Review: 60349 Lunar Space Station
Posted by Mr_Cross,
Out there, somewhere in orbit around the LEGO moon are a new team of intrepid astronauts. Exploring and investigating the brick-built cosmos… making discoveries and trying to reach further depths of brick space.
Hopefully they are helping to stimulate a new generation to become astronauts, explorers and scientists. What I have seen so far gives me hope at least.
In keeping with the rest of the subtheme, the set takes inspiration from the NASA Artemis program.
60349 Lunar Space Station is the “medium” sized set in the subtheme. We have seen a few orbital Space Stations over the years. Most recently 2019’s 60227 Lunar Space Station may share the same name but does look significantly different.
Summary
60349 Lunar Space Station, 500 pieces.
£54.99 / $79.99 / €59.99 | 11.0p/16.0c/12.0c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
A great looking model, interesting subject matter but a slightly high price in some countries.
- Great range of characters to inhabit and work on the space station
- Lots to play with
- Modular “airlock” system used across theme
- Expensive in some regions
- Wasted space
Instructions
The instructions are provided as a single perfect bound volume.
Stickers
It’s just one medium-sized sticker sheet with 13 stickers to apply. I’m a fan of nicely generic screens that have potential uses in my own MOCs, hazard tape is always welcome too. So I’m not unhappy about these stickers. In fact, I’m becoming a bit of a convert and see any generic sticker decoration as potentially useful.
Minifigures
Another whole new team is featured in this set. Five wonderfully detailed minifigures each with a job to do, and enough varied crew to stage a mission limited only by your imagination. Shown here in the order we encounter them, they are distributed as one character per bag.
In bag 1 we have one pilot astronaut in a Bright Light Orange flight suit. The dark blue visor is an interesting choice for the sunshade and looks really nice as a contrast to the suit. The real world ones are black and are intended to reduce glare from any reflected sunlight during approach and landing - another rabbit hole search “unearthed” the wikipedia page for the Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) which I believe this suit is modelled on.
There is an alternate expression, a sleeping face, a now familiar part that has featured in many previous sets, but is still an appropriate feature to have available for creating scenes or role-playing. An alternate hairpiece is also provided to replace the helmet. This feature has become almost standard in sets I’ve bought in the last year or so.
The design is also pretty accurate and if this is the first time you are seeing these new figures it is your first look at that great new updated Classic Space logo with a gold moon!
The first of two science officer astronauts in Dark Azure jumpsuits comes in bag 2.
My son who was building the set made the deduction that this guy is a Dad away from home - “There is a picture of his family on one of the stickers!”
He comes with a hairpiece that is new for 2022, but owing to its design precludes an alternate expression. This suit also features the new logo too.
The second of the science officers comes in bag 3 and is ready for some serious rock analysis with a fairly heavy-duty drilling tool.
The second expression is so slight to my ageing eyes as to be virtually imperceptible - a raising of the eyebrows and perhaps a squint as if observing something close-up? Which was how I felt trying to discern the difference!
In bag 4 we have an astronaut in an EVA spacesuit. This character also comes with an alternate hairpiece. I’m pleased to see this variation of backpack for the astronaut, a jetpack with lights and multidirectional jets is a must for any explorational (or maintenance) spacewalk. The camera is a useful piece of equipment too.
Bag 5 provides our final minifigure, a second astronaut in an EVA suit. The final figure also comes with a hairpiece for when they are not wearing their helmet. This astronaut also has a spanner, and the regular backpack with the updated classic space logo.
The Build
Bag One
The first bag contains parts for a Lunar Lander (or is it an escape shuttle? (Actually it would seem this is an Orion spacecraft bringing astronauts to the Gateway Space Station from Earth)
A rear propulsion section with solar panels is built first.
The main fuselage uses the same new two part cockpit as seen in both 60350 Lunar Research Base & 60351 Rocket Launch Centre the latter however, having both parts appear in Dark Orange.
There is a storage unit filled with a crystal behind the pilot, is this a sample to be taken back to earth or actually some new kind of rocket fuel? Blocktillium perhaps?
The finished little shuttle is really neat and very, very swooshable!
Bag Two
The beginnings of the large central section start obviously with a lower deck, in this case, sleeping quarters.
