Aanchir

New Elementary's parts review is up (ahead of their full set review which they say will be up this weekend), and I'm glad to see the yellow printing is nice and bright! Yellow printing on black plastic can often look kind of iffy even in some classic sets, but it seems like the graphic designer went out of their way to make sure the parts didn't end up with the sort of greenish tint that can sometimes result from that color combination. The same is apparent in Brothers' Brick's review, so hopefully that's a sign that the print quality will be strong across all copies of the set. After reading TBB's review, one feature I see that I'm not so fond of is the use of the classic 4x4x2 rocket cones for the rear engines. I think the Galaxy Explorer made a better call using Fabuland washtubs so that the narrow end of the cone would fit better with the upscaled proportions of the rest of the ship. Also, while I like the design of the new mini spacecraft, TBB's review really highlights how big a departure they are from the original fliers, which felt more like maneuverable hover-platforms than swift little speeders thanks to their multi-directional rockets. Thinking more about this, I realize it'd be fun to try and design upscaled versions of the original fliers and cargo hold that can be swapped out for the speeders and rover in the new version of the set. So I guess that's something I'll be playing around with on stud.io in the coming months!

As awesome as that would be, I think you'd have to scale the Renegade up quite a bit more than 1.5x to have corridors that would fit a minifig! I'd love to see somebody attempt that in a MOC though.

Really impressed with this redesign! It definitely takes more liberties from the original with regard to color blocking and such than the Galaxy Explorer did, but the end result is very effective IMO. And also like that set, it makes some nice improvements on the original in terms of playability/functionality, such as adding detachable energy cells, retractable landing gear, and a "dropship" function. One small but significant change I greatly appreciate is having one universal coupling design between modules, instead of some modules only having "male" pins or "female" pin holes. This expands the customization potential quite a bit: for example, if you wanted, you could flip the body front-to-back, attaching the cockpit and sensor/comms array to what's normally the "back" and the engines to what's normally the "front" — something that the original design didn't allow without modding. The decision to replace the cargo bay containing a small rover with a larger rover that can be dropped directly to the surface definitely adds to the playability IMO (and helps the rover build stand out more from the one that came with the Galaxy Explorer). But I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity not to give the rover itself modular connections like those on the spaceship — especially since in the original build, the cargo bay was yet another modular unit that could be attached to the body, cockpit, and/or engines. It's also a shame not to have any hoses along the body, since those were a detail from the original that was quite distinctive (and I suspect, very exciting for kids of the generation that got to experience Blacktron when it first came out). Moreover, fuel lines or cables like that are the sort of detail that could've complemented the new energy cells really nicely! I am not nearly as impressed with the Alienator/Strider alt build as with the main build. I certainly respect the effort to give this set at least one alt build, since that was a super impressive bonus feature of the Galaxy Explorer, but the leg supports feel awkward to me, and the use of arch bricks in particular makes it feel almost a little too obvious that the design is making do with parts selected with an entirely different type of model in mind. They seem flimsy and decorative, rather than sturdy and utilitarian like the trusses, lattices, and solid armor plating that makes up the rest of the build. Also, compared to the Galaxy Explorer alt builds, which all felt nearly as faithful to their predecessors as the main build did, this revamp takes a lot more liberties (particularly due to keeping the beefy cockpit and engine modules the same as in the main build). It's possible that the legs might look better from a different camera angle, though, and I appreciate that the very classic function has been maintained! I also quite like the service mech built with some of the leftover parts, despite it not being based on any existing Blacktron set. And who knows? Maybe I can take this opportunity to try and MOC an upscaled Alienator/Strider that's more to my tastes, using some of the features of this one that I do like as a starting point.

