Aanchir

Well, there was a post earlier this month in the City topic mentioning the prices for the the not-yet-revealed sets 60335 and 60336, and pointing out that they could potentially be train sets based on those prices. There HAVE been other City sets besides motorized trains at prices as high a $179.99, but they are few and far between. And given that 2022 is anticipated to be a "train year" according to the 4-year pattern we've typically seen in the past, I don't think expecting 60336 to be a new City train is at all unreasonable. I'm not quite as confident about the prediction that 60335 would be a new train station, since dedicated train station sets aren't as much of a "given" even in years that new City trains are released. But considering this year's heavy emphasis on actual City buildings that can be linked together with via the current road system, it'd certainly make a lot of sense for LEGO to release a new train station as part of their next batch of City train sets.

As far as colors go, it's also good to keep in mind that the City theme is color-coded to a much greater extent than the real-life subject matter it depicts, no matter what country those colors are inspired by in any given year. After all, in real life, fire stations, police stations, hospitals, etc. are rarely painted to match their corresponding emergency vehicles! Adult-targeted sets like the Fire Brigade and Police Station sets from the Modular Buildings Collection are a lot closer to reality in that respect. As such, a lot of City color schemes in any given year are focused as much on unifying the sets from any given "category" and making sure they stand out from sets in other "categories" as on maintaining any sort of real-world accuracy. After all, even in the United States, emergency vehicle color schemes and designs can vary WILDLY between states and even between cities/counties: see here, here, and here for various examples. To be honest, I sort of wish that the school bus in the school set were Flame Yellowish Orange instead of standard Bright Yellow, for several reasons: Flame Yellowish Orange is a closer match for American "School Bus Yellow". A more yellow-orange color would help the school bus stand out better from the yellow and black color schemes used for a lot of City construction vehicles. The school and bus stop in the same set have Flame Yellowish Orange accents, so Flame Yellowish Orange would better match that color scheme. I'm not totally sure why the designers opted for Bright Yellow in this case, though perhaps they plan on shifting construction vehicles (which are also often a yellow-orange color in real life) to Flame Yellowish Orange the next time those get a wave of sets of their own.

I understand what you mean, but I also think what buildings "fit" or "make sense" together the way you're describing is still highly subjective. I mean, I've seen plenty of positive AND negative comments about how it looks next to particular buildings like the Police Station, Parisian Restaurant, Bookshop, Corner Garage, or Assembly Square, rather than any sort of consensus about which buildings do or don't work. And there are many more combinations that I don't think have been shown in ANY reviews so far, meaning that none of us can say for certain whether or not they'd "fit together" the way you're describing. Once the set is released and the instructions are added to LEGO.com, it'll be easier for folks to either test those combinations out either in real life or on software like stud.io, and share the results with others in the community. For now, one option that would decidedly not obstruct the view from the guest room windows would be to place it next to the single-story "market" section of the Market Street set. And the upper stories of Detective's Office and Parisian Restaurant are all 10 studs from the back of their respective baseplates, making them potentially promising options in their own right. Also, the Daily Bugle, while not officially part of the Modular Buildings Collection, is a fully modular-compatible set in which the building itself is six studs from the edges of the baseplate on either side and eight studs from the edges of the baseplate in the front and back. As such, it would leave quite a bit of room for the Boutique Hotel to breathe, although I doubt many would for the aesthetics of placing the Boutique Hotel right next to a massive skyscraper with such a rough, utilitarian-looking architectural style. This is not by any means the first Modular Building that has elicited concerns that they don't fit or make sense next to neighboring buildings! A lot of people had the exact same concern about the Downtown Diner set, which similarly has a wall and windows facing a narrow gap along the left side of the baseplate. Similar concerns (albeit fewer in number, as far as I've seen) were raised about the gap on the right side of the Parisian Restaurant Some builders ended up remedying those concerns either with extensive modding (for example, converting the whole set to a corner building) or by building a custom alleyway, park, public square, community garden, or other type of open-air property to display alongside the building in question. The same could be done here by builders who like the set's architectural style but not its placement on a city block. But on the whole, whether you are content with options like these work for you or would rather skip this set entirely comes down to personal preference. There's no shame in skipping a building that you don't think works with your collection or layout, regardless of your reasons for feeling that way. And the designers of these sets certainly don't expect any of them to satisfy or make sense to everyone. Yeah, boxing and weight training were featured in the Downtown Diner set, and there was a dance/ballet studio in Assembly Square. There were also darts and billiards in the Detective's Office set and table tennis in the Fire Brigade, though I doubt those are the sort of sport you were thinking about. More sports-related content could be great, although a professional ice hockey rink, soccer/football field, or baseball/softball diamond would likely be impossible to fit in an official Modular Building set, since it'd require a pretty big arena plus spectator stands and two full teams of players to feel genuinely believable. For comparison, consider the size of the larger fields/courts/rinks from the LEGO Sports theme. An amateur field for any of those sports could possibly work at a diminished scale, but probably not as part of the "official" Modular Buildings Collection, since it'd leave very little room on the base for any sort of actual, multi-story building. So like the the Spring Lantern Festival set, it'd likely have to be released as a stand-alone set or a set from another theme that just happens to be compatible with the Modular Buildings Collection. One sport that I've felt for years would be a great fit for the Modular Buildings is bowling, both because it's an indoor sport with a long history, and because it would be hard to convincingly fit into a building with a smaller footprint than we've seen in official Modular Building sets. The biggest question there would be what to do with the upper stories of the building. I could also easily imagine a Modular Building set including a amateur street basketball, street hockey, tennis court, or skate park in a vacant lot — either on 16x32 base adjoining a "half-size" building like the ones from the Market Street, Pet Shop, and Bookshop sets, or in the center of an expanded 48x32 base like Assembly Square with narrow buildings on two or three sides. I also know that some buildings and schools in big cities have outdoor sports fields of that sort on the roof, with tall fences or nets to prevent balls, pucks, or players from falling onto the street below (a Google search for "rooftop basketball court", "rooftop tennis court", etc. should bring up plenty of examples). That could work in a Modular Building set if you figured out a good architectural style and floor plan to use for the rest of the building to keep it from looking too odd next to other sets. Similarly, a rooftop swimming pool could be viable in a set, although most of those I've seen are at hotels. And needless to say, it would feel a bit redundant to see another modular hotel set any time in the near future!

