Mr Hobbles

I'm completely sold on the Octan tanker and seaplane. These are great and MUST buys! The fire 4x4 and fire helicopter look good also, not totally sold on the 6 wide 4x4 or the front of the helicopter but it could work. Not so sold on the airport though...it's not that much better than the old one... EDIT: Now that I have had a longer look (That Octan tanker is gorgeous), that fire helicopter is hideous. Purely due to the front.

I hope so too. The modular buildings brought me out of my dark ages, and they're also the reason I'm still here. Bar the purchase of every single modular building and a few city sets, I would probably have forgotten about Lego again.

I NEED this set. I'm more excited about this than I am the modular Fire Station!

Now that I've seen the second floor, I'm more impressed, except for two (Easilly rectifiable) issues: 1. The refrigerator. Fixed by replacing it with this: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/2131c01 2. The ping-pong table - replace the two studded sides with tiles. Don't know why this isn't done anyway?

Hmm, I've been looking forward to this getting announced for a long time, and I feel slightly disappointed. It's not that it's not a great set - it is, it's just not as great when you compare it to previous Modular Buildings. The building itself looks too blocky and plain and doesn't fit in well with the general aesthetic introduced previously. The tree on the front look too skinny and weak, and the spacing between bricks on the top floor looks weird and out of proportion. In fact, the building generally looks out of proportion compared to the previous buildings. I'm also not too wild about the inclusion of the car in this set - I wish they had released it seperately. While awesome in it's own right, it's inclusion has firmly cemented the time period this building exists in. One of the charms of the previous building is that they could be in any era. There's a lot to like in this set, such as the belltower, some of the interior details, and the roller doors. However I think this is the worst of the modular building line so far. I'll still be buying it though! If just to support the modular building line in the future, plus it probably is an awesome build.

This is stunning. I want this NOW. I can see myself taking this apart and rebuilding it every Christmas as a family thing.

I want them both. Like I want all the previous LEGO Architecture sets. It's just a shame you can't get them anywhere normal.

I'm not against new building techniquest at all. Using Ski Shoes on the Cafe Corner for the decoration was genius, as was using a turntable for the 45 degrees corner. The use of SNOT in many different sets is welcome too. The problem I have is that the building techniques in this set seem to be slightly pointless, and also against the point of LEGO. I buy LEGO because I want to build things. I don't want a piece of cloth making up the entire top part of the set. Also, why the brick built horses? There are many LEGO horses already in production, of many different styles and colours. I don't even feel like the horses on this were particularly well done, otherwise I might not have minded. You also bring up the cost prohibitions of building sets. However this is a carousel. It is meant to go round and round. It is also the main theme of the set. Having one of it's most important parts of it (The mechanism) being so blatantly obvious is inexcusable to me. I would have happilly paid another £5-10 to have the motor and battery box hidden (If the sets other faults didn't put me off..). More generally, it seems as though this set missed a few iterations of the design process. This feels to me like it was either the prototype or one of the earliest design revisions. It could have used a few more passes. As it stands I just feel that the set is quite ugly.

"Do not want." Sarcasm aside, I won't be buying this. It has too many "weird" methods of doing things for my liking. Cloth roof? Brick built horses? And let's not forget the hugely obvious motor - an unfortunate by-product of the new Power Functions line. Not impressed at all. Roll on the new modular building!

Well, there is some good news to come out of this at least. Of course nobody likes a price-hike, but sometimes it's inevitable. Today's economic climate is certainly making it more difficult for companies to do business. Now admitedly, the original price hike was unbelievably stupid (I can't fathom why LEGO decided to increase them by that much in the first place), but this news brings it back down to almost normal. It's still more expensive than it was, but at least it's not so bad. A model I had been planning to order within the next couple of weeks (My first LEGO factory one) was £210 three days ago, now it is £145. That is MUCH better. It's a modular house with three stories and 1115 pieces, so for the piece count, it's still relatively expensive, but that's the price you pay for the convenience of getting everything in one place rather than on BrickLink.

I have press screening tickets to go see this tomorrow night. Looking forward to it! Will report back with opinions and such like.

I voted no, they don't fit well together. They are in a completely different league to the City sets. I'm also more likely to buy modular (As I LOVE them). I currently own all three sets, and I'm about ready to order a MOC I built in LDD which I hope will go along well with them (Just waiting for the money to buy it now!). However, I will also buy City. Mainly for the vehicles, although some of the buildings are quite cool too (If not as detailed).

Ooohh, how did I miss this. Just downloaded the PDF and ordered a paper copy. Seems very business-heavy, but this could be quite interesting. My bedtime reading for the next few nights.