I suspect the black-walled castles and more fantasy-influenced figures and factions were partly a way of keeping the Castle theme fresh after it had been around a while, same as how Classic Space got replaced by Futuron in the mid to late 80s, and then with more varied subthemes in the 90s. After all, if you're going to have new castles every other year or so, it helps if they're not all the same shade of gray (the ONLY shade of gray LEGO was making basic bricks in back then)! Plus, a lot of the black castle wall and arch pieces were also being used for forest hideouts and gloomy pirate forts in the late 80s and early 90s, so the Castle design team probably saw black castles as a great way to get even more use out of those recolors once they were in production. Nowadays, at least some of that incentive no longer applies, since LEGO has a lot more variety of stony/earthy colors they can choose from for castle walls. But black castles have still had plenty of staying power across many themes as a way to create stronger visual contrast between "hero" and "villain" factions.

The legs are the normal length, though, so it's really only the hair that's out of the ordinary. I don't see any speckling on the sleeve, might just be JPEG compression artifacts? She does have a sort of lacy pattern to her sleeves in the review video but it's just white lace over yellow skin, no lime in sight. My guess is they went with a cockatoo for a greater sense of novelty (since it's a new animal and not just an updated one). I appreciate the gold tooth as another nice pirate-y feature that hadn't been apparent in previous pics. The compass-like motif on her breeches is also a nifty detail! I definitely don't mind getting another Aussie animal mold! Would love to get a platypus mold someday as well, though obviously that's tangential to this particular discussion. Oh for sure! The lacy sleeves, bracelet, tattered skirt, and pronounced cheekbones all stand out quite a bit from these other one-off figs as well as from the female pirates in Barracuda Bay and Eldorado Fortress. One trait I would like to see on future female pirate figs is visible scars. I feel like in the past, LEGO (much like Hollywood) has sometimes been a bit too reluctant to portray female characters with "un-pretty" features like scars or injuries — for example, compare the facial features of the Agents theme's male and female baddies. But nowadays LEGO has been getting better (at least in their modern-day themes) at portraying features like vitiligo or limb differences that challenge conventional beauty norms, so they might be more open to giving pirate women visible scars in future sets as well.

This is definitely a no from me. Mind you, I would have no objection to a modernized version of the old dragon mold. For starters, I would DEFINITELY want any minifig-scale molded dragon to have printed eyes— minifigures and molded horses have always had printed eyes, and nowadays so do even many smaller and simpler LEGO animals like mice, squirrels, and songbirds, so I greatly appreciate keeping things consistent by adding eye printing to other LEGO animals. That said, for minifig themes I do still prefer simple dot eyes like those of minifigures over elaborate multicolored eyes like the modern crocodile or fantasy-era dragons, because again, I like seeing that sort of consistency. I don't think the classic dragon's articulation would really need any improvements — it was already very impressive for a molded animal its size, even by modern standards. Making the legs separate pieces with Technic pin connections could maybe be nice, especially if it allowed builders to swap them with some of the current dinosaur leg molds to create varying dragon designs, but wouldn't really be necessary for playability in my opinion. The connection point in the mouth would definitely need to be be updated, though, so that modern flame pieces can be attached securely. I would also expect a revised version of the classic dragon to add at least slightly more organic contours to the face sort of like the modern LEGO shark, horse, and crocodile, which replace a lot of the sharper right angles from the original design with beveled edges. Some 90s LEGO animal molds like the octopus and dragon already employed beveled edges to great effect, but sharp right angles of the dragon's head and tail were considerably less organic-looking than the torso, arms, and legs — perhaps in part because they had to double as components of the much blockier classic LEGO crocodile. By contrast, the LEGO minifigure always had a very smooth and curvy surface compared to its body. It's possible that a modernized version of the classic dragon could even use the same face and tail molds as the modern crocodile — besides the beveled edges and somewhat smoother face, I really love that the modern crocodile's tail ridges are now truncated cylinders instead of sharp triangular points, so as to better match the texture of the studs on its back! Bear in mind, this balance between angular and curvy shapes on modern LEGO animals isn't simply a case of making all animal molds curvier or more organic-looking than their predecessors! The modern LEGO cat, rat, owl, mouse, dolphin, and stingray have considerably more geometric and angular forms than their predecessors from the 90s and early 2000s (many of which were used both in minifig sets and Belville sets, which may account for their much more organic design language). Likewise, the modern LEGO parrot replaces the smooth dome-like chest of the original with a body shape that has hard edges separating the front and side surfaces (though I still feel it is way overdue for printed eyes!). Overall, I feel like this current "house style" for minifig animals, using beveled edges in place of either right angles OR seamless rounded surfaces, does a great job creating greater consistency across the board, rather than having some animals extremely blocky and others extremely curvy. In short, the classic LEGO dragon has definitely aged a lot better than some other classic animals, but I it'd need at least a few improvements for me to really accept it in a modern set. Ideally, the end result could be as well-liked even among old-school AFOLs as the modern horse design!

