icm

Would it be possible to get a picture or two showing how the antenna is built? Thanks.

Thanks for posting! The space hopper is fun and I really like the antenna. I think I'm going to have to build it myself. Some time ago I bought a couple extra copies of 31066 for a 2017 Space line, but I focused on improving the Moonbase, which resulted in a smaller rover and left too few parts to build any kind of space scooter afterwards. Here's a potato quality photo of that; there are better images of individual builds in my Flickr album.

No spoilers here, but at 16:06 in episode 1 you can see the space shuttle and booster stack from set 1682 on the shelf in Dustin's room. That set was released in 1990, not 1985 ... :) ... silly little details like that are what fan forums are for, right?

I dunno, looks like they put a lot of effort into the landspeeder. The form factor is exactly the same as the previous model, so it looks pretty much the same at first glance, but it actually looks like it's built completely differently than the previous model, especially from the passenger section back. There's certainly a lot more change between this landspeeder and the previous model than between the last two snowspeeder releases. Want a midi-ish scale X-wing and TIE fighter? Go buy the Juniors kits. Then get back to me with sales figures - the great numbers in the sky that only a privileged (?) few know, and they're not telling.

60028 and 60029 are definitely the best minifigure playscale rockets Lego has ever released, but they're far from the 1 stud = 1 foot scale that I use when planning minifigure "scale" builds. 60028 is styled after SLS, which is about the size of the Saturn V. The Saturn V in 21309 is about 3 feet tall and is about 1:100 scale, while 1 stud = 1 foot is about 1:50 scale. A minifigure "scale" SLS would then be about 6 or 7 feet tall; 60028 is about a foot and a half tall.

You didn't ask me, but I'll answer your question anyway. The answer is - perhaps. Depends on what it was. Some senseless changes in my family, at work, or in the economy and government might be worth getting angry about (but not on this forum). Changes to an ongoing toy line, or any ongoing piece of pop culture, aren't worth getting angry about, even if I don't like the changes that have been made. Also, before getting angry over "senseless changes" to something, it's generally well worth your while to think over the changes and see whether or not they make sense to other people, even if not to you. That's a general principle of life. I don't mean to lecture or talk about things "back in my day," because by many standards I'm really quite young. But I'm just enough older than you to have grown up during the "crisis period", such that my childhood Legos were from the late 1990s and early 2000s. During that period Lego went through a tremendous amount of change - the building styles and parts libraries changed radically on timescales of just two years or so, which is much faster than they've changed in the succeeding years. I followed Lego online and even posted (underage) in the BZPower forums, so I was aware of the bankruptcy crisis. Many of Lego's decisions in that time made me mad, because I hated most of their newer products and was shocked by their violence compared to the late-1990s sets that I was first acquainted with. I had my own ideas, too, for what would sell well and what would save the company - surely if they just went all-in on a Thunderbirds license those sets would sell like hotcakes! Or perhaps if they would release my dream Space line, a bunch of realistic near-future space fighters with extremely detailed builds and lots of functions, based on my own "Interplanetary Patrol" set of stories and patterned off of my favorite MOC (here), that would revive their fortunes because it would be such a contrast from the preceding Space lines. - - - But then I grew up, and I realized that changes in Lego product lines are small potatoes compared to getting an education, finding a job, and worrying about the proverbial "wars and rumors of wars in far places." I learned that other people have different opinions than I do, and that's OK, and that Lego has no responsibility whatsoever to do anything I want. And that's OK too. So, I understand your perspective. You got a certain idea of "what Lego City is supposed to be" during your formative years, and it hasn't stayed in that box. That can be hard to take, just like a lot of people found Rian Johnson's direction of The Last Jedi to be hard to take. (That's just an example, let's not get into that topic. I think it's great.) It's a different picture than mine, and I got angry when my formative idea of "what Lego is supposed to be" wasn't matched by events for some years. From my perspective, I think the subthemes of City that venture outside the metropolis are great. I grew up with Divers, Outback, Arctic, and Adventurers as listed on Brickset, and so I think that the Deep Sea, Forest/Mountain/Swamp, Arctic, and Jungle subthemes of City are pretty cool revivals of that content (or similar content, anyway) with modern parts and techniques. You see differently. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Neither of us gets to define the direction Lego takes, nor do we get to define our experiences and impressions of Lego during our formative years as any more important than those of anyone else - and that's A-OK.

