CP5670

There are several third party light vendors out there for Lego. I like Lifelites the best, which has a broad products lineup and fairly reasonable prices. Their Modulite kit is designed for interior lighting. You could also use the official Lego PF or 9V lights, but the PF lights only work well for vehicles and the 9V ones are very expensive to buy in quantity.

I write Lego as a singular noun. LEGO looks odd, as if it's an acronym for something, and Lego bricks is too wordy (and as someone else said, a brick refers to a specific kind of Lego piece). TLG has been making a fuss over what they want people to say for a long time, but I honestly couldn't care less. I'm their customer, not their marketeer.

Thank you. This MOC is probably still my best, but is fairly old now and could use a few updates with newer pieces. I was thinking of adding some interior lighting into it, maybe with UV lights.

I like having one or two motors in the largest models, especially when they're used to power several different functions like 42009, but definitely appreciate manual functions that are well designed. As others have said, the problem is when motors are used in place of interesting mechanisms, or drive up the price of an otherwise small, non-flagship model. I have zero interest in 42030 for example, which is functionally identical to 8265 but just adds several motors (and costs over three times as much!). Sets like 42008 should be significantly cheaper for their piece count and functionality, and the only reason for the price is the PF elements. For the same reasons, I don't care for the fanmade upgrades to sets like 8043 or 42009 that add extra motors to achieve the same functionality, even if they make the models more playable. Modern Technic sets usually have poor manual controls in the form of black 12t gears, but they can be easily replaced with 1980s-style cranks that are much easier to handle. I make that adjustment on many sets.

I remember seeing this at Brickfair, as it was right next to my models, but don't think I met you there. It would be great to have a video of it walking. I always like to see space models that incorporate Technic functionality like this.

I love these models. You have captured the style of the original theme perfectly despite the extra colors, and the models look very playable and have just the right amount of detail. My favorite one is the 8-wheeled upgraded MCM. The photos with the grid backgrounds are great as well. It seems like MTron is seeing a surge in popularity lately. There was a big MTron display at the Brickfair VA show a few weeks ago.

Great show as usual. The 5 day format allows them to space things out more on the AFOL days and make things more relaxed. I was a little disappointed by the World of Lights though, as there were only a handful of lighted models (my space ones were the only ones on that table) and the room wasn't dark enough for them really stand out. As for the crowding, the line looked unusually bad on Saturday. I heard there were so many people that they had to make people wait outside to stay within fire regulations for the maximum number of people in the building, which led to extending the show by a hour. Sunday seemed to be better. I typically spend 30 minutes or so at each of my MOC areas talking to the public, and then go into one of the hideouts or the area in the back behind the moon bounce for a while to get away from the noise.

You can use any regular 12V AC-DC transformer with the newer control center, which you have shown above. I have several of them lying around and they all work fine with it. It's a bit trickier to power the original control center (with yellow/red buttons) like this, since it does not have a plug for a transformer. I use one of the Radio Shack "hobby plugs," which is essentially a pair of bare wires that plugs into their lineup of adjustable-voltage transformers, with the plugs clipped to the battery contacts inside the control center. It's fiddly but works pretty well, and the wires stay in place without any soldering needed. The second control center is not too bad and seems to work with a single XL. A loaded RC motor will shut it down though. The first control center is much worse, and doesn't even handle a single PF medium motor properly.

There is even a third variety, from the original 1997 sets when they first came out with the clutch gears. Those have the same markings but a light gray center, and I think are even harder than the current ones.

I think most of the modern Creator sets are in fact photos, including that one. However, the 4955 and 4993 images posted earlier definitely look like renders, and I remember several others like 4996 like that in the past. The seams between bricks are more visible than usual and transparent pieces look different. Maybe it was only the Creator stuff from a particular time period.

I think some sets in Creator are worthy successors to Model Team, and easily match the level of detail in the earlier (pre-1994 or so) Model Team sets. However, the later Model sets were at a larger scale and/or made extensive use of chrome pieces, which we have never really seen in Creator. They also had a lot more stickers, which made them look more realistic. Creator used to have more of an emphasis on having several buildable models and a high piece-to-price ratio with fewer rare or expensive pieces, but that is less true today than it used to be. Creator in general has a wide variety of sets and is sort of a catch-all theme for anything that doesn't fit into the other established themes. As for why Model Team and Technic share a forum, many MOCs during the studded Technic era were a mixture of both themes, with a Model Team look but Technic functionality. I think you don't see that many MOCs like that today though. That cartoonish look might be due to the box art rather than the actual models. For some reason, Creator uses 3D renderings of models instead of photos. You can easily see it in the pictures above.

There are bits of backstory about these themes in the old catalogs and box descriptions. TLG never says what the Ice Planet rockets are for, but the "rocket technology is wanted by everyone in the universe." They "conduct their top secret research" from the Ice Planet Krysto and "their findings are coveted by the Blacktron forces and even renegades within the Space Police." The engine placements never made much sense. I always thought of the engine parts on the bottom as stands or landing gear, not actual engines. The UK names for the sets make that especially obvious, as the Spyrius boss is called Major Kartofski. I guess Spyrius doesn't care so much about the Ice Planet rockets, as they have their own rockets in 6959.

