howitzer

Number of entries in various contests definitely reflect TLG's releases at least to some extent. I believe the small car contest a few years back had highest number of entries of all time, and the construction equipment contest a bit later was very popular too. On the other hand, other contests, such as GBC and the recent non-vehicle contest, as well as the transformation contest had only a few entries, barely enough to make it a contest.

Yes it does, there's a few reviews online already, such as this: https://bricknerd.com/home/i-design-real-pinball-machines-lego-comparison-7-1-26 and this: https://www.brothers-brick.com/2026/07/03/a-lego-pinball-wizards-take-on-lego-icons-11374-arcade-pinball-machine/ It even uses the new freewheel-gear which debuted in the Road bike set.

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

This is awesome! Could also be improved a lot with parts from other sets, but as an alternative it's really great!

I have many desires, stuff that would really embody the spirit of Technic and make for a great anniversary sets, but I feel listing them would be a waste of breath (or keypresses). Rather my expectations are at most 1 set worth of the title of 50th anniversary set, and the way things have been going even that doesn't seem likely. There will be cars, cars and more cars and little beyond that.

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...

Those AI images are indeed pretty impressive at first glance, and have gotten a lot better in last couple of years compared to the AI generated images of Lego when they first started to appear. Of course someone with actual knowledge on the parts and construction techniques will quickly notice the inconsistencies with real Lego, as is seen with the Twingo pictures above such as bent liftarms, wrong length/width of panels and completely nonexistent parts. For images depicting System creations it's probably a bit more difficult to separate AI images from traditional CGI and photos due to wider parts selection and it also seems to me that AI is slightly better at creating System builds than Technic builds. When it comes to official sets, I wouldn't be too worried. The official reveal will happen when it will happen, and before that AI images are no more useful than the blurry "leaked catalog photos" of olden days or whatever, which often were nothing like the actual, final product. I find however that AI images could be used to make fake Lego content revolving around MOCs, which could be used to get ad revenue or something. I don't see even this as a huge problem though, as I don't think there's _that_ much money to be made this way. Maybe it could be a problem whenever there's some contest with photo submissions?

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.

It doesn't represent light, it represents reflector. Road bikes commonly have a rear reflector but no lights.

Funny that there's something that seems to represent a derailleur, but it's static and there's just a single sprocket in the rear so no changing of gears. I'm sure a proper (functioning) derailleur is beyond what's possible with Lego but that being the case I'd have designed this bike to represent a belt-driven transmission with internal gear hub. Or just make it a proper single-speed if that's also too hard to do. Other than that it looks nice and it's nice to finally see a proper Lego bike set released, considering that beside Lego bikes are practically the only place where normal people can easily see and feel a mechanical transmission in action in real life.

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.

Did it have to be lime? Otherwise looks great among all the car crap, but I'm not fan of the colouring of the cabin.

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.