Aanchir

Interesting perspective! Not to disagree with it, but it does present some ironic implications when you consider that in non-train contexts, we've recently seen Octan's clean energy offshoot "OctanE" ditch the brand's traditional green and red logos and livery in favor of a more "electrifying" Bright Yellow and Dark Azur color scheme. Then again, perhaps that isn't so ironic after all if you think of it as Octan using green and red to communicate speed and power while also downplaying their products' environmentally unfriendly reputation, then adopting a hip, new color palette to help market electric vehicles as a cool, contemporary option that isn't just for "tree-huggers" or "motorheads". On a related note that circles back to the topic of trains, I've recently been thinking about ways that that "OctanE" rebrand could show up in a train-related context, sort of like how railroad fuel tanker cars were one of the places where Octan branding has previously made frequent appearances. One possibility that occurred to me is a flatbed freight car hauling windmill components, much like the flatbed truck in 7747 Wind Turbine Transport. I'm sure there's probably other options out there as well which people who pay closer attention to trends in freight transportation might be able to suggest. It would be neat to see train sets reflect some of these sorts of modern trends we've seen in other City sets, especially considering that trains are often already a much "cleaner" and more energy-efficient form of transportation than road vehicles, so I imagine that trains and advances in environmentally friendly infrastructure would appeal to a lot of the same interests.

That's a valid perspective. I didn't mean for my comment to imply that I was judging you, just that that I agreed with your post but didn't feel quite so strongly about it myself. In hindsight, I probably could have worded that better. You also make a very good point about price discrepancies between countries not always being particularly consistent.

I get where you're coming from, but how is that really any different from the way that road baseplates used to appear in so many sets from the 70s/80s/90s? It's not as though the road pieces in sets like 6390, 6396, and 6397 didn't elevate their prices, but that hasn't stopped AFOLs here on Eurobricks from lambasting comparable town scenes, airports, and service stations from more recent years (even when they have lower prices overall and a far better price per piece after adjusting for inflation) for not including roads, runways, or driveways. It's one of those sorts of things you can't have both ways, no matter what road system happens to be the current standard at any given time. I realize, of course, that you've personally been fine with roads and stuff NOT being included in regular sets, since you prefer the "old school" road baseplates from your childhood over the more modern ones anyhow, and already have a considerable stockpile of them. But is it really so awful for today's kids to have access to sets with playable, interconnected street scenes, just like you did at their age? I wouldn't have put this so bluntly, but I agree with this point. 60291 is a huge step up from 8403 whether you measure by the size of the house itself, the amount of furnishings and play features contained within, or the "footprint" of the complete set — and all at close to the same total price. Even if you don't care for the road baseplates, it's not like replacing the surface of the street hockey court with standard plates or a baseplate (or even just having the "goals" sit loose in front of the house) would've made a huge difference to the set's price. The roads probably account for a bigger portion of the Skate Park's price, since it's a much smaller set in the first place, but I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the first stand-alone skate park set the City theme has had in its entire history. I mean, even as a builder who usually doesn't care too much when buildings and scenery are independent builds without a base linking them together, I feel like this would have been a much far less appealing and enjoyable set design if there were literally no surface included for the minifigs to skate on besides a few disconnected stunt ramps. It'd be like if an ice skating rink set didn't include any ice or a swimming pool set didn't include any water. Plus, in the grand scheme of things… City is the sort of theme where a LOT of sets can feel overpriced, even without any obvious justification. Certainly, I wouldn't have expected 60306 Shopping Street to cost $80,— but then, I also wouldn't have expected 60257 Service Station to cost $50, and that one didn't even include any roads or other large/"special" components to show for it! Personally, I feel like Shopping Street would have felt like the better value for money of those two even if it HADN'T included roads — at least it portrays a bigger, more varied, more heavily populated scene (sort of like 60233 Donut Shop Opening or 60026 Town Square, just with fewer and smaller shops and vehicles), rather than just one small shop and a couple of mid-size vehicles. Plus, Shopping Street's British and German prices feel considerably more equitable, whereas the Service Station's price seems rather steep in all three of those countries/currencies.

