Aanchir

Even if that were to happen, I doubt LEGO would just jump straight into the deep end of the pool, so to speak. There are quite a few 18+ brands that they would probably be interested in as a potential license before going as far as a series like Fallout. Plus, if they were to start licensing more "adult" brands, I think they would most likely start with more nostalgic ones that will appeal to several generations of adults — as was the case with The Simpsons, Ghostbusters, Doctor Who, James Bond, etc. Not only would that sort of nostalgic focus help to maximize the potential buying audience, it could help defuse any controversy resulting from those licensing decisions. Like it or not, the newer something is — whether it's movies, music, games, TV, or something else entirely, the more suspicious older generations tend to be of it, and the more likely it is to elicit panicked "Think of the children!" reactions. For instance, it's much rarer today to find people as fearful of jazz, rock and roll, and hip-hop as it would've been when those genres were newer and less widespread outside of their respective subcultures. To put it another way: critics of older media are often seen as enemies of culture or tradition, whereas critics of newer media are seen as their defenders. It's a frustrating and often unreasonable double standard, but it's still a reality that LEGO has to reckon with.

Hey y'all! Been a while since I checked out this topic! Something I realized recently after helping my brother to build the Bowser's Castle set is that some recent parts like the 8x8x2/3 rounded square plate, 6x6x2/3 rounded square plate, and 3x3 round plate with cutout could be great for building castle towers, Forestman tree forts, and so forth with a sort of semi-rounded shape (something I've been trying to manage in MOCs with for some time). They match up neatly with the curvature of other useful rounded pieces from recent years like the 2x2x5 quarter cylinder panel, 3x3x5 quarter cylinder panel with twin arches , and 2x2 macaroni tile which I'd previously tried experimenting with in MOCs. The new 3x3 plate with cutout in particular is great for locking the top of curved corner walls together. Currently, they mostly appear in bright primary colors which might look out-of-place as the main color of a building, but each has at least one more subdued color option like Dark Orange, Reddish Brown, or Black. Unfortunately, the BrickLink prices of these parts (especially in those more subdued colors) are still pretty high. But I suspect we'll see lower aftermarket prices and more recolors for all of them over time, especially given how extensively the Super Mario theme uses them.

Dang, that's a lot of road plates! I was so intrigued that I went ahead and checked out your progress pics on your city on Instagram to get a sense of just how big your layout is to need that many. I dunno if I've ever seen a city that big made by a solo builder… mind you, I don't tend to look up pictures of people's tabletowns online usually, so most of the town layouts I've seen are at conventions, so the size of those layouts might be limited by how much a builder is able to transport from their home to the exhibit hall. That said, how many people who have that many are really going to have a city that size and still be interested in expanding it further? Because if you've already got as many roads in your cty as it room for, it won't really impact you much whether LEGO replaces their current road system or not… Yeah, that's also the sort of thing I've been mentioning when I bring up multi-lane roadways. Because the actual road markings in the new system are in the form of decorated tiles that you can rearrange to your heart's content, it wouldn't be hard at all to make those just by using multiple road segments side-by-side, or even with a median of any width you like in between. Probably for a lot of the reasons I've mentioned before, and also for a lot of the same reasons builders have for using MILS bases. Not to mention the likelihood that they'll be more widely available in the long run. After all, the new road system is going to be showing up in several of next year's City sets, and probably in even more sets in the years to come. So if those road segments end up showing up in sets you end up buying for other reasons, you might as well put them to use — even if only in the parts of your layout like bridges, hills, or construction sites where full-size road baseplates might be less convenient.

