Aanchir

Seems pretty nice to me! A fairly detailed jungle scene, minifigure, and three chimpanzees (which do, indeed, use the mold from the collectible minifigures). It certainly seems like a great follow-up to the Amelia Earhart Tribute LEGO released for International Women's Day 2021. In fact, I feel like a lot of people might prefer this one over the Amelia Earhart Tribute, since I remember the latter getting quite a bit of criticism for the size of its base/display stand relative to the actual model. That doesn't seem to be an issue with the Jane Goodall tribute if the pics I've seen are in fact authentic.

For my part I'm a little more impressed with the articulated brick-built goats than I would've been with static molded ones. If the shaping had been weaker I might have felt differently, but all things considered, I feel they ended up with a good balance of rigid corners and softer curves, which is one of the only areas where specialized molds might have had an advantage over a brick-built creature. This way they're also an actual part of the building experience, which is generally a plus in my book. Speaking of brick-built detailing, I love that figurehead! LEGO definitely did a great job achieving that wood-carving look. The roof is not bad at all either! There are definitely plenty of building techniques that could very easily be repurposed for historic MOCs even if the set itself wasn't quite to one's liking. Though it seems like it'd be more than adequate for a historic layout if you simply omitted the stickers and added some rowers in place of the goats.

60198 also had quite a few substantial side builds! I feel like the contents of the first couple booklets (the forklift, armored truck, drivers, and pallet of gold and banknotes) would easily have cost somewhere between $25 and $30 if they'd been sold as a set of their own. So the lower price could also be due to having fewer side builds like that. I guess we won't know for sure until more details emerge.

This is absolutely gorgeous! You really recreated the structure of those classic sets sets quite nicely while modernizing their colors and details enough that they feel like they could believably fit in with newer sets like Barracuda Bay. You even managed to include some great play features like secret hiding spots for loot that weren't even present of the original set! And needless to say, it's very generous and diligent of you to create a building guide. I don't really look at MOCs on YouTube very often but I gave your video a look and it's very well shot. I hope all the effort you put into this video is appreciated by your other viewers! I do kind of wish that the shanty roof's texture still felt like thatched palm leaves and less like tiles/shingles. Maybe you could try adding some quarter-circle tiles to the ends of the 1x2 tiles you're already using so the raised portions have more of a "leafy" shape? Your choice, of course. Fantastic job overall!

As frustrating as the high prices are, part of the reason they're so high is that City is reliably one of the most popular LEGO themes every single year. And I'd hardly call the sets "garbage". A 5+ theme like Town/City is certainly never going to approach AFOL standards as closely as more adult-targeted sets like the Modular Buildings, but I definitely feel that many City sets like 60283, 60291, 60324, 60330, and 60351 far surpass the '90s Town sets of my childhood. I do prefer Friends over City on a lot of levels, but I feel like in recent years the City theme has been improving in many areas where the Friends theme typically excels. In just the past couple years, there has been a real upswing in City sets focusing on everyday life, like the Skate Park, Family House, Town Center, School Day, Beach Lifeguard Tower, and Picnic in the Park sets. There have also been numerous sets focusing on science and exploration which I surely would have loved as a child, just as I loved the Launch Command and Divers sets of that time. And a lot of great new animals have been featured in City theme over the last few years, which is a trend that I'm sure will continue in the new Farm sets coming this summer. There are straight tracks included in that very set! And also in 80035 from the same wave. No teal slopes just yet, though, unfortunately.

New construction sets would be great! With the new road system, I think it's a better time than ever to get some sets focusing on road and bridge/overpass construction. We could get a new tower crane (perhaps using the roller coaster track pieces on its boom as trusses), a new road roller, and even some construction equipment I don't think we've ever actually seen in previous City/Town sets, like a pile driver, road grader, paving machine, and road marking machine.