I think you should at least read the first part of the post, since that answers a question YOU asked. If you're going to ask questions and then be too lazy to read the answers you get, you're going to have a hard time getting anybody to care about your questions or concerns in the first place. This is certainly a fair point, although from my experience with touch controls on various devices (iPhone, Nintendo DS, Wii U, etc), muscle memory can go a long way to compensate for that as long as the controls themselves are positioned carefully enough for you to keep track of where they are on the device without looking. I'm sure for plenty of people, the additional options this system offers is a totally fair trade for the loss of haptic feedback, same as with any other sort of application on touch-screen devices. Also, the Powered Up app's custom controllers can also be combined with program blocks to create more varied outputs for each input. For instance, you can program a controller for a model with multiple independently driven wheels or tracks (or a model with separate motors for acceleration and steering) so that you can drive and steer the model using just one thumbstick, instead of needing separate inputs to independently change the speed or position of each motor. Likewise, you can program a controller for a train layout so that your trains will realistically slow to a stop when you shut off the engine, rather than needing to manually reduce the input speed at a more gradual rate just to keep the movement looking realistic. I understand if you don't care about these options and still prefer to keep using Power Functions. Nobody's forcing you to switch over to the new system, after all, just as nobody ever forced anyone to stop using the 9V system for Technic, Trains, or Mindstorms if that's what they already owned and preferred. But I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to expect LEGO to continue producing a system like Power Functions when they have a system that offers nearly all the same options as Power Functions and Mindstorms COMBINED, as well as lots of new possibilities that weren't offered by any of the systems that preceded it. I definitely wouldn't mind if LEGO introduced more physical remotes like that. I suspect a big part of why they didn't focus on that sort of stuff early on is that Power Functions components (and even Power Functions-based sets like 42095) were still available, and they wanted as many of the early Powered Up sets as possible to showcase the new stuff Powered Up could do, rather than stuff that was already possible using the previous system. After all, it'd be impossible for a general-purpose "analog" remote to replicate many of those computing-based functions like the programmable functions of #17101 and #75253 or the one-touch maneuvering and tilt tracking of #42099 and #42100. Next year would probably be as good a time as any for LEGO to introduce a simple analog remote like that, since once 42095 is actually retired (and not just "temporarily out of stock"), it'd be pretty fitting to replace it with a similar sort of "entry-level" remote control Technic vehicle.

The more expensive listings are is for the set (an individually-packaged XL motor), while the cheaper listings are for just the part itself. Chances are that most of the listings for the loose part are people who bought other Technic sets that include XL motors (possibly on sale or marked down in some way), and were able to make enough of a profit from the rest of the set's components that they don't need to charge quite so much for the motors themselves. By comparison, the stand-alone sets are usually only available directly from LEGO (either through LEGO Brand Stores, LEGO.com, or LEGO Shop at Home catalogs), so there are usually fewer sales and markdowns available for the individually-packaged version. As such, few BrickLink merchants are likely to offer the individually-packaged components for much cheaper than it would cost to buy them directly from LEGO. Power Functions components, Mindstorms components, and even 9V components are likewise often listed both as loose parts or as stand-alone sets. And unless the part in question was ONLY ever sold individually (like some of the more specialized Mindstorms sensors), the listings for the loose part will almost always be cheaper — especially if you buy them used rather than new. Hope that answers your question! I don't really have any Powered Up sets myself yet, but I downloaded the app a while back so I could check out the interface and see what options it offered, and I'd say that the drag-and-drop controls for the program blocks are about as easy to use on a touch-screen interface as they would be with a computer mouse. Also, since I first downloaded it, they even added the ability to design a custom controller for "remote control" type play, giving you much more flexible options than you would have with either a physical remote control or a predefined controller layout like they provide for specific types of sets. Some of the options include buttons, "thumbstick" style directional controls, rotating knobs, two-way and three-way switches, linear sliders, and letter and number markings to help label the different control options on your screen you have. All the control switches and knobs also come in a wide range of colors to help differentiate between them, and you can place them wherever you like on the screen. I suspect there's a bit of a learning curve to figuring out exactly what type of control setup is best for the sort of models and components you want to control, as well as how to assign the different control options to the motors in your model, but I feel like that's part of the fun — not unlike the challenge of figuring out how to build motorized MOCs that can perform particular actions in the first place. I definitely feel like LEGO put a lot of thought into trying to make this new system as versatile as possible, and I definitely think it's much more in line with the LEGO brand's open-ended design philosophy than requiring programmable and non-programmable kits to use entirely different systems of plugs and motors.

