CP5670

I have this set and it's pretty nice. I love the Res-Q theme in general. I think that tow truck is easily the highlight of this set and is probably the best such vehicle I've seen in any City set. The other vehicles are also great. The base itself is lacking though, as it basically consists of one room that doesn't even have side walls. It does include a cool 3x6 computer sticker and a vast array of minifig tools and equipment though. I have some plans to modify the building and make it larger but have never gotten around to doing it.

Very cool video. I noticed the following post in the comments, and it's something I have often wondered about myself: Does anyone know what that black square on the "neck" of minifig torsos is for?

That life-size model is awesome. Do they still have it on display there? This is definitely the best of the three models in this set. It moves quite smoothly and has several different articulation points.

This is coming up in five days. My latest MOC is all ready to go, although I probably won't have time to photograph it fully until after the event. A full schedule is now on the website as well.

That's a very nice page. It has pretty much everything from over the years. In general, your best bet in this situation is to look for sets that contain the part. Both Bricklink and Peeron have set inventories, although I don't know if Bricklink's one is as extensive.

It looks like it involves a lot of repetitious basic brick construction, which goes very fast in my experience. I can't see that taking 35 hours unless the builder is not familiar with Lego.

As described earlier, it's pretty clear why TLG wants to keep the new sets under wraps. They want to make their marketing splash at whatever time suits them. What I find harder to understand is why so many people agree to TLG's demands. Unless an NDA has been signed by the uploader, they have no legal authority to take down any pictures. Leaked prerelease information like this is common in many other markets (computer hardware, for example) and I usually don't see the companies doing anything about it, simply because they can't.

If that's actually a true super car with a full gearbox, it's a must buy for me. We haven't had one of those for many years now. TLG has released several Ferraris of a similar size but they were all lacking in functionality compared to sets like 8448 or 8466. Those wheels look awesome. I think they're the same as the 8880 wheels, but electroplated and shiny.

The dump truck looks great. I like how TLG is including the PF system in medium-sized sets these days. In the past, electric components usually only appeared in the big flagship sets.

Definitely the Airport Shuttle. I picked up most of the old city sets I always wanted off ebay a few years ago, but the prices on this one have always kept it out of my reach.

I'm warming up to Insectoids after getting a few of their sets recently, but I don't think this particular one is so hot. The rear wheels just look out of place with the rest of the model, especially given the size of the front ones. That Insectoids poster is really nice though. I have posters for some of the other space themes but not that one.

I was going to bring up the same sets when I saw the thread title. The SP Striker is actually my favorite space model of any theme, including classic space. Between the themes as a whole, I would give a slight edge to SP1, mainly for their much nicer Space Lockup jail cells with their laser bars. As the 1989 US/Canada Lego catalog says, "you can't have a Space Police without a Space Lockup." I slightly prefer that color scheme too. However, SP2 had uniformly good sets while the SP1 ones were more hit-or-miss. I thought the Mission Commander was fairly disappointing compared to the smaller SP1 sets, although it's an ideal parts pack for those half-octagon panels. I also like the SP2 minifigs better. It was the first theme to have a lot of fine details on the torsos as well as the first to have a special commander minifig, while the SP1 guys are basically the same as the Futuron ones. One odd thing about both themes is that all of their ships are lacking something important. The SP1 ships have no engines to speak of while the SP2 ships are poorly armed, with only two small red lasers around the cockpit.

I prefer PSP's interface and use that most of the time (only up to version 9 though; I don't like the newer Corel versions at all). Photoshop has some additional functionality over PSP, although I think you can make both of them roughly equally powerful by using custom plugins.

This actually makes much more sense. I have always suspected that their official reason for it was just a cover up and it had more to do with a supply-side change such as what you're describing. There was an article profiling TLG in some finance magazine that was posted on Lugnet a few years ago, which hinted at the same thing. I can't find the link now though. I haven't bought much new gray at all yet, since I still have large quantities of Technic parts in the old colors. It will probably take me several years to use them all up in MOCs, but I'll buy up a lot of new gray at that point.

