I subscribe to the LEGO Club Brickmaster Magazine.  There are some small sets and some other goodies that LEGO sends you if you're a Brickmaster, besides the magazine.  The magazine itself has the same stuff as the free LEGO Club version, plus some extra articles.  I still get the free version of the magazine, so if I want I can compare the two and see what the Brickmaster one has that the regular one doesn't.

I received the two versions of the LEGO Club magazine this week just a couple of days apart.  I got the Brickmaster one first. The Brickmaster one has 36 pages, whereas the regular one has 20. I casually flipped through the regular one today and noticed that there was a survey card in the center binding. On the front of the card it said:

ATTENTION

LEGO Club Members

LEGO Company wants to make the best possible LEGO sets. Everyone who sends this survey back by February 26 will be entered into a drawing for a $50 LEGO Shop At Home Gift Certificate!

Inside the card there's a fairly detailed (for a kid anyway) survey about how much you did and didn't like the LEGO sets you've gotten in the last 2 months.  I thought that the survey was pretty cool, but I didn't remember seeing it in the Brickmaster version of the magazine.  I checked to make sure, and my memory had served me correctly.  The Brickmaster magazine had a poster of the new Bionicle stuff in the center binding but no survey.

I found this fairly troubling.  The plain Jane non-Brickmaster magazine contains a survey, but the Brickmaster version of the LEGO Club magazine does not.  I always figured that the fans who paid $40 to be a "Brickmaster," were the types who LEGO aimed to please.  A quick look through either version of the magazine will tell you that they're both targeted at kids, so LEGO trying to please AFOL's doesn't really seem to come into play...at least I don't think it does.  The fact is that any Joe Shmoe can get a whole year's worth of the regular LEGO Club magazine for FREE.  Therefore it only makes sense that those who are willing to pay for something extra are the hardcore LEGO fans who take their hobby to the next level.

I'm sure that there are many more people out there with the regular free subscription than people with a Brickmaster one.  Putting the survey in the version with more subscribers doesn't make sense though, because if you wanted a higher number of survey results, you'd just put the survey in your entire circulation.  Aiming the survey at a younger crowd wouldn't make sense either for a couple of reasons.  First, both magazines had Exo-Force cartoons, Bionicle stuff and Aquazone cartoons (kid oriented).  Second, the younger crowd isn't exactly the best at expressing their ideas for what a better LEGO set would be.  (I'm sure many IndyLUGers remember the "Angry Mountain" at the 2003 Roadshow.)

My only thought for why LEGO would offer a set-improving survey to all the slack-jawed yokel builders that seems to make any sense to me is that they think that the people, both young and not-so-young, who get the Brickmaster magazine have such extremely discerning taste in LEGO sets that we're too hard to please.

Up until a couple of years ago, this seemed to be very true.  Brickfest Q&A sessions with LEGO representatives were fraught with concerns and complaints.  There were plenty of good things to be said too, but the AFOL community seemed to always want more; we were unappeasable.  The last couple of years has seen a plethora of great sets from LEGO, and from leaked preview pics I've seen, the rest of 2007 looks like it will continue in that direction.  Many AFOL's are very happy with the current selection of LEGO sets...but does LEGO fully realize this?

Maybe I'm completely wrong about all of this, and am worrying for nothing.  Who knows.  I do know that because I get both magazines, I do have a survey, and I know that I am happy with recent LEGO sets.  Two out of two ain't bad!  Wink

David