What Would You Do With 340 Acres to Build With Bricks?

Where to start? Convention space. Huge parts warehouse. Giant spaces for different themed builds. A bigger Bricks for Bricks Bricklink store.

Sadly, I don’t have anything close to that amount of space, but the LEGO Group does in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The news of a LEGO factory opening in the US is not new. LEGO plans to be up and running with brick production in 2025 to supply the US market. This site, just southwest of Richmond, VA, will produce bricks and pack sets. What that means for my fellow North American brick fans is yet to be seen. I’m hoping it just means an improved supply chain with better access to sets.

So what’s the latest? Ground breaking was held on 13 April 2023, but just this week a visitor center opened on site and it’s open to the public. I’m not sure on hours, but I’m pretty sure they’re not selling exclusive sets or minifigures that you can scoop up (sorry). A local news station went to the site and posted a few pictures. My favorite is this brick designed model of what the plant will look like. The reporting focused on jobs, politicians, and carbon neutrality, but as a brick fan, I want to see LEGO Bricks. This is a pretty impressive layout. Hopefully a fan will visit soon and post some close up pictures so we can get a better look.

One thing to notice in the article is that they mention the site being closed for various reasons, but of a goal to be able to open it up for school field trips and other visits. That sounds cool! Maybe they will open it up for fan tours as well so some of us bigger kids can stop by for a visit. If you are in the area, send some pictures or get me a link of where we can see them (post in the comments) .

In the meantime, happy building!

Why Not Have More Ideas Sets?

In case you missed it, LEGO and Target partnered up to produce a set that achieved 10K votes on the Ideas platform, but didn’t get produced as a set. There were three options and they were put to a fan vote. The choices were a Viking Village, Marine Life, or working mini-golf.

The voting wrapped up and the results were posted. The Viking Village won the vote per the post on the LEGO Ideas site. The set will be sold at Target, LEGO Brand Stores, and LEGO Shop @ Home in the US. I’m not sure of the retailers who will get it outside of the US, but don’t panic if you don’t live in the US and have Target. I haven’t seen anything about when the set will be released. Maybe a year from now?

This brings up an interesting point. Don’t we already have a program to bring rejected LEGO Ideas projects to life?

Isn’t the BrickLink Designer Program the place to bring back rejected Ideas sets? I guess this program limits sets to a 10K production run and has limited availability, but still. Why is there one more program to produce these projects?

My proposal would be to just select more Ideas sets through the Ideas line versus bringing them back through various ways again and again. The issue I’ve heard is LEGO doesn’t have the capacity to produce more at a time then they already are, but then again, aren’t they involved in these programs? I guess the BrickLink program puts more on the fan designer, but couldn’t LEGO do the same for Ideas? Maybe they could publish their guidelines and make fan designers meet them. That’s just my opinion anyways.

I’m glad to see another set coming via fan vote, I just think we could streamline the process versus having various programs to bring Ideas projects to life.

What are your thoughts?

Happy building!

Post Event Write Up -- LEGO House® - Online Fan Event - AFOL To LEGO® Designer

As mentioned last week, I attended a LEGO House® online fan event on 26 March 2021. Having attended other events in the past, LEGO has used the Microsoft Teams platform. It’s not the best or my favorite, but it works I guess. We were greeted by the host, Astrid, who is a Senior Event and Tour Manager in the LEGO House® Sales and Marketing Department. She was hosting from the Red Experience Zone in the LEGO House®. From the looks of it, there were around 50-ish people in the meeting.

Astrid - Senior Event and Tour Manager in the LEGO House® Sales and Marketing Department

The moderator for the event was Are Heiseldal (sorry for the blurry screen shot). Are was scheduled to fly to Denmark for the event originally, but I think he did a great job moderating virtually. He definitely did his research ahead of time, had some great questions lined up, and then mixed in some of the fan questions. He was supported in the background by Jan Beyer, LEGO’s AFOL Community Integration Manager.

Are Heiseldal

The first AFOL to LEGO® Designer interview was with Justin Ramsden (originally from the UK). Justin had decided to stay at work and was in the LEGO® Innovation House. He had set up his background with the sets he helped design in the background. Justin went through his story on how he joined the LEGO® Group and some of the differences he had like a documentary being filmed on him while he applied (not sure if it is still online or not, but worth a watch if you can find it). I won’t repeat the whole story here, but Justin is very charismatic and definitely seems to enjoy interacting with the fan community and talking LEGO.