This is a great modern take on that set. I especially like the vehicle storage area. I need to get some of those new trans-neon curved panels.

At the Brickfair events, they give all the exhibitors cards with answers to many of these questions ("I don't know how many pieces, I wasn't counting") to display next to the models.

I'll probably get this just for the green CS guys. The final suit is also better designed than the original Ideas submission, which was flimsy and over-detailed IMO.

I think this is one of the best Technic B models ever. It's a unique concept in Technic and has a range of functionality comparable to the main model, unlike most B models. It's also easy to motorize, and is very impressive to watch running with a 5292 motor added to the rear propellor. The rotors actually run much slower when tilted due to the air resistance they produce.

This sounds like the usual Greenpeace nonsense. That being said, I'm not sure what the "long term contract" with Shell is about, as I haven't seen any Shell Lego stuff in a long time. There were a lot of Shell sets in the 1980s and another wave around 2000, but I can't think of anything since then. Octan seems to have driven Shell out of business in Lego City.

I should be able to come, although am not 100% sure this time since I'll be starting a new job before then. BF VA is local for me and I have been there every year so far. A Technic meetup would be fun, especially since we've historically had a pretty low turnout with Technic here (although I can certainly see why Paul doesn't come anymore). I might bring some of my Technic MOCs from last year just to fill up the Technic area a bit. There don't seem to be any Technic MOCs posted yet.

I never thought of CS as being about peaceful exploration, except for perhaps the very first wave in 1978/79. After that, there were plenty of sets like 6950, 6980 and 6891 that are armed to the teeth. The only difference is that the sets back then didn't include enemy craft within the same set, like modern ones do. Also, the CS line went on for many years and was quite diverse. The final CS sets didn't have much in common with the original ones except for the minifigs. Benny's spaceship is almost perfect in my book. It's a modern set inspired by the old CS sets and their color scheme, as opposed to something that follows the CS style exactly. I would love to see additional sets made in this style. I don't think the exo-suit should be associated with CS though. Except for the minifig, that model is about as far removed from anything CS as I can imagine.

I like how you used various sections from the official Blacktron sets in these models. Really makes them look authentic.

I don't like the plane parts either, and especially hate that giant wing piece. I passed up some otherwise nice planes just because of that piece. It wastes a lot of room in the interior of the plane and constrains the dimensions of the plane, and is not easy to replace with something else. As you said, all planes become essentially the same plane. The raised baseplates are somewhat more useful, although they do constrain a MOC to some degree as well.

I picked this up yesterday. Awesome set, easily the highlight of the Lego Movie lineup for me, and the price point is good as well. Like others said, it's more of an reimagining of CS than genuine CS, and is the sort of thing we would have built as kids. It's admittedly too sticker heavy and should have had more prints, but the stickers add a lot to the set and it's definitely worth applying them. I think we'll see a lot of the trans-yellow stuff showing up on Bricklink as well, which I can certainly use more of. The set is clearly in high demand and is backordered on S@H, and I apparently got the last one at the local Lego store and had to call them to reserve it for me. I think it was a bit more complicated than that. The original Legends like the 10001/10002 Metroliner were very faithful to the originals, and TLG reproduced several unique parts just for those sets. Also, when the first Legends came out in 2000, the regular City line was garbage and there wasn't really much for the Legends to compare with. However, by 2003/2004 the World City line had been established and was a massive improvement, while the later Legends had numerous changes from the originals and used the new gray color, making them unattractive to AFOLs. You can compare the Bricklink prices on 10001/10002 against something like 10159, for example.

I love this particular set, although I'm not a fan of Hydronauts in general either. It feels very roomy and has enough space for 6 or 7 minifigs inside, and the printed parts are great. I removed the pneumatic hoses on mine though, which look ugly and can't be easily hidden.

There have been cases where only one side of a left/right pair of pieces showed up in some PAB wall (and later on Bricklink) in huge quantities. I don't think they necessarily make these pieces in equal quantities, even when they appear that way in sets.

But, but, but... trans-neon green glows! GLOWS. It's great to see the rest of your special parts collection. You have stuff in just about all of the classic transparent colors. I wonder why the 1x2 inverted slopes are especially common. Some of the other pieces look like variations of certain Aquazone bricks, like the dark gray 3-sided bricks and the trans-clear 2x2 octagon. Maybe they were intended to be part of that theme at one point. Love the double-sided plates as well. I figured they must have made prototypes of that kind of piece at some point. I'm hopeful that they will release a piece like that into regular production eventually. We have been getting things like the inverted 2x2 tile lately, which would have been hard to imagine in the past. Nothing wrong with these parts being distributed either. On the contrary, it's a good thing if these wonderful pieces are filtering out to fans who can make use of them. As Faefrost said, they would probably just get thrown out otherwise.