Still Raindrop

I think I see a new chopsticks piece in the City of Lanterns! I hope that makes its way into less expensive sets at some point soon!

I never said that boycotts were exclusive to white people....

Yeah, I realize that mine is definitely a minority opinion. I just prefer to have my city be a multicultural one with many races and ethnicities, rather than one with one/none. Others have Different preferences, and that’s fine. It’s definitely a personal thing, and I don’t think we’re in any danger of it happening. I probably didn’t explain myself well—it was a late-night post, and I’m not known for coherence then.

Nope, and I didn’t say that. But the people who say that bringing race into something automatically makes you racist are. I probably stated my point poorly. I think many fans would be disappointed or upset, but the more fragile ones would be those calling for boycotts or saying that Lego has lost their business by being “too pc.”

This is a fascinating topic, and it's one that I've actually been thinking about quite a bit lately. I recently changed all the minifigures in my growing town to be various flesh shades. I first attempted to make more explicit Black inclusion by using the more highly textured hair pieces, but something about it just didn't look quite right. When I switched it out with a more accurate skin tone, the minifigure looked much better. For me, I do this because I want my Lego town to be sort of an ideal place, and that includes harmonious relations between people of all races. Honestly, I would kind of like it if Lego were to change its non-licensed minifigures to being flesh-tones. That being said, it would receive massive backlash from some of the more fragile white folks, I think. That being said, I do feel like Lego needs to add at least one more skin tone for East Asian people. They've used both medium nougat (Cho Chang, Dr. Wu, Baze Malbus) and light nougat (Rose Tico, Chirrut Îmwe, Mulan), but I don't think that either is quite right. Actually, come to think of it, I'd also like to see more consistency when it comes to skin tones. Lego is finally using medium nougat for Jango Fett, but it's even used different skin tones for different versions of the same actor. Look at Jeff Goldblum. For his appearance in Thor: Ragnarok, he has light nougat skin. For Jurassic Park, he has medium nougat. It does make things a little tricky.

I guess I could see it going either way. They are great candidates for brick-built figures; however, that would also mean extra parts that could raise the price. What's more, I assume they'd use ball joints. Since those have only shown up in light and dark grey, it might make the color schemes a bit odd. I'd be excited if they did include them, though! I seem to remember the original submission having a Barkley at one point. Yeah, Big Bird really is the heart and soul of Sesame Street. And, as you said, Oscar has to be there. I like your idea about Oscar, as well. If there were a way to get him to go up and down inside the classic can, that would be better than my idea. My kids have an old hand-me-down Sesame Street playset that used to belong to my wife; pushing a button would raise the lid of the trash can up, and Oscar himself would pop out (well, before the sticker fell off). Something automated like that would be great, since popping up unexpectedly is sort of his trademark way of appearing. I had thought of that, as well. Honestly, it's not a bad idea in some respects. As you mentioned, the scale would be good. Furthermore, I think that most of the key monsters would look good this way. However, the lack of arms would be a problem, I think. Maybe using the Lego baby piece would be a better solution. The arms aren't able to move or grasp anything, but at least they're present. Plus, you'd get head articulation, which is a plus. However, I kind of doubt they'd go that way. Scale is already way off when it comes to smaller folks, with nothing in between the baby and the standard short-legged children (who are well over half the height of an adult). It seems like they'd probably want to take advantage of the improved detail you could get from an actual minifigure. Though I do think most of them would have short legs.

Though I imagine it will be aimed mainly at nostalgic adults, I'd also bet that it might come with one or two newer characters--if only to get the gender ratios a little better. As far as Muppets go, I can't see them making a set without Big Bird Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, Elmo, Grover, Oscar, and possibly the Count (though they could get away with leaving him out, since he lives in a castle and not at 123 Sesame Street). I imagine they'd include Prairie Dawn for nostalgic adults and maybe Abby for some kid appeal. I doubt that they'll make more 70s/80s-specific characters like Biff and Sully, Mumford, Rodeo Rosie, Roosevelt Franklin, Hoots the Owl, etc., but I also doubt that they'd include too many new characters like Gonger or Murray. Zoe and Rosita are possibilities, while Snuffy and Barkley are unlikely due to the number of pieces each one would require. Most of these characters, I think, could be done pretty well with minifigure parts. Big Bird would be tricky; a solution like the one in the submission could certainly work, but I'm not sure that Sesame Workshop would be cool with that. Hopefully that would mean a new mold instead of simply excluding him, as I still see Big Bird as sort of the heart and soul of Sesame Street. As for Oscar, I was thinking he could be a minifigure head with a dish on top, placed on a couple of these pieces: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=92947#T=C I do hope it won't be all Muppets, though. Ideally, I'd like to get at Gordon, Susan, Luis, Maria, and Bob. I'm not sure how likely that is, though, since there will presumably already be lots of minifigures. Fortunately, it's much easier to replicate these characters with existing parts than it would be to make new Muppet characters without custom printing.

