icm

Here's an analogy for what Lepin does. Imagine you had a book binding machine at home and you started printing off a zillion copies of Harry Potter and selling them super cheap online. That would clearly be criminal theft of intellectual property even though you weren't actually stealing any of the materials used in the books you sold. That's what Lepin and some other clone brands do with Lego sets and some fan creations. It's blatant, egregious theft. That's why we can't support anything that's built with Lepin parts, even if the build itself is ok. Using Lepin parts and modding a Lepin copy of a Lego kit supports theft. Edit - just to be clear, I'm not accusing you of theft in any way. Some people buy Lepin kits precisely because they are more affordable than genuine Lego and I understand that. People who buy Lepin kits are not thieves, it's the higher-ups at Lepin who are. But all the same, we stick with genuine Lego on this forum.

In the comments on the Brickset review, Huw says this might not be available until August in the USA. Does anyone have any more information about that?

Yep. You'll find a lot of brand loyalty on this forum and a lot of disdain for brands like Lepin, which aren't just competitors but are outright thieves. The build you posted is OK, but still - we don't have anything to do with Lepin here.

What pleases me about the background information they released is the fact that this theme is apparently the brainchild of their first designer hired from mainland China. So it's not so much that the higher-ups at Lego said "we want to make a boatload of money in China, now all you European and American set designers get busy cooking up something Chinese" and this is the best they could come up with, it's more that the Chinese designer (I don't recall his name at the moment) came on board wanting to make the sorts of Monkey-inspired sets that he would have wanted as a kid, and the higher-ups said "good idea, that fits with our strategic direction, now here's a humongous budget so go to town." That makes me more confident that there are all sorts of authentically Chinese details and references that I just don't see as an American, and that the whole theme is more than a "pandering cash grab." That said, my introduction to the Monkey King stories was reading the unabridged Journey to the West in translation, so I'd much rather see mystical mountain temples and heavenly peach trees than giant mechs. To repeat a hypothetical example I used when talking to a friend of mine, if you told me Lego was making a theme based on "Hamlet" and it turned out to be "loosely inspired by Hamlet, featuring singing lions and warthogs aka The Lion King" instead of "castles based on sixteenth century Denmark," I'd be a little disappointed - not that the Lion King sets wouldn't be fun in their own right, just that they wouldn't be anything close to what I was hoping for. But if this authentically Chinese designer that helmed the Monkie Kid theme and co-produced the Monkie Kid TV show wanted to go in this direction with the source material - well, that's his choice and I hope the theme is successful. It's just not my cup of tea.

Nice figures! If Ninjago went to the Wild West, that would be fine with me!

Silly idea, not one I'd like to buy: Clone Turbo Tank / Technic crossover. $350, 3500-4000 parts, 6+R sequential gearbox with ten wheel HOG steering, ten wheel suspension, powered observation turret and gun turrets. Extra points if everything works without major flaws! and the steering connects to a little steering wheel by a minifig seat in the front and you can sneak a fake engine beneath the seat.

Ahch-To Library Tree - $30 USD, 250-300 parts, Rey, Luke, Yoda. Tree opens up for play access to library room, has cabinet with two books. Also has catapult function to blast Luke out the door. Includes flames on boat studs to knock over like in City fire sets, Rey's staff, Luke's torch. Dagobah Dark Side Cave - $30 USD, 250-300 parts, Yoda, Luke, Darth Vader (with Luke face). Accessories include Luke's backpack, blaster, lightsaber, Darth Vader's lightsaber, snake, Yoda's staff.

With Monkey Kid (sorry not sorry, I'm gonna spell it with ey) officially revealed, I guess we can now officially call 2020 the year of the ships, just like 2019 was the year of the spaceships. So many spaceships last year! And so many ships this year. Barracuda Bay, 3-in-1 Pirate Ship, Destiny's Bounty, Marine Research Ship, and Monkey Kid container ship. They're all great models, but mostly out of my budget, even though they're all priced quite reasonably according to parts count (except for the Marine Research Ship, but it has two huge floating hulls so it gets a pass on parts count). Edit, plus the AT-AT (land ship) and Passenger Airplane (air ship) (which are not so reasonably priced according to parts count, and also probably out of my budget). Edit, plus the Helicarrier (air ship)!

How about a big brick-built tauntaun with a big ice arch like the Jurassic Park D2C?

City Mail Plane and City Safari Truck are sold at Walmart and Barnes & Noble in the USA.

Young Draco Malfoy, zipping around on a broom and getting chased by Muggles in helicopters as per his boasts to his friends in book one!

And these threads always come back to Star Wars. The circle is complete.

I think the space in the product line for another small airplane is already occupied by the 4+ airplane in the Minions wave.

