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A traction engine, nice one! You've got my vote.

stop forum spam worked back in the day. Not sure how i works with your setup or if it is still effective.

A bit more on the big rollercoaster in the form of a video It looks great!

Hi jonwil Reddit is your friend in this case ;)

Really? That's a mediocre tablescrap model that doesn't fulfil the brief. Lets celebrate moments in space by building something that has nothing to do with moments in space - top logic lego ideas. I can only assume that it was chosen to fit in with the often hinted at line of theme park rides, although we'll never know as the whole decision process is shady at best.

Ah, I see. They could have gone full lepin and had a "Tosla" sports car with "didn't panic" written on the screen :D I've not really followed these competitions over the years (this is the first one I've taken any notice of), but the level of transparency with regards to the selection seems terrible.

Thanks for keeping this topic updated, Digger of Bricks There's some really good classic space themed builds, its tricky working out which one to vote for. I'm surprised there wasn't a tesla!

Not a big fan of steam, so my favourites are: The class 08 , The BR class 55 (deltic) BR class 43 (intercity 125) I was lucky enough to drive the BR class 08 in the picture (Haversham) at my local heritage railway - I reckon you could see my smile from space :D @Steamdemon They also let me on the footplate of a class 17 - it's got a little burner on board so that the driver can make tea as they go along.

Yes they do: They don't need to go through the cost & process of designing a theme, so only need to employ people to create the actual bricks and the lego sets. That’s a huge saving of both time and money. In addition they lower the risk by committing to established IP's that they know will be in great demand as they'll be advertised heavily (Usually in the form of a film). I maintain that the reason we're seeing more licensed themes is that Lego have modified their business model to give financial decisions significantly more weight than they have in the past, as the decision makers in the company are from an accounting rather than creative or educational background.

Licensed sets require less creative personnel to bring to market, so they make more money. Modem Lego set design is more influenced by accounting staff chasing bonuses than creatives and educators trying to bring the best experience to kids - obviously there's always been a compromise between the two but in the past few years it's noticeably tilted towards the money.

Wow that truck is low effort! Good point about the wheels. If Lego want to make something worthwhile for their anniversary then they need to spend a bit of time focusing on the details and possibly making a new mold that at least looks a bit vintage. Slapping together some current bricks is a lazy cash in.

The house is a nice recreation of 326 but the windmill is just in the style of the era however both are hugely expensive - presumably the packaging will be main selling point, with hand laid bricks in cardboard and the cellophane wrapping of the era. More importantly it does mean that there are anniversary sets that have not yet been see so there is hope for some further interesting ones.

I'm not saying they're bad designers, in fact they're excellent - they're fulfilling their brief perfectly by bringing to market the required product at the desired price point. What I'm getting at is Lego have changed from trying to be the best at what they do to making the most money as possible. As part of this they are "buying in" designs from IP's and bypassing the R&D and subsequent brief creation elements associated with creating a theme from scratch. Without this the licensed sets are just the best model you can make to fit in with the desired price point - therefore the brief is determined by money people and not creative people. When given enough headroom in the price they come up with some great sets but more often than not, it's all about the figs with a token build - eg microfighters, battlepacks & sets like 75169, 75200, 75205 from this year.

Unlike the in house themes, there's no real design going on in these licensed themes. The characters, scenes and vehicles are all designed by some mega corporation with Lego just following the brief of "make this in the most cost effective way with the least number of lego bricks". This is typical of the modern accountant lead design where the whole point is to harvest money above anything else - it's the reason we've got identikit films, homes for battery humans and Ed Sheeran! The pursuit of money above everything else goes against the nordic concept of lagom, showing that Lego really have ditched their old vales of quality and education.

I give it 10 years before Lego is absorbed by the corporate creativity void that is Disney, in their mission to homogenise all popular creative works in a massive, global fun sponge! The demise of originality in Lego looks to have started when they hired a lot of AFOLs (at a time when Batman had been cut and before the collectible minifigs) when we were all excited about seeing something from popular culture in minifig form. I feel that the mentality of the time carried over to TLG with these new recruits, bringing with them a focus on turning film characters in to minifigs rather than the set design itself (aside from a handful of bricks as scenery). You only need to look on ebay to see all of the sets for sale without the figs; people even steel the figs from boxes in shops! Lego used to be all about the set as a whole and while there are some notable exceptions (e.g. trains, modular buildings etc.) they've turned in to a company that produces film merchandise. Sadly I don't think there would be a place for a young Jens Nygaard Knudsen in today's Lego company, and that's sad.