One aspect of those sets that I find especially nifty is that they had two clearly-defined rival pirate factions, rather than focusing on a conflict between pirates and soldiers. On one side, Captain Redbeard wore a fancy coat and cravat. His ships and crew sported a red, white, and green color palette and sailed under a fairly traditional "skull and crossbones" with an eyepatch. On the opposing side, Captain Kragg and his crew had a more disheveled look, with bare arms and/or chests and often numerous battle scars. His ships and crew were decked out in a blue and black color scheme, and flew under sails marked with a skull holding a dagger in its mouth. Some German LEGO Pirates media of the 90s played around with this sort of storytelling by establishing "Captain Roger" and "Captain Ironhook" as rival pirate captains (portraying the former as a greedy but likable antihero, and the latter as an out-and-out villain who used slave labor to achieve his ends). But that wasn't especially apparent in the sets, since both captains' fleets used the same flags and near-identical crew members, and the captains themselves had matching hats and faces. For that matter, UK marketing materials presented the two pirate captains treated Roger and Ironhook as friends/allies, doing away with their contrasting characterization, while US marketing materials simply treated both of them as the same "Captain Redbeard" character in different costumes. I can't help thinking it could be interesting for a future iteration of the Pirates theme to give this "Pirate vs. Pirate" narrative approach another go. It'd certainly be a change of pace from the 2009 or 2015 Pirates sets, and I feel like a lot of kids tend to be much more interested in pirates and pirate ships than in colonial-era soldiers and warships. LEGO themes these days also allow for a lot more colors and much more detailed graphic designs, which would make it much easier to differentiate rival captains, crews, and fleets while still maintaining a reasonable level of realism. That said, I certainly don't mind the Pirates theme's usual "Soldiers vs. Pirates" approach — especially since it's one of the few themes that doesn't default to presenting the "lawful" faction as the "good guys". That distinction opens the door to much more nuanced storytelling than we often see with Town/City Police sets, Space Police sets, etc. And given the sorts of actions that were sanctioned by colonial powers during that period of history — imperialist conquests, naval impressment, the slave trade, etc — this nuance is very appropriate, even if these narratives still favor a romanticized portrayal of the "Golden Age of Piracy" over strict historical realism. Honestly, the hull is one of the aspects of those sets that I don't find too much fault with, since thanks to its size and design, it's the only System pirate ship hull in LEGO's history that actually floats! I definitely prefer more standard LEGO pirate ship hulls for their greater customization potential and the larger amount of space they allow below deck, but the actual floating functionality definitely helps justify those shortcomings of the 4+ hull's design. It's also nice that in spite of the specialized shaping of the hull segments, the sloped portions "above deck" line up with standard LEGO slopes.

Just looked at the EugeneToyAndHobby site that these prices were credited to, and it looks like the site's prices even for a lot of already released sets are inflated above RRP. For example, they have both 60324 Mobile Crane and 41700 Beach Glamping listed for $44.95 — the actual RRP in the United States is $39.99. So needless to say, I wouldn't put too much faith in the accuracy of their prices for sets that haven't even been officially announced.

LEGO could also potentially make a sliding door with a two-stage mold like they use for minifigure legs with shorts/boots or minifig arms with short sleeves/gloves. The new plane/helicopter nose piece (69953) introduced in some of this year's City sets shows that molds like these can, in fact, allow for a seamless combination of solid and transparent colored sections. Of course, that would sadly mean not being able to mix and match different door and glass colors like with traditional LEGO train doors. But then, the same was true of the glass doors from a lot of 90s Town/Train sets like 4554. And compared to either those OR the train doors, a sliding door mold could be reversible, rather than every color needing separate "left" and "right" variants. I agree that there's no reason to expect doors on the next LEGO passenger train based on precedent. But at the same time, the City theme has been deviating from tradition/precedent in a number of ways lately, like introducing a totally new road system last year, and introducing the first school and school bus in the theme's history this year (things we never even got in the World City or Town themes)! Even the Farm subtheme is making a surprise comeback after an absence of more than a decade. So I feel like it's a little easier to hold out hope for changes or innovations like that than in past years when the theme seemed to be adhering more strictly to a predictable set of norms/standards.

