howitzer

One of your points caught my eye, the requirement of a smart device is indeed a drawback. Not necessarily a debilitating one, but still. I'm sure though, that the people at TLG have considered this at length and come to the conclusion that as long as the requirement of smart device is stated out clearly enough and most of the product range is still traditional, it's not going to be a problem for their business. Vast majority of people have a smart device at their disposal and those who don't probably aren't buying much Lego anyway. That's something to ponder though, while the Sian didn't have any motors, other flagships and just below flagship sets (42100, 42099, 42114) of the last couple of years have had PU motors and thus required a smart device and if the rumours are correct, the upcoming bulldozer will surely too while the Zetros could be anything. Beside those we have the 42109 and 42124. So especially in the higher end most sets appear to require a smart device while the small sets naturally go without electronics. I really hope we're going to also see large, even flagship-level sets, without smart hub in the future. The dumb hub un-released with 42113 gives us hope though. It appears though, that the complex, motorized sets have come to stay, smart or not. The brickbuilt frames with gears inside of the 80's and early 90's are gone for good, and while studless is indeed much harder to build with, it also allows the design of much better looking models with more complex and interesting mechanisms. I don't think ingenuity is lost either, rather the new parts have allowed the design of smoother, more reliable and compact mechanisms instead of kludging together stuff that could be easily solved with new parts. I also remember fondly my childhood sets and builds, but I must say that if you strip the nostalgia away, Lego (and not just Technic) has come a long way, and models today are for the most part much cooler than they were in my youth.

What I attempted to say was that leaving the instructions out would seriously compromise the quality of the product, and that's something TLG won't do. I'm sure there is an environmental aspect to consider, but I'm not sure ditching printed instructions is going to even have a meaningful impact at the current state of things. The bricks themselves are of course by far the biggest offender here, but I bet packaging also has bigger impact than instructions. I'd be very interested to see if there's any actual (published) studies done on this, especially considering the alternatives, like switching to paper packaging instead of plastic bags and PDF instructions instead of printed ones. In the meantime though, the paper for instructions of course should come from sustainable sources. Plastic or not, I have thought of Lego as a generally much more environmentally friendly toy than many others, simply because they are so durable and reusable. When I was a kid I had some Lego inherited from my parents' generation and I passed my old Lego down to my kid. Few other toys can be useful and fun literally over multiple generations.

TLG will never replace printed instructions with a building video as it's obviously a very bad media to actually follow when building. The printed instructions have value in that one doesn't need a device to view them and they are very easy to browse to find if there was a mistake or something. They are not expensive to make or don't take much space in the box either, so little would be gained by ditching them. At the very most I can see them replacing printed instructions with downloadable PDF instructions but I see no gain in that either, as that would cut out those consumers who don't for one reason or another have a suitable device on their disposal to view the instructions. It's still primarily a toy for kids and while there are a lot of devices around nowdays, they're not everywhere and when printed instructions are included, the set is complete, nothing else is required to fully enjoy it (unless it's a Control+ or other such set).

No trikes or sidecars :(

There are several, for example: Lego's own Digital Designer, Studio (made by Bricklink) and LeoCAD. I use the latter mainly for it's comfortable UI but others have their advantages too.

That's what I do when building a MOC, especially if it has any complex gearings or whatever. I have a selection of parts on the table in front of my computer, and I can switch freely between digital and physical models, building both at the same time.

It's pretty rude to ignore a well written comment which offers counterpoints to most of your arguments and answers most of your questions. Anyway, haptic feedback is indeed nice and you can use a gaming console controller for that with PU.

New tracks would be a pretty strange decision, as the old ones are quite large and even if they wouldn't be exactly in scale for the model, I believe it's an acceptable compromise. And I really hope there will be something more interesting in new parts than another track tread piece.

