Toy Fair 2017: Coaster Dynamix Cyclone Revealed

[Hapori Tohu]

One of the more hotly-debated "compatible with LEGO" toys of the past few years has been the Coaster Dynamix roller coaster kits. At this year's Toy Fair, a distributor was able to show us (a not quite finished version of) The Cyclone kit, as seen on Kickstarter. Much has been said about how much this may be based on earlier attempts at custom LEGO roller coasters, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of new pieces both pictures on the box and "in the brick". Click through to view our photos of this potentially hot new addition to the world of LEGO-like amusement park rides.

 

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[Ayliffe]

One of the more hotly-debated "compatible with LEGO" toys of the past few years

 

[citation needed]

[danny316p]

 

One of the more hotly-debated "compatible with LEGO" toys of the past few years

 

[citation needed]

 

Fair enough, but I wanted to avoid discussing the controversy on our front page. There's some disagreement over exactly what the facts are, and I didn't want to take a side (especially not on BZPower's behalf).

 

My understanding of the issue, as informed by a variety of in-person conversations, e-mail threads, and social media rants:

Coaster Dynamix had previously had a relationship with Adam Reed Tucker (an LCP who is largely responsible for starting the Architecture series). The gossip breaks differently depending who you hear it from, but apparently that relationship ended badly and Coaster Dynamix discontinued Adam's "Roller Coaster Factory" sets (like this) in favor of developing a different LEGO-compatible roller coaster system. Coaster Dynamix is now rolling out a supposedly completely new system that doesn't build off of the previous one. Adam put the word out a while back that AFOLs shouldn't buy the new system because he thinks it is still based on his work. Last I heard, there were still legal proceedings taking place regarding whether or not Adam should be compensated further for his previous involvement in Coaster Dynamix' LEGO-compatible products. The last few concrete things I heard about that situation were gossip-y comments in person last November. Since then, I had been informed that the new Roller Coaster kits would be coming out "soon", but I hadn't seen any new details of the sets before Toy Fair (there was an AFOL at BrickFair Alabama who had a dinosaur theme park layout that uses some parts from Coaster Dynamix, but that was all I'd seen of the system - and I didn't know how current those were relative to the upcoming kits).

 

...admittedly, I don't think there's much overlap between the Bionicle community and the parts of the AFOL community that I associate more with Adam Reed Tucker (mainly Architecture, the LEGO Certified Professional program, and the Brickworld convention in Chicago). However, this was a topic of interest to the larger LEGO fan community, and the presence of one kit in an unexpected area made it likely that other LEGO fan outlets would miss it (even if they were already at Toy Fair in person).

 

There are other reasons the kits were hotly debated - Kickstarters that dragged out, delays in getting Roller Coaster Factory kits, issues with purism ("it's not really LEGO!"), arguments over the quality of the parts, etc. I'm not that interested in going down the rabbit hole, but I feel like I've heard an unusual amount of debate about Coaster Dynamix' attempts to enter the LEGO hobbyist market since the first Roller Coaster Factory sets were unveiled at Brickworld Chicago 2013.