Then why will they care if it's badged under City?

Imagine all the complaints from the many people who prefer in-house themes to external intellectual property! I think Lego does just fine developing NOVA-type sets without a license. That's what the exploration themes are, right? Besides, the Discovery sets from 2003 (which are basically what you're proposing, just extended to other topics besides space exploration) were frankly pretty boring. I wanted them when I was a kid simply because they were real-world rockets, but I hardly ever played with them because they weren't minifig-compatible. In that regard, City does much better! Finally, one of the main reasons I can think of for acquiring a NOVA or Smithsonian license would be to gain special access to museum gift shops. That's what Cobi does, among other brands - they sell an Apollo Lunar Lander and a USS Constitution sailing ship under the Smithsonian license. But Lego sets of appropriate content sell just fine in museum gift shops. I've seen the City space line in the gift shop at Kennedy Space Center, the 2019 Creator shark, Creator underwater robot, and City diving boat at the local aquarium (quite a large modern facility), etc. They seem to sell just fine, so Lego doesn't need to acquire an additional license to enter those markets.

This is slightly off-topic, but while I generally agree with @Aanchir's analysis of things in nearly every particular, I do think that the exploration themes from the 1990s that Brickset retroactively classifies within "Town" were unofficially prompted, or at least nicely coincident, with wider awareness of those topics in their respective years. For instance, Launch Command dates to 1995, the same year as the movie "Apollo 13," and Space Port dates to 1998, the same year as the movies "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact." I'm not aware of similar movies about scuba diving or Arctic exploration in 1997 and 2000, but I do remember reading a lot about scuba diving and deep sea exploration in "National Geographic World" magazine in 1997 and reading a lot about Arctic exploration in "World" and various other magazines around the turn of the century. Maybe there was some big anniversary? Similarly for the exploration themes of the 2010s released under the "City" banner, the 2011 Space wave coincided with relatively wide awareness of space exploration thanks to the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the completion of the International Space Station and the 2019 Space wave is explicitly inspired by the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. I don't know enough about the other fields covered in the exploration themes to relate them to wider events and anniversaries in Arctic exploration, deep sea exploration, jungle exploration, or volcanology, but I suspect that there may be some identifiable prompts for one or more of those themes too. TLDR - Lego needs no external prompts to develop an exploration subtheme of City or Town, but maybe they help.

Rich lore, devoted fanbase, immense potential for building and play / Hemmed in by intermittent general interest and primitive building techniques in its first run / Back again for many years? 7/10 (early), 9/10 (modern) Next theme: Aquazone

1 - For many people who live in inland areas, concepts like "forest police," "swamp police," "forest fire," "mountain police", etc., are a lot closer to home than concepts like "coast guard", while for people who live in port cities, "coast guard" is closer to home. For instance, I live in a metropolis of two million people that's nine hundred miles from the closest coast, but only ten minutes from the nearest national forest. Smoke from forest fires frequently obscures the air in the summer, and sometimes people I know have to drive through burning canyons on their commutes. Why should "coast guard" then be more valid as a subtheme of "City" than "forest fire" or "mountain police"? 2 - From a perspective of development and marketing, it's a lot more practical for Lego to include these modern-day playsets with aspirational careers for little kids (fire, police, medical, explorers) under the City brand than to develop a new logo, branding and marketing strategy, and set of unique characters for each one. The "City" brand tells parents that a set is based in the real world, features happy people doing their jobs, and is mildly educational and aspirational for a kid who wants to grow up to be a police officer, firefighter, doctor, pilot, bus driver, race car driver, engineer, astronaut, naturalist, scientist, etc. Take away that branding and parents will start to think these sets need more gimmicks to justify themselves - as an example, the 2007 Aqua Raiders theme is basically "Divers, but with lots of weapons and giant mutant sea creatures," while Friends is basically "City, but with variations that market research suggests will help it be more successful with young girls." Exploration subthemes may not take place inside the metropolis, but as "real-world stuff that your kid may grow up to do for a living" they fit just fine with the City brand. 3 - If we concede that it's fine for subthemes to overlap with each other, and we're more concerned with "eliminating the artificial divide" between subthemes than with actually changing what gets released when, then what's the point in continuing this conversation at all? Brickset classifies sets according to subtheme for convenience in the database. Lego releases waves of City sets with similar content at the same time because it's more efficient from a production, marketing, and sales standpoint to design, produce, and sell a group of related sets at the same time than to release those same sets at intervals over several years or to design, produce, and sell more widely varied groups of sets at the same time. But you won't find any distinction between "subthemes" in the sales page at Shop at Home, for example. So what's the big deal?