What confused me was the apparent waste of space here… yes, in reality, double thickness walls (at a minimum)are probably required to adequately protect and seal any environment in space. I think these channels would probably be filled with pipes, space-age insulation etc. and that’s not something we want to waste precious LEGO elements doing if it’s going to be hidden anyway… so why is this channel here? It’s not a big issue by any means, it just made me scratch my head.
Even with that area locked away, there’s plenty of space on each side for an Astronaut to sleep in this lower deck… if only someone would turn that sun off… oh!
Bag Three
]
Daddy, what is that banana doing there?
I’ll be honest, I’ve got no idea what that banana is doing there. Has it been pumped out? Is this some sort of futuristic reconstituted expanding banana paste? There’s a knife and fork symbol here leading me to the conclusion that this is a food dispensary point. The LEGO product page suggests this is a science and botany lab, but I’m not quite seeing it, this seems more like a refectory, galley or “mess”.
The outer enclosure is nice, the repurposed windscreens are easily open and shut to allow access the astronauts within the space station.
They look great, but when shut the screens don’t quite sit flush and an overlap creates a small lip. It’s not exactly unsightly and from a practical point of view, it helps with opening it up too.
I think the large panels of window are impractical even if they do look very cool.
Perhaps white screens in the lower section would make more sense from the “sleeping” quarters point of view. The screen part actually currently appears in white in 10274 Ghostbusters ECTO-1, so I wonder whether this was a design objective to limit the number of parts in different colours within the set.
Bag Four
This bag has parts for a midsection, but first we add a radar dish and a robot arm to the larger lab and sleeping area.
The robot arm is a very familiar sort of build, unsurprisingly. Less conventionally however, it uses flag pieces for the gripping “clamps” (this feels like superfluous labelling - and I’m surprised to see it as historically I thought language usage was kept to a minimum to avoid translation issues)
The arm has captured an asteroid, this is the new over-moulded boulder and if you didn’t already know, there is a geode inside.
We can see that the docking rings are only big enough to get a minifigure through horizontally. Although this was true of previous sets (and is in keeping with how astronauts move about in zero gravity) I think it’s worth mentioning here because in a space station playset, moving astronauts between quarters, engineering and external missions is one of the things we might want to do.
An interesting protrusion is included as both a visual feature and a necessary support leg.
The mid-section is secured into place, and that is done by two easily attached or removed pieces. I think it lessened any modular play as my son was subsequently reluctant to rearrange the station (which should be possible using this method of construction)
Bag Five
A reasonably simple cube construction houses a neat little mechanism. The little yellow actuator clips down into place, which I imagine is necessary to counter the weight of the flag elements (solar panels) at extension. Again this section includes another “leg”.
The solar panels themselves are printed one side (fair enough and pretty accurate to real world examples)
Once all the sections are connected, the overall size of the model is impressive, and it’s weighty too. I have to say this impressed both my son and I.
The completed model
There are some fun possibilities for playing here. The minifigures can be posed floating about inside the lab, attached by bar handles. You could make vignettes of experiments being undertaken both outside the space station and within utilising the asteroid, the amoeba tiles and the various tools and accessories provided. Our astronauts in EVA suits can do “necessary” maintenance tasks… or take space walks.
So, I like the inclusion of the space-walk hatchway that the astronauts might use to exit the station on research missions.
I’m not sure if we can do much more than open this up and push the character in though, because any further travel into the station is limited by your finger size and the docking ring. Which in my case pretty much prevented any such activity.
Background
The instructions again feature the Artemis Program and have taken some relevant imagery from NASA and the dedicated Artemis websites. The Gateway Space Station will be a lunar orbiting station and is intended to be the staging point for both lunar and eventual deep space missions. I think there is a good degree of artistic licence being utilised here, as there is much that differs in the LEGO representation.
The Space station is an important stepping stone, making regular trips to the lunar surface more manageable and hopefully in the longer term putting us a step closer to Mars. It’s definitely exciting, intriguing and inspiring stuff. Just the sort of thing I want to encourage my kids to play with.
Other thoughts
I’d like LEGO to produce smaller sets from themes like this. Any of the one-man buggies in this new space theme with the addition of one of the brick built craters and/or a boulder would make a neat stand alone little set in my opinion. I can see the argument that this would harm sales of the larger sets because the “need” to buy them is reduced because you can get most of the new elements in smaller sets, but I think it might also lead to greater involvement in the theme if the initial “buy in” was cheaper.
