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Thanks for your reply - could you just post a picture of the back? No need to work on a new version if the disc is already easy to spin; I'd just like to see it.

@Lego David, please ignore my previous post in this thread. I have too much spare time on my hands at work today, and I apologise for reflexively dismissing your comment. I better get back to work now.

Two things - 1 - $30 went a lot farther in 1979 and in 1999 than in 2019 because of inflation. I think it's actually quite remarkable how the price-per-part ratio has gotten smaller with time despite inflation, and even more so how accounting for inflation the $30 sets today are often (not always, but often) just as massive as the $30-equivalent sets from 40 years ago. For example, compare the 924 Space Transporter from 1979 ($10 then = $30 now) and the Royal Talon Fighter Attack from 2018. The two ships are nearly exactly the same size. 2 - Everything you've said about minifigures and builds here could have been said, and probably was said, about the original Star Wars line way back in 1999. In that respect, things haven't changed at all in 20 years. The individual desirability or collectability of individual minifigures in lines before the licensed era is an entirely different question.

The 7131 Anakin's Podracer was the second "big" Lego set I got, right after the 7141 Naboo Fighter. I'll definitely pick this one up. It looks pretty good and I like all the figures, but it's a little disappointing that it's so similar to the 2011 model.

Looks like all of Danth's and Digger of Brick's wildest dreams have come true: this is from the Zusammengebaut ticker: LEGO City Space: Mars mission, following 50 years of Apollo moon landing, will be released in late June, a major station: »LEGO Mars Mission Space Research Rocket Control Center 60228, 99.99 Euro RRP, has integration with the LEGO Life App, smartphone can be integrated into the station and is then the control screen. In addition: Gray roller coaster rails, but not a full loop »LEGO Mars mission maintenance mission shuttle 60224, 9,99 Euro UVP » LEGO Mars mission rover test drive 60225, 19,99 Euro UVP »LEGO Mars mission Mars research shuttle 60226, 29,99 Euro RRP » LEGO Mars mission moon station 60227 with luminous stone , 49,99 Euro RRP These are NOT license sets, but "inspired by NASA"

Glad you like it! How do you think it could be improved? By the way, I don't remember if I commented in your thread or not, but I'm really impressed by how well you were able to recreate Starfleet Voyager with just a few copies of 70841 and 70821. I am almost persuaded to buy several more copies myself for that purpose.

Fair enough. I got the previous version partly built, but it turned out to be poorly balanced when landed. I started to redesign it to correct the center of mass location and took the occasion to refine the design in a lot of other ways. That's a feature I would really like to see in digital building programs: a center of mass marker for the entire build and individual center of mass markers for assemblies and subassemblies. That seems like it ought to be easy to implement: it's just a bunch of addition, multiplication, and division of part masses and locations, not anything more complicated like stress and stability analysis or kinematic simulation. The only hard part would be defining the center of mass of each part as a property. Now I'm getting off topic, so I'll stop.

I'm glad you like that ship. I took it apart after about a week, but I've thought about rebuilding it. What do you think of the Galaxy Explorer?

Thanks! But are you referring to the ship in the first post based on 6931, or to the Galaxy Explorer I posted a few minutes ago?

Here's another revision of my updated Galaxy Explorer. There are three main goals: preserve the wing and cabin dimensions of the original, keep the lines clean and the build simple, and fit as much cargo as possible. The interior features a set of folding gates between the cockpit and the front cargo area, another set of gates between the front cargo area and the rear cargo area, removable racks in the rear cargo area from which to hang tools, and a door on either side of the front cargo area to allow access to the cargo from the wing without having to open any of the four large rear hatches (top, bottom, left, right). Fully loaded, the ship can hold four 3x4 crates and six 2x2 crates, or two rovers, or a rover and a light trailer loaded with one 3x4 crate, or a rover and a heavy trailer loaded with two 3x4 crates. I've got a lot of ideas for builds to go with this, but of course there's not enough time to bring them all to fruition. Please comment and critique. As always, more pictures are on Flickr.

^ See: 3723, 3724, Modular Buildings, 10193, 10210, 10223, 10228, Winter Village, Fairgrounds, 70810, 70751, 70620 (and arguably 70618), 70840. Those are all D2Cs based on original, in-house ideas that don't attempt to model any specific real-world or licensed subject. Thanks to the UCS line, Star Wars does get a disproportionate number of D2Cs compared to other themes, but it's not accurate to say that we never get a D2C for an original theme.

It looks very good, but the point of the original set was that the printed disk was easy for little fingers to spin. The disk in this build can still be swiped on the top surface, but I don't see anywhere to spin it by flicking the edge.

Good idea. This could really work as a City subtheme, appealing to new audiences by appealing to kids who want to work in the movies when they grow up, and still keeping the usual target demographic of kids who like to play cops and robbers. The sets are well done too; they look like real City sets. I'd add a few more studio trappings (lights, mics, cameras, etc) to the helicopter rescue and Jack Stone car chase kits, though - if there are any cues that those are "studio" sets, I don't see them.

I saw this when it was featured on the Brothers Brick a few months ago, but I haven't taken the time to play it yet. Maybe that's something to do tonight after work. This is a really impressive piece of work, here. Thanks for posting.

^ Exactly. Amen to every word of that.

Frankly, I just hope Speed Champions continues. It's all I ever wanted in a Racers theme as a kid; I never liked the wacky cars in the Drome, Technic, Tiny Turbos, or World Racers subthemes; the large Ferrari and Lamborghini models were nice for their time but were too big to fit in my town and relied too much on stickers; and I wanted to see more well built, realistic, real-world cars like the minifig-scale Ferrari Formula One cars. I also wondered why Lego never did any real-world/Town racecars besides Formula One cars - why not NASCAR, Le Mans, etc. - and now they're showing up in Speed Champions. The only original Racers theme I'd like to see would be a line of cars inspired by the circuit bosses from the original Lego Racers video game.

