Aanchir

Yeah, either 45-degree or 30-degree curve segments could be quite nice. I went ahead and sketched up an example of what 30-degree curve segments could look like using stud.io's parts designer: Three 30-degree segments this size create a curve with the same 16-module center radius as the old 90-degree curved road baseplates, and the road markings are spaced about as far apart as they would be on a road made with the straight road segments. There are probably many further improvements that could be made, such as perhaps making the studded areas wider along the outside of the curve and narrower along the inside (currently, 2x4 tiles attached to the inside of the curve would collide with each other). If you were to opt for a 45-degree road segment instead, you'd probably want a tighter curve (with, say, an 8-stud center radius) so that the lane markings don't appear to be spaced too far apart compared to the rest of the roads. However, on a 90-degree curve, that might be too tight for larger trucks to manage along the inside lane unless you placed some straight segments in between the two 45-degree segments, which would result in the roads at the beginning and end of the curve not neatly aligning with each other on the grid. Conversely, you could use a 22.5 degree curve like LEGO train tracks do, which would involve a larger radius than the old road baseplates had. Obviously, there are drawbacks to designing curves in this "style", regardless of the angle — for instance, you can't expand the number of lanes like you could with a straight road. So far, I have no idea whether there's any way around this. EDIT: Just saw the car transporter pics. Great design! Simple yet effective.

I mean, for what it's worth, there's no reason to assume LEGO considers Nexo Knights a failure — particularly since as recently as summer 2018, at least one of the designers seemed to suggest otherwise: Certainly, some folks at LEGO probably had higher hopes for the theme, particularly its tie-in media like the books, app, and TV series. But I can't really imagine them interpreting that as a problem with Castle themes more broadly. And anyway, very few themes are expected to last more than two and a half or three years, so ultimately Nexo Knights lasted about as long as it was probably intended to, just with a considerably reduced presence in its final year. Furthermore, AFOLs have pretty much ALWAYS reacted negatively (at least at first) to "big bang" themes like Power Miners, Atlantis, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, Elves, and Nexo Knights (as well as "action/adventure themes" more generally like Agents, Hidden Side, Ultra Agents, Monkie Kid, etc). Obviously, not everybody in the community hates these sorts of themes, and some people's opinions of them can end up improving over time. But chances are, LEGO wouldn't make themes like those at all if they were particularly concerned about whether AFOLs would like them, let alone continue releasing new ones every few years.

Given that the sales of the previous Creator Expert trains were apparently somewhat underwhelming, I think it makes sense that LEGO might've been reluctant to let their expectations for that set get too high. After all, there were two new LEGO trains last year (the Disney Train and the Hidden Side Ghost Train Express) and three the year before (the Hogwarts Express and the City Passenger and Cargo Trains). That's considerably more than there had been in the years leading up to the release of the Horizon Express, so clearly a "starving" fanbase wasn't any sort of guarantee that an AFOL-targeted train set like this would fly off the shelves.

There was also a medieval-fantasy type post office in The Secret Market Place from LEGO Elves, and a more modern post office as one of the alternate builds of Toy and Grocery Shop from LEGO Creator. But you're right that there haven't been any in Town or City since the 80s, which is a bit of a shame. On the plus side, this year's City lineup includes a house for the first (and only) time since 2010, so that seems like a good sign that the designers are still open to releasing sets based on stuff that's otherwise been conspicuously absent in recent years.

Not gonna lie, without any other context I would've assumed the yellow containers were urine samples! But on second thought I sort of doubt that would be a realistic assumption for this set's 1940s-ish time period. The main thing that Transparent Yellow 1x1 bricks tend to be used for in other themes is lightbulbs or lanterns, and the only time I've seen them with a gray or white cap in a set is as a Gatorade-type sports drink in Heartlake Skate Park. The ruby could be a reference to any number of sets or themes, though the Re-Gou ruby is definitely the most nostalgic possibility, and could also serve as a very topical reference to this year's Haunted House set. Likewise, while the cap is pretty common in its own right, one particularly noteworthy LEGO criminal it's connected with is The Brickster from the LEGO Island video games and the ill-fated LEGO Island Xtreme Stunts theme from 2002.

