icm

Thanks for a very detailed review! Sure wish this set hadn't suddenly become more exclusive than an SDCC Boba Fett Brickhead, it's a real beauty.

Billy and the Boingers Bootleg! Cover it with faux-rock-band stickers and you're good to go....

FYI, showing your haul (ie, what you actually got) is a pretty darn good way of showing what's available (ie what someone else might be able to get if they placed an order too). You're the only one here who thinks haul pictures/descriptions are off-topic.

Another Destiny's Bounty this year wouldn't make any sense unless it was 4+! (That actually sounds pretty good to me ... :)

By far the most volume-efficient way to store Lego is taken apart, inside ziploc bags that are filled loosely enough to retain some flexibility and let you squeeze all the air out. I like to use quart-size bags and gallon-size bags. Then bagged sets are stored inside large plastic bins. When you build a set, you add a lot of air - - - just think how much air is "trapped inside" an enclosed box like a building or a car! Technic sets don't usually have large sealed spaces like that, but their structures and gearboxes are still a lot sparser than the raw parts in a pile. A big bin can hold several times as many parts disassembled and bagged than it could if those same parts were assembled in sets, because the sets don't fill the volume the way bags of loose parts do .... Sounds like @Tazmancrash has the right idea. Depending on the size, 50 sets should fit in two or three 56-quart storage bins. Those won't take up too much space in a closet. I store all my sets that way and rotate out a few every now and then to build and swoosh.

Explosiveness? Surely that's autocorrect on your phone, right? You mean expressiveness?

I'm not saying that Friends or Minions are in any way "canon" to City, I'm just pointing out that from a perspective of filling out a product line there are just as many minifig/minidoll/minion-compatible passenger airplanes this year as there have been in any other year, they're just a bit more spread out. I wouldn't even call the situation an Easter egg - it's just a way of providing a bit more variety in essentially the same products as they'd be putting out anyway all under City. Category 1: 4+ propeller airplane + airport terminal (City) Category 2: 4+ passenger jet (Minions) Category 3: 6+ medium-sized passenger jet (Friends) Category 4: 6+ large passenger jet (City) Straw Person No. 1 has a kid that likes the Minions movie, isn't otherwise interested in airplanes. Straw Person No. 1 buys the Minions plane for their kid. TLG sells one 4+ passenger jet that they wouldn't otherwise have sold. Straw Person No. 2 has a kid that likes Friends sets, is only mildly interested in airplanes. Straw Person No. 2 wouldn't buy the City airplanes for their kid, but does buy the Friends plane. TLG sells one 6+ medium-sized passenger jet that they wouldn't otherwise have sold. Straw Person No. 3 has a kid that really likes airplanes and wants to be an airline pilot, but doesn't like girly stuff and hates the Minions movies. Straw Person No. 3 would have bought the whole airport line if it had been larger (one set from each of categories 1-4), but only buys the large City jet. TLG doesn't sell one set from Categories 1-3 that they would otherwise have sold. I think there are more Straw Persons No. 1 and No. 2 than there are Straw Persons No. 3, so it makes sense to spread out the airport content across multiple lines. Just my two cents, it's not a big deal.

I think the reason the Airport wave is so small this year is because they decided to split it across different themes. Friends got a medium-sized passenger jet and Minions got a 4+ passenger jet; add that to the large City passenger jet and the 4+ City propeller plane and you've got a normal-sized Airport wave, except with more variety in the minifigures. Minions and Minidolls instead of only Minifigures.

^^ Looks like it has about the same amount of interior space as the U-wing kit from 2016, and it's a lot easier to access the interior.

Brickheadz Tauntaun battle pack :)

The Night Buzzard looks great - if and only if I think of it as a "midi-scale" version, similar to the midi-scale Millennium Falcon and Imperial Star Destroyer from ten years ago. It doesn't have nearly enough interior space to count as System minifigure playscale. The new Jedi Interceptor looks pretty good from the outside, but it'll need modding so that the pilot can sit upright like in all the previous versions. The ITS transport actually looks like a really good model with a very accurate shape and a reasonably large, playable interior at a reasonable price. It's a pity that it's such a boring, obscure ship! General Grievous's starfighter looks like a really good model - it's smoother and more accurate than the previous version by leaps and bounds. The price, unfortunately, is awful.

