{"id":194,"date":"2013-11-17T16:56:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2017-04-26T15:04:21","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T20:04:21","slug":"the-wal-mart-side-effect-part-2-winning-a-fight-but-losing-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/2013\/11\/17\/the-wal-mart-side-effect-part-2-winning-a-fight-but-losing-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wal-Mart Side Effect, part 2: Winning a Fight, but Losing the War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I didn&#8217;t intend to write a blog follow up to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/31\/the-wal-mart-side-effect-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Wal-Mart Side Effect, part 1<\/a>\u00a0just <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/i01.i.aliimg.com\/wsphoto\/v0\/1097083083_1\/BOMBOM-Star-Wars-6pcs-Minifigures-with-weapons-stand-plate-ninjago-doll-toys-building-block-sets-eductional.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"143\" height=\"200\" border=\"0\" \/>yet, but this\u00a0<b>is<\/b> related&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s something I think is funny&#8230; so I&#8217;m on eBay this morning, and one of the new features is displaying items similar to what I&#8217;ve searched for in the past&#8230; when I see the following mixed in with the results.<\/p>\n<p>What I suspect, with LEGO outsourcing many things to China, China is fulfilling the quota of parts, but making a few extra on the side, in the process &#8212; I doubt there&#8217;s any agreement in place to what the machinery does after the quota is fulfilled &#8212; so minifigures are being sold to different distributors and repackaged.<br \/>\nI also suspect, LEGO Retail is waging a war with BrickLink sellers &#8212; seeing the amount of money being spent on after market LEGO &#8212; LBR is using this to justify reducing discounts and many policy changes &#8212; damaged sets use to be on discount at 20%, now it&#8217;s 10%; opened &amp; returned sets use to go into grab bags, to which many LUG used to help bulk up collections; etc. \u00a0But honestly, I think LEGO is losing the war &#8212; the amount of money they&#8217;re losing through discounts to North Americans vs. outsourcing to China, has got to be comparing a trickle of water to a tsunami.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t use the quality argument for not buying any of the above &#8212; I suspect the makers of the above make the same quality of parts for LEGO. \u00a0Unless I do a side-by-side comparison, would there be any differences? \u00a0If it&#8217;s minor, would it matter in a large fan display, considering if I bought some of the above at 50% of LEGO&#8217;s price or better? \u00a0I makes you think if TLG &amp; LBR has their priorities a little backwards.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=brickbuildr\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I didn&#8217;t intend to write a blog follow up to The Wal-Mart Side Effect, part 1\u00a0just yet, but this\u00a0is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[326,5],"tags":[521,518,519,520],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clone","category-community","tag-bootleg","tag-china","tag-knock-offs","tag-outsourcing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/hqdefault.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YMsl-38","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1885,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/1885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brickbuildr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}