As a parent, I would appreciate a set at a pocket-money price point. Certainly a Polybag, a £9 set and a £15 would be welcome, and not just in this theme.
As a Space LEGO fan, I’d like a more affordable way to source more characters from the theme other than relying on Bricks and Pieces to eventually have them in stock.
I would also really love to see LEGO run a second wave of this subtheme - I’d happily accept this as a surrogate for classic space, especially if I knew it was going to return year after year and develop in ways I can only dream of.
I’d also like to see LEGO inject a little more of their creativity in adding to this subtheme… a ship with deep space travel as it’s remit (passengers and crew in stasis pods and re-use of the dome parts from 60350 Lunar Research Base for biodomes) - of course I can create any of that myself, I have the bricks and I have the desire… but it’s not the same as an actual official set in a box.
Conclusion
I think this set has much to like about it, and there is a lot that can be played with. It has some areas that could have been handled differently, another docking ring would have been nice… but the hatchways do add to the play value. I really like the solar panel mechanism, but activating that from table-top play is less impressive.
There are some other issues for me (mostly concerned with our poor astronauts sleeping) but I’m still trying to decide whether those are adult nit-picks and more or less irrelevant where a fantasy space adventure in LEGO is concerned. I’d also have welcomed more parts of a modular system, but any additional sections would come with cost implications.
Overall this set and the theme in general has ticked most of my boxes. For the first time, I’m not sure I’m bothered by the colour scheme (I think retrospectively that has purely been a case of me lamenting the imaginative contrasting livery of sets in the vintage themes like Space Police, M-Tron, Insectoids et al. anyway). I really do love a space adventure, just perhaps a little more science-fiction in the mix would add to my excitement though.
Is this good value? Is it enough? This is a generously proportioned set and I have to say after I ran a database query to see what else you can get from the 2022 assortment for similar money - I’m beginning to think that this is just the sort of value you can expect in today’s market.
However, the whole theme certainly feels overpriced to me but at just 10%-15% off, I could definitely recommend this set and 60350 Lunar Research Base (that I reviewed previously) because they’re both great sets and together create a very pleasing “world”. I also bought 60348 Lunar Roving Vehicle to add to these sets after reading Lobot’s great review.
Here then, as played with by my kids are three of the available four sets, they played for some time, there was a mission I overheard, and the crew were all infected by the amoeba… not the utopia I’d hoped for, but we live in strange times.
In my opinion 60351 Rocket Launch Centre is perhaps a little wallet busting and therefore conspicuous by its absence, but it is still a set I would like nonetheless (in part due to benbacardi’s thorough review).
The other thing that is now absent are two of the new geode boulders, “acquired” by my children after they’d finished playing…
“Daddy, can we have a boulder each, please?”
“Yeah sure, did you enjoy playing with the LEGO?”
“Yeah it was really cool. You can put that in your review if you like.”
“Thanks, I might.”
Perhaps that is enough, it is really cool, we enjoyed building it, the time spent together was lovely to be part of and to observe, we went to space together and last time I checked, the real world cost of that was a lot more than the combined cost of these LEGO space sets!
163 likes
40 comments on this article
I'm sorry but I'm really unsure for who the Lego is targeted for. With their recent approach, they are making LEGO even less accessible than ever before. The prices are so ridiculous across the board that it can be hardly justified. I can buy any lego I want but I won't because this is a theft under direct light. Shame because I consider Lego one of the best toys ever made.
@NatureBricks said:
"I really want this set, but the fact it's $55USD in Germany and $80 USA in the USA is outrageous to me."
It's also $80USD ($100CAD) in Canada (without the 15% sales tax, which makes it $92USD).
I love those sets, however. I thought about getting them, but the four of them are $500CAD ($400USD) without tax, which is way too much.
People hate Star Wars prices, but City prices are as bad, if not worst (which proves that there is no such thing as a SW tax, btw...)
Turn a 2 into a 7, and you get a Police Patrol Boat from 60227 Lunar Space Station! This comment will be nonsensical once that's fixed . . . . [EDIT] and it's fixed. Great review!
Ridiculous pricing and in addition it seems a simple seat is too expensive to be provided in recent sets (even in trucks and cars).
