Aanchir

I feel like the crossbow design here is most likely a digital-only design meant to evoke the familiar "LEGO" look of the classic crossbow, while making it easier to animate the crossbow being fired or reloaded during gameplay. I doubt it would be used in the sets, since there's not much point in making the bolts removable on a physical piece that lacks any sort of firing mechanism. If LEGO did make a new crossbow mold that can be reloaded, I think they'd be more likely to design it with the same firing mechanism as this bow, and have it share this arrow piece for the bolts. We know that these two molds will remain in use in 2024 (and aren't IP-locked to the Avatar theme) because they appear in one of the upcoming Dreamzzz sets.

Pretty sure the bag is just 92590, same as was used for Majisto in the Lion Knights' Castle. It's a very common piece, often used for LEGO City crooks (as a place to stash stolen dollar bills or gold bars) or as a feed bag for animals. I would not be surprised at all to see it in this or other medieval sets, but I wouldn't see it as something all that exciting or special either.

Okay, but have you considered that LEGO might have had reasons for approving this particular project despite rejecting other train projects? LEGO's choices to accept or reject a project are largely a matter on how much market potential they see for that sort of set, with or without a license. And that judgment is derived from various factors beyond just qualifying for review, such as how quickly a project garners support, how much "buzz" LEGO sees about it on social media, what specific audience demographics it seems to appeal to, etc. Obviously, we can't know for sure which specific factors went into approving the Orient Express. But I'm sure one factor is that it had a lot of appeal not only among train enthusiasts, but also film, TV, and literature buffs who were aware of this train's illustrious reputation in the sphere of popular culture. I'm not sure any other real-world train is as much of a household name as the Orient Express in this regard. If we suppose LEGO approved it on those grounds, then it would have been foolhardy to release a set of it with a different name. And releasing it as a generic, non-branded model would probably have also meant making even more substantial changes to the project than the actual set ended up doing, so as to avoid legal trouble with the Orient Express company. I'm not sure that the project creator would've approved of such extreme changes either, considering that he was drawn to this train in particular for his proposal as a film enthusiast himself! In short, I get that you would have been much happier with a generic, unlicensed vintage train instead of this set. But it should be obvious that there are a lot of people out there (including the project creator) who were enthusiastic about this project specifically because it's the Orient Express and not a generic train. Anyhow, who in your mind would be any happier or better off if LEGO had rejected this project? It's not like that would somehow guarantee you a different adult-targeted train set in its place. It might have just as easily meant no new adult-targeted train set in 2023, plus yet another letdown for LEGO Ideas creators and project supporters with a passion for trains. Moreover, even if you don't care for this set, just consider that if it does well, it could definitely motivate the LEGO Ideas team to approve other LEGO train projects in the future (much like how they've approved so many TV sitcom related or space exploration related projects after the earlier successes of sets within that category). Seeing a lot of buyers willing to drop $300 on a LEGO train could even motivate LEGO to invest more heavily in the adult-targeted train sets that they develop in-house.

I mean, in this specific case, the Orient Express is the train that that LEGO Ideas users supported. Obviously for other models like the Crocodile Locomotive or the various LEGO City trains, they've had no problem opting for a generic, non-licensed design. But here they weren't designing an original train design from the ground up or "shopping around" for different railroad companies to partner with — they went into the process with the aim of producing an Orient Express model.

The set description for 60432 on Brickmerge says "Begleite die Weltraumcrew auf ihrer Suche nach einem Superkristall mit genügend Energie, um die gesamte Weltraumbasis mit Strom zu versorgen." ("Join the space crew on their search for a super crystal with enough energy to power the entire space base"), so I guess this is what that line refers to!