How many of those have been created by kids/teenagers? Studless is much more difficult to build with than the old studful style, there's no argument about that. For AFOLs it's easy to dismiss the increased difficulty but making a good-looking, sturdy and functional build with limited parts is really hard. Adults generally have more skill, patience and perseverance than young builders so they are more often able to actually finish models properly. Now, one might ask why TLG switched to studless if it makes MOC building harder? The answer is simple: it allows for more complex, full-featured and better looking models, and it's still entirely possible to build MOCs with studless - just not as easy. This might actually work as advantage for TLG, as kids will keep the models assembled longer, wanting new sets instead of taking the old ones apart to build something else. So TLG can get somewhat increased sales while staying true to the basic concept of a toy that can be taken apart and reassembled in almost infinite number of ways. IMO the recent trend of a lot of increasing licensed sets with more and more cars in the lineup and the decline of B-models speaks also of this: the sets are mostly intended to be placed on display, instead of being taken apart soon to build something else.

Thanks! I actually didn't know about the Top Gear car slow-start thing.

They might but probably not. Their FAQ says that shipping outside Finland is decided on case-by-case basis, and I suspect that foreigners making order in non-EU countries are out of luck :(

Carefully built and lubed, the ABS gears can stand surprisingly high speeds without melting, check Brick Experiment Channel on YT for some high speed Lego videos (and other insane builds).

It's perfectly trustworthy. I could go and walk into the store to pick up the set and pay with cash or credit card. It's a locally big retailer from where I've bought numerous sets, nothing shady about it. For some reason though, they have large selection of Lego, most of which is always offered significantly below RRP (though not every set, IDEAS sets for example are often nearly at RRP).

Thanks a lot for the video, this info should come handy when I get to the actually attempting to drive my WIP excavator, even though I'm using the RI hub. Should have enough similarities (and if not, then I'll have to resort to learning Python...)

@Jurss, @Gumalca Oh, I stand corrected. I had no idea about those B-models. Thanks for letting me know, I always thought graders to be completely absent from Technic, except for the universal set I mentioned.

I actually had a similar observations as Erik when I introduced Lego to my partner. First I gave them 8865 to build, and it was a real struggle (and not just because the horrible first-iteration friction pins), the next one was 8868 which went much easier but I still had to help here and there. Then we bought and built together 42082 and again the new parts and building techniques posed a challenge and naturally I finished my sections much, much faster, but it was still fun to build and play with together. Simply being familiar with the basics of parts and how they go together helps tremendously in getting a build right. As others said, it's really easy for us AFOLs to forget that there's a lot to be learned for someone who has never put brick and brick together because we have learned the basic stuff so long ago that it comes as easy as breathing to us.

Yep, all lengths from 3 to 15 would have uses. 5 and 7L for example would be really useful with 5x7 frames. But I'm not holding my breath for the whole series considering that first bricks were released in 1977 and the last to round up the selection (14L) in 1997, 20 years later. The full selection of straight, full-thickness liftarms happened much faster though, the first being released in 2000 and the last to complete the series from 3 to 15L in 2004. Still, that's many years in between the first and the last release.

I'd buy that in a heartbeat, especially if it included long actuators for pneumatics.

Not even as a B-model but as one model in a universal set, 8074 in 1991.

Is 209,90€ cheap price for 42115? https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/35345/nrvdk/LEGO-Technic-42115-Lamborghini-Sian-FKP-37?list=OZCYkRhlx7n5sxdbhqKs8qOdHwiPlsOipMtjip9CK2

Pullbacks are licensed. Otherwise yeah, only couple of small unlicensed sets. But there are multiple 2H sets without any info yet, not even rumors so there you might find something larger unlicensed, though the largest ones probably will have licenses.

Yep, RC driving is highly probable. The question is, what other functions will there be beside driving? Being a truck it could be almost anything, though I hope it'll be something else than a dumper, as those have already been seen with the Arocs and as fully remote in the Volvo. Zetros being an off-road truck, I'm also expecting a proper suspension setup and four-wheel drive.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a proper brick-built front grille? For me that printed grille seems to be perhaps the most glaring problem looks-wise...

Yeah, true. And it might be that single hub isn't enough for operation anyway, as you'd need 2 motors to drive the tracks so only two ports available for other functions. Maybe with a 4-function gearbox it could be done (one motor as selector, another to drive the functions) but it's much more probable that there's two hubs. On the other news, a Zetros could be nice, depending on functionality. Would complement nicely the Arocs.

While something like this would be truly the next level of awesomeness, I'm highly doubtful. But as 42100 was a showpiece intended to display the capabilities of C+ system, it's indeed hard to justify the price point without introducing something new and exciting, some new connector or panel won't cut it here.