CP5670

This game is a little tricky to get working on modern hardware anyway. I played through it again last year, but the only way I got it working was to force software rendering in dxdiag. At least software rendering doesn't look that bad here since only the characters and objects are 3D, not the environments.

Does anyone have these? Can they be used like normal bricks or are the magnets permanently glued onto them?

I use them with the XL by gearing up the motor first, adding in the clutch and then gearing it back down. This reduces the torque that goes to the clutch gear and makes it more effective.

Has anyone else tried to improve the steering on this model? I found it to be too stiff by default due to the use of friction pins at the articulation point instead of connector pins. There is a red bush pin on top and a normal black pin on the bottom, and replacing those made it quite a bit smoother. TLG seems to have used friction pins there to compensate for the slack in the mechanism, but I think they went too far with it. I made a couple of other minor changes to mine. I replaced the knob gear with a big crank like 8854 or 8862, and changed the gear ratio at one place to increase the torque coming from it. The model is much more fun to play with this way, despite still being manually operated. This has become my favorite Technic set since 8275. It is remarkably large and complex for an $80 model, and in terms of value for your money, it has to be the best set TLG has made in a long time. It really dwarfs 8459, which was the same price back then (and would be more like $100 now with inflation).

The minifigs are great and it's always good to have more colored transparent cockpits available, but the actual sets look lousy. That's pretty much what I was expecting though.

Yeah, I was just referring to the printed graphics, not the pieces themselves. They could probably be used as straight replacements for the equivalent printed tiles in those sets. (although they aren't the same shape as the tiles so it would take a bit of work to rig them up)

I always wanted this set as a kid. It appears in many catalogs from that time, although I never saw it in stores either. The parking and car/wrench signs are from 6394, and the Octan and blue arrow signs come in a number of sets. The reflector brick with 3 lights is a cool piece. I have several of them from space sets, but as you say the furthest light is noticeably dimmer than the closest one. I hope TLG makes PF versions of these things eventually. The lights themselves are especially nice, as they have a convenient brick-like profile (unlike the current PF lights) and flash if you flip them over.

Nice review. The winch mechanism is great. It could have used another minifig though as you say. This is actually one of my favorite City sets ever. It's simply packed with features, and I think it was the only 9V set of any kind that included lights, sound and a motor.

This is the real problem as far as I'm concerned. I am a big PC gamer in general, but I don't like pay-per-month MMOs. As I said in the pinned thread a while ago, any pay-per-month game will have flawed gameplay by its very nature.

This was the Space category winner at Brickfair this year: (not mine)

It's a good idea, but the color ruins the effect IMO. They should have been some transparent color. The light gray makes them look more like a painted pattern instead of lights.

8653 does have a cool door mechanism, but it otherwise seems pretty basic to me considering it was $100. I think 8674 is a better example, as it include a nice independent suspension system. Actually, it's nearly identical to the Technic sets 8458 and 8461. Although even those sets were somewhat lacking by the standards of Technic super cars. They should have at least had transmissions given their sizes and prices. As you say though, Racers is a pretty odd collection as a single theme. It includes sets in microscale, minifig scale and large scale (with either Technic or MT/Creator construction), as well as both realistic (Ferrari) and more sci-fi vehicles. The only thing they have in common is that they all race in some way.

I think Technic sets have more emphasis on functionality and include a lot more mechanisms for the size. Many of the Racers sets are big but don't have much beyond the standard front wheel steering/rear wheel drive setup, and suspension in a few cases. The Racers sets do have some good parts for Technic MOCs though, especially the wheels.

That sounds like a pretty bad dream. Apparently obscure toy stores like that actually exist around the world though. They got a bunch of Lego stock in the 1980s and sell it so slowly that they still have some of it left. I've heard various smaller European countries brought up here, although you would only find such stores in small villages there. This is how most of those ebay sellers who sell a ton of old MISB sets get their stock, but it's unlikely to happen in the future as TLG has revamped their supply chain to prevent this.

This appears to be another case of a location-specific issue. I will update the entry. Maybe TLG has switched to the new type of tires in some packaging plants but is yet to run out of old stock in others.

