Huw and the gang at Brickset.com went for a walk at London Toy Fair, and look what they found out about the upcoming 2H 2015 LEGO Technic sets!
Technic
- 42040 Fire Plane (£45, 578 pieces) - A white with red seaplane, maybe 30cm wingspan whose single propeller turns as it's pushed along the ground. It comes with trans blue 2x2 round bricks that can be ejected onto a fire below.
- 42042 Crawler Crane (£110, 1401 pieces) - a very large and impressive motorised crane which, refreshingly, is blue and not yellow. The boom must have been 1m long.
- 42043 Mercedes Benz Arocs 3245 (£170, 2793 pieces) - A stunning vehicle featuring power functions and pneumatics. The cab is white, the tipper grey. It has a pneumatically controlled red arm with an opening scoop at the end. The arm has a new rack housing at the end of it that solves the problem of it being too thick when brick built. It comes with a large motor, 4 pneumatic cylinders, a blue pump cylinder and 4 valve controls. There are three types of cylinder which might all be new. On the box they are labelled as 2/11, 1/11 and 1/5. The 2/11 is, presumably, 11 units long and 2 wide, the 1/11 was 1 unit wide and, well, you can guess the other one. The Mercedes logo is printed on a 2x2 boat stud. The alternative model, a flatbed truck, looks as good as the main one. This was easily the 'best in show' as far as I'm concerned.
The news about the new pneumatic cylinders are simultaneously exciting and intriguing!
New lengths appear different from the previous calculations, but 1-wide and long cylinders could bring some interesting applications ahead. I guess the indicative measures correspond to cylinder retracted lengths.
It also seems to indicated that cylinder lengths move from half module units to entire module multiples, like it happened with the pump design, when the 8110 Mercedes-Benz Unimog U400 was released a few years back.
Although the pump cylinder is mentioned to be blue, hence I wonder where we get the old pump element back which also existed in blue (and yellow ofc), a new color for the newest version, or even some new type of pump (e.g. 2-wide).
As expected all this proves the artwork in the preliminary box images were WIP as usual, and just indicative before they have final illustrations for the new elements.
The new rack housing element for the extendable section in the jib sounds very interesting, and I wonder where this could be used also with the outriggers to have them deployed.
Still no news about the eventual presence of suspension.
As for the Crawler we still see no much detail, although I have my doubts about the 1m lattice boom...
Five (4+1) 15L beam sections as shown in the box we have seen, would mean just 60 cm. No way to get another 40cm just by attaching this to the super-structure, unless there are additional sections to be attached, not pictured in the preliminary box image.
So something might be substantially wrong here. Either the information or the preliminary image... Although such boom length with the kind of lattice construction we have seen, seems something that will prove to be quite fragile.
Regarding the Fire Plane, the information is unfortunately very scarce, but for sure this is not where we put our biggest expectations and hopes...
Check it at Brickset if you want to rad others comments and also news about the other LEGO themes.
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6 comments:
The pump cylinder looked much the same as the old ones from what I could tell from the box. It may well be a new size and if so would be a 1/5 in the new nomenclature.
I'm not sure if the rack housing was used for the outriggers (of which there are two), it's possible.
The four front wheels steer proportionately and the rear pair of axles seemed to be connected as a bogie, mounted in the centre. At least that's as much as I could tell when I lifted up the front to gauge its weight. So, not suspension per se but the body can be rocked side-to-side on them.
OK, so the crawler lattice boom might not be 1m in length but it was certainly long and impressive.
The fire plane is a single propeller driven sea plane with two floats, much like this one http://www.zenithair.com/stolch701/7-photo-floats06.html. It was predominately white with red accents and stickers. The ailerons moved and I suspect the tail flap did too but I didn't witness that. Size-wise I'd say it was about the same as 8836 Sky Ranger.
Thanks for the insights Huw!
So it looks we have at least a pendular suspension on the rear axles group. Not bad!
BTW yesterday I saw a MB truck (not Arocs but an older version) with double wheels at one of the rear ale and single in the other.
If you see the pump in the box, it should mean they have already a newer version of it, in the Toy Fair.
Dear Huw, are there dual wheels on last two axles?
I don't recall, sorry.
No problem :-) , but thanks for great toy fair info!
Some may find this tweet interesting... The Crane is in deed blue, and quite big...
https://twitter.com/Zusammengebaut/status/560103882286968832/photo/1
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