He discussed his first set which was the 2015 San Diego Comic Con set: Throne of Ultron. He mentioned how he didn’t have a copy and he had to go into the vault to have an example. Then Marcos Bessa posted a picture of his copy of the set. There might be a trade happening at some point…

Justin recommended building all that you can to become a better builder/designer if you are interested in joining LEGO. Looking at his resume, he has taken advantage of switching teams and building sets in different themes. He talked about how this gave him different perspectives that he was able to bring across the company to different themes. Pretty cool.

Lastly, someone asked about the shirt he was wearing. He said his Mom made it for him. She apparently was in the livestream with us and should have taken orders because a lot of folks would have paid up right then and there.

Justin Ramsden

Marcos Bessa was up next. He is one of the multiple Portuguese designers working at Billund. He was at home, but did have a few of his sets behind him along with one of his favorite sets from back in the day. Apparently a Portuguese comedian has coined him the “Cristiano Ronaldo of Lego.” If you don’t know who this is, do some internet searches about soccer players.

Marcos told the story about how he came to work at LEGO. I enjoyed the quip about how he was trying to save up for an iPhone, saw the #10182-1: Café Corner modular building, and picked it up instead of a phone. Probably a better investment and he was still able to get the phone later while it’s a lot harder to get a Café Corner.

He has been with the LEGO® Group for 10 years now and said that part of what he likes about the job is the free bricks. Can’t say I blame him there.

I was going to ask a question and someone else got to it first, but it was how you balance your hobby and design work. I enjoy LEGO, but in my spare time. Marcos’s work is LEGO so he mentioned that after eight hours, he’s ready for something else. He enjoys other hobbies when he’s not at work. Makes sense to me.

After each of the Designers were interviewed, they did small group breakout sessions. I was randomly assigned to Marcos and his group. Some folks got to ask some great questions. I enjoyed the setup and how they broke us up.

Marcos Bessa

Two of his MOCs were mentioned during the event. The first one is his very first MOC. The second is a modular building he designed. He mentioned how he’d really like to design a modular for LEGO and it’s one of the running things he has whenever he sees Jamie Berard. We’ll see. Maybe one day, he’ll introduce a new modular building to us.

Marcos Bessa - First MOC

Marcos Bessa - Modular Building MOC

The final interview was with Milan Reindl. Milan is on the Technic team and has been since joining the LEGO® Group. His back story is that he grew up in the former Czechoslovakia. He didn’t have any LEGO bricks or sets to build with, but some friends did and he enjoyed them. Once communism ended, his family took a trip to Germany and his parents bought him a few small sets. Since he had so few pieces, he learned how to build lots of things with small pieces.

Fast forward a bunch of years, Milan became a teacher and would build things and take them into school to show his students. He eventually joined LEGO and demonstrated how he took one of his sets and built 7 or 8 cool things with only the pieces from that set. It was very impressive to see.

He has a YouTube video online of a Technic glider he built that really flies. You can video his full channel here were he talks about a lot of Technic things.

It was also pointed out that he has friends who don’t like him building with their kids. Apparently the builds he makes are too good and then the kids expect their parents to put out builds of that quality level. I wonder if they hide the bricks when he shows up?

Milan Reindl

Milan got to design the brick version of the 2017 Technic 40th anniversary logo. They let him keep his brick build version. A screenshot of him with it is below. Here’s a video of it.

Milan Reindl - 40th Anniversary Technic Build

I won’t go through all of the discussions we had, but overall I had a great time. The event was around two hours long and while I had to pay ~$32 to attend, I think it was worth it. I learned a bunch, got to hear about working at LEGO, and got to interact with fellow fans from around the world to include Australia, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

At the end, everyone turned on their video cameras and we took a group screen shot. Can’t say I’ve ever done this before, but it was a cool idea considering we can’t be all together due to location and the pandemic.

Group shot

And one more… not sure how they did this, but here we all are in an auditorium…

Brick on!

Group Shot - Auditorium

Do We Really Need this Ad Campaign?

LEGO® kicked off the “Rebuild the World” campaign in 2019 and has continued it into 2020. They recently put out a new commercial. If you’re reading this post, odds are you don’t need the commercial to be enticed to buy LEGO® products. Does the rest of the public need it?

