kbalage

Lol :) There are 3 black older gears available on Bricklink so they do exist, but I don't know where they came from.

Which is quite interesting as I couldn't find any sets with black versions, do you know where it came from?

It was apparently one of the gears that this specific set needed to blend in the background and to support the chains :)

This is the channel of JB Spielwaren, which is LEGO shop. They get stock from TLG well before the release (even the reveal) date, all shops do. But this shop (and another one in Romania) decided to exploit the system and they use their own stock to create unboxing / speed build / review videos after the sets are revealed, but way before the review embargo of RLFMs. Technically they don't brake any rules with TLG, and apparently no one cares enough about it to change rules affecting all of their business partners. So the recipe is fairly simple, if you want to be first with LEGO reviews, you need to open a shop.

This would be a cool concept and useful for people who have a larger collection and like to disassemble older models for parts, but based on the visible trends of the last few years, TLG isn't really targeting those fans, so I don't think it'll ever happen. If they cared about those people, we should have seen a lot more progress on the Powered Up app, for example.

42082 is also motorized, so you "can't move the gears freely," yet people seemed to like it a lot.

42100 had 2 hubs and 7 motors for 450 EUR. Even with the price increases since that release 700 EUR seems to be a quite bold price tag that cannot be justified alone by the electronics included.

Those photos were published because the sets are coming in June. If the rest of the Technic lineup is being released in August as usual then we might need to wait until the beginning of July to get the official images.

After quickly checking the small John Deere tractor I would say the shade of green on the stickers should be more or less ok, I don't think TLG updated anything between these two models just to make it worse. What you see on this photo is more the result of a light source being reflected in a different way on the stickered surfaces and on the panels/beams themselves.

It's not uncommon to have a 1-2 month delay in the US for certain summer releses, Brickset has an article on this.

"It's Technic, no one understands what's happening in there anyway"

This was a half-hidden function of the Zetros, where you can see how the differential lock and other internal mechanisms work in the Control+ app. I really hope we get something similar for this set, as an education / demonstrational aspect is the best use of AR for Technic instead of the silly implementation of the pullback racers.

I won't make videos using leaked photos, and I don't want to judge a set based on a single blurry (and potentially preliminary) photo anyway without any confirmed information.

The problem with the direction of current Technic designs is the half-hearted approach to the system - they're developing more and more specialized panels for the licensed models to have less gaps and look more realistic, but they refuse to add certain elements like the windscreen, or intentionally leave large gaps for a specific feature like the cutout for the engine on the F1 car or here at the rear. There are workarounds for most cars, like adding the A-pillars with flex axles, but let's face it, this one just looks weird without a windshield. I think if LEGO wants to continue making these licensed cars (which it seems they'll do), they'll either have to choose models that translate well into Technic sets, or accept the additional cost of developing one-off custom parts for these models. And I haven't even mentioned the recurring problem of big gaps between the wheels and the wheel arches, especially on models like this that have almost no suspension travel at this scale. And yes, I still realize that Technic should be about playability and functions for kids, but as TLG started to push the theme towards display pieces for adults, then they really should design products that meet the expectations of the audience.

Creator Expert / Icons vehicles are actually between 1:12 and 1:14 most of the time :)

I intentionally picked these two from my (rather low number of) car samples to show their huge difference. Still, these are Technic cars for a similar audience, so the comparison makes sense from the customers' perspective. If you expand your model to a larger number of sets with more diversity and variation you might get an average for the price/weight ratio, but you might get that as well for any other arbitrary pairs of proportions.

I didn't say pricing was actually based on the price/piece ratio, I said I think it has more to do with the size of the model, and how TLG categorizes it based on that. Weight can be an indicator too, although by comparing a few car sets I found no evidence of the price/weight ratio being more precise across the range than the piece count or the volume of the sets. As an example, the 42127 Batmobile has 1360 pieces for 100 EUR with a weight of 982g, if I compare it to the 42125 Ferrari set with 1684 pieces, it weights 1313g and has a price tag of 200 EUR, none of the comparable ratios make much sense. For me it easier to say TLG came up with a 200 EUR price tag for the 1:10 cars, and a 100-140 EUR range for the ~1:13 vehicles. This does not add much to the (theoretical) pricing of the Liebherr crane, but might help to understand why a set can be very expensive if the end result looks big.

I'm 100% sure this won't happen, but I really wonder what magic is hiding in that box that justifies the price. I' fear that TLG's pricing strategy these days is based on the size of the final model, and not based on the parts included.

It's interesting that the Liebherr is described as 150 cm tall... wasn't it rumored to be downsized? Or is this already the smaller version? :) With 2 hubs and 6 motors, it better have a big pile of metal parts for that price :) Another thing is the lack of Control+ mentioned on the Audi RS Q e-tron. I wonder if it'll be really motorized or otherwise how that price will be justified.

If someone has the same opinion frequently that's also suspicious, what if the reviewer only does this to please the audience? :)

Unfortunately they don't even sell them in every European country...

I'm sure you find lots of experienced and trustful reviewers online with full transparency who do this strictly in their free time, without monetizing videos, running ads on their websites or using affiliate links, simply because making LEGO reviews is such a fun and rewarding activity thanks to the huge overly-positive and accepting fan community.

That's a common observation nowadays. If you don't pay for the exact sets you review suddenly you become totally incapable of justifying its value or properties. It doesn't matter if "honest non-sponsored" reviewers buy their sets from Patreon- or YouTube money, or they actually run a toy shop like HDS, they have to be the source of truth because they have a receipt in hand and they said it's an honest review, so it really has to be :)

We'll see. The dimensions are weird, even if that's the packaging. Motors, sensors and lights come in plastic bags and I couldn't find such dimension details for them on the official pages. As far as I know only the hubs are packed in paper boxes, but this almost square thing doesn't really look like anything we had before.

You mean 88019 ;) Theoretically it can be anything as the large Mindstorms Technic hub's number is 88016 so this range is not only reserved for motors and accessories. I'm not sure though that creating yet another hub for the platform would be really a step in the right direction.