That may be true, but I also think Moe's Tavern not becoming a set could just as easily be because The Simpsons was a very small, short-lived theme with few sets, so it was easy for the designers to come up with enough family-friendly locations for however many sets they saw demand for before ever needing to resort to more controversial options like Moe's Tavern. Plus, it's much easier to keep a futuristic fantasy setting like Mos Eisley Cantina recognizable and playable without portraying any realistic-looking alcoholic beverages than it would be with Moe's Tavern. With the modular buildings, LEGO has an even wider range of potential settings to choose from before needing to consider less family-friendly options than they did with The Simpsons. So I don't think they'd need to push the envelope any further than they have previously. Plus, nothing's stopping them from finding kid-friendly equivalents for more adult settings or scenarios, just like they did with the cookie smuggling and the pool hall in the Detective's Office set. For example, an arcade makes a pretty good substitute for a casino, and it's not uncommon for video game developers to make that same conversion when localizing games with casino-inspired locations or minigames to countries with tighter regulations on simulated gambling. All you'd need to do is furnish it with coin-op arcade machines instead of slot machines or roulette tables and non-wager-based card games or tabletop games in place of casino card games. Most of my own attempts at MOCing an arcade for modular buildings have been more focused on the sorts of video arcade machines that were around when I was growing up, but even if you prefer for the modular buildings to stick to an earlier setting, there are also plenty of early 20th century arcade machines to choose from, like pinball machines, fortune teller machines, target shooting machines, Skee-Ball machines, slot-car racing tracks, strength-tester machines, etc. Using machines like this in place of casino games works especially well given that they had a similar sort of sinister reputation in the early 20th century, but are now nowhere near as controversial.

Both of those sets were released as part of the Town subtheme, which tends to include larger sets like those pretty often (60200 and 60204 in 2018, 60132 in 2016, 60097 in 2015, 60026 in 2013, 4207 in 2012, etc). So I don't feel like that's indicative of any sort of major change in strategy. Likewise, it's been pretty common for years for summer waves to focus on more than one major subtheme (Arctic and Trains in 2018 and 2014, Coast Guard and Jungle Explorers in 2017, Volcano Explorers and Airport in 2016, Deep Sea Explorers and Space in 2015, Cargo and Coast Guard in 2013, etc). 2021 certainly has some great new stuff going for it, but it still seems to stick to a pretty consistent subtheme-based strategy. The Town Center, Skate Park, and Modern Family House are all part of the "My City" range which effectively seems to be an evolution of the Town subtheme, and the Criminal Hideout is almost certainly going to be part of next year's Police subtheme, as other criminal hideout sets have been in the past. Certainly it's unusual for the biggest Police set of a particular year not to be a police station, but the same was true of fire stations up until last year when the Downtown Fire Brigade set occupied that slot. What we have been seeing recently are some surprising changes in when particular subthemes happen to show up. In the past, larger Town sets tended to show up in the summer wave, so the number of medium and large My City sets rumored for the first half of the year is a departure from that norm (probably motivated at least partly by a desire to give the new road system a "grand entrance" right off the bat). Also, from 2006 to 2018, subthemes like Construction, Mining, or Demolition tended to show up on more or less a three year rotation, but there's no indication yet of a full subtheme in that family next year. That said, it's possible that the next wave of sets in that category might have gotten pushed back to the summer in order to push the My City sets ahead to the beginning of the year (especially since that way it could include some sort of highway or bridge construction set as a follow-up to the new road system's initial debut). Other than that, though, City stuff still seems to be organized into subthemes pretty much the same way as we're used to.

I'm super confused by this reply. Yes, MILS would allow you to fix a lot of the problems I mentioned. That's because MILS was created by AFOLs to compensate for the implicit limitations of traditional road layouts. The new road system does essentially the same thing, but without being so heavily parts-intensive or geared towards highly advanced builders. And if you've already been "floating" your road baseplates over studs like this so you can line them up with MILS bases, then you should be able to do the same thing just as easily (if not moreso) with the new road elements. After all, that's what I'd already been suggesting to people who were worried about the new road system being incompatible with existing road baseplates or modular buildings. I'm just… not seeing the issue. The new road system is compatible with older baseplates in all the same ways that MILS is, but it's a lot more cost-effective and kid-friendly since the default road height is just two plates tall rather than six.

I can sort of understand why LEGO hasn't introduced a newer equivalent of those hulls… after all, part of LEGO's financial plight in the 90s and 2000s stemmed from how many parts they were introducing like that which they weren't really getting much use out of even back then. So that probably gives them a lot of incentive to try and get as much use as they can out of existing pieces, rather than introducing a second family of hull pieces. Additionally, LEGO also has a lot more parts like curved slopes, wedges, SNOT brackets, hinges, domes, etc. for building brick-built hulls at that sort of scale than they did back in the Classic Pirates days. I mean, just look at how they built the hull of this year's Creator Pirate Ship or this year's version of Destiny's Bounty). However, having tried to come up with a brick-built equivalent of those 12-wide hulls myself (with the desired end goal of trying to come up with a modernized Cross Bone Clipper sort of like the Barracuda Bay version of BSB), I recognize it's hard to achieve quite that same streamlined form factor using existing bricks. So I can definitely also relate to your frustration. Wish I had a better answer than that!