Yeah, TLG couldn't help with this. These are not "official" ID numbers of any sort, but rather fan-created ones from the BrickLink reference catalog, which Brickset pulls their minifigure data from. If I had to guess, these "missing" ID numbers are probably ones that were probably created early in the BrickLink database's existence, but later either changed to identify them as "variants" of another figure with a different ID number, or deleted due to being figures that never actually appeared in sets (like having the incorrect color legs, incorrect/missing headgear, an incorrect/missing neck accessory, or some sort of one-off production error like a misprinted torso). After all, since BrickLink originated as a site for buying and selling LEGO, a lot of the database entries would've originated from used lots which could easily have included mis-assembled figures. I wasn't active in the online LEGO fan community during BrickLink's early days, so maybe somebody who was already an AFOL back then might be better equipped to answer this question? I wouldn't know who to ask, though. I tried checking Archive.org's Wayback Machine, but unfortunately I wasn't able to confirm anything that way.

I mean, a lot of the sets that have included the steam drivers have left one or two unused anyway. For that matter, remember that the Big Ben included FOUR 9-piece hand tool packs despite only actually using two parts from each, and likewise The Big Bang Theory came with a 17-piece kitchen accessory pack despite leaving 15 of those pieces (all but two forks) unused! So I don't think this would really be much of a deal breaker, at least not for an 18+ train. If worse came to worse, they could probably find an alternate use for at least some of the leftover drivers so they don't go completely to waste. I do have sort of a soft spot for 7938 for managing to offer a decent likeness of a metro/commuter train like some of the ones I've used to get around in real life, without needing to use a specific train nose or windscreen mold. And its colors and design language paired very nicely with 7937 from the same year. But aside from that, I agree that it was pretty uninspiring. I definitely agree that 60197 is the most appealing City passenger train so far, thanks to the varied interior (with a standard coach and a cafe car) and flashy multicolor exterior. Continuing the classic LEGO train/transit logo across the entire length of the train as a white stripe is a clever design choice that feels very modern and stylish. 60197's biggest weakness is the lack of doors (a trait shared with all City passenger trains so far), but otherwise it's a pretty phenomenal design, and I love that the nose piece lines up nicely with existing curved parts in the front and with standard 45-degree slopes in the back. In the future, I would love to see a passenger train and station platform that are wheelchair accessible Trains are a vital form of transportation for a lot of disabled folks, and it seems like including wheelchair access in a future wave of City train sets would be a good way of acknowledging that. It would also be neat to see a passenger train with sliding doors, which are very common on light rail or subway trains. It's kind of surprising that LEGO has never done this, since some of LEGO's very first sliding door pieces were the ones introduced for freight trains and freight depots. And a passenger door piece that slides along a plate with rail in that same manner could be just as useful for buses and trams as it is for trains, since it would neither take up any interior floor space nor need as much clearance along the sidewalk as a door that swings open.

It's definitely a big change to see so much emphasis on buildings, roads, and scenery in the City theme! Less than a decade ago, one of the most frequent complaints about the City theme was that it focused much too heavily on vehicles and not enough on buildings and scenery that you could actually build a substantial-looking City layout from. For example: And I'm especially happy about some of those buildings being ones like a school, hospital, bank, observatory, lifeguard station, and grocery store — stuff that was typically rare or non-existent in past years of City, World City, or even Town sets, and that I'd have been reluctant to even get my hopes up for a lot of the time. Certainly, there's still an abundance of Fire and Police stuff like we've come to expect, but even the new fire and police stations are small enough that they no longer dominate the entire City range to the extent that they often did in the past. Between this year's and last year's building and scenery offerings, I don't think there's been a better time for layout builders in the entire history of the City theme. Especially if the rumored train assortment this summer includes a station platform and other railway buildings/structures. And all this stuff also has me eagerly looking forward to what future years of City sets might offer! If I have one regret, it's that all this stuff has unfortunately coincided with my marriage and move to Canada. Although this might be the ideal time for me to finally consider getting into themes like Friends or City to build a "tabletown" of my own, the apartment I share with my wife and our two cats doesn't really have much room for a unified layout of that sort. I can only hope that these emerging trends in the City theme remain stable enough that when I do have a better opportunity to take the plunge on that sort of thing, there will still be enough of these sorts of sets available for a "starter layout" that I won't need to dig into LEGO's back catalog for stuff I missed out on.

