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Brickthing

Review: 2233 Fangz

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Set name: Fangz

Set Number: 2233

Price: $12.99USD , 12.99 Euro

Pieces: 55

Year of release: 2011

Peeron

Bricklink

Brickset

fangzintro.jpg

Heroes! Witch Doctor’s servant, Fangz, has been sighted!

This ferocious beast will defend its master with everything it’s got. Including the jaw-mounted spears and corrupted Quaza spike.

When you see Fangz, you know you are close to Witch Doctor, so set proximity sensor to maximum!

The Box

Front

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I really like the boxes of the Summer Hero Factory sets, with their bright green borders and beautiful background art. Here, Fangz lunges at you with his head awkwardly to the side, kindly sacrificing his depth perception so that you can see how nice he looks before he eats you. In the background it’s raining Fangz through the sunlit canopy of the Savage Planet jungle, ready to follow up on attacking you incase the leader Fangz isn’t successful. (His front legs are bending backwards to fit on the box, which I think may be detrimental to his running...:look:)

In most boxes I prefer the non-US versions that don’t have the extra text, but this box does a good job of not letting it get in the way of the wonderful box graphics. :thumbup:

Top

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The top of the box has a 1:1 image of Fangz’ head, which if anything, is slightly smaller than the actual piece.

Side

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Instead of a LEGO Club advertisement as on Raw-Jaw’s (Non-US) box, there is a cartoon Witch Doctor skull. Fangz’ Club advertisement is on the opposite side, along with some additional translated warnings.

Back

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The back of the box shows the same comic on all of the Summer boxes, but with Fangz facing off against Nex 3.0. Fangz seems to be having some trouble standing on the tree branch, but overall this little action scene looks very nice, and portrays both sets nicely. Unlike Raw-Jaw’s box, the Hero being upgraded in this comic is of the 2.0 variety.

Contents

From within the box

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Inside, we are greeted with the instructions, a small-shoulder torso, a large bag of pieces, and a tiny satchel of TECHNIC pieces along with two spears and two balljoints.

Instructions

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The instructions are clear and easy to follow, and the added diagrams specifying which shell size to use is more useful this time, because Fangz has multiple sets of 4 and 5 shells in the same colours. The instructions would have you build Fangz as if he’s skydiving, but I find the building process to be more entertaining if he is posed as he is built.

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The parts inventory is quite wide for a small Villain set, with most pieces coming in multiples of 2 or 3.

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Along with ads for the website and Hero Recon Team, there is this wonderful double page of an aerial battle between Waspix and Furno 3.0, with some ancient jungle ruins in the background. Although it’s a space saving move for the instructions, I miss the older BIONICLE instructions that had multiple pages like these for the entire wave in one booklet.

What you probably bought the set for

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Fangz has 55 pieces of which only 7 are small TECHNIC connectors, so naturally there are some very good parts contained within. The recolours include four Dark Grey bones, two black 5 shells (exclusive to Hero Recon Team before) and two Piraka claws in Black mixed with the new Silver-Metallic colour. Non-new highlights include three Silver 3 shells, another Trans-Orange 5 Shell, two ball joints (sadly not new pieces) and a long red bone.

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Fangz has a smaller selection of new Summer pieces, being spine armour, Quaza spikes, his head piece and a new Hero spike, although he makes up for it with his printed armour. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Fangz comes with two unique types of Trans-Orange shells, of which there are three of the size 4 type! They’re printed with orange and silver, depicting tiger patterns mixed with metallic plating, including some air ducts on the size 5 shell for the head.

Fangz’ headpiece is another piece exclusive to this set, as compared to the Fire villains’ shared heads. It uses the new double rod connection to attach to a shell piece, meaning that it is wider than I expected from the box shots that always depicted the head from the side. Rather than a wolf, Fangz’ head is shaped more like a hyena or a rodent, with buckteeth to go with it. Due to the gunmetal colour and angular form, the head reminds be strongly of a Zoid head more than a Hero Factory head. Still, the detail of this piece is excellent and I’m sure people will find many applications for it besides as a creature head.

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The underside of most of the new Summer pieces have the double rod connection, which works well as long as both rods are attached (depending on the plastic/rubber of the piece). Fangz’ headpiece has the rod connectors at a roughly 20o angle from the direction the head is facing, which you’ll see gives the head a much more dynamic look. The mouth of the headpiece is also big enough to fit a ball joint and socket through it, allowing it to potentially be used as leg/arm armour.

Build

Due to the quadruped stance and spiked back of Fangz, the build is a fair bit more interesting than usual. To be expected for a set this size, the build isn’t very long, so I’ll let you look through the building sequence before I present my thoughts on it:

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build2.jpg

build3.jpg

build4.jpg

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There we go! I really like the order of building Fangz – You start off with the torso and back legs, which seem like a velociraptor until you add the front claws and armour. The head is added near the end, followed only by adding the back spikes, as if you were corrupting the innocent creature after completing it. The only negative part of the build is clicking together the old-socket Matoran claws, where it feels a lot less secure compared to the new sockets that I’ve gotten used to building with.