I'm with @Maple on this one — it's kind of weird to act like including a road system in more than just stand-alone road packs is "forcing" people to use it, especially when road baseplates showed up in larger sets pretty frequently back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. If you really prefer the old road baseplates as the foundation of your layout, there's literally nothing preventing you from removing the road plates from the sets they appear in and using them exclusively in non-road applications like driveways, parking lots, train platforms, or bridges. Also, I don't mean to be rude, but it's kind of grating when a lot of the most vocal complaints about the new system seem to come from people who have layouts large enough to require dozens of road baseplates. I mean, even having a collection that huge (not to mention a large enough living space for such expansive layouts) doesn't exactly make you sound like you lack the financial means of paying a higher price for road baseplates on the aftermarket if it's truly important to you. Many people's homes don't even have a spare room large enough to hold a layout that requires 40+ baseplates for its roads alone… and I say that even as a builder from a pretty wealthy background myself. For that matter, glancing at your layout on Instagram, you clearly already use the MILS standard in your layout, meaning you clearly had no objection to raising up your modulars by more than a full brick. So do you really believe you're in a position to preach to us about what a dreadful inconvenience it is to raise your Modular Buildings by a single plate (at the "added expense" of a handful of small plates per building)? I mean, all you'd actually actually need to do to use the new roads in your current layout, even in conjunction with the road baseplates you're currently using, is to raise them by one plate less than you've raised the rest of your layout! There's no requirement for you to "convert" your entire layout to use just one road system — after all, MILS is designed to allow builders to use road baseplates and more custom roads in the same layout! And that's not even mentioning how much you've paid to tile over the curbsides on your road baseplates. If you're already that comfortable paying extra for large quantities of Dark Stone Grey tiles, that would appear to negate your concern about the size of the new roads — it takes far fewer tiles to increase the width of the new roads by a couple of studs on either side than add six studs' worth of extra tiles on each side of all your road baseplates. All in all, I can understand if you don't like the style of the new roads, or if you don't like the way they're connected together. But frankly, your purported concern about the expense or amount of work it'd take to use them in a layout rings kind of hollow. And if you're going to persist treating modest costs like these like they're non-negotiable, even after you've voluntarily committed a greater expense and much more effort to raising your layout at least three times higher than the aforementioned "fix" would require, you're going to have a hard time earning your fellow builders' sympathy.

I agree — I'm not sure how likely an Octan tow truck would be, considering how much LEGO City's in-universe brands have diversified since back then, but it's certainly not at all difficult to imagine a vehicle like that in the future, particularly if it were inn the context of other Octan-related builds like a service station. I myself got to thinking recently about Octan's growing business as a "clean energy" supplier through their Octan-E division, and specifically wondering if the "Octan-E" equivalents might be possible for any of the other contexts where Octan branding used to frequently show up, such as railroad tanker cars. I suppose one possibility would be a train car that carries windmill components, like a railroad version of 7747 Wind Turbine Transport.

I wouldn't necessarily expect a City train station in 2021, since in the past they've usually come out either the same year as new City trains or one year after the last batch of new City trains. Based on that precedent and the four-year cycle that major LEGO City train releases tend to follow, I suspect it would be much more realistic to expect a new City train station in 2022. However, I can't really speak for other themes since as many train stations as there have been in recent years (between Winter Village, Disney, Harry Potter, and Hidden Side), they haven't had any sort of obvious release pattern. Getting a non-City train station next year is definitely possible in light of all those examples, but I have no idea how likely/unlikely it would be. And of course, how useful such a station would be for more general train layouts could depend heavily on what theme it belongs to! Personally, in a situation like this, I would not recommend paying inflated aftermarket prices for an older station like 60050. Instead, I'd encourage building a custom station that you would be happy with having in your layout (even if you're not perfectly happy with it and prefer to think of it as a placeholder for a "newer better version" in the futurre). You shouldn't have to spend a whole bunch to do this, since the most important features of any LEGO train station tend to be built from fairly basic parts like bricks, plates, slopes, windows, and doors. You could even copy the design of the main platform from an earlier train station set using that set's online instruction manual, making substitutions for parts you don't already have in the right sizes or quantities, and then come up with the station building from scratch, focusing on whatever sorts of features feel most important to you in a train station. Whenever a new train station you really like actually DOES come out, I think you'd have fewer regrets about buying it to replace a MOC you built at a minimal cost than to replace a set that you bought for an inflated aftermarket price.

