howitzer

I have the same feeling regarding 8868, it's very functional and playable, while managing to look good. The build is also straightforward, and while the pneumatics is complex and challenging, it's not needlessly complicated and you always know what you're doing so no large complex assemblies which purpose are mysterious until very late in the build. The only things I'd improve on would be adding a steering wheel (preferably functional, but I'm not sure if it's possible) and doors with mirrors.

Looks awesome, do you have any more photos to show?

But those enthusiasts don't really have to answer to anyone but themselves, so they can cut entirely stuff like quality control and all that. They also don't need to make profit (or any revenue at all) and if the project fails, the loss is mostly their own time spent. Then there's of course the scale of the production, it's fairly easy to craft a single, working prototype (like allanp showed here) but there's still a big leap from that to producing millions of these parts. It's basically the same question which arises every time someone wonders why TLG won't produce this or that part. I'm sure the competitors can also do the math, and that's why we don't see much innovation from them, at least as long as they aren't growing big enough to pose a serious challenge to TLG's almost-monopoly.

R&D is expensive, much more so than copying someone else's design. Maybe this will change in the future but at the moment it looks like TLG is the only company with resources to do any innovation.

It's indeed "specialized" as in the parts in question don't have much use beyond gearbox parts... but TLG has made specialized fake engine parts too, so why not gearbox? Sets with gearboxes are released almost every year so it would see a significant amount of use, despite being single purpose. But yeah, this demonstration proves once and for all that more compact gearbox design is indeed possible within the system and TLG has run out of excuses to not make one.

Something I wonder about is the outriggers. Apparently they must all be operated separately (that is, 4 knobs) which is kinda strange as I imagine it would be very easy to connect them together for simultaneous operation with a single knob.

When can we expect reviews?

I made a comparison overlay with the real thing few pages past. The proportions are indeed all over the place, but I guess there must be compromises as there's also tons of functionality inside. You're entirely right about the colour scheme and messy exterior though.

If they are indeed completely smooth (like glass marbles) then it should work. But any imperfection on the surface will break the suction effect.

Overall I don't really like that much the looks. Even disregarding the proportions relative to the source material, the exterior is way too busy with a jumbled mess of parts. Funnily, I find 9396 cleaner and better shaped, even though its exterior was more open. Maybe it's the clear two-colour scheme as opposed to 42145's four main colours. I wonder if it would help the looks if the black parts in the middle were changed into red (though some parts like 5x7 frames don't exist in red, which makes it more difficult).

No shallow-gene-pool AFOLs here, if you're an adult and you enjoy Lego, then you're an AFOL and that should be the end of it. You're welcome to enjoy Lego your way, regardless of what some others may think of the sets - and others are welcome to enjoy it their way. That's the beauty of Lego, you can enjoy it as it is or modify/MOC the hell out of it, whatever rocks your boat.

2020 was a pretty bad year too with the cancelled Osprey and no sets that I would consider above the average (perhaps the Sian and Ducati but that's it). 2021 had the magnificent Tow Truck and the Cat and Zetros were of course huge flagship sets, but if you're not into C+ there's not much else going on there either as the car sets were quite underwhelming and the rest is small stuff, which is always there. This year we already had the very nice ATV and now we're also getting what looks like the best helicopter ever and the waste handler as another set with pneumatics. It's nothing like 2016 but it's something.

42080 had a PF motor just when PF was being phased out, so I think they just wanted to sell their stock off cheaply. Same as 42095 which was really, really low price considering all the electronics it had in it. Beyond that, all the materials, logistics and stuff are now considerably more costly than they were in 2018, thanks to recent world events. I don't think TLG is really making any more profit off of 42144 or other recent sets than previous sets - the increased costs just have to be passed at customers.

Perhaps at some point, but not likely anytime soon. TLG doesn't like to repeat sets of the same theme and scale (Edit: unless it's a car) very close to each other, so probably the next helicopter will be much smaller scale, which wouldn't allow swashplate functions.

Would've been a very bad year for my wallet if also Liebherr were to be released this year...

Looking at the photos promobricks released, it appears that there's no cyclic pitch control, but a collective control along with tilting of the rotor, similar to 8856. Operating them from the cockpit is cool though.

But is that a justification ("I'm allowed to buy this without losing face because it's complex and interesting") or does it just make the set more interesting to the buyer ("I want to buy this because it's complex and interesting")? I completely agree with your second paragraph.

Well, I think they did remove some stuff, like Brickarms products from the site...

Considering how many System sets are nowdays being marketed strictly for adults and apparently selling well, I don't think the internal mechanisms are important anymore as a justification for buying toys. Almost all of these sets are more or less representations of real-world objects, which is probably enough justification for adults to buy them. Of course some non-realworld stuff is also marketed to adults, especially Star Wars UCS sets and such, but that has more to do with fandom culture as it has become normal and even "cool" to be a fan of some fiction franchise and show it off.

Asking the real questions. But somehow TLG sees these things as profitable, even if empty shell-design would be much cheaper or alternatively, functionless System-based design would be much more accurate in looks.

I went through the Technic section of PaB, and it appears that at least most of the last year's new parts are available but none of this year's so it looks like there's a significant delay in the addition of new parts. Also, the categorization is really broad, with only 20 items shown per page, which makes it annoying to browse. They really should improve the UI too.

These design issues make me wonder how much there has been internal prototyping on gear selectors and gearbox mechanisms at TLG? Obviously all of that is secret so I'm not expecting any answers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the issues of unrealistically large and cumbersome gearboxes is a well-known problem, but they just haven't been able to implement better designs because of the inherent limitations of the materials and production processes in question. Does anyone know if there are there more realistic/compact designs from other brands? That would surely be a great selling point for their products, if such a design (that meets the quality standards) were brought on the market.

I don't think all of those parts are available in sand blue. Particularly the dishes and at least some of the panels have not been made in this colour, probably some others too.

These might also interest you: https://www.newelementary.com/2019/09/88072-design-4623-plate-modified-w-arm-up-hook-1x2-difference.html https://www.newelementary.com/2019/11/difference-3839-plate-modified-1x2-with-handles.html

Yes, that's true, but there's indeed the fact that building instructions are freely available anyway, so sharing a page or two here doesn't really deprive TLG their profits. I'm pretty sure it's a different matter with the Ferrari book. And regardless of BI sharing or forum rules, it would still be illegal.