Nah, Town is the right place for that. It's a nice build!

In no particular order, I prefer City, Creator, Star Wars, and Space. Those are the themes for which I most eagerly anticipate news of new sets, read reviews with the most interest, and am most likely to buy new sets. (In Space I include any System-based space-related set from any theme, eg the Saturn V, Lunar Lander, and ISS.) Next come Ninjago, Super Heroes, and Technic in no particular order as themes that I keep an eye on and sometimes buy from, but less frequently.

The post that started this thread is a pretty fair assessment of how Lego has changed over time, bearing in mind that it's usually impossible to draw a bright line between eras in any field and that any opinions as to what time period is "best", etc, inevitably vary according to individual taste. I think it's a good idea to split the 80s and 90s according to when the boxes changed from "Legoland" to "Lego System." That's a bright dividing line for convenience - call them the "Legoland era" and the "System era." The "crisis," "recovery," and "modern" eras don't have such easy markers for division, but going by boxes I'd start the "crisis era" in 2000, when "System" was dropped from the boxes, combine the "crisis" and "recovery" eras into a single time period, and perhaps start the "modern" era in 2010, the year I bought my first Creator Expert set. I don't like to make value judgments about preferences, favorites, and superlatives, because there's a lot to like and a lot to criticize in every period of Lego's history, but I'll say that according to my personal preferences the sets I'm least keen on collecting are those released between 1997 and 2003, which period spans the late "System era" and early "crisis era." I just don't like how sets from that era rely so much more on large, complex molds than do sets from the preceding and following decades (according to my personal perception, anyway). However, unlike the OP, I consider the 1999-2000 waves of Star Wars to have actually aged quite well. Those sets introduced a large number of new molds, but they were almost all simple, versatile shapes like wedge plates, cylinders, and hinges that were quickly used in almost every other theme, and almost all of them are still used today. I honestly don't think Lego could have done a better job representing most of the subjects in those waves in sturdy retail sets with the available parts. They're easy to build, rebuild, and modify, have loads of potential for alt builds and combiners, are sturdy and swooshable, and are all easily recognizable interpretations of the source material in Lego bricks. Sure, some of them look a bit awkward (the Naboo Fighter and Snowspeeder especially), but Lego still hasn't released retail sets that hew as closely to the source material as I'd like in those cases, so I applaud the 1999 designers for doing the best they could. Anyway, those are my two cents.

BT2 is far from my favorite of the older Space themes, but you've done a really good job integrating vintage and modern parts here, and the way you combine the cockpit pods with different payload modules is just great. Looks like it would be loads of fun to play with.

Really fantastic little set of models here. I'm especially impressed by the Thunderbird 3/5 docking feature. Good luck getting to 10K! Like jimmynick, I'd buy this in a heartbeat!

