Review: 11995 Hero Recon Team

[Brickthing]

Set Name: Hero Recon Team

Set Number: 11995

Price: $12.99USD, 11.99 Euro

Pieces: 23 to 32

Year of Release: 2011

Hero Recon Team Website

“Have you ever wanted to create your own unique Hero unlike any the galaxy has ever seen before?

LEGO Design byME welcomes you to the place where personal and unique Heroes come to life. The Hero Recon Team is a brand of LEGO customization that offers you the tools for creating your own personal models.

Besides building your personal Hero in the Hero Creator you can also play online games with your Hero, and upload your Hero to the gallery for other kids to see.”

Welcome to Part 1 of this review on the new Hero Recon Team service. The ability to create and order your own custom Heroes is a first for LEGO action figures, and I was eager to find out what it would be like. Read on to find out how the first stage of the Recon experience works – creating and buying your Hero. Of course, this part of the review can be experienced directly by going to the Hero Recon Team website, so a lot of what's included in this review is purely for reference purposes.

Website

Arriving at the homepage

The first thing that we see when we arrive at the Hero Recon Website is Mark Fortis in some sort of industrial warehouse. Moving tracking lines direct us to the right hand box that gets straight to the point of the website, mainly with the “Exclusive Chest Armor!” and “Build a Hero Now!” text. Curiously the little Hero on the green button is a 1.0 Hero, but it looks nice anyway.

If you haven't already rushed into the Hero Creator as the website strongly suggests that you do, you'll notice that there is more to the website in the forms of a gallery, games and some storyline information accessible from above and below the main area. I won't be looking closely at the rest of the website for this review as I'll be focusing on the Hero creation process, but it's interesting to note that a lot of the Hero graphics are either reused or made in LDD. There's even a recoloured Breez! I realise it's probably not worth making high-quality promotional images for the webpages of an online side-service, but I would have preferred that they at least used images of Heroes that can be built with the Hero Creator instead.

About Page

The main about page shows a rendering of a Hero along with a box and a customized building guide to match the Hero. I'm not sure if this is exactly what the box and instructions will look like in real life, but I'd be pleased if they looked that good, considering it's a custom product. (Hoping for a Hero pod would be too much ) Notice the armour orientations, shield position and the three-piece gun...anyway, onto the Hero Creator!

Hero Creator

Tutorial?

After a firey loading screen, we are confronted with an offer for a tutorial. If we click the tick, a nice animation shows us how to add pieces and explains the “weight” limit to the model. Cruelly, the tutorial buttons flash when you roll over them, so I was fooled for the first few times into thinking that the tutorial was interactive. On a trivial note the torso armour colours shown in the tutorial include Lime and Blue, which aren't avaliable in the editor or even in the 3.0 Summer sets. I hope they will be made available eventually though...

At the end of the tutorial you are given access to the creator, and your Hero still has the Yellow- Orange torso armour that was demonstratively added.

Stage 1: Basic Armour

If you choose not to take the tutorial, you are immediately taken to the Hero Creator, and you are presented with a basic skeleton in the assembly tower. The assembly tower background really adds to the experience, because it looks like you are creating a Hero in the same was as in the story. There is a nice atmospheric humming in the background, that can be muted by the sound button in the lower right corner.

Unfortunately there aren't any options to change the skeleton – your only choice is to add torso armour/hands/feet/a head, as directed by the progress tabs at the top of the Creator. It would've been nice to customize the skeleton and use the less-common body without double ball joints, but I imagine it would've made the Creator massively more complex to program. On the bright side, you receive normal length arms and the longer legs currently exclusive to Stormer, which is a better combination than in any of the 2.0 Heroes.

Each green plus indicates a spot where a piece can be added. Adding a piece to the head or torso area unlocks another green plus, for the next piece to be added on top. For reference purposes, here are all of the pieces avaliable in the first stage:

Head: Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Lime, Purple

then

Helmet

: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime

then

Headgear

: All six 2.0 head-gears, in their respective colours

Torso Armour: White, Black, Trans-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Silver, Gunmetal

then

Hero Chest Armour

: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime, Exclusive Black/Silver

or

Fire Villain Machinery Armour: Gunmetal (Picture)

or

Shoulder Armour: Blue, Yellow, Black, Lime (Picture)

then

Hero Core

: Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Lime, Purple

(I'm disappointed that White and Orange cores aren't avaliable, considering that they've been found in the Pick-A-Brick sections of Lego Stores. )

Hero Hand: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime, Silver

or

Ben 10 Claw (left hand only ): Black

or

Y-joint: Black

Hero Foot: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime

Once you have added hands, torso armour, a Hero Core, all 3 head pieces and feet, the second stage is unlocked and the first stage is complete! (image) Next we'll be adding weapons!

