Dear LEGO : 736


Dear LEGO / 736

"If it were my toy company..." —Todd Lehman

[crossposted to .dear-lego & .general; followups to .dear-lego] Brad Justus, Senior Vice President of LEGO Direct, wrote in (URL): "We want to be a company with whom you want to be involved. We want to be the company you'd like us to be. And to do (...) (25 years ago, 12-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego, lugnet.general)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —David Simmons

Go Todd! I agree wholeheartedly with every idea, especially the point about being able to submit your own models for consideration as a company-produced set. Just imagine a line of text on the box: "This Lego set custom designed by: Your name here!" (...) (25 years ago, 12-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Todd Lehman

(...) Maybe someday we'll see Larry's black hopper car. Wouldn't that rock?! :) The big legal hurdle there is indemnification against false representation. (Say some model creator steals a design from someone else and represents the design as (...) (25 years ago, 12-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Matthew Miller

(...) This also -- to my non-laywer mind, of course -- partly reduces the legal issue. If submitted designs are publically available on the web site for a year or so before being considered for production, that seems like ample time for the (...) (25 years ago, 12-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Shiri Dori

Wow! Todd, those were GREAT ideas! The only things I might add if it were my toy company are: 1) To (maybe) re-release discontinued items that are exteremly wanted. I mean, think Demand and Supply - people are willing to pay a heck of a lot for (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Matthew Miller

(...) It's true. A "Lego Classics" (not to be confused with "Lego Classic"!) line would do extremely well. (...) A lot of pieces aren't being made anymore -- I doubt you'll be able to order those. (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Will Hess

(...) mean, (...) stuff (...) LEGO could easily prevent this by not selling the key parts (pantographs, flags, landing stilts, etc) for individual sale. Just my .02 worth... Will (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Matthew Miller

(...) Why would they want to prevent it? Complete sets would almost certainly be cheaper than purchasing the parts directly, so there's not really an issue. (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Will Hess

(...) issue. If TLG were to go to the expense of reissuing sets they'd have to: 1) begin production of parts that haven't been available for some time 2) print instructions and boxes 3) sort the parts into poly-bags and the poly-bags into sets 4) (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Matthew Miller

(...) Easier than designing and making new parts. (...) Ditto. (...) They do this anyway. (...) Ditto. (...) Ditto. (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Will Hess

(...) Yes, but they'd have to take something offline to produce these parts, and there's no guarantee that the molds are still useable (or even exist). It's also pretty clear that most of the "special" parts are made overseas (Billund or Sweeden I (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Ray Sanders

(...) Or to put a different way: Are the molds (that were used originally to make those parts) compatible with the current state of the art molding machines used by TLC ? A negative answer would imply the need to make whole new molds. Ray (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Matthew Miller

(...) But that doesn't seem prohibitive to me anyway. They're certainly inventing new pieces all the time these days, and that takes new molds. And at least they'd still have the basic engineering done for retro pieces. (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Jeff Thompson

(...) One reason that LEGO is constantly inventing new pieces is to make sure that as many elements in a LEGO set are patent-protected. The re-released old sets would not have that advantage. I wouldn't mind if they modified the sets to make them (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Matthew Miller

(...) Oooh, that's a dangerous path. I can just see it now -- Jrized versions of all our favorite classics. (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Allan Bedford

Nephilim <jthompson@esker.com> wrote in article <FMpE99.Jos@lugnet.com>... (...) But correct me if I'm wrong... If LEGO not longer holds patents on the old parts, then that means that no one else does either. And yet.... We don't see Megablocks (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —David Schilling

(...) The large radar dish recently re-released in grey in set 4533, (and it looks like a pair of tan ones any day now in 7115) show that old pieces *can* be reintroduced, if there is a desire to do so. By the way, THANK YOU, LEGO, for doing that! (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Scott Edward Sanburn

(...) Well, it depends. One, if they update their machines. Most molds can be run on different machines, it is just a matter of setting up the machine for the specific mold (core temperature, shot size, etc.) I know somebody posted they put all (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —James Powell

(...) Yes, TLG does imbed worn out molds in buildings. No, the molds are not hard to make. It is the pattern making that is hard to do (the first mold) I would imagine that the LEGO molds have been done on CAM for quite some time...since the best (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Scott Edward Sanburn

(...) Hmmm... when I worked at a plastic parts plant in Fowlerville, Michigan, we had some new molds come in for the Dodge Neon Battery Box. The molds where around a 2 foot cube (2'x2'x2'). They cost the company around 500,000 each, and we had two (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Allan Bedford

More of my two cents.... I think this makes about 4 1/2 cents so far: (...) time (...) So long as this were the Rock Raiders sets.... then things would improve in two ways. Regards, Allan (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Will Hess

Me and my big mouth! For the record...I AM NOT AGAINST REISSUING OLDER SETS OR SIMPLY MAKING OLDER PARTS AVAILABLE TO ORDER!!! I'm simply pointing out that there's more involved in this than many people seem to think. My major point is that, from my (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Shiri Dori

(...) This is one of those Me too letters: I think so too. Re-releasing sets would be pretty easy for TLC, and people would love it. And buy them. (I know I would! I'd start with the Metroliner, then a few Pirate sets, the big police station...) (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Allan Bedford

Here's my two cents on the whole thing: (...) Why not simply substitute for newer parts. Great thing about LEGO is that it's entirely modular. (sarcastic remark, I apologize in advance.) Put another way.... if need be they could easily redesign a (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Lawrence Wilkes

(...) trouble is I dont think people are thinking demand and supply. The reason people are willing to pay so much, is because they are not available. If they were freely available, then they would not be in so much demand. Evidence is that when they (...) (25 years ago, 14-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Colin Gutierrez

Lawrence Wilkes wrote: <snip> (...) That may be true, but I think many non-AFOL parents (who played with Lego as children) would buy the re-released classic sets "for their kids." It might even bring alot of people out of their dark ages. --Colin __ (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jan-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Richard Franks

(...) There's nothing quite like nostalga to make people want, nay - need, something. Someone at my work saw my offer on the internal newsgroup to buy any childhood LEGO from them and contacted me, ready to sell. I made the mistake of pointing them (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jan-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Re: "If it were my toy company..." —Tobias Möller

Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet <3853a96b.135213995@...et.com>... (...) this!! (...) saying, (...) flush (...) question. (...) much (...) in (...) _ (...) models. (...) This is good -but perhaps not from a website (also from catalogs, by phone (...) (25 years ago, 18-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego)