Are the LEGO F40 and LEGO Mini Cooper Going to Be Retired Soon?

[fantomas007]

OMG, people, just relax. There is no chance of soon retirement of F40... even if it would be the worst seller from exclusives (i dont think it is), there is no way to retire such set just after several months... Same with MiniCooper - although living a little more, the new box is the evidence that we dont need to panic... The only question is how long will T1 live, since it looks like a new death star with unlimited life... I am nervous with it, since I am sitting on many T1 sets...

[akohns]

I saw just at the Downtown Disney (Disney Springs) Lego store yesterday, and I noticed the VW Camper & Mini have new box shapes. They are long and squatty to match the F40 box more closely. 

[johnjohn15]

Interesting blog. Does any one knows if the rear spoiler can be removed? I'd like to buy this lego set however i don't like nor want the rear spoiler. it looks clean that way, in my opinion.

[Battrax]

27 minutes ago, johnjohn15 said:

Interesting blog. Does any one knows if the rear spoiler can be removed? I'd like to buy this lego set however i don't like nor want the rear spoiler. it looks clean that way, in my opinion.

Of course you can - it is made of Lego bricks. However, the rear wing is fixed in place on the real car and integrated part of the carbon fibre body work. The F40LM version (built by Michelotto for customers who wanted to race the car) has an adjustable middle section to change the amount of rear downforce.

[Lordoflego]

I don't think that those are retiring soon.....but......but.....I'm gonna get sh.t load of minis

[Miami Bomb Squad]

1 hour ago, akohns said:

I saw just at the Downtown Disney (Disney Springs) Lego store yesterday, and I noticed the VW Camper & Mini have new box shapes. They are long and squatty to match the F40 box more closely. 

Its ironic your avatar is of a Lego cameraman, Yet you have No photos of this new box for the Mini Cooper.

[Mos_Eisley]

7 minutes ago, Miami Bomb Squad said:

Its ironic your avatar is of a Lego cameraman, Yet you have No photos of this new box for the Mini Cooper.

The new boxes have been out for quite some time now. 

[dcdfan]

The new box sightings for T-1 & Mini were discussed months ago...

[Val-E]

Yup, it´s new PS, EV, Sancrawler and SOH boxes that would be breaking news.

[Miami Bomb Squad]

2 hours ago, Mos_Eisley said:

The new boxes have been out for quite some time now. 

 

2 hours ago, dcdfan said:

The new box sightings for T-1 & Mini were discussed months ago...

Then Why are we discussing Early retirement for the Mini?
 

[Mos_Eisley]

24 minutes ago, Miami Bomb Squad said:

 

Then Why are we discussing Early retirement for the Mini?
 

Not sure. 

[exciter1]

25 minutes ago, Miami Bomb Squad said:

 

Then Why are we discussing Early retirement for the Mini?
 

Apparently, it's fun.

[Ciglione]

Do you guys think the Tie Fighter will retire soon? I've searched on lego.com for "retiered" and it came up with the results. Or is it just a mistake of the website?

[jaisonline]

33 minutes ago, Miami Bomb Squad said:

 

Then Why are we discussing Early retirement for the Mini?
 

Speculation  

seriously because Lego needs to fix their website's search logic  

[Armor]

Look, we can't all be asking so much from the 1 IT staff. That poor IT has to keep track of at least 20 different countries inventory and update the price during the sales season. Its only 1 guy and I think he is doing a wonderful job keeping the website working 30% of the time without freezing on purchases. 

Edited January 16, 2016 by Armor

[biniou]

13 hours ago, Armor said:

Its only 1 guy and I think he is doing a wonderful job keeping the website working 30% of the time without freezing on purchases. 

Oh, that would explain a lot of things, maybe there is no search engine, just one guy on his computer trying to do everything each visitor asks.

"You want to sort sets by price ? Damn investor, I'll kick you to the homepage"

 

Edited January 17, 2016 by biniou

[Val-E]

"Now where did I put my red sold out crayon? No probs, I´ll use an orange one instead."

[fossilrock]

I work on an ecommerce site for a living, and i'm one of two people managing a site filled with a few thousand products.  Mistakes are easy to make.  Tags are easy to forget (or misplace).  You try and keep a lot of consistency, but it's not always easy.  I suspect the crew at Lego.com is also small, and not some vast empire of techies like many of you like to think.

I personally, don't have too much of a problem with the lego.com site and think the rhetoric here is overblown.  Yes, occasionally my purchase history drops off the radar, or i've had one instance where my VIP points weren't synced properly, but that's probably due to bugs in the Point of Sales system when they upgrade their site (upgrades usually can happen every few months) and push it out live and they may have missed a few things..  In the end it was all corrected.

Edited January 17, 2016 by fossilrock

[gregpj]

I work on an ecommerce site for a living, and i'm one of two people managing a site filled with a few thousand products.  Mistakes are easy to make.  Tags are easy to forget (or misplace).  You try and keep a lot of consistency, but it's not always easy.  I suspect the crew at Lego.com is also small, and not some vast empire of techies like many of you like to think.

