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Oh, ok ... In that case, well done to Bricked1980! Thanks for letting me know, I hadn't heard the news yet.

@JintaiZ, it's great that @Bricked1980 made it to 10K, but why single him out for congratulations right now? Do you know something that we don't know about which project is getting approved in the current review cycle?

With the 2020 versions of what? Speak up, Gryffindor Brick Kid, I can't hear what you're saying.

Well, shoot. I couldn't find a better head for Sophocles Sarcophagus on Bricklink. Looks like Mr Sly Boot gets a reprieve.

Oh, okay - I didn't notice the back view of the airplane in one of the other photos of the setup. Looks like it's basically a mod of Steve Trevor's airplane in the 2017 Wonder Woman set. I think I can figure out the rest from there.

I've long considered this one of the lesser Adventurers sets, but you make some very good points regarding how much playability it fits in a small package. For whatever reason, when I was reading this review last night the first thing I thought of was this page from Cigars of the Pharaoh ... maybe I should get myself a copy of this kit and replace Sam Sinister's head with something more kindly. Then he can be Sophocles Sarcophagus! It's so hard to embed a Google image search result these days that I had to embed somebody else's Flickr version of the scene instead ... I did NOT build this, it just came up in Google. Hopefully you recognize the reference if you've read the Tintin books!

Hmm ... people on this forum have been asking for a zoo and a farm for so long that I'll believe it when I see it. The zoo and farm are 2HY prices, not 1HY prices, so I'm skeptical that they've been leaked so soon. A royal carriage sounds more at home in Disney Princess and the cabin sounds more like a Creator set. I can believe a microscale cruise ship in Creator 3-in-1 for 70 euro, but not a minifig cruise ship in City for that price. Put me down as skeptical about that entire list. I've seen the leaked grainy images for 60282/3/4, though, so I believe those.

Yeah, instructions and box weight can make price per gram unreliable too, since Bricklink doesn't list those weights for a lot of sets. I think they're roughly proportional to total weight, but I haven't done any analysis because I don't know how to write a crawler to get the data from Bricklink automatically and it would be extremely tedious to get a large comprehensive sample by hand.

Going by weight the 2017 UCS Millennium Falcon and 2019 UCS Imperial Star Destroyer are both pretty good value at about 6.0 and 5.6 cents per gram, respectively.

My preferred measure of value for money is no longer price per part, but price per gram using US RRP and total unopened box weight. Extraordinarily good value is under 5 cents per gram, extraordinarily bad value is over 8 cents per gram. The mosaics are just over 7 cents per gram, so they're relatively bad value for money in terms of how much stuff you're getting. Obviously the price per part ratio is great because of all the 1x1 plates or tiles.

There is actually lots of other sci fi / fantasy space on the shelves ... It's called Super Heroes. Both the DC and Marvel lines have been responsible for a few spaceships a year since they began. Marvel Super Heroes, notably, falls under the Disney umbrella like Star Wars does.

$250 sounds like it could be close to minifig scale then, not super sized as some have speculated. I can easily imagine Lego taking a model the size of 75021 and adding a thousand parts to it. After all, the X-wing nearly doubled in parts count between 2006 and 2019 while maintaining the same physical size. Has this reliable source said anything about the release date?

The 918 / 924 / 928 are pretty firmly spaceships far more advanced than anything in late-70s NASA concepts, but they bear a passing resemblance to some of the more ambitious Space Shuttle proposals. (Space Shuttle was designed in the mid-70s.) Clearly there's not a one-to-one correspondence. There's plenty of wiggle room for one kid in 1978 to see the 918 / 924 / 928 as starships akin to those in Star Wars, but there's also room for another kid in 1978 to see them as spaceships akin to those in NASA concept art. That's the great thing about the first wave of Classic Space, compared to later waves. The Galaxy Commander from 1983, and later the Gamma V Laser Craft and FX Star Patroller from 1985 look a lot more fanciful. Then the Taurean Ore Carrier / Cosmic Fleet Voyager from 1987 and later ships like the Blacktron flagship and the Space Police and Ice Planet flagships don't look like anything NASA might build; they're clearly starships.

I'd say that later Classic Space was pretty far-out in the galaxy, but the 1978-1983 waves that define "Classic Space" for most people are pretty close to the aesthetic and technological level of Space:1999, which features a Kubrick-inspired moonbase but then goes completely off the rails with regards to realism when it sends the Moon spinning off into space in order to encounter the alien of the week many light years from Earth. The limitations of wedge plates and slopes give the larger spaceships a sleeker look than the bundles of tubes and spheres in Space:1999, which lends the overall setting a bit more of a far-future feel. But then again, the few examples of official media that Lego produced for Classic Space, circa 1985, gave it a much more far-future setting with huge exploration starships in remote corners of the galaxy, like Star Trek.