Charming! I love the old-timey paddy wagon and the use of the gold filigree parts underneath the car port. The colors also give it a bright and festive look which suits the Winter Village series. The snowman holding a pair of handcuffs, the stocking full of coal in the jail cell, and the crook attempting to steal presents add a delightful touch of humor. The spinning light is a great way to incorporate a light brick in a way that suits the subject matter, though a part of me wonders if there might be any way to couple that function with Transparent Red or Transparent Blue filters to simulate the idea of the light flashing red and blue like on a police car. Similarly, while I love the colored lights you put on the Christmas tree, I kind of think it'd benefit from attaching an actual star-shaped piece at the top in some way that would evoke the appearance of a police badge. Overall, though, this is a great MOC with lots of festive charm! It fits in wonderfully with the Winter Village series, and employs enough humorous juxtaposition of policing and holiday motifs to retain a lighthearted feel, despite presenting more of a conflict scenario present than you'd ordinarily see in other Winter Village sets.

To be honest, I have no idea whether LEGO intends to do away with baseplates at any point. It's entirely possible that they might if, for instance, the thermoforming plates they use to manufacture them finally wear out, or if their ongoing sustainability research ends up concluding that they can't find a sustainable equivalent of the material used for baseplates, or if some other manufacturing-related issue arises that we're not privy to. At the same time, baseplates only showing up in a handful of sets per year has already been the status quo since around 2012. So for all we know, LEGO might be perfectly fine continuing to use them on a similarly infrequent basis going forward. They certainly haven't shown any urgent desire to do away with baseplates in the few sets and themes which still use them. As for building cities in this system, it's not really any more difficult than it would've been with baseplates. And in fact, it's totally possible to design a town that adheres to the same sort of 32x32 grid as road base plates would have. It just gives you the additional option of working with smaller grid units, along with other variations on the standard layout. Funnily enough, when you do a Google search for "how to build a LEGO tabletown", an eleven-year-old Eurobricks topic in the first page of results actually addresses a lot of the same sorts of issues that have come up in discussions fo the new road system: For starters, the original post raises concerns about the fact that the built-in curbs on road baseplates extend so far beyond the curbs of modular buildings, one of the things I've frequently mentioned as a strength a more customizable road system like this new one might offer over the previous system. The first reply, by @Ralph_S, goes right ahead and points out how his LUG uses tile-based roads at their events, and how those sorts of roads can still be used together with standard baseplates by resting the baseplates on top of a layer of studs. The second reply, by @Joebot, mentions how many times LEGO changed the design standards of their road baseplates over the years and the inconvenience that could present even for builders who already had a substantial stockpile of roads. Another reply mentions how the author started buying road baseplates intending to build a layout around them, but then opted instead for brick-built roads. It mentions many of the strengths brick-built roads could offer beyond the lack of a built-in curb such as customizable road length, lane width, number of lanes, crosswalk placement, road stripes/markings, elevation, and aesthetics. Needless to say, I wouldn't be surprised if reading Eurobricks topics like this one was part of what convinced me so many years ago that LEGO ought to implement a new road system that would offer many of those same advantages and opportunities, without the intimidating cost and complexity of fully brick-built roads!

The overlord dragon's wings are definitely some of the most skeletal we've seen in years, but the Legacy Golden Dragon's wings were pretty skeletal themselves— even though the Golden Dragon had much more solid-looking wings on screen than the Overlord Dragon did. With that in mind I'm reluctant to judge this design too harshly. After all, the Legacy sets in general are generally re-imaginings of stuff from the earlier seasons, not screen-accurate replicas. The new Overlord minifigure is a big surprise to me, since I expected them to reuse the existing design for a third year. Ironically, despite this being a Season 3 inspired set, this version feels much more directly inspired by Season 4's Digital Overlord than the one from previous Legacy sets, considering the helmet mold, golden shoulder armor, and number of arms. Not that I'm complaining, though! It's cool that it's an actual new minifigure design, especially one that better reflects so many of the scenes the Overlord appears in!