Thank you again for putting in the time and effort to obtain, scan, and share these! The planet itself being called "Ice Planet 2002" is a bit surprising since other British publications identified it as "Krysto-2002", but we saw a similar trend in US publications which referred to it either as "Ice Planet 2002" or "Ice Planet Krysto". But rather than a contradiction, I think it's safe to say that these are just alternate ways of referring to the same planet, sort of like how in real life a lot of newly discovered celestial bodies receive informal designations before they are assigned formal names by the IAU (like 14 Andromedae b, later formally named "Spe"). The Ice Planet article also strangely makes it sound like "Commander Bear" is the name of the VEHICLE rather than its pilot, but this is probably just poor phrasing due to identifying each major vehicle with the name of the set it comes in — other British set names like 6705 Commander Bear and the Spyrians make it clear that Commander Bear is the name of the character. I definitely find it neat that British publications like this actually have a clear title for the lower-ranking Ice Planet explorers ("Ice Ranger" or "Ice Planet Ranger"), as opposed to just referring to them generically as astronauts or scientists like American publications do. Of course, I still actually kind of prefer the UK's shared job title for lower-ranking Ice Planet officers compared to the German catalogs' approach, which gave the figures a wide variety of job titles that were perhaps needlessly specific, and often varied between sets even if the figures in the sets were identical. Some of these included Transgalaktonaut, Nachrichtenspezialist, Countdown Spezialist, Wissenschaftler, Klimatologe, and Galaktologe (in English, "Trans-Galactonaut", "Communications Specialist", "Countdown Specialist", "Scientist", "Climatologist", and "Galactologist"). And certainly none of these character names or titles are as weird as this French magazine ad in which the Ice Planet commander introduces himself as Le sage immortel de la planete glacée "Ice-Planet" ("The Immortal Sage of the Frozen Planet 'Ice-Planet'"). I'm… not sure where that idea came from or what it was meant to imply, because it's a wild tonal shift from the sort of conventional sci-fi technobabble typical of other countries' space theme marketing, and feels more like something out of Dune or John Carter of Mars than, say, Star Wars or Star Trek. That said, I also find it interesting that like the British catalogs, this magazine only really describes the characters settling this newly discovered planet to use it as a launch base for satellites and rockets, unlike blurbs and publications from countries like the US and Germany that go a step further by describing them as scientists conducting research on the planet. For all we know, these astronauts as portrayed in the British media may have just chosen this planet as a communications hub because it's conveniently located, and the frozen environment may be just an inconvenience for them rather than a reason that they chose this newly discovered planet for their operations. On another note, the Pirates article on page 8 also caught me a little off guard by identifying 6268 The Sea Vulture as one of Captain Roger's ships, even though other British marketing materials identify its captain as Captain Ironhook. But upon reflection, the Summer 1992 issue had identified Captain Ironhook as an "old friend" and ally of Captain Roger, and the Spring 1994 issue actually used a picture of Ironhook to accompany a story about Captain Roger. So this could have been either an error/oversight, a retcon, or just a sign that at this point British promotional media simply considered Ironhook and his ships a part of Captain Roger's fleet. US-based promotional media simply treated the two pirate captains as the same character in two different outfits, just as it had with Governor Broadside and Admiral Woodhouse. I don't care for this approach myself, especially since Captain Roger clearly has a peg leg while Captain Ironhook usually does not. But I suspect that was a pragmatic choice, since a lot of the more story-driven LEGO Pirates media that served to flesh out these characters and their relationships to one another never made it to the United States. By contrast, as we learned in this thread's transcriptions of German audio dramas, some non-English-speaking countries drew a GREATER distinction between the two characters — identifying them as leaders of two rival pirate bands, and portraying Ironhook as an outright villain compared to Roger's portrayal as an avaricious antihero. This is honestly the presentation I'm most fond of since it gives the characters and factions the most complexity.