Plenty of parents DO shop online, though — the events of this year have certainly made that obvious! And there are also of other possibilties for "expansion sets" besides Xtra polybags which WOULDN'T need to be LEGO Brand Retail exclusive. All in all, it just seems weird to me to act as though the new road system will not be useful to kids before they've even launched, just because one of the options it offers isn't included in the initial "expansion set". I mean, we've gone years with much more essential road features like traffic lights or road signs only available either in LEGO-exclusive accessory packs or as "add-ons" in specific Police, Town, or Great Vehicles sets. But I've never seen anybody here complain that it inconveniences kids not to include those with road baseplates (which the new system actually does). Yeah, from my understanding, the main reason they've only released roads as two-packs for so long is that they don't sell well enough in general to justify having four separate road baseplate sets/SKUs available at any given time. And I can't imagine that AFOL panic-buying would be enough to create greater sustained demand for road baseplates than there was before this new road system was available.

My point is less about equipment, faciliities, etc than the fact that reviewers like Jang come closer to the sort of personality that often attract kids to YouTubers than LEGO would likely be as able to manage by approaching the task from a more "corporate" mindset. And that sort of personality element can often be a bigger factor in what YouTube channels kids are interested in than production values. And while companies like LEGO might sometimes be quick to do stuff that they think will be good marketing whether or not there are already independent equivalents, I think that's often offset by the desire NOT to spend extra money trying to achieve the same outcomes that they're already getting via private individuals who don't even require payment from the company for what they do. I mean, it's not like Mojang's marketing department bothers filling the official Minecraft YouTube channel with the same sorts of "Let's Play" videos that so many Minecraft YouTubers already make, despite how popular those are with kids and how effective they are at helping to promote the game itself. From their perspective, that sort of redundancy would be a waste of resources. I could be totally wrong about the type of strategies they're interested in, of course! I realize this is all just speculation. But if there IS a reason that they don't do as many "speed build" videos as AFOL Youtubers do, that desire to avoid paying for stuff that they already get from fans (either completely independent ones, or ones that LEGO is already connected with via their "Recognized LEGO Fan Media" program) seems like it could be as likely a reason as any.

Aww, thank you for sharing that heartwarming moment! And don't worry, you're far from the only person who grew up with some weird interpretations of patterned elements like that back when the details were so heavily simplified compared to today's counterparts. For instance, for a long time I thought the Spyrius torso pattern was supposed to be a front-view picture of a spaceship, with the silver trapezoids near the center as its windscreens. And even more embarrassingly, I mistook the female Islander torso for some sort of abstract butterfly-shaped necklace, and the two black lines that define the figure's cleavage as its antennae (similarly, I mistook the gray floral brooch and black lines representing bunched-up fabric on the bosom of the female figure in the Pizza to Go set for a decorative spider pattern)! Obviously, I realized these errors long before reaching adulthood, but I still can't help but feel a bit silly about how convinced I was of these details at the time.

Okay, but counterpoint: in the new road system, marked bike lanes are optional, while in the old road system, they didn't exist whatsoever. And set-specific features that can be re-arranged or even entirely removed from a layout certainly seem like a considerable step up from the set-specific patterns that often appeared on baseplates back when they actually showed up more often in larger sets rather than just by themselves. Having grown up with sets of the 90s, I can attest that even these Dark Azur tiled bike lanes are a lot easier to expand on using loose parts (or even for LEGO to put bike lanes like this one in future set) than to expand on stuff like Paradisa's Light Green baseplates with cobblestone driveways or Light Yellow beaches, Wild West's Brick Yellow baseplate with wagon wheel tracks, or the various river baseplates in Town, Islanders, Forestmen, Wild West, and Adventurers sets which almost never matched one another. And honestly, it would not be hard at all for LEGO to replace the "Xtra" Bicycles polybag (which has already been retired in some countries) with a similar product that includes parts like the new bike lane tiles in addition to bikes, bike racks, helmets, a basket, etc. After all, they've already got a new Food polybag on the way to replace the previous one which launched alongside the Bicycles polybag. The fact that they went so far as to print the tile with the bike lane icon (in a set where all the other set-specific graphics are represented by a sticker sheet) makes it hard to imagine it NOT showing up again in other sets.