It's also entirely possible that LEGO is planning more 90th anniversary related "throwback" sets than just the one from that poll! Note that the poll was specifically for a "a single new product for the 2022 LEGO Adult Portfolio" — which is to say, probably an 18+ set. It makes sense that for a product like that, they'd want AFOLs to have a voice in what theme it focuses on. But we've seen time and time again that LEGO has no objection to making "throwback" sets or minifigures even in more kid-targeted sets and themes: Benny's Space Squad from The LEGO Movie 2, the Jungle Explorer from Minifigures Series 19, the modernized Captain Redbeard/Roger and Bo'sun Will minifigures from the 2015 Pirates range, etc. Plus, keep in mind how much different stuff LEGO did for the 80th anniversary of the brick/40th anniversary of the minifigure! I doubt for an anniversary this big they'll just do one 18+ set and leave it at that.

Very good point about the stop sign! It's possible that the designers didn't include one since school buses outside the United States and Canada (and even school buses in some Canadian provinces) don't tend to have a "stop arm" like that, and just use flashing lights instead. But I would've been happy to see that detail just 'cuz it'd match the school buses I'm used to seeing in real life. That said, I'm more bothered by the lack of wheel arches on the back, since it makes the front and back of the bus feel mismatched. But thinking about it a little more, I realize that this was done for a reason — a preformed wheel arch like the ones they used in the front would obstruct the wheelchair access. But I still think there are other ways they could have reduced that mismatched look, like even just changing the color of the front wheel arches to yellow. This is also why just recoloring the Friends school bus design would not have worked here. Imagine trying to fit a wheelchair into a bus with a floor raised up as high as the floor of the Friends school bus, let alone provide a ramp that would reach that high without being too steep! The other differences in the shaping of the two school buses don't bother me too much, since they resemble two different styles of school bus which I've seen plenty of in real life. I do have a preference for the cute and curvy aesthetic of the Friends school bus, but that's not really a fault of the City one's design.

I 100% agree with you about the school bus — I was likewise disappointed with that build compared to the Friends one, for reasons I think I already addressed in an earlier post. I don't think "childishness" really fits as a description of what I dislike about it, though. The rest of the older sets you give as examples are pretty good in their own right, but I definitely wouldn't describe them as "better" or "less childish" than the newer versions. They're just different architectural styles (and wildly different sizes/price points, in the case of the two police stations). In fact, I prefer the 2021 Family House over the 2010 City House in that comparison. On the outside, the new model has a very fresh and distinctive modernist architectural style: wrap-around plate glass windows, decorative wood paneling and crawling ivy, a second story that overhangs a carport, a balcony/terrace, and a low-slope roof. This feels much more distinctive imaginative to me than the family house's straightforward vertical layout and old-school gable roof like we've seen in so many Creator houses over the years. I also feel like the floor plan and interior furnishings of the newer house are far more exciting than the older one, particularly since it has an actual bathroom and a bed that's more than just a slab. The designer was even thoughtful enough to ensure that the bathroom has smaller glass-block windows to let in light while maintaining privacy — a consideration that has been overlooked even in a lot of Friends sets over the years. Build-wise, the new model does use larger 1x6x5 panels for its windows instead of smaller window frames and panes, and likewise the roof is made from large smooth slopes instead of smaller ones. But it also uses smaller parts instead of 1x6x5 panels for both its interior and exterior walls, including the structural wall supporting the car port. And a lot of those exterior walls even make extensive use of SNOT bricks to add textural detail. So all in all, I think the two sets seem pretty much equal in terms of the complexity of the build itself, as would be expected from their similar piece counts. None of that is to say the old City House was a bad set for its time! Its nostalgic, suburban-looking design is pretty believable for the most part (aside from the chimney, which is purely decorative and lacks any space for a duct to connect it to the oven on the ground floor). And it had some charming features of its own that the newer model lacks, such as a front porch with a colorful awning, a fence along the property line, and a treehouse and garden wall in the side yard. But I find the newer one more visually and structurally impressive/interesting for the various reasons stated above. And I don't think either set seems more or less "childish" than the other by any metric, though I suppose a lot of that inevitably comes down to personal preference.