Fantastic! Thank you so much for the work you're doing. I always love getting these glimpses of past themes as they were marketed at the time in different parts of the world — and Dragon Masters is of particular interest to me since it was my own first Castle theme (just as Ice Planet 2002 was my first Space theme)! There's not too much exciting new story info here like faction, character, or place names (the names "Dragon Knights", "Merlin", and "Ogwen" were already pretty well known from British catalogs), but it's interesting that the writers of this issue decided that Ogwen is capable of speech. It definitely does fit with the sort of European literary and folkloric traditions that inspired this subtheme — many mythological dragons like Fafnir were traditionally portrayed as capable of speech, which in turn inspired the portrayal of dragons like Smaug in more modern works of fiction. But it's an interesting distinction from a lot of other countries' marketing materials in which the wizard's dragon is rarely even named, let alone "anthropomorphized" to this extent. I think your decision to post these in separate threads seems sound. A unified topic for these scans could potentially be useful, but not strictly necessary unless a mod says otherwise (especially if you include links to your previous magazine scan topics in future threads). On another note, I appreciate you uploading these images to Flickr as it makes it easier to browse the various publications you've uploaded and follow along with future scans you upload compared to sites like Imgur.

Nothing wrong with female knights! I mean, "folk heroines" like Joan of Arc, Joanna of Flanders, and Brunhild have been popular for centuries. And even if female knights were rare in real-life medieval history, there's no reason that has to be the case in a fictional setting. I also don't think the hiatus since the last traditional Castle theme can really be taken as a sign that boys no longer like that stuff. But there are plenty of other things that boys enjoy just as much, and even a lot of the boys who like castles, dragons, knights, wizards, etc. can still enjoy that same stuff outside of a conventional medieval context. Honestly, before yesterday it had been a few days since I'd checked Eurobricks, so it was a huge bummer to see the rumor of a new theme that appeal to me in a lot of the same ways that LEGO Elves did, only to immediately see in the replies that it was a totally unfounded hoax. Even if there wasn't really enough evidence for any of those claims to really get my hopes up, it's certainly the sort of news that I would've liked to hear for real. I do hope we will get another fun action/adventure theme with mini-dolls before too long, though in my case, I'm not so concerned with whether it'd be medieval-inspired or not.

This, this, this! To put it into perspective, how many of us remember what the first "LEGO System" theme to have purple boxes was? Believe it or not, it was the Pirates theme! I myself had forgotten about this for many years until I saw some folks displaying their LEGO Pirates collections (with boxes) at a LEGO convention a few years back. Some examples from the BrickLink reference catalog: Pirates sets began using purple boxes in 1991 when the parent category for "play themes" like Town, Castle, Space, and Pirates was rebranded from LEGOLAND to LEGO SYSTEM, and the purple boxes remained the standard through the final 1997 wave of the theme's original run. Moreover, even if we accept that a lot of aspects of the Friends theme's design and box art still have girly or feminine connotations, such as pastel colors or heart motifs… I don't see any reason to think that should change, necessarily. I mean, how often do you see anybody calling for LEGO to make the Technic theme's box art less masculine? I'm not saying that girls can't like roughing it in the outdoors — or the color black, for that matter. But I am saying that from a marketing standpoint, this sort of packaging is just a few steps away from what you'd expect to see on a stick of men's deodorant. It's certainly at least as flagrant an example of "gendered marketing" as most LEGO Friends or Elves boxes, but I hardly ever see that mentioned, let alone criticized. Whereas feminine elements of themes like Friends, Elves, and Dots are routinely criticized as drawbacks or biases that LEGO ought to try and tone down to broaden the sets' appeal. And in many cases, it's not because of any sort of conscious prejudice! It's just that for those of us who grew up with older LEGO themes (which often skewed more masculine in one way or another), we become so numb to a lot of their norms that they barely even seem noteworthy to us. For better or for worse, it's much easier for long-time LEGO fans to notice and question the ways that newer sets or themes vary from those familiar norms than to notice and question the norms themselves. Nothing to do about that, really, besides making a continuous effort to look inward and question our own frame of reference as we encounter stuff that falls outside of it.