I think of inconsistencies between the PT+OT and TCW this way: TCW is the Clone Wars told from the perspective of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka the way they'd like to remember it. Matt Lanter's Anakin is the wise, good, heroic but also troubled Jedi that old Ben Kenobi wants to remember when he reminisces with Luke about his father; Hayden Christensen's Anakin is the surly, vengeful, murderous man he really was. Likewise, TCW's Obi-Wan is a bit livelier, wittier, more sarcastic than Ewan McGregor's performance because that's the way old Ben wants to remember his time in the war; it's a way of suppressing the pain of its traumatic beginning and end (and middle, since it's war). Edit: the Anakin we see in TCW is Anakin as Obi-Wan wants to remember him, and also Anakin as Darth Vader wants to remember his former self: good, selfless, heroic and troubled but JUSTIFIABLY troubled .... There are elements of truth to the corruption and hubris we see bringing the Jedi down in TCW, but the Jedi really aren't quite as bad as all that, all things considered. Vader and Kenobi just have to emphasize their faults in what they remember. Vader does to tell himself the lie that everything he's done is justified and he's glad to be where he is now in order to suppress his feelings to the contrary, and Kenobi does to try to come to terms with the downfall of everything that was ever important to him in his youth. So in TCW as the way they choose to remember the Clone Wars, we see the heroism and prowess of their own selves and other Jedi selectively highlighted along with the hubris and arrogance of the Jedi Order.

Guess it depends on how you distribute ratings with a 1-10 scale. Some people think of it as a uniform distribution, others think of it as a Gaussian distribution centered at 5 with a standard deviation of somewhere between 1 and 2, others as a higher-order distribution looking somewhat like a shifted Gaussian with the peak somewhere between 8 and 9 like a grade distribution .... Sorry, I'm just working on a paper with a bunch of covariance stuff in it right now, so I had to comment ....

It looks to me like the cabin is accessed from opening side walls like in the Black Pearl, the gun deck has two guns and two stud wide planking on each side above it at deck level like the Barracuda, and the poop deck is slanted like on the Barracuda. There doesn't seem to be a door to the cabin, like on the Queen Anne's Revenge. There is a narrow two stud wide staircase from the deck to the poop deck. There are probably no holds under the deck forward or aft of the guns.

I'd put this very shortly after City Space, actually. I think of the 2019 City rover as like Mark Watney's rover from the movie version of The Martian; this reminds me of his rover from the book version. So pretty darn close in any hypothetical Lego space timeline. But then there's the weirdo from another planet - maybe Watney just never saw it?

The colors and the face print look a lot like those in set 10191 "Star Justice" from 2008. That was built by an AFOL in the then-current "Pre-Classic Space" AFOL quasi-theme/trend. The basic idea for "Pre-Classic Space" was to build chunkier, clunkier spaceships and rovers in white and light gray to suggest the spacecraft that the Classic Space ships were developed from. So you're not wrong about the Creator 3-in-1 Space Rover Explorer possibly representing a time between City Space and Classic Space. https://brickset.com/sets/10191-1/Star-Justice

Just chiming in to point out something that must be pointed out at least once in every discussion of new vs old Technic supercars and Technic in general - - - 8880, for all its amazing features, relied on a set of specialized new molds for the gearshift, the four wheel drive, and the four wheel steering. Most of those new parts were never used again. I just got a used copy of 8880 on Tuesday and built it today, so I know firsthand what an amazing set it is - - - but the "soul" of Lego Technic is achieving mechanical solutions with existing parts, not relying on new parts that were never used before or since. With that in mind, I think the Porsche, Bugatti, and Land Rover, despite all their many flaws, are much better representations of what Technic can do. They have new wheel rims and mudguards, sure, but those are decorative elements that aren't important to the technical functions. The technical functions are achieved with existing parts, except for a new wave shifter and blue gear in the Bugatti that are much more generic and therefore versatile than the extremely specialized shifting, drive, and steering system that was invented for the Super Car in 1994. Dangit, now I might talk myself into getting the Bugatti or the Land Rover. Wallet, please say no.

Ever since I was a kid, it's been my opinion that Lego has a unique talent for photographing sets from the least flattering angle for the box art. At least, it's almost always my opinion that the most flattering angle of any particular set is not the one on the box. But that's just me!

I usually have zero interest in walkers, but this is superb. I love the level of detail, the overall shape, the clean, uncluttered interior, the two seater cockpit, the reel for Luke's grappling line, the speeder garage ... And that new 74-Z speeder bike is just fantastic. I probably can't afford the AT-AT, but if there's an Endor set anytime soon with the speeder bike in brown it'll be a must-buy for sure.

That's absurd. Who the heck ordered that? If they shuffle the parts around like they're shuffling around the minifigs, a site that is already extremely difficult to use is going to become a hundred times worse.

Well, that too. Sort of looks like they took the shape of the app-controlled Batmobile and stuffed in a mobile lab instead of motors, battery box, receiver. It's just that it's this big all-terrain vehicle with sci-fi styling that carries a mobile lab. The details are different.

Does the vehicle in the Gallimimus pursuit set 75940 remind anyone else of the 6927 All Terrain Vehicle from Classic Space?

I think they're the same wheels as on the 2019 City Rover.