This is heavy Doc

"It will be interesting to discover what they are made from."

Gold? ;-)

It looks great but 680€ ...cough ....the reviews will have to be outstanding, and there need to be some serious discounts fore to even consider this. There are just too many "affordable" other sets from LEGO.

@deikoon said:
""It will be interesting to discover what they are made from."

Gold? ;-)"

Well, it's certainly not palladium!

Imagine the price if it was! ...on second thought, I shouldn't give Lego any ideas!

Presumably the numerous large frames, weights, motors have really boosted the price. But unless there is some magic going on under the hood, this looks like another 'enormous for the sake of it' set. Combine that with Control+ and it's another easy pass!

Impressive, but that price is kind of nuts.

I bet those weights are made from pure Unobtanium. Only that could explain the insane price.

Other than that, not much more that can be said that hasn't been said before: Looks decent at first glance but the boom is way too small and out of proportion, Control+ with the issues that come with the system, and the price just doesn't make any sense.

Nice going LEGO, that boom is comically short. I love them for trying out new stuff, but this looks so unfinished with the short boom.

Yeah I know, with a longer boom it would probably be unstable or break or whatever... If that was the case, pick another machine to model. I'm not a fan of this one.

There will be no gearbox. Like 42100 every motor is directly linked to its function. I expect a minimal amount of gears.

I love Technic and I love cranes, but the only way I'd consider spending $700 was if the scale was MUCH more accurate. The comically too short booms make the "model" too toy-like for the price. Not to mention, lose the app control.

Maybe Lego should spin off an R/C theme and get Technic back to the [manual] basics?

I just checked online prices, you can buy a real crane for that kind of money...

I used to love Technic. It was my favorite theme for decades.
Remember the days when Technic was great value for money, gave you B-Models (including printed instructions) for free, and came without added ballast to the RRP like licences, overpriced electric components and the like?

$700, for this? For less than 3000 pieces?? This is insanity for something that isn’t even fully accurate. This is double the cost of what I’d still consider expensive for this.

Easy pass for me unless theres a serious discount. It doesnt even look like the model its supposed to represent.
I think this will be a huge fail

So, for $20 less, I can buy the 9,090 piece Titanic, or the $70 less, I can buy the 10,001 piece Eiffel Tower.
I don't wish Lego anything bad, but I hope sales for this set are so dismal that a valuable lesson is learned. The price is ridiculous, no matter how many motors or hubs are included.

Will this be the Black Panther bust of Technic sets?

I don't know what sort of focus groups Technic use these days, but supermassive, licensed, app-based, overpriced are all no-no. The last decent Technic models that I purchased were 2015 releases. Since then, I haven't seen anything come out that I like. So, 8 years and counting for something decent. Thanks God there is a nice lineage of great legacy Technic sets to keep us happy for the foreseeable future. If you want something good, the secondary market is your best friend.

The Audi R/C set has 900 parts, a hub and 3 motors for €170. So two of those will get you the 2 hubs and 6 motors this thing had, and 1800 parts. With the crane you get another 1000 parts for €340.
That just doesn't add up. Like others, I like Technic and I like cranes, but no way am I buying this thing.

@MeisterDad said:
"Will this be the Black Panther bust of Technic sets?"

No,it's going to be the hulkbuster 2022 of technic sets.

There are a number of ultra high-end Lego models that perhaps warrant their significant price tag. This isn’t one of them.

For almost £600, a price that barely passes the 20pp ratio, it feels one of the most expensive and worst value sets lego has ever released. I understand there are bigger pieces, motors and the like included, but with the cost of living problems and appeal, this set will be priced out of the market for many.

For a similar or noticeably cheaper rate, there are so many better high-end priced models that are much more worth their while. Titanic, Colloseum, Rivendell. Even the super car range, which aren’t cheap but yet almost £200 with much more substance.

I see this being a shelf warmer unfortunately as even 20% only takes this down to approximately £464, which still feels too high.

I miss the days of innovative and mechanically interesting Technic sets, even from a few years ago. Not these ultra big and expensive sets which scream style over substance.

Nice try, but failed. The design is boyish. The book not very realistic. Neither the length of the boom segments or the crawler link elements.