Completed Set

Front

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Firstly, many people have raised the question of what exactly Fangz is meant to be. I think the best answer would be that he is meant to be a “Fangz”, because there are many features that don’t match any Earth predatory animals, such as the spear tusks, buckteeth and spiky spine. He can be posed to resemble a hyena, but none of the official images suggest that (although some images suggest his front legs be bent forwards. :sceptic:).

Regardless of what he is though, Fangz look vicious and ready to pounce on an unsuspecting Hero. There’s no part of his body that doesn’t have something sharp, be it claws, teeth or spikes. I like his colour scheme a lot, and even though his head is the only Gunmetal piece, it suits better in that colour than it would have in Black or Silver. His body is illuminated by trans-orange and red, although I’d have preferred the long Red bone used on his torso to be in Black or Orange, to either intensify the “glow” of the trans-orange shells or let them do their work on their own rather than confuse the colour scheme with a single red piece. The back looks like it’s emanating with power, but I’m not sure what the storyline explanation or purpose of this is.

Side

completed2.jpg

A side view of Fangz shows of his triple-jointed legs, his toothy snarl and curving spine, although it also shows the holes in the construction of the back. From many angles it’s quite easy to see through his body, and the construction underneath the plates is only one stud wide. The only way I could see to improve the thin shape of the body would be to replace the trans-orange 5 shell with a trans-orange torso shell, but otherwise the way Fangz back is built is as good it can be for using the Hero Factory system. I’d much rather see the building system push itself to create interesting creatures such as this rather than it sticking with easier humanoid builds.

His front legs are remarkably bulkier and larger than his back legs, which is something that isn’t shown on the box. Even though torso armour for shoulders as now been used quite a lot, it helps hide the vertical thickness of Fangz’ back, and make him look strong in addition to being fast and agile.

Back

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Unlike most sets, Fangz looks good from the back as well; all the exposed undersides of the armour shells face inwards and down.

The spikes on Fangz’ back can be articulated a fair amount, although they look best when all of the back shells follow a smooth arch shape. The colour of the spikes doesn’t entirely match the trans-orange armour (black/orange spikes would’ve been very nice), but it does make Fangz look like he has been corrupted and is now under the influence of something evil.

Faaangz?!TM

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Despite his name, Fangz doesn’t actually have any fangs. Instead, he has two spears protruding from below his jaw, made out of rubber so that they don’t hurt people, break or damage the TECHNIC connectors holding them. I’m not sure if their articulation is meant to be a play feature or not, because it isn’t very exciting when his jaw clearly hasn’t lowered with the spears.

The “fangs” benefit the set by making Fangz look more dangerous, but if you don’t like them they can be removed and the head will still look fine. I just find it odd that Fangz doesn’t have proper fangs while four of the Heroes, Raw-Jaw and Rocka XL do.

In the above pictures you can also see the effectiveness of the new headpiece connection. Like Raw-Jaw, the printed armour that the headpiece attaches to acts as Fangz’ eyes, with the trans-orange armour meaning that Fangz has evil BIONICLE-like eyes. :wub: Unfortunately his eyes cannot catch the light to glow, unless a laser/black light is used to make the trans-orange piece fluoresce.

Action Poses

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Hyena mode

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Raptor Mode

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Final Thoughts

Colour Scheme - 9/10 – Fangz uses a solid colour scheme of Silver through to Black, with the twist being his glowing back. The Silver and Black gives him a dark metallic look perfect for an evil robot hound, and it is distributed evenly throughout his body so that no part is too bright or too dark. The trans-orange gives him proper eyes and an interesting back, and while I’m not sure why they are there, I can’t complain about the 5 trans-orange pieces that Fangz used to give him that colour scheme. :wub: My main but small disagreement with the colours used is that Fangz only uses colours from the Fire Villains, albeit with a focus on the Blacks and Silvers rather than the fire colours.

Parts - 8/10 – Fangz doesn’t have many Summer pieces, but he is an excellent source for armour shells – many black/silver shells that are either coloured or were found singularly in only one Winter set, a trans-orange 5 shell to pair with Jetbug’s and 4 trans-orange printed shells. I hope it will become a trend to include a trans-orange heavy set in each wave of sets. :sweet: Fangz has a decent number of bones, however there are only two less common bones (the long red bone and the small torso piece). In summary, if you like trans-orange pieces Fangz will be a must-get, otherwise Fangz provides a solid selection of pieces for your money, but you’ll find more interesting/special pieces in the other villain sets.

Design - 9/10 – This set provides a pleasant break from humanoid villains, fully embracing the look of a feral jungle animal. Considering the limitations of the Hero Factory system, Fangz does very well at making a different but sturdy body, using the Quaza spikes in the best way out of all the villain sets. The fangs/spears are the only strange part about this set, and they can be easily removed if you don’t like them.

Articulation - 10/10 – Fangz is completely articulated with 21 points of articulation, including the 3 spikes’ movement. The back legs and tail are especially fun to pose, and I believe Fangz and Waspix are the first sets in Hero Factory and BIONICLE to have such legs with full articulation.