My personal opinion… Don’t make the commercial and knock some price off a few sets with the money you saved from not making the commercial. That’s just me though. What do you think? Is this an effective ad campaign? Does this really get people to buy more LEGO® products.

Here’s the most recent ad from November 2020 if you haven’t seen it…

LEGO® Customer Service at its Best

I ordered the new train set on its release date of 1 July 2020. #10277-1: Crocodile Locomotive was packaged up that day at the warehouse. When I placed the order initially, the gift with purchase set #40411-1: Creative Fun was not added to my order. Then when I received the order confirmation message a few minutes later it was listed. In that time I had emailed customer service asking what I missed when I placed the order to get the gift with purchase. Then I quickly sent a note saying I was good to go. About five days later I received an email saying they were sorry for the confusion and that they alerted the web team of the issue I had to make sure it didn’t happen again to others.

Fourteen days after I placed the order, the set remained in “pre-shipping.” I was getting concerned because that is very unlike LEGO for shipping in the US. I reached out to Customer Service again just to check on the status of my order. I knew it would take around five days for a response to come in and I wasn’t mad about it. I just wanted to make sure it didn’t get misplaced.

Seventeen days after the order was placed, the shipment started moving outside of the warehouse. I was glad to see it was on its way.

Then on 18 July (four days after I sent the message to Customer Service) I received an email from Svetoslav. It said:

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“Thanks for getting in touch with us.

I'm sorry we couldn't reply to your email sooner but as you might imagine we've been busier than usual helping fellow LEGO® fans from all over the world!

Looking into your request, I see that your order has already been shipped. I'm sorry for the delay but our colleagues at the warehouse and our delivery partners are taking extra safety measures to make sure your order arrives in the best condition and safest way possible which adds to the usually longer than residential addresses delivery time frame that applies to your shipping address. I hope this doesn't cause you or your LEGO® fan an inconvenience so I've added 1000 VIP points in hopes you'd give us another chance to earn your trust in the future. You can track your order by visiting USPS.com and using tracking number XXXX. I hope everything's alright now but please let us know if not or if you need any further assistance!

If you need anything else or have any further questions, please don't hesitate to get back in touch! :)
Stay safe and have an amazing day!

We want to make sure we're doing a good job for you, so you’ll always find the link to a four-question survey in our emails. Please tell us how we did today:

Please let us know if you need anything else.

Kind regards,

Svetoslav
LEGO® Customer Service”

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First off, I wasn’t mad and didn’t lose trust in LEGO. I just wanted to make sure the package didn’t get lost. I get it. We’re’ in the middle of a pandemic and warehouse procedures are probably different. No worries there.

Secondly, 1,000 VIP points!?!?!?! I realize with the new VIP system that’s ~$5 off and then points to the next $5, but wow! That wasn’t required at all. I appreciate the gesture though.

Hats off to the LEGO® Customer Service team! I know they’ve had to adjust to working at home and the volume of requests has gone up, but they’ve gone above and beyond to help customers out when the system isn’t working at 100%. Thank you all and keep up the good work!

Have you had any experiences with LEGO® Customer Service worth noting?

Happy building!

Bricks for Bricks Update for June 2016

In the last month of our campaign, we're at $107.43 to donate to Pencils of Promise.  Thanks for those of you who have supported the campaign and bought some good LEGO items in the process.

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We've added a few sets to Brick Classifieds.  

70816: Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! - The LEGO Movie - $105 - Free Shipping
     (3 available)

70809: Lord Business' Evil Lair - The LEGO Movie - $69 and $12 shipping
     (2 available)

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Lots of discounts available in the US via Amazon.  As of the evening of 31 May, there are over 200 sets priced at 20% off or more.  Check out the Brickset Amazon List for details.