Better to rebuild 2006's crawler crane 8288

@Huw said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
""It also contains 24 weighted elements, weighing 38g each, which provide a total of 0.9kg of counterweight for the jib. It will be interesting to discover what they are made from."
Probably not these, which were the first thing that came to my mind: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=73090b&idColor=5T=C&C=5"

They are the light grey elements stacked at the back of the model. Presumably there's a steel plate inside to give them weight.
"

Estimating the size of the weight pieces: l x w x h: 11 x 6 x 1 stud^3 (with a few cutouts), giving a volume of around 40 cm3. Assuming they are 100% ABS, with a density of 1,05 g/cm3, that's a weight of around 42 grammes each. There are 24 of those elements, so a total of 1.0 kg.

I'd say they must be solid ABS.

I wonder if they will ever release a model of my Liebherr fridge.

I used to love Technic. But it has lost its way. This looks entirely unexciting, and far too large to be practical.

And as an entirely separate issue, it will end up costing 1000$ in Canada, including tax. (º0º)

Every year when the big Technic set comes out, I feel the urge to buy it, out of habit of many years. But I have resisted the past few years except for 42082 the Rough Terrain Crane, which was a good set. This year will be the easiest pass.

TLG have lost their way, they are pushing Technic sets into extreme price brackets.

Rather than trying to produce challenging, interesting, educational sets they are focusing on creating more outlandish sets that are well beyond the means of ordinary customers whom Technic was so accessible for before.

As a big crawler crane I think a lot of design compromises had to be made to keep the stresses within a somewhat acceptable range. It just feels disproportionate and looks weird. What crane has no ballast on the body, but a stacked superlift? The short mainboom and jib look weird to with the ugly struts and the crawlers are nothing like the source material.

If it wasn’t a licensed set I might have overlooked such issues, but it is a licensed Liebherr LR13000 and as such it’s ugly and weird and I do not see it being worthy having such a high price.

PS: I am a bit of a crane expert, so if you want a technical review, sent me a free copy and I will make a detailed report on this compared to the real thing ;)

I have 855 and I really like it

@jkb said:
"I wonder if they will ever release a model of my Liebherr fridge."

I'd only buy it if it can protect me against a nuke...

Technic is what drew me back into Lego more than a decade ago, and for years I'd buy every Technic set that was released.

But the past few years... Ridiculous prices, often because of unwanted technology, has put me off. I'm not interested in controlling a model with a phone or tablet. Give me some interesting engineering, generic sets, so I'm not paying for a licence, and manual controls and I'll be back like a shot.

Can't see me buying this unless the price drops like a stone.

@HoMa said:
"Nice try, but failed. The design is boyish. The book not very realistic. Neither the length of the boom segments or the crawler link elements.

Better to rebuild 2006's crawler crane 8288 "
You know what, that's exactly what I have started to do recently. I have begun to pick up used Technic sets I had always wanted but never got, on ebay, from between about 1990 to 2015. Some real highlights available at great prices. For the equivalent of this set's RRP I can get between five and ten classic Technic sets, many of which also have highlights like pneumatics (including the now sorely missed air tanks), chrome pieces, all kinds of motors, battery boxes, compressors, lights etc.

There is a huge electrical/electronic problem at The Lego Group. There is a British company (things are expensive in the UK) that is able to produce powerful microcontrollers for USD$4 (Raspberry pi pico). A 9v motor can be had for CAD$2.50. How come a large hub (Mindstrom) cost CAD$329 when sold separately. I believe Control+ used to be available for CAD$180 (they don't seem to be sold separately any more). How come a CAD$2.50 motor jumps to cad$50 after adding a few reduction gears and a casing? The hubs should cost about cad$50-60 the software should be open source. a battery pack should be cad$10 (how come a battery box can be cad$70?). Most 'powered' Technic set should be powered by battery boxes and regular motors (just like Power Function but with bluetooth). Whoever wants to automate the thing can buy the (Mindstorm/Spike/Control+) box and thinker to his/her heart's content. Some would even argue that motors (and related equipments) should always be sold separately keeping the price down and leaving the choice to the consumer.

That seems to be the big problem with Lego they don't seem to be able to do cheap electric/electronic parts. The 'move hub' (a gigantic part than cannot fit in any model whatsoever is cad$99). This set should be about $300 for the plastic. Add, let's say, $150 for the motors and electrical components (battery box, transmitter, receiver) and you get to $450 (no iphone/android necessary).

If the 17*7*7 boom parts are not available on pick-a-brick, this mean you need two sets to get a reasonably resembling crane. At near cad$1000 in Canada, Amazon will have to come up with a very nice discount to make this palatable.

