Mmmm...
Kids! We’re having cat for dinner!

Is anyone else heading the Psycho shower scene music?

@PDelahanty:
Same mug(s), same potioning cauldron.

@CarolinaOnMyMind:
Alf?

It's cool: I am the president,
The president of Fabuland!
It's my private woderland
And I do whatever I like!
Whooooo!

Very fond of Fabuland, kicked off my LEGO collection!

Looks more like "Catherine Cat in Cryostasis".

@Norikins said:
"A cauldron, saucepan, ladle, teapot, amphora, and 3 cups. This isn't a normal kitchen. Is she brewing moonshine? Potions? Poison?! Does Catherine only drink liquids? Is she unable to eat because she seems to be a "cat" but is really something more sinister posing as a cat? A vampire who got bored of drinking blood the regular way? Something even more sinister?"

Your right, real cats don't need liquid, they get most of it from solid food.
My cats both sleep in the kitchen.

@LegoDavid said:
" @Brickchap said:
"I love all the old cooking pieces! I am fortunate enough to own a Fabuland 1950's fridge, which is awesome because it looks cool and fits in perfectly with my 1950s city!

I'd love to see Fabuland return, but with regular 'minifig' sized animals, or just regular people. A peaceful English/European village between the wars, with emphasis on houses and shops rather than the usual 'emergency/conflict/here's a problem that needs to be solved' type sets we get from City and Friends. The old Creator houses are probably the closest thing to that."

They should have used all those new head molds introduced for those Vidyo animal characters for a Fabuland reboot. "

Yes! I got a lot of those Vidiyo minifigs to create my own 'modern' Fabuland.

@WizardOfOss:
These days that style of packaging shows you what wasn’t stolen already.

@PurpleDave said:
" @WizardOfOss:
These days that style of packaging shows you what wasn’t stolen already."
Well, so many brands still use packaging like that for toys, and it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. At least, here in Europe. I guess in some parts of the world people are just a bit more honest?

I also wonder: how does a plain box stop people from stealing stuff out of it? It's not like you don't know what's inside, as it is clearly printed on the box. Maybe Lego should also move to plain brown boxes with just a small label, just like BlueBrixx? imagine how the average toy store would look: the big brown wall of Lego :-)

I'd say it's primarily a matter of cost cutting, secondary of environment.

@MCLegoboy said:
"Catherine is cooking up the ancient potions for her dark magicks..."

This is the true backstory to how Fabuland became Chima

@WizardOfOss:
How do cardboard boxes stop theft? They don’t. This month alone, I’ve probably seen 4-5 LEGO sets that had been ripped open, including Minecraft, Ninjago, DC, and (shockingly) Vidiyo. But the cellophane window seems to invite it. DK stopped packaging minifigs in those little plastic clamshells tapes in the cover because it’s too tempting a target when you don’t have to do anything wrong to find the item you’re going to steal, and you don’t have to put any serious effort into transferring it to your pocket.

Have you ever noticed how minifigs are spread throughout the build with numbered bags, or their parts are split up between different unnumbered bags? When I was a kid, you built _all_ of the minifigs right at the beginning on every set. If they did that for a $200 SW set, you could rip the box open, just grab any bag numbered “1”, and be sure that you had all the minifig parts when you walked out the door. If you have to pull minifig parts out of every bag, it’s not as convenient, and cuts down on theft. There’s too big a risk of getting caught for the limited reward. But if you could scoop up army-builders in just a few seconds, I expect I’d walk into LEGO aisles to find every copy of certain sets ripped open, like the 501st, or Ahsoka’s unit (332nd?).

When I was in high school, I spent a few years working for a guy who builds small wooden boats (he’s started making them for Hollywood productions, so you might have seen a few in movies). One of the perks of the job was I’d get to go sailing a few times during the summer. I don’t remember what led to this moment, but there was a harbor full of Bermuda-rigged sailboats, and all that kept you from entering the hold on these was usually one or two padlocks. The boatbuilder told me that a determined thief could get into any of them with nothing but a hammer and a crowbar. The padlocks are just there to “keep honest people honest”. And it’s the same with eliminating the cellophane windows. They create a barrier similar to the difference between seeing someone drop a $20 bill on the ground vs actually picking their pocket to get it.

(Damn, another post lost because of probably a timed out session? That never stops being annoying....)

4-5 this month alone? I doubt I've seen that many in my life....

I obviously don't know how many opened boxes the shops have to take off the shelves, but still. And like I said, other toy brands still use similar packaging, or even just open cardboard with the stuff attached with just a tie wrap or some annoying clips. Impossible to remove nice and clean, but nothing a little force wouldn't solve. In the end, kids love to see what they are gonna get. Not a picture, but the real deal.

And also looking back on old Technic sets, at least some I have had sort of a lid on top of the tray to keep everything in place. So even if you ripped out the cellophane, you're still not there. You still had to rip apart the entire box. Or open it the way it's intended to be opened. Either way, not something you can do quick and sneaky.

And even in that SW case, if all minifigs would be in bag 1 : how quickly could you find that bag in a $200 set? You're grabbing into a big box with numerous little bags (that usually happen to make a lot of noise...), and somehow even at home the 1 bag always seems to be the last one I find. Or is that just me? I always thought of them being in different bags just as spreading the rewards along the build.