I mean, we're talking about a system that we haven't really seen innovated on or implemented in new or creative ways since 2005. And even THAT was pretty much a low point for its creative potential. Plus, it's been eight years since nearly all themes stopped using baseplates in general, switching instead to standard-thickness plates that offer fundamentally greater versatility and creative building potential. If anything, it kind of surprises me that a similar evolution for LEGO's road system didn't come SOONER. And anyhow, is a road system that's only suited to building flat grids of two-lane streets with predefined road markings and lane widths — no bridges, inclines, additional lanes, curbside parking, medians, subway tunnels, sewers, traffic circles, oblique-angle curves, bike lanes, speed bumps, etc — really "not broke"? 'Cuz, comparatively, the new road system seems like it would be great for building most of that stuff, even without any new molds beyond the ones we've seen. Curves are the only thing from that list that's noticeably missing from the new system, and it would presumably only take one additional new mold to correct that. None of this is to say that there won't be anything to dislike about the new road system — I'm going to need better pics and potentially hands-on experience before I can more thoroughly appraise where it might fall short of its ideal potential, and I'm sure everybody's bound to have their own "pet peeves" in the long run, just as with road baseplates. But regardless, it's not really hard to think of reasons that LEGO might be interested in moving on from a system that hasn't really shown any new potential in over a decade.

I’m with you there. I think a lot of people assume random online complaints from our communities impact LEGO’s decision-making process way more than they actually do. At least when it comes to sets and themes that aren’t primarily aimed at adults to begin with. I mean, let’s be real: most of LEGO’s current themes would look nothing like their current forms if their designs were somehow contingent on overwhelming, vocal AFOL approval! Usually the sharpest community reactions say more about our weakness at prognosticating what LEGO will or won’t do than anything else.

I don’t get how you got that impression when the main idea of my post was that LEGO is likely to make another Space theme again in the future. The reason I brought up Mark’s posts is as a reminder that even if it seems to some of us like LEGO has “given up on” Space themes and will need some huge change in thinking to bring them back, it’s just as possible that they haven’t internally drawn as sharp distinctions as we typically do between space and other “Space-ish” themes in recent years. And if that’s the case, then it might not be any more far-fetched for them to bring out a new Space theme as soon as summer of next year than it would’ve been for them to bring out a high-tech spy theme in 2014, a high-tech castle theme in 2016, or a high-tech ghost hunting theme in 2019. Personally, I find it immensely unlikely that LEGO would’ve made stuff like spaceships, space stations, and alien species as instrumental to The LEGO Movie 2 if they truly had categorically decided “space themes” were otherwise off the table. You don’t pitch a movie for kids centered around stuff that you’re convinced kids won’t be interested in.