Quality - 9/10 – The quality of the new pieces and printed armour is excellent, and the only shortcoming in quality is the use of Av-Matoran feet with the breakable sockets. It’s a shame that they have been re-introduced after the new sockets had been supposedly phased in completely, even showing up in redesigned SYSTEM socket bricks. Hopefully the fact that the claw feet weren’t modified means that it wasn’t worth redesigning them for two sets because they won’t be used again in the future.

Overall - 45/50 – Fangz is an excellent set, primarily for his departure from humainoid villains and for his trans-orange pieces. As a non-sentient predator, he doesn’t have as much character previous villains, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less of a formidable opponent for a Hero. The set also lends itself perfectly for buying multiples of, either to build a pack of Fangz or for the pieces, which are suitable for a wide variety of Hero Factory/BIONICLE MOCs.

He’s right behind me isn’t he?

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Alright fine, you can have the spears back!

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High-Res Photo Gallery! :sweet:

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I love all the trans-orange! (hate the spears though.)

By the way, do you think that there is any possibilaty that there will ever be a trans-orange head piece?

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I'd never liked it before, but I quite like it in these shots. If I have some extra cash I might get this guy, but not until I get Raw Jaw, Witch Doctor and Rocka XL.

Edited by Bundalings

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Hi, I'm pretty new here. I just have a quick question about the box sets.

I notice in all your reviews the headpieces for Waspix, Raw-Jaw, and now Fangs all used the rod connectors. I was wondering if have try putting their headpieces on the Hero Factory heads? Do they make decent mask for the heads? Took any pics?

Thanks a bunch for the reviews, really excited for when they come out in my town. Just wanted to know how they look if put HF Heads. So I can just buy the big sets and MOC them.

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Hi, I'm pretty new here. I just have a quick question about the box sets.

I notice in all your reviews the headpieces for Waspix, Raw-Jaw, and now Fangs all used the rod connectors. I was wondering if have try putting their headpieces on the Hero Factory heads? Do they make decent mask for the heads? Took any pics?

Thanks a bunch for the reviews, really excited for when they come out in my town. Just wanted to know how they look if put HF Heads. So I can just buy the big sets and MOC them.

I don't have any, but from looking at the pictures I don't think they can. The hero heads have the forehead that sticks up in front of the rod holes, so rods that are on a flat surface like on the villain heads wouldn't be able to reach them.

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This is awesome! I'm really liking how the new line looks good from all angles, and this is one of the better ones :thumbup:

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First: You should take bigger pictures. I really appreciate HQ pics. I like to see how HF is evolving with the new system. It looks like a fun set, good colors and there are a good number of Technic pieces.

Edited by Jagersmann

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Villain helmets do not fit on the hero heads, and that includes Witch Doctor if I'm remembering right. I'm not near my sets right now, being down at Brickfiesta, but I'm pretty certain his head didn't fit on the hero heads either.

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Thanks for the review! Awesome set. As a sucker for anything robotic and quadreped, this is a must-get for me.

Couple of things put me off though: The Avtoran feet, and his spears. I guess the spears can be removed easily, like you said.

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Hi, I'm pretty new here. I just have a quick question about the box sets.

I notice in all your reviews the headpieces for Waspix, Raw-Jaw, and now Fangs all used the rod connectors. I was wondering if have try putting their headpieces on the Hero Factory heads? Do they make decent mask for the heads? Took any pics?

Thanks a bunch for the reviews, really excited for when they come out in my town. Just wanted to know how they look if put HF Heads. So I can just buy the big sets and MOC them.

It was one of the first things I tried, but unfortunately the Villain heads are designed to fit flush on shell pieces, so the connection points don't fit on Hero heads. However, Raw-Jaw and Fangz' heads can be used as Hero heads if you get a bit creative with attaching them - I'm currently working on a Rocka XL-like titan that uses Fangz head and pneumatic hose to attach it to the Hero head, so I'll have pictures of this connection later this week. :classic: The head pieces of Raw-Jaw and Fangz are also at a larger scale than Hero helmets, so they're best for titan Heroes unless you really want a bobble-head Hero.

Waspix/Scorpio's head doesn't fit and wouldn't look good if it did because the eyes are too far apart (and solid plastic), and while I can't speak for Witch Doctor from experience, I would think that his head could be used with the right connection pieces. However, I don't think you'd be able to see the Hero head inside the headpiece anyway. :sceptic:

First: You should take bigger pictures. I really appreciate HQ pics. I like to see how HF is evolving with the new system. It looks like a fun set, good colors and there are a good number of Technic pieces.

I'm uploading the original images for Fangz and Raw-Jaw now (will take a while though), before they were resized to be topic friendly. Until the folders become public, you can access them by adding "HQ/" before the file name in the URL of each image:

"http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sprxtrerme/Reviews/Fangz/box1.jpg"
becomes
"http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sprxtrerme/Reviews/Fangz/HQ/box1.jpg"

Hopefully these will be useful for you, although please forgive the grain and possible Photoshop artifacts - I took these photos intending to scale them down a lot. :classic:

Fangz doesn't have many TECHNIC pieces compared to BIONICLE sets, but the few that he has are nice ones. :sweet:

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Okay, I just have two questions. Can you put Bulk 3.0's helmet on Fangz? (If possible, please post a photo.) Another question that I have would be that if I make a Fangz in Bulk's colors, with another Bulk helemet on it, would I run into any exclusive or hard to find parts that aren't avalible in black or new silver colors? I would like to know this because I don't want to spend money on Fangz just to test it, (It isn't avalible here yet anyway.) and Bricklink doesn't have them inventoried yet. If you can't answear this second question, that's okay, thank you for trying. If this request confuses you, I'm sorry. I just keep imagining Fangz being a domesticated pet for Bulk. Anyway, thank you.

