News review of the year

Thanks for this overview. I’ll go read (or reread, I guess) the article on Technic pins. At the time of publishing, it was not such an issue for me but when I took some of the sets that have them apart in the last few weeks, lets just say I did not have that much fun…

I must say I am eternally grateful to this site for the excellent reviews and articles, which are immensely enjoyable. I also find the database for personal sets or sets in generally to be top notch; especially today, after a bird flew in and knocked down four of my Lego sets (and I had to replace some parts - ahhh), the depth and helpfulness of the database is incredible.

Must ask though, the "this part is in x amount of sets" is incredibly useful, means I can pilfer from other sets, while I put in an order for replacement parts. However, wasn't there once a function, where I could find a part in sets I owned, rather than having to sift through all sets in which a part is in, to see if I own it? My memory might be faulty on that one !

Regardless, this is an invaluable site and thank you to the entire team for your continued hard work, it is very much appreciated.

Thank you Huw and the team for allowing me to live in 2021! Brickset is incredible and I love chatting with other Lego fans! Happy new year for 2022!

I've fallen into a second Dark Ages phase this year, so I'm not the best person to comment on LEGO news highlights anymore. Most news I get about TLG are not highlights for me but lowlights. The only question for me is, how much lower can it get.

What I do want to point out though is that even though my love for LEGO has soured thanks to everything TLG is doing wrong imho, my love for Brickset and its awesome team is as strong as ever.
@Huw , thank you very much for the amazing work you do and the effort you and your team put into the site. If LEGO was only one tenth as good (and passionate about the quality of their product) as Brickset I would never have quit the hobby!

To be fair, every Lego website and social media fan site linked to the "LEGO has designed a set that can't be taken apart" article which may have aided in its popularity.

I too have found myself teetering on the edge of a Dark Age, Lego wise. Notwithstanding the fact that it's truly been an awful year all round, there have been so few sets that have really exited me this year and I have bought less Lego in 2021 than I have for at least the last 10 years. This is why I find BRICKSET invaluable as the quality of your reviews helps me to decide what is truly not for me.
The Adult Duplo article stick cracks me up and re-reading through the comments posted in the year's most commented on gives me a sense of the very best, and worst, of a truly eclectic fanbase.
Here's to a better 2022 for everyone, for Lego for sure (come on, give us Peli Motto and Trapper Wolf and make me happy) and to BRICKSET for all the great work.

@AustinPowers said:
"I've fallen into a second Dark Ages phase this year, so I'm not the best person to comment on LEGO news highlights anymore. Most news I get about TLG are not highlights for me but lowlights. The only question for me is, how much lower can it get.

What I do want to point out though is that even though my love for LEGO has soured thanks to everything TLG is doing wrong imho, my love for Brickset and its awesome team is as strong as ever.
@Huw , thank you very much for the amazing work you do and the effort you and your team put into the site. If LEGO was only one tenth as good (and passionate about the quality of their product) as Brickset I would never have quit the hobby!
"

You are omnipresent in the comment section here on Brickset, you are quite far from being in dark ages because of that.

Ah, I forgot about the Duplo prank. It's even funnier now after having just read the cringey/sloppy press release on the Sonic set that was announced today.

@thor96 said:
"You are omnipresent in the comment section here on Brickset, you are quite far from being in dark ages because of that."
That doesn't really mean anything, I'm more active on Brickset than ever but I haven't bought a Lego set in nearly three years. Even in my greyest ages as a teenager I still bought sets occaisionally.

@Robot99 said:
" @thor96 said:
"You are omnipresent in the comment section here on Brickset, you are quite far from being in dark ages because of that."
That doesn't really mean anything, I'm more active on Brickset than ever but I haven't bought a Lego set in nearly three years. Even in my greyest ages as a teenager I still bought sets occaisionally."
+1

And @thor96 : compared to in the past I have cut down on my commenting activities quite a bit. I used to comment daily, and on almost every review or news article. Now I only comment on very few articles and almost no reviews.
Come to think of it, the only review I have really commented on intensely over the past few weeks was the Lunar New Year Ice Festival.