I personally, don't have too much of a problem with the lego.com site and think the rhetoric here is overblown.  Yes, occasionally my purchase history drops off the radar, or i've had one instance where my VIP points weren't synced properly, but that's probably due to bugs in the Point of Sales system when they upgrade their site (upgrades usually can happen every few months) and push it out live and they may have missed a few things..  In the end it was all corrected.

I think that's entirely the point... They make how much a year and it seems they can't make competent IT decisions? I've worked on plenty of small to large scale IT projects and if we delivered products with the problems we've seen on S@H (and remember what a small sample size we are) we'd have never made it as a company.

Mistakes happen in the world if ever changing IT tech but some of these are going in _three_ years in production. No excuse for that.

[fossilrock]

47 minutes ago, gregpj said:

I think that's entirely the point... They make how much a year and it seems they can't make competent IT decisions? I've worked on plenty of small to large scale IT projects and if we delivered products with the problems we've seen on LEGO Shop at Home (and remember what a small sample size we are) we'd have never made it as a company.

Mistakes happen in the world if ever changing IT tech but some of these are going in _three_ years in production. No excuse for that.

I'm sure the finance department sees that the site is making an increasing amount of revenue each year, and as long as it maintains solid margins, they keep from rocking the boat too far to upset the apple cart.

Most of the complaints that I see on this site are mainly from people that are upset because they aren't getting advantageous signs to when products are retiring so they seem to want lego.com to give them a blatant clue and handhold them through the process of hoarding product.   That seems to be the main gripe, hence why the continuous ongoing debates about "orange" vs "red", etc. So, honestly a lot of the complaints here are based on people thinking lego should cater to the resellers business model.  And as we should realize, lego is not going to do that, because their system is simply meant to sell products and make them money. 

I've made many many orders over the last couple years on the site, and never had an issue with any of my orders.  So to me the site works as it should.  And that's ultimately what it comes down to.  If the products that are synced with their POS are available to sell when it's in stock.  Execs aren't going to give two flips if Samuel in Alabama is freaking out because he didn't start hoarding a set yet to eventually make a profit from it, and all the sudden the set he was eyeing went to "red out of stock". 

And to be honest, i've had more issues with bugs affecting my transactions through amazon.com and walmart.com than lego.com. 

Edited January 17, 2016 by fossilrock

[gregpj]

29 minutes ago, fossilrock said:

I'm sure the finance department sees that the site is making an increasing amount of revenue each year, and as long as it maintains solid margins, they keep from rocking the boat too far to upset the apple cart.

Most of the complaints that I see on this site are mainly from people that are upset because they aren't getting advantageous signs to when products are retiring so they seem to want lego.com to give them a blatant clue and handhold them through the process of hoarding product.   That seems to be the main gripe, hence why the continuous ongoing debates about "orange" vs "red", etc. So, honestly a lot of the complaints here are based on people thinking lego should cater to the resellers business model.  And as we should realize, lego is not going to do that, because their system is simply meant to sell products and make them money. 

I've made many many orders over the last couple years on the site, and never had an issue with any of my orders.  So to me the site works as it should.  And that's ultimately what it comes down to.  If the products that are synced with their POS are available to sell when it's in stock.  Execs aren't going to give two flips if Samuel in Alabama is freaking out because he didn't start hoarding a set yet to eventually make a profit from it, and all the sudden the set he was eyeing went to "red out of stock". 

And to be honest, i've had more issues with bugs affecting my transactions through amazon.com and walmart.com than lego.com. 

Well I'm with you on the orange vs red debate vs other statuses... who cares.

What I just don't get is why their search is so inconsistent over the years (leading to this entire thread) and why they just can't scale their resources properly to meet demand during busy periods? That should have any exec wondering what in the world their IT department, large or small, is doing!

[fossilrock]

30 minutes ago, gregpj said:

Well I'm with you on the orange vs red debate vs other statuses... who cares.

What I just don't get is why their search is so inconsistent over the years (leading to this entire thread) and why they just can't scale their resources properly to meet demand during busy periods? That should have any exec wondering what in the world their IT department, large or small, is doing!

Really, a lot of it seems to come down to inconsistent tagging on the taxonomy related to each product, and that could be due to a number of things from changes in personal (at any level that influences the decision making), to just some guy not really making it a high priority.  Like I said, when you are managing thousands of products, tagging them all with constant consistency can be a challenge.

I guess, it comes down to how you buy your products.  I personally, just use category, go in see what's available within that category and buy from there.  If I see Star Wars items showing up in creator, then I think there's a problem, but i've never seen that happen, so really I just think they have some inconsistent taxonomy search tags here and there that are minor to the overall effectiveness of the site.  99% of costumers wouldn't even search this way, so i'm sure it's not seen as a giant priority.  

I have my doubts that any of these are retiring, except for perhaps the mini cooper.  I could see that bailing out this year, but would be shocked to see the ferrari go…  Regardless, if people like the ferrari, and want to invest in it and have a number of them.. .well, I guess now is a good time as any to start buying a few every couple of months.  
 

[akohns]

On 1/16/2016 at 11:51 AM, Miami Bomb Squad said:

Its ironic your avatar is of a Lego cameraman, Yet you have No photos of this new box for the Mini Cooper.

No photo because my arms were full of Batman Tumblers...