barnstench fartface

Aanchir is referring specifically to Ameet's activity books. Those never come with anything exclusive. DK Publishing's visual encyclopedias and things along those lines do often come with exclusive minifigures, but that's a different deal (and company) entirely. So it really wasn't likely at all with this one.

Looks a bit long for that. Maybe a Bohrok eye?

I sort of wish the cube deal came with a non-fire chi version of Bladvic instead. Shame that's the only version of the character we're getting. Especially since Bulkar's design is so frickin awesome. I would have loved to see more Bears in actual Bear gear. Sigh...

Ooh, the packaging for the Klinkers is really nice. Really selling the steampunk/junkyard aesthetic. Those guys are the ones I'm most looking forward to. The new Lixer images make it much clearer where they use flame yellowish orange and where they use bright yellow. As I sort of feared, it's kind of a mess? Turg mainly uses orange, Tungster mostly uses yellow, Spugg is like, half and half. Spugg and Tungster at least seem to have some degree of color blocking going on, but I dunno about Turg, his yellows seem less coordinated. Kind of wish they were all mostly fl. yel. orange to differentiate them more from the Electroids but I guess it is what it is. Also, from the first video we saw from Nuremberg since I thought they were all bright yellow I had thought Tungster would come with recolored fl. yel. orange wings, but obviously they're just bright orange. Slightly disappointing, if only because it's the only solid orange piece among the three of them. (trans bright orange wings would have been amazing, unrealistic as the idea is)

I did not expect Rinona to have new clothes. Dang, now I am kind of tempted to buy the set. I could always use more Rhinos. If only the Mammoth Stronghold came with Mungus.... I'm planning on getting the Rumble Bear sometime since I am obviously missing Bladvic and I haven't been able to find Iceklaw's mech anywhere. I doubt I'll get the others, which will make getting the new minifigs a pain in the butt :/

I have just gotten Meltus and Flamzer, so my collection is complete as well, for now. I'm really looking forward to series 5, a lot of the designs look really solid. Series 4 was mostly good, few flukes (Nurp-Naut and especially Meltus...). But also some really great ones, like Niksput and Vampos. I am a little disappointed that the new Nixels are so lacking in variety, though...The 2014 ones had much more creative builds. Which. I mean, it's thematically consistent for Nixels to be unimaginative, but still, it bugs me. Anyway. I've been looking at the new old tribes (the new Infernites, Frosticons, Glorp Corp). And. I'm like, super aware this is just me being an obnoxious nitpicker, but I am rather bothered by the inconsistencies between the 2014 and 2015 tribes. Like, with the Glorp Corp--all three from 2014 had trans green cheese slopes somwhere on them. It was kind of a small tertiary color that helped unify them as a tribe. But, the 2015 ones on the other hand...Slusho has trans green wings so I guess he is excused, but the other two don't have anything and it really bothers me. I don't know if the trans green slopes they used last year were simply because trans fluor green ones weren't available (I believe they were also new for last year?), which would make sense since the new Glorp Corp do use a bunch of trans fluor green ones, but whatever the reason...it's annoying. And Dribbal is a Niksput clone, that's also kind of a bother, I guess. At least the head is different though. I have kind of the opposite problem with the new Infernites, which instead of dropping a color gained one...unlike the 2014 ones, which only used transparent parts for their specific fiery bits, the 2015 ones use trans bright orange ones all over the place as a tertiary color, just for the sake of having cooler (hotter?) color schemes. Which they do! They really actually look better with them than I think they would without them, but...still, consistency is an issue. I don't know. Thankfully the Frosticons don't seem to have anything like that going on...

Pohatu's weapons don't bother me much. The friction works pretty well, I think. Not that I've played around too much with him, but they aren't just flopping around breaking at the lightest of touches from my experience. I also like his design a lot in general. (not enough to not mess with it, but enough)

While I too sort of miss the days of titans with complicated legs, Lego created the friction extender piece pretty much exactly so they wouldn't have to do those anymore. Unfortunately I doubt that we'll really see sets like those..

I thought it was pretty decent. It wasn't all that amazing (perspective may be skewed, spent the morning catching up on Steven Universe, standards may have been left set too high) but a good amount of the gags were pretty good. I especially enjoyed the introduction of the Glowkies. Really, the Glowkies stuff was generally pretty solid. I think my favorite new characters based off it are Rokit and Boogly, though the latter didn't do much. Can't say I cared much for any of the Infernites, but considering that's how I felt about most of the original characters (save for, like, Shuff and Zaptor) I guess it's fine that way.

I was at Target today. There was already a cardboard Elves display next to the Friends sets, though sadly only one set was there (the ship.) Whether this means that the other sets were there (but already sold out!) or not I do not know. In any case, it's a bit of a shame, I probably would have picked up Aira's workshop if it was there...But I guess this way I just have to wait about a week to follow my original plan and buy it at the Lego store so I can take advantage of the polybag promos going on. The Magical Fire poly looks interesting enough and it's a great way to round off the minidoll collection (since I imagine it'll be a while until I can afford the treehouse...). For that matter, the Mask of Fire polybag is also a great incentive...quite a fire-heavy promo month, March...

I can hardly wait for this theme to drop in March. Only problem is that more and more of the Elves sets are looking great and I'm already planning on getting a bunch of Ninjago...decisions, decisions. That Brickset review convined me that I do want that set after all, which makes...just about every set this wave except for the Bakery that interests me? I may have to end up skipping the boat for now since I'll be getting Aira and Nadia in the smaller sets. Will probably also skip the Hollow set since I want to get the treehouse and that comes with Farran...No doubt I'll probably end up going back to them, though! All these sets have amazing parts and I really would like to own all of them. Except the bakery, again. That one really doesn't speak to me at all. Which is probably for the best...

I built a Scorpio mock-up on sunday, and the function is fun enough to justify a purchase from me even without all the cool parts he comes with. (gunmetal spider legs will be useful!) and I don't think the design actually looks too bad at all in person (except for the hands, which are still really crappy). But yeah, that body horror explanation of Scorpio makes him even better.

I believe they're from the scene in which he turns himself into the Empire towards the end of RotJ. (he was handcuffed at that time, if I remember correctly) It does strike me as a bit silly to include accessory for that, but that's the most likely explanation. And it's good that they're getting a bit more mileage (and a recolor!) of the Breakout cuffs, anyway. Come to think of it, have the chain pieces ever even come in silver metallic? That will probably be useful too.

I was huge on Chima, I loved the minifigures and I got tons of the sets (mainly on sale months to a year after the fact cause hey I'm not made of money) but I don't really mind that it's ending. It had a decently long run and I have more than enough stuff to remember it by. The show also managed to pull itself together in its third season (hated the first one...) so it had a satisfying conclusion to its story as well. This way I have one less theme to focus on (which is good since between Bionicle, Ninjago, Elves, Mixels, and assorted other things, 2015 is already going to be running me pretty ragged). Also this way I can just relax and focus on getting the very last couple of minifigs I need to have a complete selection. So it's fine. I think we have enough "action themes" running right now to get by with even without Chima, but there's certainly a chance that something new will pop up.

I've said this elsewhere multiple times, but I think one of the greatest things that could happen to CCBS would be to introduce shells with studs on them where the connection points for cladding are. (Hollow studs, so you can still put stuff on them and everything). It would be a fantastic way to add some nice detailing on CCBS figures (some simple cheese slopes could do so much good to a lot of designs) and it would even allow CCBS to work with and be implemented into system sets better. I dream about this all the dang time.