I'm very excited for this one. I do hope they'll reduce the size and complexity a bit to make it more affordable ($100 would be nice, though that's probably unrealistic). My wife and I both grew up watching Sesame Street, and we now watch it with our three kids. It's a lot of fun, and it's a perfect mixture (for me) of nostalgia and a cool building. I do wonder what minifigures they'll include. I imagine they'd get rid of Biff and Sully, but I'm not sure if they'd replace them with anyone (Zoe or Abby would be good candidates; though they're newer characters, having a few extra girls would be nice. Luis and Maria would also be good).

I think it depends on how you define minifig scale. In terms of getting the right number of minifigs to fit into a vehicle, this one fits the bill. But because minifigs have such odd proportions, any vehicle that can fit the right number will look really oversized. Look at this one, for example. I’ve never seen a surfer van that’s twice as tall as a person! Even the City cars are often oversized this way (even the smallest City sedan is taller than a miningure). ks6349, the different scales of City vehicles mean that this may fit in. Just keep in mind that it will be wider than your garbage truck.

As far as vehicles go, I think it's a mixed bag. Larger vehicles like garbage trucks, fire trucks, semis, etc., are all undoubtedly better in the modern era. But I prefer passenger cars from Town (before the late 1990s). While the shaping isn't as elegant, I find that the scale is better. Even 4-wide City cars are huge, with a sedan being notably taller than a minifigure (and, while this is true of Town sedans, as well, it's an easier fix. The bodies are small, with comically oversized windshields. For more accurate size, those windshields can be replaced with 1x2x2 slopes. City vehicles have larger bodies and tend to be better-scaled to themselves, so scaling them more accurately to minifigures is difficult). As far as buildings go, I agree with you. In addition to the City buildings, Creator and Friends have also offered amazing buildings on the same City scale. This scale isn't too far off from the classic Town scale, which is nice (the doors are only one brick taller, which doesn't look that noticeable). It's this scale that I'm actually using for the town I'm building, and it works great.

I’d take this further. My unpopular opinion: I prefer City/Town/Creator 3-in-1 scale to modular scale for these reasons: •It’s easier to make a city, or at least a few downtown blocks. When I bought modulars and made modular MOCs, I never got more than a street. Now that I’ve scaled down, I’m in the process of making a bigger town that looks more alive. •The City/Town/Creator 3-in-1 scale is obviously smaller than life. But when you look at the modulars, you’ll see that they are also undersized—just less so. Most of them lack plenty of details. •There are fewer constraints outside of modular-style buildings. I made a tiki bar modular, and one of my next projects is to change it to a smaller-scale building. Already I can think of lots of ways to make it even better. •Making modular MOCs takes a ton of plain bricks that won’t necessarily be seen often (see point 1). •While I appreciate the detailed interiors, the lack of an open back makes playing much more difficult. •The size, scale, and detail of modulars means anything that’s not packed with detail looks sorely out of place. Relatively plain “filler” or background buildings are easier to pull off if you’re not using the modular standard. I’m sure there are other reasons I’m forgetting, too.

The light brick on my Winter Village Toy Shop is still lighting up, and I activated the battery 10 years ago when it first came out.

I hope that Johnny Thunder has back printing, though his backpack seems to indicate that he may not.

Looks like a series with lots of useful minifigures and components! I have a soft spot for Johnny Thunder, so he's on the top of my list. However, seeing him redone this way makes me really wish that we could get an updated version of Dr. Kilroy. I've made an updated Pippin Reed already, but Kilroy has such distinctive features. There are newer head prints that have some of the components that made Kilroy unique, but none that have all of them. Similarly, I can't find a torso that matches his which also has back printing. The closest is the stilt walker from the latest people pack.

I'm kind of hoping it will be this. Just the other day I was thinking about how I miss short-lived, experimental in-house themes. I enjoy bigger and more long-lived ones, as well, but there's something about the freedom of not being tied down to a bigger theme that I really enjoy.

Beautiful! I was nine when this set came out, and it was one of my biggest Lego sets, as well. I've had a soft spot for Adventurers ever since, and Johnny and friends often seem to find their way into my MOCs (and I've got a ton of minifigures I've created lying around, waiting for the time when I can make my planned Adventurers photo-comics a reality). As was mentioned before, I love the studs. They give it an undeniable Lego feel, and that's something that I always like to see in MOCs. The technique is cool, the sphinx looks great, and the scene is fun and filled with action. However, my absolute favorite thing about this was your approach: I've seen a few MOCs like this (and my Adventurers MOC that I posted here a while back, which was based on 7417, was kind of like that), and it always strikes me as a really cool way of going about things. Capturing the spirit of a set based on how you experienced it when you played is, to me, the epitome of what makes Lego great. And this is a fantastic example of that!