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Finally, the summer 2016 LEGO Catalog arrived at my home today.  While there are some amazing looking sets, I was initially shocked about how much of the catalog was filled with Licensed sets.  The first few pages were Star Wars sets.  Then there were Minecraft, Super Heroes, Ghost Busters, Speed Champions, Angry Birds, and Disney Princess.  Yikes!  That's a lot.  The breakdown of what's available (in the US only):

-Star Wars has a number of Rebels sets and a few new Force Awakens sets.  I'm not a huge fan of the Rebels sets.  There's an X-Wing fighter and a set from Jakku.  Both have BB-8 and a few other good minifigs though.  
-I'm not a Minecraft fan and I don't follow or sell any of the sets.  You tell me what you think.
-A few Super Heroes sets are listed.  Nothing new that I wasn't already aware of.  
-A page on the MINDSTORMS EV3 and a page on City Skylines from the Architecture line (nothing new)
-The current LEGO Ideas sets.  The Big Bang Theory (#21302) was recently discounted at Amazon for 34% off so I get the feeling it's not selling really well.
-Ghostbusters
-Modular Buildings and some of the Creator Experts buildings, but not including the new Big Ben set (and YouTube video), some of the fairground sets, and some of the vehicles.  
-Speed Champions
-The amazing looking Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS.  The You Tube Designer video is here.  It looks pretty awesome... although it's $299 so... yikes!  A few other Technic sets are listed as well.
-LEGO Simpsons & Classic are next
-Some new LEGO Creator Sets are next.  The buildings aren't as impressive as some of the older Creator houses that existed, but the Vacation Getaways brings a new style to some of the CITY Campers of the past.  The details look pretty good too.  
-NEXO Knights are next, followed by Ninjago, and Angry Birds
-As a Train fan (no new trains... come on LEGO!!!), I look at the city sets to see what might go good with future train displays.  There are some new aircraft.  Nothing drastically new, but they might be worth waiting for discounts on Amazon in a few months.  The Fun in the park - City People Pack  is a great edition to any LEGO City.  It includes a LEGO baby minifigure, the first LEGO figure in a wheel chair, and a bunch of other great minifigs to add to a CITY scene.
-The rest of the catalog hits on Disney Princess, Friends, Elves, and then the Minecraft Village on the back.

A few notes:
-Yes, I'm biased and I only spent time mentioning the themes I enjoy.  
-LEGO VIP members get free shipping on orders over $35 in June.
-Purchases over $75 get an exclusive Fountain (#40221) set which goes well with the Fun in the Park set.

Happy Building!

LEGO Shop at Home May the Fourth Sale - Is/Was it Worth it?

If you live in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand, you got 10% off all LEGO Star Wars sets.  How awesome is that?  Granted if you do a currency conversion, more often than not the price is lower in the states, but still it would have been great to have 10% off all Star Wars sets in the USA too.  Sadly we did not.  If you looked at the sales, the majority of the items up for sale are already discounted on Amazon and have been for quite some time.  Many of the buildable figures have been discounted for a few months on Amazon in the US now.  The set discounts for LEGO Shop at Home in the US weren't much different from what Amazon has been offering either.  The Battle on Takodana (#75139) has been around 15% off on Amazon and Amazon increased it to 20% off to match LEGO's sale.  The Resistance Troop Transporter (#75140) has been 20% off at Amazon for a while too and LEGO matched this for their sale.  The 3 "deals" I saw through LEGO Shop at Home (in the US) were the Imperial Shuttle Tydirium (#75094) at 20% off (vs. 18% off on Amazon), the Homing Spider Droid (#75142) at 20% off, and the Sith Infiltrator (#75096) at 20% off.  Sadly, none of the Ultimate Collector Series Star Wars builds or larger Star Wars sets like the Millennium Falcon (#75105) were discounted.  

While it sounds like I'm complaining, the free shipping, double VIP points, First Order Stormtrooper minifig, and LEGO Force Awakens movie poster definitely help some.  You won't get any of that from Amazon.  

If you've been saving up for some Star Wars sets, you still have time as the sale ends on 4 May.  I bought a few items for the store to include sets and minifigs.  Let me know if you have purchased anything through the sale and your thoughts on LEGO's discounts.  You can post in the comments or email me at store@bricksforbricks.com.

May The 4th Be With You!

A lot of junk shows up in the mail whenever I go to check it.  Lucky for me, on Thursday I received some mail from the LEGO® company.  It was an advertisement for LEGO's® Star Wars™ Day promotions.  From 30 April to 4 May at LEGO® Stores or from LEGO® Shop at Home, you can get the following:

     -Free Exclusive First Order Stormtroopers™ Minifigure
     -Double VIP points on all Star Wars™ Purchases
     -Free Star Wars™: The Force Awakens Poster on all Star Wars™ Purchases
     -A number of Star Wars™ LEGO® sets will be on sale

Also, if you've been paying attention.  The new LEGO® Star Wars™ Assault on Hoth™ (#75098) will be released on 30 April.  It's $249 and contains 2,144 pieces.  I haven't seen too many reviews of the set on any of the fan sites yet, but it looks like an interesting one.  

