Legoist

Fantastic...

Printed parts look more cool, but stickers aren't bad in my opinion, except when they go over multiple pieces. I wish someone would one day create a small website or forum page dedicated to Lego stickers, where Lego fans would upload scans of stickers found in old Lego sets.

It's not actually that big... each house is smaller than 20cm x 20cm when folded.

Ditto. We already have all we need. Also, to officially grab the license would be probably more expensive than with Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Whoa, that's a very hard choice. What could be the criteria? I can say that for some unexplicable reasons, I always loved the broom, the walkie-talkie, the megaphone, the suitcase, the aqualungs, and the pitchfork. I can't really think of an accessory I don't like... perhaps the whip?

- Nothing in particular of what's on sale today. - The Emerald Night, among the upcoming sets. - The 1983 IC Train, among the sets of the past.

Classic Space (but new sets of course)

I can't suggest anything unbiased here, because I don't like the Metroliner, while I absolutely love the Emerald Night.

It's certainly not my favourite Castle subtheme, but I don't hate this either. I think the 2nd castle is indeed a poor design, but the 1st one is not that terrible, and almost all the smaller sets are just fine (the only truly ugly one is the tiny flying machine) although I can't say from the picture if they are <insert that tiresome argument>. Not so important, but the dragon IMHO looks much better than the current dragon, which barely looks Lego at all. As a whole theme, FK seems definitely better than KK to me. And considering the level of the other Lego themes of late 90s, FK is possibly one of the best theme of its time.

I think there's such a huge difference between the two options, that I can't really suggest either Green Grocer is targeted at older builders. It has a massive amount of fairly normal bricks (but in unusual colours) for the structure, but then goes crazy in the variety of parts for the front and other decorations. The result is huge, so if you plan to use it in a Town diorama, you have to consider how does it match with the rest of your Lego city! (if it's your first modular building, it might look odd surrounded by tiny houses) OTOH, by itself it's a great building, and could be a stand-alone display model if you want, but I believe its biggest strengths are (a) its use in a large town and (b) as a source of parts for City or Castle mostly. The Pirate Ship is targeted to all audiences, with a slight focus on the youngsters. It's probably more fun to build (except that it takes less time) because there are few repetitive steps or identical pieces. It has much more playability of course, but it also works better than the Green Grocer as a display model. So my take is: - buy Green Grocer if you plan to create a large cityscape with other similar buildings - buy Green Grocer if you like creating lots of MOCs of city/castle buildings and want interesting parts or normal bricks of uncommon colour - buy Pirate Ship if you play a lot with your Lego after building - buy Pirate Ship if you are looking for an impressive Lego model to display in your house while as much as pure "building fun" you can't go wrong with either of them YMMV That's a great set! If you want it you better rush because it might be discontinued soon. At least it's not available anymore in several EU countries.

The cookie cutter is great, but the other are ridiculously expensive compared to their function...

Personally I believe that the new 8401 City minifig set is a great idea: We already have several impulse sets, but what if TLG decided to release more sets with 4-5 minifigs besides the impulse? Star Wars fans already get their "battle packs" with 4 minig each, although the set also contains a significant model to build and not just minifig. Castle fans (well, the lucky ones where this is available) have a Skeletons Battle Pack and a Knights Battle Pack: So what other minifig sets of these 2 types would you like to see on the shelves in the future?? NOTE: "type 1" is 4 minifigs with significant additions for ~10$/e, "type 2" is 5 minifigs with just 2 accessories each for ~15$/e, BUT you can of course suggest different types you would prefer!

10/10 It blends PERFECTLY with the others. It just looks like it was part of 10193

This strikes me as slightly odd... What's wrong with having a mixture, as long as there is enough sense within such mix? Personally I don't like cars wider than 4, but I found that a 6-wide truck looks more proportionate alongside such cars than a 4-wide truck. On the other hand I can't accept 8-wide trucks even if the overall design looks cool. Obviously, I don't expect others to agree with my own taste... but it just sound odd to me that you reject the idea of mixture a-priori. Note that I also do not like a mix of widths for vehicles of the same type, so I wouldn't gladly mix 4- and 6- cars together or 4- and 6- trucks together or - the horrow! - have 6- cars and 4- trucks together. Let's say my "golden rule" is: bikes <= cars <= trucks <= trains (boats and planes are out of the equation because they can have much more size variety)

If your purpose for using LDD is just design and not ordering the parts from LEGO Factory, then I suggest you consider using MLCAD, which can do all those things.