I was just looking at some more images of the City range, and here is my current understanding of the spacesuit colors: Warm Gold: Admiral (this one is confirmed in 60434's Play Zone page linked above) Earth Blue: Blue team leader. She has a face tattoo of a constellation. Dark Azur: Blue team crew and robots. This team seems to be made up of scouts, explorers, and pilots. Earth Green: Green team leader. They have a scanner or microcomputer of some kind over one eye. Bright Green: Green team crew and robots. This team seems to be focused on scientific research work (like geology, botany, chemistry, and xenobiology). Dark Orange: Orange team leader. He has a face tattoo of a lightning bolt. Flame Yellowish Orange: Orange team crew and robots. This team seems to be focused on mining, construction, and repair work. The team leaders and admiral appear in just one set each. So far the blue team has the most robots: a humanoid robot in 60432, an autonomous rover in 60431, and a drone which can attach to their backpacks as a jet booster in 60430. The orange team has a tracked construction robot in 60248 and a repair drone in 60433, while the green team has just one tracked robot in 60434. But of course, it's possible that there may be other sets later in the year with additional robots or crew members.

The LEGO.com "Play Zone" page for 60434 refers to them as "new crystal-botanic batteries", and in this image you can see both a computer screen showing how the batteries are made using alien plant life and crystals, and a machine being used for that purpose. The pages for other sets like 60430 and 60431 refer simply to "power-generating energy crystals", so it's possible that the purple fuel cells are weaker ones that use the crystals alone for power, while the pink ones are stronger fuel cells that also incorporate organic compounds from the alien plant life. Alternatively, the different colors may simply indicate whether the batteries have a full or partial charge.

Someday I really want to use those transparent tube slide elements in a space MOC as well! They have a cool futuristic look that I think would work great either as cosmetic details like fuel hoses hoses or as a way for characters to move between sections of a spaceship or habitat.

I'd say Friends has also played at least a little bit loose with reality over the years. For instance, while it's possible for multiple members of a high school friend group to have student pilot certification (which at least Olivia and Stephanie seem to have had in the previous generation of sets), I don't think it'd be all that common/likely. But I agree with you overall about some of the differences in tone between Friends and City.

Makes sense. Milk and cookies don't pay the bills!

I mean, it's certainly highly speculative, but I think it's a stretch to compare a set like this to themes with highly intelligent humanoid aliens, advanced bioengineering and "mind-link" technology, suspended animation, and so forth. What we see in this set falls far, far short of that: a rover inspired by the sorts of habitable rovers that space agencies like NASA and JAXA are currently developing, and some craters that house a couple hypothetical alien macroorganisms. It's not as though LEGO Town and LEGO City have never dabbled in speculative or fanciful subject matter like this, eithre. Just last year, the meteorites from sets 60350 and 60351 both included microorganisms in the form of a printed 1x1 round tile. Both that wave and the 2019 wave of Space sets included models inspired by concepts like NASA's SEV and Lunar Gateway which are in development, but are still years away from coming to fruition. The City Jungle Explorer sets from 2017 included human-sized carnivorous plants. And over 20 years ago, meteorites in the original Arctic sets included a "Space Scorpio" and "Space Spider"! All in all, this wave strikes me as a a continuation of the "hypothetical near future" sort of subject matter we've already seen in the City theme's 2022, 2019, and arguably even 2015 space exploration sets (after all, no new shuttle/space plane had flown on an orbital mission like the one in 60078 since the end of NASA's space shuttle program). Perhaps once more of the sets are revealed we'll see that theey contain more fanciful far-future subject matter. But the two sets we've seen so far seem to be only a touch more futuristic or speculative than what we've seen in previous City sets. Seems a bit premature to start worrying that "Lego has lost its way" based on one City set being less grounded than you'd like. Last I've heard, LEGO City in particular and LEGO in general have been doing just fine financially, regardless of what we as individuals think about specific design decisions they've made in one theme or another. And if it turns out that kids don't care for this wave of Space sets, it's not like designers would be prevented in any way from taking a step back in a more traditional direction for subsequent waves.