For my part, I had the opposite reaction — that first imageg has me extremely impressed at just how big, varied, and detailed a City layout you can make from these 2022 sets even without any of the 2021 "road system" sets or any non-set buildings to fill it out. By contrast, in previous years many official City promotional pics showing multi-set layouts (like this one from 2012 or this one from 2009) have been heavily reliant on non-set buildings and scenery to turn even multiple years of sets into anything even approaching the feel of a real, bustling city scene! Needless to say, a layout combining multiple years of these "road system" sets and/or MOCs could be even more impressive! But a lot of AFOLs have been complaining for years that the City theme had far too much emphasis on vehicles and not nearly enough emphasis on roads, buildings, and scenery. So it's pretty reassuring to get a wave of sets where that's decidedly not a problem. As for looking "childish"… well, that's the City theme for you! There's never really been a City police station, fire station, coast guard station, hospital, bank, etc. that I wouldn't describe as "childish". Each and every one has prioritized color-coding, play value, and other kid-friendly design features over sophistication or realism. And that's not a bad thing by any means! It's the very purpose they're created for, and they're generally very effective at achieving that purpose. Now, I have my own quibbles with some of the 2022 sets in question, which I'm pretty sure I've brought up in previous posts, but "childishness" is certainly not one of them.

Neat! I've dabbled in designs for a corner building layout with a diagonal alleyway/courtyard on Stud.io, and it'd certainly be neat to see in an official set in the future. I don't care as much for that version of the Boutique Hotel so much, though, since it doesn't quite capture the "organic" art nouveau look as well, and the overall composition feels more visually crowded when viewed from the street. I do greatly prefer the arrangement of the palm leaves in the third version to the arrangement in the final set, though! Even if it's still a bit artificial looking, it has more visual "flow" than the chaotically splayed-out leaves in the final design, and the connections to the trunk are less awkwardly exposed. Oh, absolutely! In my opinion that's one of the defining factors of the Modular Buildings Collection, even if relatively few builders recognize it or take advantage of it (especially due to the price of recreating some sets' middle floors). But in this case my hope was to come up with an interior design that would work with just the base set — no additional floors — and as it turns out the mailboxes wouldn't really make much sense that way.