Stage 2: Weapons

When you click on the weapons tab, the background slides along to one with weapons and tubing, giving the impression that your Hero has been moved into the area of the factory specialized in arming Heroes. It's odd that you add weapons before armour, but that may be related to the piece limitations on your model. (Notice how the green “weight” bar has filled up? It's purely based on piece count rather than plastic weight, which is something I'll look at later.) Depending on which hands you chose, you will be able to add certain pieces. Ben 10 claws cannot have pieces added to them.

Hero Hand:

Furno Sword

: Silver/Trans-Orange

or

2.0 Saw Blade

: Gunmetal

or

2.0 Gun base

: Gunmetal

or

2.0 Hook/Claw

: Silver, Gunmetal

or

Villain Claw/Bow

: Red, Gunmetal

or

Minifig Spear

: Black, Silver, Blue

or

Minifig Chainsaw

: Dark Grey

or

Minifig Battle-ax

: Black

or

Minifig Pickax

: Grey

Y-Joint (left and right points):

Furno Sword

: Silver/Trans-Orange

or

2.0 Saw Blade

: Gunmetal

or

2.0 Gun base

: Gunmetal

or

2.0 Hook/Claw

: Silver, Gunmetal

or

Villain Claw/Bow

: Red, Gunmetal

Y-Joint (middle point):

Hero Shield

: White, Red, Yellow, Orange

then

(2 per shield)

Minifig Spear

: Black, Silver, Blue

or

Lightsaber Bar

: Trans-Red, Trans-Light-Blue, Trans-Blue

or

Minifig Chainsaw

: Dark Grey

or

Minifig Battle-ax

: Black

or

Minifig Pickax

: Grey

I'm not sure whether the Black minifig spear is made out of the rubber like the other two spear colours or plastic as it is currently only avaliable in. If someone orders a Hero with this piece, please let me know what it is made out of.

It's disappointing that you can only add one weapon piece to each Hero hand – this means it's not possible to make Surge rifles, Furno crossbows, or other multi-piece tools, despite then clearly being shown in numerous promotional Heroes around the Recon site. You can get around this by using Y-joints to add the pieces you need for tools you want, but it means the instructions/online version of your Hero will look very strange.

Once you have added at least one weapon, the next stage is unlocked. There is small typo that says the next stage is adding extras instead of cladding, but it doesn't detract from the overall Recon Team experience. Honest!

Stage 3: Cladding

In the next room you add armour, as reflected in the new background. The green pluses in this stage are strangely positioned, but they add armour to the upper arms, thighs and shins. Sadly you can't add armour to the lower arms, but that would've been complicated with the large weapons you can choose. The 2.0 and 3.0 Heroes don't tend to have completely armoured arms anyway, so your Hero won't look lacking without lower arm armour. The choices for all six spots are identical:

Size 5 Armour: White, Red, Blue, Black, Trans-Orange, Silver

or

Size 4 Armour: Yellow, Black, Silver

or

Size 3 Armour: Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Lime, Silver

I compared colours multiple times to be sure, and it seems that you can indeed choose Size 5 Black and Silver armour, which is currently exclusive to the Hero Creator and the online Pick-a-Brick (until the 3.0 sets are released, which have these pieces). I imagine the reason they are avaliable is because they are non-printed versions of Villain/Hero nametags, which gives me hope for non-printed Trans-green armour being avaliable in the future . Oddly, you cannot choose Nitroblast's Size 5 or 3 Gunmetal armour.

I shamelessly chose a healthy selection of Black and Silver armour pieces, to get the most out of my custom made Hero. The next stage is unlocked once you've added the top four pieces of armour (the only bottom two are optional).

Before we continue to the final stage, I want to highlight what is, in my opinion, the biggest issue with the Hero Creator – you can't choose how you want the armour pieces to be orientated. Instead the Hero Creator shows all armour pieces facing forwards, and then the armour is sometimes repositioned automatically later. The Hero building system is designed around and depends on the ability to put the same armour pieces onto bones in different positions, which makes a great deal of difference to the look, shape and style of each Hero. I'll certainly be changing the orientation of each armour piece when I receive my Hero, but it means he won't look nearly as good on the instructions.

Stage 4: Accessories

In the final stage you add extras such as spikes or claws to your Hero. By now the progress bar is almost full, so you cannot add very many spikes. All 12 spaces have identical options, but you will not be able to fill each one. The entire stage is optional, so if you chose two Hero Shields and filled out all the weapon spaces, you wouldn't have had any space left for this stage (or two shin armour pieces), but you can still complete your Hero.