I can't say I agree with that assumption. My 8-year-old cousin has been thoroughly enjoying the Harry Potter books since she first reached appropriate reading level. And that's not just an "adults trying to force their favorite IPs onto their kids" thing. When I was a kid, I certainly didn't care about the age of a lot of the books and movies I enjoyed. I mean, I was an avid reader of Hergé's "The Adventures of Tintin" comics and L. Frank Baum's Oz books, even if they were first published before my PARENTS were born! On a more cynical level, it's important to keep in mind that big movie studios and publishing companies put loads of money and marketing efforts into keeping their biggest cash cow IPs relevant. I mean, it's not as though the Cinderella sets in the Disney theme are "adult nerd stuff", even though the movie they're based on came out in 1950! Rather, Disney has gone to great lengths to present their classic movies to families as a "timeless" childhood experience. As I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s, this stuff was kept in kids' line of sight with new "Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection" and "Platinum Edition" re-releases, sing-along videos, direct-to-video sequels, television re-broadcasts, theme park attractions, and crossover media like "Disney's House of Mouse" and "Kingdom Hearts". Nowadays, they've built up the entire "Disney Princess" brand dedicated to marketing these characters and stories even to kids too young to understand just how long ago some of them were first released. It's the same with other mega-popular brands like Super Mario, Batman, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. Truth be told, despite having been a child of the "Harry Potter" generation and an avid fan of the books and movies growing up, I'm probably most fed up with that brand's enduring popularity at this point, given how their author has taken to channeling her considerable power and influence into defaming and demonizing transgender people. All that said: it's not a foregone conclusion that the popularity of these brands will maintain peak strength forever. Back in the 90s, the relevance and marketability of Star Wars took a considerable hit, and as much as Disney might try to keep that from happening again, there's aren't any guarantees that they'll be able to manage that. Plus, as we saw during the gap between the prequel and sequel trilogies, it doesn't even take a 90s-level decline in the popularity of Star Wars to open up room for other Space themes to exist alongside it. Certainly, a lot of people might be apprehensive about Disney's stated plans to avoid another years-long drought between new Star Wars movies. But plans are just that — plans. As we've already seen, Disney's plans to release Star Wars films on an annual basis like Marvel movies didn't end up panning out for them. And a lot of stuff can happen (like the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on movie theaters and planned movie release schedules) that even the most thorough market forecasts can't always predict. ----- On that note, in answer to the original question: probably! After all, "ever" is a long time, and it's not unusual for particular genres or interests to fluctuate into and out of fashion with the passage of time. Also, space themes are a broad category that can be approached in numerous ways. Right now, "space opera" stories like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy shape a lot of the ways kids think about space travel. But if "first contact" stories, "planetary romance", "interdimensional travel" stories, or so on start to make a big comeback, it could open up an eager market for very different sorts of play and storytelling scenarios than the Star Wars or City themes could ever hope to cover. And anyway, for all we know, LEGO might already be open to introducing new space themes in the near future. It's only been a year since The LEGO Movie 2 theme launched with numerous space-travel-oriented sets, so they're clearly not averse to the idea. And while stuff like the Systar System and Rexcelsior fleets might not meet a lot of AFOLs' nostalgic criteria for a "true" Space theme, but the same can be said for most Space themes since the mid-90s. @Nabii, a Classic Space fan and celebrated MOCist who went on to design sets for several of the Space themes of the 2000s and 2010s, has spoken extensively both here and on other sites like Reddit about how basically every theme he's worked on has been condemned by AFOLs (at least initially) for not matching up with how they remember the sets of their childhoods. So if we're being realistic, we should expect the same reaction to whatever the next Space theme turns out to be. Because no matter what comes next (or when), it's not going to be exactly the hypothetical ideal that each of us has individually decided we want to see in a future space theme. But hopefully it will still be something that we can come to appreciate when looking at it on its own merits, rather than in comparison to a purely theoretical concept we've built up in our heads.

I'd assume it's just because bigger segments are quicker to lay out and rearrange. Plus, smaller indlvidual segments would require more robust supports if you chose to elevate them (same as why you would often opt for larger plates for the upper stories or roof of a building. On that note, something else I was thinking about with regard to these new bases… being able to elevate or incline roads more easily will probably make it a lot easier to add subterranean structures to like subways or sewers to a layout! I wouldn't really expect to see that type of stuff in the City theme, of course, since that sort of stuff could require a considerably more advanced building level and/or higher price point than City sets often have.

It's definitely a good question. Even if the modular buildings can be modded to work with road baseplates, I never got the impression they were intended to work with road baseplates. They always struck me more as their own independent series, kind of like the Ninjago City sets or Winter Village sets are. I also figure a big factor in whether modular building collectors bother with roads at all is what type of storage space they use. On social media, I've seen AFOLs display their collections in a number of different ways. Some of them do have a specially designated "LEGO room" with a centrally located "tabletown". That's certainly the style of display that tends to works best with road plates. But I've also seen a lot of AFOLs who opt for displaying buildings on shelves or in cabinets along the walls of a room (similar to the microscale shelves in the AFOL apartment). And that sort of display rarely leaves enough room for more than a single row of baseplates. This is closer to my own childhood experience — we had a multi-level "built shelf" around the walls in our basement, whereas the middle of the floor was kept open for play. Tbh, I have to wonder if those sorts of space limitations might've been another factor that helped inform the design of this new road system. Although stuff like play value, creative potential, and cost of manufacture were probably higher on the designers' priority lists, given how kid-targeted the City theme in general tends to be.

