The cats hope to escape in the pink bubbles from the “Show”.

So many short lived elements. Sigh. I honestly wish those little jars were still in use.

I absolutely adore this little set! I bought a sealed copy a few years ago. The Very Light Bluish Grey cat is a personal highlight.

@Wallace_Brick_Designs said:
"So many short lived elements. Sigh. I honestly wish those little jars were still in use."

Iwouldn't mind seeing that ribbon piece come back.

Those kittens are actually pretty cute, possibly more so than the overly cartoony versions you get from modern-day Friends

Printed eyes, yay!

Kitties!

The only set with a hairdryer piece, the Friends Salon 41391 has to use a cone and paddle.

@ambr said:
"The only set with a hairdryer piece, the Friends Salon 41391 has to use a cone and paddle."

No, it was in eleven sets: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=33025&in=S

@ambr said:
"The only set with a hairdryer piece, the Friends Salon 41391 has to use a cone and paddle."

There was a unique hairdryer piece in friends’ early years, actually! https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=93080c&name=Friends%20Accessories%20Hair%20Dryer&category=%5BFriends%5DT=S&O=%7B%2522iconly%2522:0%7D

@MCLegoboy said:
"lolcats"

The Reasonably Clever Lego webcomic introduced me to the concept of lolcats with this same cat from 7600.

@TheOtherMike said:
" @ambr said:
"The only set with a hairdryer piece, the Friends Salon 41391 has to use a cone and paddle."

No, it was in eleven sets: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=33025&in=S "

Depends if you count Scala as Lego, I was referring to design 33025 with the square nozzle which they should have kept for Friends etc. I didn't know about the early Friends version though, so will continue with my cone and paddle.

@MCLegoboy said:
"lolcats"

I can haz shampane?

@ambr said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
" @ambr said:
"The only set with a hairdryer piece, the Friends Salon 41391 has to use a cone and paddle."

No, it was in eleven sets: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=33025&in=S "

Depends if you count Scala as Lego, I was referring to design 33025 with the square nozzle which they should have kept for Friends etc. I didn't know about the early Friends version though, so will continue with my cone and paddle."

https://brickset.com/parts/design-33025 was also in 5942.

Looking at this set again, I’m pretty positive there’s only one part still in circulation (ignoring the mold change that it). That’s crazy.

@Wallace_Brick_Designs said:
"Looking at this set again, I’m pretty positive there’s only one part still in circulation (ignoring the mold change that it). That’s crazy."

I count three:
pink Hairbrush, trans-clear minifig head, trans-purple jewel

@Murdoch17 said:
" @Wallace_Brick_Designs said:
"Looking at this set again, I’m pretty positive there’s only one part still in circulation (ignoring the mold change that it). That’s crazy."

I count three:
pink Hairbrush, trans-clear minifig head, trans-purple jewel"

Color wise. Yes, the trans-clear minifig head was the one. I think…

@Wallace_Brick_Designs said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
" @Wallace_Brick_Designs said:
"Looking at this set again, I’m pretty positive there’s only one part still in circulation (ignoring the mold change that it). That’s crazy."

I count three:
pink Hairbrush, trans-clear minifig head, trans-purple jewel"

Color wise. Yes, the trans-clear minifig head was the one. I think…"

Trans-purple gem still in production as of 2025 sets not yet at EOL, pink hairbrush was also last used in '25.

I forgot about this one!

@Murdoch17 said:
" @Wallace_Brick_Designs said:
"Looking at this set again, I’m pretty positive there’s only one part still in circulation (ignoring the mold change that it). That’s crazy."

I count three:
pink Hairbrush, trans-clear minifig head, trans-purple jewel"

“Part”‘ is so open to interpretation I didn’t know what the first comment meant until reading the second (and third and fourth) comment. The shape can be a “mold” or “design”, and the piece that comes out of it can be a PCC (Part/Color Combination) or an element. I prefer the TLG terms of “design” and “element”, but even elements get messy because if they brought the dark-purple 1x8 brick back, that element ID has already been retired. And once a design ID or Element ID number has been retired, they no longer bring them back into use. Instead, they assign a new number to what appears to be the same thing. They haven’t stopped making 1x8 bricks (or made significant changes that could change the way it interacts with other parts), so the design ID is still unchanged going back decades, but the element ID on every part in this set has probably been retired at least once since this came out.

