Merlo

There were adult exclusives for older Lego lines? I thought AFOL sets were a relatively recent invention, unless we count complex technic sets and such. IMHO it's a cool and fun build. The set is exactly what you see on the box. I doubt many Lego sets do bad now that they're raking billions. Let's hope we get a 10497-like Renegade and not an Eldorado-like Renegade :)

It's my guess that in the time the original Galaxy Explorer came out, you weren't really spoiled for choice when it comes to brick built space ships. I might be wrong, but the ship seems to have a legendary status at least partially based on that. It's also my guess that the new Galaxy Explorer didn't sweep the world off of its feet. I mean, I hope it did and I'm wrong, but I didn't hear no immediate plans to continue with Lego space remakes, even though the designers themselves expressed the wish to do so.

Ok, so how could I not think, after this, that you aren't able to see things in the context of the time they're made in, the intended audience, the available pieces, etc.? For example it's quite obvious that the new Galaxy Explorer is a much better set than the original, yet the original was *everything* when it came out while the new one is "it's ok" in the time it came out. And this is the only way we can rate sets. We look at what's available and what's possible and compare what we got. Well any set is suited to any age to some extent. Were 10305 as detailed as that church, or at least halfway there, I'd like it a lot. Even if it was much smaller. Had 10305 been just as it is now, but also much smaller, I'd still like it. I like AFOL sets, I like kids' sets, I don't particularly like hugely inflated kids' sets as it's a lot of money and space for something that won't be as awesome as a full blown AFOL set and won't be as playful as a full blown kids' set.

No, any 400$ set can be a lot of different things and interesting for many different reasons. I just find 10305 interesting as a big castle to play with, and that's not in my sphere of interest. What? :) Well, as I said, those are two different things to me. 10305 is playable, it can be played with. Playful to me means having a playful look. It's not bad that 10305 is great for play - it's great! It's just not for me. No, 10497 is also right in Lego's territory of trying to have its cake and eat it too. I'm in the process of moving and it's on my shelf right now between 21322 and some non-Lego modular buildings. 21322 looks very playful. The buildings look very lifelike. Looking at both sets it's difficult not to say something like "Fun!" or "Cool!" depending on which one you look at. 10497 is right between those two. A little bit fun, and a little bit cool. But no one ever exclaimed "a little bit fun and a little bit cool!" I think the words you're looking for are: I've been forever spoiled by some great Lego sets that likely demanded a lot of time and thought (or maybe incredible talent? no idea) and am finding it hard to adjust to a time where Lego just churns out sets that often look great, but lack vision. You can change a MOC to make it stable and to use available colors. Also, please note that the two are not mutually exclusive. A fully 18+ looking set can have all the play features a child would want. And a smallish set aimed at children can look good enough for adults to actually want it. I usually only bail on adult sets when I see it looks too much like a playset for me to able to display it unless it's fun and relatable to me. I don't think I've ever expressed any kind of preference for greebling. If you took the literal wall parts of old castles and smacked them together into an interesting shape, evocative of some different or nonexistant time and place, I'd be fine with that level of "detail" and "greebling" :) It's actually really simple. Look at the Galaxy Explorer - as I said it looks simple, sleek, elegant, it has that striking classic space color scheme. It's maybe not interesting enough to display with its clean and straight lines but, hey, what if... what if we made it the size of the original Galaxy Explorer? Or smaller!! It would be much more rebuildable, it would be swooshable, it would have an overkill of details for a simple playset. Imagine how silly my comment of "oh, it's kinda flat on my shelf next to more spectacular display models" would sound then? I would (hopefully) quickly be buried by replies of "because it's not a display model, dum-dum, now be quiet and let me swoosh and rebuild this ship just one more time!" I love play sets. I love display sets. I don't have a particular need for inflated play sets. The only thing that does is dillutes the "level of interest / square cm", rebuildability and cuteness of the set. IF the real life inspiration for the set is actually very detailed so you absolutely have to enlarge it to show that faithfully for older fans - I'm fine with that too. This is neither. Or, Lego could say "the castle can only be this big for the level of detail to suffice in an 18+ set". Or, Lego could say "the castle will be aimed at kids but, by God, it will be so cute AFOL's will buy it too" (as was sometimes the case with the castles of old) Also, here's a random MOC in 10305 style. This is overdetailed and oversized for its own good. Take this, compress it, don't go full "and here someone carved their name in the wall" and you'd have a set that's cute, wonderful and affordable and 10305-ish done good. Look at this: This set has 3 pieces from today's perspective. Yet see how the pizzeria is reminiscent of the real thing? And how cute that silly van is? Lego used to excel in "going around the limitations to capture the essence of a thing suited for any age". Now they excel more at "disregarding the essence to just add a thousand pieces more to boost the price".