For starters, the majority of sets and themes these days don't use baseplates. So it was probably a higher priority for the designers to begin bringing their roads in line with the same standard as the majority of their other sets than to focus on making them "backwards compatible" with a standard which had already been largely abandoned. It's not as though this is the first time that LEGO updated their road standard without regard for "backwards compatibility", after all. The same can be said for the three times that LEGO expanded the standard width of the roads themselves on their road baseplates. Furthermore, one of the greatest strengths of the new road standard is that it includes connection points on both sides (above and below). This is a huge step forward for being able to elevate or hinge roads while keeping them securely attached to and "in system" with the rest of the model. But this would not be feasible if the new roads were designed with a thickness of 1 1/2 plates. Not only would that not leave any room for connection points underneath the recessed portion of the roadways, but it would make it difficult to neatly connect parts attached underneath the roadways with parts attached over top of them. The proportions of the new road modules also make it extremely easy to create "custom" road modules using standard plates, tiles, and curved slopes, without having to worry about the limited range of sizes and shapes that traditional baseplates come in.

I wouldn't even say that Jamie's modulars are any more similar to each other in style than to those that came after them. I mean, Parisian Restaurant, Detective's Office, Grand Emporium, and Fire Brigade are every bit as different from each other as they are from the Downtown Diner or Police Station. And as Jamie has mentioned, some of his Modular Buildings like Fire Brigade and Detective's Office got heavy criticism specifically because fans felt they DIDN'T match the style they'd come to expect from the rest of the series. The long and short of it is that there aren't really any characteristics which clearly and consistently differentiate Jamie's Modular Buildings from those of other designers. One of Jamie's strengths as a designer is in his creative versatility and ability to defy expectations. So I don't think there's any reason to assume that a diner, garage, bookshop, or police station designed by Jamie would have "fit together" with the other modulars any better than the ones that actually ended up getting released.

Right! Thank you for the reminder. I'm surprised I forgot so easily, because I was looking at interior pics of the Brick Bank only a couple weeks ago to refresh my memory about how the chimney and fireplace were constructed.

Which other Modular Buildings had a typewriter in them? I've definitely forgotten and it wasn't one of the first few I checked after reading this post (Detective's Office or Town Hall). That's not to say I'd be at all surprised if I misremembered that detail. And fair point about the film projectors, too, though like typewriters, film is still fairly ubiquitous in media (both as an object and as a symbol associated with video and motion pictures in general). That definitely does a lot to ensure that adults of any age will recognize what a film projector is for (though I have no idea whether the same is true of younger kids). Oh yeah, I definitely agree. I was just mentioning that I had a hard time imagining what you'd put inside one as big and majestic-looking as the one in the photo that @scottwb2010 shared. But a 16-wide downstairs post office with an apartment or even some other type of business upstairs could work quite well. And the post office in your link definitely has the sort of look that would be lovely to see in a set! While it doesn't look like any of the post offices I grew up seeing, it definitely brings back memories of at least a few different souvenir shops or stationary stores I've been to, which I suppose often stock similar enough sorts of products that it's not hard for me to imagine how the interior might be furnished. You certainly don't have to tell me twice that smaller, cozier sorts of homes and businesses can still make for a lovely modular building in their own right! In fact, the sets that are broken up into smaller properties like the ones you mention often tend to be some of my favorites. At its best, a set with that format functions as sort of a microcosm of the entire neighborhood, and a glimpse into the lifestyles of the people who live there.

Very fair! Even my old hometown that I mentioned used to have a fancier post office building itself, but it was converted into the City Hall. That particular building was an example of American neoclassical/"federal style" architecture which would be much too similar to the Town Hall set to really be viable for a new Modular Building, but there's definitely a lot of ways that the renaissance revival style in that photo you shared could be adapted into something very fresh and striking! I'm not too familiar with how a post office building that grand would be furnished aside from the public office and sorting facility, since obviously none of the post offices I've been to within my lifetime would require a three-story building to handle their operations. I went ahead and read a little more into the history of that particular building, and a few particularly exciting features it mentions are a telegraph room and an instrument room, which are connected via pneumatic tube. But as awesome as that would be to see realized in a set, I have to wonder how many buyers would be familiar enough with those technologies to understand and relate to the function they perform within a post office. Speaking as a 29 year old (which I know is probably very young compared to some of us here), the only context in which I'm used to seeing pneumatic tubes is in the drive-thru lane at certain banks. Most previous instances of technology in the modular buildings are simply "vintage" equivalents of technology buyers can still recognize from today's world — cars, trucks, refrigerators, cash registers, microphones, jukeboxes, gumball machines, parking meters, etc. If I'm not mistaken, the typewriters, record player, and reel-to-reel tape recorder in the Police Station set are the first example we've seen of technologies that have been almost entirely displaced in the digital age. Would pneumatic tubes for inter-office communications be a bridge too far?