To be honest, I'm not sure why you think this. There's no reason to think that ANY of those themes were intended to last much longer than they did. Even Ninjago itself was originally intended to last only two or three years, and the fact that it has continued for over 10 years is a testament to how much MORE popular it ended up being than even the high expectations its design team had for it during those early years. Even in the years prior to Ninjago's launch, most of LEGO's new in-house "play themes" aside from City (Exo-Force, Agents, Mars Mission, Space Police 3, Kingdoms, Power Miners, Atlantis, etc) lasted only two or three years before being discontinued or replaced with something new and fresh. And some of those themes like Power Miners and Atlantis were considered great successes! They were simply never intended or expected to be long-runners of the sort that City, Friends, or Ninjago have become. And it's not like LEGO has been avoiding new in-house themes, either. Although this year's Vidiyo launch clearly fell short of expectations, the Dots and Monkie Kid themes from 2020 have clearly both been strong enough successes to get additional waves of sets in 2021 and 2022. Maybe if we'd gone three or four years without any new in-house theme launches, I'd agree that LEGO was seemingly avoiding them. But as it stands, it seems more like they've just taking those sort of new launches a little more slowly than they had been in the late 2000s or early 2010s. Anyway, I see plenty of other people pointing out that the core topic here is little more than a personal opinion. As I see it, Ninjago sticking with the same main characters for so many years is a big part of why it has been so much more successful than G1 Bionicle. It may not have anything as narratively ambitious as Bionicle's world-shaking 2008 plot twist, but that's not something a story strictly NEEDS to be enjoyable. And the sets from recent years have also been pretty amazing, in my opinion, with plenty of outstanding designs and varied subject matter. There are still many that stand out as are strikingly different from anything seen in previous waves: for example, the Fire Fang, Land Bounty, Skull Sorcerer's Dragon, Skull Sorcerer's Dungeons, Jungle Dragon, Catamaran Sea Battle, Hydro Bounty, Temple of the Endless Sea, or Ninja Ultra Combo Mech. Certainly, some of them can be repetitive, but that is the nature of ANY stable, long-running theme, whether it's Town/City, Space, Castle, Pirates, Technic, Bionicle, Friends, or Ninjago. That said, a lot of these Ninjago sets that feature the same subject matter as earlier ones still manage to bring clever new improvements and innovations, as exemplified by many of the Legacy sets. Furthermore, if you really feel the theme has become "low-effort and repetitive", why do you have such harsh words for the repetitiveness of the hero vehicles and mechs, but not for the equally repetitive temples and dragons? Why do you praise the "balanced" approach from the first year and criticize the introduction of high-tech ninja vehicles in the second year, when maintaining that strict division of low-tech heroes annd high-tech villains would've made the theme MORE repetitive, not less? Why do you treat the new villains each wave as one of the main attractions of each new wave" when even in the debut year that you supposedly liked, they exemplified the sort of anachronistic absurdity that has "next to nothing… that is even related to actual ninjas?" Your concerns about the theme moving away from spinners are especially silly, now that we know there are new spinner sets coming in March 2022. And while I certainlty share your fondness for the clever card game that associated the first couple years of Ninjago spinners, here you only mention it in order to disparage later spinners and fliers as forgettable gimmicks. Again, you're criticizing the theme for being stale and repetitive while also criticizing it for NOT sticking strictly to the same approach from the year it began. I'm beginning to see a pattern here… Your characterization of Ninjago as a "dumping ground" for ideas that ought to go elsewhere is just as disingenuous — for one thing, including the sky pirates from half a decade ago among the ideas that supposedly "don't make sense in the context of what Ninjago originally was" is yet another obvious giveaway that the things that bother you about Ninjago aren't actually new at all. You could just as easily make the exact same argument about the ghosts from 2015 or the nindroids from 2014. And anyway, why would a high-tech, non-ninja sky pirate faction be a poor fit for the theme, when you had nothing but praise for the high-tech, non-ninja skeleton faction from the year that supposedly exemplified what you feel the theme should be like? In truth, the theme has been envisioned as a fusion of ancient, modern, and futuristic concepts and aesthetics since even before its launch — modern cities and futuristic vehicles feature just as heavily as a "feudal Japan feel" in a lot of the early concept art from before the theme's launch. If it were really a bad thing for the theme to embrace those wacky anachronisms, then surely the theme's popularity would have declined sharply after the first year. But in fact, you yourself admit that the ninja vehicles in 2012 were well-received, and don't ever even bring up its continued popularity beyond its first few years as it continued to defy your narrow idea of what the theme ought to be. Your final claim that Ninjago's success is somehow to blame for your broader personal frustrations with the current state of LEGO themes is also pretty dubious. LEGO Legends of Chima and Nexo Knights were both fairly successful themes that lasted about as long as they (or Ninjago, for that matter) were originally projected to — and, in fact, LONGER than many pre-Ninjago themes. You present no evidence whatsoever that Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights, or Monkie Kid have in any way "failed to find an audience" — particularly since practically all your other arguments treat pretty much everything about Ninjago beyond its early years as a failing rather than a strength! I'm trying not to be mean about this, but this tendency of yours to argue in circles to try and prove why LEGO in the late 2000s/early 2010s was good and LEGO today is bad has become pretty tedious and predictable. And it's pretty arrogant to act as though you have a clearer understanding of what made Ninjago's early years (AND its later years) successful than the folks at LEGO who actually made it that way! As much as you praise Bionicle's varied main characters and its 2008 plot twist, your complaints almost perfectly mirror the curmudgeonly complaints of many strictly old-school Bionicle fans: That the theme should have stuck with the primitive tropical island aesthetics it started with, and was ruined by introducing modern or futuristic concepts like high-tech cities, giant robots, gun-like weapons and orbital space stations. That the theme should've stuck with a strict formula of humanoid hero sets and beastly villain sets instead of disrupting that "balance" with humanoid villains like the Piraka. That the collectibles from the first few years were good, but later years made a foolish decision to abandon that approach in favor of forgettable launcher gimmicks. That the theme would've been better off if the sets and story had ended in the early years instead of being dragged through wave after wave in the name of selling more sets. But then, there's one core difference between those situations. Bionicle G1, as it turns out, could NOT sustain its popularity, although its decline was probably not for the reasons that many of those folks believed. Ninjago's popularity, on the other hand, has shown remarkable stability in spite of, from your perspective, getting steadily worse from its second year onward. Maybe that should be a sign that the core audience that made Ninjago so successful simply doesn't share your beliefs about what the theme is supposed to be? That maybe they never did? I know I'm not gonna change your mind, and that reading your blog post, let alone replying, was probably a waste of my time and energy. But eh, what's done is done.

