Gumalca

I'm a big fan of the Technic magazine extras. Among those that I have are the 412401 Wrecking Ball Crane and 412504 Wheeled Excavator, two types of machines that will also feature in this blind box series, so they will have to be compared. But the ones from the blind box series look less complex than the magazine ones. Also less refined than the Technic polybags we got in the last years. Therefore I'm not really sold on this new series. Also why not more variety? The magazine extras feature everything from helicopters, harvesters, submarines, mars rovers, supercars to construction machinery, in all kinds of colors. Sure they can do multiple series, but if they don't bring out the best in the first series, chances are there will not be another. Of course I'm holding back final judgement until the full release, but I really hope this won't be a similar let down like the F1 CMF series, where they released a much better F1 polybag a year before for the same price and then dumbed everything down for the CMFs.

If it has AWD this will not really work well together with lifting the back wheels off the ground?

Since the Technic magazine with the fire truck is available in stores now, there are photos from the last page showing the upcoming issue on the web. The extra will be a combine harvester.

In case you wonder why we get this set, it was me who wished for an "Exploration Submarine, 50€" in the 2021 survey from the Technic Team: Link

42208 Aston Martin Valkyrie $60 42209 Volvo L120 Electric Loader $110 42210 2 Fast 2 Furious Nissan Skyline GT-R $140

It definitely makes sense to only have spur gears hear for the model, but it will seriously limit alternate building. Not even a single bevel gear? Damn! How are we supposed to build a helicopter from that?

Yes, this set looks like it could have been released 15 years ago. And in this regard it is ok for what it is. Some good old open frame Technic build. Maybe some 10€ sets from recent years have raised expectations beyond what was possible to continue to advance.

My hope was for something more along the shape of 8250, but that shape is probably to similar to military submarines for Lego nowadays. It's great that it has a lot of gears and functions, quite an outlier in todays Technic sets. Therefore I will surely get this, even though I'm still getting used to the look. It does not seem to have a lot of simple beams and is quite colorful, which will make alternate building hard I guess.

This is clearly my favorite of the upcoming wave. It has only one real function, but we don't get such a push beam rotator function everyday, so it's interesting. Also the size of the model meets the expectation for a 333 parts set, thanks to some good old long beams. I would have been fine with another color scheme as I think I have enough white already. But it fits the topic so it's alright.

Can someone figure out how the tipping function works? How is it connected to the gear? Nevermind, someone just posted a good suggestion.

The rear mudguards have to be printed, right? That makes them less useful for alternate MOCing. But having the engine in the front is nice, because it requires a bit more gears. Since most other cars at this scale have been sport cars and have their engine at the back, they were often technically simplistic beyond means.

Both the harvester and the garbage truck had a lot of system parts. And small parts. They are smaller even though they use more parts.

I think their point was that without knowing where a part goes they can't look for a solution to replace it.

Thanks for giving such a honest insight. This just shows how tough competition is. Look at those 42114 alternates. M_longer's moc on first place has fan photos from 28 different buyers if I counted that right. Your Moc on 9th place has one. Now if we put these numbers into relation, then we can estimate that M_longer has probably 28 times your sales too. And yet he's complaining, lol. My personal advice to you would be to look more into medium sized sets. Considering big sets like 42114 it's not just about best price. People who decide to buy and build an alternate are also investing a lot of time. So many will only ever build one and choose from the top ones. For medium sized sets people are much more likely to buy multiple alternates in a row, which increases your chance of a sale if you're not one of the top Mocs. 42109 is probably an outlier here, because it never attracted much attention from the alternate community.

I guess that's true. Many designers will only make one alternate for a big set. And then the outcome depends very much on whether people like the type of vehicle. I've also bought multiple of your Mocs, but for example I'm not sure I'm going to buy your 42175 camper. The subject just doesn't interest me that much.