^ And that's exactly why I'm planning on getting it, budget permitting! To me, it's the closest spiritual successor yet to that kit, even though it's on a dinosaur island instead of an airless moon.

Thanks for posting, it's good to get the real story from the person who knows it best! With last year's big Batmobile, the designers were aware of a very good fan build (Dave Slater) and so they went out of their way to make every shape solution different from his so that nobody could say they copied anything. I wonder if that's a new policy.

Sounds like a great Rogue One wave to me! I'd just add that if in our make-believe world the next X-wing can be (in, say 2022) a Blue Squadron fighter with General Merrick, then let's add a Partisan X-wing in 2026 with Two-Tubes and Saw Gerrera.

It was quite a scandal at the time in the AFOL community. I believe the MOC was by Cavegod, and the cockpit shape of the set also was heavily inspired by the MOC. I don't remember the whole story offhand, so if you want to know more you'll have to find the forum threads about it yourself.

Probably a good idea to take Police sets off the shelves at this time. They'll probably be back in a few months.

Not disparaging the final design is certainly the polite thing to do, but I haven't heard about it being an NDA-like signed requirement before ... citation, please?

This is a worthwhile read about the development of this theme. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-05-25-why-it-took-five-years-to-build-lego-super-mario

Thanks for the review. In the video, the suspension seems relatively hard: both the front and rear suspension assemblies return to full extension immediately after being released, unlike the notoriously soft Chiron suspension which does not. Is that true?

Please show me a brick built Creator Expert style model with an eight speed sequential gearbox actuated from paddle shifters at the driver's seat. Until then, Technic is the right place for a model with this feature set.

I skipped the 42056 and 42083, but I think this one has finally convinced me to take the plunge ... Still gonna wait for a review though, not gonna buy it on day one without a review.

Really nice build there, and a stupendous custom minifig too! How much did the parts cost for this version? I built a Spiffcraft in Studio a while ago, based on one I found on Flickr, but I haven't ordered parts for it yet.

Thunderbirds - either the 1965 original series or the 2015 remake. I was so disappointed when Andrew Clark's Ideas project didn't make it through review!

I dunno, the marine exploration ship seems like decent value to me at $150. It is expensive, to be sure, and the price per part is very high, but it is a very big ship. As Jang would say, the "volume of stuff" looks about right. The 2015 deep sea exploration ship was $120; it had a much larger side build but no second hull.

Way back when the set was first released, some people on this forum (I don't recall who right now) did some great work reverse-engineering the original submission of the Pirate Bay. I've been planning to do a "modernized" version of the original submission in Studio, replacing the raised baseplate and the old narrow ship hull with modern constructions, but it's really hard to construct a satisfying replacement for the old narrow hulls. It's really important to me that the "buildable, modern Pirate Bay" have a shipwreck that can be rebuilt into a ship about the size of the old Renegade Runner or 6271 Imperial Flagship, without destroying the rest of the build the way rebuilding the ship does in 21322, and using few enough parts to keep the complete set at a simulated price point of $200-$300 USD. At first I thought I could adapt the hull from Steamboat Willie or from the 3-in-1 Pirate Ship, but their SNOT constructions completely fill the hull volume in the bow and stern and are therefore unsuitable for use in mostly hollow hulls that are furnished as pigsties, like in the original Pirate Bay. I've been looking through the Pirate MOCs subforum looking at past builds for inspiration, but there are 172 pages and I've only made it through 37 .... If anybody knows of any ship with a small brick-built hull and a good amount of interior space, could you please reply with a link? So far I like the two ships linked below. (There were probably more good small ships in those 37 pages, but the Flickr/TinyPic/Photobucket apocalypses mean the pictures are no longer visible.) These ships are good for a start, but of course it would be great to see as many ships of similar size with non-prefab hulls as possible in order to learn techniques and build the best alternate Pirate Bay ship possible. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/7266f841-368f-4fd1-bd4c-24d91944b544 https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/56013-trading-ship/ Thanks a lot!