howitzer

Funnily enough, most innovative time of TLG was in the 90's with no competition whatsoever. Today I feel the opposite is true, with all the competition around TLG seems to have dropped anything remotely innovative or "risky" from Technic product line and are only releasing car after car with very little in the way of innovation. --- As for the set itself, there's seems to actually be a fair number innovation included with the suspension, gearbox, ghost mode, etc. Too bad the only place TLG innovates in anymore seems to be 1:8 cars which are expensive and, well, cars. But credit where credit is due: FINALLY a proper Technic spur gear with teeth number that's not divisible by four. This makes it possible to have 2 gears side-by-side with axles mirrored in exactly the same alignment. All the other new gears are of course nice too but I feel this is the most important new part for a long time. I really hope these gears are coming to PAB soon.

Looks like nowdays even Ninjago sets are on par with functionality of a typical Technic set: https://www.newelementary.com/2026/06/review-71869-land-bounty-from-lego.html

Doesn't help with axle-ends either.

Whatever it's going to be, I'm fully expecting to be disappointed so evil genie has no hold over me on this matter

All of them, obviously.

Went to the local hypermarket on the other day in other business but decided to check out the Lego shelf in case they had any good discounts. And they did: all Ninjago and Technic 25% off. Too bad I'm not interested at all in Ninjago and every Technic set they had on shelf was either Kawasaki Ninja (not interesting) or a car set (also not interesting). So I guess I saved a bunch of money. My Bricklink order of loose bricks arrived on the other hand, so I can get on with my entry for a (non-Technic) contest held by my local LUG, which is nice.

No, there hasn't been one and it indeed has been suggested before. I'd make an effort to participate if there was an animal contest but I'm not sure how popular it would be... often when there's a contest themed outside of typical Technic builds, they tend not to be hugely popular while themes that include stuff you could buy in an official set (vehicles, construction equipment) get a lot of attention.

The alternate model contest of 2026 models could be fun with everyone picking a single set and making an alternative of that. It would be a good way to showcase the possibilities of Lego even with the limitations of currently produced parts palette. The one additional limit I'd impose would be: the model has to be decidedly different from the original, so car alternatives of car sets. Not that I see myself participating this time, I don't there's any sets worth of buying this year (unless something hugely impressive comes later but that's a slim chance) and my building time is mostly directed elsewhere anyway at the moment...

Ah, that might be true. I thought one of the turntables would have 64 teeth and seeing those worm gears mesh with them it should work. But alas, the turntable has 60 teeth so it's different size than the new gear. So yeah, it still seems the only gear to mesh with it in whole number spacing is the 16T gear.

I believe the other worm gear, 27938, will also mesh with the 64T gear with whole stud spacing. I also don't think the half-stud offset is a huge problem when meshing with 8, 24 and 40T gears, though this obviously depends on what you're building.

True, I'd rather say "worst year so far". There's always room for more disappointment.

If you take a bit of time to read the comments about this year's lineup you'll see that it's definitely not just you.

In your second to last line you surely meant something other than 42043 which is MB Arocs, right? Anyway, I like pneumatics but other than that I pretty much agree. Technic of today seems to be Speed Champions but with larger scale, uglier designs and steering, but that's it. The Unimog is sort of interesting but I don't like the colour scheme so I probably won't buy it. And beside that there's nothing remotely interesting.

2023 had the Liebherr crane which wasn't without flaws, but at least it was properly Technic. Same for the Moon rover of 2024, which I think is off-putting to some due to it's theme though it's a very good set with novel and interesting functionality. I'd take any one of these any day over a full year's range of cars.

No, you're not.

Numerous stores in Bricklink have those with prices starting around 0,60€/piece so that seems like an obvious way forward.

Still works here.

No problems here.

Yes, pinhole would work, even though pinhole sits very small amount (1/20th of a brick) higher than the studhole on the side of the headlight brick so in theory it wouldn't be exactly on grid either, but such a small difference is insignificant. These flaws scream of a rush job with much of the quality control skipped.

Did you not watch the video at the time point I mentioned? It's place in the build is shown there quite clearly and if you watch it, you'll see that it indeed receives a stud and not a bar (66909 in particular). On the other side (where the illegality occurs) is also headlight brick, but raised one plate so the sideways stud of the headlight brick collides with the backside of the other one, this is all explained in detail there. Oh and I meant the video by Tiago Catarino which was linked on Thursday, not Racingbrick's video which ignores the entire matter.

It's used to receive stud sideways, see the video Auroralampinen posted above at 5 minutes in. A 1x1 brick with axlehole could've been used in it's place. This could be an explanation, as these problems indeed seem really easy to solve and these kind of flaws should never get through a proper quality control.

The two major flaws mentioned in the video are really bad, I mean how hard can it be to build the driveshaft properly, especially as the other end isn't connected into anything? Half-inserted axle isn't going to hold the gear end in place. For the other problem your mileage might vary, but in my view it's even worse as there's going to be stress and damage to the parts over longer periods of time. I was seriously considering getting this set even though it's a car, as it's finally something different as far as cars go, but now I don't know.

As was said in Racingbrick's video, it's car precisely because cars have mass appeal. Yes we get too many cars in Technic but this one breaks the pattern in that it's non-licensed and packed with functions so it should be far more interesting to Technic fans than whatever you can find in official sets. I would also get a kinetic sculpture, GBC or clockwork any day over another car, but let's face it: there's nowhere near as much market for those as there is for cars. As for the model itself, the functions seem great and the design is nice but I don't like the colour scheme. Somehow the white doesn't sit well at all in the model, perhaps it should be either completely red and black or perhaps the white should be replaced with some other colour. I guess this is a matter of taste and I'm still going to vote for it, just for the sake of being Technic, but if I were to ever build it, I'd try something else in the place of those white parts.

James Bond, Ghostbusters and Back to the Future cars have already been done in other themes, as have been various Batmobiles and so on. There's not that much space for actual innovation with movie cars. 1:8 scale is already big and cumbersome, hard to handle and to appreciate after finishing the build, moving to even larger scale would make them even worse in this regard. And of course the parts would be under much more strain as 1:6 scale would be over twice the weight of 1:8 (all else being equal). New large scale backhoe has been on the wishlist of practically everyone on this forum for a very long time now. We'll see what they do for the anniversary year but somehow I'm not having very high hopes...

According to Rebrickable 42100 has 4108 pieces with 102 of those being the extra "rock" pieces for it to handle so still over 4000 pieces for the machine itself, but just barely at that. And yeah, the very largest sets all seem to include some kind of extra which increases the part count - 42082 had those house things and 42055 came with a small secondary model and some round bricks to represent rocks. 42131 didn't have any extras though and with 3854 parts it's one of the biggest especially if you don't count the extras in other sets. I'm not sure how many parts the prefab house parts for 42082 were but I suspect it along with 42100 still have more parts for the main model than 42131. McLaren P1 had 3893 pieces so more than the bulldozer and only a bit over 200 pieces short of the supposed part count of 42232 so I don't think that's a crazy amount of parts for 1:8 car. 4500 or more would be a bit harder to imagine, at least for supercars.