Well I've been (overly) specific about how I feel about certain things and there's plenty of written proof and yet somehow my entire take ended summed up like a caricature :) On the contrary, Mike didn't chime in on this topic, nor would I be able to claim he felt otherwise than he did when designing the set. All I can say is how I feel about it. There's no objective truth to it. I may feel something is beautiful, you may feel something is ugly. But I can't feel you said 2+2=5 if you did not. Accusation is a charge of wrongdoing. The designer of the set had no legal or moral obligation to make the set into anything remotely close to what I would like, so there's no wrong done. This is nothing more than lighthearted forum banter to add some spice to an otherwise stale argument :) Yes, of course. To state why the GE is disappointing to me. I can't really *know* what the designer was thinking nor what any of you were thinking for that matter, all I can say is how it feels to me. But just like I told to someone before, I don't think anyone is wrong to like the set nor was Lego wrong to make the set. Presumably, sets are made to sell and for people to like, not to meet some specific criteria. I'd say if you're redoing something the two ways that come to mind are a cover song - interesting take on the original, and a tribute song - that tries to capture most of the different things that the original meant to different people. 10497 is just a bit of both, but not a lot of either. It's not interesting enough to be a true cover, as evidenced by many more interesting MOC's in existence, and it's not deep enough to be a true tribute, as evidenced by the many things about it that I miss and can find in the original, a 40 year old set. It just tries to substitute both by superior execution. Fair enough, but I've seen a few of these before. They seem to weirdly collaborate with my thoughts on their design process. It turns out they were inspired by Benny's Spaceship. They never had classic space sets. They're focused on technical aspects and execution rather than the specifics. They've been looking at real castles for 10305. I think I've mentioned MP does wonderful renditions of realistic-y sets and aspects, but not so much the ones where imagination is involved. 10305 takes a lot from the immediately preceding Creator Castle. There's no talk about what the Galaxy Explorer meant to any of them (probably nothing, aside from its know place in Lego history). It's all just written from a very professional point of view: there was an assignment, there were challenges to overcome, here's how we overcame them. This is all in line with what I've been saying and much like asking a painter to describe what was like creating one of his painting and the entire talk ends up about finding the right thickness of canvas and mixing a proper shade of yellow.

I love the interior details. I like that they're there. I think they'll mean a lot to some people. But since I buy sets more to display them and I won't display the castle open... I always thought this was primarily due to brick limitations in the past, or some other reason. Yes, of course, the sets were boy oriented more than not, but if you've seen kids play they don't actually behave like stereotypical boys and girls. You won't get any opposition on this from me. Lego always lacked the interiors in my youth and I'm glad they're here now. Yes, more bricks brought more details and that's a positive change. I wish. It did yes, and it was a wonderfully weird feature. But since the blue bricks extended forward it felt like a semi-closed fuselage thing going on, with the rear part being closed off. Several of the images of MOC's on this topic handle this well. Looking at them now I don't even think glass was the problem, it's more that the 10497 glass doesn't look like a part of the ship like it does on both the original and the MOC's. It looks like the ship is just the bottom part and then it has an elongated double cockpit like a fighter plane. Some MOC's also have a lot of glass like that and don't have this problem because the glass part seems to make up the hull of the ship. That way you get sort of the best of both worlds. It feels enclosed, and yet you can see the interior better. So now that I've managed to put that to words, it seems this is also one thing that the MOCers have understood and felt about the original, there was more to it than "it's a ship and it has glass". The interplay between those two worked because it was carefully chosen. For an outsider to reverse-engineer, there's nothing easy about this, yes. For Mike, it wasn't a problem. I've seen Lego sets do these things before to great success. Yes, I agree. In fact, I've accidentally mentioned this exact thing before I read your post. However, "better-looking" is a big factor of alibi designing... i.e. you cannot make it interesting, or you cannot make it both interesting and looking great, so you just make it so it looks great. If you put your heart and soul into a design and it turns out unpopular - you're to blame. If you don't really think about putting anything in it, but just make it have the literal parts it needs and it look great - how can you be to blame? It looks great! This is why I loved Lego sets of old. Great! Then it's no worries for most people, they will probably enjoy a majority of the sets to come. For myself, I've found that a majority of interesting things are ugly. They're not really objectively ugly, of course, but their quality is not immediately apparent and since they don't conform to our expectations, they look somehow ugly or "weird" or "awkward" at first. That's why I said 10497 is a bit of a rice cracker. If you put on Barbie Girl for kids, they'll immediately catch on to why it's great. They definitely won't if you play them some jazz, because it's "ugly". It takes deeper look to see it can be much more interesting than Barbie Girl, just like it took a deeper look to realize what I've just realized about the cockpit of the Galaxy Explorer a few paragraphs before. The MOC-ers realized this because theirs was a work of love. Lego's was a work of skill, done professionally. I only say that because the end result is too close to the source in literal, banal, countable aspects. Whenever you love a subject, your problem is deciding on what take of an idea to incorporate into the final design. You never just look at the bare mechanics of it and try to smooth them so they're superficially more appealing. I think it set out to sell well, didn't it? I would hope it was not a failure at that because I'd like to see more space sets in the future :) Have I said that? Worst case scenario you're just people that are not hard to please, and that's a good problem to have in one's life :) Sure. This is related to what I said about some of the sets from before... if you make a set be a lot of things at once, a lot of people will be able to find something for themselves in there. If the set mainly just looks good, then it won't be for me.

