Lyichir

I quite like the Mei mech! Compared to the Monkey Mech it looks quite lean and sleek. I've been itching for Mei to get her own humanoid mech ever since she had the Monkey Mech high score back in season one, so it's great that we're finally getting one that seems to have been worth the wait. The other two sets don't excite me as much—they seem fine for entry-level sets but as a longtime collector of the theme, they're not as exciting. Though the mini-mech with its shrunken proportions and giant cloud does have a sort of fun "young Goku" feel to it.

Just saw the first pic of the Maple's Pumpkin Garden polybag (via CandidBricks on FB). Cute little set, and the first one of these to feature a cedar tree (which is simple but looks good). Uses the standard lime green watering can seen in other themes, which like the reuse of the standard shovel in some of the other sets is mildly disappointing—I hope eventually this theme features more recolors or new molds for some of its tools to make them resemble the ones in the games more closely.

Very fun! You don't see a lot of Life on Mars MOCs. The use of those newer neon orange windscreens with the mechanical arches of the original theme is an inspired part combination. I don't quite know how I feel about the combination of sand green and sand purple into one vehicle—most classic Life on Mars ships tended to stick to one main "color" (for instance, blue and sand blue, red and sand red, green and sand green). I suppose sand purple was used a lot on "neutral" bases and vehicles, so it's not unprecedented to combine it with another main color, but it's still a somewhat odd color combination to me. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the brackets you've used on the wings never appeared in sand purple, did they? That's fine for a digital MOC, and sand purple is definitely far from an easy color to work in, but I often find it slightly disappointing when a great digital model isn't buildable with real bricks.

Very nice! Really good balance of the essential Ice Planet colors (white, blue, neon orange, and black). And the skis underneath the wings are a great touch.

The motorization options people are coming up with are very nice! I wonder if Lego's challenge with motorizing the set had less to do with it being difficult in general and more to do with it not easily allowing for a "plug 'n play" solution similar to previous train sets like the Emerald Night. Previous official motorization options have tended to involve minimal rebuilding (mainly swapping out some easily removable "modules" for motors, battery boxes, IR sensors, etc.), whereas these solutions require more disassembly/reassembly to integrate motors without compromising the aesthetics. Whatever the case, I'm glad the ingenuity of the community is getting a chance to shine once again!

The good news is I don't think such pests would tend to do damage to the bricks themselves. But there's definitely a risk to the boxes and instructions, and if you were saving the sets for resale you'd probably want to thoroughly clean the bricks before you had any hope of selling them.

In what universe would Star Wars prevent a space theme but allow a City subtheme with "SPACE" logo and branding about as big as the City branding itself? Let's be serious here.

Oh, if the new sets use the new trans-black that'd be very exciting—and a realistic choice for spacecraft seeing as they typically need decent solar shielding for windscreens.

TBH, this version of City Space isn't THAT huge a leap from the previous iterations of it. As we get farther from the end of the shuttle program, and the possibility of a major milestone like a return to the moon or mars still distant, City's space sets have to get more speculative/aspirational to stay interesting and novel. Sure, the discovery of multicellular life elsewhere in the solar system may not be realistic, but it's a fun play scenario for kids to get them excited about astronauts and rovers and rockets and such (much like how crystals/treasure have been used in previous science-based City waves to give them a concrete sort of "goal" for the scientists that can be easily understood by little kids).

It looks like the aliens (at least the ones in this set) aren't minifigures, but rather a minifigure head on a hollow stud with the six-pointed crown from the Angry Birds theme attached underneath as tentacles/legs. Personally I like the aliens being non-humanoid.

Sigh... no, I'm not saying that (and in fact as a '90s kid myself HATE that kind of generational slander that tries to insist that today's kids are too dumb/have it too easy/etc.). I'm saying that literal laws have changed, often for good reason (consumer product safety protections are often written in blood). I think another real practical reason Lego no longer does 9V trains is that for younger kids, a safer system is required, and Lego does not want the market confusion that would ensue if they had to market two separate train systems (9V and battery powered), especially when trains are such a small part of their portfolio overall. If you're only selling one "adult-targeted" train every year or two, selling powered track exclusively for those trains is probably not a particularly sound business model.

As far as I'm aware it's not about cost so much as safety—Lego has moved away from most products that need to be wired to an AC outlet due to increasingly strict safety standards and the desire to go above and beyond those standards to avoid reputational risk. Battery-powered trains are generally safer for kids and don't require as many massive warning labels on product packaging that could worry parents.

