Hero Factory 2011

[Vinyl Scratch]

Studs, I fell in love in that custom Hero Core.

Really good repaint, but I'm a bit iffy on the yellow on the weapon. Doesn't seem that much quality as the rest.

[Studs Not On Top]

Studs, I fell in love in that custom Hero Core.

Really good repaint, but I'm a bit iffy on the yellow on the weapon. Doesn't seem that much quality as the rest.

Thanks! That's my favorite part about him. I'll try to go over the yellow again.

[Dorek]

I kind of disagree. Rocka becoming XL was IMO one of the best parts of the episode, seeing as it reinforces the importance of building to Hero Factory. This is one of the reasons I really like Hero Factory's story-- the importance of building keeps its values close to those of the company it's a part of.

I'm okay with that, and I like the ancient armor pieces idea itself. It ties in with a lot of stuff that happens in the episode, and stuff we know, but it totally downplays any storyline connective tissue it might have; it's just "ohay look, armor pieces, aren't we so lucky". Every mention of the "ancient race", that logically are the ones that made this armor, the temple itself, and the Skull Staff (which gets no mention), is totally peripheral and completely ignored by all the characters.

I kind of interpreted Witch Doctor's staff as letting him control his Quaza powers, not just giving them to him. And seeing as he doesn't shrink back to civilian-size when the staff is broken kind of reinforces that for me. Speaking of which, if there had been more time in the episode it might have been cool for them to see them put him through the malfunctioning teleporter to shrink him so he could be more easily brought back to the Factory. Another real missed opportunity.

Personally, I thought the teleporter was what Rocka was going to use to become XL, but ah well XP. I just think it's weird that, even at the size that he is, the Skull Staff is what let him do anything and everything, and there wasn't much mention of how Stormer deduced that.

And the plot points you mention liking didn't bother me much either. But the banter was oh-so-horrible to me. I much preferred the banter and one-liners from RotR. It was campy, but it was usually in-character, which I prefer to some of this episode's jokes.

As I said, hit and miss. RotR had some great lines, even if they were childish, but I very much liked the sniping between Rocka and Furno, as well as Rocka delivering that patently (and admittedly) awful line to Witch. Obviously there were some low points (cattle and chocolate milk come to mind) but it was slightly more understanding dialogue.

Eh... Some of the scenes had colorful backgrounds, and some had more colorful characters. I kind of wish everything were a bit more colorful like it is on many of the hero box arts. A lot of the backgrounds just felt grittier and dustier than they do in promotional art elsewhere. As you mention, the lack of lighting could have something to do with this. A lot of the box art has an eerie greenish glow which is largely absent here.

Yeah, the coloring was a bit whack, but I thought they used it mostly right in the backgrounds; appropriate shades of dark greens and blues at the right moments, even if the characters didn't always fit in.

I didn't really like all the fight scenes-- the Furno vs. Waspix scene was rather annoying partly because of how awkward Furno was during it. Which, granted, is plot-relevant (he's supposed to be seeing that leading isn't as easy as he thought it would be), but for me wasn't very entertaining.

Yeah, Waspix vs Furno wasn't exactly a high note, but I thought they handled the non-humanoids very well, all things considered, and every fight with Witch was crazy awesome.

Absolutely disagree about Zib's voice actor. I much prefer his voice in web media like Hero Factory FM. It can be either funny or dramatic, as opposed to here where it has this uncharacteristic seriousness without any sense of dramatic timing. And when he's excited about something it's even worse-- he has the same sort of bubbly excitement as Kiina in TLR, except not on a character where that sort of attitude makes sense. His elaborate high-five with Quadal was pretty awesome, though. And I'm probably being too hard on poor Zib-- he was perfectly OK in RotR and OoF, but here it's like they concentrated all the worst things about the character and voice actor into one script.

