tiberian

retrojunk.com has a collection of old lego commercials from the 1990s - a thread about this was on classic-castle a while back.

Mithrandir wrote: "Personally I don't get all this hate about the new gray ("bley"? What the heck does that even mean anyways, blah-grey?). It's just a different color, and the Lego company is NOT going back to the old gray no matter what, so you're either going to have to go on and megablocks about it for the rest of your life, or realise that it's beyond your control and embrace the new gray." Well Mithrandir, you know by now that "bley" is an abbreviation of "blue grey." The old grey had a yellowish tint to it (not the same as the yellowing which occurs with age). Of course one big problem with this change is color compatibility with the old sets, but it's not just that. The old texture of grey was a much more convincing representation of stone and concrete, and worked for metal as well. The new grey works OK for shiny metallic objects, like spaceships or trains, but no so well for most anything else. Just as an example, as far as Legends are concerned, one of the sets I was looking forward to most before the color change was 6080 King's Castle, built almost entirely of light grey. It is also one that would be adversely affected with the color change, so TLG were to rerelease it today, I probably would not buy it. Of course there are other sets I would love, such as 498 Galaxy Explorer, which would not look worse with the new colors, and I would have no problem in buying that as long as I was intending to keep it for display and not for dismantling and adding to my spare pieces, in which case compatibility would be a factor. Although I am well aware that TLC's decisions are beyond my control, that doesn't mean I just keep quiet and like it. No bad decisions would ever be changed if people just did that ;-) .

TLG simply has not been able to understand the adult collector market. Other 80s toys are also being rereleased. When the first "Legends" were released, they came in black and white boxes, with poorly printed instrutions, and erroneous or missing pieces. Although later Legends came with colored boxes, they also came newer, uglier colors (bley, pink brown) and finally with altered pieces which were uniformly inferior to the originals (like just about every change in 6597). Compare for example, to the Takara Transformers rereleases, which come in beautiful custom boxes which open open up to reveal display trays and come with thoughtfully designed booklets and new collectible pieces, in addition to the old ones. As a busy working guy I don't have much time for making MOCs, so Lego collecting is the biggest part of my hobby. But TLG just hasn't wanted my money bad enough. Although they released a few of the truly great sets (6085), which I gobbled up, they then released others which I could care less about (USS Constitution anyone? aka floating parts pack). Instead of buying the blandly boxed, bleyful 6597 with its sprinkling of inferior substituted pieces, I have just purchased an unopened 6396 which looks so nice in its Classic Packaging that I will take pleasure just looking at it before finally sitting down to build it.

So this means no return of nonfranchise Space for 6 more years at least :( ... although given the quality of most current system scale sets vs the Star Wars line, that may be good thing.

Hi all, I see I am in the minority here :) . I didn't mean to be harsh - but to me they don't look an attractive bunch. Somehow I don't picture the average kid nagging his parents to buy these. I don't think TLC has anything to do with it - these sets are probably good representations of their screen models. I think it is the Lucasfilm models that are probably ugly to begin with. That being said, the sets will probably be good for parts. Ideally, I would buy and build every set before passing judgment on it. But I don't have that kind of dinero. So, pictures are important in choosing what to buy.

My two cents: 7250 - 9/10, best of the bunch. Would look nice next to an AT-AT. 7251 - bleh. 7252 - Ugly (note the capital "U"). 7255 - bleh; lots of premolds. 7256 - 8/10; I like Ani's fighter; that droid thing gets a bleh. 7257 - bleh. 7258 - looks like a Star Wars version of a Designer Insect Pack. 7259 - 7/10; cross between X-wing and RGS, and not as good as either. 7260 - 7/10 - as mentioned previously I too like the fact that the catamaran in built not premolded but overall the set is not very impressive. 7261 - 7/10; big but ugly. These guys should get style tips from the Mtron folks. Overall, and especially compared to classic star wars designs, these are lacking aesthetically, although more than likely that has to do with Lucas and not Lego.