-R8-

Have a great one!

My stuff mainly comes from replicating existing artwork, so it's not original. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (warning, large image) I've also dabbled with polymer clay: Colored with colored pencils, as strange as it sounds I'll need to get around to photographing the rest of my clay Pokemon

Have a fantastic birthday Sir Siegfried!

I'm just exhibiting the MOCs I bring - I'm not selling anything there.

Is anyone here planning on attending Brickfair 2011? I am hoping to attend as an exhibitor - this will be my first LEGO convention.

Hope ya had a great one Big Cam!

Narcissistic me had to have epaulettes of course:

I'm usually very obsessive with keeping to the instruction booklet when building a set. One of the few changes I make involve the Magna Guards: I know that the purple cones were placed there so as to allow part of the staff to be hooked onto the ship, but that just irked me. Plus I never really liked the idea of storing weapons on a ship's external side. So I just places the cones on the "right" way, like this:

Ingenious use of pieces all throughout! This is one of a few microscale creations that really push the theme well beyond its potential.

Great color scheme...sand blue works well with black, eh? It has a robust, insect-like feel to it, while still being sleek and swooshable at the same time. I'd love to pilot that

So it was the year 2003, and Bionicle fans worldwide were eagerly awaiting the new Bionicle sets to hit their local toy stores. When the news broke of the first sightings of the sets, the fans stormed the stores to locate the new sets on their shelves. And when they finally got there, they all exclaimed, "More Bohrok???" The Bohrok-Kal weren't exactly the most well-received Bionicle line, but they still remain among my favorite releases in the entire series. Today I'll be taking some time to review the deadly and intimidating Pahrak-Kal! Name: 8577 Pahrak-Kal Theme: Bionicle (Bohrok-Kal) Year: 2003 Pieces: 41 Minifigs: 0 Price: USD 7.99, GBP 4.99 Further References: Brickset.com, Bricklink.com, Peeron.com, flickr, Biosector01 Wiki (storyline information) Along the course of this review, there will be spoiler tags containing tidbit pieces of information about this set within the Bionicle storyline. If you're interested feel free to read, but if you don't care for the storyline, then don't hesitate to skip the contents in the spoiler tags. In fact, try it out below: Though considerably more expensive to produce than the cardboard box we are all accustomed to, Bionicle canisters are an excellent place for storage of the set itself. The canisters in older sets released in 2004 and before were the best designed in my opinion, after that the storage aspect of the canister seemed to go downhill. But even within that group of sets, I think the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal series had the most superior canisters of them all. You'll see why towards the end of the review! The back of all the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal canisters had a giant sticker on it with all the legal information, but the instructions have you remove the sticker (thankfully it doesn't leave a residue!). The instructions feature the set pasted in front of a neat CGI background, with the set's name cleverly integrated into the pattern on the right. On the back, we have the entire series sets listed along side their respective Krana-Kal, which are rubbery elements that were made as collectable products. These mainly served a storyline purpose, apart from collecting. There were forty-eight in total to collect. Sets 8573 Nuhvok-Kal and 8573 Tahnok-Kal could be combined with Pahrak-Kal to create a combiner model, known as the Bohrok-Kal Kaita Za. These combiner models were always an incentive to collect the sets in a particular series. My main reason for liking the Bohrok-Kal line? The silver (or as Bricklink puts it, pearl light grey) elements. I've always liked these metallic elements for MOCing, but I'm not so much a Bionicle builder in the first place. The brown arms are great to have too. In the previous Bohrok series, these elements were released in the 'light shades' of all the colors (save for black and white), but here they were released in their solid, primary shades. Bionicle sets were notoriously referred to as being 'clones' of each other, meaning that all the sets were in essence the same except for the color, weapon, and collectable (Krana, mask, etc) inside. Minus the colors, these elements were basically the only ones that differed from set to set. The build is so simple and quick enough to be memorized and recalled even