I mean, it's not as we haven't gotten male pirate minifigs during the same span of time as the female pirate minifigs being talked about — even if a lot of them aren't as exciting as a CMF with several brand-new prints. In fact, one of the two female Build-A-Mini pirates in question repurposed a torso previously used for male pirates in the Creator 3-in-1 Pirate Ship and Scary Pirate Island GWP, neither of which included any female characters. More male pirate CMFs would definitely be awesome, make no mistake, but it hardly strikes me as a runaway trend to get two female pirate CMFs five years apart, especially when all the pirate CMFs before that were male. Seems to me more like the designers are just approaching these two figures from the perspective of "how can we make a new pirate who stands out from previous ones?" And that's easy to do with female pirates, since they've been so much scarcer in past sets and CMF series than male ones. In this particular case, I suspect it also helped that there was a relatively recent hair piece with bandana, never used for a previous pirate minifig, all ready to go — presenting a great opportunity to make a pirate that stands out from their crewmates while still leaving room in the budget for a new animal mold.

Nope. The torso from the Town Square set has a tabard, belt with pouch and coin purse, and gray fur collar, while the one from the upcoming CMF has what looks like leather armor and a black collar or gorget with metal studs (matching the printed legs with metal-studded belt).

Honestly, I already wouldn't have expected LEGO to make their next big Castle exclusive a Wolfpack castle any more than I would expect them to make it a Forestmen castle, because both of those are outlaw factions rather than knight factions. So it suits them to remain scrappy underdogs compared to factions like the Lion Knights, Black Falcons, Black Knights, and Dragon Knights. And I don't think this BDP set really changes the likelihood of LEGO making smaller Wolfpack sets (like a re-imagining of 6038) one way or another. In fact, that would be an especially appealing option for a new Castle set (or part of a new Castle set), considering none of the other recent Castle throwback sets have included four-wheeled carriages with steering, just smaller two-wheeled carts.

Besides that, brightly colored fabrics are such a common thing in the Pirates theme that a brightly colored wool cap ought to fit in just fine aesthetically whether or not it's realistic. After all, real-life tall ship sails would pretty much never have colorful stripes like those on sets like the Black Seas Barracuda, Caribbean Clipper, Skull's Eye Schooner, etc. Pirate captains wouldn't generally have the eyepatch+hook+peg leg trifecta, let alone a skull-and-crossbones patterned hat. But iconography like that is familiar enough from pop culture that we tend to accept it as a natural part of the pirate genre and setting in fiction, even if we might question it in real life.

She seems plenty pirate-y to me. Bandana, gold skull-and-crossbones necklace, motley-colored outfit with period-appropriate materials and fastenings, leather boots, compass, coin purse, parrot, cutlass, etc. Some battle scars or tattoos might have helped to take the pirate look one step further, but overall I think she fits in very nicely with other Pirate minifigs. Perhaps even more so than the Series 20 Pirate Girl, who to me reads a little bit more as "heroic swashbuckler film protagonist" than "swarthy sea dog". Don't see what's wrong with the hair, either. I think the hair texture, the pronounced cheekbones, and the lip color give her a nice Afro-Caribbean look, and of course tying the hair back with a bandana feels appropriate for a rough-and-tumble pirate life. The cockatoo looks fantastic, but it does have me hoping LEGO will finally get around to updating the parrot/macaw mold with printed eyes and a printed or dual-molded beak — nowadays it's looking pretty rudimentary and lifeless-looking compared to other modern LEGO birds! Eager to see more pics so we can see if she has any alternate face print or right arm printing. But very impressed with what we can see on the leaflet!

