CP5670

I was thinking the same when I saw that circular saw. I don't see much wrong with the other rooms, but the rest of the set is underwhelming. The city line has come a long way since this set was released three years ago, although they're still going cheap with the stickers instead of printing.

I got an MISB 6990 Futuron monorail on there a few weeks ago for $260. It was quite expensive, but most of these in the past have sold for well over $400 and I've never seen a new one this cheap, so I think I got a fairly good deal on it. Pity it wasn't buy it now though, or I could have used the Microsoft cashback rebate on it.

There are many interesting sets in the Dacta line that were never advertised in the mainstream catalogs. I think most of them were only sold in the US and until the mid 90s, only to schools. Aside from this hospital, there was a town set with numerous roadplates and copies of several small vehicles from around that time period, as well as a large Futuron space base with strange looking minifigs. The coolest sets were probably in Technic, such as the 4.5V manual control sets (which included 4.5V touch and light sensors that were never seen in Technic) and the 9V Control Lab line later on. They currently have an expensive but very neat NXT-colored pneumatic set available with a Lego pressure gauge.

Same here. I spent hours staring at those catalogs as a kid and dreaming about creating my own layouts like that some day. They don't have the mini catalogs in the sets at all anymore, only the bigger S@H ones that are distributed separately.

This is actually the second review here on this set, but it's always good to see another perspective. Yours appears to be perfect condition too. I got one of these MISB off ebay some years ago, but the box was damaged and the big windshield unfortunately had two big scratches/pits in it. Cool, I didn't know this. I have seen the set called Multi in some US catalogs from that time period and the box also says Multi on it, but Brickset and all the other sites call it Mega. Yes, you can get some insane deals from this if you catch it at the right time, especially when it's giving 30% or more. It's limited to buy it now items though.

I found them all. Great idea with this.

There must be people out there willing to pay for this, or they wouldn't charge for it. As others have said, I would take $1700 worth of Lego over this any day. I could buy several of those old MISB sets for myself off ebay, instead of just looking at the boxes.

He probably suggested it for speed reasons. AA (especially supersampling) adds a lot of extra time to the rendering, but it would look better and the smoothing would be consistent across the model. I guess you could just leave it running overnight.

Most of these look quite nice, better than I would expect for alternate models. (with the exception of the red truck, which looks like its back fell off ) There have only been a handful of Technic sets over the years that had really good alternate models (8868 and 8480 are a few that come to mind). It's nice to see TLG putting more effort into them.

The lighting and reflections on that look great. Thanks for detailing the entire process, so the rest of us can do this too. It would probably be better to do the antialiasing directly while rendering the model, since there are some jagged edges visible, especially in the back. Most rendering programs should have options for that somewhere.

I remember seeing some of their auctions at one point. I didn't enter them though.

I save all of my boxes, although I kept them in my parents house since I don't have enough room in my apartment. I will probably leave them there until I get a larger place of my own. They're fun to look at every now and then. To be honest though, the boxes today are pretty crappy compared to what they used to have 10+ years ago. They no longer have the alternate models on the back or the flap and "featured parts" tray, and the cardboard itself is thinner and lower quality.

I've seen this before too. Some of the set names they give are quite strange though and don't match up with the official names used in any country. The UFO sets are an example.

In general, it usually means modification or moderator (as on a forum). I don't think it has any Lego-specific meaning.

This looks a great set. As you said, that SUV is probably the best such vehicle TLG has ever made. However, the price is just too high for me to consider it. It should be more like $15 given its size and piece count. I'll probably pass it up unless I spot it in the S@H clearance section at some point.

I have had these issues before but they have been rare, with only two cases out of the 40-odd orders I've placed over the years. One caused me a fair amount of hassle (the guy was friendly but very slow at dealing with these issues) while the other seller just refunded me quickly. For very large orders, I tend to stick with a few specific sellers who I know handle such orders quickly and accurately. This is something I occasionally do just to see what kinds of parts they have in stock. In recent times, I have often wanted to avoid bricks manufactured in 2007 in certain colors, due to the differences in color saturation. If it's hard to tell what kind a seller is carrying, a small sample order usually clears it up. The same thing can be done to test the quality of used parts.

This is one of the most original Technic concepts I've seen. I love how the house moves in a couple of distinct ways. How many different motors/geartrains are you using there?

Even if the new bad guys are called Blacktron, that doesn't necessarily mean they will have anything in common with the old Blacktron themes. TLG has reused names like this before with no other connection; look at Aquaraiders for example. As I said before, you can't really say anything good or bad about these sets at all until we have some pictures.

You would probably be better off doing this using motors and gearing, maybe with a thread/pulley mechanism to actually lift the blade so you don't run the risk of breaking pieces. A couple of PF XL or 9V red/black motors geared down enough should be powerful enough. As for third party pieces, look at fischertechnik's line and see if they have anything useful. I vaguely remember reading once that their pneumatic system was compatible with the Lego one and had some extra features. I think a bigger problem is what to use for the treads. I suppose you could just use several 8275 tracks side by side to make them look thick enough, but you would need something much larger than the usual sprocket wheels. As mentioned there, those things don't have anything in common with actual hydraulic pistons and wouldn't be appropriate for this at all.

The names sound interesting enough, but it's hard to say anything about these sets until we have some pictures.

I look forward to seeing them. The larger WC ground vehicles were all outstanding, even better than the recent police lineups in some ways.

How many battle droids were there? Did they come in a box or a large padded envelope? $30 seems like an obvious ripoff from the seller in either case though. I can't imagine how a package of minifigs would be heavy enough to justify that. International shipping costs can be high but they're not that bad.

You can even see it in this review with the old 80s police car for comparison. The later 80s/90s cars were slightly better, but they all had that strange go-kart shape, and the junior era ones were even worse. This car was a good example of a 4-wide vehicle that didn't look too small. Actually, the only major issue I have with this car is the lack of a roof. The gray bumpers look a little strange too, but you can always remove them.

I don't get the hate here. This was a decent set. There have been better police cars since then, but at its time it looked better than just about any of the previous Lego squad cars, both the classic and junior era ones.

No, the color changes (grays, etc.) happened in 2004 while the color density issues started in early 2007 and are still ongoing. TLG themselves have admitted that there is a problem here and have supposedly been working to fix it, but it's hard to see why they would have any incentive to do so given that most people don't care about it. There were also some unrelated problems with slopes, tires, stickers and window glass at various points over the last several years, although most of those were eventually fixed. This is certainly true. Lego will continue to sell better than the clone brands due to the excellent set designs they have these days. I think most consumers decide what to buy based on how good the sets are. For a typical casual buyer, brick quality is a non-issue and even the selection of parts doesn't matter so much if the set itself looks good.