Yep. Of course, the reasoning varied from person to person: Some folks only count "deep space" themes as "true" LEGO Space (excluding themes like Life on Mars, Mars Mission, and Alien Conquest), and considered the appearance of an Earth-like planet in the background of some of the SP3 box art enough to exclude it on those grounds. Others felt like the robot dog and the alien cars and trucks were too clearly inspired by subject matter here on Earth, and thus considered it more like a futuristic version of the Town/City theme than a Space theme. Some people took particular issue with the open-faced helmets worn by the officers in the theme's first year, which suggested the possibility that the theme's ambiguous lunar setting might have a breathable atmosphere. And of course, there are certain folks out there who haven't considered ANY Space theme since an arbitrary cutoff date (often in the mid to late 90s) a "true" LEGO Space theme, just because stuff like the inclusion of alien minifigures and the lack of interaction between different subthemes/factions in the magazines and catalogs made subsequent sets feel too different from the "LEGO Space" sets they'd grown up with. Obviously, it's fine to have these sorts of preferences about what you prefer to see in a LEGO Space theme. But it always feels a bit silly to me when folks try to justify those preferences by coming up with elaborate rules for why only the sets they like within a given category actually qualify as part of that category. It's perfectly okay to be a LEGO Space fan while still acknowledging that LEGO Space includes certain sets and themes you happen to dislike! Yeah, while City has had plenty of space sets before, this is the first time they've had a dedicated banner to signal that they belong to a particular subtheme. And I think LEGO CIty Space is only the second product line in the theme to get this treatment after LEGO City Stuntz. I wonder whether specific branding like this is gonna become a more common thing for other City subthemes in the future as well.

Ironically, if it didn't have City branding, I just know that there would be folks in this thread complaining that it's not "true" LEGO Space, just like I've previously seen people say about themes like Life on Mars, Mars Mission, or Space Police 3. All in all, though, the rover design seems to draw primarily from some of the rover concepts we've seen from real-world space agencies in the past decade, including several of the concepts for the Lunar Cruise that JAXA and Toyota are co-developing for NASA's Artemis program. The style of rocker-bogie suspension in this set is shared with some of these concepts, as well as with many of NASA's previous unmanned rovers. So it's not too tricky to imagine how City designers in this day and age could arrive at this sort of "futuristic" design even without pulling from any actual sci-fi reference material.

Technically, the previous City wave did have alien life, specifically the microbes inside the meteorites from 60350 and 60351! Also, the Town theme had a "Space Scorpio" and "Space Spider" as part of the 2000 Arctic range. But you're right that the City theme itself has never had a larger alien species like this! On a related note, I appreciate that the aliens look very unlike any sort of Earthling organisms. Despite their very speculative nature, this helps to set them apart from the humanoid aliens we've seen in Space themes and other sci-fi themes from the mid-90s onward.

I don't think this has anything to do with LEGO's use of that face print. It's just that it happens to work really well for elderly bearded men with a warm smile. Face prints used for earlier Santa minifigs like this one from 2017, this one from 2015 or this one from 2013 were likewise shared by a bunch of other white- or grey-haired fellows from other themes. Plus, LEGO had already used this same face print for the Majisto minifig from the Lion Knight's Castle, so an ad campaign started this year wouldn't really have had any impact on that decision.

I can't imagine it'd PREVENT a larger Castle relaunch, since wider product lines like that are pretty much invariably aimed at a much younger target audience. Like, for comparison's sake, it's not as though the Ninjago City or Star Wars UCS sets have any sort of negative impact on sales of the more kid-targeted Ninjago and Star Wars sets that are carried by regular toy stores and department stores. Of course, there's also not any guarantee that they're gonna stick to a strict "every other year" schedule for big nostalgic Castle exclusives. There are plenty of adult/teen targeted product lines (like the Creator Expert/Icons classic vehicle, world landmark, and fairground series, or the Ninjago City sets) that have had a more irregular release schedule, with a varying number of years between new installments. So future Castle exclusives could potentially show up more frequently or less frequently depending on their size and other factors. Smaller sets can often be released more frequently than larger ones without overwhelming buyers (which is why there can be a new Winter Village Collection set and multiple Botanical Collection sets every year, while the larger Landmarks Collection sets usually tend to have a longer gap between new releases).