While reading the reviews of the Series 22 minifigures that Brickset and New Elementary posted today, I suddenly realized that I was probably wrong about the Troubadour minifig's gold coins being a reference to the Fantasy Era "Crown Knights". In fact, both the coronet on the coins and the blue-and-magenta outfit are almost certainly a reference to the castle guards' heraldry from the Yellow Castle (375/6075)! Definitely a neat throwback, and I'd love to see LEGO do even more with these colors and this heraldry in the future. The magenta in particular is a great approximation of the heraldic tincture purpure. It'd also be interesting to see the heraldry from some of the other knights in that set brought back in the future, although I understand why they may be less appealing than heraldry from more recent Castle characters and factions — object-based or animal-based heraldic charges like crowns, lions, dragons, eagles, wolves, etc. tend to have stronger symbolic connotations associated with them in the modern day (nobility, majesty, courage, power, ferocity, hunting prowess, etc) than non-representational or heavily abstracted geometric forms like chevrons and trefoils. On another note, I'm pleased to see that many of the figures including the Snow Guardian and Night Protector have arm printing and dual expressions. I feel like that's a big improvement from the early days of Minifigures blind bags, in which those sorts of details were much less common/widespread.

Kinda reminds me of years ago when I attempted to come up with an interior floor plan for the Green Grocer's upper floors… I quickly realized that even omitting bathrooms or kitchens, it was hard to realistically house enough tenants to justify the set's FOUR mailboxes! When I looked up other people's attempts I quickly realized it wasn't something other people really concerned themselves with at all — most simply treated it as a single-family townhouse.

Even if this weren't the case, it's a little absurd to act like a Castle-related Ideas set is unlikely to succeed without a Disney tie-in. After all, it hasn't even been a full year since the launch of the Medieval Blacksmith set! Moreover, there have only been 17 Ideas sets to date based on entertainment brands, and only five of those (WALL-E, TRON: Legacy, Steamboat Willie, Winnie the Pooh, and Home Alone) have been based on Disney-owned IPs. By comparison, there have been upwards of 30 Ideas projects based on Disney-owned IPs that have gotten 10,000 supporters only to be rejected in the review phase! That hardly suggests any sort of deep-seated, pro-Disney bias among the review team.

For my part I'm pretty sure Priyanka's skin tone is either Nougat or Medium Nougat, and the apparent difference from other parts in those colors is either just poor scan quality or poor print quality in particular catalog image. Also, Dark Orange already functions as an intermediate skin tone between Medium Nougat and Reddish Brown, having recently featured as the skin tone of the Pharah minifigure from the 2019 Overwatch sets and of various Duplo figures like the one in 10948 Parking Garage and Car Wash. Needless to say, it would be odd for LEGO to introduce a new shade of brown as a skin tone for that Harry Potter trunk set, but NOT the Dark Orange color that already appears as bricks and hair pieces elsewhere in the same set. So I think the darker-looking skin on the pink haired figure is just a case of distortion due to the weird lighting effects on that set's box art.