I don't think it particularly matters what my ideal GE would be, Lego doesn't owe me anything. I think it's great, though, how the old sets could be so many things to so many people. If you have an interesting and messy, yet simple design with bigger bricks, you could always make it sleeker yourself. I used to do this a lot as a kid. If you like it as is, that's great. If you don't - very easy to rebuild it. It's a lot easier to make something seemingly complicated simpler than the other way around. The new GE I definitely cannot make more complicated with my time and skills and it's brick count. Thus, a completely unrelated comment on the Brick Artisan's GE: I like the execution on the official GE better. I also like square lines more than rounded ones. 10497 looks contemporary but this somehow looks like 1990's even. If those two sold next to one another I'd still buy the Brick Artisan's one. There's no alibi work in that one, it's just the author's vision and you can take it or leave it. I can respect that. I dig how simple bricks have been used in interesting ways. Also it looks "messy" enough that you cannot take it all at once and thus it doesn't blend in with the background once you've seen it two times. And the cabin look leaves some mystery about the interior so you can pretend it's a larger ship if you want. The greebling also helps with this. But this is not something unique to this ship. Lego used to be all about this. Making small sets appear like they depict larger vessels and buildings. 10497 feels a bit like the opposite of that. And the windscreen on "second deck" I also find to be like the Lego of old... it would be very very difficult to argue that looks better than the 10497 solution, but this one is interesting and strange, and that one is just the reversed front windscreen. All in all a great effort by the designer. The other ship is also cool. Perhaps a bit too child like for my old ***, but interesting. I still see a lot of Lego designs that are interesting, whether it's monkey kid or dreamz or ninjago, etc. I'd like some of that in themes I find appealing.

Thank you for the interesting breakdown. I think for me the roof was just a way to demonstrate what I was talking about, not the main point. If I did a MOC for myself, I think I would actually skip the sunroof entirely. "Better" was never an issue, the official set is plenty good. But in all these images you posted designers take a stand/guess on what the original designer meant or where the beauty lies in their eyes. Lego set stays as far away from this as possible and does literal translation of design styles. It tries hard not to take any kind of stand so it ultimately doesn't say much at all. It's not very brave and I'd think it'd be easier to argue that the entirety of the classic space period is just ugly and dated compared to the new GE than it would be to argue that classic space is boring compared to this. As good as this looks, we have other great looking sets, we don't have many weird and wonderful sets like those from the classic space era.

What's wrong with the Blacktron Cruiser? Isn't it close to the original? Aren't aviation helmets more Star Wars-y and more space-y? Weren't the helmets before that just bike helmets? I'm not trolling, I genuinely don't know. I think I can describe my complaints about Eldorado Fortress and 10497 easily. For example: Look at the Eldorado Fortress? You did? OK. Now look at the new Galaxy Explorer? You did? OK. Did you notice how the Galaxy Explorer design is so much better than that of Eldorado Fortress that it almost hurts to look at the Fortress in comparison even though it would seem logical making all those shapes in a spaceship would be much more difficult than making a squareish fort, which already looked good in 1992 and was easier to modernize? You did? GREAT! You didn't? Well then we can agree to disagree and there is probably such a big gap in our tastes that it would be a waste of our time to try and bridge it :) My complaint about 10497 is that it's a bit of a rice cracker in space. If anything, the original GE needed more flair, not less. However, related to your conclusion, I do feel Lego space sets of the past had plenty of models that were just... too much. Too many colors, shapes, details, everything. If someone with such great taste as Mike Psiaki took those models instead and made them more rice crackery and boring, I think the end result might be... perhaps not more "inviting to play" but definitely prettier and more display-worthy than the originals were. I'd be excited to see that = more interesting ships getting the GE treatment. As I said, I bought the GE, I'd be 1000% buying those too.