As a space station, this set is more impressive than the 2019's 60227. It also is, I think, the most realistic spaceship Lego ever made. But, unfortunately, it's not nearly as swooshable as 60226 is.
Sets like this one makes me want to buy a City set for the first time in ages. It looks impressive, like the rest of the Space subtheme, but....
For R$799.99 it is a no. Ninjago, Speed Champions and Super Heroes offers much better deals in terms of number of pieces. City has become sadly expensive in the last years. Some sets are understandable due to some kind of gimmick being forcefully added to it (helicopters that fly, giant shooters, road plates...). But for the Space sets there's no reason for the high prices. Really disappoiting thing.
I love that you “child tested” the set. Though these don’t have much appeal to me now, I would have wanted all of them when I was a kid!
In my headcanon, this is a deep-space vessel meant for a mission to Saturn. The capsule docked to the front is the command module, the big hexagonal structure is the rotating habitat torus (which obviously can't be a rotating torus with room for minifigs in a <$100 Lego set, so this is a good substitute), and the power and propulsion element is the engine block.
Most recently 2019’s 60277 Police Patrol Boat may share the same name but does look significantly different. ? Eh..?
More modularity would have been the biggest winner here but I guess you could just combine it with the last Space wave we've got and that should make up for it. I really like the bio dome and that there is so much to play with. It's just overpriced, especially the bigger sets, get it 30% off and I think you are in for a great deal.
@eiffel006 said... (which proves that there is no such thing as a SW tax, btw...)]]
Of course there's a SW "tax". Do you think Disney lets TLG use Disney's intellectual property for free?
Looks like the Hermes from The Martian.
'60277 Police Patrol Boat' should have read '60227 Luna Space Station', it was a typo and therefore miscommunicated my intention to Huw.
Should be fixed now.
I really like these new sets (I liked the 2019 space sets too) and if I were younger or my kid was interested in LEGO I'd certainly pick these up. But since I don't play with them, I don't find the value especially at these costs. But for play value, they look great and have a lot of neat features.
I will agree, price is rough for the target audience. But hey, they need to keep that profit high ya know...
so can you connect the 2019 (wow really it's been 3 years?!) station to this one?
@ahughwilliams said:
"so can you connect the 2019 (wow really it's been 3 years?!) station to this one?"
I believe you can, but I don't actually own 60227 to confirm that.
The "docking rings" (Part No. 49699) are the same in these sets, so I think it's fair to assume they do.
$80 for an unlicensed, 500 piece set?? I love "the return of Space" as much as the next--but for that kind of money I could get -actual- classic space! Is this a minifig thing, is that why it's so much? I can appreciate minifigs, but I've never understood the justification of minifigs jacking up a price like that.
Love that the wife and child minifigs on the videocall back to earth are the same 'figs from 60326 earlier this year - worldbuilding!!
Also could be used as makeshift underwater base (solar panels could still make sense in a coral reef setting), colors might not match 60265 but imagination, same modules, and windows do help.
With some mods, the 2019 Space 2020 Underwater and 2022 Space bases are very compatible due to the same "airlock" pieces.
Of course, all those bases/stations can extend upon themselves as well for people who have multiples of the sets.
Also the beds have holders for minidoll feet, so compatible with 41713 : Olivia's Space Academy
I don't know why, but that one minifig reminds me of Sharon from Space Brothers. It's a cool looking set. Heck, the whole series of it is pretty dope. May get all of them, haha.
@560heliport said:
" @eiffel006 said... (which proves that there is no such thing as a SW tax, btw...
Of course there's a SW "tax". Do you think Disney lets TLG use Disney's intellectual property for free? "
I don't have time to look for it at the moment, but Jang showed how the cost of the deal was split accross every set LEGO produces, not only SW sets. He repeats it quite often in his videos, actually. I read an article about this either, but I can't find it [I'm not making anything up, but I'm working and have no time to dig too deep in the issue right now).
@eiffel006 said:
" @NatureBricks said:
"I really want this set, but the fact it's $55USD in Germany and $80 USA in the USA is outrageous to me."
It's also $80USD ($100CAD) in Canada (without the 15% sales tax, which makes it $92USD).
I love those sets, however. I thought about getting them, but the four of them are $500CAD ($400USD) without tax, which is way too much.