The school is pretty good by City standards! It has lots of great figures and details to create all sorts of school day play scenarios: a bright red "school bell" to start the day, a detailed playground for physical education or recess, an arts and music classroom with cubbies/lockers, a more standard classroom with desks and a blackboard for classes like math and science, and even a school bus stop with a pedestrian crossing and crossing guard/bus driver. There's even some more of the bike paths we saw in the Shopping Street set for kids who ride bikes to and from school instead of taking the bus. The set does have a high price per piece, but that's pretty normal for City sets, and I think that the value seems to compare favorably to similarly priced sets like 60050 Train Station or 4429 Helicopter Rescue, which had similar prices when adjusted for inflation. I'm not bothered by the size of the school building, though, since the designers did a good job packing lots of detail and play value into it both inside and out. The lack of a wall behind the blackboard did surprise me a little, since unlike the open back wall and roof it doesn't seem to do much to make the interior more accessible for play. It also feels like a bit of a missed opportunity that the set not a "mini modular" like the pizzeria and dojo in last year's Town Center set. I'm a sucker for that type of modular layout that can be re-arranged or expanded, even if here separating the two classrooms wouldn't really make much sense or improve the play value in any meaningful way. What disappoints me the most is the bus. While including a school bus is a great choice (as is the choice to give it a wheelchair ramp), the rear wheel arches and hood/bonnet feel blocky and primitive to me, and the proportions feel "off" for reasons I can't quite place. The lack of a door might be part of it, though — LEGO still hasn't quite come up with a great solution for realistic bus doors. But overall, I can easily give the set a thumbs up in spite of those shortcomings. After all, there has never been a school in LEGO City or even in Classic Town, so this one is a more than welcome addition to the theme! As for new trains… I haven't heard any rumors just yet about what we might see in City for the second half of this year, but I certainly hope train sets do return, in accordance with the four-year cycle we've come to expect. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago in the LEGO Trains 2022 thread, I'm especially excited for how new City train sets might incorporate the new road system. Level crossings are pretty much a given since there tends to be at least one in every wave of City trains. But I could also see the new road plates working great for a vehicle loading platform like in 7839 Car Transport Depot, a service vehicle accessible station platform like in 4554 Metro Station, or a road-rail freight depot like in 4555 Cargo Station. As for the trains themselves (likely one passenger train and one freight train, if LEGO does continue to follow the pattern from years past), I'm not too picky about their designs. All I want is for passenger trains to feel nice and comfortable, like the sort I'd enjoy taking a trip on, and for any freight train to have a nice amount of variety and creativity in what sort of wagons and freight it carries. And fun, creative colors are always a great bonus! 60052 Cargo Train from 2014 and 60197 Passenger Train from 2018 are some examples of sets that satisfied me nicely in all those respects. Additionally, with how great a job LEGO has been doing with disability representation in this year's sets, I'm also sort of hopeful that we might see a wheelchair-accessible passenger coach. After all, public transit is very important to people with disabilities of all sorts that might make traveling by car difficult and/or cost-prohibitive. But I realize that space aboard LEGO trains tends to be pretty tight, so this would most likely be limited to a 4x4 space for a wheelchair to park at the back of a coach, with a set of doors next to it and standard seating for the remainder of the coach's length. It would also be neat for them to include a blind passenger with a service dog for similar reasons.

Really? I'd have figured that the belt loops and pockets would be much too modern for a historical pirate crew.

Honestly, I disagree? Sending sets out to reviewers for free means those reviewers get a platform to share their thoughts about sets whether they feel positively or negatively about them, whereas if reviews only came from people who actually went out and bought the set with their own money, then they'd mostly only be reviewed by people who considered them a worthwhile investment in the first place. Certainly, some reviewers might feel happy enough about getting free sets that it influences the tone of their review, but I think examples like Brickset's reviews of Assault on Hoth and Dom's Dodge Charger demonstrate that even reviewers receiving a set for free can still be brutally honest about any negative thoughts or feelings they have about them, and that LEGO does not "punish" reviewers or sites in any way for publishing negative reviews. And so I think any time a review feels dishonest in how positively it frames a set, that's more the reviewer's fault for being negligent/unprincipled than LEGO's fault for sending them that set in the first place. Perhaps those reviewers genuinely weren't too bothered by that? I mean, I didn't even take notice of this issue in any of the review photos or official pics I've seen, since I was more focused on the exciting details on either side of that gap. Now that you point it out, I agree it's somewhat disappointing (especially with the wall colors showing through on the roof level), and I do wish it had been mentioned in some of the reviews I've read, but it still strikes me as a fairly minor fault in an otherwise lovely exterior design with very clever geometry. For my part, I found the leaves of the tree especially disappointing from the very first photos. Instead of fanning out realistically from the top they seem to criss-cross every which way, and the connectors that attach them are poorly hidden, making the whole tree feel tacky and artificial. And that's a much bigger frustration for me, considering that the trunk design is otherwise pretty lovely, and has the sort of textural detail I've been hoping to see in a LEGO palm tree build for some time! But the reviews I've seen so far mostly give the palm tree a lot of praise, and I get the impression that the reviewers genuinely DO like the overall palm tree design more than I do, regardless of how they obtained the set. Maybe for them the look of the leaves and trunk matter more than how they go together, or maybe the "aha!" feeling of seeing a build this unique and unprecedented outweighed any concerns about "realism". For that matter, maybe the design is simply easier to appreciate when you can see it from all angles in real life and hinge the leaf positions to your liking than when all you have are other people's photos to judge by. Certainly there are plenty of sets I've built with features that had originally seemed awkward or disappointing to me in photos, but that I gained more appreciation for after seeing how they look and how they go together once I had them in hand. In any case, I see no reason to think the folks who have reviewed this set were at all dishonest or insincere in the feedback they gave it. The reviews I've read so far are by experienced reviewers who have demonstrated (even in portions of their Boutique Hotel reviews) that they have no trouble speaking up about aspects of a set they find weak, messy, frustrating, ineffective, illogical, or just plain boring. So I think it's safe to assume that any weaknesses they didn't take special note of are just ones they didn't find especially noteworthy.