Might be my bad English then. I meant playful as in full of wonder and whimsy and such, not playable as in you can easily play with it. I think 10305 is likely more playable than any previous castle with its detailed interior, but the outside look is almost halfway to a real castle, and not one of the interesting ones either. But most of 10497's play features have been inherited and/or improved, rather than invented. Ah, don't get me started on this. Remember when Lego had alternate models on boxes that were often more imaginative than the main model? The second sentence I think it's an exaggeration. The Creator 3-in-1 rover - I think that could've been in classic space colors and I'd like that very much. It was a good set. Speaking of which, Mike Psiaki also designed 31052 Creator 3-in-1 set and absolutely crushed it. Not only is the main model great (the things he might not do as well are not as crucial here), but both B and C models could have been sold as is and no one would have even noticed they were made from the parts of something else. And the models are entirely different -a camper, a house and a boat! I think that set surpasses my expectation for what a 3-in-1 set can be by quite some margin, unlike 10497's alternate models. This is almost akin to quote mining. This is just a strawman that goes against everything I've ever talked about and that probably anyone would consider insulting just on the basis of how deluded I would have to be to even entertain such a thought. As I've repeated many times, I don't mind and would not insult anyone's vision of the GE. I would not like all of them, sure, but I would not consider their taste inferior to mine because that makes no logical sense. My only complaint was that the new GE is what over here we'd call an alibi-job. I.e. you hire a professional, the professional look at all the superficial aspects of the product and absolutely nails them and doesn't really care or feel or think it's his job to try and reach the heart of the matter. Instead of thinking how to translate between two design languages or just admitting that it's not possible to know what every part of every ship meant to every person and just taking a stand on whatever the designer likes, or maybe consulting with his colleagues, the solution here was not to take any stand, not to translate anything and just do a "oh, it's a ship that goes vroom, so now it can be a ship that goes vroom and looks more badass and contemporary". And that's okay, I guess? I would just argue all these old sets were, even if it was by accident, just a little bit more than that. No, why? I think GE had a good size and price for what it was. I'm not an expert in these things, but looking at it as a consumer, it seemed fine to me. When I say something's a tad too plain, I don't mean it should be huge and greebled all over. I think that it's perhaps a bit of a rice cracker. It might still be tasty, well priced, filling, and all that, but at the end of the day it's a bit of a rice cracker :) I love the look of the 10497. I've already praised the fact that it doesn't have nearly as many tiny pieces as some of the other sets I've built before and since, but absolutely doesn't need them to look good. In fact, the only thing I don't like about Lego is when it tries to look detailed and fails. I believe this designer could make a toilet bowl look stunning. I would just prefer it if the first question that comes to mind when seeing a space set that's supposed to be in the vain of classic space (and even the factions that came after) is less "bro, did you work on this for 12 years?" and more "bro, are you 12?" In my experience adults have much fewer issues making something technically sound than they do finding their inner child. Also, I do not find this opinion of mine controversial, especially not amongst comparisons between the new GE and 6931 and other takes. Ah, maybe because other designers attempted to highlight and emphasize what they liked about the original GE, while this one just inflated it and smoothed it. Also, I think you're still exaggerating when you try and make it seem like you were in awe with all the features because my initial reaction after the build was disappointment that this set is one of those rare sets that you build and find nothing really surprises you. What you see on the box - is what you get. What really surprised me instead was how cleverly it was built and how the build process was more fun and less of a chore than usual with Lego. I cannot quantize these things. I can just say if a remake contains something truly new that would excite me or perhaps translates the original idea differently than I would have imagine, thus surprising me. This all goes hand in hand with the lack of vision I've mentioned with Lego these days. Everything is a one-off. Look at the creator castle, 10305, medieval blacksmith, forestmen GWP. In this case, much more so than with the sets that don't even match in scale or product line, I would think someone would say "okay, let's look at what classic space meant to us. we can then unify that into a design language we could reuse if we ever delve into the sets from this rough era again". Instead over the next x years we're bound to get a few more sets than don't match one another in any way because that's the easy way out and everyone here will be praising them and I'll be feeling kinda sad inside that I imagined Lego 30 years in the future would be so much more than what I have imagined not really "failing to meet some of the standards I foolishly took for granted". Let's get back to the Galaxy Dropship for a while - that doesn't look contemporary. It has a design that's kinda hard to place or at least the kind that'll look like a good classic car with time. And it's not because it's greebled or because it has round edges. It's because it has a uniform vision. It's not like borrowed ideas that would make the final set be easier to make or sacrifice logic for looks. The old GE also had a uniform vision, Lego back then often had. This vision can differ wildly and doesn't have to be anything even remotely similar to the Dropship. Same. But that's also what I've been saying: things that are attractive to AFOL's are not being specifically catered to. They're kinda there partially so instead of being able to completely enjoy something, you end up partially enjoying and partially feelings the sadness of a lost opportunity. I dig this. All except the printed parts on the roof. I wouldn't hugely mind a curved classic space set (if it's consistent!) but I do prefer square lines myself. Not only on the aesthetic front, but also because I feel it takes a lot more bricks and effort to make an attractive curved vessel, and it would equally take more effort and skill to build such sets. If 10497 is any measure, I think we should all find great pleasure in saying the exact same thing, but shaping it smoother this time and making the posts much larger

