Brick by brick - the Lego thread

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Welcome to the thread for those tiny sources of foot and wallet pain, Lego bricks!

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Lego has changed a lot since I was a kid. Back then, the main themes were City, Castle, and Space. Around the time I started really getting into Lego sets (late 80s, early 90s) - things were picking up & Lego started releasing more detailed sets - but still nothing like what is out today. Castle started to have subthemes, Space became (for me) Blacktron 2 vs Space Police, Pirates became a thing, and Lego became the only thing I cared about.

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Fast forward to the early 2000s. Lego massively expanded the number of sets & themes it was selling, and also had started up a large number of theme parks, but actually was having problems with making ends meet. In 2003, Lego lost $300 million, and was headed for bankruptcy. Thankfully, they were able to turn things around within a couple of years - by taking steps like selling off most of the Legoland parks, sold off video game development (previously done in house), reducing the number of different Lego bricks from 12,900 to 7,000 - and focusing on developing more sets for the core audience.

Today, Lego is the largest toy company in the world, and is still privately held.

My favorite sites for Lego stuff:

News & Reviews:

Jay’s Brick Blog - A blog about LEGO bricks (jaysbrickblog.com)

Brickset home page | Brickset: LEGO set guide and database

The Brick Fan - LEGO News, LEGO Reviews, and Discussions

The Brothers Brick | World’s No. 1 source for LEGO news, reviews, and fan creations. (brothers-brick.com)

Shopping sites:

BrickLink - Buy and sell LEGO Parts, Sets and Minifigures

  • This site lets you buy sets, bricks, minifigs, instructions, custom items from individual sellers.

Home | Official LEGO® Shop US

(hint: if you use Microsoft Rewards, you can get 3% back; also make sure you’re signed up for Lego VIP for rewards & early access to sets)

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Thought I’d share this today since it was happening, and I noticed Lydia Winters (Mojang/Minecraft) was involved.

LEGO® CON 2021 | Watch LIVE | Official LEGO

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Side note: I didn’t end up watching, but I did read some of the announcements. There’s a contest to vote for the next Lego Minecraft Minifig skin (none of which looked that great to me), some upcoming Star Wars Mandalorian sets which look OK, though I still wish we had gotten a minifig for Kuiil… :sob:

What did I do instead?

Well my wife and I started sorting through some of our Lego sets to figure out which we want to get rid of and put everything into an inventory. So far we’ve gotten through most of the polybags, some of the keychains, part of the minifig series packages, and all the Friends dolls we already had separated into bags. This will take a while…

Also, my star wars vip minifig display polybag that’s worth over $100 apparently split open, so not so much now. But I wanted to build that anyway, so oh well.

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Oooh, great thread! I don’t quite build LEGOs as often as I’d like, but I love 'em. Subbed to the thread :slight_smile:

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I love Lego, but I’m always afraid of becoming addicted to yet another expensive hobby :sweat_smile: I almost bought some Speed Champions sets so many times…

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I HAD all the speed champions sets, though I think I’m now missing 1 from 2019 + don’t have any from this year yet. And I’m torn on opening the Ferarri team truck from 2015 since it’s worth about twice what I paid for it…

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where is the UCS gunship? The mandalorian sets leaked a few weeks ago, so i know quite a few people were expecting the gunship to be shown off. Its rumoured to be Aug 1st, and its prob my most wanted set this year

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Yeah - was expecting to see that today, and it was a no show… :frowning:

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I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and when I was young, they put in a landfill a couple of miles away from where we lived to take trash from NYC. (I was back in that area a few years ago and think it’s completely full now) As a result, I’ve grown to care a lot about the environment and making sure we do what we can to make the world a bit cleaner.

It’s great to see the work that Lego is doing to make one of my favorite products more renewable. They came out with some softer plastics made from plants a while back, and this seems to be the next step.

Edit: there’s also an interview on the subject that was just posted.

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Before June ends, I wanted to mention this cool set that Lego released this month - “Everyone is Awesome” - it’s a set that celebrates people of all types for Pride, and it also is a great way to get a ton of unique minifigures in all sorts of colors. I highly recommend this both for what it is & what it represents.

Everyone Is Awesome 40516 | Other | Buy online at the Official LEGO® Shop US

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So tomorrow is the first day of July, which means that a number of new sets will be available. Additionally, Bricklink will be doing round 1 of the crowd funding on the first wave of new sets, so those will be available as well.

This means tomorrow will be a fairly expensive day for some of us…

Here is Jay’s list of new stuff for July:

I’m intrigued by the giveaway item of the mini Adidas shoe and minifig with the Adidas brick, so will probably pick up some of the Speed Champion sets I don’t have for this year.

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Also, my wife and I both want these two sets from Bricklink:

And this one which apparently is no longer in round one as of today. :cry:

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So it seems there was some controversy over just making 5000 of each of the sets, which… I get but also don’t totally agree with. These were limited edition sets (2500 copies) last time around, so while the Castle sold out in maybe 25 minutes, (and Bricklink had major site issues for the first few minutes), it didn’t seem unreasonable. I did manage to pick up that, the ship and the safe without issue. Apparently they had an issue and 10000 copies of the forest were ordered.

Evidently they will reopen the purchases for everything but the forest castle set which should allow another 5000 copies of each.

http://letsbuildlego.com/2021/07/07/lego-update-bricklink-program/

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My next build :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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We start to go back to our office in the next week or so, which I am so excited about. I cant wait to work with nice people again.

I have been looking for things to pretty up my desk, and have a little plant ready, and some colouring pencils for downtime but I couldnt resist…

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Cute.

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Yeah, that one is really nice. Haven’t put mine together yet.

Ooh, good choice. I think the design of the “screen” is pretty cool idea.

I’m hoping to put together some of this year’s speed champions sets soon. I like the larger (8 stud across) design they switched over to last year since it allows better detail, but now they take up more space and don’t fit as well with the older ones.

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More info tomorrow

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I just wanted to step in and say I love LEGO. My wallet and wife…not so much. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I’m lucky that my wife is basically just as big a fan as I am. Our wallets hurt a bit extra for it though. Lego sets are a much more expensive hobby than gaming, at least for me. Too many got to have ones. Thankfully, while I was always a big star wars nut, I no longer am buying the larger of those, as I simply don’t have room… The modular buildings, HP (yes I know… But I love them too much and really like the minifigs of the actors), seasonal, some of the ninjago city ones, etc. all add up quickly though.

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For sure. And my wife doesn’t dislike lego, just the cost. It’s something she doesn’t understand. But she did buy me a slew of TMNT sets when those were a thing.

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I’m a pretty big fan of the different LEGO Star Wars sets. I think I have around 20 different sets. I would post pictures of some of them but I’m travelling away for another month so that’ll have to wait.

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the gunship just leaked ahead of its reveal tomorrow.

Sweet jesus is it pretty.

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