CP5670

It's nice to see that they are paying attention to the AFOL community. Color saturation and quality was easily at the top for me in the concerns list. I would be buying far more Lego if the bricks were the same as they were 10 years ago.

You can often avoid sales tax by buying from an online store that doesn't have a presence in your state. Of course, you'll have to pay shipping costs instead.

The concept for that 7344 truck is different from this set. It's supposed to be one of the huge trucks found in mines and quarries, like this. It was a great idea that wasn't really well executed, due to a lot of <insert that tiresome argument>, special purpose parts it used like the dumper.

Very cool. It has quite a bit of articulation on each joint. I think it should walk if everything is programmed the right way. The design seems to be based on an actual, commercially available robot called Asimo. I remember reading about it at some point.

That dump truck is quite nice. It's larger than most town vehicles from that period. The excavator is sort of lacking though and seems to have been an afterthought to the set. They used these until 1998, along with several other parts with the same kind of teeth. Most of mine are actually of this variety.

This might be more appropriate for the BSTF forum. The 6915 sets were definitely going that cheap a year ago, although I haven't checked recently. The key is to keep searching on a regular basis for a few months, preferably once a week or two weeks. I have been doing this on and off for the last several years. You can search for many items at once by typing the numbers in parenthesis, like "lego (6915,6975,8298)". I have found things like this over the years too, but it can potentially take a lot of work to find them unless you're looking for that specific item. You typically come across these items by typing only the set number without the "lego" (which can be tedious to look through, as a lot of non-Lego stuff comes up too), finding another item by the same seller and looking in his item list, or by searching for just "lego" and looking through everything that shows up. Some other factors that cause sets to go cheap are MISB sets that are not advertised as such (but where you can see in the pictures that the set is probably new) and sellers that don't accept Paypal. I've taken advantage of the latter many times, especially from international sellers.

That site only has the small catalogs that were included with sets, not the big S@H/Lego Direct magazines.

If you happen to have this head, it would make a better substitute: Nice scene though.

The site was down for quite a while earlier today, and it seems like some people's topics got triple-posted during that time.

I would like to see these too. I have most of the Mania magazines and big catalogs from 1995 onward, but not any of the earlier ones. Peeron and Brickfactory have scans of most (but not all) of the mini catalogs that were included in sets, but not any of the full scale S@H catalogs.

I have this and think it's a great set too. The locking mechanism is quite clever and it comes with a lot of valuables to keep inside, as your pictures show. Like many of the WC sets, it has doors as well and the construction generally feels like a classical town vehicle. I think it's worth putting the stickers on here, as they are all the clear paper variety and don't come off easily, as opposed to the white paper kind. The ones on the armor vest look especially nice. The only downside was that the set was a little expensive for its size when it came out, although that doesn't really matter now.

The main themes I'm interested in these days are City and Technic. City had several great sets and continued its revival from last year. The Town Plan (although technically not part of the theme) was an especially nice addition. Technic was a little disappointing after the last couple of years, which have each brought at least one outstanding flagship set, although the power functions pack was a great extension set and the linear actuators could have a lot of uses in MOCs. The Lego education pneumatics set was another interesting addon pack, although expensive. The main gripe I had was the same issue as last year, the megablok-like brick quality in several colors. I rarely pay full price for anything but the absolute best sets these days and wait for most things to go on clearance. Hopefully that will change at some point next year, if that TLG engineer's comments at Brickfair were accurate.

Good set with a nice variety of equipment (especially the three computer tiles), and the minifigs were getting increasingly more detailed printing by this point. However, it has one fewer minifig than the previous packs did, and they are mostly commanders instead of the basic guys, which makes it less useful for building armies. That Unitron chief is one of my favorite space minifigs though. Since your set was new, did you get any additional visors with it? These sets often came with a few extras. The strange thing about Unitron was that their biggest set, the monorail, was apparently intended to be a standalone originally (it came out a year before the others and the box has the Spyrius blurb on it). I think TLG only decided to make a theme out of it and call it Unitron the following year, and only in the US.

This could lead to very interesting models. I incorporate Technic functions into some of my Space MOCs (and plan to do a lot more of this in the future), but have not used much in the way of Bionicle parts.