But don't worry, as you don't seem to like my comments you'll be happy to hear that come next year I will stop commenting almost completely.

It shows how after almost a full year of news how many articles I forget are published. I'll have to reread the technic pin article. I don't use them very often, so most get sorted away.

@AustinPowers said:
"But don't worry, as you don't seem to like my comments"
Huh? I didn't get that tone from his comment... Or am I missing something here that isn't my bussiness?

@Robot99 said:
" @AustinPowers said:
"But don't worry, as you don't seem to like my comments"
Huh? I didn't get that tone from his comment... Or am I missing something here that isn't my bussiness?"
I thought that was exactly the tone he meant.
Either way, I will more or less stop commenting.

The thing that made me notice that I actually am in a second dark ages is that I simply don't feel the urge to comment anymore. In former times new sets often excited me so much either in a positive or a negative way that I felt I just had to comment.
Nowadays, most new sets just leave me uninterested so I think there's just no point for me in commenting, or I just have no opinion worthy of a comment.
In addition, by now I have over 1,500 sets plus several thousand minifigures. It is a case of simple oversaturation. And most new LEGO sets just don't offer me anything new that I haven't already got. There's the odd exception here and there of course, but simply not enough to keep me captured. I have (and all the time had) other hobbies as well, and am really enjoying spending more time on them now again.
And even if I didn't, for what I love as subjects for brick sets, other manufacturers than LEGO by now offer far more enticing propositions, and at far better value for money too.
All this led me to where I am now. So yes, it is indeed a new dark ages for me - though I don't even feel like this is something negative.

Dude, you can just go if you want to, it's fine. People change hobbies. No need to be a drama llama.

@AustinPowers said:
"I thought that was exactly the tone he meant."
Hmm, maybe it's just me projecting my feelings, but it came off more as a surprised tone to me.

Anyways, I understand your decision to move away from Lego, as I haven't really been in touch with it either lately. For me it's not even disinterest, on the contrary, there's been a ton of sets over the last few years in particular that I wish I could buy. But the sheer amount of money you need to spend to upkeep this hobby - not to mention the ever-shrinking amount of space necerssary for it - just makes it unsustainable for me.

With my main hobby, video games, I can buy one copy of a game for a flat price of 60 bucks and get dozens of hours out of it from the initial playthrough alone, plus hundreds more from all of the times I will inevitably replay it. I don't get that with Lego - I can spend $400 on a single set, get a week or two worth of building out of it, and then it'll take up a huge amount of space somewhere in my house where I'll be afraid to ever dissasemble it.

Sorry for the cynical post that is rather unrelated to the article at hand, just wanted to share the sentiments.

@Robot99
@AustinPowers

Slowly getting disinterested in the Lego offerings? Nothing really new for you in it? I can relate. I used to say on this site (the only Lego site on which I comment) that I am a 'Technic' guy. I bought a grand total of one(1) Technic set in 2021 42116 (a 140 pieces set worth 10 euros). I did however bought a few System sets which seemed interesting (either for parts or for building techniques). Last year, Lego did a survey asking what people wanted to see in the Technic range. I wrote extensively to them on that matter and was also able to read many great ideas proposed by other members on a forum on this subject on Brickset last year. I'm still eager to see if we will ever see the result of this (seeing the offerings for 2022 so far, the prospects are not very good). Being a 'Technic' builder, means I do not have a 'town' to which I can add over time - so all the System sets I have are disparate and rather hard to combine for a cohesive whole (i.e they are neither on display and/or built for a very long period of time - hence poor value for money). Recently, I decided to mostly moc the stuff I want to see/have. I am 3 years into building what I really want but have to wait until Lego eventually produce the pieces I want in the colour I need - until then, I keep refining the model on Stud.io and slowly building what I can. Also with the advent of 'muted' colours, it is becoming hard to find parts in 'traditional' Lego colours (the colours on the 70s Legoland flag: yellow, red, blue, white, black - in that order). Nowadays, you can buy a pretty good computer/game console/tablet or a 1 meter long ill-fated historical plastic ship made of Lego for about the same price - which one will give you the best return on your money in terms of entertainment? - to each his own, but for me, answering this is fairly easy and I don't like having to pay for 'Lego houses' and other similar projects/ventures/initiatives which does nothing for me. Still, I like to read the passionate comments and heated debates on Brickset and sometimes feel compelled to share my view - even though the large number of sets offered by Lego in recent years fails to keep me genuinely involved with the hobby.

