Harry Potter Advent Calendar - Day 14

This year’s HP advent calendar is extremely weak if you compare what we were getting last year

I'm loving this year's calendar and theming but then again one of my favourite kits from the year or so is Hogsmead and I can see the potential for expanding that set. With some of these builds

I wonder what the panel in the middle is for? Is it there so the minifig from yesterday can 'stand' behind the counter? What a weird design.

This build is very unremarkable. Almost to the point of feeling super memorable in how unremarkable it is. That in and of itself makes it special... a special kind of unremarkable.

Wasn't super into this build but at least all the pieces are usable, unlike some other days

@Binnekamp said:
"I wonder what the panel in the middle is for? Is it there so the minifig from yesterday can 'stand' behind the counter?"

I was in a rush to get it built this morning, so my initial thought was that it was so the e minifig could sit at the table, sans chair/bench. But seeing the finished model for more than 1/4 second, there isn’t room to fit feet inside, unless it’s just the toes and the minifig is posed like a battle droid riding a STAP.

So I'm expecting chairs from tomorrow so people can sit at this table

@Brickalili said:
"So I'm expecting chairs from tomorrow so people can sit at this table"

Maybe it’s a standing bar, and the Friends panel is just there so you can sidle up and perch one foot on it while the bartender pretends not to notice you gesturing for their attention because they’d rather cater to customers who are overly generous with their tips.

@EtudeTheBadger said:
"Woah, that moulding mark looks ug-ly."
What I don't understand is why LEGO changes moulds that in the past iterations hid moulding marks to new versions that don't.
Best example imho is tiles. In the past LEGO had tiles that hid those marks by placing the injection point on the inside of the tile, while many cheap knockoff manufacturers simply put them on one of the sides in plain view, depending on the orientation of the tile in the build.
Nowadays it's the other way round.

I used to build BlueBrixx sets years ago that had those cheap parts where the moulding marks on the sides were so shoddy that you could even see remnants of the marks on the top of the tile, while their current Star Trek sets I am building at the moment have the marks on the underside (just like the ones LEGO used in the past), perfectly hiding them, whichever way you connect the piece.
On many of my current LEGO sets otoh the injection points are now on the side of the tiles, and often they look as bad as on this part in today's HP Advent Calendar build.

What has happened to "Only the best is good enough"? This is one change for the worse that doesn't seem to have any good reason other than to probably make production even cheaper, no matter how shoddy the end result.

Imho injection points should always be either on the top of a stud or on the underside of a piece that doesn't have studs, especially if such a version has existed for years in the past, proving that it is perfectly possible.

@AustinPowers:
I think they prefer to avoid putting the gate in the middle of a logo. It may be fine for larger plates to have one or more obscured logos, since the majority will be complete. Parts that only have one stud, however, probably aren't allowed to have gates right in the logo.

@PurpleDave : but why suddenly?
They did it for decades and everything was fine.

So you are implying they now prefer vanity (i.e. the visibility of their logo on a single stud) over quality? That's certainly an interesting change versus the past. For the better? I dare say no.
Indeed, "Only the best..." now seems to be a distant memory, not just on this aspect.

Also, how would that explain the change on parts like this in the above build, where a change back to a point on the underside or rear, like in the past, wouldn't obscure a logo anyway?

@AustinPowers:
It could be as simple as someone getting promoted to a position that lets them make such decisions, and “fixing” things. Consider the old four-flower sprue. There’s long been disagreement between AFOLs regarding if the flat surface or the stud should face up. This disagreement has clearly spilled over to the people who made the molds. I got a bunch for a project, and I got some that have flower details cut into the flat surface, indicating that’s the top. And I have others where all the mold info is raised on that surface instead, indicating it’s the bottom. And still others have flat sides that are perfectly flat, indicating that it could go either way. Someone had to make a conscious decision to produce the first two examples, and it was likely not the same person both times.

@PurpleDave : I still don't get it. Why consciously CHANGE a mould design at all when the old one has worn out? Why not simply make a new one of the exact same shape and form as the old one? Designing a new one after all means more effort and therefore cost than just reusing a tried and trusted design that has proven to provide a perfect result for the customer for decades.
Especially on all those 1 by x variants of tiles, which looked perfect all round with the injection point on the underside.
So much so that, as mentioned, even the competition (at least the one that is interested in offering top quality for the customer) has decided to put in the effort and swap out their older (and likely cheaper) mould designs for the optimized version for a better looking end result.

@AustinPowers:
Do you realize how much injection molding technology has changed since the first LEGO brick was produced? Mold design is now less art and more science compared to when the minifig was created. One seemingly pointless tweak to the mold design could conceivably knock 10% off the cycle time, meaning production could see a 10% increase in capacity, all for a tiny change to the mold design.

@PurpleDave said:
" @AustinPowers :
Do you realize how much injection molding technology has changed since the first LEGO brick was produced? Mold design is now less art and more science compared to when the minifig was created. One seemingly pointless tweak to the mold design could conceivably knock 10% off the cycle time, meaning production could see a 10% increase in capacity, all for a tiny change to the mold design."

So basically cost reduction at the expense of quality?

Maybe they should change their motto: "Only the cheapest....But we make You pay for it!"

@WizardOfOss:
Go read all the complaints about the price of the X-Jet, then remember back to the days when Mattel made a serious offer to buy them because they were losing money. This is a company that has become trapped in 1970’s pricing, because people have grown up and had kids of their own grow up without seeing much change in the retail price structure. It’s hard to break out of that and keep pace with inflation, but the one way they can do so on the front end is to reduce the cost to produce a part.

@PurpleDave, don't you have a TL;DR for that?

I don't have any issue with Lego trying to save cost by producing more efficiently. But not at the expense of quality. In the long run it's just not sustainable to offer lower quality at higher prices than (some of) the competition. They only still get away with it because too many people still aren't aware other brands exist, or at best think it's still all trash.

@PurpleDave : I am no expert in moulding technology like you appear to be. But I look at it from the point of the consumer. If the newer version offers inferior quality but costs the same or even more, then I tend to get annoyed, especially when the competition seems to go the exact opposite way.

And I strongly agree with @WizardOfOss in that the motto of "Only the best..." has become a joke and should indeed be rephrased to "Only the cheapest for us and most expensive for you customers is good enough".

If they really did care about quality like they pretend to do then they wouldn't cut such corners.

I am just building two sets at this very moment, one being LEGO 77012 Indiana Jones Fighter Plane Chase, the other being the UCS version of the Enterprise NX-01 from BlueBrixx Pro. The price per part of the latter is 7 cents, of the former 9 cents. Both sets are officially licensed, but other than that are totally different. The Star Trek set has no stickers, only printed pieces of very high quality. The stickers on the Indiana Jones set otoh have defects (at least on my example), like the cockpit printing having white spots in some places on the grey grid, as well as having been bent in the box, making some of them unusable. Of course I can order a replacement from customer service, but shouldn't such issues be avoided if "Only the best is good enough"?