Legoist

Chiming in to add another praise! How long did it take you from the sketch to the final result?

Each vehicle is great. And also you made a really original colour selection. Is the excavator in the middle also your design?

The only good things of superpacks is that very often nobody buys them, so after a few months the shops have to get rid of them at huge discounts (although at least around here shops rarely have them at all). It's true however that this one is a bit of an odd selection. It should have had either the passenger train combined with the train station, or the cargo train combined with the train crossing.

Exactly. Ask any AFOL why they would not buy clone brands, and the #1 reason is "quality". If Lego ever chooses to lower quality down towards the level of clone brands, they would lose the competition big time. There would be no reason left to favour Lego products except a vague emotional factor.

Bingo.

Those articles linked in the 1st post talk about ~15-20.000$ as current starting prices. The next article mentions a company trying to lower the price below 10k, and another company targetting 5k (and its website mentions a model already available for <10k). And this is only NOW, ten years after it was impossible to see any 3D Printer below 50k. It is not unreasonable to make optimistic expectations... http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2008/tc2008103_077223.htm There's a video on youtube showing the 3D Printing of some cup-shaped object about 3 inches tall. It takes ~10 minutes or something like that. I rather think that on the long term (10-20 years from now) the price and the time will become non-issues. The only remaining issue might be quality, and more precisely resolution. Lego bricks have very short tolerances, so it's possible that 3D Printers manufacturers simply won't design printers with such a great precision because only very few customers may actually need that.

Ouch... I just realized the title may be misleading. It should have been "great opportunity or serious threat to the Lego hobby". I meant it in general, I didn't mean specifically an opportunity or a threat for the Lego company(TLG). Basically I meant to ask what does this possibility make you feel, do you think it will bring more goodness to your hobby or more annoyance?

Yep, but that's one reason why they may become a threat.

This is about something that most likely won't happen until at least 10-20 years from now, but eventually it will. In case you don't know, 3D Printing is basically CAM (Computer-Aided-Manufacturing) technology that allows "fast" creation of objects of various material (ABS plastic being one of them) in a fully-programmable machine. The idea is that of having something similar to a regular printer, except that instead of printing documents of paper, a 3D Printer "prints" (i.e. sculpts) solid objects of a chosen material. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing Before someone gets too excited, let's check today prices of 3D Printers and printing services from these articles: http://www.catiacommunity.com/feature_full_guest.php?read=1&cpfeatureid=53255&page=2 http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06215/710849-96.stm Clearly, today these are not home-budget machines... But as the same articles point out, their price will eventually decrease until they might become affordable by the average family. In some other article that I cannot find anymore, there was a comparison with laser printer prices, which went down from prices similar to today's 3D Printers to less than 1000$ in 15-20 years, so perhaps this could be a reasonable expectation for 3D Printing too. So if we think about AFOLs being able to buy a 3D Printer in the future, and use it to craft Lego parts, what consequences would it have on the hobby, if the practice became widespread enough? THE GOOD? - We would be able to make our own customized parts. Pieces in shapes that has never been made before, tailored to our needs and favourite themes. No more begging TLG to make a piece (or a whole historical/licensed/discontinued theme) we really want, but has not enough use worldwide to justify mass production. No more waiting for small companies to fill the gap and make certain train wheels or minifig accessories just as we want them. - We would be able to make existing pieces in a colour choice that has never done before, just for the fun of it. Think brown trees for an autumn landscape, or dark green baseplates. - We would be able to make many copies of regular pieces that are otherwise rare and take a long time and lots of money to buy on the secondary market (suddenly you can easily build tens of Diesel Shunters or make a whole city with dark blue roofs). This would be a delight for many MOCers, particularly those who make creations for expositions. THE BAD? - TLG might face more challenges to remain competitive, although it's clearly impossible for home 3D Printing to be ever cheaper than mass production, but still some financial damage might happen. - Smaller nice companies like Big Ben Bricks and Brickforge could have more serious trouble, since their total production is small and have to charge more for their custom parts. - The secondary market could become flooded by counterfeited rare Lego bricks, making it a nightmare for collectors to distinguish them from the genuine. - Many home-made pieces of inferior quality or with colours not matching the official ones will end up mixed with official bricks in second-hand Lego, just like clone brand bricks today, making 2nd-hand purchases more risky, particularly when buying complete sets of the past, in case many sellers start "completing" their incomplete sets with forged bricks. So what's your gut feeling? Is it going to be a more good or bad thing? (Sorry, not enough posts yet to create a poll here... )

The cactus is fantastic. It's so... cactus :)

I had the opposite thinking. When I saw the current cargo train locomotive, I too immediately thought of the 12V IC train and wondered: why didn't they just make the cargo loco front identical/similar to that of the 12V IC? It was so much cooler! This new front single-piece is boring.

