[REVIEW] 42070 - 6x6 All Terrain Tow Truck

[Erik Leppen]

Inreresting how in the conclusion of your review you mention that all functions work, but as you found out and can clearly see in your "driving" video, you need a living room the size of Australia to make a full turn. In the video I'm not seeing you drive the truck - I only see you trying to turn it. Seriously, the crop-circle-sized turning radius is laughable, and kind of reduces "driving" to "manoeuvering tight spaces" all the time. Unless you're outside of course, but we have seen that if you're outside, you can only control it if you're sitting on it.

So yeah. Anyhow, your review is of the high standard we are used from you, so kudos to that! The pictures seem to get better with every run, they are a joy to watch. Even watching pictures of bags of parts is a delight. But many thanks for the good write-up as well, your outcome seems to support the consensus - it's not a bad set by itself, it's just priced as if it were made of diamonds.

(Although your view on medium azure and medium blue are just your taste, which I don't share. I like both of those colors a lot, and I expect to like dark azure as well... but part availability stays a problem and I hope with you that 2018 will bring more of it, as well as bright green and dark purple.

Edited July 17, 2017 by Erik Leppen

[suffocation]

1 hour ago, Jim said:

[...]

Claas has 1977 pieces and has an MSRP of € 149. Four big tires, no PF.

[...]

 

Great review as always. Have to say the set is a massive let-down in terms of design, parts and building techniques, except for the awesome outriggers.

(The Claas does have an M motor and a battery box.)

[Siegfried Meyer]

Great review Jim, always excited about the written report but on a side note,   I recall my Claas having pf  "medium motor and battery box" 

and @suffocation mentioned that alrealready

Edited July 17, 2017 by Siegfried Meyer

[Jim]

Just now, suffocation said:

Great review as always. Have to say the set is a massive let-down in terms of design, parts and building techniques, except for the awesome outriggers.

(The Claas does have an M motor and a battery box.)

You are right of course. I will correct that.

[agrof]

I am sad to say, the best part of this set, is Jim's review. Excellent evening reading, thanks for that!  

1 hour ago, Jim said:

I had a friend over who is interested in LEGO Technic as well. Obviously, he didn't want to be in spectactor mode during the entire build, so we alternated building every now and then. Since I misplaced the L Motor, you can see what happened in the picture below. The dark azure liftarms were placed over the wire, which got us into trouble half an hour later or so.

There is a tiny typo: L motor instead of XL.

[Rishab N]

Nice review as always Jim. The pictures are as crisp as ever and IMO it seems like the get better with every review if that's even possible.

On the other hand the pictures do a great job of showing so much of the color vomit in this set. I thought it would end with yellow axles and such, but TLG has added even more than usual. Orange 1x2 liftarms? All those yellow connectors and liftarms? And then the different coloring on either sides of the chassis.

Gearbox is interesting looking, Claas tires are nice. always good to have something large scale, and the color is nice, but that in no way redeems anything for this set. IMO its one of the most disappointing sets in the last few years.

[Vectormatic]

29 minutes ago, Jim said:

 

This set is doing worse in the polls than every other set I have reviewed. It's even doing worse than the drag racer 

 

Another "lets use a new weird shade of blue" monstrosity 

I agree with the general consensus though, this set is overpriced, and is missing a lot of finishing touches, to the point where a 6 year old could probably improve the looks of it (bed floor, door gap)

Quite a shame though, considering the general type of vehicle has potential, and i think even as unfinished as it looks, this truck has a certain bad-assity to it.

 

Excellent review though Jim! great pictures and story telling!

[Maaboo the Witch]

Love this review, Jim! Great job as always with some wonderful pictures. This thing is overpriced indeed, but with a discount of some sort I think it'd be a fine purchase.

That poor bear, though... 

[Globemaster8]

Another great review Jim, the pictures were (as usual) crisp and perfect. Whilst the review was great, my personal opinion is that the set isn't. It's overly priced and lacks the quality of previous flagship and 2h sets. Again that's just my opinion. 

Edited July 17, 2017 by Globemaster8

[kbalage]

40 minutes ago, Jim said:

This set is doing worse in the polls than every other set I have reviewed. It's even doing worse than the drag racer 

 

I think it shares quite a few mistakes with the drag racer - cool looking for the first sight, but has poorly executed features and the motorized functions have a lot to complain about. Unforunately it seems to be a bigger challenge to fix the issues of this set, the drag racer was not that hard to pimp up :) Anyway, excellent review as always and beautiful pictures - love that even and soft lighting :) 

Edited July 17, 2017 by kbalage

[syclone]

Jim, excellent review of not so good set . I don't wonder why they used blue (dabudee dabudei...) seats , I wonder why they use these panels as seats, imho 3x5 liftarms look prettier .

[snefroe]

hmmm... I love the big lego technic sets, but this... hmmm... i dunno... it doesn't really look awesome or appealing to me. then there are the powerfunctions... hmmm... is there anything new? something we havent seen before? nope, doesn't look like it. I do like the small details though, like the bear at the front

think i'll skip this one...