Well, maybe it's me, but somehow this whole elongated cockpit thing doesn't remind me of a big spaceship. I would find a glass roof covering the majority of an intergalactic spaceship a truly odd sight. Maybe great for tourism, but still :) Yes, but you could argue anything. I could argue the designer used the original GE images with an AI tool, asked for something sleeker, got something perhaps not too logical, but looked badass enough to make it :) Ah, but a part of the cockpit already was transparent. They could've designed the 2nd "deck" in the same way as the first and get as big as a windscreen as they wanted. Isn't it more likely that the way the new GE was built was easier and just better looking than trying to emulate how it looked in the original? Lego today is not brave enough to make something that looks weird. Heck, it's doubtful if anyone would buy it. All I'm saying is I loved weird. Classic space was anything from a little to a lot of weird and the new GE instead Benny's Spaceship-ized the old GE. I would have preferred if someone instead old Galaxy Explorer-ed the Benny's Spaceship. Make it all angular and awkward. But again, that's just me. The opposite of "flat wall" is not necessarily mad detail or greebling. I kind of feel like you wrote this part more because it makes for a good addition to the debate, but I'll bite :) The flat wall in the classic set wasn't really an imperfection because it was close enough to what the author wanted to make (whatever it was). There was no need to make a wall that height non-flat and probably if you tried with those parts it wouldn't look as good. But if you look at the old Galaxy Explorer and try to describe that part, precisely because of this you would not say "and the walls are really really flat". It kinda feels more like it was practical for them to be flat and they weren't tall enough to bring particular attention to that fact than like it was a particularly important part of the design. So instead you would probably describe it as "it has the part with the cockpit and then in the rear it suddenly gets both taller and wider" (and, heck, even falls again). Now, it doesn't matter what that means to me if I'm remaking the GE. It doesn't matter what it means to you either. But surely we both have our unique takes on "how this solution back then would translate into the design language of today". But what happened instead was that we got a literal, unidiomatic translation between the two design languages. And through that an idiom of old became a slightly broken expression of new :) It's a bit like not seeing the forest for the trees. The designer, for whatever reason, chose to partially google translate the old GE into the new - and hilarity ensued :) It would be similar had the wings of the new GE been just a flat plate like the old one had. Luckily, that part was properly translated into the present.

Ah, sorry, is the consensus that Benny's ship is very true to the classic space formula? Because to me that set and the new GE have very little in common. So it would make sense if one of them was true to it and the other wasn't, but not both. Unless we're just thinking "classic space colors" + "set in space" = classic space! In which case, yes, I probably am asking too much and everyone thinks I'm off my rocker :) As far as Benny's Spaceship is concerned, I think you could've seen from my previous comments why I wouldn't find in it the parts of classic space I liked and why I never bought it and why I would find those parts in, e.g. 6931, now that you've mentioned it. 6931 looks weird! It has an uneven mass/color/layer distribution and makes the child in me say: "wait, what is this??" I can easily roleplay it being from another world, let alone from the future. Benny's Spaceship does not - like, not at all. It looks sleek and badass and perhaps a bit comedic in how over the top it is. It's far more like a ship straight out of a superhero movie (which I guess it is) than out of classic space. It's like a cool kids' set, but might be too complex for rebuilding. Just like the new GE is like a cool grown up set, but might be too simple for prime shelf real-estate. 10497 I can only appreciate from a technical standpoint, i.e. look at how the designer has solved this, look at this technique, look at the execution here, etc. If I'm a child and Benny's Spaceship is in sight, I won't look twice at 10497. Well after this whole 10497 thing I find it hard to believe you wouldn't just wholeheartedly accept any and all space remakes that just meet the basic criteria of "looking like the Lego designer can design Lego", and I believe there are plenty of people who work for Lego and can indeed do a solid job of designing Lego xD