Spike: Red, Green, Lime, Yellow-Orange, Purple

or

Flame: Trans-Orange

or

(Atlantis) Claw: White, Black

or

Viking Horn: White, Lime

Stormer's Headgear:

Eyepiece

: Trans-Orange, Trans-Apple-Green

Once you've finished your Hero, click the Save button...

Stage 5: Export

Here you can choose your Hero's codename out of a multichoice range. There is a wide range to choose from, but you're limited to male names and cheesy Hero-style last names. I'll list them here, in case they change in the future...

First Name:

Alexander

Anthony

Daniel

Edward

Ethan

Gary

Jacob

James

Jimmy

Joshua

Michael

Noah

Peter

Richard

Rick

Robert

Samuel

Middle Name:

Missile

Gold

Stone

Ultimate

Slime

Power

Fire

X-Ray

Mercury

Ice

Hammer

Flame

Machine

Shock

Max

Super

The

Stealth

Blizzard

Iron

Claw

Pierce

Last Name:

King

Breaker

Stone

Gunner

Claw

Master

Shadow

Torch

Walker

Burner

Fist

Vision

Mind

Ice

Stinger

Sight

Viper

Hider

Runner

Power

Claw

Thunder

After you choose your Hero's name, you and your Hero are whisked away from the Hero Creator to the next page!

Final Touches

Choosing details about your Hero

The next page shows your completed Hero in 3D glory, and lets you customize information about him, for what other people will see and for what will be included on the information sheet when you order him. I'm really impressed by the technology behind making the Hero images. By clicking the “Edit Hero” link, you can change your Hero's name and the following information:

Latest Mission:

Tanker 22 Rescue Mission

Tanker 22 Reconnaissance

Outer Galaxy Patrolling

Tanker 22 Battle damage assessment

Tanker 22 Observation

Favorite Food:

Pizza and Coke

Stewed Bolts

Metal mousse

Mexican

Nano smoothie

Olive oil

Mission Teammate:

Furno

Breez

Surge

Evo

Nex

Stormer

Favorite Music:

Futuristic Punk

Classic metal

Electric violins

New age

Oily blues

Robo rap

After you've chosen your Hero's mission details and personal likes, click the “Send to Cart” button...

Choosing your Hero's stats

...Which will take you to another stage, where you can give your Hero stats (25 points total, max 10 per area) and a specialty:

Skills:

Double Shot

Fire Blast

Stun Attack

X-ray Vision

Instant Invisibility

Power Armour

Ultra Speed

Click the “Send to Cart” button again, and your Hero is finished, ready to arrive on your doorstep 3-4 weeks after you buy him!

Time to order!

You know the rest.

Analysis

The price of a Recon Team Hero appears to be always the same, despite some parts of the website saying otherwise. The only restricting factor on your Hero is the piece-counter, which counts the number of pieces, not the value of the pieces that you choose. The advantage of this system is that certain combinations of pieces will make your Hero very much worth the price you pay for it, but it will cost you just as much if you want to have a lighter Hero that does not max out the piece-counter. The minimum number of pieces is 23, while the maximum is 32. Please let me know if you find a way of exceeding the piece-counter limit as is shown in the tutorial.

Although you deserve to pay extra if you design a Hero like this...

Recon Heroes cost roughly 50% more than normal 2.0 Heroes, they have limited armour and weapon configurations, and roughly the same amount of pieces (23-32 compared with 29-31). However, because you can choose which pieces you'd like, you can choose pieces which are much more useful and valuable for you. You can include pieces such as hands, spikes and uncommon armour pieces (Especially those from the villains) that you'd usually need to buy multiple sets to aquire in a single Recon Hero.

Hopefully if the Recon Team program is successful, it will be updated later in the year to include 3.0 parts as well, which will greatly improve the options for unique Heroes. I also hope that a future update will bring more customization options, to armour pieces and to the skeleton, especially as the 3.0 Heroes have started using different coloured bone pieces.

Personally I'm very impressed with the online part of the Hero Recon Team, as it expertly combines a game-style character creation interface with ordering an actual product. I ordered my Hero a few days ago, so come back next month to find the conclusion to this review! Feel free to share your thoughts on the online component of Hero Recon Team, as well as any suggestions you have for designing Heroes with it.

Till next time!

[VBBN]

A very informative review brickthing

I'll be interested for part two, mainly to see the packaging and chest piece and such.

