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Cary Clark / FAQ / Dear-Lego / all

How does The LEGO® Group determine which pieces go into which bags in a set?

From Larry Pieniazek: !

The process is automated. Some digging on Dejanews will get you a number of posts that describe it in detail. These posts, originally to rec.toys.lego, are no longer available.

As far as I know, no one has ever said how LEGO® set designers make the partition the set into bags decision.

It is clear, though, that size is a factor, You will almost never find a 2x4 brick and a 1x1 round plate in the same bag except for the smallest sets (pre Town Jr. that is... all bets are off now.) So the set into bags decision may soon be a lost art.

From Cary Clark:

Different production runs of the same set contain different parts in the polybags. There is some speculation that the different styles of polybag -- perforated or non-perforated -- are stuffed at different production facilities. I’d like to put a reference to that post here, but I can’t find it.

Since the parts differ from production run to production run, one can only assume that the bag contents depend on where the bags are packed, the physical limitations of the packing machines, and the relative size of the parts.

Why are certain set numbers skipped? Why are some reused?

From Richard W. Schamus: !

No one knows for sure. Some items numbers are only released in certain regions, or certain countries. Perhaps others get scrapped as a production line, only to have that number assigned at a later date.

From Dan Boger: !

Some of the lower set number have been reused many times. 214 and 700 have been used with 11 different sets!

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