CP5670

Lights would at least go towards justifying the high cost though. I think it needs to be more like $120-130 (in terms of US prices) to be a good buy.

Looks like it, but I'm fine with that personally. I think these commando guys are how the SP3 figures should have been in the first place. On a side note, has anyone else noticed that the trans-red visors on the commandos are not quite identical to the old SP1 visors? They are a different, lighter shade of trans-red.

If 8043 costs $150 it will be a bit of a ripoff, especially if it has no lights, but I think it will cost less than that. Most casual buyers would avoid it at $150 given the size and piece count of the model. Other than that, I don't see much wrong with it, except that they should have used a smaller bucket than the big, front loader one. I think I see what you're saying about the 8053 stabilizers. It looks like they have manual worm gears similar to the 8295 forks. This kind of setup really goes against the whole point of Technic and it's something we're seeing too often lately, even on large sets. It's the main reason I didn't like 8258 last year, which did this in several places.

Yeah, I brought up this one too in the element of the decade thread. I'll quote myself: This one is handy too, as it's the only axle available in a non-integer length.

The responses in this thread generally seem to be more in favor of showing studs, but it seems that people's opinions on this depend a lot on what themes or types of models they build. Out of curiosity I just took a look at the last 20 or so MOC threads posted in the sci-fi forum, and all but one are completely studless. I must be one of the few space builders who likes studs. In contrast, there is a more even split between studded (at least partially) and studless models in the city and Technic forums from what I've seen.

I like the police HQ a lot, especially the truck it comes with and the big corner panels in trans-blue. By the standards of Lego space bases of the past, it has fairly solid construction and doesn't feel overly "open." I'll probably get that set, but the other two don't look nearly as appealing. These SP3 enemies have all remained very expensive on Bricklink, even the ones that are fairly easy to get. I don't really want the Gold Heist set and was going to get Frenzy separately (the only guy I don't have yet), but last I checked he costs almost half the price of the entire set. That guy seems to have a white or flesh head, which suggests that he isn't actually a human. It's good that they are including a few enemies with new molds, although that other guy is overused in these upcoming sets. We can also see now that the second alien in the police HQ is a recolor of the Skull twins, not of Frenzy as many of us thought earlier. This is true about most of the 2009 line, but the Galactic Enforcer is an exception to all that. It uses a lot of conventional construction and closely follows the style of the Space flagships of the past.

I had the same thoughts on 8043. The small size is not necessarily a bad thing in my book, and the low piece count suggests that it will cost less than the common $150 price for flagship sets. I think the motors are all the M type in the picture. I'm guessing there are two motors in the chassis and two on the turning platform, which means that either the turntable is oriented upside down or this is one of the very few sets to use the inner teeth on it. The entire boom on 8053 seems nearly identical to that of 8421, but the main chassis is smaller. That looks like a good set for people who don't already have 8421. The studded yellow bricks are reasonably common in other themes. It's a good thing that so many other themes use Technic construction these days, which has ensured that there is no shortage of Technic bricks on Bricklink even though we hardly get any in the Technic theme itself. The motorcycle wheels look the same as the ones in 8420, but the tires are strangely very shiny. Maybe they are not made of the usual rubber material.

Those transparent 2x2 tiles look great. I have always wanted to see more basic pieces (bricks, plates, tiles, etc.) in transparent colors. We never seem to get enough of those.

It was fun to look at the box models, but as others have said I don't think they are a huge loss. The box models for most sets sucked and it was only the largest sets that actually had anything worth building. Some of those large ones were indeed memorable though. We still get alternate models in Creator and Technic, which have full instructions and have obviously had more thought put into them than the old box models. I don't think we will see any more physical idea books with the internet these days, but it would be good to see something like that on the Lego website. I've been building various things from the old Technic idea books lately and they have lots of great concepts, some of which never appeared in actual sets. Speaking of goofy models, I was looking at the 697 idea book a few days ago (the last one they made, in 1997). Check out this and this. This is probably the craziest official Lego scene that I have ever come across.

I've wanted this set for a while now but haven't been able to find a good deal on it. I have the special doors though so maybe I could just try to get the other parts individually. As you said, it could use some actual suspension. There were the red suspension parts that were used on a few City sets back then, which might work here if there was a way to connect these wheels to them.

I've pretty much said everything I wanted to in this thread, but an interesting example backing up what you said can be found in Lugnet. Lugnet had a more serious atmosphere than EB (often overly so I think) despite having an official age limit of 13 and little enforcement of even that in practice. The EB community has struck a better balance with this and is more in line with other internet forums in general, but it does show that the overall mood of a place and the actual ages are determined more by other factors than age limits.