I am not interested in military Lego, but the job itself looks top notch! It's nice how the two minifigs ended up with different actual patterns. Do you use something like a large square image with a fixed pattern, so that different parts of the pattern end up on different torsos? Or do you use an algorithm to randomly generate the pattern on each torso? Also, what kind of printer can print on such uneven surfaces as the legs?

I've always thought they were not worth the hype since the start. I stayed away from them, until I heard about the barcode method. So I used it to get 7 of them from Series 2, which I thought I had some good use for (basically just to add some cool variations into the civilian population). I might still get a couple from Series 1 using the same method, but apparently Series 1 is nowhere to be found anymore, so farewell. I think they're barely worth 2e each when you can use the barcode method to just get the ones you want.

I don't see any reason why TLG should release more train sets in 2011. The current batch within City already has quite the standard selection = Passenger Train + Cargo Train + Station + Crossing. Of course there COULD be still room for things such as a Cargo Station, one or two more railway structures, and individual wagons. But we're not in the golden 12V era anymore, and neither in the silver 9V era. There COULD be one more Exclusive train set tho. I guess the Emerald Night has been super popular, so I'm sure they will do something else for trains in S@H, and could be in 2011 already. But I definitely do not expect this in City.

I think it's just the same as 8867 but with half the pieces.

No, it's just untrue. Check the website, it's "Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off". So buy 2 copies of a set, and you get 25% discount on the total price.

Thanks again reviewer! I think this cargo train was pretty cool. Not exceptional, but each car is definitely nice.

I have yet to find a single attractive feature of this set. I like neither the design nor the pieces included nor the colour choice. I voted 1 (I know, it's almost a sacrilege to say that ANY Lego set is "poor", but if we have a 5-grade voting system, let's not be afraid to use the whole range...). I have a hard time imagining me buying this set at any discount, unless the price was downed to not much more than the value of the straight tracks.

Yes, I dislike sets with huge specialized parts. Licensed themes sets typically have more of these compared to more traditional themes, perhaps because the age target is lower. I'm fine with small specialized parts, which essentially work as decorations only, like minifig accessories, trees, flags. ladders (but not stairs)... But I don't like the bigger ones, such as train fronts (including the not-so-large ones used in the current PF trains). I like pieces that fall in between the basic and single-use, and especially I've always loved pieces with a (simple) function, movable pieces like hinges and groups of pieces that put together let you slide or rotate them. Basic bricks are essential, but generally I like to build trains most (and anything that goes in their scenery), so I can't go very far with basic bricks alone!

I don't collect anything. My main theme is Trains, but even there I just buy sets here and there without feeling like I had to complete the set of sets. Actually my purchasing habits are quasi-random, meaning that I buy sets which I like either for the model or for the parts to use in MOCs, and (with a few exceptions) I let the randomness of sales and discounts drive my wallet. That applies to both old and new sets. Nevertheless, being focused on Trains means that at least City and Creator sets are in (Modular Houses could be in as well, but I've never bought any of them), while other themes are generally out, since they usually have a lot of parts strongly characterized. But of course, I may still get individual sets from any other theme if I think they have many useful parts. Totally aside to this, I've been thinking about buying some Castle sets and some monstrous minifigs from Atlantis, Space Police or whatever, and then use the material for RPGing.

I am not sure of this since I've only glimpsed at an advertisement, but I think all shops associated with the S-Bonus Card (the green one) might have a general -15% discount sales from 16.09 to 19.09. You need to have the S-Bonus Card with you to get this benefit. That's not a huge discount for Lego sets, but could be the occasion to make some purchases you've been planning to do anyway. Some shop chains using the S-Bonus Card which usually have Lego sets on the shelves are Prisma, Sokos and (on a lesser scale) S-Market.

Definitely out in Finland. We got it 1-2 weeks ago.

Well I just think it's brilliant. The interiors are just the perfect balance between realism and Lego's typical minimalism. Also the colour scheme is very original. :thumbup:

I've noticed that there's quite a bunch of Eurobrickers from Finland, so I thought perhaps someone might find it useful to gather up news of local sales. At least I have a hard time knowing when a shop chain is doing a Lego sale here... Here's my finding of the day: Shop chain: Toys'R'Us Location: Idea Park (perhaps the sale is not valid in other TRU shops) Lucky finds: two huge sets are on 50% discount: - 7754 Home One Mon Calamari Star Cruiser (Star Wars) down from ~160e to ~80e - 5974 Galactic Enforcer (Space Police III) down from ~96e to ~48e there are A LOT of boxes at 50% off for both of these so it's very probable that there is many days left I know this is only one shop, so it might seem ridiculous to make a post for a sale on just one location... however I believe that Idea Park is quite a shopping destination for many people living in central Finland.

It's a concept of honor that truly I don't understand. But I don't want to mock your hobby, that's your choice. I only wanted to suggest at least in cases like the Spartans, where their faces are visible, to apply a little variation so that the army would be more realistic (not that anybody cares) and this way there would actually be something to "design", rather than just owning.