TeriXeri

Exactly, LEGO even had one long time ago in both Town and City Town (1996) City (2009) The last time City had a non 4+ dump truck was 2018 with the mining theme. And then there was the year 2012, a crazy year for City trucks : 2 Garbage trucks (1 closed dump) 2 normal dump truck 1 smaller and 1 huge mining dump truck 2 Transport trucks

Current known retirement date for the 60304 Road Plates is 31 december 2026, so still another full year after this, and there could be new one after that (as things like the train rail packs / switch tracks also retire that date but LEGO has pretty much always made new ones, except for when they change big systems (like 9V to battery train, or baseplate to road plate)

I like the interior of 42656 Heartlake City Airport and Airplane but the focus of that set is entirely different from 60104, where the City set is more about loading/unloading the plane, the Friends set is far more about the actual terminal and passenger "roleplay" , and probably the most "detailed" yet in that aspect, but it misses big Airport things like control tower , and the airplane is kind of secondary, no door or stair, or vehicle, or walkway or whatever to suggest boarding it. 60434 Space Base and Rocket Launchpad has like the best control tower yet, even tho it's a weird space-crane, the top part could easily be used for an airport with perhaps a few changes to the screens and radar shape.

The main thing that's missing is an Actually Big Dump Truck (those articulated 6 wheel trucks used in both mining and construction , not the extreme pit mining ones with 4 wheels), I like the Excavator design but there's nothing to go with it really. The extremely large Crane will probably scale decently with the rumoured City Tower thing. I wonder about that Bulldozer set's scale, really large dozers do also exist (but the largest also have enormous weight over 100 tons / 100.000 kg , so not exactly common)

952210 Robbie Rolla's Steamroller from 2022 did have both rolls and is a genius build considering the small size. Seems like the only double drum roller set would go all the way back to 2009: 30003 Road Roller But the current 2024 set is cheap enough to make 2 and convert it into steamroller + wheel loader type of builds (and there's 60450 Wheel Loader but that uses a different color of yellow, so would not be an exact copy)

I built the 2025 Creator cat and it had paper bags but in bag 3 there was a smalller plastic bag too. I also found a whole bunch of 2025 polybags which use similar paper as the magazine gift bags now. 2025 City had paper for the donut truck for me, but plastic for a bunch of others like the sports car. So not a 100% appear rate yet, but it's getting there. And I know it still varies per continent. The boxes also show the set name and number of pieces on the front of the box, which was not the case for 2024 or older sets , but there are still 2-3 "versions" of boxes / instructions being produced (V29 (International) and V39 (North America) and sometimes a V55 (China) variant)

Would be interesting to see if they make a new battery/charging system, perhaps some "power bank" type thing chargeable via the wall powergrid and optionally USB etc. And perhaps smaller then the current battery box type of things.

I think I got that torso from 2849 Helicopter , which also was released as 1068 Air Patrol I got the Green one from the 1996 train , was an awesome figure, especially at the time green regular parts were still quite rare.

It does look like a cool set, and could even probably make a nice container truck type of build from the red part and the extra wheels etc, more interesting then the F1 truck tbh, however the F1 pitstop is a nice set with 5 figs. Oh I agree the removable "shop" part is cute for the donut and burger trucks, and handy, with no big focus on City buildings right now as the 8x8 / 8x16 system seems to have stopped at the moment. Friends does have some real nice food carts and shops as well, in particular this year's Candy Store would make a very colorful Candy truck.

60448 Sports Car is probably my favorite small set of 2025 so far, really impressive model and amazing shaping , and looks better then many similar 6 wide speed champions of the past. Also the newer transparent black just looks nice, and the contrast with the black plates and clear headlights is nice. Box and product pictures just make the car look a lot more compressed , while it's actually quite long and sleek. And if less studs are desired, you can still add 1x3 red tiles to the sides.

A big snow plow front? Alaska style freight train. Likely orange and darkblue. The 2022 passenger train has not retired, and the red tram is also for passengers. Instead, the 2022 cargo train did retire , while the 2018 cargo train actually got way extended and is still available. (and actually has an Arctic snowmobile from the previous 2018 arctic theme)

More Pirates did show up in the recent LEGO Fortnite update , (reused figures from Barracuda Bay and more pirate skeletons), but they also did introduce a variant of Islanders/Kahuka people as banana people. And players can use Pirate flintlock pistol/rifl, a tribal shield using the original Islanders shield shape, a throwing spear , buildable cannons and medieval/pirate tutor housing (basicly an XXL version of the housing seen in the 3-in-1 castle in terms of color scheme with brown/yellow walls, darkblue roof, and the stone bottom walls and white interior walls make it feel more like Medieval Blacksmith indoors) So I think LEGO is still well aware they exist. I'm not suggesting pirates sets released under the Fortnite theme, but still think it's clever they did a clear Islanders inspired content patch (+ useable pirate guns + shield and spear) while somewhat playing it "safe" by making them banana people. (ninjago did something similar a while ago making them purple skinned or even 2 headed)

