CP5670

I built this model a while ago and that mechanism worked perfectly. Try using different sizes of rubber bands. If they have too much tension in them, it might not switch when it hits an obstacle.

I've had in mind to get a Mindstorms set (or at least a controller brick) for many years but have never done so. On one hand, the concept is great and seems right up my alley, but like others said Mindstorms models focus on the software and the mechanisms, which are the main attraction of Technic to me, are often simplistic. I don't have any concrete ideas on what to build with it either, so I might end up not using it much. I do have the old 9735 Scout set and it's fun to play around with, but its potential for MOCs is limited. As for the price, one problem is that Mindstorms sets are based around the electronics instead of conventional bricks, and electronic Lego pieces have frankly always been overpriced. The EV3 looks quite nice, but looking at its specs the price doesn't make sense in this day and age compared to modern phones and other gadgets. The same applies to many of the sensors and other components. We have seen in the past many times as well, like the speed regulator and control center prices in the 90s.

My GE does the same thing. I have it among a layout of road plates and standard city buildings, so I just replaced the 1x1 tile in the corner with a 2x2 plate that holds it down and is needed to connect it to the road plates anyway.

I actually really like the look of this building. It's on the small side but has just the right amount of exterior detail, while still having a clean look overall. I find that some of the modular buildings are over-detailed and that architectural style can look out of place in a modern city layout. I haven't been collecting the whole line and only have the GE and TH so far (which are excellent models). The theater floor interior is too sparse and needs some mod work, and the car is little more than a parts pack. The movie ad stickers look great though and add a lot to the set.

I keep the blinds partly down in my Lego rooms, although I believe the windows in my current apartment have an anti-UV coating so it may not be necessary. The real problem is the oxygen-sensitive bricks in many sets from the early 90s. These pieces discolor just as fast in a dark room, and it's hard to do much about them. This is really noticeable on some models where only certain white pieces are affected, and others still look perfect.

I usually don't use these stickers unless they are really essential for the set to look good (which is occasionally the case). I think Lego has gotten better about this in recent years though. We get a lot more stickers in sets today than we did 10 or 15 years ago, but very few that cover multiple parts. For 2556, you might as well leave them off since they will peel off and break up anyway after a few years on display.

These are some truly inspiring models. My favorite is the MYRICL. The lighting really makes all the windowed interior areas pop out. I think these models have just the right level of detail too, with plenty of little touches if you look closely but still having a clean look overall.

Good attempt, but the fine scratches still look pretty visible in that picture. Maybe some additional treatment would help with that. I've used Brasso in the past and found that it removes the finest, hairline scratches but doesn't affect larger scratches and tends to leave a foggy residue along the edges of pieces like canopies, where you can't rub it in easily. Is that future floor polish different from the thing in the Bricklink post? Even if one of these methods only works on transparent bricks, it's certainly still worth looking into. Scratches on those are much more noticeable than on standard ABS bricks.

This theme is a mixed bag. I'm not a fan of the several different color schemes for the human ships, which is like Roboforce. The Vermin Vaporizer is great as a standalone set and has the best color scheme, although I think it relies a lot on the stickers to look good, and the smaller insect models are nice too. More than the sets, I'm interested in the new pieces they come with, which will show up on Bricklink soon. Is that trans-light blue dish on the Vermin Vaporizer a new piece? It could be handy for many things.

From the picture, I don't think so. That was the main point of the grooved shape of the old gear. It was the only bush-like piece you could do that with and was occasionally used in place of regular or half bushes in that situation. However, I think the new gear is still better overall. Apart from being fragile, the old gear tends to shift around any axle it's placed on (for the same reason that it can rotate inside plates) and make it fall out of alignment with other gears.

The sets are good but nothing strikes me as a must-have. The new helmet and the printed 2x2 control tile are great though, and I will certainly grab some of those off Bricklink when they appear there. In general, I think TLG is printing more parts these days than they used to a few years ago. I haven't been keeping track of the sets coming out but have seen a lot of new printed parts showing up on Bricklink. This is certainly a trend in the right direction.

This is a massive model. The internal lighting and giant SP insignia are awesome. I like the chunky, studded look of the ship as well, which is fitting for a classic theme like SP1. I think it would look better if the rear/engine parts had the same colors as the rest of the ship though. It looks like the ship was originally the front part only and an extension was retrofitted onto it later (unless that's the look you were going for).

Nice chart. I wish they would re-release the RC motor core inside a modern PF-style housing. It's the only motor that has both power and speed, but it has an unwieldy shape and is difficult to place inside models, and is very expensive these days as well.

That price seems about right for an MISB set. A used set should be less than that. I like the futuristic style and overall construction of this set just as much as the pneumatics. It was one of the last sets with a lot of studded construction, and among the very few blue sets of that type, but also mixed in plenty of studless parts. As a result, the model is lightweight for its size but extremely sturdy.