I can't think of any reason that this shield couldn't be molded in a transparent color. After all, several of the issues I'd previously been aware of with transparent parts — and often frustrated with myself — have been negated now that LEGO has switched their transparent material from polycarbonate (PC) to methyl methacrylate-acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (MABS). As the name implies, the new material shares a lot of its chemical properties with the ABS that LEGO uses for solid-colored bricks. If the properties are similar enough, LEGO might even be able to produce transparent versions of that shield on the same mold they use for solid-colored ones. That said, please keep in mind that I know next to nothing about the chemical engineering or mechanical engineering considerations involved in LEGO production aside from what I've seen shared by people more knowledgeable than me!

I was only mentioning counterfeiters/bootleggers in response to @Lord Insanity's claim that by bringing back rare parts like train windows, LEGO would be "removing the monetary benefits of bootlegging in the first place." I agree that sites like Bluebrixx seem to be pretty careful about not stocking actual counterfeit versions of current or recent LEGO products (probably because as a European company, they could quickly get in hot water with customs agencies by importing counterfeit goods), but some of their suppliers like Decool are a little more suspect since they also produce actual counterfeit products in addition the stuff that Bluebrixx carries. Needless to say, figuring out which third-party manufacturers are trustworthy isn't always cut-and-dry. In any case, the topic of third-party bricks was pretty off-topic for a thread about 2021 LEGO trains to begin with — it's safe to say that anybody expressing hopes for LEGO to introduce or reintroduce certain parts isn't concerned with what other brands carry parts like them. Rather, they're talking about ways they'd like to see LEGO themselves improve their product offerings. So while it's understandable to bring up other toy companies' products as a point of reference for what LEGO ought to be doing, it doesn't make much sense to drop links to or recommendations of non-LEGO products as if it somehow fulfills the hopes people have brought up in this thread.

Depends how you define "similar quality" — designers clearly didn't mind using more standard window panes and frames for the coach in the 2018 Hogwarts Express set, even though the coaches from the films had multi-pane windows which older depictions of the Hogwarts Express portrayed using the older train windows. Likewise, both the Disney Train and Winter Holiday Train used standard window panes and window frames, despite both those sets having a 12+ recommended age range. So it certainly doesn't seem like they object to compromising on minor details like that for sets portraying specific trains, OR for train sets aimed at teen and adult audiences. And let's be real — even with its advanced building level, it's not as though the Emerald Night was free of compromises or inaccurate details in the first place. So even a designer of Jamie Berard's caliber probably wouldn't have been too bothered if he'd needed to use a different style of window on this sort of coach. That's fair, and I can't fault you for that, nor would I have any objection to other companies copying parts like this long after any sort of IP protections on them have expired. But that's all the more reason that LEGO reintroducing parts like the train windows wouldn't really hurt counterfeiters, since their business revolves around copying other companies' products whether or not a "legitimate" equivalents are available from the original manufacturer.

Thank you for sharing your experiences! I definitely agree with a lot of the points you make, and that final point in particular is something I think we ALL need to remind ourselves of sometimes! After all, it's very easy to begin thinking of adult-oriented sets in general as stuff designed specifically for AFOLs like us, when really, a lot of them might be aimed at a much wider range of adult customers, including adults who have never picked up a brick before, haven't built anything with LEGO since their childhood, or don't ever tend to spend any time at all in "toy stores". Beyond the sorts of "user-friendly" design considerations that LEGO has adopted in their sets, packaging, and instructions, this is also one of the reasons that a lot of LEGO's adult-oriented products and marketing efforts — for example, the Art, Architecture, Forma, BrickHeadz, and Botanical Collection product lines; or the packaging design for their 18+ sets; or marketing efforts like the LEGO Masters TV series or the Levi's, Adidas, and Ikea brand partnerships — can often seem so far removed from the sets and themes (or changes to existing sets and themes) that we might prefer for LEGO to focus on.