I wonder if the upcoming "Spooky" stuff in LEGO Fortnite will have some more references to Castle, as the last update Lost Isles had a lot of Pirate stuff (pirate skeletons and the minifigs from Barracuda Bay as Pirate enemies) , spooky could mean Fright Knights or Forestmen or something for that game, as it already has Falcon Knights and unofficiallly Wolfpack (figures missing emblem as they likely didn't want to spoil it releasing in the Town Square set or something?), and a Lion Knights villager. LEGO also seems to have played it safe by doing "islanders" as banana people, they still have a variation kahuka styled masks and stone totems, and throwing spears and even oval shields like the original Islanders. But Banana people also do fit in Fortnite as the Peely character has appeared various times (even in a big lego set now) And the "Tutor housing" they released in that game fits both pirates and castle builds really well. (yellow+brown walls/darkblue roof) also fits the style of 3-in-1 Castle. (build scale is too large for actual sets tho) There's a lot of Fortnite crossovers lately, Friends, and more Dreamzzz have been part of seperate game maps, some having pieces/builds/figs from sets. That said, having more Castle via Creator 3-in-1 doesn't seem unlikely, figures are still in production for Falcons, Wolfpack, Lion Knights and Forestmen + the more medieval torso possibilities from set like Viking Village still being around. Right now 3-in-1 is on a quite low number of minifig sets as well, so having some sets contain minifigs at the start of 2025 is certainly possible, as the number would be cut from 7 to just 4 remaining (Pirate Ship, Space Coaster, and Cozy + Modern House).

This, and even in a large country or even just a city, it can be very different, just look at New York , white/blue police cars (recently changed to white/darkblue/green), and ambulances are white/red (and part of the New York FIRE Department). Then Los Angeles , Police Cars are white/black , and ambulances full red .(also fire department) Europe has quite a bit of variation but at least for northwestern europe. overall police cars have some form of white/blue with either neon yellow, or orange/red in the past decade. And Medical vehicles do indeed have quite a few neon yellow variants (with some country variations, but even there it can vary , Paris has full red ambulances with neon stripes used by the fire department) It's impossible to list every single variation of course, but LEGO City has certainly been more European-ish in it's emergency vehicle colors since about 2019 (excluding specific subthemes like Sky Police (2019) or Elite Police (2020) . 2024 City Police uses darker blue and more white, but still could be somewhat comparible to what police use in countries like Denmark, Norway, while 2019-2023 was more Germany/UK/Sweden like. (especially UK for the recent medical vehicles)

Yeah, they don't do the "themed" police years either, this year had the prison island, but it's not like they do Sky Police type of waves anymore that run at the same time as regular police , now there's obviously the option to roleplay harbour police with the 2024 sets, but they did not make those a different subtheme entirely. Also recent years have better focus on buildings and vehicles being seperate sets most of the time, I'm a big supporter of selling buildings and vehicles seperately, especially for basic things like a bus, tram, or main street/downtown type of set. As for 2025 sets, they'll probably make new Downtown/Appartment type of sets, as pretty much all of those seem to be retiring at the end of this year (including sets like Ice Cream, Car Wash, Skate Park etc. A big downtown highrise building would make a lot of sense, seeing how huge the new 2024 crane is (even if the 2023 Downtown and Appartment sets do allow tall builds as well, it would still make sense for a new 2025-2026 version to be on the market to sell the crane more), as for actual design, it seems they have departed from road plates and the 8x8 , 8x16 system in 2024, but maybe that's just because of existing sets being around / available. Current 2021 road plate expansion pack is not listed as retiring.

Probably in a tiny minority here but: LEGO making that JAWS set was a bad move, yes it's nostalgia for "just a movie" , but 50 years later, the world is looking at millions of sharks killed a year, at an increasing trend. And yes, this did come from IDEAS, I'm not pointing at the original designer or submission here. But if you like it, buy it. That said, I wouldn't mind an update of 31088: Deep Sea Creatures at a larger scale, seeing how that set is actually still made in 2024, it must be popular.

As far as licensed vs non licensed, sets like that upcoming Dark Falcon really seems interesting, but still definately is affected by license tax, as no way that looks like a set sized of €180, even with the trend of inflation and the last falcon from 5 years ago(still sold) already being €170 . If it were an icons set or something it would certainly cost less, Altho even unlicensed Friends ,City and Creator are trending toward the whole 10+ cent piece ratios on many sets (not a metric I use, but LEGO seems to be with how so many 2024 sets seem to be following it of course mostly around 8-12c a pc) , so perhaps Dark Falcon would be something like €150-160 if it had generic figures and no license.