I must be the only person here who is not a huge fan of these sets. I mean, they're nice, but they are not must-have items for me, and I probably won't get any of the ones so far unless I find them at substantial discounts. On one hand, they have an immense amount of detail and I like how they have much larger and more well enclosed interiors than normal City buildings. However, they have a very old fashioned look that doesn't appeal to me at all. They do look like they are set in the 1930s, or at least like they were built back then. I guess I prefer modern and futuristic things over historical ones in general. The fire station is somewhat better in this respect, leaving aside the fire engine, but it's also the most expensive set of the line so far. This is my other issue with them: given their sizes they are quite expensive, much more so than normal City sets. The piece counts are high but most of those are small parts used for the detailing. I don't mind the prices so much in themselves, but am used to getting much larger models for that kind of money.

I love that scuba gear. I think the visor is the same as the old one used in Launch Command and Space Port (in chrome gold).

I had picked up 5974 and 8265 and won a 7738 at Brickfair, and I built them over the last few days. Here are some new observations on the brick quality. The majority of the white in 5974 looks surprisingly good and is back to the 1990s level. Some pieces still have that milky, transparent look, but I would say around 70% of the white pieces are good, which is a refreshing change from last year. The bad pieces include rare parts like 2x2 concave corner slopes and plane tails, but also some common parts like 2x4 and 2x6 bricks. 7738 is a 2008 set that also includes a lot of white, and here almost all of the white pieces are bad. There is a very noticeable improvement in 5974 over 7738 and other stuff I got last year, which is good to see. The yellow pieces in 8265 are more of a mixed bag. There is some improvement with small studless liftarms, while larger studless beams as well as studded bricks and plates still look fairly lousy. I compared them to equivalent parts from 8275 (from 2007/08) and 8459 (from 1997). I think the studded pieces are actually slightly better than the ones in 8275, but the difference isn't big and they are still some ways off from the old yellow. I didn't see problems with light or dark blay in any of the sets, although I have never seen those in the past either. Does anyone have a picture of the issue here? I had also skimmed over the PAB section at the Lego store where I got this stuff. Some bins there had good yellow and others had bad yellow. The white stuff I saw looked pretty good to me. The tires in both 5974 and 7738 as well as in PAB were of the new variety, without the stickiness.

I would be interested to know if the price disparity is actually specific to Lego or if it exists in all goods in those countries. I was visiting Norway last week and looked around a few local toy stores while I was there. The Lego sets I saw typically had a 70-120% markup over the US prices, but that was in line with just about everything else I saw over there. Most things were around twice as expensive as what I'm used to seeing over here, and some electronics products I saw were 5 times as much. It's worth keeping in mind that the average incomes in many of these countries are also higher, although that doesn't entirely compensate for it.

Someone asked Steve Witt this question at the Brickfair Q&A and he said something about the old hinges requiring a standard of quality that was too hard to achieve, but he was pretty vague about it. I think the real reason is that the design itself was flawed. If you look at them carefully, they fit together in a way that bends and crushes the plastic. The plastic slightly deforms right away when you first put them together. They lose their grip over time, especially if you take them apart and re-assemble them a few times. However, the roof/canopy pieces you mention had the fingers placed further apart and didn't seem to suffer from this issue, so I'm not sure why those were changed. Probably just to fit in with the new system.

The Peeron entries I linked above suggest that the change was in fact made in 1994 or possibly 1993. I remember seeing the old kind in my 8857 and 8868 sets, although I can't be entirely sure about it now. Maybe it varied with the location, as was the case with a lot of these minor part changes.

I just looked this up. I definitely need to try this out at some point, as I have a number of pieces from various sets affected by this problem. On a side note, there was one additional new part introduced in 1994. The type 1 half bushes were replaced by the type 2 kind. The main difference with these is the gripping strength. The type Is had a much stronger grip, too strong for most purposes, while the type IIs were easier to remove.

I keep all the catalogs in storage. I have most small catalogs (the type that were included with sets) from a variety of countries from 1986 onward, large S@H US catalogs from 1995 onward, and club (Mania) magazines from 1996-2001. I skim through them every now and then. That's where most of my knowledge about obscure Lego facts has come from.

Actually the prices were just as low in 2003 too, and they had a lot of unique printed parts that year (and there still continued to be cases of such parts until 2006). TLG had simply reduced their profit margins during those years to try and make their products more attractive, which was good for us but backfired for them.

I rather like that helmet. They do still make unique molds, just not as often as they used to 7 or 8 years ago. The biggest change has occurred with unique printed pieces. At various points in the past (1980-1993 and 1998-2003), it was common to have printed pieces that only appeared in one or two sets, which I think added a lot to the value of those sets. Today, we're lucky to get any printed pieces at all aside from minifigs.