TeriXeri

Each single year has good and bad City sets(opinion unique to each person), if I don't like something I don't buy it. Right now I am looking forward for a 2020 police station (if it's similar to the 2019 fire station), but don't need another police helicopter for example. Other then that, I'm pretty much done on fire and hospital sets in my collection for now. But that doesn't mean there'll be people who want such (police/fire/medical) vehicles, especially kids seem to like the theme for toys as it's been seen for decades. Once I organize my collection in the near future, I'll start modifying my sets anyway to make them more personal, which to me, is the core point of LEGO. Does that mean I'll hate any future police/fire/medical sets made ? No, but I don't need 100 police minifigs or vehicles, I'll just buy more selectively, or make new models out of parts.

Very nice set, and even outside of it's original model, it seems to have a lot of clip/bar/balljoint parts to make other skeletons or builds out of it. I think they made the right choice with the size/price , and the figures are a nice bonus. A recent LEGO City magazine had dino bones in it's story, and could easily replay it with this set, or turn it into an digsite skeleton find. Even one Nexo Knight's comic had a short story about dinosaur skeletons being zapped to life by the lightning monsters

Paper remains the best way for owned sets imo. While there might not have been digital instructions in the 70s and 80s like now, finding old intact instructions to build old sets feels so satisifying. And the LEGO community even have gotten old instructions back online via people who scanned those old paper instructions and then hosted them. So I can imagine building a 2020 set in let's say the year 2070 will feel great as well still. Of course a digital version is still good in the sense of not having to print 500 pages, in case of manual being lost, or never having owned the set/paper manual.

There's certainly some overlap of themes in the City magazines as well . Here are some examples of older retired sets shown in the 2019 comics, City Green Ship - Harbour (2011) Deep Sea Scuba Scooter (2015) Creator 3-in-1 Alternate Build of Lakeside Lodge (2016) Friends (no minidolls shown) Heartlake City Pool (2013) Heartlake Pizzeria (2017)

Hopefully some more info about the 3-in-1 sets soon (november/december?)

31098 Outback Cabin is kinda slow with dropping it's price compared to other 3-in-1's, with it's base price/part&volume rather high, this is definately not a €30/€35 set.

The F40 and white 911 sets aren't bad single car sets and I got both of those as my first SC sets this year, and can fit into a City setting, as somewhat "retro" street supercars.

It's more about the ratio of vehicles to buildings in sets. In comparison the 2016 vs the 2019 Fire Station, I greatly prefer the 2019 version, and added the seperately sold dockside dock and boat to it, as well as the Fire-Chief truck to have a larger ladder-wagon. I admit that Donut Shop set has some awesome vehicles, but the buildings are rather tiny in comparison to the total volume of the set. Similar for the Downtown Fire set, has some decent construction-site side builds but I'm not really interested in the huge firetruck when I have 2 fire cars already. Then compare recent 3-in-1 buildings have no to at most some tiny 4-wide vehicles that only take maybe 5-10% of parts.

Certainly, also for Star Wars, biggest example being (2018) 75203: Hoth Medical Chamber 255 parts €50 in NL. Back to the Frozen II examples, it's not just currency dependant but also country. (Germany generally being lower) 41166: Elsa and the Reindeer Carriage - 116 parts €35 in NL 41164: Enchanted Tree House - 302 parts €60 in NL 41167: Arendelle Castle - 521 parts €90 in NL (€100 in Finland) But it's not just Disney, Harry Potter has had it's (regional) price hikes as well : 75951: Grindelwald's Escape (2017) 132 parts €30 in NL ($20 in US) Meanwhile opposite regional price differences exist where City is more expensive in the US. This is not meant as a complaint, as I personally don't collect those sets/themes, more as observation.

Some themes are definately getting horrible price/volume ratios, especially those recent Frozen II sets.

I can fully understand wanting just extra rolling stock, or seperate rail packages instead of full train sets with yet another electronic component. That's how I feel about some of the buildings in the City sets. And again, I can fully understand the reason for LEGO selling large complete train or city playsets, as especially those are great to start out collections / playability context and shelf space on retailers. But that doesn't take away there are people that desire seperate traincars or buildings, but likely such a minority of customers that it's not viable to be created right now. That's why 3-in-1 is my go-to theme for most buildings, unless it's an exception set like the 2018 hospital or 2019 fire station.

I completely agree on that for most sets with multiple mixed vehicles+buildings, especially the capital city / donut shop / ski resort / downtown fire / sky police airbase, type sets of recent. Some of those sets contain a fair amount of "unwanted" content for me, which in the end I tend to not get such sets. Of course it's LEGO and the parts can be used for other builds but you'll still end up paying more then if they were a bit more seperated into smaller sets, but I can also understand reasoning of not having 100 new city sets in a given release season, due to packaging/distribution/shelf space.

Depends how they do the fenders and wheels. The taxi in the Donut set using the older wheels looks a bit silly, meanwhile the Kayak Adventure car or the car in the Sky Police Airbase look a lot better. Meanwhile, the 2019 Police Car is using a different style and is only slightly smaller then a Speed Champion car, still looks great.

8 wide for regular "cars" is indeed very wide. I can understand somewhat for some larger 4-person passenger cars to seat 4 figures, but it wouldn't make sense for sports cars (like the upcoming Lamborghini or Ferrari sets). Of course the new chassis piece still allows to have 6 wide cars + tiles at the sides, so not all is lost.

Licensed to me have no "classic" theme factor, different skin color figures might seem insignificant on paper, but for some fans (including me) it can play a role on deciding if a theme is appealing or not. In house unlicensed might be more generic, but it also has room to be more original, not based on source material, and possible nostalgia factor bringing older fans back into LEGO. While pop culture licenses might as well bring people into LEGO of course, Star Wars and Harry Potter have shown long-lasting licenses, we also see many licenses with very short lifespans.