Sort of! Best I can figure (based on trying to reconcile the piece count we've heard for 60304 with the preliminary image that was leaked), the new system is largely based on new 8x16x2/3 and 16x16x2/3 slabs. The 2x4 and 1x4 tile cutouts are used both for decoration and for linking the road segments together with each other or with other builds on the side of the roads. Proportionally, the new slabs are somewhat similar to the two-plate-tall interlocking bases that appear in Juniors/4+ sets, except with the cutouts more evenly spaced. So they don't need an additional layer of plates underneath. Here's my mock-up on Stud.io parts designer showing about what I expect the new road pieces to look like (according to prototype versions that show up in some of the leaks): The lane markings also appear to use gray tiles 2x4 tiles printed with white stripes, rather than just white tiles. You're right that you could definitely still use baseplates under these new roads. Many of the new sets also include https://brickset.com/parts/design-15625 at each end of the roads, which could be used to connect the new roads with the existing road system. In any event, this new system is gonna be a godsend for stuff like bridges and inclines (two things that traditional road baseplates were never especially conducive to). Previously, some of the most effective parts for building that sort of stuff were ones like 30401, 30477, 2617, and 2642. But given that all that stuff has been retired for decades, and that most of them were fairly limiting in terms of how wide you could make your roads), I think it's gonna be awesome to have a newer and more versatile solution that seems like it'll be getting more widespread use than any of those parts typically did.

What I meant is, it's simpler to do from scratch, since instead of needing to lay out a bunch of Dark Stone Grey 2x2 tiles on road baseplates, you can just a bunch of plates (any size or color will do; I just picked red 2x2s in this render on a whim). I get that if you've already stockpiled a bunch of road baseplates and tiled them, there's not much point in changing systems. But at the same time, if you've already taken all of those steps, then it seems like you don't really lose much from LEGO finally launching a new road system. Whereas for those of us who've been hoping for a more customization-friendly road system for years (especially since 2012 when standard plates became the default bases in nearly all non-Modular Building sets), this is a monumental step forward.

I suppose you meant 10185 and 10218? 10190 Market Street's main colors are Medium Blue and Earth Blue, neither of which is used as a wall color in Assembly Square. And again, there's no reason that every new modular building NEEDS to use different colors than previous ones. But there's no reason for new modular buildings to strictly AVOID using new colors, either. I mean, Parisian Restaurant is the most owned AND most wanted modular building among Brickset users, and it used different colors than previous buildings for both its walls AND its roof. I'm sure there are plenty of "unused" colors on the current color palette that could be used just as effectively. For instance, what about an Tuscan-inspired building with Cool Yellow/Bright Light Yellow walls and a Dark Orange tile roof? Or a Moorish Revival inpired building in varying shades of pink and nougat? Or a building with an old copper roof that has aged to a tasteful Bright Bluish Green, Sand Green, or even Aqua/Light Aqua patina? Even a Bavarian-style half-timbered building with Dark Brown timbers and Spring Yellowish Green infill? With over 40 colors to choose from on the current palette (excluding transparent and metallic colors), it'd be a huge waste for the Modular Buildings to continue reusing the same dozen or so main colors indefinitely!

Certainly that's one possibility. But using the modular buildings with the new road system would be even simpler, without any need for modding. Just scatter a layer of plates between the roadways and set your modular buildings on top, like so: Obviously, stuff might slide around a bit until all your buildings and streets are laid out, since the bottom of a baseplate has no connection points. But that's just all the more reason that building stuff on standard plates is a more versatile system to begin with: builds with anti-studs underneath can easily be raised up as much as you like.

That's certainly the impression I tend to get, but obviously folks don't tend to respond well to that kind of suggestion, so I figured I'd leave the floor open for people to offer any alternative explanations. Trust me, I'm with you on all those points! But it can be surprising how even just a few bright colors can be enough to rile up some folks. That's a valid perspective. Personally, I don't care all that much for Sand Red specifically, since it tended to look kinda dingy (in sort of the same way as the classic browns and grays did), but I definitely agree that the part of the color palette you mention was a little lacking after the mid-2000s simplfication of the color palette. The introduction of Vibrant Coral has helped a bit, though for many historic-looking buildings it'd probably be more suited for use as an accent color than as a main color. Out of curiosity, do you think that Nougat could be effective for that sort of drab pink sandstone color? Like on the most recent versions of Luke's Landspeeder in LEGO Star Wars, or the garage door of the Simpsons House? After all, according to a (sadly not archived) page about the Pet Shop set on the old LEGO Creator Expert site, Nougat was considered as a possible color option for the brownstone apartment, before ultimately settling on Reddish Brown with Dark Orange accents. Now that LEGO has expanded the use of Nougat for building elements rather than just skin tones (as well as the overall range of colors present in the modular building series), they might be more willing to use it in the Modular Building than they were 10 years ago. It's not that a new color is necessary, strictly speaking… but why settle for that sort of mindless repetition when there are so many more unique and creative options for designers to choose from? Or, to put it another way: what would be the harm in introducing some more varied colors?