Funnily enough, it wasn't even a new mold for 10305 (even though it's the first time it's been seen in the Castle theme) — rather, it's an unprinted version of the headgear from the Minifigures Series 13 Egyptian Warrior and Series 19 Mummy Queen! It definitely showcases how much hidden potential even molds created for non-medieval themes/settings can have for Castle sets and minifigures. For my part, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the civilian characters in this set share molds or prints with those in 10305, but I also don't expect so much repetition that characters end up copying their entire outfit from those they share parts with. After all, from what I can tell this is intended to work as sort of a companion piece to 10305, which wouldn't work so well if you wind up with several near-identical civilians walking around! Still, there are ways to repurpose some of these prints without it feeling totally "redundant". For example, the peasant/cart driver minifig's torso could be used on a child character, or on an older character with a molded beard in place of that figure's pannier (and of course, there's no obligation for LEGO to pair it with the same hat or same color trousers). And just as 10305 reused the torso from the Minifigures Series 22 Troubadour for the prince/young master (and the shield from the Series 23 Knight of the Yellow Castle for one of its decorative coats-of-arms), this set could potentially reuse prints from Minifigures Series 24 or 25, so long as its development schedule has lined up correctly for the designers to take advantage of such options. Prints from other themes can sometimes also be used to great effect. After all, there's nothing about the design of the blacksmith from 21325 or the miller/chef from 10305 which would automatically clue you in that their leg print had been introduced seven years earlier for a LEGO City barista unless you were aware of those earlier uses!

The club memberships/subscriptions cost MONEY over there? In that case I definitely understand why a lot of British kids might not have gotten them, particularly since in the KFOL years I imagine it'd usually be parents making the final decision about that sort of thing instead of kids themselves… Yeah. I mean, I have a fair amount of childhood nostalgia for Fright Knights myself, but a lot of that is more for the characters or for the general spooky vibe than for the actual sets. And that's the sort of thing LEGO can easily satisfy either through the Collectible Minifigures (as Minifigures Series 25 is doing with its new version of Basil the Bat Lord) or with stand-alone figs in more general-purpose Castle sets like they did with Majisto in 10305, without needing any sort of full-blown revival. Honestly, Fright Knights wasn't even the theme/subtheme I mostly enjoyed back in the 90s, let alone the one that I have the most fondness for in hindsight. In the former category, themes/subthemes like Islanders, Exploriens, Aquazone, Adventurers, and Rock Raiders come out far ahead, while in the latter I think Spyrius easily leads the pack — as an adult, I have an even greater appreciation for its embrace of "retro" sci-fi imagery and themes like robots, flying saucers, and intergalactic espionage than I had as a kid. And besides that, I've been extremely impressed and inspired by a lot of the throwback sets we've seen recently that hearken back to sets or subthemes that preceded my own KFOL years, like Forest Hideout, Lion Knights' Castle, Galaxy Explorer, Blacktron Cruiser, Barracuda Bay, and Eldorado Fortress. In light of that, a lot of my current wishes for future throwback sets (and also a lot of my MOC ideas) have more to do with which classic sets/subthemes/characters might best accompany those sets than with which sets/subthemes/characters I actually have the strongest childhood memories of. Apologies if I sound like sort of a debbie downer here. Make no mistake — I'd love to get a new version of Willa the Witch as a rival for Majisto, and maybe even a brick-built re-imagining of the classic dragon which was so iconic to the subthemes they originated in! But I can't really muster up that same sort of enthusiasm for a full reboot/revival of either subtheme.