That's it precisely. If the T-Rex in 75936 had been released as a standalone model, perhaps in Creator Expert or as the biggest summer set in Creator 3-in-1 without any branding, I bet it would have been received with universal acclaim. A gigantic brick-built T-Rex that's 27 inches long and can be rebuilt into two other dinosaurs? Awesome! But when it's released with Jurassic Park branding and an oversized gate simply to reach a perceived threshold size of "big enough for a D2C," it clashes dramatically with fan expectations and it makes the set less attractive to the group of customers who would have snapped it up as a $100 or $120 Creator set, or even as a $100 or $120 Jurassic Park-branded set. Granted, the design team does seem to have been quite unaware of fan expectations, so their method of releasing to the public this totally awesome dinosaur MOC that was sitting on their shelves was quite reasonable from their point of view. ("We've got a D2C slot coming up ... we've got this totally awesome T-Rex we want to make into a set, and it's not quite big enough for that D2C slot ... what else can we make to go with it?") Considered as a set designer's favorite MOC released to the public, it's an amazing set - sort of the UCS Millennium Falcon of Jurassic Park builds. (Remember that 10179 started out as a designer's MOC and had plenty of shortcomings of its own, many of which were remedied with 75192.) It's only when considered as the ideal D2C Jurassic Park set that it comes up short. - - - The general perspective on fan sites seems to be that the ideal Jurassic Park D2C would feature one or more of the most iconic scenes and locations carefully picked to form a cohesive whole, constructed with a bevy of impressive and innovative building techniques that would do any MOC proud. (In another franchise, that is exemplified by the Stranger Things set, which features an instantly recognizable, frequently recurring, and critically important location in minifig scale without reducing it to a vignette, a vehicle that is innovative on its own and whose inclusion in the set seems entirely natural, and an ingenious structure that pushes the limits of what's possible with Lego.) The T-Rex in 75936 features a number of impressive and innovative building techniques that would do any MOC proud and push the limits of what's possible with Lego, but they're mostly hidden inside the hip joints. Since what meets the eye is mostly simple cladding with curved slopes and organic, lifelike shapes are notoriously hard with Lego, it's bound to look a little disappointing. The gate is also nice enough on its own, but paired with the T-Rex it doesn't form an especially cohesive whole, and the minifigure vignettes on the back mostly serve to highlight the mismatched scales without adding much playability, unlike the minifigure vignettes in other D2Cs like the Disney Castle. I know nothing about how price points and set slots are allocated between themes, of course, but it seems like the Star Wars line has demonstrated pretty well that it's possible for $100 UCS/D2C-like sets to coexist with upper-end play sets and D2Cs. The BB-8 and Porg sets have the same attention to sculptural accuracy, fun building techniques, and limited playability as this T-Rex, and they coexist just fine with $100 spaceships and location playsets and $200 UCS/MBS models. With that example, I think it would have been wiser to give the T-Rex its own product slot and leave the D2C slot for something more cohesive, rather than a couple of very different, loosely related $125 models boxed together to meet a price point. But what do I know? I'm an engineer, not a production manager. I guess I better stop kibitzing and get back to engineering ....

Hi, @Nabii - Thanks for posting! The visitors center was a rumor that started so long ago that people seem to have forgotten it was only just a rumor. It probably started because of the visitors center that reached 10K on Ideas several years ago. Add to that the fact that there's no previous history of larger-than-minifig-scale builds in the Jurassic World line and the large number of JP Jeep Wranglers and Ford Explorers on Flickr and I think there's a fair case to be made for expecting that <if> the rumored Jurassic Park D2C was a reality, it would be minifig scale and would have a vehicle or two and some larger vignettes. To be fair, if the set as designed <had> been like that, no doubt there would be just as many people complaining that it was stolen from Ideas and just as many complaining about its design and features, just like they complained about the Classic Batcave and Betrayal at Bespin minifig-scale D2Cs. For what it is (a gigantic brick-built T-Rex and Jurassic Park gate), 75936 is a pretty awesome set at a very reasonable price, and I would definitely buy it if that's what I wanted - but I must say I would rather have a standard molded T-Rex and a Speed Champions-size Explorer and Jeep for it to chase in a $70 set. Off topic - the 75970+75975 combination of Overwatch spaceships is one of my favorite sets this year. It looks great, is loads of fun to play with, and with a few City workers and astronauts substituted for the Overwatch characters it goes great with my City space center. Thanks for building such a nice spaceship and stuffing it with so many play features. Having never played the game, it's just a Spaceship to me! - - - By the way, did you design any of the sets for this summer's City space line? The first time I saw pictures for 60224 Maintenance Mission Shuttle, I thought "this looks just like a Mark Stafford build!"

How about we just hope for a printed trans-yellow Millennium Falcon canopy part in another set? There are plenty of ways to imagine that part coming in a different set, in a different line, in a different subforum. Not the rumored Rise of Skywalker Falcon.