Why do people always seem to say that sort of thing as if it'd be the end of the world, even if it were true? I mean, nobody ever posts stuff like: "I don't think tan would be likely. It will give the feel that the Modulars have mixed with the Elves theme…" "I don't think brown would be likely. It will give the feel that the Modulars have mixed with the Wild West theme…" "I don't think blue would be likely. It will give the feel that the Modulars have mixed with the City theme…" "I don't think red would be likely. It will give the feel that the Modulars have mixed with the Ninjago theme…" But for some reason, there remains this widespread sentiment that colors like pink, purple, azure, teal, etc are inextricably linked to the Friends theme, and that somehow that makes them the antithesis of everything a Modular Building should be. At this point, I've seen complaints about the color schemes of Bookshop, Corner Garage, Downtown Diner, and Diagon Alley being too "Friends-ish" also. Just search for appearances of the word "Friends" in this topic and you'll see plenty of examples. All in all, I can't think of any reason pinks, purples, and pastels would be any more out-of-place on a modular street than colors like Bright Yellow, Medium Blue, Light Royal Blue, and Sand Green which have already had prominent appearances in Modular Buildings sets. Certainly they are no more vibrant than the sort of colors you might find in many historic European towns like Copenhagen, Venice, Madrid, or Rothenburg. Why not embrace that sort of opportunity to mix things up a little? After all, it'll surely get tiresome if LEGO just keeps reusing the same handful of "earth tones" over and over again…

Yep! And truth be told, some of the solutions are so simple they'd barely even qualify as modding. For instance, one solution that occurred to me yesterday is just scattering some 2x2 plates in between the roadways and setting the modular building bases down on top of them, like so: As long as they're distributed evenly enough to support the building's weight, this solution ought to be pretty reliable! And it's certainly less time-consuming than widening the curb or realigning the entire modular building sets so they'll line up flush with the road…

I think this new system seems plenty kid-friendly… I mean, the new roads are very similar (in terms of both their height and the way they connect together) to the bases in 4+/Juniors and Super Mario sets. From my experience, parts like these tend to be very easy to line up with each other and link together securely, which helps to make up for them not being one big sheet by default. Entirely brick-built roads (especially ones that are reliant on SNOT techniques) are definitely more of an AFOL MOCist thing, but these are a lot more user-friendly than that. Judging from the piece count we've heard for 60304 and the accessories shown for it in the leaked picture, most or all of the road segments in the final set will presumably be 16x16x2/3 and 8x16x2/3 molds, rather than two layers of standard plates and tiles.

There are several obvious ones that I’ve been bringing up for years at this point when describing what I’d like to see in the next road system: • Anti-studs underneath of plates/tiles make them fundamentally more versatile and customization-friendly than traditional baseplates, since it allows builds to be easily and securely angled or raised, and to be joined with custom assemblies constructed from standard building elements rather than only with printed parts designed SOLELY for use as roads. • Both anti studs and the lack of built-in curbs make it MUCH easier to create bridges, overpasses, bike lanes, curbside parking, multi-lane highways, changes in elevation, etc. within this system. • Curbs no longer need to be entirely plated/tiled over for layouts with a different ground color like Winter Village or desert layouts. • The new system makes it much easier to ensure driveways and alleyways of any width connect directly to the edge of the road and remain flush with the road surface, whereas previously any driveway narrower than the width of a full road would require either studs or inconsistent elevation between roads and offshoots. • The new system makes it easier to add different features like median strips, traffic circles, etc. in the center of a road, whereas the old system required rare, bespoke road plate molds/prints for these features. • The new system can be included in a much wider range of sets and price points, compared to the old one which could only be included in sets with a box bigger than 32x32 studs. • The new road system can have crosswalks, manholes, and storm drains anywhere you like, not just at predefined points on a road segment. • The new road system’s lanes can be widened as much as you need for whichever scale of vehicles or real-world lane width standards you prefer using standard tiles, whereas the old road baseplates had lanes in fixed, immutable widths that didn’t even stay consistent between sets with different years of release. In other words, road baseplates made THEMSELVES obsolete any time LEGO decided they wanted a different lane width. That’s just a few off the top of my head! After all, this is the sort of shift I’ve been hoping to see for MANY years. And as for current drawbacks like the lack of curves, those could easily be dealt with as the system continues to expand. Potentially even in a way that creates even more possibilities for layouts than the old road system did, like curves of less than 90 degrees (like the ones used for LEGO train tracks). Overall, this system is MUCH more friendly to customization and expansion than the old one, which effectively hit the limits of its potential decades ago.

