2011 City Spaceport Sets

[Bluetron]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but it looks like, in addition to alien invasions, Lego will be releasing some new "spaceport" type sets:









I like what I see so far. You'll notice that the spaceport's logo is a tribute to the Classic Space logo - it's the little red ship taking off into the sky. It looks like most of them come with the Atlantis helmet in white with a gold bubble visor, which should be a cool variant (although I don't know why they don't use the old spaceport helmet molds, they looked more "spacey"... oh well).

Speaking of Atlantis, it looks like all the upcoming subs have clear yellow cockpits! The new divers have clear yellow bubble visors as well:





The Deep Sea Raider (7984-1) has some especially nice parts -- that big clear yellow canopy plus several clear yellow 2x2 mini canopies. I can already see many new Classic space and Blacktron I MOCs coming from just that set. Not sure about the suggested retail price though...

[Borgador]

Those 2 trans-yellow canopies are great. The city space sets look great too. The new style space helmet in white is awesome.

[Admiral Netsooj]

YES!!! More trans-yellow cockpits!!!

The new NASA sets are cool, but I don't think my budget will allow me to be able to get any of them.

[Capt_Redstorm]

Lots of large parts in the NASA sets, but plenty of cool and new parts as well. The cement cylinders in white for example. The new Atlantis sets are pretty damn awesome. Got Angler Attack towards the end of last year and was very pleased with it.

[spacie]

Has anyone else also noticed that they changed this part again?
It now has something like this instead of a plate at the front (look at the image of the new space-shuttle)
There also seem to be new triangular wing plates with a smooth top. ( again in the space-shuttle)

[Capt_Redstorm]

Has anyone else also noticed that they changed this part again?
It now has something like this instead of a plate at the front (look at the image of the new space-shuttle)
There also seem to be new triangular wing plates with a smooth top. ( again in the space-shuttle)

Oh, cool. Don't know how I missed that.

[Admiral Netsooj]

Has anyone else also noticed that they changed this part again?
It now has something like this instead of a plate at the front (look at the image of the new space-shuttle)
There also seem to be new triangular wing plates with a smooth top. ( again in the space-shuttle)

Interesting..... If it were in trans colors, I could see that it might make using that windscreen more troublesome. Well, less asthetically pleasing, and easier to open, at any rate.

Then again, for all we know, TLC didn't change it, and it just has some of those pieces attached to it. Just a thought...

[spacie]

I don't think they didn't change it, take a look at the picture above. The front part of the canopy seems to have been "cut off" and replaced by that piece.

[Bluetron]

Thanks for pointing that out, Spacie. This is the kind of thing that TLG's Design Lab does that kind of drives me crazy. First they add the square tab to the front of that canopy piece, and now apparently they've changed it (yet again) to a snap bar. I can see how the bar might make hinging easier, but now we're going to end up with new versions of old parts that can't be used in old ways. This kind of screws up reverse compatibility, IMO, and causes the older canopies to become rarer over time. I wish they'd settle on a final version of this part already.

[Stargorger]

Well if they did that, how would they extract more money from us? *sniff sniff*

Yeah not a fan of the new part. In general I don't like it when they change older parts (with multiple uses) into new 'sleek' shapes that you can only use for one thing. I end up with a lot of 'junk' parts at the bottom of my boxes that I cant use for anything but their intended purpose, which kinda defeats the point of creativity with building toys, don't ya think?