Jeffery Mewtamer

Can't say I'm surprised the thread is mostly about CCBS. Star Wars is one of Lego's longest running and most popular licenses, so there is already a plethora of minifigs and brick built ships, with some of the most iconic having received multiple incarnations over the years. By comparison, CCBS is still relatively new among Lego's product offerings, and from the way people talk on this forum, has only gotten over it's growing pains and hit its stride in the last year or two.

Anyways, As I have no idea what most of the mentioned characters look like, even if I recognize their part in the story, I have to say my most wanted Star Wars set would be a build your own lightsaber kit sized for CCBS figures.

I've only ever seen bits and pieces of any of the movies, but having heard the Radio Drama versions of A New Hope and the Empire Strikes back, I can't imagine the movies being anything but disappointing by comparison, and that's not even considering the outdated visuals. The Radio Dramas obviously expanded things(you don't fit a dozen half-hour programs into a movie), but I never got the feeling that there was filler, so I imagine listening to the movies would leave me with a highly abridged feeling.

Then again, in general, Movies are probably one of the most limiting of visual mediums.

^My only exposure to recent Star Wars media has been the recent novelizations of the OT, so I can't really comment on Disney's handling of new stories, but does decanonizing the EU material really effect anything? All of that material is still there and unaltered for fans of the EU or any new fans who want to delve into it, The story tellers on Disney's dime have less material they have to worry about contradicting with new stories, and there's nothing stopping Disney's writers from delving into the old EU and pulling ideas into the new Canon. Dislike the new stuff if you want to, but complaining about the de canonization of the EU strikes me as on par with people who act like a bad reboot movie prevents them from enjoying the older media within a beloved franchise.

And perhaps more importantly, how kindly is Lego likely to take a fan project asking for funding? Because some IP holders can be real jerks even about non-profit fanworks(Exhibit A: Nintendo's treatment of Metroid AM2R and Pokemon Uranium among others).

Honestly, I'm not seeing how calling their product off brand Lego is fundamentally different from Malt-o-meal cereals having writing on the bag that says compare to *Insert closest Kellogg's/General Mills analog* or when television ads compare the product being advertised to competitors.

Granted, in this case, it sounds like they're ripping off specific sets or running some kind of scalping scam, which quite a bit more clear cut an IP violation than mentioning Lego's name in the copy for buckets of bricks not made by Lego.

Any part introduced prior to 1997 has an expired patent, assuming Lego always renews patents for the full 20 years.

I believe duplicating a set design would fall under copyright and copyrights have the completely unreasonable lifespan of life + 70 years, and I don't think Lego was around back when copyrights had to be manually renewed.

As for using the Lego name, that's a bit murkier. If Lego has become a generic term(which I'd argue it should), than anything goes. If the trademark on the name is still active, an off brand claiming to be Lego would certainly be a violation, but I'm not sure how far claims along the line of "like Lego" or "compatible with Lego" can go without being violations. Now, even if the name has been legally declared a generic term, it's quite possible current Lego logos are still under Trademark. Sadly, generification isn't a well-defined process and it almost always comes down to court decisions as to when a term becomes generic, but the idea is that a term becomes generic when the population starts using a brand name as a catch all term for a type of product(examples include dumpster for large trash bins, zipper for meshed teeth fasteners, velcro for hook and loop fasteners, Hoover for vacuum cleaner(though I confess I've never heard anyone call a Vacuum Cleaner a hoover). And yes, I'd argue that, colloquially, people use the term lego as a catch all for any building toy that uses studded bricks as their core component, and that it would've been declared a generic term years ago in a world where IP law wasn't broken.

^Wouldn't silver or black be more appropriate for a Toa of Iron?

Though, has Lego ever made metallic parts in anything other than the classic coinage metals? In particular, have they ever made parts in bronze or any cool spectral colors(copper and gold both being warm spectral or near spectral colors)?

Also, would I be correct in assuming Gunmetal is a duller metallic gray compared to Silver?