I've always liked Henry Winkler (c'mon, he's the Fonz. What's not to love?) and he really brings this great exasperation that I think fits Zib. I'm less of a fan of David Carr's interpretation; very dry and stuffy, which also suits Zib to a point, but there's no soul to his lines (which, I guess, is to be expected from shorts and podcasts, but still). But hey, not everybody can like everything. His timing (and overall lines) weren't as great in this one, to be fair. He was made much more of a stock character, which isn't too fun.

Other voice acting was all good, although I agree about some of the awful lines Stringer had to work with. It's those awful metaphors like chocolate milk, cake, and cattle wrangling that really made me grow tired of the banter very quickly.

I'm perfectly okay with Stringer being a redneck, but any and all "Earth" references should be cut out, unless it's clever pop culture references like HeroBook.

Good point about the less-rushed story. Still nowhere up-to-par with some of the episodes like The Enemy Within, though. Then again, some might argue that if The Enemy Within had been more rushed they could have worked in some more story info on Von Ness so that his motivations in Episode 4 didn't seem so inexplicable. Overall, none of these episodes have been up to the same level of storytelling as Clutch Powers or the Ninjago TV episodes. Here's hoping they work a bit more on that.

TEW was just great overall; good music, animation, voice acting, characterization, etc. Haven't watched Clutch Powers or Ninjago to really compare, but I'm usually okay with what they have. It's a balancing act; the younger the audience, the more room they have to work around and just have fun with things, but to a point; today's tween generation is pretty cynical.

Also, no idea what the other 22 minutes of content on the DVD will be.

Unfortunately, there is none. Amazon's product page is lying; the back of the DVD box says "45 minutes", which is the length of the episode, and doesn't count OoF. Presumably they just copy/pasted it from RotR.

[Vinyl Scratch]

Unfortunately, there is none. Amazon's product page is lying; the back of the DVD box says "45 minutes", which is the length of the episode, and doesn't count OoF. Presumably they just copy/pasted it from RotR.

Seems like it, but I would be all sure until the actual DVD is released. Things are sometimes omitted from the back covers.

[Dorek]

Seems like it, but I would be all sure until the actual DVD is released. Things are sometimes omitted from the back covers.

Well, we have the box image itself that says 45 minutes, and the only thing that says 88 minutes is a product page that is a lot easier to change than box graphics. Since they typically don't list bonus features in the actual runtime, that leaves either 43 minutes of mystery material, or more likely, that the Amazon.com product page is wrong.

[Aanchir]

I'm okay with that, and I like the ancient armor pieces idea itself. It ties in with a lot of stuff that happens in the episode, and stuff we know, but it totally downplays any storyline connective tissue it might have; it's just "ohay look, armor pieces, aren't we so lucky". Every mention of the "ancient race", that logically are the ones that made this armor, the temple itself, and the Skull Staff (which gets no mention), is totally peripheral and completely ignored by all the characters.

Yeah, it would have been really nice to get more info on that... Especially since based on the website, those are probably the same ancients who created the skull carving mounted on Witch Doctor's staff.

Personally, I thought the teleporter was what Rocka was going to use to become XL, but ah well XP. I just think it's weird that, even at the size that he is, the Skull Staff is what let him do anything and everything, and there wasn't much mention of how Stormer deduced that.

I figure even if his "deduction" was a wild guess, the fact that the staff was what Witch Doctor was using to shoot laser blasts at Stormer gave him plenty of incentive to smash the staff.

As I said, hit and miss. RotR had some great lines, even if they were childish, but I very much liked the sniping between Rocka and Furno, as well as Rocka delivering that patently (and admittedly) awful line to Witch. Obviously there were some low points (cattle and chocolate milk come to mind) but it was slightly more understanding dialogue.