There's no industry standard for scale in LEGO sets, it changes all the time ,and varies heavily per theme and even sets within the same theme. Official sets (intended for minifigs, most with minifigs included) just are defined by parts use, parts count, and target theme/age ranges. We get anywhere from 4-8+ wide vehicles intended for minifigs each year, and the larger vehicles aren't all trucks/vans. 2020 Speed Champions having an 8-stud wide car model set (based on a real-life car) on a new chassis part, but nowhere near "realistic" scale to a minifig, it's purely that wide for the purpose to seat 4 minifigures. I'm talking sets here. I'm not speaking about predefined parts like doorframes, horses and bicyles, because those are pretty much defined by the mould and cannot be modified.

While fitting 4 figures in that Jaguar car is pretty nice, I hope the lamborghini set cars aren't 8 wide, and keep the similar scale to the F40 and 911.

As for Half or Quarter Domes, I always saw those as force fields or something that still protected the entire facility area, just because they were open didn't mean they are actually open. Many structures in LEGO have open sections for play, and I personally never had issues with open-backed structures if they looked fine otherwise. That said, I liked how they put some non-combat playfeatures in recent Nexo Knight castle sets (Fortrex/Knighton Castle/Jestro's Volcano Lair), including bedrooms, bathroom, cooking or dining areas. Having non-combat features integrated into Space or Scifi/Aquazone like bases is a great idea to expand.

With parts having a preset size and studs, it's simply impossible to always scale everthing accurately ( see the Ferrari F40 example above ), compared to the real car, the speed champion's front just sits much higher, and that's also shown comparing it to the larger Expert model. The smaller a model is, the harder it is to get true minifig scale, many 6+ wide minifig vehicles may seem oversized but that's just what it is to get more details and shaping. Meanwhile, 4 wide vehicle sets may look too small and blocky instead. (I don't mind that personally, but some people like more realism). I'm purely talking official sets here, since MOCs are completely up to the builder.

I don't think there's a need to define an exact scale, a lot about LEGO is about imagination, and it's up to the builder to choose for more realism. Even within the same themes like City and Creator 3-in-1, all sets that came with minifigures can vary a lot, there are comically small 4-wide "Town-size" cars, to 8 wide vehicles. I personally just define 3 levels of scale, Micro/Nano , Minifig and large scale as there's too much variation. Microscale : Minifig scale : to even Large Scale : Even while a set like the orange car is about 8+ wide and doesn't come with minfigs, the design still clearly has a defined 2x2 seating area for a figure, in all 3 builds. And of course Town set vehicles at 4 wide were generally a lot smaller, but even nowadays there's choice how to build up a city. Some people build up in Creator Expert modular scale, others build 3-in-1 scale, or a mix of such. And if I look at my own collection of vehicles, which are mostly recent City and 3-in-1, of course there's some "comically" large size differences, but I personally have no issues with it, it's LEGO, not an historic accurate museum display or something. And even going to other themes, there's even larger "minifig scale" vehicles like this, but this is not based on any real life city car. Comparing 2 of the same car model in different scale like the F40, I only consider the Speed Champion set as minifig scale, even while the Expert model clearly has more realism with the 2 seats etc.

The only Licensed Fantasy Castle line I'd really appreciate would be the Warcraft universe, but that's because it's partly logical with LEGO's partnership via Overwatch already, and WoW Classic being re-released since last month. And while the franchise is enormous, I'd like it to be based off WoW Vanilla/Classic locations + some of the more iconic raid/world bosses of Vanilla/Classic first. A Minifig scale Ragnaros, Onyxia, Nefarian , Azuregos, Lord Kazzak or other creatures would be amazing. And if they go 1 step further, we could sections of raid/dungeon instances like the Deadmines pirate ship etc as well. Of course you could have small sets as well named something simple like "Elwynn Gnoll Camp" (Hogger), or, but a gnoll minifigure might need new mold. The movie was hardly related to the game at all, with the recent re-launch of Classic, it's one of the more popular streamed games again, especially at launch. Also , the Hearthstone card game is still fairly popular as well, and a remaster of Warcraft 3 is on the way also. Of course after having said all this. I'd still greatly prefer an original in-house theme , especially focused on castles, possibly dragons and fantasy figures as well, but the main focus being actual buildings, and modularity of wall/tower sections would be even more amazing.

2017 + 2018 were pretty strong years for creator 3-in-1 houses, in comparison I feel 2019 was pretty weak, outside of the Pet Store/Townhouse and Emmet's House from TLM2. Hopefully 2020 is better, but if it follows previous years, usually the larger 3-in-1 sets are in the summer waves.

I fixed my post, "making room" didnt make sense. I more meant it in the way instead of 1 €140 set, they had 3 other large sets for 2019 (€80 Donut, €80 Ski and €100 Downtown Fire in my country) Even if you leave out the Fire set, that's 2x €80 sets instead of 1 €140. City Space sets at €100 and €140 sitting high up there as well but those are part of subtheme so I won't compare it to Capital City.

Donut Shop opening sort of was this year's city plan set, alongside Downtown Fire and Ski Resort, that's 3 large sets with vehicles+buildings for City for 2019.

Tbh, the most recent set that comes closest to a more 90s look and feel is the 72003 Berserker Bomber set. While Trans-Bright Green isn't very classic (Space Police 2 uses regular Trans-Green) , it's the contrast with the black and white that makes it a very Space-esque set, in design/colors at least. It's a shame that was the last wave of the theme with only a few sets, but I wouldn't mind more sets using Black and Trans-Bright Green. Overall, I would love a good non-licensed Spaceship set/theme using a lot of more traditional parts like angled plates, dishes, and slopes.