Agreed, I could really dig something like that. It could perhaps even reuse some of Sweet Mayhem's molds from The LEGO Movie 2. I could see this working very nicely with a Star Trek style storyline where a crew of protagonists travels to different planets, doing their best to aid any local inhabitants they meet along the way. Space also is a great fit for other stuff that suits the action/adventure theme formula, like exciting "action play" features and individualized protagonists with color-coded outfits. And since themes like Friends and Elves have typically gone into more detail with interior role-play elements and interiors, that sort of theme could be a great opportunity to embrace those strengths in a more futuristic setting. Imagine a starship for the theme's heroes that includes enough sleeping quarters for the entire four- or five-person crew, plus a futuristic kitchen/galley, and accessories tailored to each hero's mission specialties. Maybe even a cute robotic pet! I think the narrower hips of the mini-doll are the main reason the legs aren't individually articulated. The hip-to-leg connection for traditional minifigures is already much more delicate than most other sorts of LEGO hinges. So I suspect that fitting individual hinges for each leg into an even smaller space was out of the question once it was clear that more human-like proportions were one of the main things needed to reach the kids who minifigures didn't already appeal to. There were a number of prototype mini-doll designs that did have individually articulated legs, including ones resembling classic minifigure legs — but evidently they didn't end up testing as well as ones with more organic-looking body shapes. Additionally, one strength of the style of hip joint used for mini-dolls is that mini-dolls with floor-length dresses or mermaid tails can all bend just as freely at the hip as mini-dolls with shorter skirts or trousers. By comparison, traditional minifigures with full dresses/gowns can't bend their legs at all, and ones with molded or fabric skirts often can't fully bend their legs forward. Frankly, when you think about the sorts of design features that mini-doll characters often feature, it becomes clear that a lot of them would have considerable limitations if they'd stuck to the traditional minifigure's general shape. A LOT of mini-doll characters wear skirts, dresses, or gowns of varying styles. Additionally, they often have detailed shoes such as sneakers or sandals, which would be hard to depict in the same detail on the traditional minifigure's tiny, square feet. And a lot of them have long hair, which tends to restrict head rotation against the traditional minifigure's large, blocky shoulders. When considered from this perspective, features like a single, centrally-placed hip joint, flexible rubber hair, and feet with a large instep to allow for printed details like sandal straps, buckles, or shoelaces make a lot of sense!

Do you plan to resell them? If not, I figure you could just open and use them regardless of their authenticity. It's not as though quality factors like "clutch power" would apply to LEGO coins like they might with other parts of dubious authenticity. Also, as @TalonCard mentions, LEGO's chrome gold / metallized gold coatings have varied over the years, possibly because of how easily the coating material can wear away if kids put chrome parts in their mouths. Since chrome parts were so common back in my early, irresponsible KFOL years, I learned this from experience. Those sorts of color discrepancies can be even more pronounced if you have both brand-new chrome parts and older, more "weathered" ones in your collection. So I wouldn't worry too much about this slight visual mismatch. And as long as the LEGO "word mark" is on the back of both sets of coins, I think that's probably enough to give these ones the benefit of the doubt — certainly, there are counterfeiters who go as far as to replicate the LEGO "word mark" on their molds, but they don't tend to remain in business for very long, since companies that exactly copy a competitor's brand name or logos to the letter can't really feign legitimacy when faced with legal challenges!

Yeah, I agree. They were a defining gimmick in a number of my favorite themes of my KFOL years, and even by modern standards they were outstandingly versatile! Plus, I really loved magnet-based toys in general back then. But a lot of magnetic toys are way more dangerous than I realized at the time, and loads of kids have ended up in the emergency room from swallowing them. A lot of countries first began rolling out tighter regulations on magnetic toys after a child died from swallowing magnets from a Magnetix kit in 2006. LEGO stopped including the classic magnet pieces in sets shortly after that, though by this point they'd already replaced them with larger pre-assembled couplings in City train sets due to these sorts of safety concerns. It's a shame the newer magnet pieces from the 2020 City sets haven't appeared in any other sets since then. While their bulkier and more complex design definitely makes them less versatile (and more expensive) than the classic magnets, they still seem strong enough and versatile enough that they could have a lot of uses in Space and City builds, at least from what I've seen in reviews like this one.