The designer of the Resistance Transport Pod probably had concept art or early stills from the scene when the Pod is on the beach at Canto Bight and Finn and Rose are riding towards it on fathiers. In that scene, the interior of the ship is lit up in yellow to contrast with the blue shades of the night and the sea and to prepare the eye for a sudden flash of yellow and orange when the Canto Bight police destroy it. By contrast, the color of the Millennium Falcon's canopy is established as transparent black by decades of canon. Granted, the designer of the Resistance Transport Pod should have abided by decades of precedent and guessed that its canopy would be trans black too, which is where Digger of Bricks's "ulterior motives" come in, finding excuses like the Canto Bight beach scene to use a different color. It's also established by a decade of canon that MCU Quinjets have trans black canopies, though, so the designer of the most recent Quinjet was really taking liberties by using trans orange. But then, too, the entire Endgame line is bizarrely unmoored from MCU canon, and the MCU Quinjet changes frequently anyway. Point is, the appearance of the Millennium Falcon is very consistent from film to film and I think Digger of Bricks would be the only person in the whole wide world who would be happy to see it appear in Lego with a trans yellow canopy.

Ironically, set 75937 from this summer's JW cartoon line does a better job representing the iconic scenes of the 1993 film than the D2C, if you add in a T-Rex from Bricklink.

Several years ago, a few projects by Senteosan got 10,000 votes on Ideas, including this one: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/e4ffedab-7e33-40e3-a579-f61cc8a0c5ee So Ideas shows that there is (or was) a demand for large brick-built dinosaurs in the context of Jurassic Park, but Senteosan's models were smaller, and they included the Ford Explorer too. I think I'd buy Senteosan's Ideas model, but the JP Rex and Gate to be released doesn't speak to me without the car. Plus, the dino is too big to be very playable, and what's the point of a dinosaur that can't stomp around and eat people?

I don't think the color change and crew swap, on its own, does much to establish that 1979 feel, but I do agree that the Space offerings this year pretty much cover all the bases for the 1979-1982 CS waves. Small single-seat spaceship with a small cargo bay in back? That's the 918 One Man Space Ship - or the 60224 Maintenance Mission Shuttle. Medium-sized two-seat spaceship with a small cargo bay behind the back seat, and some design commonality with the single-seat spaceship? That's the 924 Space Transporter - or the 60226 Mars Research Shuttle. Large two-seat spaceship with a large cargo bay in back, some design commonality with the smaller spaceships, and a substantial base? That's the 928 Galaxy Explorer - or the 75975 Watchpoint Gibraltar spaceship, with extra crew from the 60230 Space people pack. Small open-cockpit spaceship with a decent build for its size and some design commonality with all the other spaceships? That's the 75970 Tracer vs Widowmaker spaceship, with extra crew from the 60230 Space people pack. Substantial forward base with auxiliary vehicles? That's the 926 Command Center - or the 60227 Lunar Space Station. Large base with a big launch control display, two-seat monorail that terminates at the launch base and a spaceship launch pad, and auxiliary rovers? That's the 6970 Beta-1 Command Base - or the 60228 Deep Space Rocket and Launch Control. Rocket base with auxiliary vehicles? That's the 920 Alpha-1 Rocket Base - or also the 60228 Deep Space Rocket and Launch Control. Rocket transport truck? That's the 897 Mobile Rocket Launcher, or the 6950 Mobile Rocket Transport - or the 60229 Rocket Assembly and Transport. Anyway, that's enough of that. Back to work ....

Hmm ... usually I like GBailey's work, but this leans too heavily into random greebling for me. I prefer cleaner lines. Also, the shape of the spaceship isn't very interesting. That rover is pretty cool though. I'd go for the rover without the spaceship, but not for both at once.

Nice fun swooshy ship, with particularly fine lines for the canopy and nose transition. The engines and cockpit are nicely detailed but not so detailed that they distract from the overall shape. The satellite launchers are a nice touch, but the landing gear is extremely spindly, especially for an ice planet. Overall, this ship reminds me of a Colonial Viper. Was that intentional?