I will still be eagerly waiting for the review (here and Sariel).

@AHYL88: Seconding the vote for 42128. That's easily the biggest Technic set I've ever bought, and a great set that the people saying that they've gotten out of Technic should look at.

@BooTheMightyHamster said:
"Technic is what drew me back into Lego more than a decade ago, and for years I'd buy every Technic set that was released.

But the past few years... Ridiculous prices, often because of unwanted technology, has put me off. I'm not interested in controlling a model with a phone or tablet. Give me some interesting engineering, generic sets, so I'm not paying for a licence, and manual controls and I'll be back like a shot.

Can't see me buying this unless the price drops like a stone. "

At that point they are just integrating the mandatory 30% Amazon discounts on Technics sets in their pricing model.

So you can say “I saved 200€ on this” to your wife and they can keep their 25% gross margin.

Everyone is happy !

As DM would say, Enjoy the Silence............of those tills not ringing.

42042 Crawler Crane did this better in 2016, for about £110 (2016 prices) and it was easy to source the parts to extends the boom..........

This is the problem with LEGO nowadays. They think people will buy anything at any price (like a tech company that has a bitten fruit in their products).

I'm not into Technic, but I can compare this to CITY. There are almost no impulse sets. Those sets that you buy to your children when you are in the store and they request something. Target price 5 euros.

Looking at the other side, what parents are going to spend 200+ euros in a CITY set, that they know it will probably be "destroyed" after being built. A tiny CITY house has a price of 52 Euros. It should be 25-30.

Perhaps LEGO is targeting their products to rich people. It's fair. But I'm not sure if this is the right strategy for the future. There are many products that are targeted for casual customers. Yes, LEGO will sell them but they are not loyaling the customers.

A lot of people in my country has problems to pay their bills. People that know me always say the same: "I would love to buy the LEGO set XXXXX, but it's way too expensive. I'll buy another toy". If the sense that LEGO is too expensive is becoming wider and wider, I think LEGO will be in trouble in the next years. Nothing I hope, but it seems that it's what they are going after.

@Huw said:
" @deikoon said:
""It will be interesting to discover what they are made from."

Gold? ;-)"

That would certainly explain the price!"

I know this is supposed to be funny, but if the 24 weighted elements with a total weight of 900 grams were made out of gold, the price for them would be more than 50.000 USD currently.

@AustinPowers said:
"I used to love Technic. It was my favorite theme for decades.
Remember the days when Technic was great value for money, gave you B-Models (including printed instructions) for free, and came without added ballast to the RRP like licences, overpriced electric components and the like? "

Same here, Technic fan since the 90s but I find no interest whatsoever in the theme nowadays. They have ran Technic to the ground with their greed, offering less and asking more. The lack of B-models and the overwhelming amount of licensed sets and the same copy pasted 1:16, 1:10 and 1:8 cars has turned Technic into overpriced merchandise.

This set is the epitome of their hubris. We've had sets with similar amount of pieces and motors before, hell, with the same license (does anyone really care if their Lego crane is a "Liebherr"?), but never at this price. No amount of plastic, cheap electronics and useless licensing is enough to justify 680 euros for a toy. Anyone remember when you could get the 42082 with Power Functions, B-model and 4000 pieces for 230 list price 3 years ago?

The pricing is crazy, but I imagine it has been priced specifically to discount to make people feel they are getting a bargain. They did exactly the same thing with the last big proper Technic set I bought, the Bucket Wheel Excavator. That was £190, but was widely available for £105-115 (40-45 % off) for much of its two and a bit years lifetime.

I wonder how soon TLC will learn that Control+ is a bug, not a feature.

Control+ means that your set's functionality will expire when your phone expires. Phone batteries are not longer replaceable and don't last forever, phone operating systems upgrade and apps often become in compatible or not supported.

My old powered technic sets will always be usable, as long as the electronics last, because they came with a remote. Everything is in the box, and when I hand it over to my grandchild (when I eventually have one) or give away to a friend's child, they get the complete set which will be as fun then as it is now.

Control+ is a terrible mistake TLC have made. They can include it with their sets, but a standalone remote control should be included with every remote controlled set, even if it doesn't have the full functionality of Control+

I wanted to estimate how many 'extra' boom would be needed to make this looks like the original. I then went on the Liebherr site and get the pdf document of all the specification of this piece of machinery. It was disheartening...