Y'all write too much for one person to answer @Horation Yes, people have rebuilt 10305, but it's not a job for the majority of fans, or even a significant number I would think. I'm not saying TLG should only make smaller sets. I just think it would be better if they opted for one thing at a time and really nail it instead of making multiple things with only moderate success at each. The set is plenty playful on the inside, but as I said, it's a dollhouse kinda playful not a rebuild kind. So if it's not a rebuild type set I'd prefer it to look more attractive as a display piece. Since they sacrificed a bit of that to add play features that I'm not going to use, it feels like a waste to spend 400 euros on it. Or, in other words, it's an epic set, that's not epic enough to be epic :) I feel the interior is not for me, it's more for kids. And the foliage and the rocks I feel are too rough for me and too rough for some of the more detailed castle parts. Why do you think neither of those options would please me? I bought plenty of kid friendly Lego sets for their simplicity and cheerful nature. I did, however, buy more 18+ non Lego sets, for the previously mentioned reason. If the set is 18+ and it's meant to please grown ups, but can't match non-Lego offerings because it has to be a playset accessible to little kids as well, that's a shame. I wish I had the time and the skill to just MOC them a bit as people have MOC'd 10305, but I don't. Many ideas sets I would have bought day one were changed in this way. Wait, what? I kinda can't follow from the middle point onwards :) If it was greebly, presumably it wouldn't be a set primarily meant for play and rebuilding, but more for display, and the other way around. It's okay if a set does one thing great and I don't like that thing. Tough luck for me, but still a great set. I just don't like it when sets are missed opportunities to really add anything substantial other than "it will sell". And I can hardly imagine something Lego makes would not sell, too many people are desperate for their favorite themes.

The thing is, classic space designs looked weird and futuristic. They looked nothing like 1980's cars and that's what made them interesting. The new Galaxy Explorer, however, looks very contemporary. It's very much made to appeal to our present day sensibilities. However, I've never really argued for sets having to be curvy, just that reasonably curvy looks less strange than perpexingly square. Also, if we're drawing car comparisons - classic space originated in the 1970's. It took some time in the 1980's for ridiculously square car models to gain traction, by which a common set of elements was already in usage. So this: seems to me much more similar to this: than to this:

Yeah, I understand. I didn't think of any of this as an argument or taking sides, so I did not think of the fact that I was replying to something you said as disagreeing with you in general. You're right, I apologize. I wasn't doing it on purpose, age does a number on me occasionally these days. Hopefully I can remember this going forward.

I think "bro..." summarized that much more succinctly ☺ Joking aside... I feel like clasic space actually had a lot of curved and round elements and the fact that it didn't have more was due to the fact that was not possible at the time. I do like straight lines more, but that is probably because I grew up with them. In fact, for me Galaxy Dropship is more in line with what I personally thought the Classic Space philosophy is than the new Galaxy Explorer is. What's that? Well, classic space looked strange and futuristic. Sometimes it looked just straight awkward. Like it was depicting something that might not entirely make sense to us because it was so far ahead of what we considered normal. The sets often had some combination of odd shape or layered colors and/or bricks, so that when a kid's eye would look at them, it was not immediately obvious what you're looking at and like the sets had secrets that your imagination can feed off of. It was almost like simulating greebling without having any greebling whatsoever. The old Galaxy Explorer was not one of the sets that had many of these features other than the basic quirkiness of its look (almost a double decker, with oversized engines and a big rear spoiler, etc). The new Galaxy Explorer has only a subset of inherited features, losing some in the process, while the Galaxy Dropship correctly presents some of the features that classic space indeed had. To me it seems like the old GE was a spaceship that might have been fast, sure, but that equally well presented a bulky, imposing look. It was sort of a best of both worlds. You could pretend play it was a huge ship, much bigger than it actually was because the interior was partially a mystery when closed. The new GE always looks like a very fast combat vessel of some sorts thanks to the really pointed look and the two canopies. Often when I say I would have liked reimagined sets, people think I would like an X-wing with the galaxy explorer name and colors. In fact when I look at these old sets I have two images in my mind: what the set actually looks like, and what it might have looked like if the original designer had a way of realizing that vision with today's bricks. So when a designer stacks a flat wall 4 bricks high in 1979, that's very normal to me. When a designer stacks a 7 bricks high flat wall in 2022 that almost feels like a caricature to me: not looking at the set as what it could have been but looking at it at what it was only because it couldn't have helped it, like painting a pretty person with some normal imperfections and leaning real hard into the imperfections for no reason. Yes, the buggy alongside Dropship is cool, but seems more like it will go racing that like an exploration vehicle :) But, also, the ways in which you could make a buggy back then were quite limited. I doubt they would make them like that if they could have helped it. Benny's spaceship I think has very little to do with classic space, other than the colors, of course. It works great for what it was designed for, but doesn't work at all in terms of classic space. I think the new Explorer perhaps looked too much at that ship instead of the legacy of classic space and then masked this radical change in design philosophy by staying drastically close to some visual elements that carry over the look, but not the soul of classic space. My original criticism for a lot of sets its that Lego wants to have its cake and eat it too, so the sets end up being okay from a play perspective and okay from the looks perspective. I'd love them to be great at both but I'm not sure that is possible. I'd love to be proven wrong, but the way I see it the set can be smaller, rebuildable, playful (which GE is not) or it can be a full blown grown up set with wonderful details, greebling, etc (which GE is also not). I'm not sure where the disconnect here is. Maybe it's because I used "played with" in a way that I think of when I think of playing with Lego - rebuilding it and letting your imagination run wild. The way you can play with 10305 is not that, you can play with it like it was a dollhouse. And if you're of the age where you'd play with it like that, it's not likely you will be rebuilding a 4000 piece set. Oh I like most castles. Creator castle was cool for what it was. I've even built that 3xMOC of the same. I've recently posted some other castle in the appropriate topic if I'm not mistaken. So, as I said for the GE, I'm fine if they look very playful and fun from the outside like the creator castle. I'm fine if they're interesting only in a way that you could put it on a shelf and have it as an ornament. But if they're exactly halfway between these two, then they don't really excel at anything.

