^
I agree, as someone who misses out on buying some older sets, having them available again for when I am older is a great thing
another good reasoning is to alter parts of the old set and make it better
such as the cockpit and overall design from the 2000 Falcon was made more sleeker in the 2004 variant.
And the police stations have different versions to help modernize the city younger kids will grow up in
alongside the forest police subtheme and the soon to be sky police
(though it’s called the Air Base, Brickset have put it under the Police Station tag)
I know, but some of those were released an year after the last one…
I know this is the reason, but I wonder… Why didn’t they do the same think trough Bionicle G1’s run? In each year we had different sets that will never be repeated again…
That isn’t exactly the case. Lots of themes did exactly like Bionicle, but not with characters. Take Racers for example. Aside from maybe one or two, each car design that they made was for one specific set, that would never be remade again.
I hope you got my point. Remaking those sets isn’t necessary a bad thing, but making so many of them isn’t very good either.
I can understand, but if they remake it, they should do it after like 5 years… not almost each year like in the case of LEGO City. That is just my opinion though.
You could just as easily put up any Bionicle set here, going on just the Red main Toa sets we have 6 versions of Tahu (Mata, Nuva, Adaptive, Stars, Master and Uniter). And a large number of bionicle sets were repetitive yet there were differences.
Whilst ideas and themes repeat, they bring new ideas and designs in as @Whaddon pointed out with the Falcon.
As long as they’re actually updating sets and improving them then hey, I’m cool with it. As long as they gave the last one enough time to leave shelves.
Yeah, we get a lot of new Police sets, but they’re always updating and changing it. Not only to be fresh for the older fans, but to have a jumping on point for the new kids.
It’s good for both the company and the consumer to release a new wave of say, fire sets every two or three years. Not only does it bring the company profit, but it also gives kids more chances to buy sets they want. If a kid wants a lego fire truck for their birthday, bingo. Obviously it’s ideal to switch it up occasionally, but if it was becoming stale, the numbers would show.
I don’t even find direct rereleases to be necessarily bad.
Lego is still bringing new ideas to the table, however, and instead of looking at something as “oh it’s another police station”, they continuously experiment with the foundation, and I praise them for that.
Just because they represent the same character doesn’t mean the newer sets were remakes of older ones. Neither of them can be confused to being just the last set updated. The designs of all of them were unique for one single set.
If LEGO decides to go on remaking the same set on and on, why do they do this only with licenced themes? (and Lego City…). They could for example remake Castle and Space sets, which we clearly see that they won’t do very soon.
As much as it’s good to get a old set again on shelf, too many of it isn’t good. I would want something truly new, not the same Millennium Falcon again.
Another problem is price increse of each set. With each new Millenium Falcon the release, they bump the price up a little bit. Like they did with the Death Star in 2016…
The 2008 version costed 400$
The 2016 version had like a few extra pieces, and costed 500$!
I don’t think it’s fair for LEGO to do this just because this set is newer. Both of them are exactly the same, so they both needed to be 400$, but just because this new “newer” they incresed to price 100$ more. And all the LEGO Star Wars fans consider it one of the worst LEGO remakes (if you don’t believe me search on YouTube).
The main reason? Licensed themes continue to sell. They aren’t remaking Castle and Space because those lines are dead. Also, you’ll find that generally speaking Lego reuses designs every few years, or brings back lines similar to other ones (Castle > Knights Kingdom > Nexo Knights), (Life on Mars > Mars Mission)
So there are two things you’re missing here. For starters, a ~200 piece increase is not a small increase. An 8 year time gap is not just “newer” that’s almost a decade. Therefore you have to account for inflation when you complain about prices:
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, prices in 2016 are 11.47% higher than prices in 2008. The dollar experienced an average inflation rate of 1.37% per year during this period.
In other words, $400 in 2008 is equivalent in purchasing power to $445.90 in 2016, a difference of $45.90 over 8 years.” Source From Here
What that basically means is that your 100 Dollar increase that you see is actually only a $54.10 increase when accounting for inflation, since the cost of that set in 2016 would reasonably have been 445-450 dollars, and that therefore a 200 piece increase in the set costing an additional 50 dollars, while costly, isn’t actually all that unreasonable for an exclusive set like the Death Star.
As it stands, personal feelings aside, You can’t call the Death Star (a re-release from almost a decade later) and Tahu (Who had 2 versions in three years with almost the exact same build, and then another version years later with the same build that had been used for Four Years by that point) entirely different. One is a limited edition release meant to appeal to the new generation just getting into Star Wars (and the older ones who couldn’t afford to drop 4-500 on a lego set back then but could now) and the other is a copy paste that went on for years.
Literally everything you’re complaining about in terms of sets being reused is basically just Bionicle. I hate to say it, but it’s true. Bionicle was not exactly the best for always having new things, even if the design and overall look were different.
Point is you occasionally have some valid points against the Licensed themes you hate so much but this is not one of those times.
Get ready for another probably longwinded post from Bio
[quote=“LegoDavid, post:14, topic:47758”]
Just because they represent the same character doesn’t mean the newer sets were remakes of older ones. Neither of them can be confused to being just the last set updated. The designs of all of them were unique for one single set.
[/quote]
This feels kind of hypocritical to me, but I might be wrong. Using your example of the police stations. Yes, while some of these sets do feel like updates of sets, they’re all unique in their own little ways. The first one you posted has the huge plastic base, which none of the others have. Also, there used to be only a small presence of robbers in the early sets, but now they have their own vehicles and accessories making the sets feel more complete
2.[quote=“LegoDavid, post:14, topic:47758”]
If LEGO decides to go on remaking the same set on and on, why do they do this only with licenced themes?
[/quote]
Because the vehicles/scenes are iconic. Who wouldn’t want to build their own Millenium Falcon or Batmobile, or recreate the Battle on Geonosis? I certainly would.
3.[quote=“LegoDavid, post:14, topic:47758”]
I don’t think it’s fair for LEGO to do this just because this set is newer. Both of them are exactly the same, so they both needed to be 400$, but just because this new “newer” they incresed to price 100$ more.
[/quote]
First off no, they’re not exactly the same, the 2016 one has updated minifigures and over 200 more pieces. Secondly as Ace and Kini have said, you’ve got to account for inflation. $400 in 2008 is about $470 nowadays. If you want a good analysis on the set, Jang did one back when the newer set came out in 2016 and I feel it would probably answer some of your questions
Inflation is actually notoriously difficult to account for because it’s something we can really only measure in hindsight and it’s entirely dependant on the products/services you use to benchmark the inflation.
In the grant scheme of things a ten dollar difference over almost a decade due to inflation is actually pretty much right at the acceptable tolerance. If I had some more data from Lego sets I could eventually come up with an inflation rate specifically for Lego, but then the problem arises of trying to account for how Lego actually sets the prices, which fluctuate depending on the season more than depending on production costs.
It’s a mess. It’s hard.
Remember kids, don’t be a Kini: Don’t go into Business or Economics because it will screw you up inside.