Number two here. I didn't vote for the first because the concept is exactly the same as Town Plan. And we already have one of those. I didn't vote for the third as we already have so many garages, gas stations, trucks and lorries. Really, do we need more? Nope, what we need is transport. We've had one bus in the last 10 years? Trains are few and far between. And it would be nice to see a few more options. Don't get me wrong, I don't see it being a monorail at all. There's no way they're digging out the old molds for this. Not to mention the mechanism would need to be updated to modern standards, and knowing LEGO, they'd want to make it Power Functions compatible. Unless they used the tracks from the new Indi set that's coming out, I mean, why create a whole new mold just for one set... But I digress. I don't see a monorail. Best I can hope for is some buses, a taxi or two, and maybe even a bus stop/station to go with it. That would be ideal for me.

Not so sure about that! Put the 8866 train motor on the bottom (Replacing the 9V one), add an old 9V battery box (You'd have to get rid of the doors and the grille and have that replacing most of the bodywork) for power, and put the receiver in the cab somewhere. It might just work! It's not without it's flaws, but you'd have a functioning locomotive under power functions.

It's completely obvious it's a new modular building. I doubt it's a joke as it's not April 1st. 1. It's right next to them, and covered up. 2. There have been recent rumours of an urban fire department, with a bell tower, which explains the height of it (These rumours prompty disappeared from BrickTownTalk - takedown notice, anyone?) 3. In the email sent out last week about the new issue of BrickJournal due out in a couple of weeks they hinted at an exclusive piece of news.

Even that's a great idea, they've already done this with Emerald Night. The set has been known about for some time and they've now released a video.

So I was just lurking in Trains & Town as I usually do, and thought I would catch up with the Emerald Night post. Lo and behold, what do I find, but a really cool video describing how LEGO came up with the idea for the set! (Link) This got me thinking about how cool it would be if TLG followed the lead of all those other companies and opened up their business to the outside world; becoming more transparent by showing off videos and blogging some of their inner workings. How they come up with their sets, the ideas behind them, and showing off sneak previews in both video form and images in blogs. They've certainly started going down this route, but I'd love to see more! An official TLG blog would be awesome, maybe with a weekly or monthly video podcast showing their new sets and inside sneaks of the company.

Unfortunately I don't think I'm gonna be making it this time, primarilly due to a lack of funds. :( Maybe next year (fingers crossed). :)

Ahhh I see now, it's been downscaled a bit with that clicky thing that I missed...somehow...sorry about that. I didn't see the detail pics though, cheers for those!

Ignore what everyone else is moaning about for the time being...you couldn't provide a larger, higher resolution photo of that entire page could you? We haven't seen that truck and helicopter properly! (Except for the low res blurry photo on the front page...)

Put me down for a definite maybe. It all depends on whether I can afford it by the time it comes round, but I'm definitely going to try.

This is amazing. LEGO has knocked one out of the ballpark yet AGAIN. 2008 wasn't such a good year for City. Police didn't interest me and Coast Guard bored me. The only two sets I picked up were 7731 Mail Van and 7737 Coast Guard 4WD. Of course I picked up 10185 Green Grocer, but technically that's not City. 2009 was looking slightly better. I do plan on picking up all the farm sets (Especially 7635 4WD with Horse Trailer), and perhaps a couple of the construction sets (Even though I own a lot of the previous sets). The real gems for me so far were 8398 BBQ Stand and 8401 LEGO City Minifigure Collection. Now however, that's all changed: 7639 Camper Van. AMAZING. Ill be picking this up in a heartbeat. 8402 Sports Car. THANK YOU! FINALLY! 7641 City Corner. A BUS! A BUS STOP! I don't care much about the rest of the set, but A BUS AND A BUS STOP! WOW! The bus looks great! (The reason I don't care for the rest of the set is that I'm too used to Cafe Corner/Market Street/Green Grocer. Seeing a building that isn't built to the same standards is a bit a of a letdown for me. But I realise that those sets aren't classic City, so the more sets like this, the merrier!) 7642 Garage. Meh. Only thing I like about this is the blue pickup truck. 7638 Tow Truck. However I really quite like this. I just wish it wasn't orange. Thank you LEGO! Here's my money! PS: I've noticed a lot of talk in this thread about whether there will be another Cafe Corner type building this year, with many people saying no. Well, there was in an interview with Jamie Berard (Creator of Cafe Corner and Green Grocer) in BrickJournal where he unoquivically states that there WILL BE one more set in 2009. He said he always planned three buildings, the first being Cafe Corner and the second being Green Grocer. Market Street isn't part of his "original three" (Source http://www.brickjournal.com/wiki/behind-th...e-green-grocer). Judging by that interview it looks like the plan is to have one Cafe Corner styled building a year.

I'm not entirely sure, and I could be mistaken, but do I see a couple of pieces in Old Brown in there?!

Sounds ominous. These always intrigue me.