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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.

The KingsKnight Space Shuttle reached 10,000 in about two weeks, and it didn't get approved. To its favor, the playable piano is a lot more novel than KingsKnight's Space Shuttle, but Ideas hasn't approved previous pianos that reached 10,000. There's been at least one before, maybe two.

Sounds about right to me!

Eh, rules rules rules. To me, neo Classic Space is simply anything built in a style or subject inspired by the Space sets between 1978 and 1987. That includes all official sets in the Classic style released after 1987, such as the Benny ship from TLM1, the mini Galaxy Explorers that came with a DK book and the 60th anniversary set, Benny's Space Squad, and the 4+ spaceship in the TLM2 line. In an extended definition, neo Classic Space is anything inspired by other neo Classic Space builds that generally sticks to the blue-yellow-gray color combo or the white-blue-gray color combo. With that said, how would you classify my modern set-style interpretations of 918, 926, and 928? Are they neo Classic Space, Classic Space Evolved, or something else entirely?

I think the question of whether kids play "space"/"Star Wars" vs "pirates" or "cowboys" is a bit misguided. The appropriate question would be, when they play "pirates" or "cowboys," do they play "Pirates of the Caribbean" instead of "pirates" or "The Lone Ranger" or "Roy Rogers" instead of "cowboys." Generally, Space/Pirates/Cowboys are very different themes for play, and the real question is about whether kids play with existing characters or with characters they define and name themselves. Color me skeptical on the sky-is-falling lack of creativity and imagination among children in the use of existing named characters. My dad tells about playing "Lone Ranger" or "Roy Rogers" as a kid instead of generic "cowboys," fifty years ago. A hundred years ago, kids might play "Peter Pan" and "Treasure Island"; two hundred years ago they would play "Knights of the Round Table" instead of generic "knights" or "Robin Hood" instead of generic "robbers in the forest." (Check that last one by reading some Twain.) When I was a kid twenty years ago, I was fully aware of the named characters in Lego themes and the Star Wars, and I used the names freely. It saved me the trouble of having to come up with a unique name for each little minifigure when I added a set to my town. That doesn't mean I ever re-enacted movie scenes with my Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker minifigs and their accompanying sets, nor even tried hard to copy the movie personalities. Same with Vernon Dursley - same with the astronaut minifigure I named after Buzz Aldrin. However, I agree that children's enthusiasm for Benny as a named character doesn't necessarily show that children today would like neo-Classic Space as a theme on its own. I haven't had the opportunity to closely observe how children today play with Lego and engage with licensed or story-driven themes vs open-world themes, so I defer to your experience. As for the future of Lego Space, I have said it before and I will say it again: I am cautiously optimistic that there will be another "true" Space theme in the next few years, and until then I'm content to get my Space fix through bits of other themes. However, I recognize that my tastes in Space are a lot wider than those of many other people: I love the Space sets released under the City and Ideas labels, and I'm happy to get a cool spaceship in a licensed theme and treat it like any other as long as I don't know much about the IP it's based on. That Overwatch rocket? It's just a Spaceship to me. The much-maligned 2017 Milano? It's just a Spaceship to me. The Arrowhead from Lego's animated Star Wars TV show? It's just a Spaceship to me. None of those, of course, satisfy the dedicated Space fan who hasn't gotten a dedicated Space line since 2013.

Wow, now we're talking the kind of spaceships I want. The Systar ship and Rex ship are very impressive sets, but they're just not my cup of tea. But this moonbase full of NCS rockets? Awesome! Too bad we didn't get sets for many interesting vehicles and locations from TLM, so there's no guarantee whatsoever that we'll get anything from this scene in set form.

At the risk of going off-topic a little bit, I'll mention here that the 2015 Utility Shuttle most closely (as far as I know) resembles the European "Hermes" concept from the mid 1980s. I believe the Hermes program got pretty far in the design process before it was cancelled. It would be really great if this year's Space wave had a kit modeled after Dream Chaser, but I'm not counting on it. Link below is to a picture of Hermes that shows off the similarities to kit 60078 pretty well. https://goo.gl/images/ya8dGV

Please, I think this conversation might be more productive if the certain shop owner on YouTube were to be named so that we could all see his or her videos ourselves. What's the name of the channel? On the subject of the 2019 lineup, it's the same old cycle - at the start of the year I don't see much interesting product, but as more information comes out via rumors the year looks better and better. For instance, a couple weeks ago I wasn't looking forward to anything past the January release. However, I'm quite excited by the rumors about a big new Space wave for City, another version of Anakin's Podracer, a 1989 Batmobile, and some summer Hoth and Endor sets. Then there probably ought to be good product for Episode 9 in the fall, and we still don't know anything about the summer wave of Creator or Technic ... so even though this year's winter wave is a little weak, I'm sure there's plenty of good stuff just over the horizon.