I think the closest we have to a precedent for "using mini-dolls on the basis of character design" is Inside Out 2 . But that set is still fairly feminine-coded in terms of both its aesthetics (lots of floral and pastel colors) and its figure selection (starring two of the emotions portrayed as female characters instead of any of those portrayed as male characters). Another debatable example is The Ice Castle. While other Frozen sets have used mini-dolls, most other teen/adult targeted Disney castle sets — including some of those starring "Disney Princess" characters like last year's Disney Castle or this year's Mini Sleeping Beauty Castle — have used minifigs, so the Frozen set is sort of an outlier in that regard. For my part, I wouldn't mind if more themes used mini-dolls where the character designs are especially well suited to them, but you're right that so far this doesn't generally seem to be the deciding factor in which themes use mini-dolls. That said, the distinction is definitely more nuanced than just "boy theme" vs "girl theme" — The Dreamworks Trolls sets strike me as one especially feminine-coded theme that opted for minifigs instead of mini-dolls, and there are also occasional Disney sets like 10773 that are very "girly" but still use traditional minifigs.

Whoa! That is very cool, and a very resourceful use for a CNC machine! I'm sure some folks would be aghast at the idea of cutting into bricks in a retired color like Sand Red, but as long as you manage to put these modded parts to good use, I'd say your efforts have been well worth it. I hope you'll share a link here if you end up using them in a MOC!

There also used to be a color literally called Brick Red — but it was never used for basic bricks outside of Modulex or some test bricks from Bayer (the company that used to provide the LEGO Group with their colored plastic granulate, back before TLG switched to mixing dyes and colorless granulate in house). It's the color that BrickLink calls "Fabuland Brown" for System parts or "Terracotta" for Modulex parts. You can see a photo of some of the parts produced in this color here.

Oh that employee gift set is very charming! Also, the fact that the exclusive figs are characters from other themes "dressing up" makes me hopeful we might still get a more straightforward Willa the Witch throwback in a regular set or minifig series at some point. I also like the use of the rubber capes from recent Super Heroes sets as a modern counterpart to the classic plastic capes. I wouldn't mind seeing them used that way in future Castle throwback sets. One surprise to me when I was looking at the digital building instructions is that it includes the 1x1 dragon coin tile from the Harry Potter sets. I wonder if that means that part is not IP-locked, or if those rules just don't apply to sets like this that aren't released to consumers. My guess is the latter, but I would be very happy if I'm wrong, since that coin makes a neat counterpart to the crown coin, and fits beautifully with the world of LEGO Castle. Not being happy about it is reasonable, but I don't think it's fair to act like it was created to spite non-employees who would've wanted a set like this (even if it feels that way to you). It's just about creating something nice for fellow LEGO employees, same as any other set of this sort. It's not really about us in the first place. Believe me, I'd love more small Castle throwback sets like this as much as you would! But I don't think the existence of an employee gift set like this really affects what we see in more widely-produced sets one way or another. If anything, the influence seems to go the other direction — the designer of this year's employee gift set probably wouldn't have settled on a Castle throwback scene/costume party if not for so many of the necessary parts (Majisto's hat and wand, forestman clothes, Black Falcon clothes and shield, etc) already being available from other recent sets.

Yep! There are actually both 2x2 and 4x4 versions! But I also love seeing other parts used creatively for brick-built cakes. For example, a 2x2 round plate in Medium Nougat with a 2x2 round tile with hole in White on top could make a very nice bundt cake! Well, they kind of do — the color term "peach" is a broad one that can refer to anything from pale yellows to oranges to pinks. In fact, it originally referred to the pale yellowish color we associate with the inside of a peach. But I get what you mean, and it would be nice to get the peach piece in one of those more intermediate pastel orange-y shades (like the sort of color also often called "apricot"). Agreed! I think that some of the reason they haven't made a dedicated dinner knife mold besides in the Friends accessory pack is that they've been able to get away with using the old Aquazone knives in some settings (especially historic ones like Castle or Pirates), so it hasn't been as big a priority as stuff like spoons and forks that would be harder to represent with other current accessory pieces. Plus, at minifig/mini-doll scale, there's generally not room for more than two utensils to be within reach at a single place setting. But even if it hasn't been a top priority, it'd be nice to get a more appropriate dinner knife piece sometime soon.