I think the officially mandated reply to all such statements is: "Bro..." :)

Yes, architectural details. What you're talking about is playability, which I never complained about. Architecturally the only point of interest is the irregular design of it (which is great!) and of course the fact that the rooms are now furnished instead of us just having a hollow castle with like a spear and a torch attached somewhere is nothing short of wonderful! But if you have the castle somewhere as a display piece and you don't intend on playing on it - meh. Way ahead of you, I'd be buying this day one. But then again I said that for so many Lego Ideas that Lego subsequently turned into something that's "okay, I guess" :) https://ideas.lego.com/projects/bcc52725-df48-4522-aeee-a34dba13889a

Yes to all of this. As I said, when I talk to my friends about it, we can agree on many such things. And when I watch Lego review videos, the reviewers often point out the same things about certain sets. So my general feeling is that there is a way to make these sets that doesn't involve crazy or unrealistic requests and might even make the sets simpler and at the same time more attractive to the majority. Yet this is often not done and sets seemingly go out looking like a first draft. Same. Oh, no doubt. I can only compare those sets on the basis of Lego's lack of vision - both are too close to the original for my taste. What I really would like is a reimagining, not a remake. Imagination was always why I was into Lego. Having said that, I think 10497 has a top notch execution. It has very much a vibe of "I hired the world's best professional musicians for this mediocre song I wrote 40 years ago". The song is still mediocre, the musicians don't really care for whatever feel it might once had, but by god, the playing is out of this world! :) For whatever reason Ninjago City Markets is the first set I've seen where all the bricks in the interior were not just crazy colored but also "wrong" and seemingly as many hollow bricks were used as possible. Pages and pages? That's such an odd take I'd be surprised one person thinks that way :) I'm pretty sure we're all glad to see our fellow Lego fans enjoy their Lego. It's not even logically possible to be "wrong" about enjoying something, unless that's actively harming others. (let us all skip that part where plastics are probably not that good for the planet lol) What, like if you're the first on the scene? Definitely :) But critique is the only way anything or anyone gets better. If you think you're the best, you probably won't work super hard to be the best and then some! Toxic neutrality is also a thing. It's when you stubbornly refuse to be negative because you'll be perceived differently than if you'd just be positive, but you can't find it in your heart to be positive and this internal divide makes you toxic towards everyone in a neutral way. Or not.

Tame color scheme, not same. Partially agree. BB set is the most "serious" out of them. This is why I said I'm not sold on the idea of it. The idea does not match my taste, but the execution is capable enough. Lego set has no ideas worth mentioning over the original. Lack of baseplate made the gray base a necessity and of course it made more sense to play with the hollowness of it. So the only idea it really had (modularity) is taken straight from the BB set. But even disregarding all of that, it's possible to make a somewhat faithful tribute to the original Eldorado without bringing much new into it, but still make it good I'd buy even a 4000+ set if it looked good. Instead, look at this. What even is this? How did this pass the first review stage? This is straight out of the "me: age 12" playbook. So rocks in the front here are terrible compared to rocks in the front here? Interesting take. There's nothing wrong with the ramp there, it just happens that the Lego set made a wonderful ramp. Credit where credit's due. But the BB set also has much better / more logical texture placement and element composition so looking at it you immediately have an idea of what is what. The elements separate clearly in your mind because those with same-y colours have lots of texture and those that look flat have different color highlights. This is a clear sign that the creator is familiar with some basic design principles. Lego set just kinda... attacks your eyes and the different elements of the set (walls, ornaments, furnishings, etc) don't separate neatly so everything looks messy. I can't quite take these comments seriously, but just for the sake of conversation... the docks are usually a much bigger part in sets that could act as a town dock. EF is not such a set. It's meant to be standalone even though it's modular. I think you misunderstood what I meant by "trying to add detail that isn't there". What I meant is, you have a certain number of bricks and you have to leverage that number with the chosen complexity of the set. If you have a small set, you may be able to sacrifice enough bricks just to detailing so that the detailing looks convincing - that's great. If you have a bigger set or you have to limit the brick count, you can forgo brick-built details and just use the pre-made bricks that imply some sort of detail - like BB and many other Lego set - that's obviously a little bit of "cheating", but can certainly look attractive. But if you try to add simulated complex detailing with a brick count that's too small - then everything starts looking messy and clashes with the other more convincing details in the set. This is why the red parts on the new Eldorado look more like the builder was lacking some white bricks than actual detailing and the details on the BB set do not- This kind of messy/low res/clashes with more accomplished detail phenomenon is easiest to see in the creator pirate ship: Given the hull is just a single brown color, all the shaping here looks wonderful. It takes something bland (single color) and gives it enough texture to make it pop. Now look at the rear part with the captain's cabin and black, red, yellow, green and brown parts. They are supposed to imply some colorful ornaments but the brick count is way too low for that, so they just look messy and even wrong/amateurish, most notably with the two little red and yellow specs in the very rear and the way the black just makes the right angle against the brown. This makes it look like one part of the ship is high res and another one is very low res.

