Gumalca

Oh right, I hadn't noticed that, but now I can't unsee it. That ruins the set for me. Otherwise the inclusion of a London bus and camper van actually seemed nice. The 11035 Creative Houses just seems boring. Minimalistic house facades have been in many of the large boxes, and most have even done it better, like 10704, 11717 or 11005. 10703 was also more varied in styles. And then we had 11004 and 11008 that brought some really interesting variation into the housing market. None of this is found in the new set. 11034 Creative Pets is very odd too. The printed bow bricks with eyes limit reusability a lot. And seriously which animal has its eyes on the forehead, come on! Not really a great year for Classic. Only the Creative Space Planets I might be getting. And previously I thought the Classic line is really improving, with 11027, 11028 and 11033 from last year that reduced the color palette in each set, so that you finally would get a substantial amount of bricks in one colour to actually build something that doesn't look like patchwork and is bigger than the included mini builds.

Leaked prices and piece counts: 31158 Sea Creatures 421pcs $29.99 31151 Terrifying T-Rex 626pcs $59.99 31153 Modern Beach House 939 pcs $109.99 So these are definitely larger than 31088 and 31058 that we previously had. More like 4506 and 4507. Which is a good thing, because that should be enough for realistic looking models. The small Creator creatures have become too cute lately with all the big eyes for my liking. Just compare 31145 to 31102 or 31073. So I'm looking forward to those medium sets coming. Especially the T-Rex could be great, because the Jurassic World theme mostly has those molded dinosaurs that I find boring, and bigger brick build dinosaurs otherwise only appear in the large 18+ sets. For the sea creatures I'm wondering which species might be contained. A rerun of the always popular shark (31088), dolphin (31128) or octopus (31130 and 31088)? Or maybe some of the previous B-models or side builds get a better treatment like sea horse (31128 and 31140), whale (31088), manta ray (31130), lobster (31130), seal (31133), crab (31088) or turtle (31128)? They would all deserve a proper A-model treatment. I guess I'm hoping for a proper manta ray the most!

Good to hear that you were able to solve it! Right, taking the wings or top off is not that easy in this model. Everything is connected in multiple directions.

Pushing the gear out will do nothing. This setup is not influenced by gear alignment. Many MOCs have this problem, but Lego avoids this. So here front and back wheels are only connected through a linkage. The problem is most likely that one of the linkages was connected to the wrong hole. For example on page 33. Can you even retract the front wheel completely? If your linkage is short of one hole distance I think you can't do this. That's why Lego tells you to test the linkage on page 33 and again on page 46 with the front wheel attached.

Agreed. I've built a good amount of Premium Technic MOCs that are on rebrickable, and nearly always there will be techniques that are questionable. Things that Lego will not do in a mass product for very good reasons. Looking at a great MOC is one thing, but only once you have built it yourself you can really compare it to a Lego set. Even when there are good videos of a MOC, this does not tell everything. After rebuilding I've sometimes found myself wondering why functions don't run as smooth as in the video, although I keep attention to have all axles run smoothly. So I find the question a bit strange. The opposite question (which MOCs do you think could be turned into an official product right away), would make more sense for me.

You're probably right. I felt cheated first when 8110 had no complete B-model, and 42023 also had no complete B-model.

I own 80 Lego Technic sets, and I think I've built all the B-models except for 8258. I guess it just happened that I parted out the set before I had time to build the B-model. I've also built a lot of rebrickable alternates, free and paid ones. In the last years, most of the time there were better looking alternates from rebrickable. But I still appreciated that the official B-models were sturdy and easy to build.