Honestly, I don't get why everybody seems to imagine that bringing Jamie back as the designer would resolve some of their current frustrations, when a lot of those frustrations (interior walls not reaching the ceiling above, properties 10 studs wide or narrower, smaller properties unrealistically carved out of larger ones, heavy emphasis on storylines/mystery scenarios, etc) are traits that first began showing up in sets that Jamie himself designed! After all, Jamie was the lead designer of both Detective's Office and Brick Bank, the two sets with the most similar design philosophy to this one. In fact, this is the first time characteristics like narrow facades have shown up in a set that Jamie DIDN'T design. So what reason is there to think that these traits are a product of his absence, rather than a product of the influence he's had as the forerunner and design manager of the more recent Modular Building designers? It's entirely possible that having him as the designer of future buildings could result in MORE of these traits people have been criticizing, not fewer. Make no mistake: the admiration that AFOLs (myself included) have for Jamie's brilliance as a designer is very well deserved, and this post is not in any way intended as a criticism of the caliber of his work. That said, the characteristics of the Modular Buildings he worked on are not as different from those of the past few years as a lot of people often seem to imagine. And in fact, he has spoken in several different interviews about how much criticism some of his buildings like Fire Brigade originally got (despite how popular they would end up being after their release), as well as how similar many of those criticisms have been to the way fans have criticized more recent buildings.

I don't think the lack of a modular post office really needs any further explanation than "the designers have always settled on other types of building instead". After all, there's nothing about a post office that would make it fundamentally more appealing addition to a modular street than most of the sorts of buildings LEGO HAS already focused on. And even now, there are plenty of other potential Modular Buildings besides a post office that could still appeal to lots and lots of people — like, say, a clinic, a museum, a newspaper press, a hotel, a pharmacy, an electronics store, or a toy store. I also feel like post offices often lack a distinctive architectural style that might help make them a standout choice from a visual or structural standpoint. The nearest post office to the house where I grew up is in the back room of a building which was built as a supermarket, but converted to a hardware store the same year that I was born. Other post offices in that area include one in a rather bland-looking brutalist building, one in a shopping center, and one in a shopping mall. Needless to say, even though post offices serve a tremendously important function, their exteriors often fail to make a strong visual statement. Honestly, as much as I'd love to see a post office in a future modular building set, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it ended up being a "secondary" property like the laundromat in the Brick Bank set, the barbershop in the Detective's Office set, or the donut shop in this latest set. It's definitely very cool! LEGO previously used the same technique for the bas relief panels in 21036 Arc de Triomphe from the LEGO Architecture line. I saw somebody comment either here or on Brickset (don't have the patience right now to dig back and remind myself who posted it where) that they felt it would have worked with the old-style jumper plates but is uglier with the new style, but I feel the opposite — the gentler angles and more varied degrees of projection from the inner surface to suggest the appearance of a relief sculpture, whereas I feel like the older style's simpler geometry would look less decorative and more utilitarian.

Some neat building details that caught my eye include: The cornices along the roofline, which use the new inverted arch together with unprinted Minecraft wolf heads, of all things! The quoins along the left and right sides of the station's facade The 1.5 x 1.5 corner arches forming the capital of each column, with offset plates/tiles joining them together over top of each window The wooden support beam underneath the window air conditioner. This one took some time for me to figure out how it was even attached! The entirely SNOTted staircase construction with triangular tiles along the inside edge The corrugated steel rooftop water tank The SNOTted window trim around the apartment's front window The scalloped edge of the donut shop's awning The stacks of gear plates as decorative shrubs The crawling ivy that wraps around the police station's front left corner. As far as interiors are concerned, there's still quite a bit that the official pics don't show from great angles, such as: The record player in the thief's apartment The water cooler in the police station lobby The crawl space below the police station The third-floor interrogation room and bathroom Any and all features inside the Sand Green building's attic, since it's pretty spacious and has a door that opens into the police station. Maybe a utility closet or evidence lockup? EDIT: An evidence locker is mentioned in the set description, so that might be exactly what that room is. All of these details are currently only visible as glimpses through the upstairs windows or from a top-down perspective in some of the lifestyle photographs. I suspect we might not get a clearer look at them until a designer video and/or reviews of the set show up online.