People hate Star Wars prices, but City prices are as bad, if not worst (which proves that there is no such thing as a SW tax, btw...)"
No kidding, the 3 recent SW dioramas sets come out to $350 CAD and these 4 City Space sets come out to $565. I started scaling my Lego purchases the last couple years due to Lego focusing more and more on IPs as opposed to original content. This year the prices are starting to make scale back even more. Going to be interesting to see next year LEGO report
So I'm not the only one wondering how well this would combine with 60227 right? Looks like the way the modular sections go together is more or less the same, that would make it nice and easy to click 'em together to make an even larger space station
US pricing is so crazy. Gotta wait for that 20% off.
Love the set, though. It's a cool mix of Classic Space and something modern.
“Expensive in some regions”
Honestly, it’s expensive in all regions, it’s just that America got it the worst (again). I’m not even shocked at this point, it’s pretty clear that these are targeted at kids whose elders don’t care how much they spend for their children. As opposed to almost-adult fans like me who can afford these but are turned off by the price and the overall simplistic build.
I’m not here to cancel your kid but the wife and kid could be any of the astronauts’, not just the guy’s. ;)
@ra226 said:
"$80 for an unlicensed, 500 piece set?? I love "the return of Space" as much as the next--but for that kind of money I could get -actual- classic space! Is this a minifig thing, is that why it's so much? I can appreciate minifigs, but I've never understood the justification of minifigs jacking up a price like that."
This is NOT 'the return of space'. The only thing mildly related to 'Classic Space' here is the modified logo - which is fine btw. The action of 'Classic Space' was in (wait for it: Space) - at no point in the entire Classic Space line-up was there a terrestrial launch pad or any facilities whatsoever. In 'Classic Space' everything takes place in space and the 'spacepeople' are mostly outside (if we can speak like that, i.e. a large amount of vehicle had the astronaut not caged inside a vehicle but rather riding it like a buggy or a motorcycle). Also, as requested by the reviewer, Classic Space had tons of small vehicles 885 and 886 both have 20 parts - 5 of which is the spaceperson). A proper line-up of 'Space' would have 2 small sets (US$10), 2 medium sets (US$30 and US$50), 1 large set (US$100) and 1 mega set (US$150-200). The theme would also carry through from one year to the next (no need for six sets per year, some year may be less (2-4) - doing more Castle or Pirates and then coming back to Space later). Maybe, one day, there will be an AFOL leading the company and those things will happen...
Good review! I think the designers did a really fantastic job with this set, and there's clearly a lot of attention to detail in how well many of the features reflect the real-life plans for the NASA Gateway.
While some of the features like the huge panoramic canopy windows on the HALO crew cabin seem to be creative license, I don't mind too much. After all, these sort of canopy windows are very traditional for LEGO Space models. Plus, they give kids a good look at the model's interior even when everything is sealed up, and keep the interiors well-lit even without working electric lights (much like the dollhouse-style open backs of buildings in the City and Friends themes).
I made the same inference your son did about the curly-haired astronaut's family after seeing the sticker sheet. I love this type of environmental storytelling in sets, even ones without named characters. Like the family photo in 80036, it really helps to convey the challenge of having to be away from your loved ones for a long stretch of time.
For kids, I suspect this sort of thing can make a great "story starter" for more emotionally-driven storytelling, and an opportunity to explore internal forms of conflict rather than just external ones (like safely navigating to and from the lunar surface or repairing equipment malfunctions), and can provide character-specific motivations when those sorts of external conflicts DO arise.
These details are are also an awesome way to make connections between otherwise unrelated sets — in this case, the mother and son in the photo are the same figures that appear in set 60326! And in the future, they could potentially even be a way of including LGBTQ+ representation, something I've often seen people question the feasibility of in non-story-driven sets/themes like this one.
After all, there's no reason that you couldn't hint at an astronaut or arctic researcher having a same-sex partner/spouse back home! Kids could always still interpret figures in that sort of scenario as family friends, cousins, or siblings rather than romantic partners if they had an easier time relating with the characters that way. But it could just as easily help kids with same-sex parents, friends, or family members (or kids who've had enough time to experience same-sex crushes of their own) relate a little bit better to the characters on that level.
