August11

I stopped buying the collectible minifigures after series 3. I am one of those ones, yup, who just thinks they don't feel like real Lego. But I gotta agree on this one: that freakin space marine is wicked freakin cool. Lego has no idea what lurks in the minds of Classic Space fans. It is like the Manchurian Candidate for crying out loud. I see that space marine and I know I must open up my wallet. I would buy battle packs of those dudes...

My first classic space set was the little rocket launcher. It came with a white and a red; the pictures showed red as the driver and white as the radar operator, so I figured they were on the same team. I immediately made a Star Trek connection--reds were all about mechanicals and whites were the scientists. Later Blues were command... But I imagine if my first set had all one color, it would look more like nationalities. Especially in 1978--talk about the depths of the cold war...

I remember we had the same response to the Undercover Cruiser at the 2010 toyshow--the canopy on the UC was light trans blue which definately did not go with all the other trans parts. The actual set saw an approrpiate dark trans blue canopy. Maybe getting the trans parts is just difficult by the time the toy shows come around. I'm thinking the two canopy colors on the TI will match by the time August comes around.

I just spent a while with the Flickr images by FBTB. And even though I will purchase much of AC in August, I have to admit it seems the legs on the TI do not really have any notable range of articulation--I hope someone in this thread can identify some articulation points: it is not a deal breaker but it makes the set a little less appealing...

I'm hoping TI is in the 19.99 slot for this theme. That means $60 for a "full scale" invasion! To those of you who have been monitoring new themes in the past, when can we expect official Lego information on these sets? February?

Some of the aliens do look a little too muppety. But that said, I've got a whole army of alien scum ready to pilot those Tripod Invaders. Rench will look absolutely end-of-the-world crushtastic in those things--now his eternal shout will no longer be saying, "Aarrgh! A VPR!!" but instead, "Run, RUN!! Silly HUMANS!!" My chief concern is with the mechanics of the TI's legs. I'm hoping it is really stable...

Thanks for the help--they are clearly in many sets. I think this subgenre of space is really going to inspire a lot of vignettes, a lot of MOCs. Hats off to the thinkers at lego. I collected most of SP3 and thought that would be it for a while. I thought wrong. I'm not sure I will shell out for the large ADF sets. But my desk has room for two or five Tripod Invaders. Or I'd like to make a SP3 "Squidtron's Used Space Parts" store with a broken down Tripod Invader (7051), a stripped Alienator (6876), a wheeless rocket launcher up on blocks (462), and hidden behind a bunch of empty hyper-fuel tanks, a gutted Raid VPR (5981). You need to pay extra space credits (100?) to get access to the VPR. Hey Squidtron's risking a lot to provide used Space Police technology...

Ha! Maybe--looking at the pictures again, it looks like in the Earth Defense HQ one of the blue ADF fellows has some bright green headgear and his helmet is on the ground. Is this one of the "pets" we are talking about?

I agree. The look of AC is definately present day or "in the near future." I think I was trying to compare sci-fi genres according to their primary historical placement: saucer-bubble-craft-with-legs saw its zenith from Verne up until 50s and 60s; while SP3 seems to draw on all the gritty, always raining, post-Mars colony, post-apocalypse you see emerge from the 80s and 90s where society is still being held together somewhere in the next fifty to a hundred years or so. Wow--trying to discuss AC or SP3 in terms of traditional sci-fi makes my head hurt. One quick question: I have tried to examine the HD pictures from the retail catalog, but I can't seem to see the head slugs and a few other details. I must be getting old. Could someone post "looking directions" or images with the most important features circled? Or would that be against forum rules? If there are little green head slugs in these sets, then my wallet will suffer.

I agree. I am surprised more people are not seeing this as a perfect followup to SP3. Though the supposed dates are a bit off (AC = 1950s; SP3 = 2250s?), the themes are going to go nicely together. I can easily see Squidman buying a Tripod Invader at the used Tripod Invader lot. What would a used Tripod Invader salesman look like? Snake?

Alien Conquest looks like a big win to me. And I can't help thinking that TLG has figured out how to best pull in the AFOL community: retro sci-fi. SPIII pulled me out of my dark ages; Alien Conquest will keep me out. Just wait until those saucers meet a fully-armed wing of Raid VPRs!