CP5670

It looks like the heads are more similar than I thought. I noticed the difference only because the hair on the Ice Planet head slightly covers the eyes, which somehow gives it a different overall facial expression.

This has more information on what I mean. I think red might be better today than it was at the beginning of the year, while yellow still seems to be bad. You're right that we have not had a blue flagship model in many years. In fact, 8462 was itself the first large blue model in a long time. The only previous ones that come to mind are from the early 1980s. That monster truck is really nice, especially the pendular suspension.

This is okay for what it is, but there were better small, impulse-style sets in other themes. It should have had a steering wheel or control panel of some sort. By the way, I think you have the wrong head there. It should be this one. That other one appeared later on in the Divers theme.

The new cap looks nice enough. However, does anyone else think the caps in general are way overused in City sets? More minifigs have caps than hair, and it has been that way since the late 80s. I would like to see less of them altogether.

Thanks for the scans. The US prices are actually a little lower than what was posted earlier in the thread, so it's a pity to see other countries getting ripped off. 8258 is probably the standout set and the one I'm most likely to get, but it definitely has room for improvement. I'm looking at it as a platform for mods as much as anything else. As someone in the TechnicBricks blog comments said, the crane winch and especially the outriggers are lame designs and don't feel like proper Technic functions. It has a great alternate model though. 8265 actually looks like the most well designed set to me, and it hasn't cut any corners like 8258. The main reason I will probably pass it up is its similarity to 8459, which I already have a couple of. As a primarily yellow set, I think it's also more likely to have bad quality bricks than the other two red sets. If I find it on a discount though, I'll pick it up.

I need to read thread titles more carefully. You might want to ask Whitefang about it, who lives there too. The cable prices are higher on Bricklink, although if you only need one they're still fairly cheap. You can of course solder the PF leads to a 9V connector, but that will take some work and seems pointless given that the extension cable is specifically designed to do this. The only reason to modify any wires is to make the conversion work with the IR receiver.

I would also have a higher opinion of this if the price was lower. I think they should have just dropped all the vehicles out and priced it at $30 or so, which would have made it a lot more appealing and a good candidate for mods.

That looks beautiful. You may want to use a better camera though, as some of those pictures are really doing no justice to that model. Does that sort of weight cause any problems in the drivetrain? I tried to build a large truck once several years ago (although not as big as this), but abandoned it halfway through since it was becoming too heavy and no amount of shock absorbers could support it well. It looks like you're foregoing suspension altogether here, which is probably a good idea for such a heavy model. The hubs do look about the same size. I think the tires might need to be slightly misshaped in order to get a firm grip. I briefly tried it on the ones I have (from 8865) and they don't fit very well.

Great rendition of this model. The 8466 was a very impressive set and had true super car-like functionality, especially after the disappointing 8448 and 8458 that came before it. One of the highlights of the original set were the massive wheels. They easily dwarf any other Technic wheel ever made and suit the model perfectly. However, they are very rare and expensive on Bricklink these days, at least $10 per wheel, so it probably isn't worth trying to get a full set of them. The original model only has front wheel steering, but it's easy to make it 4-wheel. I have done that on mine. This is a problem on the original model too. In fact, the front shocks carry so much weight that they get slightly bent over time. I added an additional pair of shocks on both the front and back wheels to get around this. Among the super cars, 8865 and 8448 have the best suspension, not too stiff nor too weak. 8880's suspension is fairly stiff, while 8466 in its stock form has the opposite problem. I think it's just the box/manual picture. I love the look of this set. Yours actually looks very close to the original except for the wheels, and the resulting lower height. I motorized all four wheels with the 5292 RC motor a while ago and it worked fairly well. The small bevel gears above the differentials are a bottleneck in the drivetrain and tend to slip frequently. The assembly there needs to be reinforced or rebuilt in some way. I partly agree with you on this, but I have still continued to buy any standout studless Technic sets like this one. I actually have two of these sets, one of which I got for free due to a freak glitch on Lego S@H's part and still haven't opened.