I know, I know, I know ... City Space isn't real Space, so it doesn't count and isn't relevant to this discussion ... but when I was a kid and into my teens I was really into Solar System exploration and the sort of recognizably near-future spaceflight in things like Thunderbirds and 2001. So when I saw set 60229 Rocket Assembly and Transport, I saw this episode of Thunderbirds ("Day of Disaster") And when I saw how all the sets connect together like this: (aka a Seriously Huge Investment in Parts on my account last summer), I saw things like this (respectively the spaceships from 2001's Mission to Mars, 2015's The Martian, 1998's Deep Impact, and 2009's Avatar) https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Interstellar_Vehicle_Venture_Star?file=Isv.jpg When I was a kid I would write stories that were sort of like a cross between Star Wars and Ender's Game, filtered through the technology of 2001 and early-2000s NASA concepts, and I would design my own spaceships for those stories. That's why, having grown up studying spaceships enough to know where fact ends and fiction begins in near-future sci-fi, in my mind I'm just so happy with the 2019 City Space line as the near-future sci-fi "Interplanetary Patrol" Space line I dreamed of as a kid. I know that many of you in this thread have different ideas about what you want in a Space theme, so ... now that Lego has released the Space line of my dreams and I've been fortunate enough to get the whole thing, I'm happy to stand aside and let each of you get the Space line of your dreams. Whenever it comes. Space, come back, we want you! (Just not to the exclusion of NASA space or City space or Star Wars space, please ... we want them all!)

Creator Expert wasn't well defined in 2010 when the Imperial Flagship came out. That means that set 10210 has, at times, been classified by Brickset and or Bricklink as Advanced Models, Pirates, and Creator Expert. Certainly when it was released it was seen by most AFOLs as a capstone to the 2009 Pirates line.

The whole build is super fun, with all those characters and Easter eggs from all those lines, but what I like best is the updated Bi-Wing Baron. Can you post more pictures of it, please?

Sigh ... I'm back. Matlab is crunching numbers and there's nothing to do in the meantime. I apologize for taking this thread in a contentious direction. It really is my fault, and I'm sorry. The well-known problem with Internet discussions is that it's hard to read nuance and inflection into text. There was some language earlier in the thread that I read as angrier than I probably should have, and I responded by being more dismissive than I should have. In this post, and maybe one or two more depending on how the forum software acts, I'll just quote that language to show that while my perception of outrage and entitlement in others may have been ill-judged, it was not entirely without grounds. Just to be clear, from the beginning of this thread I have mainly objected to that language, not to the substance of the OP's posts, which substance is "I can't wait for the next traditional Space theme!" So there it is ... outrage, scandal, laziness, patronizing, entitlement. I'm sorry for reading more into your text than you intended. It was just Internet forum hyperbole, and you weren't really speaking of outrage, or scandals, or entitlement, in any larger sense. Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that if you use your own imagination and apply a bit of abstract thinking you may find (at least, I find) that there's plenty of non-Star Wars Space sets to be excited about in the past few years, even despite the lack of a traditional Space line or a D2C Classic Space-inspired set. For instance, do you really believe that Lego expects kids to limit the Rover in set 60225 to a testing lot at Johnson Space Center? No, they want them to use their imagination and take it to Mars. Likewise, if you apply a bit of abstract thinking it's easy to make a Ninjago speeder into a spaceship, or to have your Classic Space astronauts interact with your TLM2 spaceships. (Heck, that's even encouraged by the story.) That's all. I'm sorry for letting my attempts to convey that in prior posts seem like nerd rage or a sense of entitlement on my part, with reference to others disagreeing with my own views on the whole thing. Hum de hoo, Matlab is about 40% done with whatever it's doing right now. Twiddle my thumbs, fiddle de dee.

Alright, I'm out of this. Time to get back to work, stop wasting time on Internet forums. I'll just say this: I consider myself as passionate about Lego as anyone else on this forum (and goodness knows I spend too much money on it), but I just can't get into nerd rage, outrage, entitlement over whether your favorite toy company does or does not sell a $100 toy in your favorite color scheme. Like, use different language. Not outrage, not entitlement, just disappointment and wishing this year's product line were a little different. Not trash-talking what there is. But obviously I'm not one to lecture on taking Lego too seriously, because here I am engaging in this sort of conversation instead of doing my job at work. Cheers, everyone. Hip hip hooray for the next Space line and the next Classic Space tribute set, whenever they come!