@Huw said:
" @Montyh7 said:
"Must ask though, the "this part is in x amount of sets" is incredibly useful, means I can pilfer from other sets, while I put in an order for replacement parts. However, wasn't there once a function, where I could find a part in sets I owned, rather than having to sift through all sets in which a part is in, to see if I own it? My memory might be faulty on that one ! "

Assuming you have enabled the parts collection functionality here https://brickset.com/profile/preferences you can view the sets a part comes in then select 'Owned' from the my collection drop down, e.g. https://brickset.com/sets/containing-part-300101/mycollection-Owned
"

Thank you ! Incredibly useful feature !

I'm just commenting here to help this article show up in the next list. ;)

@HOBBES : funny, 42116 is also the only 2021 Technic set that I have at the moment.
Although I must say, 42128 is also a set worthy of the name Technic, garish colour scheme notwithstanding.

@AustinPowers said:
"But don't worry, as you don't seem to like my comments you'll be happy to hear that come next year I will stop commenting almost completely. "

I must admit, although I often don't agree with your sentiments, I do enjoy reading your commentary. It's nice to get a different perspective, and I often do err on the side of Lego (which is weird considering it is a multi billion dollar business, but meh, I love their product, what can you do). You would absolutely consider me to be a fangirl of Lego and I have no problem with that, because in all honesty for the most part I am. Don't have the deep pockets unfortunately, but I like what I like.

However, they do make some weird decisions sometimes, the whole gunship saga from start to finish was just a bad experience for people like me who like SW UCS sets and the lack of 501st stock in Aus - temporarily out of stock for nearly a year. You tend to call them out, and at times, I feel you do it just to be contrary but at other times, when I take off my rose coloured glasses, quite rightly.

If you do undertake a hiatus, I shall miss your interesting perspectives and commentary.

The 1 april ad was brilliant. Had days of fun with it ...

Are there any statistics on Brickset articles viewed overall versus articled viewed by logged in members?

@Montyh7 said:
" @AustinPowers said:
"But don't worry, as you don't seem to like my comments you'll be happy to hear that come next year I will stop commenting almost completely. "

I must admit, although I often don't agree with your sentiments, I do enjoy reading your commentary. It's nice to get a different perspective, and I often do err on the side of Lego (which is weird considering it is a multi billion dollar business, but meh, I love their product, what can you do). You would absolutely consider me to be a fangirl of Lego and I have no problem with that, because in all honesty for the most part I am. Don't have the deep pockets unfortunately, but I like what I like.

However, they do make some weird decisions sometimes, the whole gunship saga from start to finish was just a bad experience for people like me who like SW UCS sets and the lack of 501st stock in Aus - temporarily out of stock for nearly a year. You tend to call them out, and at times, I feel you do it just to be contrary but at other times, when I take off my rose coloured glasses, quite rightly.

If you do undertake a hiatus, I shall miss your interesting perspectives and commentary."

First, thanks Huw (and team) for all the cool you do! Love this site.

Second, I agree with fangirl. Auf Wiedersehen Mr. Powers! Hopefully, your hiatus will be refreshing and not too lengthy.

Third, I share a lot of the feelings and frustrations of the above comments. Like Mr. Powers, I have a gigantic collection that is surely worth "one million dollars.";)

I love LEGO. it makes me happy. I think it's only getting better. But, there really is a finite amount of space and money. More than half of my collection is still in boxes.

Then again, my son is also Teetering-On-Dark-Ages (TODA). As a serious LEGO fan and otherwise bratty parent, this makes me want to rebel and over-compensate with unswerving allegiance to LEGO!

Been a great year LEGO wise, but I do have to say the controversial VIP offers such as the Ulysses and Coin's did sour my view on the whole VIP system. So happy I managed to get all the VIP releases I wanted including the Ulysses.

Can't wait to see what 2022 brings.