  
| Author: | randyf  | | Posted: | Mar 28, 2023 21:21 | | Subject: | ATTN: BrickLink "Trans-Black" Color Change | | Viewed: | 2267 times | | Topic: | Catalog | | Status: | Open | |
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| Dear BrickLink members,
In May of this year, the LEGO Group plans to release a new color, and this has
implications for the BrickLink catalog and marketplace. The new color being introduced
is 375 Transparent Black, and we believe it will eventually replace LEGO color
111 Transparent Brown.
As most of you know, the greater fan community has for many years referred to
LEGO color 111 Transparent Brown as "Trans-Black". Up until now, this
name has served us well because there was no official LEGO color known as Transparent
Black. Now that the LEGO Group is introducing a color officially known as Transparent
Black, it will cause alignment problems to have the same name being used for
two different colors.
We anticipate that the introduction of this color will cause some disruptions
over the short term, but we have created a plan of action to minimize those disruptions.
The first thing we will do is change the name of the current Trans-Black color
to "Trans-Brown (Old Trans-Black)". This change is scheduled to
take place at the beginning of April. This will ensure that the name change will
be very noticeable within the catalog, set inventories, BrickLink stores, order
summaries, etc., so that the majority of BrickLink users can adjust to the change.
Next, the new color will be added to the catalog as "Trans-Black (2023)"
to make it very obvious that this is a new color and should not be used for older
set inventories and older parts being listed for sale. This addition is expected
to happen at the beginning of May when set 75346 is released and inventoried:
https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1398124
After a 6-month transition, we will remove the text in parentheses from both
color names. The older color will then be "Trans-Brown", and the
newer color will be "Trans-Black". This will complete the transition.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The question arises, why have we decided to go the route outlined above rather
than leaving "Trans-Black" aligned to LEGO color 111 Transparent Brown
and creating a new color name for the new LEGO color 375 Transparent Black? There
are several reasons.
First, we want to make sure that we do not create long-term confusion between
these colors, since we believe the new LEGO color 375 Transparent Black will
become the standard color and LEGO color 111 Transparent Brown will become just
another part of the history of the brick system we all know and love. As time
goes by, the older color will not be seen as often and the newer color will be
everywhere. And after what we hope is a relatively short period of time, BrickLink
users will adjust naturally to the change.
Second, coming up with a name for a new color is not an easy task. Although it
looks darker than the current LEGO color 111 Transparent Brown, it doesn't
look much different from what most people would say is some type of "transparent
blackish gray" color. Typically, new color names grow longer over time to
help distinguish from existing colors, so we could end up with something like
"Trans-Very Dark Bluish Gray".
Longer names are something we have come to accept in a catalog that covers the
entire history of LEGO colors, but it helps lower the entry barrier to BrickLink
when we can use simpler names at least for the most common colors. Using the
relatively short names "Trans-Brown" and "Trans-Black" are ideal
instead of retaining "Trans-Black" for the earlier color and creating
a longer name for the new color.
Finally, aligning the names of the two colors with the official LEGO color names
helps us future-proof the BrickLink catalog. By aligning these color names now,
we make sure that any other colors the LEGO Group may introduce within this range
in the future would not cause any further issues.
Thank you for your patience as we make this transition.
The BrickLink Catalog Administrative Team
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USA, Ohio