Lego had an alternate initiative with several MOC designers a while ago: the remake project. I don't think the website is online still, but some of the designers uploaded theirs to rebrickable eventually, for example these: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-5310/NKubate/60092-deep-sea-research-mech/#details https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-5533/PeterSzabo/60092-submarine-mech/#details The project was about City sets mostly though, which are not such a good base for alternates, because of many specialised parts. As far as I know the models were somehow checked for their stability and such. But like with most things Lego does, they just let these things vanish from the web eventually. Then there was an alternate contest for small Creator sets once, and part of the price for the winners was to have instructions for their alternates published in the Lego instructions archive website. I think the files have been pulled down also now, but brickset still lists the dead links: https://brickset.com/sets/31058-1/Mighty-Dinosaurs Now bricklink has started to sell digital instructions together with bricks, and if you remove the bricks from the cart you can buy the digital instructions only, though it's not clear why they made that so complicated. Not sure they will open it up for alternate models later. Also it's strange that when Lego hired grohl he was already a well known alternate designer, but at the same time the decline of official Technic B-models had already started so they never fully used his alternate designing abilities.

Nice. I love it.

The sun and earth domes? The smaller ones are also used on the big rover. The motorcycle windshield.

But as customers we like rebrickable. We can download the instructions as PDF and view them on any device we like. And we trust rebrickable to remain online for the foreseeable future so that we can always download the instructions again. In comparison, with a hobbyist app project, I'm never sure whether the creator will be bothered to do updates for future Android versions.

Minifigs fit into the panels pretty well. And it makes sense to have a bigger chair in the cockpit than in the kitchen.

Lego obviously had to do this, because competitors already have such orreries. Strange however that they used those big domes for the earth and sun. I find the brick build version from the competitors better fitting for a construction toy. Also strange that they did not use a lot of system parts overall. As Technic fans we can be glad they choose complexity over looks. But I'm not sure it will sell as good as Lego expects. Because it will appeal less to people collecting stylish display models, which, even though it eludes me personally, is a big trend among adult Lego fans. And as for the kids, I'm not sure they are that much interested in the educational aspects, most of them probably prefer action sets. I like the inclusion of wheels for the base. This gives the possibility for some strange vehicle alternate MOCs.

I was expecting something more like a front loader. The loading mechanism here seems very simple. The function to lift the cabin up looks interesting though.

You could also use rebrickable and run a build calculation with the two sets that you have: https://rebrickable.com/build/ For example, using this tool I've calculated, that if you have 42100 and 42110 like you say, then you only need 97 additional parts to build the 42042 Crawler Crane. But this does involve the older motor system, so you probably don't want to buy those, because they are not compatible with your current motors. Maybe your son would be able to change the build and use the motors he already has. For the 42146 Liebherr Crawler Crane the calculation results reveal that you already own 2355 of the necessary 2883 parts, so you would have to buy 528 additional parts to build it. But since this involves a lot of new and special parts, this is probably not going to be much cheaper than to buy the set in this case. So probably look out for other sets. Either way, I think buying a new complete set or the additional parts for a set are the best ways to go. Because he can always learn things from building by instructions, and still build his own ideas afterwards if he likes building from mixed parts.

Funny. As a Technic fan I don't expect this to be a real Technic set, more something that would also fit into Icons. So I'm not really hyped for it.

The costs matter, but not in a way that they couldn't afford it, or that those few sets would adjust down their annual finance report. But they have to set a limit to who is getting free sets, because nowadays everybody is trying to be an influencer and starting a youtube review channel, and I'm sure they are getting requests by influencers everyday. And in their best interest they will have some internal rules to who's getting what and who's not, so that these decisions are not acts of favoritism, or otherwise they will discover some years later that are eligible people were relatives of some dude from accounting. And then when you have those rules, sometimes people fall under the radar where it's not easy to see why. But even if everybody in the forum here likes Sariel's reviews, that's just a few people compared to the relevant audiences that one of the biggest toy manufacturer might want to reach. All you die hard fans are buying the stuff anyway Maybe they even promoted someone else to the program at the same time, maybe not even a Technic reviewer. Lego probably has their marketing data straight and knows where they want to invest more. Maybe Sariel should have started to review Dreamzzz sets

I guess that's how humans work, we like interaction with other humans, even if it's just listening and watching. I mean, there are famous youtubers who just babble nonsense into the camera and people follow them. Of course not kbalage, he always comes across knowledgable and likeable. I watch his videos too.