I mean, it clearly hasn't been a major problem for the designers of official LEGO trains. As frustrating as it might be to lose some of the details like molded divisions between panes or rounded corners, the specificity of those details and proportions was at odds with the much wider variety of real-world train window designs which existed even at that time. Also, many real-world trains have moved away from these sorts of rounded windows with sliding windowpanes, so while in earlier decades they would have made the sets feel more authentic to buyers no matter where they lived or how old they were, that is no longer strictly the case today. If LEGO really wanted to evoke that style of window in a modern set, they'd still have plenty of alternative ways of doing so which wouldn't require a bespoke mold — such as printing a rounded frame and windowpanes on a transparent panel or window pane mold. And in the grand scheme of things, these are only one of the many sorts of highly specific molds that LEGO has moved away from over the past couple of decades. The same can be said for loads of other things that once had specialized molds tailored to them: rope bridges hovercraft skirts porthole windows tow truck booms flagpoles windmill blades flatbed trailers sink basins train station platforms sports fields …and so forth. It's not like LEGO no longer cares about set designers or MOCists being able to include these sorts of features in their creations — they've just decided that the advantages of building all that stuff using less context-specific parts outweigh the advantages of having molds specifically tailored to those purposes. The monetary benefits of bootlegging are overwhelmingly driven by copying existing part and model designs, cutting out a lot of the R&D expenses that legitimate building toy brands like LEGO, Mega Construx, K'nex, Cobi, and Erector/Meccano. I understand that YOUR interest in counterfeit products is probably driven largely by the parts or sets they produce that are no longer available in current LEGO products — but that's a much smaller part of counterfeiters' business model (no matter what type of product they specialize in) than the cost savings from having so much of the work of coming up with highly desirable products already done for them at another company's expense. After all, if counterfeiters only existed because of "rare" sets or parts that LEGO no longer produces, why would so many counterfeiters waste their resources on copies of CURRENT sets and minifigures?

I always recognized it as a zipper, even though my only Futuron figs were from secondhand lots my folks got at yard sales… after all, besides the toothed pattern, it also has a zipper pull clearly visible on the left shoulder Previously, the green "neo-futuron" fig introduced as a LEGO store display in the LEGO City set 60097 retained the zipper pull while covering up the zipper itself with a strip of fabric. I found that update really surprising, since it sort of undermined the appeal of getting that particular spacesuit design in a new color, but it did fit with the sort of "modernized throwback" approach that we've seen on a lot of other minifigures based on "classic" equivalents. That said, I prefer the way the Space Police Guy's torso is modernized in a way that keeps the old suit's defining elements like the gold zipper more visible. A greater frustration I have with that particular minifigure is that the "riot gear" makes me a little uncomfortable, particularly since the geometric designs of the riot shield markings are the only indication that it belongs specifically to a sci-fi setting. I honestly would have been more comfortable if the figure carried a transparent "energy/laser shield" of some kind. Plus, while the body armor is nice and versatile (especially with such simple gold Classic Space printing), the figure looks both less aggressive AND more iconic/distinctive without it. So I would have probably have preferred if the designers had chosen to replace it with an oxygen tank, jetpack, or even protective gear that only covers the shoulders. Also, even though the blaster piece is not genuinely realistic, it feels more aggressive than I'd prefer to see in a police context. I greatly preferred how the Space Police 3 officers carried simple freeze rays that more closely resembled old-school LEGO Space ray guns with big colorful lights at the end. Not only do those sorts of features feel less blatantly "gun-like", but it also evokes a very retro, pulp magazine sort of charm, as opposed to the edgier, more serious tone evoked by this twin-barrel "space gun".

You know, I was a bit bothered by the proportions of the car wash in the Town Center, but I think it makes more sense after realizing that LEGO probably intends for it to be compatible with both cars and trucks. Most real-world automatic car washes have a much smaller height clearance, but a lot of kids would probably be frustrated about a LEGO City car wash not being compatible with a lot of their City vehicles, even if you explained to them that car washes in real life often have the same restrictions. As tall as the car wash in this set is, it still has a height clearance of only ten studs, whereas the Holiday Camper Van has a total height of nine bricks and two plates tall — just small enough to fit through without scraping against the roof! So I definitely get the sense that the designers put a lot of thought into this aspect of the set's design. Yeah, I've definitely felt more motivated to start thinking more about designing city layouts than I have in years! Previously, trying to come up with a road system I'd be happy with was as far as I actually got in terms of city planning, so having an option that allows for most of the sort of features I wanted to see that road baseplates is finally helping me move forward with some of those ideas. That said, since my wife and I share a 1-bedroom apartment and recently adopted two kittens, it might be some time before I feel comfortable trying to build any sort of elaborate layout IRL. Presently the LEGO sets we have here with us are limited to what we can fit on top of our bookshelves. But then, those sort of space constraints are yet another advantage of this new system compared to road baseplates — a straight row of road baseplates along the front of this top surface would take up a good 2/3 of the space available before I could even add any buildings!

