Lyichir

I think the black works for them, especially given their more organic shaping compared to classic trees. If you want to change the color of them without changing the build, Reddish Brown would be an easier option than Dark Brown (since parts like the large macaroni tubes don't come in Dark Brown yet).

I know everyone's excited about the build overall and the figures, but I'm also excited for what looks like a new 1x4x3 half-arch piece (used to support the floors above the kitchen and mill, among other spots). Will be good on its own or doubled up as a more circular alternative to the classic 1x8x2 arch.

I think this a cool and unique classic space concept, with a good blend of modern refinement and classic chunkiness. For its size, I almost wish this had a mechanism to automate its legs like 70708 Hive Crawler. The legs look fine (I like the yellow accents near the "feet"), but having a function would add a little wow factor and be more impressive. Just my preference—I know a lot of people prefer a model that is more versatile for display over something engineered for play, but personally I sometimes get bored having to articulate eight legs individually just to transition from one pose to another..

Correct me if I'm wrong but the chain shouldn't be engaged by the lift as it falls, right? So it shouldn't be super affected by that. Former Lego designer Tiago Catarino has a review up as well:

Brick-building is not just a matter of "cheapness" but about having the subject of a set be part of the build experience, rather than a huge molded creature that may as well be a non-Lego toy. It also allows for better articulation and/or functionality in many cases. The T-Rex Breakout set can only have the T-Rex posed as it is (with one foot crushing the car and the other planted on the ground) thanks to its ball-jointed limbs. And for a diorama-type build (rather than a playset), that posing makes a big difference. As for the Hungarian Horntail, the new one this year is WAY more detailed than the previous one with molded head and wings, let alone the even older one that was mostly one molded chunk for the torso and legs. I don't really get why you'd want to go back to that for a creature that size, when brick-building can offer so many advantages.

Former Lego designer Tiago Catarino has a review of it up as well: This review also mentions that apparently this GWP will be available twice—first from June 15th to June 22nd, and again from August 2nd to August 14th. This might be welcome news for people who don't have $150 worth of sets on their wish list right now, and may even overlap with the release of the larger D2C castle. Knowing that second release date has me personally reconsidering buying right away, since most of the sets on my wish list (mostly Monkie Kid and Ninjago) are August releases in my country.

Revenge of the Spider Queen is between Season 1 and Season 2. Overall the watch order goes like this: A Hero is Born (S1 special) Season 1 Revenge of the Spider Queen (S2 special) Season 2 Season 3 Embrace Your Destiny (S3 special) By the way, on the topic of the TV series... in some sad news, the English VA for Macaque, Billy Kametz, passed away the other day. His voice work really breathed life into one of the show's more complex and emotionally nuanced characters, so his passing hits especially hard.

Thank you very much for the review! This is the first review I've seen of this set! I'm very much looking forward to this set... it's so much unlike anything we've gotten in Lego before, and I love the architecture as well as the elaborate cloud platforms it sits on. The "unfolding" feature is also very cool.

As much potential as Legacy sets for later seasons could have (or heck, even other stuff from the early seasons, like the other dragons), I still feel like the Legacy subtheme might be over and done with... the EVO line seems to have been a pretty deliberate rethinking of what "introductory"/"classic" Ninjago concepts might look like. Even if we do get more classic-inspired Ninjago sets again someday (and I don't doubt it overall, Ninjago has gone through this cycle of classic/experimental more than once), I'm not sure whether they'd go back to the Legacy branding and its particularly show-inspired approach, or if they'd do something different (like how Legacy itself felt different from the Day of the Departed wave, despite feeling like a precursor of sorts to that "back to basics" approach).

Trying to decide myself if I'll get this to be honest. Originally the in-store AFOL day (for RLUG members) was gonna line up with the eligibility period for this, but they moved the AFOL day to July so the promotions no longer overlap. :( This is a nice GWP but I'm not necessarily a castle collector so I'm gonna have to decide whether to pick up Optimus Prime for this promotion (and figure out something else to get in July, before most of the themes I actually collect come out in August), or just wait for July and see whether this promotion rolls around again in the future.