Please explain why a Lego spaceship must mirror one of the color schemes used between 1978 and 1998 in order to count as Space.

Nope, totally serious. @MAB knows exactly what the meaning of this thread is, and so do I. When you follow these forums for long enough, you'll see this exact same thread crop up time and time again with a different title and a different OP, but it's the same thread every time. If you look at my Flickr page, you'll see that practically the only thing I ever (digitally) build is Classic Space, so I really do sympathize with you and other people who just want a traditional Space set one of these days, dangit. And I do concur that there hasn't been a traditional Space line since 2013. That doesn't mean I don't get tired of people saying it's "outrageous" that there isn't a D2C Classic Space set out right now, or a traditional Space line, and then dishing on the many great options there are right now. Have you gone through the old thread I linked and read it? Every single thing you say except the specific details about this years's MBS Mos Eisley Cantina has been repeated about a dozen times in that thread.

That's a well shaped, convincing rendition of one of the least Star Warsy spaceships in the whole canon! How well do you think it'll hold up in real parts? Do you think it's sturdy or fragile?

Oh, and the two spaceships from the Overwatch line last year, let's not forget those! They may be nominally based on a video game, but the set designer took such great creative license that they're virtually original creations. You even get an astronaut gorilla with those! (The astronaut gorilla being the part of the set that takes the least creative license with the source material, somehow.)

Hear, hear! I was going to make virtually that identical post myself. Last year was an absolute bonanza for space sets.... As long as you don't hold yourself to an antiquated rigid standard that only "traditional" Space counts. I think I've repeated that in like a dozen separate posts by now. Speaking of which, you left off at least two TLM2 spaceships; the Rescue Rocket and the Rexplorer. Plus the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander. (Not to mention the great selection of --- ssshhh, quiet --- spaceships from a galaxy far far away!). And the flying machines from Ninjago and, before that, Nexo Knights and the Lego Batman movie that are, let's face it, functionally indistinguishable from spaceships. And all the flying machines from Super Heroes that are also either spaceships with a capital S or nearly indistinguishable from spaceships. I could go on, but I won't.

According to the usual definitions at Brickset, Bricklink, and other fan sites, "Classic Space" is the 1978-1986 era in which the astronaut minifigures had old-style helmets without visors and plain solid-color helmet/airtanks/hips and legs/torso combinations with the only decoration being the Space logo on the front. According to this strict definition, "Classic Space" was replaced in 1987 by Futuron and Blacktron, which were the first named Space subthemes, the first distinct factions, and the first to have visors and more detailed torso decorations. Speaking less strictly, nothing "replaced" Classic Space. The Lego Space line evolved continuously through the year 1998. When Star Wars was introduced in 1999, Space took a two-year break and came back in 2001 with Life on Mars. It was then absent until 2007-2013, and has been absent as a continuous line since then, though there have been original Space-themed sets in other lines, including Creator, the Lego Movie, the Lego Movie 2 (which was all about spaceships!), the Lego Batman Movie, and even Star Wars itself via original content like the Freemaker Adventures. @danth believes that there is a non-compete agreement between Lego and Lucasfilm preventing Lego from developing and marketing new original Space themes while Star Wars movies are in theaters. I'm not privy to any inside information, but on the surface that argument seems plausible, especially when you consider the proliferation of action-adventure themes since 1999. Action-adventure themes share much of the design language of Space, with an emphasis on fantastic and whimsical vehicles that have moving parts, transformation features, and deployable small craft, but they are set on some comic-book version of Earth rather than somewhere out in the galaxy. Action-adventure themes began in 1995 with Aquazone, which is well known to have begun development as a Space subtheme called Seatron, and to have used Space designers and Space design elements. The next action-adventure theme was Time Cruisers, which again had a number of Space and sci-fi elements. After the introduction of Star Wars in 1999, non-Space action-adventure themes became the rule. For instance, Rock Raiders is, like Aquazone, a Space theme in disguise: the titular miners are on another planet, with a large spaceship in orbit. Alpha Team, introduced in 2001, carried on the tradition of colored glass in its flying machines. It had a rocket and an airspeeder. Its next wave, in 2002, had a base and a capital ship and a range of smaller ships ... but they were underwater, not in space. And so on, with the Arctic wave of Alpha Team, then Agents and Ultra Agents. See also Ninjago, Nexo Knights, Legends of Chima, Power Miners, and Atlantis.