The Emerald Night, Maersk Train, and Horizon Express were ALSO $100 (or more) without tracks or power. After all, all three of them (and the Crocodile Locomotive) had over 1000 pieces. think you may need to revise your expectations for train pricing, especially at a Creator Expert/18+ building level. It's not as though LEGO train sets have ever been cheap! Even https://brickset.com/sets/118-3/ back in 1969 cost the equivalent of over $140 at the current value of the US dollar! And don't forget, part of why the Saturn V was able to be as large as it was for just $120 is that it has a very repetitive inventory, with massive quantities of fairly basic parts. Train models tend to have much more varied textures, colors, and details, rather than smooth surfaces that can be built from hundreds of identical pieces in common colors. I would love for the 1x3x3 window frames to show up in more colors! I don't expect LEGO to bring back the old train windows anytime soon, though, since they have become really committed to standardizing their window and door pieces (especially compared to the 90s when they had so many window pieces that weren't compatible with one another despite being the same height and width). The closest I think we could realistically expect would probably be a window panel with the same rounded corners, but designed to fit existing window pane elements (like how 60032, 60592, 61345, 90195, and the new 3x3x2 curved window mentioned on the previous page can all use any of the current 1x2x2 window pane pieces). On that note… I wonder if LEGO would ever consider introducing a new train door piece that features a more standardized window pane. While I know a lot of people would lament the loss of the textured window pane, it might bee much easier for LEGO to include a design like that in more sets, since it would share more components with other current sets. I would also love if LEGO came out with a way of making sliding doors for subways, buses, trams, or automatic shop doors. It would be great for making doorways that are more accessible for wheelchairs or larger sorts of luggage than is possible with 4-stud-wide doorframes, but more compact and without needing as much clearance in front as a pair of train doors placed side by side like in 60154. I've tried to explore ways of doing this with existing molds, like the sliding door technique used in the Ninjago City sets (a 1x4x6 window pane between two rail pieces), but the end result ends up feeling awfully tall by LEGO train standards and doesn't end up really resembling the sort of doors I'm used to seeing on real trains and subways. Another easy way that LEGO could introduce doors with a wider frame could be if they introduced a set of french doors for the 1x6x6 window frame (42205), which like the 1x3x3 window frame is a recent addition to the current window and door system which has not been used very widely. But again, this might be too tall to realistically use on LEGO trains.

They still haven't got this on any sort of universal level, but there are some current sets which offer an option LEGO has been testing out called "LEGO Instructions PLUS" where you scan them using the LEGO Life app to view versions of the instruction steps that you can turn around to any angle and that I think shows the parts for those steps floating into place. If I'm remembering right, the LEGO Boost and LEGO Super Mario sets also have interactive instructions like this in their respective apps. I haven't tried it out too much myself, though, so I can't speak for its ease of use on a lot of levels. I built one of the Super Mario sets with my twin brother and I preferred using the digital manual on my laptop (which is closer to a print manual format) for that than the app, but that's mostly because it was easier to look at one large screen than pass a tiny smartphone back and forth. If we had a larger tablet, perhaps I'd have been fine with looking at the interactive instructions together on that screen. I suspect one reason that LEGO hasn't done a whole lot of building videos like Jang's is that they know that fan reviewers already do this, and realize that it would not be much benefit to them to compete with their own fans on that front when it would probably end up feeling less authentic and engaging than a video by a fellow fan who has more experience filming and hosting that particular type of video. But they do have a lot of videos on their YouTube channel that I haven't paid a lot of attention to, so maybe they are already moving more in that sort of direction than I realize.

