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2015-2019, six studs 2020-2023, eight studs

You guessed it! You’re right though, that’s more of a small collection problem than a prints vs stickers problem. I did really like the prints in the 1999 Star Wars sets. Today I mostly prefer prints, but like I said before, I (and many others) like to have the option to leave off stickers. Too many sets just have too many decorations, and I usually prefer the cleaner look of leaving them off. If a set has a nice, tasteful, limited set of decorations where every one is really essential to the look of the thing (the new Galaxy Explorer is the gold standard for this) I do prefer prints.

Yeah, @danth, I think I'm going to have to side with @Alexandrina on debunking your "debunking of the freedom of choice sticker myth". I didn't have a heck of a lot of Lego as a kid either, and my stock of parts for free building was pretty small. Have you ever tried to build a starfighter where the nose cone is a 2x3 black slope with a print of a McDonald's Happy Meal character on it? I did. It wasn't very menacing. In general I hated printed parts as a kid, because I never had a use for that specific print in what I was trying to build. Well, except for control panels. I did like printed control panels. Even today I usually leave off most of the stickers in each set because I don't think they contribute all that much to the look of the set. Except the control panels. I always apply the stickers for the control panels. Now, don't get me wrong - I don't hate prints today, and I don't love stickers either - but I do often prefer to have the decorations I don't want to be stickers, because then I can leave them off. And no, I don't think it would be reasonable for Lego to include two copies of every decorated part, one decorated and one without decorations, so that you can choose whether to build the set decorated or undecorated. That would really drive up costs. So between having (say) a Ninjago or Monkie Kid set with bajillions of printed decorations that I think are ugly and I'd rather do without, or having the same set with a bajillion stickers that I can leave off, I'd rather take the set with the stickers that I can leave off.

7141 Naboo Fighter in 1999!

I think I read somewhere that the Batwing from the 2019 line for the 80th anniversary of Batman’s first comic book appearance was meant to be as close to the 1989 Batwing as they could get away with, without acquiring a separate license for the specific movie vehicle. It’s certainly a 1989 Batwing to me.

Huw on Brickset should be happy that the chain is on the inside of the swing arm, unlike on the Ducati. Rear suspension geometry also looks better than on the Ducati. But unlike the Ducati, this one doesn’t seem to have a two speed gearbox with wave shifter. It’s also about a hundred pieces fewer. As a movie licensed bike made for road use, this breaks the pattern of alternating releases of road bikes and dirt bikes that has been pretty consistent since the earliest Technic motorcycles in this general scale.

In many languages airplane is a masculine noun. Using masculine pronouns for otherwise masculine words is an easy mistake to make if English isn’t your first language. El avión, etc

Lego likes unexpected synergies between unrelated parts of its product line. If that is so - which is the wildest speculation at this point - it would go really well with our favorite hyper-intelligent outcast space whale :)

Meaning that the Avatar 2 wave isn’t officially released until 2023, a couple weeks after the wide release of the movie it’s based on.

Do we know when that GWP is releasing?

Holy moly, that is spectacular.

What an amazing build! It’ll take me hours just to appreciate all the details. Puzzled how you can work on this eight hours a day for sixteen months straight though. How do you find the time?

JB Spielwaren has a review of the whale set from Avatar 2. The front segment of the whale’s body is built with a cavity large enough to hold a minifig, and it’s open at the front. Surely that must be intentional. @Modeltrainman, if you’ve ever wanted to build Jonah and the whale you could hardly ask for a better place to start. As an aside, it occurred to me today that two copies of Bowser’s Airship would be a pretty great start to Noah’s Ark ….

The large base pieces of the mobile hq would be good for simple freight barges (ie boats) or they would work to lay the keel for an M-Tron cargo vessel (ie spaceship).

A very nice little model of one of my favorite prequel era ships.

As far as I know there are no solid rumors of a Republic Gunship for 2023, just wishlisting speculation because it was reasonable to hope for a Gunship to go with the 2022 AT-TE. But then we got the Unjustified instead.

On first glance, the TIE Bomber looks terrible. Way too small. Ick. On closer inspection, I see that it's actually exactly the same size as the original TIE Bomber, so there's really nothing wrong with the scale. Much more interested now. $65 now is only $15 above the inflation-adjusted price of the original $30 TIE Bomber from 2003, so the price is reasonable given the increase in complexity and detail, and likely mass and stability. The X-wing polybag looks pretty good. I might pick it up - it would be a good update to the mini X-wing that I do have, way back from 2003. The Slave 1 microfighter makes me glad I finally picked up the BoBF Slave 1 for $40. The 501st BP makes me glad I finally picked up the original 501st BP for $24.

The penguin slushie guy is an undercover space cop catching extraterrestrial perps in New York City.

2x trans clear unprinted Razor Crest windscreens in one of the Friends sets, I think it’s the diner. Edit, it's the salon.

Need to spell check the topic title.

Neat contest! Who built the ship in the photo, and where can I find more pictures of it?

I just DMd you on Flickr.

Eh, canonically MCU She-Hulk is only six foot seven. That’s tall, but it’s not far enough outside the typical range of human heights that a tallfig is needed, in my opinion. I think a regular minifig would do just fine.

The Studio files would be great, thanks. Can you DM me with them?

Hi @Legosim! I've admired your work on Flickr for a long time, good to see you on Eurobricks. I don't suppose you'd happen to have any sort of digital file for those models, would you? I'd love to try and reproduce those Phantoms, but my workflow for physical building almost always starts with a Studio model, and I don't think I'll be able to find the time to reverse-engineer these wonderful builds in Studio anytime soon.