Even if only included in sets marked 18+ like this one, I think LEGO would still be reluctant to produce any parts that they don't consider child-safe. After all, a lot of the loose parts from my childhood collection were stuff my dad bought at yard sales or on auction sites in mixed lots, with no separation by what themes or target age ranges the sets in question had once been marked for. And while LEGO probably wouldn't be financially liable for people buying non-child-safe products in that sort of mixed lot and mistakenly thinking they're for children, any accident resulting from that sort of incident could still result in a lot of bad press and a weight on the conscience of whoever designed the parts in question or approved them for release. It's just an ethical minefield that LEGO could just as easily avoid by sticking to the more traditional plastic-on-plastic connections that their success was built on. Yeah, definitely a very nice part! They were also used right-side-up in last year's big Hogwarts Express to attach the buffer beam. I imagine it'd also make a cool wheel arch for eight-wide or six-wide road vehicles or construction equipment — it kind of surprises me we haven't seen any sets use it for that sort of thing yet. If you're willing to break the real-life rule of having the locomotive itself do the driving, I imagine you could even potentially fit an XL motor into the tender and put the narrower and more System-friendly hub/battery box inside the boiler. But of course, until people who own the set are able to test this sort of stuff themselves, I'm not really qualified to make any sort of predictions about what combination of motors and gears would provide the best balance of speed and torque for a train this size — especially since I've personally only ever had experience running trains using the default train motors.

That's something they've specifically avoided for very clear safety reasons. In the early 2000s there were multiple incidents of children being injured or even killed due to swallowing neodymium magnet toys. Currently, while some countries like the United States still allow small neodymium magnets to be sold as toys as long as they carry the appropriate warning labels, other countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ban them entirely. Moreover, even if there weren't any strict legal hurdles in place, I doubt LEGO would willingly take the risk of having one of their products associated with even a single tragic story of that sort. After all, this is a company that still prides itself on having only recalled three products in its entire history due to safety concerns — and in all three of those cases, they were able to preemptively recall those products before even a single injury or fatality occurred. They are not going to take any chances with the safety of their products, even in cases where current regulations would not hold them liable for those worst case scenarios. For what it's worth, I believe the current version of the magnetic couplings DO use neodymium magnets. But because of these safety concerns, they are secured in a large, pre-assembled plastic housing designed to keep them from being removed by the consumer.

At this scale I think I prefer the abstract lines on the door stickers over infinitesimally tiny text… IMO, even if we assume LEGO could reliably print text legibly that small (a body height of around a quarter of a point or thereabouts)… a line weight scaled to that text size risks seeming a little wonky and "un-LEGO-ish". I'm not sure even the minifig graphics are printed with line weights narrow enough for text that size. Yeah, to me one of the big improvements of this set over the original proposal is reducing the width of the locomotive and carriages from around 10 or 11 studs to around 8 or 9. This way they will not look ludicrously oversized next to other LEGO trains, and will conform a little better to layouts since they do not need nearly as much clearance on either side of the tracks. I'd love to see more trains at this sort of scale in the future, since it keeps them smoothly compatible with L-gauge tracks while still improving the possibilities for the interior (like allowing a bar counter or an enclosed bathroom that still leaves enough aisle space for minifigs to pass by, or allowig sleeper car bunks perpendicular to the coaches instead of just parallel to them). Bit of a shame that the doors between cars still don't open, but they look nice — and I imagine actual passages between cars could still be a possibility for other sorts of trains at this scale.

The use of a generic minifig face in both these sets also ties them to the Modular Buildings Collection— the Flower Cart and Fountain were the only new sets in those years aside from the corresponding Modular Buildings that didn't use more varied and detailed face prints for their minifigs. Obviously, since the Modular Buildings Collection began using more detailed face prints itself from 2018 onward, that's no longer a useful signifier of which GWP sets are specifically meant to tie in with the modular street, but it was a very clear signifier at that time!

