Future town...

[boses]

Lego town sets tend to be enviromentaly conscious...I think it would be cool to make a near-future city theme...wind farms, houses with solar-powered elements that really lit up, and plenty of other "green" features...what do you think?

[Spongey]

That sounds like a great idea. I think it's important to raise that kind of awareness at the grass-roots level. That said, I'd like to see them practise what they preach first. I've said this before (to a nauseating degree ), but the amount and type of packaging is driving me nuts.

[boses]

I agree about the packaging issue...maybe I will build "near-future town" as a personal theme...Those giant windmills would be fun to build...If I were to get bored with the theme I can always make it post-apocalyptic...

[Tedward]

...the amount and type of packaging is driving me nuts.

As a father of three kids (and thus the unpackager of countless Xmas and birthday presents) I could not disagree more. LEGO packaging is quite restrained compared to most toys. One single doll with a few accessories has more packaging than a 300 piece set!

[boses]

The technological advances in future town wouldn't have to be too drastic...It would be cool if Lego brought back the monorail...

[Mog]

LEGO's environmental policies confound me. In some ways they are very good (like with their plastic - they have robots collect all the stray particles to be purified and reformed into pieces, and if LEGO can't use them again, they ship them to someone else who can), but in other ways they're incredibly wasteful - those oversized brick buckets, for example.

However, I understand LEGO's conundrum. Children are more likely to judge the value of a toy based on the size of its box, and if the box of a $50 LEGO set was sized appropriately for the actual amount of bricks inside, it would be far smaller than most other $50 toys, which would hurt sales. In many ways their sales depend on them using oversized boxes and wasting more cardboard then they have to.

LEGO seems to be one of those companies that's eco-friendly until it affects their bottom line...which isn't very confounding at all, I guess.

[Sir Kohran]

Lego town sets tend to be enviromentaly conscious...I think it would be cool to make a near-future city theme...wind farms, houses with solar-powered elements that really lit up, and plenty of other "green" features...what do you think?

It might look nice, but this is straying into political territory and I don't know how Lego or others would feel about that; a big 'endorsed by Al Gore' sticker might not go down too well Also, there's a certain amount of hypocrisy in using plastic to make eco-friendly sets, as plastic pretty much comes from oil and oil isn't the most eco-friendly substance around right now.

[Heir of Black Falcon]

I think the main issue with lego's is not that the legos themselves are made from plastic as almost anything is now a day. The other options sich as making metal and wood toys, both having environmental issues as well so making it from another source would just be new problems. The issue to me is the great increase in plastic bags. The cardboard boxes does not bother me as much if it were recycled cardboard as I will in turn recycle it so no biggy. I would not mind them being as large as they are if recycled though making them much bigger would be pressing the issue some. The plastic bags they have are not ones that I can recycle from what I can tell so it would be nice to cut the numbers down or make it from a better plastic I can recycle. That said what ever happened to those little plastic bag sets? Less waste at least? If it were a plastic that could be recycled even better.

Getting back to the main topic. I never have been too into town theme.... I always turned it into something else basically, but I think it would be an interesting addition for sure.

R

[Tower of Iron Will]

I think a near future version of TOWN would be a great idea. To get children started on conservation minded thinking is great, whether or not politicains aprrove or not.
-Tower

[Jacob C.]

I think it would be cool to make a near-future city theme

Thats an excellent idea. Lego City 3000?
I would like to see futuristic flying cars, a space travel port, a diverse population including humans and odd looking E.T.'s from other parts of the universe.

The technological advances in future town wouldn't have to be too drastic

I would prefer that they be drastic. If LEGO was going to do a future city them, I think they should go all out and give us a completely futuristic world that is distinguishable from our own.

Something like this:
LINK
or this:
LINK

[FirebenderDude2]

Speaking of Futuristic Power, I am in a thing called LEGO Robotics, and we use the NXT's (if you haven't heard of them, it's LEGO's push into the world of Robotics, and they really work!) to do different missions. You may know what I'm talking about if I say "Mindstorms." The theme for this year is Alternative Energy. Here's some links to their website if you want more info:

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=13390

P.S.: As a side note, my team is going to the Nationals in Atlanta, Georgia, so if anyone is in that area, it's March 17th-19th downtown at The Georgia World Congress Center, come by and check it out. (If you want to see me, ask for "Alternative Robotics Team," or A.R.T. If that doesn't work, ask to see the kids from Corning, New York. For more info, click the second link.)