TeamThrifty

There's less mocs on display here than there used to be, which i find strange. I'm 99% mocs, have been since i was 8 in 1980... ...I mainly look on here for news of new sets and the rare good moc. But its getting rarer,

me neither - BWE is an excellent example. Its theoretically not my kind of thing, but i saw builds of it, liked it, bought it and built it and absolutely loved it! Its one of my favourite sets. Niche is meaningless, these sets need to be released and people will actually love them regardless of preconceived ideas. Unfortunately we're in era that totally the opposite, no variety just car-coma play it safe sets.

I own 3 bikes, all japanese sports bikes so i'm not a harley fan but i am a lego fan - This bike captures the real thing very well indeed. (I've ridden one once and i suspect that this lego version is better built and probably handles better! The real thing was awful...) Lego can't offer the forked conrod (terrible engineering solution to a problem that doesn't exist) that allows HD's to have both cylinders on the central axis... But does have staggered bigends instead, so looks authentic! The difficulty with bikes is capturing the stance and you've achieved it wonderfully. This is why mocs are better!

On the robotic arm thread i questioned why TLG didn't produce one.... Same question for this excellent engineering example. Awesome. Perfect wake-up from the car-coma. I love to see a build that i can't understand - as the saying goes, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room - i love this moc. It begs to be used, the opposite of the shelf-megablocks-mentality. I'm a big fan!

This is the reason lego exists my friend If it was meant to stay together forever it would come with glue!

Why doesn't TLG do something like this at full flagship scale? For those of us that couldn't give a sh!t about shelf-queen display models and actually want to engage in clever engineering, it would be excellent 1000 times more interesting than car-coma.

No there wouldn't. If Cars made up 70% of sets, but the remaining 30% were excellent i wouldn't mind at all. But what are the big-set, none-car options this year? Little sets don't float my boat... the cars are 3 or 4k pieces. Give us a comparable big set.

Yes we do. If we're expected to like sooo many car sets, expect to get soo many moans. The majority being silent just for the sake of it is the wrong approach

Maybe... but i love opening a big flagship box. Its still a thrill. We used to get some variety though, something for everyone. And if we're honest, heavy equipment has more variety and lends itself to lego better than supercars - they're all about thousands of pieces to make a pretty looking car, they're totally formulaic and repetitive. BWE/Arocs/Cat D9 are proper technic. Not pretty but functional and have huge variation in functions. True technic sets. I accept people enjoy building cars, but that shouldn't be at the virtual exclusion of other sectors - And i know there's an excavator this year, but its a joke for all the reasons previously discussed. What about licensed JCB sets? So many great options there.... A flagship backhoe is the most obvious, but there's also the fasttrac - a machine unique to jcb. Both of those are rich in functionality and make wonderful 'genuine' technic flagships. A 4k piece licenced backhoe?! Wow.. Instead we getting the eleventy-third car in the last 2 years alone.

It does feel like a a TLG induced dark age In many ways i'm fortunate, i spend 99% of my time building mocs. To me thats the point of lego, BUT, i enjoy a shiny new set with new pieces for xmas. I've had cada sets recently but they're 95% cars this year. I'm now 100% mocs with specific new parts bought directly from lego, but not sets. ...And the BWE rebuild will be awesome. Such an underrated set!!

2025? What the hell has gone wrong. Car, car, car, car, yawn, car, car, £350 for a 2500 piece p**s poor copy of 8043?!!, Car, car, car.... Coma. I've downloaded new instructions for the BWE and i'm rebuilding it this xmas. 10 times the set of anything available this year. Is this TLG's bright idea of the future or is the fault of the put-it-on-a-shelf demographic. I neither know nor care. Whoever it is is wrong.

Excellent model of the best looking F1 car ever from an era when they had 1500bhp in qualifying trim and NO driver aids - real men with big balls driving hand grenades. Lewis Hamilton? Never heard of her....