I think the new LEGO magnets could potentially be viable in a Space model like this, but the old ones depicted in this project definitely won't be coming back since they're small enough for a kid to swallow (which is why they got retired in the first place — toy regulations involving magnets are stricter than they used to be since even if they're not a choking hazard, they can still pose a danger by getting caught in the digestive tract).

Yeah, it's waaaay too early to speculate about whether a set like 40518 has been successful when it's barely been out a month! In general, buyers who go out of their way to get new LEGO sets as soon as they hit the shelves are the exception, not the norm. A lot of folks might not even know a set like this exists until they happen to see it on store shelves. I wouldn't classify it as a "kids-only" set, either, considering it has so little play value. Everything we've seen so far suggests that it's a "souvenir" set like 40568 Yellow Taxi or 40520 Beijing Postcard — the sort of compact, low-priced keepsake that either kids or adults visiting a LEGO store while traveling might pick up without having to worry too much about the price or how much space it'll take up. For that matter, nearly all sets with 40### numbers like this (seasonal sets, recent years' BrickHeadz, Brick Sketches, desk accessory sets, minifigure blister packs, etc) are primarily LEGO store exclusives or otherwise "limited" items — the sort that tend to be shelved near the checkout, alongside keychains, luggage tags, and "housewares" like water bottles or ice cube trays. As such, they're not expected to sell as well as general retail items like Creator 3-in-1, City, or Friends sets. But it does help ensure that folks stopping by a LEGO store will always be able to find something affordable that they haven't already seen in other stores. So no, 40518 isn't a sign of microscale becoming the new norm for LEGO trains, just as 40568 wasn't an indication of microscale becoming the new norm for LEGO cars. It's just a case of a Creator designer who really likes trains (George Gilliatt) embracing an opportunity to develop a low-priced train set for the souvenir range. If it hadn't been a microscale train, it probably would've been a microscale airliner or bus or some other sort of transit vehicle. Would any of us really see that as a better outcome for LEGO train fans? You realize that "minifigure scale" has never been a universal standard for LEGO sets, right? Especially in the Creator theme? And that nobody would ever reasonably expect a toy (even a toy train) to be motorized or electrified in any way unless it's suggested somewhere on the packaging? It's ludicrously narrow-minded to think that the only reason anybody would buy a non-minifigure-scale Creator set is because they were tricked into doing so. There are (and have ALWAYS been) plenty of folks who get plenty of enjoyment out of building and playing with or displaying a toy vehicle, even if it's not extremely high-detail or designed to be integrated with a larger layout. I mean, where have you been for the past two and a half decades of Creator sets? Because there have been dozens of other microscale sets during that time, which made no pretense of being "minifig-scale" or City-compatible. You build them, you play with them, and then you either put them on display or take them apart to build different stuff from their pieces. The same sort of enjoyment that people got out of LEGO back before the minifigure was first introduced. I get that some LEGO fans only care about minifigure-scale sets and see all other sets as pointless. But there's a whole world of LEGO fans out there who don't confine themselves to that bubble.

Oh, certainly! The rubber duck mold could still be suitable for ducklings, but a new mold for adult ducks could be great — not only to make the scale and proportions more accurate relative to other bird molds, but also potentially to allow for more detailed printing or multi-stage molding to represent different plumage patterns.

True, but keep in mind that maize/sweetcorn (i.e. "corn on the cob") would not be accurate for medieval European settings. That said, it'd work fine for builds set in pre-colonial America, or builds set in later time periods after trans-Atlantic trade has made maize available more globally. For that matter, in fantasy settings, you're naturally allowed to deviate from real-world historical or geographic limitations as much as you like, just as Tolkien did to give his British-inspired Hobbits access to New World produce like tomatoes, potatoes, and pipe tobacco ("pipe-weed"). I'm not as particular about wanting roosters, since at least some breeds of hens and roosters are similar enough for the same mold and colors/prints to work for both. A separate rooster mold (and for that matter, a separate bull mold) could be neat to see in the long run, but I'm not too bothered by their absence at this point. What I would be especially excited to see in a future farm set would be younger chicks that could accompany the chicken mold. I'd even just accept a recolor of the songbird mold, even if actual chicks would have shorter tail feathers than that. At a scale as small as that, I'm not too picky about those sorts of details.