You have an incredible way of capturing the essence of real-life buildings in Lego. I've driven past so many buildings with the same "feel" as these when I've been in Denver. Truly impressive.

Tiles are also used in literally every Modular Building to represent pavement (both the sidewalks and, in this set and the Fire Brigade, as driveways for vehicles). The driveway in the Fire Department is tiled, and that doesn't represent either patterned floor tiles or patterned carpet. It represents pavement. I haven't been to every garage in my own city, but all the ones I have visited have had paved concrete floors. To me, the use of brick yellow in this set makes the floor look like bare dirt or sand. I do think it would be easy for me to overlook if they had taken your suggestion and made it a medium stone grey or dark stone grey. Because of its color, the un-tiled portion of the ground floor of the Fire Brigade looks just fine to me--it calls to mind a rough concrete floor. Edit: I hope I don't sound unkind. I understand your point of view, and I don't particularly think a tiled floor would have worked all that well, since it would have given it a neat, more sidewalk-like look (and larger tiles wouldn't really be an option here). I just don't think it's quite fair for you to assert that everyone who wanted or expected tiles is unreasonable or asking for something unprecedented, since the only other Modular Building to have room for a vehicle inside the building used tiles (well, a tile) to create this effect.

While I'm sure that expectations were probably part of the problem, I think this is one of the few cases where simply renaming the set wouldn't have done a whole lot. You mentioned the excellent Imperial AT-ST from 2016. Looking at these two together brings up the stark contrasts. They have the same number of minifigures (less one droid), and the Imperial AT-ST has nearly 80 more parts and is decidedly bigger than the First Order AT-ST--and yet (in the United States, at least) they were asking the same price! Charging the same amount for fewer parts and an incomplete-looking model is disappointing no matter how you look at it. A removable head could have been fun--that would recreate the moment even better, since the head gets ripped off in the movie, revealing BB-8 at the controls. Something like that could have been worth $40, or maybe even justify a $45 price tag. But with such a good model so recently, it's hard to fall back on the standard justifications for price increases, like inflation or more detailed minifigures. Furthermore, as far as "rehashing" goes, they removed the most unique part of the First Order AT-ST design (the head) and kept the part that was most similar to previous incarnations (the legs). I agree with you that many disappointments people have are probably caused by expectations that are unrealistically high. But I just don't see it in this case.

Same. I was actually thinking about how I like the Winter Village Fire Station better than the modular Fire Brigade. I think that's probably because it's more difficult to get interesting building shapes and varying depths when you're working with the restrictions of modular buildings. Detective's Office, Assembly Square, Downtown Diner, and Parisian Restaurant do this best, in my opinion. He really did try to get a cool shape with the CG, but I don't think it quite works with the subject matter. Honestly, I prefer the garage/gas station from 10184 Town Plan a decade ago. But that also was done without having to be concerned about incorporating modular building restrictions (like standard connection points, the need for a multi-story building, etc.).

Palace Cinema had three, as well.

It's fine. Really, though, I think it's a good example of what I discovered when I stopped making modular MOCs and started working in something closer to a classic Town scale (though my reasons were time, cost, and playability—since I have kids). I think that the 32-stud standard can be really helpful, but it can also be somewhat restrictive. This is true both in interior design and exterior. I compare the exterior of the Winter Village Fire Station to the modular Fire Brigade, for example, and I like the look of the WV set much better. I love the design of the garage part of the set, but I think that it would have benefitted from more floor space. What's more, the floors on top kind of overwhelm the look of the building, I think. I prefer the garage in the Town Plan set from 2008. It stands on its own, so the retro garage look doesn't have to contend with two bigger floors. Furthermore, it appears that the modular garage doesn't have much more interior space than the one in the Town Plan. I also love the design of the top two floors—but again, I think they overwhelm the garage. And when you're working in a bigger scale like the modular one, I feel that omissions stick out more—like the apartment with its lack of front door. Omissions like these in smaller-scale buildings make sense, especially if they're open-backed. But it's harder for me personally to overlook in bigger ones.

Not just a police station--a police "air base" with a two-dimensional design and less complexity than the police station from the height of the Town Jr. era in the late 1990s! I really love the diversity that Friends brings. In addition to the amazing sets you mentioned, I'm also excited for Mia's house! It's not often that we get a rustic-looking home that's more than just a one-room cabin. I love all the design choices; it really looks unique.

Yeah, there have been kind of fanciful sets here and there, maybe some things that stretched believability for the sake of fun—but never an entire subtheme based on no real-world equivalent. I think Sky Police could have been a cool action theme, but the City cops-and-robbers aesthetic doesn’t fit it. It’s like if Space Police 3 had modern City minifigure designs and tried to fit into the City theme; it wouldn’t have had nearly the same character.

These are fantastic!