Ha! Great point, mate --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its sad that we've got to rely on a follow up to that awful film for anything new in classic space. I really hope i'm wrong, but lego seem to be more interested in suckling from the corporate teat of Disney that honouring their own rich history - hopefully they'll continue to release their own sets when Disney eventually buy them out.

Pretty much the impression that I got too. I actually had on my classic space logo t-shirt and pointed at it to see if it rang any bells with stuff she'd seen "out the back", but nothing. I'm just pleased she didn't call security about the confused old bloke pointing at his chest. To be fair her parents probably weren't born in 1978 so I'm not surprised she didn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of old sets :D Nice lady and good sales assistant, though. Helped me out with some sets for my nieces.

A good description of the 1978 / 1979 release date difference is here. (also an interesting article about the great Jens Nygaard Knudsen) Basically they rushed out the '79 sets to the usa in '78 rather than wait for the Nuremberg toy fair announcement. I get the impression another space based toy was in the process of stealing the limelight(!) Hopefully there is something in the works for the classic space anniversary, (other than the crummy microscale 928) but I've not seen anything mentioned anywhere. I even asked on a trip to the lego store but was given a confused look and pointed in the direction of batman

40th anniversary of classic space and we get some micorcrud - Lego need to remember where they're from rather than chase the Disney dollar.

That really made me chuckle especially as 'nothing else matters' was playing on the radio at the time! I always thought James Hetfield looked like a goat but Lars' resembelance to the bulldog is uncanny!! The only thing I'll suggest is giving James the goat his ESP guitar. Rock ON! Gary

I feel that it is misleading to compare u.s. prices with u.k. prices - in the u.k. we have 17.5% tax added to the retail prices for our goods whilst the u.s. tend to exclude the tax in the quoted price as it varies from state to state. I assume that this is also the case for the european monetary member countries but please correct me, fellow U.S. / Euro AFOLs if I'm wrong Cheers Gary

Hello, Calvin. Your stadium looks to be progressing very well. I like the way you've used the construction vehicles within the construction and I'm especially impressed with the Apple 'finder' logo in your pictures!! (it took me ages to work out where I'd seen that face before!!) Is this the same stadium that you were discussing in a previous thread regarding the construction of the corner terraces? I can see from the pictures that you've come to a solution but I'd be interested to hear how this works with minifigs... i/e how you've got them to stand on the bricks but still look at the game. Having looked at the legoland times, I'm sorry to hear it's costing £0.5bn..... perhaps you should try bricklink Cheers! Gary

Hi, Copmike - Thanks for taking the time to listen to our moans!! I've had a few problems with the quality of the door frames. I bought the 7744 police station and had a lot of trouble getting the frames to 'seat' properly on to other bricks - this has become more apparent when building MOC's where the doorframes are used structurally. Upon investigation, I found the bottom of the frame to be defective and badly moulded. In the past few weeks I've bought several of the 6117 doors and windows and the problem seems to have been rectified (presumably by 'shaking up' the factories producing the parts) but It'll be interesting to hear if this quality issue is still present in other copies of the police station. More inportantly, I'm also quite disappointed by the 'bullet holes' that appear in the clear panels that fit in to the above-mentioned frames. I appreciate that it is produced by the moulding tools but it is very unsightly. Presumably Lego have looked in to injecting the plastic from the bottom / top and found that it interferes with the small pegs that fit in to the frames but I'm sure that a better solution could be found. I feel it ruins the appearance of shop windows but is covered up when frames with the 2 horizontal bars are used. I'd be very interested to hear Legos' comments on this. Thanks! Gary

I like these little sets and think they're ideally suited for their intended task... to sit on your desk as a souvenier rather than being a building challenge. They seem to be aimed at adults rather than kids as they isn't much play value with them. It would be good to see the theme extended to other cities but it's a great start making the buildings from the 'birthplace of the skyscraper'....... Las Vegas is just crying out to be modeled in this way!

This is a great idea for a set and I think it's well done and scaled correctly (those things are huge!) - but it looks like it'll take your eye out if you got too close There is a certain irony in having 'batteries not included' on the box / instructions!!!