The red-haired astronaut's face print was originally designed for Lloyd's mom Misako from the Ninjago theme, and you're right that the two expressions are very similar, but I've always seen the alternate expression as a wider smile, as though "beaming with pride", as opposed to a more generic/neutral smile. These sorts of nuanced facial expressions are one of the reasons that I'm glad minifigures today have more facial variation than just the generic "smile". Especially for kids who are autistic like I am, details like these are useful for learning to recognize various facial expressions and the emotions that they represent, as well as to explore the sort of play and storytelling scenarios that might elicit those emotions.
Honestly, it surprised me a bit that this set (and a few other space sets this year, such as the LEGO Friends space academy) include a brick-built hand drill and the Fabuland wrench instead of their equivalents from the tool pack (https://brickset.com/parts) that replaced the old-school "tool wheel" around a decade ago. At first I figured this was probably just for cost reasons, since a lot of those tools like the oil can would not be as necessary in all these sets.
But after a little reading, I realize LEGO may have wanted the lightweight "space drills" in sets like this one to stand out from the ordinary power drills used by folks like auto mechanics or factory workers on Earth. Here's an article I found about the real-world version of those drills: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a24639/space-drill-used-by-nasa-astronauts/
The brick-built drills do seem a lighter and less cumbersome than the molded power drill piece, but while the unicorn horn used for the drill bit seems reasonably practical for boring holes, I kind of feel that a simpler, non-spiral drill bit would be a little more believable for other important space station tasks like fastening bolts. Perhaps it would have been better if the designers also included an additional piece like a silver spyglass as an alternate drill bit for those sorts of tasks.
I suspect the gap between the floor surface and the base of the space station may just been a matter of raising the hinges for the lower windows up enough so that they line up relatively neatly with the upper windows (while still locking the hinges in place securely both above and below), and the most efficient option just happened to leave an empty space in the middle.
I'm not bothered at all by minifigures only fitting horizontally through the docking rings, since as you mentioned, there's little difference between moving horizontally and vertically in a zero-gravity environment like this! Of course, the docking ring piece might have felt more realistic for other subjects like moon bases, submarines, and undersea bases if it had been large enough for minifigures to walk through without crouching/crawling.
But a larger opening would probably mean having to make the piece ITSELF larger, which could present a whole other set of issues (like having to expand the size of other parts of those sets to match, which would in turn raise the price and piece count). So I think this was a reasonable compromise. It's certainly a step up from the shorter, narrower corridors between carriages in most LEGO passenger train sets (which often lack actual openings)!
All in all, I'm impressed with what a good job LEGO's designers have done on both this Lunar Space Station set and the previous one, considering that there weren't ANY minifigure-scale orbital space stations in sets until a few years ago! I loved both the LEGO Space theme and Town subthemes like Launch Command as a kid, so I'm sure I would have loved space station sets like these back then as well.
Hopefully sets focused on space exploration continue making these sorts of big strides in the years to come, just as real space agencies have been working to do for so many decades. In the meantime, thanks again for reviewing these sets in such fantastic detail. :)
Is there room for an alien? You know the one from the movie Alien?
@Aanchir said:
"These details are are also an awesome way to make connections between otherwise unrelated sets — in this case, the mother and son in the photo are the same figures that appear in set 60326 ! And in the future, they could potentially even be a way of including LGBTQ+ representation, something I've often seen people question the feasibility of in non-story-driven sets/themes like this one.
After all, there's no reason that you couldn't hint at an astronaut or arctic researcher having a same-sex partner/spouse back home! Kids could always still interpret figures in that sort of scenario as family friends, cousins, or siblings rather than romantic partners if they had an easier time relating with the characters that way. But it could just as easily help kids with same-sex parents, friends, or family members (or kids who've had enough time to experience same-sex crushes of their own) relate a little bit better to the characters on that level.
The red-haired astronaut's face print was originally designed for Lloyd's mom Misako from the Ninjago theme, and you're right that the two expressions are very similar, but I've always seen the alternate expression as a wider smile, as though "beaming with pride", as opposed to a more generic/neutral smile. These sorts of nuanced facial expressions are one of the reasons that I'm glad minifigures today have more facial variation than just the generic "smile". Especially for kids who are autistic like I am, details like these are useful for learning to recognize various facial expressions and the emotions that they represent, as well as to explore the sort of play and storytelling scenarios that might elicit those emotions."