You actually don't need to do any of that. Just get the PF extension cable, which has a 9V connection on one end. This cable works on practically every combination of PF and 9V parts, with the exception of running a PF IR receiver from a 9V power source. Various workarounds have been proposed for this.

This set had a great concept but has been poorly executed. The structure looks pretty small for a $50 set and has a very jumbled look, as if it was thrown together at the last minute. I especially don't like those spikes. On the plus side, it does have a lot of equipment and the stickers are well designed, adding a lot to the look and feel of the set. Among the vehicles, I like the police craft and the baddie ship in the middle is decent. Adding a 1x2 brick would easily close up the police ship, and it makes you wonder why TLG didn't do that themselves. The other two vehicles are lousy though. I get the impression that they cut down on the original concept a lot to keep costs down, but then it makes you wonder why the set is priced so high. They should have dropped out most of the vehicles and beefed up the pitstop structure instead.

I would like both the bricks and plates to return to their strength levels in the late 90s. Even with plates, the strength issue came up many times with the Blacktron ship in my signature, as many wing sections were not staying on as firmly as I expected and had to be supported by extra plates on the bottom. My guess is this is due to a change in materials rather than the molds, which are replaced every few years anyway. As I mentioned in the color section, they changed the type of ABS pellets they use at some point in 2006, which may be having additional side effects apart from just the colors. The most recent non-Technic sets I have gotten are the Beach House and the 8401 minifig pack, both last month. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the handful of white and red pieces in both sets, which had good colors and fit together firmly, and even the yellow minifig heads in the latter looked good. I would need to see more/larger sets to reach any conclusions though, and brown was still quite weak in terms of grip. The Beach House had almost entirely bad yellow, both in terms of color and grip, as well as smooth slopes, rounded plates and bullet hole windows, but that is probably because it's a 2008 set and was packaged earlier. Is it only in that color? I have many of those in other colors but haven't seen any problems. I don't think the arms are actually designed to be removed at all. I remember Front posting something about that causing permanent damage to them.

It shows up but is "not available" on the US site. $160 was the US price quoted earlier in the thread, so it definitely won't be cheap. That is roughly in line with 8421's price though, which also had over 1800 pieces and a motor. I'm also interested in the crane mechanism in particular. This may be the first official Lego set to have a differential in the middle of a turntable, something that MOCers have done for many years.

I have bought sets from Korean sellers on ebay in the past, so I would guess Lego is in fact available there.

There may have been a more widespread problem with the pistons in that set. Mark Bellis mentioned the same thing here, although the ones in my 8455 seem to be fine. I think it's worth adding to the list. I'm surprised TLG refused to replace them, as they are usually very good about that. I had a few broken ones (the nozzles had come off) that they replaced around 2001.

I think there is a difference between the "best theme" and the theme having the best sets. For best theme, my vote goes to SP1 since I love their color scheme and their Space Lockup jail cells, but only their small/medium sets were well designed. For best sets, I would say M:Tron or SP2, for which all of the sets were pretty uniformly good.

I got this set when it came out, but I always found it to be somewhat disappointing after what I had heard about the older 8880 Super Car (which I didn't have at the time). It looks beautiful, but the drive and steering systems are pretty basic compared to 8880's more sophisticated setup that covers all four wheels. The upgraded transmission is great, but the functionality is otherwise more like 8865 and it feels like a step backwards from 8880. On the plus side though, the opening doors worked very well and it was nice how you could use the same chassis with different bodies for the alternate models. The later 8466 set had many similarities with the chassis of this set, but was a more impressive model and was comparable to 8880. As you said though, this set has still always been in very high demand. It has consistently been more expensive than the older 8880 on ebay and BL. The box had a cool design, containing 8 smaller sub-boxes and having the wheels lined up along one side. The set also included a few unique parts that didn't appear anywhere else, like the wheels, the 14-length gear rack and the steering joints in the front. It's due to the colors. Check the entry on stickers here. Somehow mine have held up pretty well over time though. I liked that one the best too.