Buildings that narrow might not be particularly common in real life, but they do exist, especially in historic cities! For example, these two articles mention a few examples in NYC: https://untappedcities.com/2013/08/15/5-of-manhattan-narrowest-buildings/ https://untappedcities.com/2012/11/15/the-skinny-shops-of-columbus-avenue/ Personally I like the sets that put more than one building on a baseplate in this manner. Realistic or not, it helps to break up the feeling of monotony you'd get if EVERY building on a modular street were exactly 16 or 32 studs wide. Plus, a lot of the sorts of businesses that LEGO puts in these narrower buildings don't need a whole lot of square footage to cover the essential details people would expect to see inside. So fitting them in a narrower space helps make the "world" of the modular buildings feel a little more complete without having to dedicate a full 16 studs' worth of width to relatively mundane sorts of businesses. I suspect that perhaps part of the reason for the color choice on that right-hand building was that it allows the interiors of the jail and interrogation room to look a little cold and gloomy compared to the brighter, warmer color of the rest of the station. Sort of like how a lot of Town and City police stations (60270, 7498, 7744, 6332, etc) have mostly shades of gray for the walls of their jail cells, but brighter colors like blue and white for the walls of the station. I'd be interested to see some pictures of how the set looks after you mod that rightmost building, but one way or another, I suspect it will dramatically change the vibe in those two rooms! That's a valid concern! This building is a little over 32 bricks tall, whereas City police stations tend to be around 23 bricks tall. But at the same time, this set's footprint is a lot more compact than most City police stations. City police and fire stations also tend to have relatively more modern-looking architecture, whereas the Modular Buildings Collection favors an early to mid 20th century look.

Yeah, the interior walls on the bottom floor of Brick Bank, Town Hall, and Green Grocer were the same way. When the rooms are this narrow and the exterior walls are this high, lowering the interior wall height helps ensure that you don't have to reach in as far from above to pick up or rearrange the parts or figures inside. If you prefer to fill it in, it shouldn't be too expensive to buy the bricks you need to bring the interior walls to the same height as the exterior ones, since tan is a pretty common color for basic bricks and plates. You wouldn't even have to change out the curved elements, since they seem like they'd match the curvature of an inverted curved slope. The bookshop set has more than 30 books altogether — it's just that only one has a cover that hinges open. Of the remainder, six are represented by removable tiles or jumper plates, while the rest are integrated with the bookshelves. Green Grocer was pretty much the same way — most of the items on its shelves could not be removed without taking apart the shelves themselves. As awesome as the hinged LEGO book covers are, they've never been very accurately scaled to LEGO minifigures or buildings, and when you put a bunch of them together on a shelf, they start to take up a ridiculous amount of space pretty quickly. Even at minimum, a shelving unit designed to hold two rows of three books each inevitably winds up taller and wider than an adult minifigure. That size might be suitable for a wizard's ancient magical tomes, but not for encyclopedia-sized hardcovers, let alone mass market paperbacks! No idea what you'd abbreviate this set's name to, but to be honest I find it a little strange that people are so intent on abbreviating these sets' names. It's not like the names are very long compared to, say, the Winter Village series. And if you do need to condense them, you can always use the set numbers like people sometimes do would when talking about other themes.