Aanchir is back at it again with an essay in the comments section :) I came to a similar conclusion in regards to the mom and boy in my previous comment. I feel like LGBTQIA+ representation is very feasible in plotless themes even if relationships aren't always easy to incorporate without a story to confirm them. It also seems like there is an increasing number of relatively gender-neutral Minifigures in the City theme, like the blue-haired kid in the school set. Your point about expressions is interesting, as a Brickfilm creator I love having variety for those but I never considered anything about ASD. I have high-functioning autism so I can sort of relate to the points you make (more so when I was younger than now, though) but recognizing emotions wasn't as difficult for me as it is for some other people on the spectrum, though.
Thanks for all the thoughts and comments. I'm glad so many of you have enjoyed the review and said so too.
@NatureBricks said:
" @eiffel006 said:
" @NatureBricks said:
"I really want this set, but the fact it's $55USD in Germany and $80 USA in the USA is outrageous to me."
It's also $80USD ($100CAD) in Canada (without the 15% sales tax, which makes it $92USD).
I love those sets, however. I thought about getting them, but the four of them are $500CAD ($400USD) without tax, which is way too much.
People hate Star Wars prices, but City prices are as bad, if not worst (which proves that there is no such thing as a SW tax, btw...)"
Yeah. Germany has taxes included in the price of the set and it's still only $55ish USD after the conversion. I love the sets, but like you said, they are the worst price sets in all of LEGO."
Y'all can't use a simple currency converter or what? 60€ = 66$. And what's with all the hate/envy towards Germany from US users on the LEGO sites lately?
Nice reviews for the space sets. They are so cool. I liked the Mars sets, and these are even better. The eye-catching new parts, good design, interconnectedness between sets, the similarity to the actual NASA program, the NASA branding, and the cross-over branding with Classic Space- all make these really fantastic! Unfortunately, US prices stink. But, sales are already occurring. So, come to Papa!
BTW, just checked and Costco has the full range of the space sets on their site at prices below Lego by about 15%. The entire wave is $330. I haven't seen them in a Costco store yet. But, if they show up, they are usually another $5 per set cheaper in-store.
‘I’m not sure if we can do much more than open this up and push the character in though, because any further travel into the station is limited by your finger size and the docking ring. Which in my case pretty much prevented any such activity.’
Ain’t it always the way.
Neat sets but I cringe at the number of stickers, namely the solar panels. Partly because they have printed solar panels in various sizes (thanks to official NASA sets), but partly because stickers can be hard to place straight to start (at least in my experience, but I have not placed any recent ones) without static or other factors getting in the way and causing even a slight crooked sticker to be grossly magnified on a piece like one of those large 'flag' hinged panel pieces. Maybe stickers have been changed to be a bit more forgiving where they are easier to place and pull up if you make a gaff, I'm not sure.
@madforLEGO said:
"Neat sets but I cringe at the number of stickers, namely the solar panels. Partly because they have printed solar panels in various sizes (thanks to official NASA sets), but partly because stickers can be hard to place straight to start (at least in my experience, but I have not placed any recent ones) without static or other factors getting in the way and causing even a slight crooked sticker to be grossly magnified on a piece like one of those large 'flag' hinged panel pieces. Maybe stickers have been changed to be a bit more forgiving where they are easier to place and pull up if you make a gaff, I'm not sure."
None of the stickers here are larger than 2x4. The large panels are printed.
If you are having problems with stickers, please try using either a separator tool or tweezers, as I have found greater control that way. I believe there are a fair few tips-type videos out there that should help.
Thank you for a very informative review.
I can see myself scrounging around for other panels (49699) to expand the length of this with some additional compartments.
@Brickalili said:
"So I'm not the only one wondering how well this would combine with 60227 right? Looks like the way the modular sections go together is more or less the same, that would make it nice and easy to click 'em together to make an even larger space station"
The biggest problem with such combining would be that the modules from 60227 are designed to lay flat on the ground, while the connection points of 60349 are all elevated. Except for that, they are compatible - two pins in the "rings" and then locking by one brick from the top and another from the bottom.
So after season 14 of Ninjago, Nya went to space :D
LEGO needs to bring back the moon crater base plates.