Would you buy vintage sets if Lego re-released them?

bluemoose

It was either Jake or Steve who told me to my face that the Battrax came 2nd, but like I said, they may have just been being nice, since they knew that's what I'd voted for. I was told, sometime later, that the reason it never made it back into production was due to the moulds for several original elements no longer being viable & Lego not wanting to invest the money to get them back in production just for that one set.

davee123

Huh-- I wonder which elements were out of production? Looking at the list of parts, it seems like the only candidate might have been:

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=2337

(Unless you count various printed parts). Other elements all seem to have also come out in sets AFTER 2002, so they presumably would have been OK, unless subsequent releases involved a new mold or something that wasn't justified for just the single limited-release run.

Although... huh. It also seems strange that they'd offer that particular set for re-release if the parts were an issue. I had thought that part of the process for determining the candidates for the vote was that they were ALL possible (with various modifications, as we saw in more blatantly in Main Street's re-release).

At the time, some people also speculated that Battrax couldn't be re-released because of the agreement with Lucasfilm regarding "fantasy space sets". I'm not sure how the 2001 Life on Mars theme skirted the issue, but LEGO cited the licensing issue as the reason for the discontinuation of other original space themes of the time. But the wording of the licensing is unknown, I believe-- since Battrax had already been designed and released in the past, it could have dodged the legalese.

DaveE

Istokg

As popular as the Yellow Castle (375/6075) set was... it had one strike going against it for Castle System collectors... its' color! Yellow was the early primary colour at castle building, but TLG decided later in favor of gray as the primary castle colour. So the Yellow Castle, for all its' nostalgia value... just doesn't match with the rest of the Castle themes. So it may have gotten the nostalgia vote... but may not have gotten the "Castle" vote...

brickmatic

^ That and it is pretty blocky. The other sets look more in line with contemporary aesthetics.

bluemoose

... because of the agreement with Lucasfilm regarding "fantasy space sets" ...

Having spoken to several different folk in TLG about this, I'm convinced this 'agreement' with Lucas was a fan-generated theory that got out of hand. It was a marketing choice by LEGO themselves not to have two 'fantasy space' themes on shelves at the same time; they were already committed to producing LoM before SW hit the shelves. ~10 years later the marketing folk changed their mind.

davee123

I'm convinced this 'agreement' with Lucas was a fan-generated theory that got out of hand.

Possibly-- my memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall it seeming more concrete when LEGO renewed its license with Lucasfilm for 2007, which was exactly when Mars Mission debuted.

I also remember distinctly Brad Justus answering a question about space-themed stuff relating to the Star Wars license, and the response was something annoying (but technically correct) that stated that Insectoids was still a valid product (I think the question must have been at BrickFest 2001 or something).

It looks like Jay Bruns' interview back in 2005 talked about it in passing, but I can't find the actual text of the interview :(

http://www.fbtb.net/index.asp?feature=interviews&guest=JayBruns

Link saying he addressed it in the above interview:
http://news.lugnet.com/starwars/?n=17456

CURSE YOU, INTERNET VOLATILITY!

DaveE

brickmatic

@davee123 Here you go: http://web.archive.org/web/20071120024129/http://www.fbtb.net/index.asp?feature=interviews&guest=JayBruns

davee123

Oooo, thanks! (reads) Darn! No mention of the exclusivity thing, just the expiry of the license, apparently.

DaveE

Yellowcastle

Thanks so much for the great links!