(EDIT: clarified which bulk hlemet I would like on Fangz.)

Edited by Murdoch17

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I rarely comes in and look at this, but I can't help and to note the name of this set. :blush:

Very fitting for a nasty looking clawed creature. Thank you Brickthing. :thumbup:

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Wow. It looked so impressive. And it still does to me. But the jaw thing is a real let-down.

Still, Fangz deserves a 4-star. The translucent back is a big plus. Why can't they do the same with Raw-Jaw and the rest of Witch Doctor's animals???

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Great, informative review, Brickthing. I may not be much of a fan of Hero Factory, but this latest wave is giving us some of the best constraction figure animals since the original Rahi. :thumbup:

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Great review AND pictures, Brickthing! Have to say, it's the first deep look I get into a HF 3.0 set, and as always, Lego's keeping up the good work, which is good. The comic on the box is a nice addition, and the sets, while they're becoming more simple overtime, are also more detailed.

BTW, I also miss the booklets artworks :P

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Along with ads for the website and Hero Recon Team, there is this wonderful double page of an aerial battle between Waspix and Furno 3.0, with some ancient jungle ruins in the background. Although it’s a space saving move for the instructions, I miss the older BIONICLE instructions that had multiple pages like these for the entire wave in one booklet.

Alright, I'm seeing a lot of discussion of this so I have to ask: what instruction booklets are people referring to that had these "multiple pages"? I just pulled out Tahu Nuva's instructions, those being the oldest ones within arms reach right now, and the only ad pages are a one-page image of the six Toa Nuva (the same image featured in this wallpaper) in the front and a one-page Kanohi Nuva chart on the back.

Walking over to a nearby shelf and pulling out my twin brother's Pohatu building instructions, there still aren't any ads that seem to match what people are describing. There's a picture of a Toa Canister on a beach on the first page, a picture of the six Great Kanohi demonstrating how they attach to the canister lid on the last page, and the inventory of the three sets needed to make Akamai on the first page of Akamai's building instructions.

Perhaps you're thinking of the building instructions for Rahi, since those are boxed sets like Hero Factory villains? Nui-Rama, the only one remotely similar in price and piece count to this year's villain sets, has nothing in the second instruction booklet but a page in the middle showing the action features for the set, a page in the back showing a photo of the Nui Kopen completed, and the very back of the instruction booklet showing nothing more than what you'd see in most catalogs. The first instruction booklet (which is not on LEGO.com) has the same action feature image in the back and nothing but a Kanohi chart on the back cover. On a side note, the Rahi instruction booklets on LEGO.com are apparently the really good kind that use vector graphics rather than just straight scans, meaning they look good at any zoom! Hooray!

Even the mini-catalogs included in 2001 sets (separate from the instruction booklets) didn't have any multi-page art like you're describing-- just a two-page spread with the main box art of the six Toa, some Toa Canister graphics, and two masks.

The Bohrok instructions do have some art in them-- Tahnok's instructions have two pages of tiny Bohrok vs. Toa images. The box sets from that year (all far larger than this year's villains) had similar art if I remember correctly. Are these what you're referring to? If so, then it's clear where the discrepancy is between those sets and these. Those images existed to demonstrate the story, not to advertise particular sets-- essentially, the modern-day equivalent would be if TLG put the full comic from the back of each box onto one of the pages of the instruction booklets.

I for one prefer the big character artwork we get in the instruction booklets now-- especially since for the past two waves of sets, unlike the first Hero Factory wave, the pictures of the heroes in their "battle-ready" poses from the backs of the boxes are not available on Shop at Home or anywhere on LEGO.com. It's a real loss in my opinion, so having this art in the instruction booklets is a small mercy.

Fangz has a smaller selection of new Summer pieces, being spine armour, Quaza spikes, his head piece and a new Hero spike, although he makes up for it with his printed armour. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Fangz comes with two unique types of Trans-Orange shells, of which there are three of the size 4 type! They’re printed with orange and silver, depicting tiger patterns mixed with metallic plating, including some air ducts on the size 5 shell for the head.

Fangz’ headpiece is another piece exclusive to this set, as compared to the Fire villains’ shared heads. It uses the new double rod connection to attach to a shell piece, meaning that it is wider than I expected from the box shots that always depicted the head from the side. Rather than a wolf, Fangz’ head is shaped more like a hyena or a rodent, with buckteeth to go with it. Due to the gunmetal colour and angular form, the head reminds be strongly of a Zoid head more than a Hero Factory head. Still, the detail of this piece is excellent and I’m sure people will find many applications for it besides as a creature head.