Just be patient. Buy all the old sets you like for now, and I guarantee that in another few years there will be another cluster of original themes that you like just as much as the original themes between 2007 and 2014. When I was a kid, all I wanted was a Lego space shuttle that could carry a couple of minifigures and a satellite, had the external tank and solid rocket boosters, and looked reasonably good. But I was too young to get the 1995 model, even though it was still in the catalogs when I was introduced to Lego, and the 1998 model was terrible, and the 2003 model was too big and didn't come with the boosters or launch pad. I was worried that Lego would never release a space shuttle again. Then seven years later! (2010) Lego released the amazing Shuttle Adventure, and there's been a steady sequence of space shuttles ever since: two in 2011, two in 2015, one in 2017, one in 2018, three in 2019 already (sort of) and one or two more later this year! From my perspective as a kid when I thought Lego was going down the tubes, this is an embarrassment of riches.

The third set of four finalists is up. There's finally something I like: a nice 2000-part castle. I'm still hoping for a spaceship in the last set ....

"Half of my advertising dollars are wasted," said the marketing executive. "The only problem is, I don't know which half." I think many people on this forum would agree that the sheer number of sets released each year is bewildering, and that a large portion are pretty mediocre - so wouldn't it be better if Lego just focused on quality instead of quantity, and made fewer, better, sets? The problem is that one AFOL's really good, well-made set is another AFOL's overpriced cash grab. For example, you really like the Bugatti. A lot of Technic gearheads would tell you in great detail why it's an overpriced trashy cash grab. You probably think the Overwatch line is an overpriced cash grab; I mostly agree, except that I think the spaceships are pretty cool. There's a lot of diversity in what people on this forum do and don't like, so I hesitate to make value judgments about the way Lego is going as a company except in my own personal opinion. That said, by all means keep explaining why you don't like the choices the company has made in 2018 and 2019. These kinds of conversations are valuable so that we can all hear each other's perspectives on the product, and some of what we talk about might even make its way into design/pricing/marketing decisions by the company.

After giving the minifigures from 75970 Tracer vs Widowmaker and 75975 Watchpoint Gibraltar to my brother, I went to my local used Lego store and bought some astronaut and ground crew minifigures from 60080 Space Port, which is the Space Shuttle set released in 2015. With those minifigures and some easy-to-find wheels as landing gear for the two spaceships, it makes a great near-future Space Center that fits really well with City and with the Moonbase and Rover alternate builds of 31066 Shuttle Explorer, the 2017 Space Shuttle set. I'd still like to build a satellite for the cargo bay and a light utility vehicle to move personnel around the launch site, but I'm pretty satisfied with the space center as-is. It may be a piece of background scenery from a licensed theme based on a first person shooter videogame, but I'd gladly recommend the 75970/75975 combo to any Space fans. As a longtime space buff, I think it's particularly cool because it's the closest thing to a realistic reusable single-stage launch vehicle concept like the VentureStar that we're ever likely to see in Lego, and also the closest thing to a small lifting body-based uncrewed space plane like the X-37B that we're ever likely to get. Alternatively, the big rocket makes a great flyback booster for all manner of piggyback hosted payloads, like the 75970 drone, the 31091 midi-scaled Space Shuttle, and even little Star Wars ships or anything else you can fit on there. Again, I never expected to see a fully reusable two-stage launch system with flyback booster approximated in Lego to any degree. When the Overwatch theme was first announced and pictures of the rockets released, I was disappointed because it meant another year without a traditional Space theme, but now I'm confident I like these two sets better than I'd like any other Space sets Lego would be likely to make -except a good City wave, and rumor has it that there will be quite the City Space line this summer! So that makes 2019 a pretty great year already. TLDR: Spaceship! Spaceship! Spaceship!

YouTube producers feel forced to buy the new sets because that's how they make their money! But you are not a YouTube personality who uses the platform to pay tuition and put food on the table. I am not. Most people here are not. I'm glad you have stopped feeling obligated to buy new sets that you don't want. I think a lot about each set I buy before getting it in order to make sure that I really want it. Sometimes I feel strongly tempted to get a set I don't really want in order to keep up with the Joneses, but I mostly resist the temptation. I have bought about a dozen 2019 sets already because I really wanted them, and there are at least a dozen more rumored sets later this year that I expect to buy because they're just the kind of set I like most. Edit: And more power to you for buying the older sets that you really do like! That's what keeps the aftermarket alive so that it's possible to buy old sets. I've bought quite a few older sets myself.

Oh, so he's the mysterious German store owner on YouTube who is frequently cited but never named by the many European AFOLs who would strongly prefer traditional Castle and Space to present lines and who insist that European children would also prefer traditional Castle and Space. By saying this, I have no intention of bringing that kind of conversation into this thread; I'm just glad to finally know the name of the channel.

Suddenly the increased CMF price makes sense: it had to subsidize development of an online game. Too bad they didn't relax the price once they cancelled the game; I do think the market would respond better to $3 than $4.

This is great. Mash-ups like this are what Lego is all about! Just make sure the crew's papers are all in order, because there's no way this thing is going to outrun an Imperial cruiser, at least not one of the big Corellian ships. Maybe a bulk cruiser.

Hmm... a set of vignettes that would make a nice Gift With Purchase, a building to fit in your Creator Expert town, a microscale scene that wouldn't look out of place on the Brothers Brick, and a set of monorail nostalgia using roller coaster parts. I guess a lot of people will like those, but I hope the other twelve finalists are more to my taste.