Old Eldorado was an amazing set, it was peak Lego at the time. Obviously it looks a bit too simple for AFOL tastes now, but it's the only one that's really easily rebuildable, especially when combined with other sets from the time. It does a lot given how many limitations it had with both brick size and brick count. It has that + the historic aspect in it's favor. Blue Brixx set very much looks like a companion set to Barracuda Bay, which is vastly superior to the new Eldorado. It's more elegant, but less playful than that set. New Eldorado takes some inspiration from that set, but does everything worse except the ramp (which is great). The red highlights look much more like what they're supposed to be here, not trying to imply detail that's not possible with low brick count. The gray base shaping is much less amateurish, the trees are superior and there are no weird decisions like the black docks the original had. I am not amazed by the author's vision on these sets, but he had some vision, while the Lego designer had none and just did a poor remake. Lego also took modularity and the red roof tiles from this set. Some of the details in the new Eldorado (or lack there of, especially on stone transitions and the docks) are very difficult to look at. Both old Eldorado and Blue Brixx set have tame color schemes so I've included the Legat of Legion MOC to show that a set can have lots of colors and not look like the cat threw up on it :) I don't quite like the LoL style. I don't hate it or anything, but it's a bit much for me. But, still, that set has half the pieces the new Eldorado has and has that imagination, flair and feeling of atmosphere Lego used to have. But what it all comes down to is: Looking at the old set, and being alive in 1992 or whenever, it was obvious it was a great set at the time. Looking at the LoL set, it's obvious it's a great set even now. Looking at the Blue Brixx set - I'd like something more imaginative so not super keen on the idea, but no complaints on the execution. Looking at the new Eldorado - it's just inadequate, in almost every way. The only thing it has going is that ramp, and that's all. It looks like some weird combination of: -the designer had no ideas / Lego guidelines were so strict he was not allowed to do anything and -the designer doesn't possess sufficient skill to make even a moderately attractive Lego build / the designer was given 2 days to put the finished product on the table I don't know which is true, but it's a mess. I would imagine it's difficult to take a 30 year old set, with all the advances we've had in Lego since then, and make a set that's not even as good, let alone "better by 30 years of progress".

That's not really true. I don't complain about the style of the sets, I complain about their half-assedness ;) There are many sets out there whose style doesn't gel with my preferred style and that I would never buy, but that I otherwise think highly of. "They still look good" sounds like our tastes are not so different after all ;) Let's take a look at 4 similar themed sets: Lego 6276, Lego 10320, Blue Brixx 105181 and LoL MOC 6263 Now let's imagine some categories, whatever comes to mind, things like: -how easy it is to rebuild -how elegant does it look architecturally -how "realistic" does it look if you squint real hard and imagine it's a real building -does it look clean or messy? -add your own Worst, but not an unlikely case, is that 10320 is plum last in all these categories. Best case, 10320 is still convincingly last, but avoids last place in some of the individual categories. The only thing that comes to mind at the moment is that it has a much higher brick count than 6276 so it's more appropriate for AFOL's who don't have nostalgia for that set.

I'm afraid that without a remake as a strong basis they'd just make a set in their signature "not particularly cool for neither grown ups nor kids with colors all over the place" style. think: Eldorado Fortress in space!

I agree that it very much made sense to remake the first ship. My point was only that I don't really imagine the average Lego AFOL to be in their 60's. I'm in my 40's and that ship was before my time. So, if I bought the remade Galaxy Explorer, you can bet I would instabuy anything ranging from Blacktron to Blacktron II and I'd be interested in the themes from my dark ages as well if they were made to look good too. It would be more difficult to remake more complex shapes, yes, but only in terms of man hours. If a person can make Galaxy Explorer look sleek, they would have no trouble doing so with the sets that looked kinda badass when all brick-y too.

This kinda feels like most Lego ideas to me: it's ok, but I'd probably only buy it if it was more similar to the original. But the atrocious Eldorado Fortress got my standards so low that I can't even complain about this lol The price looks fine.