icm

Last night I took a break from my usual pastime of persuading myself not to buy the 70816 Benny spaceship to build a different kind of Classic Space redux, based on 6931 FX Star Patroller instead of 928 Space Cruiser and Moon Base. Comments, criticism, and advice of all kinds are welcome! (The pictures are in the first post.)

Where did you get this information? I've wanted Thunderbirds sets since I was a kid. By "Avatar," do you mean the Last Airbender, or do you mean the James Cameron movie?

That's a very nice creation with a fun backstory. Where does the phone part come from? I can't find it on Bricklink.

When you put it that way, it does sound like a futuristic space subtheme that stretches the City brand the way the futuristic Arctic subtheme stretches that brand would be an appropriate spiritual successor to Classic Space. Although the last Space subtheme, Galaxy Squad, had several design nods to Classic Space (suits of different colors, modular builds, some white and blue spacecraft), it never felt like an appropriate successor to CS to me because it was too warlike.

Like the 1997-1998 Competition subtheme of Technic and the 2001 line of Rahi in Bionicle, then. I don't go for CCBS, but I just might get something like that.

First post updated with archived content and a historical curiosity.

If the approach taken towards AFOL demands for Castle is "give them the bricks in Modulars and let them build their own," that may also be the approach taken towards AFOL demands for Space, but Space parts are more suited towards regular children's play lines like Star Wars, Ninjago, and Nexo Knights. Hence the abundance of nice Spacey parts like trans-yellow and trans-orange windscreens we've had lately.

I just saw the pictures on Reddit. Gee, the whole line is so futuristic! It feels like more of a Space theme than a City theme. The big mobile base with the wooly mammoth would fit right in with a Gerry Anderson-style layout.

The problem with Bricklinking a build is that, while often any individual part may be found for well under the golden ten cents, shipping and handling expenses for buying many lots from many sellers can push the total expenses up to an average of twenty, thirty, fifty cents or more per part. It quickly becomes more cost effective to just buy a used copy of the set that's missing only a relatively small number of parts, if the set is retired, or to buy it new when you can (on sale if possible).

The best site for Mega Bloks that I'm aware of is bricker.ru. They have a catalog of MB sets that is similar in nature to Brickset's catalog of Lego sets, although it's harder to navigate. I don't know if they have a parts catalog.

The UCS MF won the "Specialty Toy" category instead of the "Construction Toy" category because an $800 display model is a specialty item that isn't very good for play. It's a "specialty toy" in the same way that ridiculously expensive action figures from Hot Toys are "specialty toys": silly items with no practical use whose potential customer base is severely restricted by the high price tag. Sure, those are action figures, but you wouldn't award any of them an "action figure toy of the year" award because they're too expensive for the general market.

I haven't studied business, but it seems to me like that would <not> be in a corporation's best interest. Such an attitude would lead to "having too many irons in the fire" and getting "spread too thin". Any organization must pick and choose its priorities. Some markets may be too small to be worth pursuing. Whether or not the dedicated adult fans of Castle form a market that's too small for TLG to profitably pursue is not a question about which I choose to speculate.

OK, that makes sense. I'm totally fine with that. I want one too.

All those nostalgic retreads don't seem much like "flexing of in-house creative muscles" to me, especially if the in-house content designers don't get the opportunity to make a movie, video game, app, or story to go with them. Whether you love them or hate them, big bang themes like Nexo Knights, Legends of Chima, and Ninjago are much more original and therefore much more creative than any new line that can be summarized as "an old line from decades ago, but with modern pieces." Now, about that list: Ice Planet revisited: Nexo Knights has a lot of trans-orange canopies and other homages to the design language of Ice Planet Blacktron revisited: That's what the Black Hole Gang baddies of Space Police 3 were, though indirectly. See also the baddies in black of Ultra Agents. M-Tron revisited: As Nexo Knights is to Ice Planet, so is Atlantis to M-Tron Insectoids revisited: The bug aliens of Galaxy Squad fit that description pretty well. Personally, I'd like a new Space theme that ISN'T something we've seen before, but has just enough familiar design cues and colors to draw me in. I can't say I have a good idea what that means, but I'll know it when I see it.

Here's another landing pad concept. I think I like this one better, but it might be more expensive.

This is a landing pad concept for a 928 redux that uses an unmodified 75186 as the new Galaxy Explorer. Instead of a barren moon, this next-generation starship lands on a tropical island on some distant planet, inspired by the Scarif landing pad in 75171. The idea is not to build something in the Neo-Classic Space style of Classic Space revival, but instead to build something in what I think of as a Next Generation style of Classic Space revival. This may be compared to how Star Trek: The Next Generation was a revival of Star Trek that established a deliberately different design language while maintaining the spirit of the original series. Since TLG has not made landing pads for years, it is a challenge to build a landing pad large enough to accommodate the 75186 Arrowhead while staying small and simple enough that it might fit in a large playset. If the overall "Eridani Supply Base" is built to a $150 price point and the ship itself costs $80 ($90 RRP for 775 parts - $10 license tax), this 111-piece landing pad might cost $20, when the high cost of the baseplate and the 6x6 tiles is accounted for. That leaves $50 for the base, minifigures, and support vehicles. In order to fit the price point, it appears the landing pad should be deleted and replaced by an unadorned baseplate, or the base and vehicle features described in my previous post must be drastically reduced. The picture is enclosed in a quote, for brevity.

That's an attractive recolor and rework of an aging set. It almost makes we want the original. What set is the astronaut minifigure from?