Thanks for your review! Before reading this, I didn't know that the set included 5 weapons, I though it only had 3, and it does make a difference. My vote is 4/5 for the following reasons: + top grade on the design of the minifig itself, particularly the hat and the double-print torso + good assortment of accessories These 2 are simply what is really required from an impulse set. If the minifig is cool and the accessories useful, then the set is already a success. So why not 5/5? - the added bricks are useless, they are way too ordinary and add almost nothing to anyone's collection; should better be fewer but more specialized (this is a pet peeve of mine for many other impulse sets) - the face of the minifig is too specific The last feature is actually GOOD if you buy only 1-2 of these impulse sets, but it's BAD if you buy impulse sets in large quantities... another pet peeves of mine with impulse sets! I'd prefer them to have a generic "classic" face without features, it would be much better for those who like buying at least a bunch of copies of the same impulse set. An alternative would be to have several impulse sets for each theme (in this case, 3-4 different impulse sets with imperial soldiers) but that's clearly more costly for TLG. Another - pretty wacky - alternative would be to RANDOMIZE the minifig head, but this causes new production challenges, and many people would dislike this a lot.

Wow, how can you stuff so many unconventional ideas into such a small model!

This is the first time I see this set First of all, thanks for your GREAT review! The idea of showing minifigs building the set is always hilarious. I must say that "sport" or "racing" LEGO subthemes have never ever caught my interest. And furthermore nowadays I'm a big fan of 6-stud wide trucks, and I'm never going back. Nevertheless this set really deserves a TOP grade. The amount of details is high, comes with nicely unique minifigs and parts, many accessories and is highly playable thanks to various moving mechanisms. The only 2 (minor) critiques I have with the set are that the 3 cars are identical (except for the colours) while a bit of variety would have been nicer, and that when in "up" position the trailer doesn't look very realistic (it looks like a real trailer would collapse without any support). But I still vote 5/5

Agreed! The new 6-stud wide truck design and the Construction Crane were the things that got me out of the dark ages

Interesting comments all of you, thanks! Apparently I didn't realize that perhaps in the US the situation with retail shop is quite different! As I mentioned earlier, here in Finland I can usually find the medium and large sets in retail shops for LESS than their catalog price (which is identical to the S@H price to Finland). Furthermore, every now and then there are shop discounts in the 15%-30% range, so I usually just wait to buy a set, confident enough that early or late I will find it on discount at least a little bit. S@H sometimes has a 50% off (presumably on sets about to be discontinued), but unfortunately it seems to me that the quantities might be set on a country basis, because to Finland if you don't buy them on the 1st-2nd day of sale they immediately become "call to check availability" or "sold out". It's very hard to take advantage of this kind of sale, and almost impossible for exclusives and hard-to-find. We also have a Toys'r us shop close to Tampere, Finland where I live. Perhaps they do have inflated prices over there (I've never checked it out), but it won't make much sense considering that everything on the catalog can be found in various shopping malls downtown. I doubt that this is ever offered in Finland as well! While I have never bought from S@H, at least yet, I tried to check out the shipping costs and it's always applied.