The issue as i see it is that TLG are playing safe... Car after car because they sell. We need some variety back in the line-up. BWE was very left-field but was awesome, a Grader has the potential to be the same. Unfortunately we'll get more cars because they sell. Playing it safe has its place, consolidate your market share etc. But TLG is under attack from Cada etc and playing it safe will see them LOSE market share. (as will flagships with £500+ price tags...) They need to let the designers loose, use less expensive motors and hubs and innovate. Give us 3000+ piece graders and tractors and all the other niche options, because guess what? Another supercar excites no one. ...then we can speculate as the title suggests. At the moment the limit of the speculation is a dream set that will never happen, or which car will they release. Stagnate and die or innovate 100%

I didn't know that.. thats interesting! Hopefully he's got something for 2025, looks poor so far.

42043 Arocs.. Technic through and through. Zero faff, feels modular and makes sense as you build. Close to perfect. Where's the love for 42055 BWE. Pure technic as it was meant to be. Massive, Majestic and full of functions. Sprockets and UJ and axles and gearboxes everywhere.. In many ways this Technics finest hour. Doesn't get the love it deserves. 42131 Cat D11.. Another perfect technic building experience. No repetition, faff or fiddle. 8258 Crane truck, first set after the dark ages. 8110 unimog, again, no faff or fiddle, solid technic build. Honourable mention, 851.. Where it all started for me. Biggest disappointment, 42054 Claas. Endless faff and fiddle building meaningless section that were just random pieces. I'm a massive tractor fan and this failed on so many levels. One trick pony - steering. Such a shame.

So in summary, this is a poor version of 8043 with less functions? Nothing more, nothing less. Several years of 'improvements' have led to a backwards step...? Or am i missing something?

Perhaps time saving isn't the most important thing? I personally love the journey, the trial and error - thats the best way to learn, try and try again. And by far the most fun. Charging for the finish line with a book or this forum resolving all the puzzles teaches very little and is no where near as interesting.. just a thought..

Excellent machine to replicate. 17th and 18th century was full of proper engineering, and bloody clever engineers - makes our modern cad assisted, disposable efforts look pitiful in comparison. Its a era rich in innovation that lends itself technic very nicely indeed!

The problem with these cars, apart from the sheer quantity of them, is the building experience of the bodywork is hideous and tedious. I've got one here and have build the chassis but all the bodywork bags are unopened and have been for 3 years. Its fiddly none-technic and a patience killer. Credit to anyone who can actually be arsed to spend time actually finishing the monotonous bloody things! The absolute opposite is the bucket wheel excavator and the Cat D11. Wonderful building experience and a genuine technic model when finished. But cars sell...just not to me!! They look pretty, but so what... I'm very interested in that set. Looks to tick a lot of boxes..i know nothing about, so any info would be great.

@eric trax I think this set is wonderful. I'm lover of Ag equipment and spent all my mocing time building tractors... and wondering why TLG have ignored this sector and just releases car after car after car. Finally here we have a genuine flagship in my favourite sector!!! I hope this is the start of more ag sets of this size. I've been waiting since i was 10....! I don't follow things on a daily basis so only just discovered it uses a phone app - which i think is excellent. I need to catch up a little on this control system.... and whether is programmable for mocs etc. But on first viewing, this set is a definite purchase for me. Flagship ag set at last!!!

This is why lego exists! Excellent... Just get a pile of bricks and make something up. The sheer joy of problem solving and creating something. Utterly perfect!! Please don't put it on a display shelf... make a V2 and a V3, never be satisfied, its the journey of invention and problem solving that is the reason for lego! Wonderful!! The best thread in months!!!

100%

Sadly you are correct and its leading to the death of technic. No one i knew as a kid ever built a set and left it.. it was 100% normal for 100% of people to make stuff up - long before it got its own label (moc). It didn't need a label because thats the point of lego. It comes to bits for a reason. The shelf queen mentality is driving lego's decision making - thats why there's 3000 cars released every year and its boring as hell. But it keeps the airfix-in-disguise assemblers happy. It was unimaginable that you didn't moc.. now it seems there's more topics about display options and plastic boxes to line up a thousand cars that are built once and never recycled into something that might be actually interesting. Totally Void of Imagination. No ability to take on a challenge, how can i solve this new problem? .... No need, just blindly follow the instructions, have no understanding of the mechanism you're building, then stick it in a display case... And this is why technic is fecked because TLG respond to this culture with a repetitive and dull output. Lack of imagination is a contagious disease and TLG are infected.

They do!! And its the curse of humanity.. Just ignore them and do whats right for you. In all areas of life, including mocs and instructions!!