So while it might be *a* reason, I just don't buy (nor steal...) that it's *the* reason. Very heavy handed solution for making a small problem just a tiny bit more difficult. And with the downside of a much less attractive packaging.

@PurpleDave said:
" @WizardOfOss:
How do cardboard boxes stop theft? They don’t. This month alone, I’ve probably seen 4-5 LEGO sets that had been ripped open, including Minecraft, Ninjago, DC, and (shockingly) Vidiyo. But the cellophane window seems to invite it. DK stopped packaging minifigs in those little plastic clamshells tapes in the cover because it’s too tempting a target when you don’t have to do anything wrong to find the item you’re going to steal, and you don’t have to put any serious effort into transferring it to your pocket.

Have you ever noticed how minifigs are spread throughout the build with numbered bags, or their parts are split up between different unnumbered bags? When I was a kid, you built _all_ of the minifigs right at the beginning on every set. If they did that for a $200 SW set, you could rip the box open, just grab any bag numbered “1”, and be sure that you had all the minifig parts when you walked out the door. If you have to pull minifig parts out of every bag, it’s not as convenient, and cuts down on theft. There’s too big a risk of getting caught for the limited reward. But if you could scoop up army-builders in just a few seconds, I expect I’d walk into LEGO aisles to find every copy of certain sets ripped open, like the 501st, or Ahsoka’s unit (332nd?).

When I was in high school, I spent a few years working for a guy who builds small wooden boats (he’s started making them for Hollywood productions, so you might have seen a few in movies). One of the perks of the job was I’d get to go sailing a few times during the summer. I don’t remember what led to this moment, but there was a harbor full of Bermuda-rigged sailboats, and all that kept you from entering the hold on these was usually one or two padlocks. The boatbuilder told me that a determined thief could get into any of them with nothing but a hammer and a crowbar. The padlocks are just there to “keep honest people honest”. And it’s the same with eliminating the cellophane windows. They create a barrier similar to the difference between seeing someone drop a $20 bill on the ground vs actually picking their pocket to get it."

Wow, you must be living in a really terrible neighborhood. I have never seen anything like that where I live. Rather agree with @WizardOfOss that there's probably other reasons for changing the packaging (most likely cost). It's too bad, because I rather like these Fabuland boxes where you can actually see the contents (and I regret not preserving any from my childhood).

That is one GIANT teapot!

Is that My Dad?

@PurpleDave said:
"How do cardboard boxes stop theft? They don’t. This month alone, I’ve probably seen 4-5 LEGO sets that had been ripped open, including Minecraft, Ninjago, DC, and (shockingly) Vidiyo."

Fred Meyer stores (a big box chain in the US Pacific Northwest) started putting their Lego inside locked display cabinets with security cameras pointed at them. Even the collectable minifigures are in there!

I assume they've solved their shoplifting problems. But they also seem to have "solved" the problem of having honest customers too. Before and after Christmas, there was basically nothing left at Walmart except Vidiyo (completely untouched!) and Super Mario. It reminded me of the pandemic toilet paper run. Fred Meyer, meanwhile, looked like it had hardly sold anything. I haven't gotten anything there since they made it such a hassle either.

@PDelahanty said:
"Is that the same mug that minifigures use to this day? Looks a little different."

It is the same mug that is used today.

@WizardOfOss:
I should note that I think two of those were right next to each other, and all the rest were one per store. I’ve browsed several stores in the Metro Detroit area (including one actually in Detroit), so that’s spread out over an area of around 1000 square miles at least. It’s usually not that bad, but anyone who’s going to tear into a box has their chosen themes, and any premeditated thefts are more likely to happen soon after the set launches rather than towards the point when it retires. I think the Minecraft set was the large fox, which I know just launched this month.

Anyways, there’s a lot of poverty in Detroit and some of the surrounding suburbs, and I suspect that fuels some of this. There is, or was, also a serial thief in the area, because before TRU folded, there was a stretch when I used to regularly find action figures and die-cast cars that had been removed from the packaging and either replaced with a toy painted to look like the card art, or the card art was painted to look like the replacement toy. I suspect some kid was buying toys with pocket money, doing the switch with cheaper toys (the stolen die-cast cars usually ran $5, while the standard ones are around $1, so some effort was put in to save $4), or with ones that were no longer desired, and returning them for a cash refund. It did stop within about a year of my first encounter with one of these horrible paint jobs (they were just...so, so bad).

Anyways, when I spot these raided sets, the box is usually destroyed, like someone grabbed it in both hands and tried tearing it apart. The bags are often dumped out on an empty patch of shelf, and the parts from one bag are dumped nearby. So, when this happens, there’s clearly so little foot traffic in that area that someone can locate the bag they want by contents, and sift through the parts to grab what interests them. To the store, once that box is shredded, one part or all of them is immaterial, since the product is no longer saleable. But if changing the way things are packed reduced the number of incidents, then that’s going to have an impact on the store’s bottom line.

@Lego_lord said:
"Fabuland was a peaceful theme, I don't think it will work today. I love how serene 3660 looks or romantic 3622 feels. Such a good theme."

I think nearly all Lego of that era looked pretty peaceful. I suppose the classic smily face helped.