Speaking of Mindstorms, it would be cool if this turned out to be the announcement of a Lego brick case for a Raspberry Pi and an official interface for controlling mindstorm components from a pi. Bonus points if it included a command line interface or libraries for writing raw C++/Python programs to work with mindstorms.

Mindstorm is cool, but the cost of Lego's own control bricks make getting started a bit too cost prohibitive in my mind.

I came in partway through G2, so nothing reminds me of Bionicle, but CCBS does remind me of the "attach bits of armor to a mannequin action figure"-style toys that replaced the Digivolving transformers of earlier seasons when Digimon Frontier hit stateside.

Were any of the Bionicle G2 sets ever actually carried by Amazon? I got all my Bionicle sets through Amazon, but I'm pretty sure they were all from third party sellers.

^But were they retired because the molds wore out and Lego didn't bother making new molds or were they retired because Lego decided to focus on sets using new parts? And even if the former, what's to stop Lego from deciding to create new molds to bring those parts out of retirement or design new parts that are equivalent but are redesigned to take advantage of advances in manufacturing technology since the originals were retired?

personally, I'd be more interested in a bucket o' bricks consisting of Throwbot and Bionicle G1 parts than remakes/re-issues of old sets.

In my defense, I was pretty much completely out of the Lego loop for roughly 15 years between the cancellation of Throwbots and my decision to give Bionicle G2 the chance I never gave G1, and teenaged me wasn't really interested in system sets(there wasn't enough to the sets I could afford or convince my parents to buy, and the sets that might have given teenaged me a better appreciation for brick building were too expensive to even dream about). Besides, I'm sure there are themes that even people who were active in Lego fandom during the themes run have forgotten or never heard of. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything Lego has ever made and wouldn't expect anyone to be so.

That said, even if I've mentioned things that previously had sets, I wouldn't mind them getting a reissue of those sets or new sets. And if they previously only had system sets, I wouldn't mind them getting CCBS or Technic sets.

I wasn't aware of the Doctor Who license or that Mindcraft and Angry Birds were of European origin. I also wouldn't count Cars and Football in the same class of media licenses even if those themes include licenses to have sets based on real cars or that use the likeness of real players or various logos.

Still, one would think a European company big on licensing popular media would have more European franchises among their licenses, and to my knowledge, there's a complete lack of any Asian licenses, even among Japanese Animation and Video Games that have gained mainstream status in the West.

Anyways, part of me says the holy grail of licensing would be a Lego-Namco-Bandai partnership that would allow Lego to produce sets for any property whose existing toy lines are handled by Namco-Bandai. Though, now that I think about it, Bandai might be one of the biggest reasons Lego hasn't capitalized on Japanese Pop Culture with international appeal.

In general, I think nearly any toy company that deals in character-driven or story-driven lines could benefit greatly from a partnership with Lego.

Anyways, for specific franchises, I'd like:

Sonic the Hedgehog, especially sets based on the Genesis or Dreamcast Eras. Bonus points for lots of Technic-built Badniks and Eggman Mechs.

Digimon

Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of narnia.

Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach, among other Shounen Jump titles.

I second that Code Lyoko would've been cool to see in Lego. Still, that goes back to the problem that, except for Harry Potter, Lego seems to never license non-American properties.

While I agree a Dragon theme might be a bit too narrow, a general Mythical Beasts line featuring Mythological creatures from around the world without being confined to the aesthetics of a specific fantasy setting might do well. Think about it, Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Hindu, Oriental, Norse, Native American, Celtic and probably other mythologies I can't think of, each of which might be individually difficult to build a theme around, but combined into a single pool of inspiration for new sets. There would likely be plenty of dragons, but imagine all the other awesome creatures we might get along side them.