Nice! Brickset and New Elementary have also shared their reviews of 60304, though not of the other sets that include these road plates: https://brickset.com/article/56694/review-60304-road-plates https://www.newelementary.com/2020/12/lego-city-review-mocs-60304-road-plates.html New Elementary's review in particular has some very some nice photos illustrating different ways of using or arranging the road plates, as well as the easiest way to line them up with Modular Buildings.

Truth be told, I've seen these same sort of disagreements about LEGO Space sets. Particularly comments insisting that themes like Life On Mars, Mars Mission, Space Police 3, and Alien Conquest shouldn't count as "real" space themes because they are written or implied to take place on or near Earth (for Space Police 3 the only hint of this sort is an Earth-like blue-green planet in the background of some sets' box art), and/or because a lot of Space Police 3's vehicles were too closely inspired by Earth cars and trucks to believably be the work of space dwellers whose society developed independently from modern-day Earth culture. Obviously, there's never been any sort of official lore to suggest that LEGO Space HAS to obey either of those rules, but I guess some people were so deeply committed to those sorts of inferences/generalizations they picked up about past Space themes that the idea of any REAL Space theme not adhering to them became anathema. Just today I saw a complaint on Facebook that LEGO keeps making new themes when they have thousands of fans "screaming for Space (not the weird alien space creatures/ships), Pirates, or Castle themes". Apparently, this particular person either doesn't consider themes with alien creatures or ships "real" Space themes, or just doesn't consider them Space themes worth his or his fellow AFOLs' time and interest. I doubt a lot of kids would share the perspective "alien creatures don't belong in a Space theme", but to some AFOLs I guess that is still a pretty big deal, even more than two decades after Space themes like U.F.O. and Insectoids first broke that barrier! Related to your point, I can speak from experience about just how deep my generation's nostalgia for the Bionicle theme often runs. And I know a lot of us would feel just as weird as I do about reading YouTube or social media comments from current or former Ninjago fans talking about how they miss the "classic" Ninjago sets and story arcs of 2011–2013. But would any of us have felt weird about describing the Black Seas Barracuda as a "classic Pirates set" in 1998/1999, shortly after the Pirates theme entered its first lengthy hiatus? I've seen many "modern" themes like Ninjago, Legends of Chima, or Nexo Knights criticized with claims that nobody decades from now will remember them just as fondly as current AFOLs remember classic LEGO Space, Castle, or Pirates sets, but time and time again we've seen how untrue that really is. Just look at how many LEGO Castle fans openly wax nostalgic about the 2007–2009 "Fantasy Era" sets and consider them (at least on a conceptual level) the closest that LEGO has come to their vision for an ideal LEGO Castle theme. LEGO themes continue to change, but the nostalgia we experience as human beings remains a constant.

Oh, for certain. I think the biggest strength of LEGO Creator from an "encouraging creativity" standpoint is that the more complex or specific builds can help to expand people's repertoire of building techniques and ways of using particular parts. Or as some of my art teachers might've put it, Creator encourages more creativity with the FORMAL parts of the creative process (i.e. how many different types of parts you're able to use or ways you're able to use them), while Classic tends to encourage more creativity with the CONCEPTUAL parts of the creative process (i.e. how many different types of subject matter or ideas you can come up with to portray through your builds), despite using a more basic slate of parts.

Good question! I'm not exactly sure what the reasons would've been behind that decision, but I definitely feel like the "Build Your Own Monster" set uses parts that feel very assorted/miscellaneous (like the sort you might find on a Pick-A-Brick wall or an assorted brick bucket) and not carefully tailored to any particular sort of subject matter. By contrast, the German Shepherd seems like the part shapes and colors are more specifically chosen for how well they build a German Shepherd or other specific real-life creatures. The packaging art for this set is also a lot different than Creator 3-in-1 packaging in the way it shows the loose parts in a pile, with thought bubbles around the model designs as if they're all just ideas of stuff you can build with those bricks. So even if it ends up including instructions, this packaging feels like it's more actively inviting people to just build whatever they like, however they like it. To put that another way… if the designer of this set had intended this to be a Creator 3-in-1 set, I think they might've chosen less "random" parts and instead picked parts that reflect the features kids EXPECT to see on particular, familiar types of monster (like, say, a swamp monster, an ogre/troll, or a dragon/wyvern). And honestly, after typing that out, I realize that probably could have made for a very interesting set in its own right! But it would have probably have a considerably different look and play experience than what this set offers.