Honestly, while I understand the complaints about the new fire and police stations being small/underwhelming, I also think it was a good decision. For one thing, neither of those sets are at "flagship" price points like the 2020 police station was — instead, that price point is reserved for other sets like the new Hospital, which is an amazing design with lots of detail and playability. Getting a bigger police or fire station this wave might very easily have meant getting a smaller hospital. A mid-size police station also stands out better from the 2020 one than if we'd gotten another huge one so soon. And honestly, it's got lots of nice features for its size — including not only typical stuff like a reception desk, booking facility, security gate, helipad, control tower, and jail, but also some more uncommon features like a K-9 training area and an exercise yard for prisoners. Even the skip loader style garbage truck is a fresh new concept for a getaway vehicle compared to the usual tow trucks and off-roaders. Honestly, between those features and the road system integration, I think it's much more interesting than the 2020 one was. The fire station is less unique and exciting, especially since there was a pretty nice fire station around this same size as recently as 2019. This one's garage feels a little less substantial than that one's due to the lack of windows, and the road plates feel a little less purposeful here than in the hospital and police station where they serve as a driveway (maybe some more unique road features like a marked "fire lane" would have helped in this regard). The lift-style fire pole feels like a relic of a bygone era, and the launchers on the helicopter are poorly integrated, That said, I do love the iconic "rescuing a cat from a tree" scenario any time it appears, especially here with the new kitten piece!

I suspect that those ship bases are the same Medium Nougat ones as in 71391 Bowser's Airship, but it is nice that we're continuing to see them in more sets, especially since that set only had one of each of these two particular hull segment molds. One of next year's sets that stood out to me as having a part with a lot of potential utility in Pirates builds is 43208 Jasmine and Mulan's Adventure from the Disney theme, which features a Reddish Brown recolor of part 67361. Sets have been using narrower dinosaur/dragon tail pieces as palm tree trunks for years now (and that continues a few of next year's sets like 41700 Beach Glamping and 60328 Beach Lifeguard Station), but this is a thicker piece that could be used either by itself (as it is in this set) or together with other curved tube pieces like 65473 to make a taller tree. On that note, the aforementioned Beach Lifeguard Station set introduces a Brick Yellow/Tan and Dark Red recolor of the sea turtle from Minifigures Series 21, and a Sand Yellow/Dark Tan recolor of 79387 from the Super Mario theme as its nest. But I could also see a nice curvy structural piece like that being useful for various sorts of shipbuilding-related uses. The 2x2 "splatter" tile that appears in many of next year's City sets could definitely also have utility in Pirates builds, particularly the Tr. Light Blue version that appears in a lot of firefighting sets, and could be generally useful for puddles. And the Toucan from the Minifigures Series 22 Ornithologist will be great for tropical island settings!

They could potentially recolor the ramp elements from this year's LEGO City Stuntz sets as a substitute, although that might call for some changes to the scale to ensure everything still fits together properly.

Keep in mind that EVERY wave of City Space sets so far (2011, 2015, 2019, and 2022) has had a new logo that's at least loosely inspired by the Classic Space logo: https://brickset.com/sets/theme-City/subtheme-Space Moreover, each City Space logo is based on the sorts off missions depicted in those sets. The 2011 and 2015 waves' logos each depicted a spacecraft orbiting Earth, the 2019 wave's logo depicts a spacecraft doing a flyby of Mars, and the 2022 wave depicts a spacecraft orbiting the moon. In addition to being a nostalgic throwback to the Classic Space logo (both as a fun reference for long-time fans and a hint that these Earth-based space programs will a precursor to LEGO Space's far-future space voyages). these are also probably meant as a reference to the various NASA mission insignias over the years. And those two sources of inspiration have a pretty natural synergy, since the Classic Space logo was itself likely at least partially inspired by the original 1959 NASA logo, as documented here.

I dunno, I think it could be possible to have circus sets that focus on stuff other than exotic animals. And in fact, this year's Friends "Magical Funfair" sets were pretty much a fusion of a traveling carnival and a traveling circus — they feature amusement park rides and booth/kiosk type attractions, but also a "big top" style performance venue, magic acts, and acrobatic acts. Some potential circus-oriented builds that could be incorporated into a set include a flying trapeze, tightrope, high dive, "human cannonball", clown car, trampolines, etc. And characters could include a ringmaster, clowns, strongman, horseback riders, acrobats, jugglers, a unicyclist, popcorn vendor, etc. If anything, removing the exotic animals also removes one of the features of a circus set or wave that would have likely been be most cost-prohibitive in years past. Something else they could do (which I know the Duplo theme has done in years past) is have two main sets (one focusing on terrestrial animal enclosures and one focusing on aquatic animal enclosures) which can function as a stand-alone zoo or aquarium, but can also be combined.