Well, this particular issue is a bad example. If they actually believed that kids would notice the color difference outside of a side-by-side comparison and thought that the increased sales from it would offset the retooling costs and decreased sales from AFOLs writing off the new grays, "suicidal" is not a bad description at all. AFOLs were equally active back then; it's just that TLG didn't pay much attention to their opinions. That has changed somewhat in the last two or three years.

That is not the point. The new grays have been around for quite some time and many people have invested heavily in them by now. I still have almost everything in the old gray, but once I use those pieces up in MOCs I will have to do the same. TLG made a very poor decision years ago, but trying to reverse it now wouldn't help anything. The only way they could make everyone happy is to keep both colors in service at once, and I can't see that happening given how similar they are. The difference is pretty subtle, especially with light gray, and I bet 95% of kids wouldn't notice the difference at all unless you tell them about it.

I can see why they will not change it back now, as they would annoy just as many people as they would make happy. Out of curiosity though, what exactly did they say about it? I know their official reason for changing it in the first place (which I honestly don't think was the real reason at all), but didn't know they had responded to a follow-up question like that.

This is a nice little no-frills set. I have one too. As you said, most bricks back then gripped together much more firmly than the Flextronics-produced stuff we get today. There was actually a batch of sets around 1988 though when the bricks had exceptionally weak grip, much worse than even the current ones. My 6990 monorail turned out to be like this unfortunately, despite being perfect otherwise, and I ended up just replacing many of the basic pieces. I buy MISB for the part quality. I'm picky about that in general and like the perfect brick guarantee that MISB sets give, as well as the catalogs and other stuff they come with. You never really know what you're getting with used sets, except in a few rare cases when it's explicitly advertised as a display model.

The only thing I don't like about the 6462 helicopter are the rotors. They're utterly tiny given the size of the thing. This is trivial to fix yourself though, and it's a great model otherwise. Interestingly, the helicopter in the older (and similar) 6545 Search and Rescue also has the same problem.

I remember these coupons. Many sets from 1992 to 1994 had them in the back of the instructions. The Galactic Mediator for example has a 425 point coupon and the Deep Freeze Defender has a 375 point one. I read about them somewhere at one point, but I can't remember now how exactly they worked. It was some sort of promotional thing where you could get some free item if you collected enough of them and mailed them in.

There might be a surplus of them in the market for some reason. I remember during the Brickfest 2006 event, there was some promotion where they had large quantities of these parts available to attendees. I wouldn't mind having a few more though. This piece was originally created for the monorail system, but started to be used for several other things too.

I have this one. I got it mainly for all the trans-red parts, which were quite rare back then, but the ship it comes with is very cool. I love that bomb bay. The base is lacking in comparison and is too open, although there is a lot of room for expansion on it. The Ogel minions are pretty neat as well. I believe they recalled this set at some stage due to the comic (which is not really suggestive of 9/11 at all IMO, but I guess they didn't want to take any chances), since the other Alpha Team sets were available for a lot longer than this one.

I'm a PhD student in applied math.

Mine is a reference to one of my MOCs. I have no idea when or how I got it, but thanks to whoever put it on.

This stuff works fairly well on transparent parts too. I just used it yesterday on a few panels. It won't affect anything bigger than the smallest, hairline scratches, but those tiny scratches are often what give used transparent pieces a somewhat "foggy" look. Brasso makes them look transparent again and you can see through them more easily, but the larger scratches are still easy to spot. There are at least two different types of discoloration possible. The UV tanning is more common, but it can also occur due to oxidation and there is really no way to prevent that. I actually have an interesting situation on my 8839 Supply Ship model, which I got MISB a few years ago and has been on display since then in rooms with covered windows. All the 1x8 white plates on the model look quite yellowed, regardless of their position on the model or how exposed they are, while everything else looks perfect. They must have come out of a different manufacturing batch than the other pieces. I've seen a similar situation with a few other sets too.