For me, it was largely just the shock of having read all those extremely corny animal puns on the HK TRU site and then hearing even worse and far less relevant puns in the actual episode. Perhaps I can watch it again sometime soon, this time knowing what to expect, and thus be able to be a bit more forgiving. But the first time through it was almost painful hearing the difference in the more serious dialogue I was expecting. It's like reading three issues of a Superman comic and then reading a fourth issue where the whole script is switched with one from a Spider-Man comic. Seeing serious (if corny or trite) one-liners replaced with lighthearted banter and wacky comparisons is a little bit jarring, if you catch my drift.

I've always liked Henry Winkler (c'mon, he's the Fonz. What's not to love?) and he really brings this great exasperation that I think fits Zib. I'm less of a fan of David Carr's interpretation; very dry and stuffy, which also suits Zib to a point, but there's no soul to his lines (which, I guess, is to be expected from shorts and podcasts, but still). But hey, not everybody can like everything. His timing (and overall lines) weren't as great in this one, to be fair. He was made much more of a stock character, which isn't too fun.

I disagree about David Carr's portrayal; it's able to be either serious or silly depending on the context. So, for instance, his attempts at "pranking" Mak Megahertz are suitably silly, but his introduction to the "Explaining the Character and Creature Building System" videos is nice and serious. He also can add shades of exasperation, as seen every time things go wrong in the challenge videos. Henry Winkler's portrayal has neither the comedy nor the drama, instead just feeling stuffy and serious when things are going OK and then childishly jumpy when he's worried or excited.

I'm perfectly okay with Stringer being a redneck, but any and all "Earth" references should be cut out, unless it's clever pop culture references like HeroBook.

Hey, if an Earth reference works in the context, I think it's fine. Some of the Earth references in Hero Factory FM don't bother me one bit. What bothers me about Stringer's "cattle wrangling" line is that he has essentially lived in Makuhero City since he was created. If an unnamed side character who might have had some suitable background were to say it, it would have just enough ambiguity to be believable (if it were in BIONICLE, people would ask Greg about it and he could throw together a satisfying explanation in a jiffy). But when a line is just given to an established character who happens to have a southwestern accent, it feels painfully lazy on the part of the scriptwriters.

TEW was just great overall; good music, animation, voice acting, characterization, etc. Haven't watched Clutch Powers or Ninjago to really compare, but I'm usually okay with what they have. It's a balancing act; the younger the audience, the more room they have to work around and just have fun with things, but to a point; today's tween generation is pretty cynical.

All of the Ninjago episodes are available for free viewing on

. So feel free to entertain yourself with those. Perhaps you're right about the target audience, but frankly I don't see why older children would prefer gratuitous jokes to ones that make sense in context, like the Clutch Powers and Ninjago scripts include. If the context of the Hero Factory videos is less lighthearted, then the jokes can be less silly.

Unfortunately, there is none. Amazon's product page is lying; the back of the DVD box says "45 minutes", which is the length of the episode, and doesn't count OoF. Presumably they just copy/pasted it from RotR.

Well, that's weird. I guess that also explains why Mark Hamill was on the cast list. I guess if they had drawn it out too much it would have been boring, though.

[Omicron Squad Leader]

The Hero Factory 2012 set names have been removed from spielwaren-lippe.de. I think this only proves that they are real; LEGO obviously requested their removal, just like they do with leaks on Flickr.

[Jouster]

The Hero Factory 2012 set names have been removed from spielwaren-lippe.de. I think this only proves that they are real; LEGO obviously requested their removal, just like they do with leaks on Flickr.

.....And I've a feeling we won't see any pictures until the official release date.

[Bfahome]

The Hero Factory 2012 set names have been removed from spielwaren-lippe.de. I think this only proves that they are real; LEGO obviously requested their removal, just like they do with leaks on Flickr.

Or the site took them down because they were fake or badly sourced or something.

I'm not dismissing their authenticity entirely, but seriously people seem to take anything as proof of leaks being real.

[Omicron Squad Leader]

Or the site took them down because they were fake or badly sourced or something.

I'm not dismissing their authenticity entirely, but seriously people seem to take anything as proof of leaks being real.