Yeah, I'd agree, especially for Unitron since it is a VERY small theme, and its limited release means there is less lore for it and other largely North America exclusive subthemes than there is for other themes that got different lore printed inn different countries. In fact, listings for the monorail set in European catalogs rarely even mentioned Unitron by name. That said, here's a link to scans of the May/June 1995 issue of LEGO Mania Magazine, which featured a page of Unitron blurbs and a two-page "Adventures of the LEGO Maniac" comic featuring Unitron sets. There's also some different blurbs in the LEGO Shop at Home 1995 Holiday Catalog. These is the main sources of lore for this faction that I'm aware of.

I was not particularly expecting coins to show up (you're right that the HP ones would be a great fit, but regrettably I fear that those are IP-locked). I was more anticipating gems, since that's what the original set's treasure chest contained. I wasn't even picky about whether they used something fancier like the Adventurers ruby piece, or simple transparent 1x1 round plates/tiles closer to the gems from the original set. It doesn't discourage me getting the set since it's such a simple improvement to make, but that simplicity makes it all the more perplexing why the designers didn't include any themselves. I mean, the roof supports, front door, and second-story walls are a lot more parts-intensive than their counterparts from the original set. I fully expected that those factors would make up a lot of the difference in piece count. As we can see here, the back wall/chimney is also way more parts intensive (for my part, I feel like that could have been simplified some, although the current design seems pretty decent by my reckoning). Even so, it seems to me like it would have been easy to get rid of the eight medium stone grey parts inside 4x8 turret pieces on the second story and replace them with a simple 2x6 cot using HALF as many pieces. Then the single-piece workbench downstairs could have been replaced with one made from two 1x2 log bricks and one 2x4 plate (like those already used in other parts of the set). That's three simple improvements which would actually take FEWER pieces than the current design of the interior, which seems to reduce the upper level's floor space for no reason than because that's what the original set did. I suppose in the very least I'm thankful that the aspects of the set I'm most bothered by are among the easier ones for me to mod on my own. The knight torso looks fine to me, tbh. Certainly an improvement on the original, since having molded shoulderpads instead of printed ones helps cut down on some of the gratuitous detail, and I appreciate them re-imagining it as a surcoat instead of an awkwardly flattened-out breastplate. I assume the silver collar is a gorget of some kind, although I'm not familiar with any real-life medieval steel gorgets that are split down the middle like that. Another color suggesting a softer collar material might be more realistic, although I do think the silver creates some visually pleasing continuity with the helmet and shoulderpads.

I was expecting the stickered scroll to be honest, since there's no other reason for the shutters to be stickered instead of printed unless they were sharing a sticker sheet with another element. I might've preferred it on a different piece like the "book cover" instead of a standard tile like the original set, but to me that's a pretty minor issue. But yeah, I am… deeply bummed about that interior, especially after having only minor nitpicks about what we'd seen of the set so far. It feels like a huge missed opportunity to do more with the space than the original set did, especially since a lot of the bricks eating up space on the upper level's interior are in no way as structurally necessary as they were in the original set. Arguably, it does somewhat less with the space than the original set, since it omits the barrel on the ground level and the torch on the upper level for reasons I can hardly fathom (surely it would not have cost much to include a simple torch like those from 10305, or an even simpler wall sconce like those on the exterior). It doesn't even seem to have any treasure in the treasure chest! I definitely still want to get this set, because I genuinely do like the exterior a bunch and feel it holds a lot of promise. But I figure I'll be modding the interior extensively to get it to a state I'm happy with. Maybe my hopes for the interior were over-inflated after how impressed I was with the Forest Hideout — after all, that set didn't really make many upgrades to its own interior, aside from adding a ladder which the original set lacked. I suppose the main reason I expected different here is that the original set had more furnishings in the first place. Still, I can't help feeling like a lot more could have been done here at no additional expense or increase to the piece count. I guess that's what bothers me most about this — unlike frustrations others have expressed about the lack of classic molds and prints, which are very clearly motivated by what the set's budget could allow, the shortcomings of the interior that frustrate me seem so easily avoidable.