Who here is "bitching" or "outraged"? I mentioned feeling "a little uncomfortable" about the announcement despite loving the overall set design, and @CopperTablet made a snarky comment comparing real-world police to villains in other LEGO themes before likewise saying it was a great design. Neither of our comments were anywhere near as angry/belligerent as the response y'all had to us sharing our individual perspectives. So your opinions are totally fine, but I should keep mine to myself? Really solid argument you've got there. I have no interest in debating the topic of policing in the United States or any country, nor in trying to convince anybody that they should feel the same way I do. I just felt like sharing why I had some misgivings about a set that I'm otherwise extremely impressed with. Same. And I agree, it's not anywhere near as bad in most of the world as in the United States (even if it's not exclusively a US issue). I was just sharing my perspective as somebody who grew up in that country. For what it's worth, I finally moved to Canada this month to live with my wife while she completes her PhD, so that has me feeling a lot less anxious about a lot of that stuff than I was back in my hometown. This conversation has been a good reminder for me to update the location in my profile!

I won't deny I was a little uncomfortable learning that this would be the 2021 installment in the Modular Buildings Collection, given the rising awareness of past and present police corruption and misconduct which fueled this past summer's protests. I realize the designers couldn't really have anticipated that being one of the hot-button issues of 2020, but it ends up casting a bit of a shadow over the reveal, which is unfortunate because it truly is a lovely set which makes a great addition to the series. And in the grand scheme of things, perhaps it's for the best that we're getting this set sooner rather than later… after all, even with all the effort that LEGO has put towards keeping their "real life" inspired sets free of the more distressing elements of the world we live in, at some point they might have to re-evaluate whether sanitized "cops and robbers" play scenarios like this might carry unfortunate connotations in certain parts of the world. But anyway, as for the set itself, it is truly a masterwork! The colors and architectural details do a great job setting this model apart from others in the Modular Buildings series while still fitting with the high-detail aesthetic we've come to expect. Some of my favorite building techniques that I can spot include the use of stacked gear plates for the decorative shrubs outside, the awning construction on the donut shop, and the use of unprinted Minecraft wolf heads for the cornice on the police station's roof line. This last technique is especially surprising since I would've expected a mold like that to be IP-locked. The interiors seem to be quite well designed from what I can see so far. I love the stairway design in the station itself, as well as the "pin board" and typewriter in the police chief's office, the blinds on the police station windows, and the colorful floor tiles in the donut shop. I look forward to seeing some of the interior spaces from more angles! I have to say, though — the printed laundromat billboard is gonna make the brick-built billboard on top of the Grand Emporium look somewhat pitiful by comparison!

Genuinely lovely build! I especially love the shaping and textures of the midriff and tail. The hair is also very expressive. I wish there were a way to make the shoulders a little less blocky relative to the rest of the design, but I realize that's a difficult area to keep smooth at this sort of scale, especially when you intend to keep the arms fully articulated.

This comment really illustrates my point — Old Fishing Store is a "modular building" in a literal sense (i.e. it can be split into separate modules), but the same can be said for numerous other sets in themes like LEGO Creator, City, Friends, Disney, and Harry Potter which have no relation to the Modular Buildings series which began with Cafe Corner. For my part, I mostly tend to say "Modular Buildings series" when I'm referring to "Cafe Corner style" buildings, whereas I just use the adjective "modular" (all lowercase) to describe other sets or MOCs that can split apart in some manner. After all, LEGO has gotten a lot better at being open with fans about what sets are or aren't a part of the Modular Buildings series, so trying to come up with our own set of criteria which might conflict with theirs will generally just create needless confusion. I doubt LEGO Ideas would ever implement a rule that broad, particularly when they've been totally willing to approve projects of equal or greater size in the past. Plus, "city-centre" is itself an extremely ambiguous term — there are all sorts of things that could be part of a "city centre" which would fall well outside of anything the Modular Buildings series has covered in the past: for instance, a public park, a subway station, an archaeological dig site, a construction site, a skyscraper, a bridge, or a manufacturing plant.