Yeah, I feel like that's a little optimistic — while the lobby stairs are certainly very large, the stairwells for the other floors are much smaller. And also, unlike a stairwell, an elevator shaft would also require a hallway in order to connect to both guest rooms. Yeah, I'd definitely like to see another Modular Building with an elevator, especially now that wheelchairs are becoming increasingly common in other themes. A properly wheelchair-accessible modular with ramps and/or elevators where necessary would be a great future addition to the series. Also, I feel like in the decade since the release of Town Hall, there have a lot of new parts introduced that could potentially open up new elevator design possibilities.

Whether it "fits with the other modulars" is largely a matter of opinion, though. For all you know, the designers already did put it through a review to make sure it fits with the other modulars, and reached a conclusion that it does. After all, they clearly had no objection to joining that side of the set to the police station on the back of the box. I understand that your tastes differ, but how well it suits your tastes is not a measure of how much thought or effort went into that aspect of the design. This is hardly a new complaint either! I remember people raising similar concerns about the left side of the Downtown Diner or the right side of the Parisian Restaurant, which likewise leave the walls of any adjacent building rather exposed. Same with the single-story market pavilion that makes up one half of the Market Street set. But plenty of AFOLs have either warmed up to that aspect of those sets, modded them, or skipped them entirely. Yep! Yesterday I actually thought I'd done my math wrong at first because the total I was getting for the floor space was so large! But I went back and double-checked today, and unless I made some huge error both times, I seem to have had it about right in the first place. Part of its spaciousness is no doubt because of how narrow the alley and much of the sidewalk space are compared to other buildings. But the total floor area also benefits from a few other characteristics of the design. For instance, the SNOT-based roof design eats up a LOT less interior space than either the studs-up roof design of the Cafe Corner or the hinged roof design of the Parisian Restaurant. In fact, the top floor interior is almost the same size as the middle floor interior, aside from the front corner being converted to an exterior balcony instead of a bay window. Another distinction of this set that stands out to me is that the hotel has a LOT more windows than previous corner buildings, since those have generally had few or now windows facing the back of the building. I think this helps it to feel much more "deluxe" than even a fully-furnished version of the hotel from the Cafe Corner would be! That said, when you exclude the dome and railings, this is also the shortest Modular Building set in terms of frontage. This is largely due to its relatively low ceilings and lack of a decorative parapet wall above the actual roof line.

Same as how Divers and Launch Command were Town sets, I suppose! This is certainly somewhat more futuristic than past Town/City space sets, since it's modeled on NASA missions that are still in the works and haven't actually been carried out. But in the time I've been on Eurobricks, I've seen numerous posts from Space fans arguing that sets or themes depicting the near reaches of our solar system or heavily influenced by real NASA spacesuits and spaceflight technologies don't count as "true" LEGO Space. Needless to say, all that applies just as much or more to these sets as to stuff like Life on Mars, Mars Mission, or the recent 3-in-1 Space sets. No? NASA is a government agency, so while they do ask for brands they work with to adhere to certain guidelines or even collaborate directly with them to ensure accuracy, they don't require any sort of licensing agreements or royalties for that sort of stuff. The City theme in general tends to have a relatively high price per piece despite being non-licensed, and that's ESPECIALLY true in the case of sets with lots of large structural elements and/or new molds. That seems to be the primary factor in this set's high price.

The upcoming Ninjago set 71767 includes some very cool new recolors, like the fence piece 32932 in Reddish Brown and the 4x10 gate piece 87601 in Bright Red! The design of the bridge in that set is also very nice, even though it only uses existing pieces. I also only just noticed the other day that the recently released Disney set The Madrigal House introduces a stand-alone silver fork piece (as opposed to the more brightly colored ones that appeared as part of the LEGO Friends kitchen accessories prepack from 2012). This fork nicely matches the silver spoon piece introduced in 2017, and also appears in a few of the recently revealed 2022 Friends sets. I feel like this piece will be very useful for dining scenes in late medieval or post-medieval settings. It also has me hoping that we'll soon see a Silver Metallic/Flat Silver version of either the knife from the aforementioned kitchen accessories prepack or the sprue with two knives which has appeared in Warm Gold as recently as this year. Also in the Disney theme, 43208 Jasmine & Mulan's Adventure includes the tail piece 67361, recolored in Reddish Brown for the first time as a palm tree trunk. I imagine it may also be useful for branches on other types of trees. The new "splatter" tile from next year's City sets interests me a lot for decorative detail I can definitely imagine the bright yellowish green/lime ones being useful for moss or algae, and the tr. light blue ones being useful for puddles of water. I hope that in the future we'll see that part in a color like Reddish Brown that can be used for mud puddles or other sorts of muck and grime. The Minecraft set 21183 The Training Grounds includes an unusual but potentially very useful part — a 1x1x2/3 brick with a hollow stud. In that set it's used as a square candle, which would also be a valid use for it in other themes. But I'll be interested to see it in more detail once reviews show up so I can get a sense of what other uses it might have.