Let's call Omnic Bastion bigfig-scale. The model may be larger relative to a minifig than Bastion is relative to a human in-game, but it's appropriately scaled relative to the Winston bigfig. Goodness knows Winston isn't <that> big relative to a human in-game!

Looks like a good start for a nice layout. I can see that place becoming quite comfortable with a little finishing work. More to the point, that Blacktron fleet is enormous! How long did it take you to acquire all those kits?

Yes, but that's a microscale model with a display stand. I sure hope the ISS model in Ideas review is selected for production, but it's still a microscale model with a display stand, not a minifig playset.

I agree that the Lunar Outpost/Gateway would be a more realistic subject for this summer's rumored lunar base, since NASA currently doesn't have a crewed lunar lander in development, but as a subject for a Lego set I'm strongly inclined to believe that the rumored set would be a surface base. That's much more practical as a Lego build, and it inherits a long history of surface bases, whereas Lego has never done an orbiting space station that I'm aware of, and I'm not sure how they would make that structurally stable, playable, and not just another spaceship. On a side note, this holiday season I almost talked myself into buying two more copies of the 31066 Space Shuttle Explorer from Creator so as to have its moonbase and rover built at the same time as the shuttle, thereby having "the entire line." Before doing that, I built the B and C models from the copy I do have, and was disappointed to learn that they're far enough from A model quality that I really didn't like them without substantial mods. Now I might still have to mod them up in Studio and order parts for the mods to go with extra copies of the kit, or I could just wait til summer and see what the City sets are like. I wonder if the rumored moonbase and rover will be developments of the 31066 B and C models? With the parts counts, that seems plausible to me.

Thanks for this review. It's very thorough and very well-informed. I know nothing of Overwatch, but I persuaded myself to buy the smallest and largest Overwatch sets over Black Friday for the sake of the spaceships, with the Christmas Box bringing the price-per-part ratio into an acceptable range. I plan to order a bunch of astronaut minifigures to replace the Overwatch people, build a rover and crane to fit in the cargo bay, and buy some aircraft wheels to give the drone and the rocket some landing gear. The stage separation and missile launcher in the front stage are decent play features, but I wish the designer had included a full interior instead. It's really disappointing to see that the rear cockpit can only hold a standing figure. Still, despite this set's many flaws, it should go well with my Space collection and with the Space wave of City that's rumored for summer release.

I'd call it the 2x2 studs-in tee bracket.

That's a pretty decent build and a fine ride for Maul, but it immediately suggested the Naboo Royal Starship to me instead of the Sith Infiltrator. Also, when you shrink the nose shape of the Infiltrator like that and stick it between relatively oversized bent TIE wings, you get the shape of the V-wing fighter with slightly different proportions. I think Maul might be better served just learning to fly a V-wing, if he wants a starfighter rather than a star yacht.

That's the appeal of great aviation designs! Few kids have ever seen a WWI or WWII warbird fly, and only the older generation of AFOLs are old enough right now to remember the Apollo missions, but all of those still attract kids. Plus, the Space Shuttle is a lot better-suited to Lego and Lego play than any other crewed spacecraft, since it looks like an airplane and it's got this nice fun cargo bay. I bet Lego won't stop making space shuttles until we finally get somebody back to the Moon or the company goes under, whichever comes first. Four themes, let's see - in 2019 there's the big and little Overwatch shuttles, the midi-scale Creator shuttle, and the rumored City shuttle. What's the fourth one? I can think of the Batman shuttle, the mini-scale Ideas shuttle, and the basic shuttle from a Classic box of bricks, but those are 2018, 2017, and 2018 kits.

^ Maybe there's a TV news helicopter covering the opening of the new donut store ....

Wow, what a great list! Do you know anything more about 60227? Sounds like we may be getting a hint of the City-moonbase @Digger of Bricks has been wanting for so long! And from the parts counts, I don't expect anything except maybe 60224 is a Juniors/4+ kit.

I just noticed something - the big plane in the Sky Police station doesn't have propellers. Seriously. Its engines are clearly styled like prop engines, perhaps turboprops or radials, but definitely not turbojets or turbofans. But they didn't just blur out the propellers in the box art, they forgot. the. propellers. ??? I realize that many design decisions that seem strange from an adult consumer standpoint make sense when play testing with children and production constraints are considered, but who let that one through?

I like them in limited numbers. One large, specialized costume that slots over or replaces the minifigure body per series, please, no more. They're fun and cute, but unlike other CMF parts they're very hard to reuse.