First of all, thanks to Algernon for another excellent theme review! I hope it doesn't bother you that I make my comments too extensive... if it feels to you like I'm disturbing your reviews by doing this, please let me know. Normally I would like to write my own reviews separately, but in the case of these space themes I don't think it makes much sense to create a separate review after you make such a detailed one. One of the best spaceship ever... despite the fact the overall shape doesn't convince me, this is totally overrun by the playability of this set. As you explained very clearly, there are so many great working parts in this ship, from the detaching crafts, the splitting and re-shaping of the ship, to the great use of a garage door and the carried small craft and missile... This ship is truly an excellent design! My vote: 10/10. While the overall impression is not bad, this is a primitive design for a space station. Take a colorful raised baseplate (which makes up for most of the "mass" of the set) and slap a few pieces on top of it... there is quite little to build here. At least there isn't an excessive use of oversized pieces, only the dome sections. But there are lots of ideas which seem rushed to me: the dome itself isn't good because it's only half (thus it cannot work as to make an enclosed area with controlled atmosphere) and it has a large opening even in the middle of such half (thus it cannot work as a windshield or sunscreen either): so what it the purpose of the half-dome from the point of view of the minifigs? There are other details which seem to me like they had an idea but then didn't try hard enough to implement it nicely, such as the entrance barrier door on the slope. Even the vehicles are below average. I think that generally speaking, LEGO space stations are almost always disappointing: the look large but they are in fact much less interesting to build than the larger spaceships; but at least the bases of other themes (esp. classic space) still managed to display many good ideas. Not this one, unfortunately. My vote: 5/10. Quite a good ground vehicle, and the crane idea (uncommon in space vehicles) is really nice. The only parts which could have been better are the windshield (should not be so open) and the wheels (should have some sort of spring or movable part to make the vehicle adapt to the bumps of the terrain, rather than being so rigid). Also I don't like the wheels color, should probably be gray or black, but I guess this is a theme choice and would make the set too colourful. My vote: 8/10. Not very special but quite a solid design. One point less for the open windshield which in this case is really too open... My vote: 7/10. This is very simple design, but with nice touches. I think it's hard to do much better when constrained to small size. My vote: 8/10. Not bad, but this one is really empty of any possible detail. At least it could have had one or maybe two tiny additions. I am undecided whether the wheels are too large or just fine. My vote: 6/10. This is the obligatory tiny-impulse set... Worse than average in my opinion, but not bad. My vote: 6/10. Nice small ground vehicle. Despite the cool factor of the front part, I think it would have been better to make it built with a few pieces rather than using one specialized piece. My vote: 7/10. CONCLUSIONS: My average is more than 8. The only set which is bad IMHO is the base station. Everything else is worth it, and the main spaceship is indeed outstanding. I quite like the colour scheme, although the trans-orange is a bit shocking. However it seems to appropriately suggest that the glasses material has some sunscreen properties, as it would be very much needed on an icy-snowy planet! Overall I think this was a pretty good space theme, so I voted 4/5.

I'm not expert of eBay, but the second one seems cheap! I think these 2 sets would probably cost 60e if they were sold today in retail shops.

Here in Finland we've had this set on shops for a while, I don't remember exactly but I think it's been available already before Christmas. It's definitely the first 2009 set I've seen on the shelves over here. I like it a lot, and plan to buy at least one of them. I'd rate it a 4/5 for the following reasons. 4 figures with accessories = 2e each, better price than impulse sets. Generally speaking, while most of the impulse sets are nice, many of them have very little besides the actual minifig (the best being probably the castle soldier impulse sets which has at least quite a few weapons), and the "design" of that little is pretty limited. Furthermore, despite the fact that impulse sets are quite many in number, there is actually only 1-2 per theme... and each of them (except the castle soldier, the troll and the imperial soldier) holds a minifig that is rarely worth having in multiple copies. That said, I believe a set like this 8410 is generally a better idea than impulse sets! It's almost a return to the minifig sets of the 80s, which usually were 4 or 6 minifigs each (but with less accessories). I really hope that in the upcoming months, LEGO will release a similarly-sized minifig set for EVERY theme (in a way, they already did it for Castle with the battle packs, but unfortunately not sold in every country). Perhaps City is the theme that actually needed it the least. The 8410 is great but not perfect for my tastes, but I'm a nitpicker Actually what I like most here is the non-minifig content. Roadsigns are NECESSARY and very scarce (I always wish they would release some roadsigns pack like 20 years ago), and I don't mind too much the fact that they are stickered. The park bench and the semaphore are great too. The fire hose is meh, but doesn't hurt. All of these would be worth having in multiple copies. The minifigs are a mixed bag: for me the woman and the businessman are just fine, while I don't like the other guy's torso and head. The policeman is ok, but honestly this is probably the most common minifigure in anyone's City, so they could have had someone else instead. For this set to be perfect, I would probably just replace the worker's head with something nicer and give him an actual worker's torso, and completely replace the policeman with either another civilian or a doctor/cook/trashman/postman.

I feel very mean today and I voted only 2/5. It's not a bad impulse set. But without a pair of wheels, it doesn't make any sense

Do you buy regular sets from S@H? I'm curious because I think that in S@H every set is priced at the catalog price, however here in Finland the shops very often charge something less than catalog price, at least on the larger sets. Figure the shipping cost into your total, and I don't understand the reason why would someone buy from S@H a set which is available in retail shops... So for me S@H makes sense only for Exclusives, since you can't find them anywhere else unless you live close to a LEGO brand shop, and for Factory/Pick-a-brick. But if you buy "normal" sets, why do you? Is it because even those normal sets are hard to find in your area? Just wondering...