That environment sounds pretty normal. I would expect any exposed white pieces to get yellowed in that case, but not just the molding point only. The related issue in the 80s was apparently caused by something in the air, rather than light. The most severe case I've encountered was an unopened 6395 set from ebay that seemed to have been stored in a smoke-filled warehouse, as many white pieces had slight yellowing and traces of a soot-like substance on them (the bags back then were perforated and not airtight as they usually are today). Most pieces in white, yellow and red had a black mark around the injection point. They aren't regular stains and I have not found any way to remove them. I have occasionally seen this on parts from other 80s sets too, but it's fairly rare. It's cool that you have been in this area. I live about a 10 minute drive from the university, as I'm a grad student there.

I just meant that any tracks wouldn't match up with existing ones in color. You are probably right about the high prices turning off most buyers, which is the same reason trains disappeared from retail stores. I got large sets as a kid but realistically only once a year, on birthdays. I would expect the 6399 Airport Shuttle to have been the most expensive, as it was considerably larger than the two Space monorails. Lugnet says $140 in the US, but I think that seems inaccurate given the prices of the Space monorails. On the other hand, in recent years TLG has been more inclined to release very expensive sets geared towards AFOLs more than kids (UCS, modular town, etc.), which they hardly ever did back then.

That issue is probably worth having an entry on. However, changes with the brick gripping strength have occurred many times in the past, and some were intentional and beneficial. Ideally, there should be a balance between having the bricks stay together firmly and coming apart easily when pulled off. If you go back to the late 1980s, the pieces in most sets had a very strong grip and could become quite hard to remove. TLG steadily cut back on the gripping power in the early 1990s, and it remained roughly the same from 1995 up until 2005 or 2006. The best middle ground was probably achieved during this period. I think the change that you are talking about occurred around the same time as the colors and various other defects in 2006, but it may have come a bit earlier. These pieces are definitely too far on the weak side. In my experience, the weakest pieces suffer from some other flaw as well, either a color problem or the blunt edges issue. Plates and tiles have been affected by this more than bricks. As for the colors, small black pieces have a reasonably firm grip, white and yellow are the worst, and light blay is somewhere in the middle. Larger black pieces I have are as bad as other colors. Large (bigger than 4x4) plates and wedge plates in any color seem to have an especially weak grip on the bottom. Have you had the set for a while? What kind of light/air conditions were the bricks placed in? This actually sounds similar to an issue in the 1980s, where many pieces had some kind of sensitivity around the injection point and sometimes developed a dark spot there (out of the box), but I haven't seen the effect since then.

I always figured that guy was killed from being rammed by the Battrax. That is a great site by the way, and has several old catalogs that aren't on Peeron or Brickfactory. I didn't know about this one before. I doubt that was specifically the reason the molds were taken offline. The monorails were quite expensive though (6991 was $170 and I believe 6990 was $130; converted to today's prices that would be much more), so they must have been very low volume products if they still couldn't turn a profit. I think an entirely new monorail system would be better than trying to resurrect the old parts, which would be incompatible anyway due to the light gray change. The old monorail system is great but it does have a number of flaws, like the limited train length and the fact that monorails can only be started/stopped at a track switch.

This is mainly due to the stupid knob design TLG uses these days. I have replaced the knob gears on my recent sets with cranks of various sizes, like the 80s and 90s sets had. I have no idea why they moved away from that design, which worked very well. As for motorization, if you already have a motor pack, it's probably better to just buy the M motor by itself and switch the battery box around when you want to play with the model. That would make the price more reasonable.

I saw this on Brickshelf recently. Very impressive. The model must be huge if those are 24x43 wheels. I think it somehow looks smaller than it is in the pictures, maybe due to the lack of visible studs for comparison. I also see that you're using the 62.4x20 hubs with 24x43 tires. Do they fit in well? I've never tried doing that.

That is just a police station and has no obvious connection to the monorail. This scene is from the Lego Club TV video posted a while ago. The monorail was noticed back then too and just looks like random decoration. They have the classic computer slopes on the wall as well. I don't think this is an actual set, but just something they put together for the video.

Ah okay. Thanks for the explanation then. I think that is indeed the only one with the big blob, aside from the early 1980s windows. The others have different kinds of marks. I will update that description a bit and elaborate on this.