurting my jaw and cutting into my gums with the old bricks, and now I can't because the new bricks scratch with everything.

[Brickadier General]

Thanks CopMike, I thought this was a very nice survey. This was one of the things I asked for:

I would really like to see Wild West sets return like the Pirates did. I think there was a lot of potential left in Wild West. For example, now that you have cows, you could do a "civilian" pioneer wagon, and cavalry figures could be in dark blue.

It was really hard trying to keep that within the length limits.

[Sammael]

I asked for S@H to extend its services to all countries.

[CP5670]

"This is something that consistently annoys me when I open new sets these days and has really diminished the fun of building new sets for me. Some of these pieces look just like megabloks, and when I first got some in a BL order in early 2007, I thought they were in fact a clone brand that was copying the Lego logo."

...I get the 'Mega Bloks' feel from newer bricks too, but I had no idea TLG swapped ABS in the past few years! It kind of feels like a lighter, less rugged plastic.

They used to use pre-colored ABS pellets but moved to clear pellets two years ago, adding in the color during the molding process itself. The uncolored ABS is apparently cheaper and it was part of their overall cost cutting strategy in the last few years. It should in theory be possible to get the same kind of color with the clear pellets, but they haven't been able to get it right.

There are indications that yellow became bad before the other colors though, possibly as early as 2003, so that might have been due to a different cause. TLG actually claimed to have fixed the yellow a few months ago and brought it back to its old level, but we will have to wait some time before the new yellow becomes widespread in actual sets.

Edited December 13, 2008 by CP5670

[Wout]

I added a complain about the 40% air in the boxes these times.

[kidcharm]

They used to use pre-colored ABS pellets but moved to clear pellets two years ago, adding in the color during the molding process itself. The uncolored ABS is apparently cheaper and it was part of their overall cost cutting strategy in the last few years. It should in theory be possible to get the same kind of color with the clear pellets, but they haven't been able to get it right.

There are indications that yellow became bad before the other colors though, possibly as early as 2003, so that might have been due to a different cause. TLG actually claimed to have fixed the yellow a few months ago and brought it back to its old level, but we will have to wait some time before the new yellow becomes widespread in actual sets.

Thanks for this info. I really find the production side of this stuff amazing.

[Nikola Bathory]

I completed this servey, it's great that LEGO wants to hear the opinion of AFOLs!!

Under communities, I put Eurobricks as Number 1, then brickset and brickshelf - I have accounts there too and those sites are great - but you know that.