[Aethersprite]

Nice! I'm disappointed that you can't select a hand and have 2 Furno blades on it, though. Can't wait for part 2, good job. If it wasn't so pricey and if it were available in my country in the first place I'd definitely give it a go.

[The Crazy One]

I have to say, the real problem is lack of parts and colours. Still, that will come with time. I made Merrick but I dont have the shoulder guards to complete him, as he only has the colour scheme that fits the recon chest piece IMO.

[Brickthing]

I have to say, the real problem is lack of parts and colours. Still, that will come with time. I made Merrick but I dont have the shoulder guards to complete him, as he only has the colour scheme that fits the recon chest piece IMO.

I do think it's slightly disappointing that you cannot build Merrick with the Hero Creator, and also that he uses non-existent white 3M armour. The shoulder armour is only 2 Nitroblasts/Jetbugs away though.

I think most lighter coloured cores will work well with the Recon team armour, it's just that Lime is the only lighter colour available so far.

[The Crazy One]

I do think it's slightly disappointing that you cannot build Merrick with the Hero Creator, and also that he uses non-existent white 3M armour. The shoulder armour is only 2 Nitroblasts/Jetbugs away though.

I think most lighter coloured cores will work well with the Recon team armour, it's just that Lime is the only lighter colour available so far.

Agreed, the Recon core is surprisingly unversatile with most darker core colours. Jetbugs core is the wrong colour as a dark metallic silver. I don't own Nitroblast blast but I am assuming his is black.

[dviddy]

The biggest problem is a lack of girl's names. What's up with that?

[_shaddow_]

First, thanks to Brickthing for this very complete review/guide.

I ordered my hero using the HRT on the 5th, I hope to get it before the end of the month, but since it hasn't been sent yet, I'm pretty sure I'll have to wait until May.

Here's the LDD version of my hero !

[Zarkan]

Great review, Brickthing, even if I don't share the same enthusiasm for this product as you and others do. What would have made the Hero Recon builder a must buy is if there was exclusive colors or pieces. As it stands, this service is suitable for its target audience, but not that interesting to older folks who want more customization freedom.

The biggest problem is a lack of girl's names. What's up with that?

What's up with that is that TLC is aiming this product mainly at boys who have not yet grown out of the "girls have cooties" phase. Official female sets like Breez 2.0 might still sell based on the fact that they aren't distinctly female in appearance, but no young boy with a dislike of the opposite sex is going to actually identify their custom hero to be anything other than a "manly man."

Edited April 18, 2011 by Zarkan

[r4-g9]

I ordered my hero using the HRT on the 5th, I hope to get it before the end of the month, but since it hasn't been sent yet, I'm pretty sure I'll have to wait until May.

i ordered two on the 5th and they shiped on friday they should be here by monday which is 21 days form the 5th as said on their website

[Brickthing]

The biggest problem is a lack of girl's names. What's up with that?

Along with Zarkan's reason, I'm hoping it is to do with some part of the instructions/online process using "he's" instead of "it's", so it would require another choice of Male/Female and all of the "he" areas to be customizable rather than pre-printed to allow having a Heroine. Those would be possible reasons, but not justification to a lot of people.

First, thanks to Brickthing for this very complete review/guide.

I ordered my hero using the HRT on the 5th, I hope to get it before the end of the month, but since it hasn't been sent yet, I'm pretty sure I'll have to wait until May.

Here's the LDD version of my hero !

I see you've also added some worthwhile armour pieces on your Hero. Are all the arm and shin armour pieces 5M shells, or are they a mix of 4M and 5M shells?

You could well end up getting yours up to 2 weeks before me, as I ordered mine later and it will take up to an extra week to reach New Zealand.

Great review, Brickthing, even if I don't share the same enthusiasm for this product as you and others do. What would have made the Hero Recon builder a must buy is if there was exclusive colors or pieces. As it stands, this service is suitable for its target audience, but not that interesting to older folks who want more customization freedom.

I think waiting for the part selection to be updated with 3.0 parts would be the only solution for the lack of armour choices (there is a fair amount of choice for some colours though). There could be many reasons for why there is only one exclusive piece to the Recon Team service, such as a question of funding, or whether it would decrease the value of new sets with armour colours that would've been new colours if it weren't for the Recon Team, or whether it's fair to customers to make a large amount of useful pieces only accessible through a (compared to normal sets) expensive service.

[The Crazy One]

The biggest problem is a lack of girl's names. What's up with that?

This also drops to the point that they dont look female anyway. Breeze can be passed of as female via posing and movemnt but I genuinly thought Breeze was male in the 2.0 line. Its a shame that there arent any female names ( or parts for that matter ) but hey, it wouldnt look female anyway.