Wow, Fangz's (that sounds so weird) printed shells look very nice! They're pretty hard to see in most pictures, so I'm glad they're every bit as artful as the ones in the other bad guy sets.

His helmet is cool, although it's a bit odd that it's the only Titanium Metallic (post-2010 Pearl Dark Grey) part in this set. I agree it could be useful.

I'm kind of puzzled that his front paws are the co-injected kind. You'd think it would be more practical to use plain black ones like Jetbug or Von Nebula, since it looks kind of awkward for his front paws to have metallic-colored claws and his back paws to have flat black ones. I guess they felt the metallic claws made the set look more menacing, though-- and admittedly dual-colored claws would have looked weird on Von Nebula or Jetbug.

Build

Due to the quadruped stance and spiked back of Fangz, the build is a fair bit more interesting than usual. To be expected for a set this size, the build isn’t very long, so I’ll let you look through the building sequence before I present my thoughts on it:

There we go! I really like the order of building Fangz – You start off with the torso and back legs, which seem like a velociraptor until you add the front claws and armour. The head is added near the end, followed only by adding the back spikes, as if you were corrupting the innocent creature after completing it. The only negative part of the build is clicking together the old-socket Matoran claws, where it feels a lot less secure compared to the new sockets that I’ve gotten used to building with.

I agree that it was a shame TLG had to bring back the Shadow Matoran claws just as soon as they'd finally done away with the Glatorian head. They look OK in this set, since they match the aesthetic of the Piraka claws, but I'd still have preferred some different alternative in both this set and Waspix.

Completed Set

Front

Firstly, many people have raised the question of what exactly Fangz is meant to be. I think the best answer would be that he is meant to be a “Fangz”, because there are many features that don’t match any Earth predatory animals, such as the spear tusks, buckteeth and spiky spine. He can be posed to resemble a hyena, but none of the official images suggest that (although some images suggest his front legs be bent forwards. :sceptic:).

Regardless of what he is though, Fangz look vicious and ready to pounce on an unsuspecting Hero. There’s no part of his body that doesn’t have something sharp, be it claws, teeth or spikes. I like his colour scheme a lot, and even though his head is the only Gunmetal piece, it suits better in that colour than it would have in Black or Silver. His body is illuminated by trans-orange and red, although I’d have preferred the long Red bone used on his torso to be in Black or Orange, to either intensify the “glow” of the trans-orange shells or let them do their work on their own rather than confuse the colour scheme with a single red piece. The back looks like it’s emanating with power, but I’m not sure what the storyline explanation or purpose of this is.

Fangz reminds me a lot of Spinax in both his posture, his lack of obvious real-world analogue, and his story role as a wolflike/houndlike predator.

I don't think the transparent shells have any meaningful story explanation. After all, Jetbug's probably were emanating with power or whatever, seeing as he's one of the Fire Villains, but at the same time there's no story reason why he has them and the other Fire Villains do not. Likewise, I think the only reason Fangz has these transparent shells and the other beasts don't is that Fangz needs them most to add excitement to an otherwise boring color scheme. Plus, the fact that his color scheme is otherwise boring means that he can manage an additional color, which might not have been the case for Raw Jaw, Scorpio, and Waspix (all of which already have fairly vibrant color schemes and might have looked chaotic with an additional color).

Side

A side view of Fangz shows of his triple-jointed legs, his toothy snarl and curving spine, although it also shows the holes in the construction of the back. From many angles it’s quite easy to see through his body, and the construction underneath the plates is only one stud wide. The only way I could see to improve the thin shape of the body would be to replace the trans-orange 5 shell with a trans-orange torso shell, but otherwise the way Fangz back is built is as good it can be for using the Hero Factory system. I’d much rather see the building system push itself to create interesting creatures such as this rather than it sticking with easier humanoid builds.

His front legs are remarkably bulkier and larger than his back legs, which is something that isn’t shown on the box. Even though torso armour for shoulders as now been used quite a lot, it helps hide the vertical thickness of Fangz’ back, and make him look strong in addition to being fast and agile.

I'm not all too happy with Fangz's build, just because he doesn't seem remotely as sturdy as Raw-Jaw or even Waspix. His back is just a frame with a few shells scattered somewhat haphazardly along it, and that's what it ends up looking like. Changing the color of the bone on his back from red to black could have been helpful, but there would still have been many ugly gaps in the back. The worst part in my opinion is that not all of his shells are aligned the same way. If they had been, it might have improved his look from the side and top significantly.

Back

Unlike most sets, Fangz looks good from the back as well; all the exposed undersides of the armour shells face inwards and down.

The spikes on Fangz’ back can be articulated a fair amount, although they look best when all of the back shells follow a smooth arch shape. The colour of the spikes doesn’t entirely match the trans-orange armour (black/orange spikes would’ve been very nice), but it does make Fangz look like he has been corrupted and is now under the influence of something evil.