And speaking of dark-purple 1x8 bricks, I just realized this is the set that came from. As in, the only set that has ever included a dark-purple 1x8 bricks. I wanted one for a brick badge, and it wasn’t one of the stock colors that were offered for free, so I had to buy some of these. And since I had to buy some, I bought all that store had to offer. Sent four off to get engraved (two were spelled right, and two were spelled wrong), and somewhere I’ve still got a bag of at least 30 more in New condition.

@PurpleDave said:
"And once a design ID or Element ID number has been retired, they no longer bring them back into use. Instead, they assign a new number to what appears to be the same thing. They haven’t stopped making 1x8 bricks (or made significant changes that could change the way it interacts with other parts), so the design ID is still unchanged going back decades, but the element ID on every part in this set has probably been retired at least once since this came out."

I knew that they didn't reuse design numbers, but I didn't realize that if they stopped making a given design/color combination, then brought it back, it got a new element number. That answers the question I'd had for a while as why some designs sometimes had the same color listed twice. I didn't look at the element IDs, or I might have realized that.

@TheOtherMike:
They definitely used to recycle design ID numbers, which has led to some odd problems. When 10179 came out, it used the 6.6L umbrella stand to form the shape of the cockpit windows. During the production run of that set, they retired that design completely, and in order to keep the set in production, they had to shift to the 6L umbrella stand, which isn't quite long enough to do the job correctly (honestly, they probably should have changed those parts to 3mm flex-tube, which they could cut to any length needed). Now, that's a case of changing the inventory from one design ID to a similar but different one.

Then there was 79003. The large window on the left side of the house uses a pair of 1x6x2 arch bricks arranged base to base to create a circular hole, and a 4x4 plate covered in four 2x2 turntable bases is inserted into the sidewalls of the arches to form the decorative window frame. During the production run of that set, they changed the internal shape of the arch brick, which apparently renders that specific construction technique impossible. But they kept the original design ID for the new arch brick variant, and I'm not sure how they managed to keep things straight so they could keep producing that set. What should have happened is the new mold should have been assigned a new design ID, and they should have required the previous mold stay in production for that one set. Any other sets could have been updated to use the new design ID instead, and it wouldn't have impacted the Bag-End set at all.

The other oddball one I know about is the 1x1 plate w/ vertical clip. They'd already reused the design ID 4085 for three different generations of the clip design (thin C-clip, thin U-clip, and thick U-clip), when the seemingly impossible happened. 40076 came out in 2012, after they had switched from the Type 3 clip to the Type 4 clip, but apparently they did not assign a new element ID number, and I got a sealed copy of the set that included one Type 4 and one Type 2...in dark-bley. Type 2 (4085b), which had not been produced since sometime in the 1980's, in dark-bley, a color that didn't exist until 2004. Presently, the Type 4 still has a design ID of 60897, but a ton of people listed dark-bley 4085b on Bricklink, so I'm definitely not the only person who ran across this seeming impossibility. Best guess is they had one 4085b mold that got missed during the changeover to 4085c, and for whatever reason, it got pulled back into service roughly a quarter century later for a color that never should have been combined with that specific mold variant.

The curious thing is, both of these sets came out in 2012, so one or both of these two separate issues may be behind the shift from making running changes to a part design to the current practice of retiring the old design ID number and assigning a new one when the changes are substantial enough. It was also around this time that the 1x2 jumper plate switched from the 3794 design ID used for the two versions that have a bar molded into the underside, to 15573 for the version that has the ability to fit over a centered solid stud. While the presence or lack of grooves is unlikely to factor into many building techniques (only the ability to insert the edge into a clip or minifig hand, that I'm aware of), but the center stud holder makes it possible to build a symmetrical stack that alternates between 1x1 plates and jumper plates. You can't do that with the older version, so this again is a situation where a construction technique is dependent on which specific part variation you end up with, and the only way to control that at the factory is to retire design ID numbers and issue new ones. Why this policy carries over to retiring element ID numbers, I can't even begin to guess, except maybe as an additional safeguard against accidentally producing a set with a variant-specific technique that ships with the wrong variant.

Also, thinking on it a bit more, I believe I ended up with slightly over 90 of those dark-purple 1x8 bricks, not 30.