So out of curiosity has anybody gotten or at least ordered the new sets yet? I had thought they were supposed to release at the start of this month in Europe, but haven't seen any reviews or even just pictures posted on social media.

You know, I think you're right! I looked at the pictures again more closely and it definitely looks like the tower is designed for the wider section of chain to "feed" directly through to where it's going down instead of up. That's really clever, especially since as you mention it would let it stop at the top and bottom for the cars to load and unload from the lift. It's a lot more mechanically intricate than I gave it credit for. I'm not sure whether I'll end up getting this one... love the concept but like with the previous coaster, it's expensive and takes up a lot of space. I really do appreciate how much it brings to the table, though, so die-hard roller coaster fans ought to easily be able to justify displaying both in the same park!

I might be wrong but I think that's why the red "stopper" is there right before the lift—it seems to only get moved out of the way when the lift has arrived back at the bottom to receive the cars again.

To be honest that's one of the things that frustrates me about Bricklink's categorization of parts—I'd sooner consider all of these Technic plates. Similarly it's frustrating how bricks with Technic pin holes are considered Technic bricks, but bricks with Technic pins are not (like 1x2 or 2x2 bricks with Technic pins, the latter of which has a Technic axle hole connection through the center to boot). But of course, part of that is the inevitability of any taxonomic enterprise—eventually you might end up having to make arbitrary sorts of judgment calls when things could reasonably fit into more than one category. One thing Brickset has started doing (which I think shows a lot of promise) is using a tag system in addition to more rigid categories, so that you can group parts with similar features or connection types and even search for parts that can adapt one kind of connection to another.

The "drop top" pieces you describe are used for the canopy over the boarding area! So they're all used in the set.

So how many new track elements are used here? I see at least three (lowering 90° right curve, 90° loop segment, and a 4 module track extender). Surprisingly fewer than I would have expected—the set makes use of some clever techniques with existing parts for the large drop and the teardrop-shaped loop.

For what it's worth I doubt the price point "leaking out" was an intentional business move on Lego's part in the first place. Sometimes it's worth taking a step back and remembering that we're talking about a set that hasn't even been formally announced yet. The vast majority of potential buyers (including less online AFOLs) don't even know this exists yet, let alone what it's going to cost.

Regarding DBK and his family... DBK being possessed by the Lady Bone Demon at the end of Season 1 (and being freed by MK and friends) put a pause on their ambitions, and that combined with Monkey King and MK freeing DBK from the Spider Queen at the beginning of Season 2 created an uneasy truce between them. Set-wise, I wouldn't mind seeing DBK and Princess Iron Fan return since all of the sets with them have now been retired. Their palace on Accumulated Thunder Mountain (as seen in Season 3) would make a fantastic set, and it would be neat to get a version of DBK that's more bigfig-sized or smaller, to use in a wider variety of scenes. But I don't know how likely that is with them not being the primary antagonists anymore, especially since the Trans. Fluorescent Orange color that was so key to the bull clan's color scheme in the first year is now retired. I guess we'll never know until we see a set like that released or the theme ends (whichever should come first).

Have you watched the just-released "Embrace your Destiny" four-episode special yet? Because if you haven't then you technically haven't seen all of Season 3 yet.

I think last year a designer mentioned working on Monkie Kid sets for 2023. So at least at that point there were plans to continue the theme. If the story is continuing, it wouldn't be the first time a theme had a "grand finale" that turned out not to be the end after all. Ninjago has had one or two such finales that would have been perfectly good conclusions to the theme if the decision hadn't been made to continue it.