I'm certainly a big fan of dedicated food molds, but also of creative uses of existing parts for different foods. For instance, I love how many recent sets have started using various recolors of the old ice cream scoop mold for grapes, berries, popcorn, or broccoli florets, Bionicle ball joints for oranges and tomatoes, Aquazone crystals for french fries, or various horn shapes for chili peppers! Likewise, stacks of generic plates, tiles, and curved-top elements can work great for various sorts of sandwiches, and mushrooms built from various combinations of round pieces can be very effective. I also love how varied printed food tiles have gotten. Gone are the days when pizzerias, hot dog stands, and bakeries were some of the only dining options for minifigs or mini-dolls — nowadays they can enjoy diverse cuisines like sushi, ramen, tacos, pancakes, waffles, and more! And even pizzas are now available with varying ingredients! As far as specific molds go, I'm especially fond of the recent peach mold, and I hope some day we see it recolored for plums in a color like Dark Red, Bright Reddish Violet, or Medium Lilac. A similarly useful food mold in the futurewould be a tapered piece that could be used for whole lemons and limes, especially since it would be a basic enough shape for other decorative/ornamental uses beyond just fruits or veggies. I am curious what approach future Animal Crossing sets might take for pears (the only basic fruit from the Animal Crossing games that we haven't yet seen in sets). I suppose a brick-built solution might be adequate for those (such as a Bionicle ball joint with a matching 1x1 plate on top, or a recolor of the maraca piece with a leaf plate on top), but if LEGO did make a new mold for them, it could also potentially be repurposed for other types of produce such as eggplants. Honestly I feel like at this sort of scale, I prefer brick-built cakes to a dedicated mold like this one. That way you have a lot more options for customizing the size, shape, cake color, frosting color, and toppings/decorations instead of having to choose from specific mold+color+print combinations that LEGO releases.

Awesome! Love that you took the helicopter inspired design of the original one step further with the twin rotors. A gunship feels like a surprising subject to me since I'm used to seeing M:Tron interpreted as either a rescue or mining operation, but I guess even if something like this were a set, the guns could be interpreted as extinguisher cannons/tractor beams in a rescue context, or as asteroid mining lasers. The engines look nice and beefy, as is fitting for a ship this huge. I'm also both amused and impressed by your use of the "95" signs from the Cars theme — before seeing it here, it wouldn't have even occurred to me how well that gradient matches the colors of the M:Tron logo (as printed on boxes and catalogues)! Very creative choice on your part!

I am mostly a fan of the 2D Zelda games (well, I guess they're often in 3D these days, but still with a top-down perspective that imitates the classic 2D ones) like A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, and A Link Between Worlds. I have a hard time with stuff like aiming arrows in 3D space sometimes so I don't personally enjoy playing the full 3D ones as much. I'm very much looking forward to the new game Echoes of Wisdom that's coming out later this month, since it is in that same sort of style and seems to have a lot of the puzzly, problem-solving sort of gameplay I tend to enjoy in those previous games. That said, I still have a lot of fondness for games like Ocarina of Time, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom since I've spent a lot of time watching my brother and wife play those games. It was a mix of that nostalgia and the impressiveness of the build that convinced me to buy the Legend of Zelda set. I've currently finished building the Ocarina of Time version, and my wife and I plan to start rebuilding it into the Breath of the Wild version this weekend! On a related note, a perhaps unpopular opinion of mine is that the brick-built characters, creatures, and plants in that set were more exciting for me overall than the minifigs! The Link and Zelda figs certainly look great, and are useful for adding play value and defining the model's scale, but the brick-built stuff does a lot more to inspire me to try and create my own Zelda models. For example, I have come up with some fun designs for the Keese and Water Octoroks from Breath of the Wild (not entirely happy with the latter, but I think it's a good start):