While I'm sure that'd be a bit controversial given how common LEGO helicopters are (and how divisive vehicles in Modular Building sets tend to be by default), I'd be very interested to see how a helicopter and heliport would look at an AFOL-targeted building level. It'd certainly be a departure from the level of detail we tend to see in LEGO City sets, particularly if they stick with the usual mid-20th-century inspired design language. That said, the silhouette in the teaser image makes it look more like that upper portion is a part of the building itself, presumably with a radio antenna on top. Besides this, I suspect that LEGO would be more open to a "modular-building-esque" proposal if it were clearly meant to be its own thing and not a part of the regular series. After all, they've clearly been OK with designing sets like Diagon Alley, Ninjago City, and even some of next year's Chinese festival sets to connect together in pretty much the same manner, even though they belong to totally different themes. Presumably, their main concern when deciding what there is or isn't room for among their products is whether it caters to different interests/a different audience than the regular modular buildings. As such, if a project is aimed squarely at fans of the modular buildings, then the review team has legitimate reason to worry that it will just end up cannibalizing sales from the other modular buildings (and vice-versa). But if it represents an iconic brand (like a classic movie, TV show, or book) and/or belongs to a distinct genre (e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk, cyberpunk) that resonates with people for very different reasons than the usual modular buildings, then that's something the review board would be more likely to consider on its own merits. Plus, if a project does come along that has a strong business case on its own merits, there's nothing stopping the designers from altering whether or not it adheres to modular building standards. Maybe somebody might propose a licensed building that's really popular, but the designers decide that it would match the source material better if it didn't have to adhere to those particular design standards. Conversely, somebody might propose some sort of building that DOESN'T include modular building style connection points, but the designers realize they could add them without detracting from the project's appeal as a stand-alone model. Suffice to say, the most likely reason LEGO doesn't make a rule against Modular Building proposals is that it'd be hard to write a rule like that to cover ONLY the sort of buildings that will be likely to cannibalize sales of the other modular buildings, in terms that that both moderators and users can understand. After all, I can't tell you how many times I've seen disagreements among AFOLs about what does or doesn't qualify as a "modular building" in the first place!

I definitely love when sets in other themes feel especially livable — with places to sleep, eat, wash up, etc. But outside of themes like Friends and Creator 3-in-1 which tend to excel at that, it's usually impressive in its own right for a set to meet even just a few of those requirements, even if it falls short of meeting others. And frankly, even the most well-furnished Modular Buildings rarely manage to cover ALL those bases. The residences upstairs from the Fire Brigade, Pet Shop, and Parisian Restaurant all lack any sort of bathroom, whereas Pet Shop's neighboring townhouse includes ONLY a bathroom and living room, without anything resembling a bedroom or kitchen. Perhaps the designers see that as sort of an incentive to expand the sets with additional floors. But frankly, it seems just as likely that they've chosen to prioritize focused on making sure each building has enough unique and appealing features to set it apart from the rest than on ensuring they all fulfill the same minimum requirements. After all, if every set had to include a bathroom, a bedroom, and a kitchen, then not only would those features start to feel less new and exciting when they DO show up, but they'd take up space and pieces that could otherwise go towards more unique or surprising contents.

Well, as far as Creator sets go, you're in luck! This year's 3-in-1 Surfer Beach House is enclosed on all sides, and the only "big pieces" I see in any of the pictures are floors, windows, and doors, same as in older Creator houses. Nothing simplified about it at all, from what I can see. I'm no expert on firefighting equipment, but what bothers you about the vehicles in 60281 and 60282? 60281 has the preformed nose piece, but that's no worse than we're used to seeing with City helicopters. The rest of the fuselage is brick-built, and the tail does some lovely stuff with curved slopes to create continuous shaping. As for 60282, it feels pretty believable to me, what with the rugged American-style cab, stylish high-visibility stripes along the line of the wheel arches, and a solid-looking boom for the "cherry picker" style bucket. 60280 is definitely very simplistic and cartoonish, but that's to be expected from a 4+ set. These sorts of sets are aimed at the same "post-Duplo" audience as themes like Fabuland or Jack Stone, so it's not realistic to hold it to the same standard as "normal" City sets. And even within that category, this one seems like a huge step up in authenticity from 4+ fire trucks in previous sets like 60212, 10740, and 10685. Besides 60282 which I mentioned above, the hook and ladder truck in 60216 looks pretty realistic to me (aside from the oversized deluge gun, which is easily removed without harming the rest of the design). Same with the fire utility truck in 60215. Likewise, 60231 seems like a big improvement on most firefighting vehicles from the early days of LEGO City, let alone the sort of LEGO Town firefighting sets I grew up with in the 90s like 6525 or 6340! From my experience, every era of LEGO Town/City has had its share of stinkers. Even so, I feel like in recent years I feel like there have been more than enough high-quality designs to balance them out.