Okay, I was trying to be polite, but that's a lot of words just to say that you think your preferences are more valid and important than anybody else's. Now the complaint isn't that there aren't classic influences in sets, but the the ones there aren't the right classic influences? That the designers of a Creator set was wrong for referencing an older Creator set instead of a theme like Classic Space that's been homaged and referenced dozens of times? Get over yourself. Again, the bulk of my point wasn't that older space themes were bad, or that Lego is somehow barred from referencing them. It was that the preferences of AFOLs like you and I are not going to be the main priority for a theme like this and that other aspects (including kid testing and, yes, the designers' own preferences) are going to be higher on the priorities list. It comes across as whiny and irritating when Lego ends up making space sets in Creator (like AFOLs had been asking for, complete with retro-inspired torso and head prints) and you start bad-mouthing their color schemes or design choices for not pandering enough to you. Why on earth should Lego radically redesign their set concepts to tailor them specifically to the least accommodating buyers, when kid buyers are both a bigger market and less likely to bite the hand that feeds them?

The thing about "battle packs" is that they tend to be attached to ongoing themes. I don't know for sure but I get the impression that they aren't huge profit sources on their own, and that their main advantage is as an "entry point" that gets buyers (especially kids) into a larger theme, so that they move onto bigger, more extravagant sets. If so, I'm not sure the business case is all that strong for releasing a more or less "standalone" battle pack (that would only complement high-priced 18+ Castle sets or the handful of Creator sets). In a worst-case scenario something like that could even depress the sales of larger sets, if people figured they'd rather get multiple copies of the smaller battle pack instead of (rather than in addition to) the really high-end sets. Benny's Space Squad is kind of an outlier since while it's effectively a Classic Space set as far as the figures and builds are concerned, it was technically a Lego Movie 2 set and functioned as an entry-level set for that theme. For AFOLs, it was a huge deal even for Lego fans who were indifferent to the Lego Movie, but for kids it's hard to know if something like that would have sold as well without a recognizable and popular character like Benny for them to latch onto.

I feel like Classic Space is sort of a tricky case. I would say the 3-in-1 Pirates, Castle, and Vikings sets are all based pretty heavily on "archetypal" ideas of what that sort of subject matter should look like, rather than being based solely on the classic iterations of those themes. It's hard to go wrong with a grey-walled castle or a brown-hulled wooden ship, so it's not surprising that the Creator 3-in-1 theme would opt for those sort of depictions for its takes on those sorts of subjects, regardless of how much they ended up having with how earlier themes approached those subjects. But while Classic Space is nostalgic for AFOLs, I feel like the blue-and-yellow color scheme of the ships or the color-coded spacesuits have a good deal less in common with what most kids think of when they think about spaceships—more likely, what comes to mind for them are the sort of black, white, and grey color schemes typical of NASA (and used for 3-in-1 sets like the Space Rover Explorer from 2020 or the Space Mining Mech and Space Shuttle Adventure from 2021). That sort of color scheme is arguably even more "classic" (and potentially more nostalgic to adults who didn't grow up specifically playing with Classic Space Lego sets) due to its association with the real-world "space race" and the parallel interest in sci-fi toys and stories. By contrast, the Classic Space aesthetic is a bit more particular both to a bygone vision of the future and to a particular point in Lego's own history when red, blue, yellow, black, and white were among the main colors Lego produced. It's probably slightly harder for a designer to make a case for prioritizing recreating that specific aesthetic over a more archetypal one that probably tests better with kids—especially for a mass-market theme like Creator 3-in-1 (as opposed to an expert-level set tailored more specifically toward adults nostalgic for Lego's history, like the rumored Galaxy Explorer D2C set). That's not to say Lego doesn't still work in references where they can, like the classic space logo on the spacesuits or the Spyrius/Exploriens-inspired droid head. P.S.: Speaking of references to older sets, I personally think the Cyber Drone set's color scheme was in fact intended as a reference, not to an older Space theme but to 4508 Titan XP, which could be considered one of the progenitors of the yellow-label Creator theme itself.

I dunno... I was thinking flat signage on the front would be ideal because the building has to have roof space on top for the walkway from the train platform. And I'd rather have something more universal and descriptive than just a real world brand logo (like an image of a shoe). I'll figure something out.

GWPs generally include the same sorts of spare parts as other sets... but I don't think the Forestman hat is among those. Just smaller/lighter parts like 1x1 round plates and the like.