To be honest I kind of doubt the plastic wheels were the main reason why Lego couldn't find an adequate solution for motorizing the Orient Express—as the results in this thread seem to show, the efficiency improvement of the metal axles is not that extreme (much smaller than the improvement from third-party bearings and such) and would be a much smaller factor than the overall increased weight of the train.

Generally sets that are produced in higher quantities (like the CMFs) tend to be better for introducing new molds than sets produced in lower quantities (big exclusive sets like this). Since it costs a lot to produce a new mold, putting it in a cheaper, more widely produced set gives it more bang for its buck.

Stud.io (and most Lego building programs, to be honest) slightly simplifies the shape of some parts to save on processing power (and to make parts easier to model and add in general). So rounded shapes are often a little more polygonal and subtle shapes are often simplified. In the case of Technic axle holes, that tends to mean rendering them as a basic cross shape even when the actual shape is slightly more complex and allows room for properly rounded bars.

Definitely looks good (though it occurs to me now how quickly I've grown accustomed to the new dress slope piece, that the old one already looks too tall to me).

Just picked it up today! Tim is a good friend and I was very excited that he was getting to write something like this that goes so in-depth into the development and designs of the early Space sets. I hope this book is successful and inspires Lego to produce more books like this, either about subsequent Lego space sets, other classic themes, or even more modern themes.

The issue with using stronger magnets (especially detachable ones like the classic ones) is that strong magnets pose significant safety hazards. Especially if ingested, magnets can cause severe injury, which is why recent Lego sets with magnets have had them sealed in sturdy plastic shells and have been weak enough that they don't risk cracking that sort of containment. There are laws in several countries regulating magnetic toys and many manufacturers (including Lego) tend to hold themselves to even stricter voluntary standards to ensure that their products don't become associated with injuries. Smaller entities can get away with using more powerful magnets for multiple reasons—less global businesses can skirt stricter laws in certain countries, a smaller user base means less risk of litigation from injuries, and less of a reputation for safety to uphold means they won't be held to the same standard in the court of public opinion. Personally I think the use of towballs or similar connections is fine for purposes like this—it's strong and reasonably easy to couple or uncouple. EDIT: My sister got in ahead of me and made a better explanation. :P

To be honest I don't mind a new, more distinct look for Pippin/Gail Storm since in the original sets she mostly just shared the same headgear as Dr. Kilroy/Dr. Charles Lightning. And molded hair instead of hair merely printed on the face is always a plus in my book.

Open, it's about 76 studs wide (including some of the bits that stick off the ends like the fish and ferns). Closed it's 16 studs narrower (60 studs wide).

The lanterns are light bley, not flat silver, but you're otherwise correct

In addition to looking subtly more like warm gold in the pictures, one factor that points to it maybe being Warm Gold is that it seems to use mostly 1x6 and 1x2 plates for the stripes on the side. If it were flame yellowish orange other options like 1x4 and 1x8 plates would exist in current production—but if it were warm gold, then it would only require the introduction of 1x6 plates in that color since 1x2 plates were introduced in that color in two of this year's Disney sets. That kind of economical use of existing and newly introduced parts makes more sense for a rarer color like Warm Gold. Warm gold might be slightly more expensive (though not dramatically so), but for a premium set like this it wouldn't be unheard of, with other sets like the Disney Castle also going big on gold parts for detailing.

I have no idea how well it sold overall. I definitely saw some substantial discounts in the U.S., most notably from Walmart, but those sales were fairly brief overall (unlike something like an end-of-life clearance sale) which made them feel more like an incentive to get Lego fans to buy from them. Which worked for me, since I bought all three of my copies during those sales! And since I did end up buying three copies, whether the set sold well or not overall, I feel pretty good about having done my part to support a set like this. :)

Hm, you're probably right. At first I thought it was Medium Azure (which can look a bit like that in some lighting), but comparing it to the other colors it does look more like Sand Blue. Sand Blue might be a more useful color for some parts like the big Technic quarter circle gears anyway, since it has a more mechanical sort of feel.

Not to discount your hesitation, but sometimes I feel like GWP thresholds have less to do with what sort of set is being offered and more to do with what demand is already going to be like. In this case, this GWP is being offered for Black Friday and the preceding Insiders Weekend, so Lego is probably expecting a lot of orders already—so the GWP threshold is higher to incentivize making those already planned orders a little bigger. If this were being offered during a less busy shopping season maybe the threshold would've been lower.