Honestly, I think the color/texture issues with the road plates is due to them being 3D printed prototypes in these images. After all, the picture of 60304 doesn't match up with the rumored piece count (112 pieces) — so I suspect that a lot of the existing plate/tile assemblies in the picture are placeholders for the new road elements, presumably because LEGO didn't have finished molds for at the time the photos were taken, and was still using their mock-ups from the development phase. These sorts of mismatched colors or textures show up frequently in preliminary pictures that feature brand-new part designs (preliminary images of Bionicle and Hero Factory sets were rife with them), and are one of the MANY reasons that it's generally a bad idea to draw any judgments about part quality from these type of catalog images. Once actual photos of the finished sets begin to show up, THEN we'll be able to more fairly scrutinize nitty-gritty details like alignment, clutch, color, or texture issues. In any case, these seem like a BIG improvement on the old road system from a creative building standpoint, and I will be excited to see clearer/more finalized pictures in the months to come.

Believe it or not, there's quite a lot that frustrates me about LEGO. The lack of a more versatile road system to take the place of the numerous limitations of road plates is something I've been bringing up here on Eurobricks for many years now. I've also been grumbling for a long time about their lack of apparel in adult sizes (the new LEGO x Levi's partnership is a step in the right direction, but even then I'm frustrated at the limited range of sizes, styles, and colors). And I don't think it's been more than a couple days since I mentioned my disappointment that the new road system is apparently going to still be branded as LEGO City, rather than as part of a more "theme/setting-neutral" branding like Xtra. I'd also love to see more visible LGBTQ+ representation in their products and media, more gender diversity in a lot of their product lines, and jdeally even some kind of stand against J.K. Rowling's recent obsession with transphobic fearmongering… but based on my past experiences, Eurobricks is not an especially healthy environment for those sorts of discussions. Overall, if there's one thing that seems to set my gripes about LEGO apart from the ones I disagree with, it's that I tend to be more frustrated with the ways TLG can often seem stuck in a rut or bound by tradition than with the newer ideas they've been exploring or the parts of their past they've moved away from. But then, I think that kind of describes a lot of my mindset in general, not just in regard to LEGO. I certainly wouldn't be as happy or fulfilled as I am today if I just settled for the safe, predictable path I expected my future to take when I was a child, instead of taking the chance to thoroughly consider some of the exciting possibilities that I could never have imagined back then…

Yeah, baseplates already largely stopped appearing in most non-D2C sets around 2012/2013, so it's not as though there's much left to "phase out" in the first place. And the only shift we've heard about among the current 2021 rumors is a new road system which would (presumably) take the place of printed road baseplates. If LEGO was already able to keep baseplates in production for this many years even at such an infrequent level of use, then I can't imagine that they're in any huge hurry to stop using them now. That said, I certainly wouldn't complain if LEGO did eventually do away with baseplates entirely — after all, from a compatibility standpoint, it's usually no more difficult to replace thinner baseplates with full-thickness plates than the other way around. Full-thickness plate foundations have already been prevalent since the mid-1980s (for reference, the 1984 LEGO Castle range only used thin baseplates for its largest set), so people who are truly committed to adapting all their sets to the same "standard" have had plenty of time to get used to that sort of modding. And if anybody DOES find it frustrating to reconcile two different base standards like this… well, that's all the more reason that we might all be better off with LEGO using the more versatile of those standards universally in future sets.