I think this was a pretty decent theme overall. The Warp Wing Fighter is arguably one of the best space sets ever, and the V-Wing Fighter is a surprisingly nice small set. The other sets were flawed, but had some unique ideas. I can think of far worse themes than this one, like most of the City lineup in those years. I like the fact that UFO had lots of printing in general instead of stickers, like many themes did at the time, although they did go overboard with it on the saucer pieces. As for the minifigs, I like the heads and helmets but not the torsos and legs. It's not the fact that they were over-detailed, but the details were not distinctive in any way and you couldn't quickly tell the different prints apart. Many of the other late 90s themes (Insectoids, Hydronauts, Stingrays) had the same problem, with 4 or 5 different torsos that all looked similar.

I love the overall shape of this MOC and the big windows. It shows that you can make great looking models using only traditional bricks and construction styles.

I got all the bases later on off ebay but think of most of them as merely a starting point for MOCs. The raised baseplate is not necessarily bad, but those sets used it in place of traditional brick construction. Even the bases on standard baseplates were hit-or-miss, with only 6987 and 6958 good enough for me to keep built without wholesale modifications.

I think as a kid, I put a lot of thought into all my big set purchases and still think those are great sets. Probably not so much with the small, sub-$10 ones though. There were one or two sets that I thought looked great in the catalogs and bought, but was disappointed right after I built them. The 8458 Silver Champion comes to mind. It was huge and looked very realistic, but was quite limited on functionality given its size and very high price, and was a major disappointment compared to all my earlier large Technic sets. Yeah, that one is pretty mediocre. I thought that set looked really cool in the catalogs, but at that age essentially every big set looked cool to me, so it was a matter of what was more cool. I still got a copy a decade later for the rare parts and the ship it comes with, which is much better than the base itself.

I show that around whenever people here start claiming that Lego quality is all perfect. Note that this effect is highly dependent on the ambient light level and often doesn't show up in a photo, even though it's very obvious in real life. There were some problems in the early to mid 80s with blue and red, but all the colors were practically flawless throughout the 90s. TLG introduced a lot of new colors around 2000, some of which had big consistency issues (purple comes to mind), but most of these colors were quite obscure at the time and none of the common colors were affected. This is probably what that guy is thinking about. The change to clear ABS since 2006 has affected almost every common color except black, and brought in opacity issues that even the early 2000s colors didn't suffer from. More than anything else, I think the low opacity is what makes these pieces look cheap.

As remarked earlier, this problem was a result of the switch to clear ABS pellets with color injections in late 2006, not any particular production plant or outsourcing. I think among the classical colors, only black has remained perfect. Apparently black has the simplest coloring process. Blue (and green) do have a lot of variations, but they at least all look opaque and good quality individually. I find that white and red are very inconsistent, sometimes perfect and sometimes terrible, while yellow is consistently mediocre. This is false. The traditional yellow was a lot more saturated and opaque than what we get today. See this for an example. I have not seen any yellow piece like the traditional color in a long time, even accounting for the variation within the color itself. The last time TLG was actually "working to amend this issue" was in 2008, and they haven't done anything on it since then. They actually did improve yellow over 2007, which was the lowest point, but it's remained a long ways off from the traditional color.

I know the feeling. There has been a lot said about this issue around here. I still keep expanding my collection, mostly off Bricklink (as my focus is on MOCs these days), but I mostly stick to a few specific colors that are unaffected. However, this issue has nothing to do with Chinese production specifically. There have been plenty of these parts coming out of Denmark and other countries, and they appear across all product lines. This level of quality has long since become the new normal, ever since late 2006.

I would say most of the Life on Mars sets. The sets were made up of lots of specialized parts and were full of open spaces, with little in the way of solid construction. 7317 was a good example. The theme was obviously also influenced by the introduction of Star Wars around that time, bringing dull, low contrast colors into Space. Among recent sets, the SP3 Gold Heist is one that comes to mind. SP3 was an excellent theme overall, but this set was really weak. Roboforce was a strange theme with its two completely different color schemes and minifigs, but some of the sets had great ideas (especially the Robo Master's cockpit) and lots of unique printed parts. I can't think of any specialized molds used in that theme either. There were definitely worse themes than that one. Classic Space actually had a number of very poor designs. Look at some of the 6800 sets as well. People tend to look at Classic Space with rose tinted glasses. Most themes had at least a few duds. I think the one exception was M:Tron. All of those sets were at least pretty good.

This is great stuff. Thanks for scanning these. I have the Lego club magazines from that period but didn't know they had a separate Technic club as well.

This is a great and surprisingly large set. It could use a more powerful motor though. The geared down M motor is too wimpy for it, although I see why they did that for safety reasons. I put in a 9V RC motor instead. When the rotors are pitched downwards, it actually generates noticeable airflow, enough to make light objects like papers fly off the table. This is also one of the few cases where I think the alternate model really rivals the main one. The concept is something genuinely original in Technic, and it's amazing to watch it run off the RC motor. It has the same collective pitch mechanism as the main model too, but for both rotors.

I think they originally made some corrections to the manual, but any recent copy of the set should have those in them (as well as the newer LAs). I made no changes beyond what the corrected manual had and mine works great. I actually like the original model better than that "ultimate" version. The function switching mechanism is quirky but that whole concept is the coolest part of the set for me.