What Lego did here has nothing to do with the original Liebherr 13000. First of all, the platform does not overlap the tracks at all (when the crane is forward facing). The cabin is white (minor detail) on the left side. On the right side, there is nothing above the rotation disk (don't know the real term). The same rotation disk is about 40% of the width of the platform between the two tracks - in the Lego model, the rotation disk/base takes almost all the space between the tracks - the platform seems to be centred on top of that.

There are 5 versions of this crane: SLDB SDB, SDWB, SDWVB, and PDB. The version Lego produced is a very handicapped half- SDWVB with a somewhat longer jib. There are no configuration with caster wheels to support the crane weight (could you imagine what kind of wheels would be needed for such a task?!). That said, LR1300 and LR1600 do have external ballast weights on wheels.

So basically this is so far off from the original that I'm wondering why Liebherr went ahead with this - considering Lego did such a good job reproducing 42100. Somehow, 8288 (just get the parts in yellow, and add a jib) might be closer to it than 42146 - probably also easier to display (smaller).

Note finally, that I am not faulting the designer(s) in any way. I am pretty sure the designer(s) did originally an outstanding job and someone somewhere decided it had to change (hence the delays and many uncertainties surrounding this set for the last year).

If I were to build a large technic crane, constructing the trusses out of regular pieces making it strong and solid through clever triangulation would be at least half the challenge and fun of it. Having new, bespoke, custom frame parts that does all of that takes away the entire appeal of technic construction.

And what's the point of making it huge when the parts are huge? I think the appeal of a huge set isn't in the size itself, but the fact that it's huge despite being constructed of small parts. That's what makes it impressive. Otherwise Duplo would be awesome!

I'm not a fan of control+ either, just like many seem to comment. I would personally never buy a set that requires external hardware, other than batteries. In fact, I have moved more towards not wanting motors at all. Give me cranks and knobs to turn manually. I like building technic, and Lego in general, because it's real and physically interactive. I get to hold it in my hands as opposed to look at a screen. I haven't realized until lately how brilliant the old technic was, where they even included instructions for motorizing the sets, but sold the motors separately as add-ons. I would love a return to that.

@TheOtherMike said:
"And even if you're not familiar with the manufacturer, it can still be cool knowing that it's a model of a real-world object. (Although, if some commenters are to be believed, apparently not that accurate of one.)"
Just do a quick Google picture search.
You'll find that it hardly looks like the real thing at all. At least not enough to warrant adding the costs of a licence to an already obscenely overpriced set.

@AustinPowers said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
"And even if you're not familiar with the manufacturer, it can still be cool knowing that it's a model of a real-world object. (Although, if some commenters are to be believed, apparently not that accurate of one.)"
Just do a quick Google picture search.
You'll find that it hardly looks like the real thing at all. At least not enough to warrant adding the costs of a licence to an already obscenely overpriced set. "

If I was Liebherr, I would never have given my name to this set. Technic always requires a bit of leeway/liberty when comparing to the real thing due to the medium, but this thing requires a lot of squinting and a bit of alcohol.

In itself licensed sets aren't a problem, and especially for things like the big sports cars it totally makes sense. But thing with a license is that you'd expect a certain level of authenticity. If that's for whatever reason just nog possible, then either pick another subject within that license or do something that does work without license.

No license gives the designers a lot more artistic freedom, which I think only benefits more generically recognizable subjects. Look at the 42055 Bucket Wheel Excavator as an interesting example: It doesn't look anything like any real world example. I don't think however that a more realistic representation would have worked as well, at least not without a bunch of specialized parts (these new boom pieces would have been helpful....). And even when not looking that realistic, it's still very obvious what it is, and dare I say it only makes it look cooler? If you want a more traditional bucket wheel excavator, get one from Fischertechnik instead....

Same thing with a vehicle like 42069 Extreme Adventure. While vehicles like that do exist, it doesn't try to mimic a specific one, but it looks cool and has interesting functions (those doors!).

Licenses to me make sense when A) it lends itself to be replicated in Lego, and B) has some interesting features that differentiate it from similar looking things. I'd say 42054 was a perfect example of that. Or to stick with Liebherr, 42100 wasn't too bad either.

But here? I think this set would have been received a lot more positive if this was just a generic "crane". And, well, was priced a LOT lower in the process :-)