@Aanchir: Personally, a throwDragon strikes me as "too obvious" for no one to have ever done, especially since Robotops puts forth chaining type-a Throwbot Torsos as an official building technique and the bog standard head, throwing arm, and leg builds seem to fit the long muzzle and stubby legs of oriental dragons perfectly. If Money was an object, it would be so tempting to go on eBay and buy up like a dozen each of Torch, Ski, Turbo, Scuba, and Amazon to build one in each of their color schemes. Based on the shortcomings of the one I built with five body segments, I'm thinking at least a dozen body segments is needed to have enough serpentineness and give it enough legs to be stable(the five segment version only had a single pair of legs and was constantly falling over, especially if the throw arms were pointed forward, making me think a six limbed version would work better if you want it's foremost limbs as throwing arms).

Hope talk of MOC Dragons isn't too far off topic.

I have no Dragon sets, though I did try building an oriental style dragon from Throwbot torsos when I picked up a Throwbot Superset out of noastalgia Earlier this year. Sadly, I forgot there were two types of Throwbot torso, and five of the kind that can be joined into a geared chain isn't enough for a really good serpentine body.

I can't even keep MOC from looking like miss-mashes of randomly colored parts, but if I was still among the sighted and had the parts, I'd be very tempted to pimp someone out in Purple.

Yeah, I'm about 99.9% sure nearly all mass produced plastic parts, regardless of manufacturer, have pigment mixed into the plastic while its liquid. Unless we're talking very thin, porous plastic parts, no dye method is going to achieve more than a surface recoloring, and mass-produced plastics aren't porous(if you want porous, you generally have to go for 3-D printing, and even there, the porousness is more of a limitation of the printer than an actual feature of the material).

If you want to make custom trans parts, your best bet would probably be to make some silicone molds of the part in question and then cast a copy using a clear resin mixed with the appropriate dye. Sadly, such parts would likely be less durable, and given the precision with which Lego parts fit together, the results might not fit properly with official parts. Not to mention that many parts have details that would make them unsuited to a two-part mold.

By "Y-joint" are we talking the piece that was used for hands, hip joints, and ankle joints in many throwbot sets and it's modern equivalents, the technic piece that has a central cross hole with 3 unit axles spaced at 120 degrees in a plane(the axle through the central hole would be normal to this plane), or something else?

@Vahkiti: The simple version is this:

Most 32-bit computers track time via a 32-bit signed integer, giving a rough range of -2 billion to +2 billion)the exact range is -(2^31) to 2^31 - 1) and measures the number of seconds since midnight, january 1, 1970(a date known as the Unix Epoch). Within this range, the last second, the one after which an overflow error occurs and it's suddenly ~136 years in the past is in 2038. The problem doesn't get much attention as the deadline is still more than 20 years away and the transition to 64-bit is expected to be complete long before then, but in a way, it's a far more fundamental issue than the Y2K bug. Here's the relevant Wikipedia article for those that want the long version..

Double checking my facts, there's no universal standard for 64-bit timestamps, but keeping to counting seconds since the epoch, the increased capacity of a 64-bit number pushes the rollover date to over 20 times the age of the universe, and even proposals that count microseconds instead give a range of a few hundred thousand years.

But could the in-game clock even go that far out without running into the 2038 Problem? And if we interpreted it as a 64-bit Timestamp, wouldn't that put it on a finer graduation?

I'm not at all familiar with the Bionicle story, but this thread has me wondering: was there ever a point when the conflict would've been better characterized as order vs chaos rather than good vs evil? For that matter, how many of the 9 alignments are well represented in Bionicle?

I have two questions:

1. My parts collection includes the following sets:

All six 2015 Toa

All six creatures plus the Toa that is bundled with their respective creature.

Both Umaraks

All three beasts

Skull Scorpio, Mamsk Maker vs Skull Grinder, and Mask maker.

If I don't care about getting the color scheme right, do I have enough spare parts? If not, what is the minimal number of sets needed to make up the difference?

2. Do there exist, in whole or in part, any text-based instructions for this?

I want to build this to add the techniques employed to my MOC toolkit, but the images are useless, I doubt any of the videos are narrated in sufficient detail, and it would be a waste of money to buy a set I don't have just for a differently colored version of a part I already have enough of.