At first it was very vague to me whether the Quaza spikes were in fact Transparent Red or Transparent Fluorescent Reddish Orange at the tip. In this review, it's obvious that they're Transparent Red, since they don't match Fangz's armor shells, but in other reviews they seemed a lot more glowy than regular transparent red would be expected to look. I guess it's just a reminder how much impact the material of a piece can have on the perceived color, especially if the actual color is a transparent one. Transparent Red was a dull and lifeless color when used in polycarbonate for Toa Metru Matau-- but when used in polypropylene for Vahki Vorzakh, it was very vibrant indeed, just as it is here on the Quaza spikes.

Faaangz?!TM

Despite his name, Fangz doesn’t actually have any fangs. Instead, he has two spears protruding from below his jaw, made out of rubber so that they don’t hurt people, break or damage the TECHNIC connectors holding them. I’m not sure if their articulation is meant to be a play feature or not, because it isn’t very exciting when his jaw clearly hasn’t lowered with the spears.

The “fangs” benefit the set by making Fangz look more dangerous, but if you don’t like them they can be removed and the head will still look fine. I just find it odd that Fangz doesn’t have proper fangs while four of the Heroes, Raw-Jaw and Rocka XL do.

While we're discussing the spears, let's take the time to laugh at how according to LEGOshop.com, they are an action feature-- because there, despite the lack of any action feature, the blurb encourages you to "Fire jaw-mounted spears at Heroes!" Alas, while I know a lot of people think the Thornax/Zamor combo is becoming tedious, at least it gave LEGOshop.com a meaningful function to advertise for the sets.

In the above pictures you can also see the effectiveness of the new headpiece connection. Like Raw-Jaw, the printed armour that the headpiece attaches to acts as Fangz’ eyes, with the trans-orange armour meaning that Fangz has evil BIONICLE-like eyes. :wub: Unfortunately his eyes cannot catch the light to glow, unless a laser/black light is used to make the trans-orange piece fluoresce.

While I do love the use of fluorescent colors to catch the light where eye pieces otherwise could not, Fangz's eyes look terribly dim in your photos. Is this just a quality of the photos, or is it really so hard to even see the color of the eyes from these particular angles? Personally, I like these headpieces and how they are constructed-- it makes more sense than the use of Glatorian heads for the Spikit in 2009-- but at the same time, if TLG isn't designing the actual faces so that the eyes are consistently visible and attractive from a number of angles, then IMO we still haven't quite reached a satisfying solution for the heads of villain sets (especially in the case of Witch Doctor, whose eyes are hollow regardless of angle).

Final Thoughts

Colour Scheme - 9/10 – Fangz uses a solid colour scheme of Silver through to Black, with the twist being his glowing back. The Silver and Black gives him a dark metallic look perfect for an evil robot hound, and it is distributed evenly throughout his body so that no part is too bright or too dark. The trans-orange gives him proper eyes and an interesting back, and while I’m not sure why they are there, I can’t complain about the 5 trans-orange pieces that Fangz used to give him that colour scheme. :wub: My main but small disagreement with the colours used is that Fangz only uses colours from the Fire Villains, albeit with a focus on the Blacks and Silvers rather than the fire colours.

I personally don't mind colors being reused at this stage of the game. It makes it easier to amass a usable collection of parts in the new building system, rather than having a bunch of colors in small quantities. At the same time, this may be in part because I have not bought more than two of the Fire Villains, and so haven't yet become "swamped" with parts in these colors.

Parts - 8/10 – Fangz doesn’t have many Summer pieces, but he is an excellent source for armour shells – many black/silver shells that are either coloured or were found singularly in only one Winter set, a trans-orange 5 shell to pair with Jetbug’s and 4 trans-orange printed shells. I hope it will become a trend to include a trans-orange heavy set in each wave of sets. :sweet: Fangz has a decent number of bones, however there are only two less common bones (the long red bone and the small torso piece). In summary, if you like trans-orange pieces Fangz will be a must-get, otherwise Fangz provides a solid selection of pieces for your money, but you’ll find more interesting/special pieces in the other villain sets.

While all the Transparent Fluorescent Reddish-Orange (Trans-Neon Orange) parts are nice, I hope that at some point we get some parts in the new system using Transparent Fluorescent Green (Trans-Neon Green) or Transparent Fluorescent Blue (Trans-Medium Blue), the other two fluorescent colors still on today's color palette. Other transparent colors, like the Transparent Green of the 3.0 heroes or the Transparent Yellow of Waspix's wings, are also more than welcome for variety's sake.

Incidentally, there are at least two other fluorescent colors that have been discontinued-- Transparent Fluorescent Red, the color used for Tahu's eyes which most people conflate with Transparent Medium Reddish-Violet (Trans-Dark Pink), and Transparent Fluorescent Yellow, the color used for Gali's eyes. While it's easy to see why these two colors were discontinued, seeing as they were near-identical to other transparent colors, it's a shame that the result of this was the use of BIONICLE eye colors that were either undesirable (many of the non-fluorescent Toa Metru and Bohrok eye colors) or repetitive (the orange and green eyes, often used to color-code sets by good/evil affiliation, that people complained about to the bitter end).

Anyway, great review! I'm not a big fan of Fangz compared to his similarly-priced counterparts Raw-Jaw and Waspix, but he's certainly a creative design! While I'd like to get back to humanoid villains soon enough, I hope we still see more non-humanoid, mid-size villain sets like these three in the future!