I think it would be a good idea to include a few box pictures, assuming you have the time for it of course. The copyright isn't a real issue in practice, certainly not any more than the models themselves if you are taking your own pictures. A few sets in the past have had pretty cool and elaborate boxes, such as 8448, 8094 and several large sets in the early 80s. You probably already have all the boxes that I do, but I keep all my boxes and could send you images if I happen to have something that you're missing.

I doubt this can be done without damaging the motor in some way. If you have dust clogging the bogey wheels or the metal gear, that can be easily removed by hand without opening the motor.

I found 8421 tricky because my copy was defective. The string it came with was slightly too thick and wouldn't unwind smoothly, and I spent a couple of days trying to determine the problem. I only found the issue after comparing it with the strings in other Technic sets like 8460, and called TLG for a replacement.

I would say the 8002 Destroyer Droid. The instructions are actually wrong in many places and the set came with a separate correction manual with about 12 pages. The mechanism is very unusual and several people on Brickset have had trouble building it, especially since it relies on the careful placement of many rubber bands. Unlike most Technic sets, you don't get a good feel for how it's supposed to work until the model is nearly finished. I think 8868 is actually trickier despite having fewer pneumatics, since you have less space to route the tubes and need to set them up exactly right for them to reach the pistons and for the turntable to move smoothly. 8865 also deserves a mention because of how compressed its instructions are. Step 18 with its 144 pieces has been mentioned around here before.

The stud lover badge is great. I like studs on Technic models too.

The poor grip has always been an issue with Technic claw arms in general. I think the best way to fix this is to use small tires on the claw to act as a gripping surface. This is done on the 6-wheeled model in 8062 for example.

I often use tiles as accents in my models but make no attempt to actually cover up studs. I like to maintain that blocky and distinctive Lego appearance, even if it might make my models look less impressive. This is the main reason I avoid tiled floors. I like the look of such floors but minifigs are designed to integrate into models using studs, and you can't reliably keep them upright on a tiled surface. Some builders put hidden 1x1 plates where the minifigs are standing, which is a reasonable compromise, but it only works well for static scenes rather than the playable models that I like to build. You are right, but I can see where he is coming from. A few models I've seen do give the impression that the builder sees studs as a kind of defect of the Lego system. If people don't like the studded Lego look at all, I think there might be other, non-Lego construction systems out there that are better suited to such models.

The more extreme differences in color consistency are actually bigger than the differences between the old and new grays, browns, etc. Apart from that though, there were also more consistent changes in dark red and dark blue around 2007. See this post. I'm not sure if these latter changes were intentional and if TLG changed the color names for them, but the effect for us is the same either way.

I was thinking about that, but nougat (presumably the flesh color) comes before most of the classical colors like blue, red, and so on. Maybe they are reusing numbers from old colors no longer in production. They have essentially done it again several times since then. It's just that fewer people have noticed.

You could ask for replacements, but this issue is so widespread that chances are they will just send you more bad bricks. Yeah, this describes the problem well. It's easy to tell the difference in the opacity by looking at a light source through them.

This could be quite useful, especially the official names for the colors. I wonder what the logic behind the numbering scheme is though. The numbers seem to be pretty random. Of course, this table doesn't cover all the different shades of each color that TLG produces these days.

I think I see what you're saying. You can connect that gear to most of the others by using holes spaced at non-integer distances. Here is an example with the 8t gear. That generally indicates that some axle in the geartrain is encountering friction. Make sure all the axles are spinning freely without any resistance. I only have the bulldozer but it has no problem with this.

It's in a post by Davey earlier in the thread. That statement was like most of the other things we've heard from TLG about quality issues though. There is no official acknowledgment by the company, but some (often anonymous) source says they are aware of the problem and it's being addressed. I've heard too many things like this by now to take such comments seriously.

It depends on who the target audience here is. For AFOLs, you're right. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine a kid buying one or two packs, not getting what he wanted and avoiding them in the future. In fact, I would expect that to be the typical response from kids, who won't have the money or patience to buy large quantities of these packs. I don't see any clear evidence of bad plastic in that blurry picture, but it was always pretty obvious to me that these would be coming from the Chinese factory, simply due to the "collectible" nature of these sets. In any case, I don't see why there is this uproar over the China-made minifigs only. We have been seeing junk plastic for 3 years now in almost every Lego set, coming out of all of TLG's factories including those in Denmark. The Chinese minifigs are only a tiny part of the problem.