They have been pushing very hard to make the game more then just shooting, in recent months bringing out LEGO builds, LEGO Pass, Stage Pass + Tie ins with Lady Gaga, Billy Eilish and now Metallica and Race Cars / Race Tracks and more, as both some free but mostly paid content that cannot be unlocked by just playing battle royale. LEGO mode is still very much seperate from the shooter mode, only thing that happened lately was a LEGO build in the level 1 battle pass as a bonus, and the chewbacca having a normal skin via the LEGO pass. As far as the LEGO sets go, maybe they'll add a new zone in the LEGO mode of the game after summer, when the current LEGO pass of Star Wars is over, they basicly put most of the Star Wars content in the game on a seperate island with fast travel via a cave, so they can add loads of themed islands that way in the future.

I think the ATV size is more of slight throwback to adventurer cars, with the boxy style and glass window, and the map tile. (5918: Scorpion Tracker), instead of making another quad bike, which they already did for the chicken and otter sets etc. Obviously not the same era or parts usage ,but the adventurer car chassis piece is not in use anymore, while being briefly seen in 2013 in Tan, and then 2019/2020 in Azure and 2021 in Lime.

Yeah and even if Creator , Classic, City and Friends do repeat the "same" type of buildings / animals / microbuilds / emergency buildings (Police + Fire all the time) / Food shops / Cars / Trucks , they change them up more and more , in recent years the Police / Fire and medical color schemes alone has changed quite a bit , and while some figure designs are quite "classic city" at this point, there are still minor details that make them new torsos. City and Friends in particular make very different stuff this year compared to at least the past 10 years, with a large scale crane and excavator not seen in a long time, or something like Friends adventure camp might be a "repeat" of some years ago, the design of the new sets is still updated and fresh. Creator recently switched to larger, more detailed animals, going back to the earlier 2000s but with very updated parts useage. I think that's still more refreshing compared to doing another Xwing, Tie Fighter etc, even if those do get updated designs (I mean, X-wing in particular got a lot of them in different colors in recent decade with the standard / black+orange / grey+blue / different scales, etc etc ) they are ultimately still locked by designs from the license.

To be fair, I think I'd just use the Everone is Awesome set parts + City interstellar Spaceship if I wanted some rainbow trail display, and even brand new from LEGO.com at full price that would total at "just" €55 , and then you still get a ton of figure parts and hair pieces to go with it. But I can understand this set was mainly meant to draw in people from this Pharrell fanbase to LEGO as their first set, as has been quite clear with many of those recent "AFOL" oriented licenses (Icons/IDEAS mainly), or display models (many of reallife objects)

I just consider the 2024 City/Friends Space sets as some alternate timeline/reality, while 2022 City/Friends space is more current-day. And while City is on the box of the 2024 sets, the large grey "Space" logo is the overall theme focus in that case , once it's out of the box, theme doesn't really matter anymore for me, and that pretty much always has been the case for me, unless strictly wanting to rebuild something, then yes, of course it's easier to find a set instructions by looking at the set number/themes.

Hopefully sets like the current Alien Planet Habitat, and Space Lab will be popular, so they can sell terrain builds and standalone buildings for more City subthemes in future. And I do hope those 3 sets do release eventually, not to bash the gorilla set, but that croc cave set is much more interesting, 60426: Jungle Explorer Off-Road Truck has a decent sized terrain build , and 60425: Jungle Explorer Water Plane somewhat makes up for it with the extra croc and cheaper price, but that gorilla set is just too much focus on the helicopter (and probably a big chunk of the budget into the 2 full size gorillas as well). While terrain/trees can probably be easiest recreated with a decent collection, I still like it over vehicles most of the time. My favorite mix of animal City sets have been pretty much the sets at €10 and €30 and inbetween price points, usually if it goes over that, it's either really inflated due to some special animal (orca, white shark , mammoth in recent times), or some huge vehicles (ships, helicopters , arctic mobile bases etc) , but the 2020 underwater base was nice tho.

Definately not an interesting set for me , seems very focused on the "create a minifig with your personal look" , and the colored trail, and very little spaceship. In this case, even the 4+ City Spaceship is still a much better set, and this year has been a treasure trove of Space sets overall, with City and Friends, or Technic, and those Alien Pack sets as well.

Even in those other sets they really highlight those geodes as being something that could light up, really interested to see how that works. And those printed tiles with the airplane or boat on it probably have some electronic / sensor type of functions as well. As far as normal LEGO sets, they also look interesting enough, the same explorer logo is used as previous Arctic / Sea / Jungle vehicles ,just in a different earth color, so it seems LEGO wants a consistent organization as explorers at least which is good, similarly to how they used the Space logo in multiple colors this year, and the Cargo ship uses the long time "classic" cargo logo as well (box with arrows around it)