I definitely wish it were better in some cases (like the Eldorado Fortress figs you mentioned), though in other cases if there is any fading it's barely noticeable. The latest set I've personally built is the Legend of Zelda one, and the white printing in that set all looks alright to me — though that's on colors like Dark Azur or Bright Green, so I'm not sure if LEGO went out of their way to avoid any fading on those figs (such as with a second coat of white ink) or if those colors simply show through less than colors like Black or Bright Blue tend to. The main time I find it super distracting/bothersome is if the ink color in question is meant to be a skin color, since another color showing through can make the figure in question look bruised or sickly. In any case, I don't think I'd describe your opinion on this matter as unpopular! In some cases there are probably logistical reasons for it (prioritizing additional print colors over a double coat of white, for example), but even necessary compromises are still compromises, which even the designers themselves would probably prefer to avoid whenever possible.

you… really don't get how Internet forums work? It is the JOB of moderators to step in if arguments get too hostile and risk making the forum less fun for everybody. There's nothing insidious or shady about it, it's just that once things turn into a shouting match, nobody really has anything to gain from the conversation anymore. And needless to say, insulting moderators is never a smart thing to do on any forum. It's not brave or clever, it's just rude, and makes it a lot harder for them to believe you're truly here to do anything other than pick fights and cause problems. If you seriously think basic moderation makes Eurobricks some kind of tyrannical police state, you're free to log off and spend your time on a different website. There's no need to bait a moderator into banning you (and humiliate yourself in the process).

Part of the reason for this is probably that Medium Nougat wasn't on the LEGO color palette in 2010. Moreover, LEGO's current minifigure style guide also came out in 2010, so it's likely that the 2010 minifigs were released before those guidelines were finalized. Note that in the below tweet, minifigures from the first three blind-bag series appear on the cover of the minifig style guide, which would appear to reinforce that they were designed before the guide itself was published (though since the style guide was put together by people who were on the design team for the CMFs, they certainly exhibited a lot of the same features which would end up in the finished style guide, like eye and mouth placement).

My main gripe with some of the new skin tones is that they're still ONLY being used as skin tones in sets, when some of them could be extremely useful elsewhere. A color like Warm Tan would be perfect for a lot of treated wood furniture and flooring that Brick Yellow/Tan would be too pale for, but Bright Yellow would be too vibrant for (including the wood floors my wife and I have in the living room area of our apartment). They could also potentially make good hair colors for some minifigures and mini-dolls. I'm thankful that we have gotten some more basic building elements in Warm Tan thanks to the Mona Lisa, BrickHeadz, etc, but even that is very limiting compared to the sheer variety of uses we see for other colors on LEGO's current color palette.

Yeah, I was using the box photos also, but I realized after building the platform that it needed an extra module between the carriages for everything to line up, and that sure enough the carriages seemed further apart in the box pics than they did on stud.io until I lengthened the couplings. That also explained why the couplings use half-thickness Technic beams instead of full-thickness ones — only the former is available at this specific length.

For what it's worth, the liftarms connecting the carriages of the tram together in the official set are four studs long rather than three, to ensure that the carriage doors line up evenly with the sliding gangways on the station platform. So that actually gives you even more space to fit a motor in between the two carriages! I definitely like both the look of this new tram and the sliding gangway function! The build of the carriages (lowering the doors without relying on prefab train/trailer base elements) is also pretty clever. If it's any help, here's my stud.io mock-up of the official set from the limited photos we've seen so far. The piece count is quite a bit lower than it should be, so I know for sure that I've gotten some details wrong (I'm particularly uncertain about the parts holding the bottom of the locomotive cab together, so a lot of what I have there that is just educated guesswork). But I believe most of the details of the middle carriage and the station platform should be correct, along with the parts that make up the exterior of the locomotive.