Nice idea with the sliding transmission! Does it work reliable without jerking or blocking? If I remember correctly in manual models this gear shifting will often block because when two teeth happen to be above each other they don't just slide inside each others gaps.

Personally I like the (lower-?) medium sets most. Affordable but still big enough to incorporate interesting functions, and often plenty of alternates from MOC designers to build. And considering this, 2023 was a mediocre year. In the broad price range from 15 to 90 Euro there were only cars (and one motorcycle). 2022 we at least had 42136, and in 2021 we had 42120 and 42121. 42136 was kind of bad for having so little functions, but still I really liked those sets. I rarely buy sets above 100 Euro, even though I could afford them, but they are just too big for me. And most kids probably don't get so many 100+ Euro sets either. I'm really looking forward to 2024 for the garbage truck, the space loader and the forage harvester. It seems like we will be getting some real Technic for everybody again.

I think it is a valid question. You want to build a business. You don't have to have all the expertise yourself. Even a small business can require so many skills, it would be mad to master them all: tax laws, website programming, graphic designer, warehouse manager, social media promoter ... If you are good at some of them, you hire people for the rest. Some of the most successful business owners even contributed nothing to the product, their only skill was to bring the right people together. So maybe you are good at sourcing parts and fulfilling orders, so it's natural you want to task someone with designing models. The amount of money this is going to cost can vary by large amounts. Someone might be able to put together something on a single day, but this would probably not meet your quality standards. And on the other end a very perfectionist designer might spend a month or more working full time on the model, which is maybe more than you can afford. Also how much the designer is going to cost can very by the region that he lives in and the living costs this person has. In many countries a good price per hour for freelance work would be approximately 100 Euros. So working a week at 40 hours could already cost you 4000 Euros. But lets look at the price from another perspective. If the designer would sell the instructions on rebrickable, he could also make money easily. A 2000 to 3000 parts model instruction can cost maybe 15 to 20 Euros on average. Now if we would expect a low to medium amount of sales, lets say 50 customers, that would be 20*50 = 1000 Euro income. But of course when the designer sells his design exclusively to you, he will not profit anymore if the model is a real success and customer numbers go high. So he has to calculate with an above medium success rate at least. Whether this number of customers can be reached is then your risk as a reseller of the design. An above medium success rate for a moc at rebrickable can maybe mean approximately 500 customers. This would mean 20*500 = 10.000 Euro income. So from this perspective a designer would probably charge you 10.000 Euro for the design of this model, because this is the amount of money he would expect in a slightly above medium success rate of the moc at rebrickable over the course of maybe 5 years. Most people who ask for custom designs are not aware that the rational price for such a service is considerably high. I hope you are aware of the amount of money you will have to offer someone.

Me too. The track layout is more interesting. The pirate roller coaster was just a big circle with one elevated half. But the space roller coaster has less parts and much smaller entrance building. It's a shame there is no set in Creator this year that continues the trend of pirate ship, castle and viking boat from last years: a big Creator set with historical background that evokes memories of classic Lego themes from the past.

The Bugatti sounds like good piece count for money on first look, but it just contains so many small parts. There are so many 1x2 half beams in this set... After building the Bugatti I felt that it was not more of a bargain than any other set. So I'm really not surprised that other sets from Technic don't have the same price per piece value.

Like many licensed Technic sets I only see disadvantages through the license. It looks boring in all black and I'm sure the Lego designers could have come up with more interesting shapes on their own.

You don't know how many were produced in relation to other sets. Maybe it started off very popular which prompted a lot more to be produced, but then lost popularity to some other sets that appeared on the shelves. Also it makes sense to overproduce exactly this set, because it has no parts that need special production machines. No springs, no pull back motors. Maybe Lego would like to produce more of the 50 Euro cars from this year, but they can't because their pull back motor production line is on full capacity. Then it's easier to push out more 42123s. So there is a lot we don't know before we can make the assumption that 42123 is not meeting Lego's expectations.