You have to remember that Spielwaren-lippe has been the provider of a great amount of accurate information in the past, though.

[Mesonak]

From my experience, if a list can't be sourced, it's obviously fake. If set listings are on a shop site, however obscure it may be, they're legitimate. Obviously it's not full-proof (for the possible reasons you said), but this particular site has been reputable in the past, hence me believing it so easily.

They've also appeared on www.shopping.de; don't feel like linking the individual names so I'll just link Jawblade

While good that there's now two sources, still no pictures to be found.

[vexorian]

All the other info we got from that site seemed coherent with things we knew were coming to the other themes and that were confirmed by the retailer catalog. And it also included a new logo for LEGO dino that was clearly LEGO-made.

[Vinyl Scratch]

You really think we will get pictures these days? No sir. Pictures won't come up until early-October at least. October inwards is the most likely guess for the leaked pictures from the retailer magazines to show up.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Vinyl Scratch

[Mesonak]

2.0 pictures came out late September last year, and pictures have been discovered roughly around that time for the last couple years. While Lego's obviously gotten better with keeping pictures from leaking, I doubt we'll see a radical change in the pattern.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Mesonak

[Vinyl Scratch]

That's why I said Early-October my dear Meso

[Toa_Of_Justice]

Hey, everyone! I believe Pick A Brick and DESIGNbyME been updated with HF 3.0 parts!

-Toa Of Justice

[Aanchir]

Hey, everyone! I believe Pick A Brick and DESIGNbyME been updated with HF 3.0 parts!

-Toa Of Justice

Yep. The most noteworthy additions that didn't appear in Hero Recon Team are printed parts like Waspix's printed shell and the six transparent green Hero name badges. Both of Fangz's printed shells are on there, too, even though the preview image for the larger one in the bricks tray on LDD is dodgy.

Annoyingly, the name badge shells on PAB don't have images for some reason. That should be fixed quickly, though. The same probably can't be said for the issue LDD has whereby transparent printed parts hardly show the decoration at all from certain angles, since the decoration as well as the piece itself is made transparent.

Edited September 13, 2011 by Aanchir

[CabooseBM]

I think my biggest issue with Savage Planet is hat it's so compressed. Hero Factory really needs a proper TV series, that would help flesh the plot and characters out a lot more.

I really liked Stringer's accent, but I really don't like the idea of him being the cowboy stereotype. Just doesn't work for me.

Rocka's voice was pretty great, everyone else's were kinda flat.

"Thanks, now I feel thirsty and imperiled!"

[Tanma]

I didn't think the heroes use Glatorian heads. I was excited because I thought that they are remaking the masks in the new format and releasing the new heads in trans color. Though now that I think about it, there is no way to confirm or debunk this.

---

Here's a theory:

The villains are combinations of previous HF villains.

Case in point:

Phantom : Firelord + Nebula + Doctor

Toxic Reapa: Meltdown + Corroder

Splitface : Nitroblast + Thunder

Thornrax: Waspix + Rotor

Jawblade: RawJaw + Vapor.

It would make sense since it seems like this is a prison break arc, so what about an accident causes the prisoners to fusion and unleash?

But Rawjaw and Waspix were brainwashed slaves, they had no control over their actions. I highly doubt they would be imprisoned for things out of their control, but I do see your point.

[Studs Not On Top]

Awesome!! I'm really glad they're going back to the basics for this wave-- bad guys break out, HF rounds them up (though I hope there's more to the story than that). The sizes are interesting, I wish all the heroes were small, but I'll see how it works out. I definitely want Breez and Toxic Reapa, and Rocka looks cool too.

[Phantoka Kopaka Nuva]

I noticed something.

Thornraxx's background is a Bee Hive-esque place - or a jungle, the same place as Breez, with other similar to him/her. Means that Thornraxx is one of a species.

Surge is in somekind of Coliseum or Arena, similar - not exact - to Splitface's.