[1gor]

Jim what to say than great review as we used to get from you, photos are great despite they are from level above  and small typing errors (I made them every 5th post, and if it isnt me it is my smartphone outsmarthing me) really doesn't matter. Important is to stick to your principles and to make professional job , but set is not my favorite  despite liking tractor tires...

[HallBricks]

Great review with fantastic pictures as always! Those pictures make any model look beautiful 

I'm not really fond of this set. I can't justify the high price, and I prefer more complex sets with more parts, like the Arocs or BWE. I also don't like the fact that it is remote controlled, but you still have to manually control the switches on the truck itself which I think weakens the point of making it RC. 

I'm looking forward to read the other reviews as well!

 

Edited July 18, 2017 by HallBricks

[Aventador2004]

1 hour ago, agrof said:

There is a tiny typo: L motor instead of XL.

1 hour ago, suffocation said:

(The Claas does have an M motor and a battery box.)

I guess I am none of the community, I mentioned those earlier. At least they are fixed.

[Sariel]

1 hour ago, Erik Leppen said:

your view on medium azure and medium blue are just your taste, which I don't share.

Sorry, medium blue looks like old pants, medium azure looks like neon pants ;) I fully agree with Jim that dark azure looks great. Too bad there is actually not that much variety in dark azure pieces that come with 42070. Also, as a person trying to build something with medium blue, I was severely disappointed that 42070 offers zero help in that regard.

[schraubedrin]

Great review, as always. I really like your reviews because they show the fun of building.

I'll definitely try to rebuild it with my parts, the gearbox really got me interested.

[Blakbird]

Great review Jim.  I suspect my opinion will be similar to yours when I end up getting this set, assuming they ever actually decide to release anything in North America again.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the most glaring problem with this "tow truck".  There is no tow bar.  Therefore, there is no way to actually tow anything.  This is just an off-road crane.

[aminnich]

I am just going to post my 2 cents on this set... 

This year and last, the flagships weren't that "holy crap, that model is amazing, I NEED one those now." Last year the BWE seemed unfinished and IMO they could have done a lot better of a job. After thinking about it, I will probably buy one used just for he parts. 

Now for this year's flagship, no way I'm buying this one. Like the BWE, it looks incomplete. Espically the back. For the astronomical price you are paying, the crane should have been fully remote controllable and the side panels do not do a justice for me. 

Also, it looks like a rainbow threw up on it. Forget it if I am wrong, but for example 42009's (easily my favorite flagship) insides were mostly light/dark blue-ish grey and then the yellow (yes, I know over used on technic models) was used for the body work and I thought it looked amazing. With 42070, it looks like TLG had a lot of leftover pieces and just threw them inside the model. The 6th interior picture is a good example of color vomit; blues, greys, red, yellow, black, white, orange, even brown. When I build MOCs, I do not use those colorful colors for much of anything. Also, what is the point of just recoloring a part? Why would we want a red differential?? 

The only good part of this model are the tires. I do not have a claas, but those tires looks amazing for a lot of different model ideas I have. But then again, yellow rims? Really?? 

This model was very disappointing, which is not a bad thing... way too expensive for my budget. 

Okay, ranting over. I am curious if any of you agree with me. 

[syclone]

11 minutes ago, aminnich said:

I am just going to post my 2 cents on this set... 

...

Okay, ranting over. I am curious if any of you agree with me. 

You're my hero, now I don't feel lonely  I kinda miss yellow sets, white is the really overused color. 

[Jelo]

I agree with a lot of the sentiment about this set, could (should) have been better especially for the price. I think all the technic sets this year are overpriced though so far...

Hopefully 42067 exists and is actually something good or 2017 has been a big fail for technic in their 40th year :(

As for colours, in my opinion it is rather difficult to build a moc without colour vomit in only black, red, yellow and in the last few years now white, so lego should maybe try to minimise the range a bit

[Leonardo da Bricki]

Beautiful photos and informative review!  Thanks Jim!

Sadly, as nice as you make this set appear, I will not be buying it. Just the 13x3 curved black panels and #3 connectors...

[Minique85]

Thanks Jim for the excellent review once again, I was really looking forward to it and it really helps making a set evaluation together with Sariel's video review (also excellent by the way).

Overall, I still have the same sentiment, the set is not too bad, some nice functions, 6 tractor tires, curve panels in black, cool outriggers. But it really suffers from the color pallet and hefty price tag, EUR 199 would fit better indeed. 

I have all flagship since 42009, and this is really a let down after last year's offering, which was exceptional. Maybe this will be the first year I will not buy any 2H sets, unless massive discounts are in the market.

 

[nerdsforprez]

Great review... thanks for all the hard work.  And it really is a lot of work doing all this.....

I can't really add anything that has not already been said.  Expensive, colors looks like a rainbow having a seizure, and poor functions.  One thing I can add, which I am surprised no one has said yet, is silverish, metallic  string??? YES! sign me up.  For all those crane fanatics, like me, this much better resembles the cables used on real cranes.  Sadly, though, even the silver string is not worth the 279$ this set costs.  But, I would definitely welcome the string in future sets.....

[kaelthas]

Great review. Now I know how the inside of the truck looks like. So much detail on the build. Love it.