I dont see why you cant type you own bio and names in. If you can do it on a shoe ( NikeiDs) then why cant you have it printing on a box. A simple word filter is all you need.

[vexorian]

Great review, Brickthing, even if I don't share the same enthusiasm for this product as you and others do. What would have made the Hero Recon builder a must buy is if there was exclusive colors or pieces. As it stands, this service is suitable for its target audience, but not that interesting to older folks who want more customization freedom.

What's up with that is that TLC is aiming this product mainly at boys who have not yet grown out of the "girls have cooties" phase. Official female sets like Breez 2.0 might still sell based on the fact that they aren't distinctly female in appearance, but no young boy with a dislike of the opposite sex is going to actually identify their custom hero to be anything other than a "manly man."

What is the actual cost of adding "Caroline" to the set of names? I mean, really. What if a girl actually likes HF? It may happen...

[_shaddow_]

I see you've also added some worthwhile armour pieces on your Hero. Are all the arm and shin armour pieces 5M shells, or are they a mix of 4M and 5M shells?

You could well end up getting yours up to 2 weeks before me, as I ordered mine later and it will take up to an extra week to reach New Zealand.

The arm armour pieces are 4M and the shins are 5M, I just wanted to make a good looking hero on this one, instead of ordering a part pack. I don't think i'll use these parts to moc with, or at least not immediately.

I'm actually bothered by the fact they use stormer's legs, since I wanted mine to be a bit smaller. I'll have to order bones from Bricklink to modify it.

[Brickthing]

Just a small update on the progress of my Hero, and I assume everyone else's, including _shaddow_'s:

Dear Customer,

We are very sorry to inform you that we have had some technical problems in the fulfillment of customized LEGO orders. Unfortunately this means that the delivery of your ordered Hero Recon Team member has been delayed.

The problems have now been solved and we’re working full speed at the Hero Recon production facility to produce and ship your Hero.

While the production has been on hold, we have collected and added a cool extra element to your unique Hero Recon member as a small compensation for the delay.

Thank you for your patience,

The Design byME team

It's only been a few days since I ordered, so with any luck this delay might speed up the process more than it's delayed it.

[_shaddow_]

Just a small update on the progress of my Hero, and I assume everyone else's, including _shaddow_'s:

It's only been a few days since I ordered, so with any luck this delay might speed up the process more than it's delayed it.

Yes, I recieved this mail, myself. Once again, I hope to recieve it by the end of the next week. Anyway, thanks for the information.

[80 Dollar]

Just a small update on the progress of my Hero, and I assume everyone else's, including _shaddow_'s:

It's only been a few days since I ordered, so with any luck this delay might speed up the process more than it's delayed it.

I got this message as well (Yeah, I caved and ordered one last week).

I'm really curious what this "cool extra element" is...

[Aanchir]

As far as the limited parts palette is concerned, keep in mind that these, like other DesignByMe sets, are packed by hand. Thus the simpler the parts list is, the easier it is to pack them and ship them. There's a reason why a Hero built with this online application is cheaper to purchase than the same hero built on LDD.

Certain things that bug me include the lack of girls' names, and the fact that you can't attach certain pieces in certain places (like spears or axes into the gun barrel piece-- I imagine this may be to simplify the instructions, thus streamlining the process even further). But overall, I'm impressed with the process and feel it's a great opportunity to let kids test their creative freedoms with these pieces.

Overall, the system doesn't meet all of my expectations, even though it is sufficient in most respects. I had expected that you might be able to add cladding at different angles, and was kind of disappointed to find you can't. The aforementioned weapon limitations are also a downer. One of the things I dreamed of but never honestly expected was perhaps the chance that your Hero could have a custom name badge with their name and your choice of colors (maybe even a choice of pattern) in the style of the 2.0 name badges. But then, the way LEGO applies prints wouldn't work at all for an on-demand service like this, even if the options were limited.

Overall, while I prefer LDD in most respects, I find that the limited parts palette and step-by-step process employed in Hero Recon Team is great for simple brainstorming and testing out color scheme ideas. I'm sure that applies even more so for kids, who might have a harder time completing a design with LDD's wider range of options.

[Aanchir]

Out of curiosity, are we ever going to get Part 2 of this review? I'd like to see an in-depth review of the actual product.

Also, the reviews index really needs to be updated. I could have found this review a lot sooner if it had been on there.

[Brickthing]

Out of curiosity, are we ever going to get Part 2 of this review? I'd like to see an in-depth review of the actual product.

Also, the reviews index really needs to be updated. I could have found this review a lot sooner if it had been on there.

It's upcoming very soon.