Creator Set | SerialBuilder | Pre-order update #5

Hello and welcome to another update for the Creator Set that can’t seem to get out of the door fast enough!

I know we’ve been pretty quiet lately (both Sean with his videos and I), but it’s because we’ve been very busy with things in the backend. What has been taking up all of our time?

Fixes, fixes, fixes

When I stated in the last update’s comments section that the fixes were not too major for the Tallneck, it was because I hadn’t seen the state of it after we’d been moving it around a bunch for content. What we found was that the bricks start to loosen over time when put under a bunch of stress. Now, this isn’t an alternate lego bricks issue, this is an ABS plastic issue, and it will happen regardless of the logo that sits on the studs. To be clear, we don’t think this is a critical problem, since we expect most people to build and find a spot for their Tallneck and not move it as much as we’ve been moving it (which has been a lot, and includes all the stress tests we’ve been running). But after putting my Mechanical Engineering degree to use for probably the first time since I graduated a lifetime ago, I noticed a few areas specifically in the neck area that I felt could be built in a way that would make my old professors a little less disappointed in me. And so I got to work!

The original design on the left allows for a bit more flexing which can have some ramifications if you love to move things around. The right shows the updated version which is far sturdier, even with the head sitting on it. Apologies for the lack of a proper apples-to-apples comparison videos as we just didn’t have the time to build up both of the versions at the same time to get the footage in time for the update, but we will share more in the next one.

I believe implementing the fixes on the Sawtooth and the Tremortusk gave me a false sense of security on the amount of time it would take to get this particular fix done. But making structural changes in such a complex model is not as straightforward as it may seem. I fully get that straightforward is not what most people would think here, so I accept that it’s a me problem.

Which brings me to the next one…

Quick, whilst the beast is distracted

The final build to fix was the Thunderjaw, and I have to say I got a little carried away here too.

In fact, I think I got so carried away that we didn’t have time to document the extent of the changes, so again, I’ll leave those details for the next update. Just to tease a little, this comment by Robert had been staring me in the face and I just couldn’t get it out of my head...

I know, I know, I was being responsible when I said ‘in the interest of time’ and in all fairness, I did do just that - I quickly finished up a much sturdier base without changing too much. But then it got a little involved…

Anyway! The good news is that we’ve finished the fixes and have submitted the parts list to the factory for review and will be proceeding with starting to manufacture the sets imminently. We’re about 2 weeks behind due to these fixes, but hopefully you’ll appreciate the extra 2 weeks wait once you get the sets. To make up for the slight delay, we’ll be including all 318 extra parts (slightly less for the Core Edition) for free along with your set to also show how committed we are to delivering a superior product and to show how we’re supporting the Creators we work with. We also expect to be providing as much support as we can afterwards and sharing more fixes or upgrades if we come across them for the builds at a later date.

Bag and forth

We’ve been discussing bagging options with the factory and the good news is that we’re able to bag the beasts separately for the Complete set, so that’s what we’ll be doing. No Upgrade Kit complexity like I suggested in a previous update, just a more straightforward approach which’ll improve the building experience for all the Complete Edition customers.

This however doesn’t quite work for our Core Edition customers so we’ve been wracking our brains on how to best optimise the bags to allow any build to be built easily. Here’s what we came up with:

Since this is ultimately a Creator Set, we expect you to want to make the different beasts so we assume you’ll be pulling your builds apart at some point. Now with 14,000+ parts and around 500 part types, we know first hand that the biggest headache is going to be sorting. So we’ve been thinking about how to sort thousands of parts. Even for ourselves, the large number of parts that are beginning to build up on my dining table is starting to get out of hand.

We’ve gone back and forth on how best to organise the bags for the Core Edition and were doing some pretty complicated sorting math to try to bundle up the parts so that they could be used in sequence for any of the builds, and this may have worked well if we only had 2 builds, but doing it across 5 increases the complexity exponentially. We realised that even the previous idea of the Core + Upgrade Kit split would’ve resulted in a subpar customer experience for Core customers because you’d still be looking for random bags.

Ultimately, we think that the best approach is to have the parts sorted for you in bags, so that even once you’ve built a beast, the rest of your remaining parts are still in a sorted state. What this means during your build is that you may need to identify a few more bags than those building with the Complete set, but we’ll try to bundle them up and create a balance of not too many part types per bag but not too many bags either.

Unfortunately what this means is that we won’t have Upgrade Kit for our Core customers immediately in the future if you’d like that. There may be at some point, but currently the number of Core customers is too low for us to be able to create that kit. If you’d like to upgrade to the Complete, there may be a window whilst the factory is setting everything up. Just get in touch and we’ll see if we’re able to make that happen for you. We’ll still be thinking about how to make the Upgrade Kit happen in the future though.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas

We’ll probably be trying to take a little bit of a breather as we head into the holiday period (as much as we can anyway), so the next update will most likely be in January, where hopefully we’ll be able to tell you we’re starting to ship the sets out. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly with the factory. We’ll also be sure to provide more in-depth looks at the fixes we’ve made.

We want to thank you all again for your support and we’re really excited for you to get the sets. We know some of you have bought these as Christmas presents and whilst we wish we could’ve gotten them to you by then, we hope it won’t be too long of a wait till they actually arrive. If you were gifting the set to someone, we’ve made a few postcards that can be printed out just so that you have something to share with your loved one on the day. You can find the hi-res PDF file here.

Wishing you all happy holidays and a happy new year!

Sean, Bilal and 2B