Nah, the parts he used are more accurate to the shape of the real Shuttle. The real cargo bay doors have a very boxy cross section, not a smooth semi-circle.

There's some precedent for that. The 1998 Space Port line, which Brickset classifies as a subtheme of Town, seems to have been intended to coincide with the 1998 movies "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact." If I remember correctly the Mania Magazine that featured it, the general idea was "stop the deadly meteor shower," and the space shuttle set had some less realistic sci-fi styling. Also, the 2015 Utility Shuttle, though vaguely inspired by some concepts like the Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser and XCOR Aerospace's Lynx, crosses into sci-fi territory because neither of those vehicles have actually flown. Still, it's pretty near-future sci-fi and I don't think that's what many of the people who have commented on this thread are after. Speaking of unofficial movie tie-ins, though, I think the 2001 Life on Mars line was also intended to coincide with the 2001 movies "Red Planet" and "Mission to Mars," and the bug aliens of the 2013 Galaxy Squad line loosely coincide with the bug aliens of the 2013 movie "Ender's Game." Perhaps we just need to wait until a relatively kid-friendly big-budget sci-fi movie comes out that is not Star Wars, and for which TLG does not want to invest in a license (or cannot invest in a license because of Star Wars), but which is just too good of a merchandising opportunity to pass up.

I know that most of the sets I pointed out (everything except the Benny ship) can be disqualified as "Lego Space" for one reason or another. All I'm saying is that perhaps we should cut TLG a little slack and think of "Lego Space" as something more expansive than "minifigures styled like aliens or with sci-fi torso prints doing whatever they do before or beneath a black sky," which pretty much describes all Brickset-acknowledged Space themes. Does Batman have a space shuttle in the DC canon, or is the Bat-Shuttle just a case of TLG designers wanting to have fun with a souped-up Space Shuttle and supposing it would fit right in with the absurdity of the rest of the TLBM line? I don't pretend to know every detail of the old and new Star Wars canon, but as far as I know the Arrowhead was created specifically for the Freemaker show. Of course it has design influences from the rest of Star Wars, but I don't see any one canonical ship dominating its design the way the Stealth Starfighter is obviously an E-wing. If that's the case, why not compare it to other ships designed by TLG for TLG? So, I acknowledge that almost nothing of what I mentioned is Lego Space with a capital S, but it's all "more or less" Lego space to me. I do expect that TLG will find a way to release another Space theme that ticks all the standard Space boxes within the next couple of years, just like I expect there will be another Castle theme that ticks all the standard boxes. I also apologise for getting off-topic by talking about kits that aren't really Space sets in every way.

There are several long ongoing discussions about this general topic on the forums, but this is a fair question. As you note, the record has already been set for gaps, if we don't count the pre-minifig space sets. Despite the long gap and the dominance of Star Wars on the shelves, I don't think the situation for Lego Space fans is as bad as some people on the forum make it out to be. We'll probably see another in-house Space theme in the next year or two, but even if we don't we should consider what Lego has done in the meantime: 2014 - The Lego Movie had several Space-themed sets, notably the 70816 Benny Spaceship and the 70815 Super Secret Police Dropship. That and 70806 Bad Cop Pursuit were practically a Space Police IV mini-theme. 2014 - Ideas Exo-Suit 2014-2017 8 or 9 Space-themed CMFs 2015 - Mini 928 Galaxy Explorer with a DK book 2015 City Space subtheme 2016-2017 Star Wars The Freemaker Adventures, which is practically an in-house Space theme camouflaged under the Star Wars banner - just look at how much 75186 The Arrowhead echoes the design language of Classic Space! 2016-2018 Nexo Knights, which strongly echoes much of Lego's traditional Space design language despite its Castle-inspired trappings 2017 Ideas Saturn V and Women of NASA 2018 70923 The Bat-Space Shuttle, which is very much an in-house Space set despite its camouflage under the Batman banner 2018 - Ideas Moments in Space contest, with the winner to be released in 2019 2019? 2020? There are persistent rumors that The Lego Movie 2 will feature a Space setting. So yes, there is a five-year gap between now and the last dedicated Space theme, but there certainly hasn't been a five-year gap of original content that more or less fits in the niche of Space.

I think a Castle theme that explicitly uses and names the Knights of the Round Table and the other Arthurian characters is the most likely to succeed in the era of story-driven themes with named characters while still pleasing traditional Castle fans. There would be plenty of material to draw on for the stories and no copyright issues, and the more unsavory parts of the legend could easily be avoided. I think a Castle theme branded with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table would also get a lot of good press outside the usual Lego circles. The only question is, from a business point of view, is there sufficient global interest in King Arthur?

[BUMP] [WIP] [MOC/MOD] Yet Another 928 Redux / Neo-Classic Space Base This is a description for a MOC I hope to make, but I haven't ordered any parts yet. To do first things first, I am writing this post to plan it out and get the idea on paper before I forget it; my apologies if that's not proper forum protocol. Anyone who reads this post is welcome to take the idea and run with it; just please reply to this thread with a link to anything you may do with it. I will edit this post once I start to build this idea in the brick. For brevity, everything is hidden in quotes. Thanks for reading.

Sorry if someone's asked this question before, but I couldn't find the answer after a few simple searches of the site: Is it possible to save a post as a draft and finish it later?

A lot of early sci-fi/action themes seem to have acted as rehearsals or practice runs for later licensed themes: "Look at Johnny Thunder! You can trust us with Indiana Jones!" A very successful sci-fi rescue theme could then be a rehearsal for a Thunderbirds theme, if that franchise had suitable longevity and wide appeal - but I'm not counting on it.