I guess that makes sense. I remember that they had the 8xxx numbers at a time when those sets were otherwise exclusively Technic. The functions were fairly basic though compared to most Technic sets, and today there isn't any connection at all. I don't mind the Bionicle threads, but I always thought it would make more sense to put Technic and Mindstorms together with Model Team (and some types of Creator) instead. A lot of Technic MOCs also fall into the Model Team category, and the two themes have similar scales and design concepts. They also used to share the same catalogs at one point. Sinner once said there wasn't enough interest here in Technic to warrant its own forum, but we have had more Technic fans register lately and if you combine all of those themes, I think there would be a decent number of threads. Bionicle also arguably has enough activity to have an exclusive forum for itself. (right now, most of the Bionicle discussion seems to be mixed into that one massive thread)

Quite a bit of hate in this thread, but it's nice to see that someone other than me has actually noticed this. This has been going on for almost two years now and I've brought it on EB countless times before. This is the main reason why I'm reluctant to buy any new sets for full price these days, except in certain, unaffected colors like black and blue. There was a TLG engineer at the Brickfair event a few months ago (the same guy who gave the news about purple) and he brought this up in his presentation. I asked him if they had any intention of fixing it and he gave a mid-2009 timeframe, claiming that it takes them years to readjust colors, so we'll have to just wait and see what happens.

I have almost all the sets from the old space themes but unfortunately don't have time to write good reviews like this with so many pictures.

This is a brilliant MOC, and your excellent presentation of the model really does justice to it. There is lots of functionality and detail here packed into a moderate size. Your whole construction process also seems to have been well planned out, especially with the mosaic generator you made for this. The highlight of this model for me is switching mechanism based on the turntable. I've always been very interested in techniques for splitting up geartrains like this, and your method is one that I haven't seen before. The use of several different lighting components is also great to see. It might be a good idea to cross-post models like this in other relevant categories like Technic. I don't come into this section that often and almost missed this gem.

I'm not interested in Bionicle. The "organic" style of the models never appealed to me and they have neither the brick-building feel of System nor the mechanical aspects of Technic. I have nothing against the existence of the theme though, and there are several other Lego themes that I don't have much interest in either. However, I don't understand why Bionicle is considered similar to Technic, since they have very little in common. The only thing is that they both use the hole/axle connections, but those are ubiquitous these days and appear in a lot of System sets too. Technic is all about the functionality and intricate mechanisms. There was in fact a time when Technic models were primarily built from stud connections (and many Technic MOCs still are), but what they always had in common was the emphasis on functionality.

This was my first MTron set. Nice little vehicle overall, and as you said the printed windscreen only appeared in this set. The slope was in several other sets. It would have been better if they used the small shock absorbers though, which were used on several off-road town vehicles from that time period. I've modified mine with them and they add a lot to this set.

What is considered a released set? There have been numerous sets in the past that were only distributed by a third party company in highly limited quantities, or were part of some limited promotion by TLG. The Vestas set is the latest example. There have also been many Dacta sets that, until some point in the mid 90s, were only sold to schools and other educational organizations. If you're only counting "sets" that were never released to anyone, then they wouldn't really be sets at all.

Exactly, that looks a lot nicer.

This model has excellent detail and I especially like the towing fork mechanism, but the rear section is too high for a tow truck and makes it look more like a box transport truck. It would look better if you reduced the side "walls" around the towing arm by one or two brick lengths.

This is one of my favorite space sets among any theme. The concept of a space-themed helicopter is quite unique, and it looks sleek and is loaded with tools and equipment. I modified the cargo bay on mine slightly to make the robot fit in more snugly, without jiggling around. Very good review too. I like the last few pictures. My set (MISB copy off ebay) actually came with a large MTron poster showing a cave scene from the catalogs, although I don't know if they all included that.

I like doors and they add a nice bit of detail on vehicles, but they're more of a decoration than anything functional. The minifigs can never actually go through the doors without also lifting the roof. Although I never liked how the doors had no windows above them. I would much rather have fully enclosed vehicles (which have been rare) without doors than open vehicles with them. I believe some very old doors in the 70s actually had clear windows above them, but I haven't seen them in any sets after that.