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Thank you for the great review!

Since Fangz comes with a nice assortment of silver pieces, I think I'll get him sooner or later. Now I also know that he has indeed a very nice built.

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Okay, I just have two questions. Can you put Bulk 3.0's helmet on Fangz? (If possible, please post a photo.) Another question that I have would be that if I make a Fangz in Bulk's colors, with another Bulk helemet on it, would I run into any exclusive or hard to find parts that aren't avalible in black or new silver colors? I would like to know this because I don't want to spend money on Fangz just to test it, (It isn't avalible here yet anyway.) and Bricklink doesn't have them inventoried yet. If you can't answear this second question, that's okay, thank you for trying. If this request confuses you, I'm sorry. I just keep imagining Fangz being a domesticated pet for Bulk. Anyway, thank you.

(EDIT: clarified which bulk hlemet I would like on Fangz.)

Bulk's helmet fits in place of Fangz headpiece, but then there isn't a jaw for the resulting wolf. I'm sure you could find a suitable piece though. The spikes and trans-orange shells can be replaced with silver versions, however to my knowledge the long Red arm bone only comes in Red. :sceptic: Fangz is more of the size for Bulk to ride on him, aside from the small issue of spikes. :laugh:

Ok set, worth getting. But his head sure seems small. :sceptic:

His head is bigger than Hero heads, although it's smaller than Raw-Jaw's and the Fire villain heads. Maybe it's the proportions of it on the body that make it looks small, because it's wide enough to fit a socket piece inside it, making it as big as a Glatorian helmet.

Alright, I'm seeing a lot of discussion of this so I have to ask: what instruction booklets are people referring to that had these "multiple pages"? I just pulled out Tahu Nuva's instructions, those being the oldest ones within arms reach right now, and the only ad pages are a one-page image of the six Toa Nuva (the same image featured in this wallpaper) in the front and a one-page Kanohi Nuva chart on the back.

The example I was thinking of in particular were the 2004 instruction manuals, which (referring to some Rorzazahk instructions in front of me) have 2 pages for the Vahki, 2 for the 2004 Titans, 2 for the Toa Metru, 2 for the Vahki Combiners and another 1 page for the Metruan. I'm fairly sure other years around 2004 did this as well, although it may have varied between regions and individual sets, and I suspect that the online PDFs cut them out to reduce file-size.

I'm not all too happy with Fangz's build, just because he doesn't seem remotely as sturdy as Raw-Jaw or even Waspix. His back is just a frame with a few shells scattered somewhat haphazardly along it, and that's what it ends up looking like. Changing the color of the bone on his back from red to black could have been helpful, but there would still have been many ugly gaps in the back. The worst part in my opinion is that not all of his shells are aligned the same way. If they had been, it might have improved his look from the side and top significantly.

The back is fairly sturdy, although over time and use the ball pieces could become loose. The shells are aligned differently because they wouldn't fit on the bone if they were aligned the same way. I agree that it isn't a flawless result, but I think it's the best possible solution given the pieces that exist.

While I do love the use of fluorescent colors to catch the light where eye pieces otherwise could not, Fangz's eyes look terribly dim in your photos. Is this just a quality of the photos, or is it really so hard to even see the color of the eyes from these particular angles? Personally, I like these headpieces and how they are constructed-- it makes more sense than the use of Glatorian heads for the Spikit in 2009-- but at the same time, if TLG isn't designing the actual faces so that the eyes are consistently visible and attractive from a number of angles, then IMO we still haven't quite reached a satisfying solution for the heads of villain sets (especially in the case of Witch Doctor, whose eyes are hollow regardless of angle).

You can see the orange eye colour if you look for the eye colour, but because it doesn't glow it won't stand out to you during a quick glance over. I think the contrast with the trans-orange back plates that are bright from catching light makes it more difficult to see the eye orange, but it's there.

I was skeptical about the double-headed helmets in the 2009 Glatorian, but I was quite pleased with them once I had them in hand. They don't work well for strong character faces (as shown in the Fire villain sets), but for the 2009 helmets it worked well and we ended up with 6 different character helmets over 4 recoloured pieces.

I personally don't mind colors being reused at this stage of the game. It makes it easier to amass a usable collection of parts in the new building system, rather than having a bunch of colors in small quantities. At the same time, this may be in part because I have not bought more than two of the Fire Villains, and so haven't yet become "swamped" with parts in these colors.

I enjoy having more of the same colour as it allows me to make bigger colour-coordinated MOCs, but only in Silver, Gunmetal, Black and Red. If I try to make anything in any other colour it becomes very difficult, so because the bigger sets don't provide you with a wider range of colours, the neat colours you get from Heroes are limited to being used on smaller MOCs. In general of course, as there are always ways around not having many pieces in one colour.

Anyway, great review! I'm not a big fan of Fangz compared to his similarly-priced counterparts Raw-Jaw and Waspix, but he's certainly a creative design! While I'd like to get back to humanoid villains soon enough, I hope we still see more non-humanoid, mid-size villain sets like these three in the future!