Evo is in somekind of Jungle, same as Toxic Reapa - There's also something weird on the top right of Toxic Reapa's background.

Jawblade is obviously in somekind of Underwater base... Thing. Furno is there too.

Now here is the thing, Rocka is someplace that looks REALLY similar to the Training Sphere from Trials of Furno, or the Assembly Tower, while Black Phantom seems to be in the Hero Factory or sometype of factory.

They ALL have sometype of black circle thingamajig that looks similar to the entrance to... Somewhere. It can't be something for appearance because Toxic Reapa seems to be standing in it.

My point being is that either this storyline is actually all part of a Training Sphere and isn't happening at all in the real world, explains why there's only rookies and it's all part of a training session and it's a what-if story

That, or either there are artificial created "enviroments" on Makuhero City - which are surprisingly big - and the villains spread destruction there

Or, most possible storyline, 2010-Winter 2011 villains do a Prison Break and somehow get fused together and spread havoc through different planets.

And I noticed something else, in the Group Shot, you can clearly see scratched cells - something like a villain prison.

So yeah, means either I guessed the 2012 storyline without any idea, LEGO stole my idea or it's just a rare coincidence that I was writing a Prison Break story for five months and the 2012 line is a prison break storyline

Uhm, pretty much only Rocka and Evo are rookies there. Furno, Breez and Surge passed the rookie rank after Nebula was defeated.

[Vinyl Scratch]

Uhm, pretty much only Rocka and Evo are rookies there. Furno, Breez and Surge passed the rookie rank after Nebula was defeated.

Not really, Savage Planet and Ordeal of Fire seem to retcon that. They were still treated as rookies on the SP/OoF TV shows.

Plus they will always be rookies for me no matter what you think

[Phantoka Kopaka Nuva]

Not really, Savage Planet and Ordeal of Fire seem to retcon that. They were still treated as rookies on the SP/OoF TV shows.

Plus they will always be rookies for me no matter what you think

"Alpha 1 consists of two divisions, Heroes and the Rookie 1 unit. Furno, Breez, and Surge were initially rookies under the supervision of Alpha Team, but were later promoted to full-fledged Heroes. Brand new Heroes Evo and Nex later joined the Alpha Team to help fight off the Fire Lord and his minions, and Rocka joined soon after, establishing himself as a team member on their fights in Quatros." - HeroSector01 Wiki.

I see your point, though. But Stormer is Stormer, and he won't give up his habit of treating used-to-be rookies as fresh rookies.

[Vinyl Scratch]

There's a small error on HS01 though, nothing says that Rocka joined Alpha 1, at the start of SP Rocka is a standalone Hero - or so it seems. Alpha 1 - At least part of it - is sent to rescue him, they fight together.

Nothing says that Rocka is a member of Alpha 1, that's just a misconception of the fanbase.

Same with Nex and Evo, they were sent as backup, doesn't mean they are part of the Alpha 1.

[Dorek]

Actually...

With the fire villains quenched, the Heroes face another challenge: on a remote jungle planet, a civilian scientist has crash-landed and needs help. The Hero team, including new rookie Rocka, must equip themselves with animal armor and powers in order to face whatever new challenges this savage planet can throw their way.

HF.com news post. Granted, this could TECHNICALLY be interpreted differently, but his bio reads:

Nevertheless, team leader Stormer has high hopes for this particular rookie Hero.

So yeah, Rocka is pretty clearly an Alpha member. If he wasn't, why would they have been the ones to go rescue him? Even if it's because of their service record, there's no mention of his other team, and we have yet to see a rookie not under any kind of supervision.

Edit: Also, about the whole rookies debate: Granted, it does seem like they aren't fully fledged Heroes, but A. I have yet to see them still called rookies by a reliable source (the back of the SP box is all I can think of, and it also calls Stormer a rookie, so there you have it) and, more importantly, they aren't at all called rookies in any of the TV shows post-2010.

Edited September 15, 2011 by Dorek