I love this, actually! I've felt for a while that a lot of the curve pieces that LEGO's introduced would be great for recreating the sort of terrain that the old crater plates depicted, and you did a pretty good job of coming up with a build that achieves that! I'm not 100% sold on the Reddish Brown for the raised parts of the terrain, though, mainly because the sharp contrast between the dusty-looking ground and rocky-looking protrusions makes them seem more like volcanic craters and ridges than ones formed by meteors. That's not to say that a two-tone look can't work, but I think it'd work better if it were a color like Sand Yellow/Dark Tan that's closer in hue and tone to the main ground color. I also kind of wish that instead of turbines/rotors, the thrusters on the VTOL had glowy radar dishes on the underside or something. The turbines feel a bit at odds with the Classic Space look, both because no actual Classic Space sets had propellers or turbines like that, and because they make the setting feel a little too "Earth-like" for my tastes since turbines like that would only work within some kind of atmosphere. But I do love the base itself! Not only are the futuristic curves and greebly exterior fixtures very stylish, the interior spaces are very beautifully and practically furnished with features like a lab, crew quarters, communications/command center, rocket launch bay, and garage/workshop. So while it's a far cry from the boxy exteriors raised up on support struts that were typical of actual Classic Space sets, it feels very true to the sort of base I would want to be stationed at for the sorts of missions that those sets and others typically depicted. The vehicle fleet you came up with also offers plenty of potential for different types of planetary or lunar expeditions: scouting/reconnaissance, collecting geological samples, delivering or handling supplies, responding to distress calls, etc. There are certainly some defunct parts in this model like the magnets that would not be viable in an actual set, but I have no doubt that LEGO's set designers could find good replacements for those sorts of details when it comes time to fine-tune the design for production. I think it's particularly neat that you gave the mech an alternate set of gripper arms so the crew can upgrade/refit it for different tasks. That adds some great play value to both the mech and garage/workshop, plus a practical sense for how a material handler mech like this might be designed in real life! I'm especially pleased that you actually maintained some elements of the Classic Space theme that other modernized takes often disregard, like the green and grey color schemes you used for some of the ground vehicles or the black and white color scheme and nosecone-mounted satellite you included in your rocket design. Although not as popular with AFOLs as iconic blue and yellow spaceships, these color choices and details greatly add to the model's sense of authenticity. Plus, the green and grey color scheme pairs beautifully with the green-suited astronauts that the Ideas Exo-Suit set introduced for mech/walker crews! Red wheel hubs instead of grey ones might be a bit of an improvement from a nostalgic standpoint, but aside from that, I'm very happy with the vehicle colors you chose. And needless to say, the meteor crab is ADORABLE — and exactly the sort of weird space critter that feels suited to this sort of planet, which otherwise has no obvious signs of life. I could easily picture it making nests inside craters, tucking its legs away for protection/camouflage, and consuming extraterrestrial minerals or bacteria deposits for sustenance. Great work overall, and I will definitely be checking out some of your other projects! Even if I'm not satisfied with every little detail, you did a great job weaving a coherent design out of all sorts of fantastic details and features that many LEGO Space fans like us are sure to love!

I mean, I certainly share those same preferences, just not to the point of feeling like different logos or different windscreen colors are enough to spoil/"mess up" an otherwise interesting Space set or theme. I mean, I didn't mind the Galaxy Squad or Alien Conquest color schemes or logos at all, even if they didn't go out of their way to mimic 80s and 90s Space logos and windscreen colors. Same as how I don't mind when modern space sets or themes use curvy windscreens/canopies instead of more angular ones. I don't mean to antagonize you, though. I get that you care much more about those sorts of details than I do, and there's nothing wrong with that. So I apologize if any of my responses have seemed at all hostile or dismissive. I promise it's not my intent, and it's my own fault if I made it seem that way.