I love variations to the standard humanoid build, but I think alternating between different and normal would work best. As fun as these animals are, I hope they won't be disadvantaged by the most expensive set in the wave being the only actual villain - without him, who will be controlling the animals in their fight against the Heroes?

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The example I was thinking of in particular were the 2004 instruction manuals, which (referring to some Rorzazahk instructions in front of me) have 2 pages for the Vahki, 2 for the 2004 Titans, 2 for the Toa Metru, 2 for the Vahki Combiners and another 1 page for the Metruan. I'm fairly sure other years around 2004 did this as well, although it may have varied between regions and individual sets, and I suspect that the online PDFs cut them out to reduce file-size.

A glance at a Zadakh's instructions backs up your claim. I guess 2004 was a big year for promotional images. Personally, though, I kind of prefer these sets' big two-page spreads with large images of different sets to that year's more catalog-like images. The variety is also nice-- you don't get the same images in each instruction booklet.

Also, on a related note, commenting on the instruction art inspired me to look at the online instructions for these sets and see what cool images I could retrieve for HS01. As I mentioned, in the first wave these "versus" images were all on LEGOshop.com under "more views" for both the heroes and villains. In the second wave they were available only for the villains, and in this most recent wave they're not available for either (besides the really big sets like Scorpio, Rocka XL, and Witch Doctor). Thankfully, I was able to pull high-quality versions of these versus images from the second- and third-wave instruction booklets. I'm posting those images in the main Hero Factory topic for everyone to see.

The back is fairly sturdy, although over time and use the ball pieces could become loose. The shells are aligned differently because they wouldn't fit on the bone if they were aligned the same way. I agree that it isn't a flawless result, but I think it's the best possible solution given the pieces that exist.

Ooh, that sounds like a challenge! :devil: I'll see whether you're correct by trying to fashion up a sturdier-looking alternative on LDD. I agree it would be difficult, but I'll do my best.

You can see the orange eye colour if you look for the eye colour, but because it doesn't glow it won't stand out to you during a quick glance over. I think the contrast with the trans-orange back plates that are bright from catching light makes it more difficult to see the eye orange, but it's there.

Still, I'd have much preferred if there were cavities in the helmet to let light in. It also bothered me with Fire Lord, and in his case you'd have thought Drilldozer's eye holes in the back would be sufficient. With some better planning, both of these sets could have been improved in that regard

I was skeptical about the double-headed helmets in the 2009 Glatorian, but I was quite pleased with them once I had them in hand. They don't work well for strong character faces (as shown in the Fire villain sets), but for the 2009 helmets it worked well and we ended up with 6 different character helmets over 4 recoloured pieces.

Oh, no! I think you misunderstand me. I don't mind double-sided heads/helmets at all! Even Jetbug's/Nitroblast's doesn't bother me. What I had issue with in the case of the Spikit was the fact that there was a clearly humanoid head underneath the helmet, with a non-matching eye color outside. Even though it's obvious that the helmet on the Spikit is meant to be part of the head, and that the Glatorian head was only chosen for its proportions (if it were still in production, the rubberized y-joint seen in the 2004-2007 titan sets would have worked just as well), it still was bothersome if the Spikit was looked at from an angle at which the Glatorian head was visible, like a direct side view. It wasn't a big problem, but needless to say I feel the solution these beasts use is superior in some respects

I enjoy having more of the same colour as it allows me to make bigger colour-coordinated MOCs, but only in Silver, Gunmetal, Black and Red. If I try to make anything in any other colour it becomes very difficult, so because the bigger sets don't provide you with a wider range of colours, the neat colours you get from Heroes are limited to being used on smaller MOCs. In general of course, as there are always ways around not having many pieces in one colour.

Well, this bothers me in terms of the line itself (as I've mentioned before, we have almost all warm colors in this wave besides Stormer, Nex, and Scorpio), it doesn't really faze me when it comes to the individual sets. As long as the sets are in colors where the end result looks cool, then the set will be pretty much the same to me in value.

I love variations to the standard humanoid build, but I think alternating between different and normal would work best. As fun as these animals are, I hope they won't be disadvantaged by the most expensive set in the wave being the only actual villain - without him, who will be controlling the animals in their fight against the Heroes?

Well, if Witch Doctor has anything going for him, it's that he's intimidating. If the only true villain were a set like Fire Lord, then it might seem like the Heroes had a significant advantage, but seeing as the villain is an enormous magical skull-beast, I think he's got a fighting chance. :tongue:

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Thanks for this beautiful review, Brickthing!

I was pleased to see a good detail shot of the (fang-less :laugh: ) head piece. Indeed, it looks very much like a Zoids head, especially reminding me of Unenlagia and its Fuzor form Double Arms Lizards.

The variety of parts is pretty good, and the colour scheme is interestingly good too.

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Thank you very much for this review! :sweet:

I couldn't really tell much from the box, and the real life pictures were really helpful. I'm was never a fan of Bionicle, and Hero Factory does little to change my opinion, but Fangz looks like he could be useful as some kind of monster in my medieval Kingdom.

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Great review!

I really like Fangz, with the cool head that can attach to hero heads, and awesome spikes on his back!

And I LOVE the Raptor Mode pose! :devil:

Thanks for the review!

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