So if you'e been saving up for some Star Wars™ LEGO® sets, this might be the chance to get a good deal or at least some fun freebies. 

More Bricks on the Way

It's always exciting to get the news that "your order has shipped" and to know that some bricks are on the way to you.  There are a few on their way to me and I'm pretty excited about it.

The first order was from Amazon.  If you missed a recent blog post I had about where to find discount LEGO sets, you can read it here.  In the post I mention a few web sites that consolidate sales from the various retailers.  Brickset has one for multiple retailers to include Amazon.  You can view their Amazon sales site here (for the US).  As of late, Amazon has slashed prices on LEGO Dimensions so there are a lot that are steeply discounted.  There are also a lot of Creator and City sets on discount too.  One of the Creator sets discounted is the Blue Power Jet (#31039)  which I originally bought from LEGO for full price at $69.99.  At the time of this posting and when I purchased it from Amazon, the set is going for $49.38 or 29% off!  I should have waited to order!  I picked up another one at this price.  I'm not sure if I'll sell it or if I'll break it open and use it for the great piece selection.  I thought this set was great, but to see it on sale at Amazon like this and a few weeks back it was on sale at LEGO Shop at Home it makes me think that sales were not as good and they are trying to get rid of it.  Another thought... LEGO overpriced the original set and not enough people bought it at the original "high" price.

What else is showing up to join my brick stash?  As mentioned in my last post, LEGO is running a double VIP point sale.  It is supposed to run from 7 to 22 March 2016 in the US.  Details are posted at LEGO Shop at Home here.  Anyways, I placed 2 orders for some Star Wars sets.  The first were a few smaller sets that I purchased mainly for the minifigures.  They are (with links to their Brickset page):
     -#75143 - Homing Spider Droid (includes 4 minifigs to include Yoda)
     -#75136 - Droid Escape Pod (includes 4 minifigs... R2-D2, C-3PO, and 2 Jawas)
     -#75137 - Carbon-Freezing Chamber (Ugnaught, Boba Fett, Han Solo, Han in Carbonite)
Order #2 included,
     -#75138 - Hoth Attack (Han Solo, a rebel, and a Snowtrooper)
     -#75102 - Poe's X-Wing Fighter (Poe, X-Wing Pilot, Ground Crew member, and BB-8)
I will do some reviews once the sets arrive.  In the meantime I am waiting for them to arrive.  I think that LEGO must be inundated with orders.  I only received a notification for my second order and have not yet received one for my first.  Neither order has shipped.  This is odd as typically you get the order acknowledgement right away.  Amazon acknowledged my order right away and it shipped the next day.  We're at almost 2 days later for my LEGO Shop at Home order and one has yet to even be acknowledged.  Has anyone else had that issue?

I hope you all are enjoying some new bricks this week!

Double VIP Points and Pencils of Promise Update

Everything I've seen is that LEGO will be having a double VIP point sale from 7 to 22 March 2016.  That means that instead of getting $5 in store credit for every 100 points (you get 1 point for every dollar you spend), you will get $10 for every 100 points you earn.  If you've been saving up to buy a big set like a modular building or one of the larger Star Wars items, now might be a good time.  Also, LEGO has released a large number of new sets as of 1 March.  There are a bunch of new Star Wars sets, some new Super Heroes sets, and more.  Definitely check out the LEGO Shop at Home site for more info.  

As for me, I'll be looking to pick up a few of the Star Wars sets, but I can't quite decide.  The Millennium Falcon?  Poe's X-Wing?  Or maybe some of the new Star Wars sets that have some of the new minifigures?  We'll see.  

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If you've looked at the Brick Classifieds items for sales or at this site you know that I am running a Pencils of Promise campaign to raise funds to build schools and support students and teachers in Ghana, Guatemala, and Laos.  The campaign started on 24 January 2016 and we are giving 15% of our profits to Pencils of Promise.  After a little over a month, we have raised $13.86.  The amount is slowly going up and I'm confident at the end of this campaign we'll donate a lot to help them out.  Thanks to all who have made purchases so far!