after several years. Speed build competitions of Bionicle sets were (and maybe still are) popular among the fan base. The final set is hulking and menacing in appearance. Which doesn't make sense, because it's short and has stubby legs. Posing Bionicle sets was always so fun to do. They make great subjects for photography. The lever on the back can be pressed down to make the head thrust forward as a method of 'attack.' It's a very simple mechanism, but a very cool feature for a set this size. Its headplate can open up to reveal the Krana-Kal inside. Introduce 8568 Pohatu Nuva into the fray, and you can expect a fight to ensue. Pahrak-Kal attacks first! Its head can lunge pretty far. When the head plate is locked on, its trans-green eyes can be pressed to force the headplate open and launch the Krana out. The Krana can latch itself onto the head of other Bionicle figures like the Toa Nuva series for example. This adds much more interaction and playability between the sets themselves. So, why do I love these canisters so much? Because of the ingenious storage system revolving around it and the set design. The Bohrok-Kal itself can be rolled up into a ball as both a play feature and as a quick way to store the set! A clamp within the canister latches onto its rear (ouch! ), where it will hang until brought out again to play with. Did you know that even a promotional CD came packaged with these sets? Some of my sets came with CDs, while others didn't. This is because LEGO had packaged CDs only with the early releases of the Kal. In the line that succeeded the Bohrok-Kal, the Rahkshi, CDs were packaged in early releases of them too. CDs also came along with early European releases of the Toa Metru. After a sinister sounding voice gives the introduction, you are able to click on either of the two figures on the opening screen to learn more about them. We'll do Pahrak-Kal since, well, this is the review for it. Clicking on it takes you to this cool 3D rendering of it. I think at one point this animation was made into a screensaver and downloadable from Bionicle.com. The left buttons will bring up pop-ups like a close-up of its weapons, a listing of all its respective Krana, a view rotator (which I don't get, can't you get a full view of the set if you have it with you?), and finally a short clip with the Bohrok-Kal in action. Here's a quick screen capture of one of the frames in the opening animation. Rolling on an arid desert or on a carpet floor, this set is great fun and a nice little set with a lot of nostalgia in it. Now let's scrutinize it for our ratings! Pieces: 8/10 - This rating is given from the perspective of a Bionicle fan, of course - a purely System builder would find the parts in here to be totally useless for the most part! Build: 6/10 - Nothing to it if it can be remembered after a long period of time. Design: 9/10 - In its own respect, I love the design. The fact that such a small set can roll up into a ball and have a number of play features to go along with that is quite remarkable. That being said, it gets very repetitive when considering that all the other sets in the series are designed with the same formula. Playability: 8/10 - A great amount of playability in a small set like this, and since Bionicle sets are collectable action figures, a ton of more playability right there. Price: 8/10 - I miss the days when Bionicle sets were only 7, 8, 9 dollars, and not the 13 dollar price tag that the series pretty much ended on. I guess rising petrol prices and many other factors left TLG with no choice, though. Overall: 7.8/10 Even though there are some who simply view the Bohrok-Kal as blatant rip-offs from the Bohrok, I still think that the elements in new colors and new weapon molds made this series worthwhile. I actually like this line better than the Bohrok because I find that I use (or used to use) the solid colors far more in MOCs than the lighter shades found in the Bohrok. Plus I cannot ignore those awesome silver pieces. Stay tuned for future Bionicle reviews of sets from the beginning!

Browsing through Brickset and Bricklink and 'window shopping' for old sets always makes me wish I was alive in the 80s and 70s for the old stuff. Being that I grew up with sets like Town Jr., Life on Mars, etc. of course those are the themes that make me nostalgic the most. I find that older sets especially those released in the 90s appeal the most to me, far more so than today's sets. That is not to say I don't like today's sets - they're excellent and much fun, but older sets will have that sentimental value that newer sets simply won't have for me. Furthermore, I think in recent years we have seen some of the best sets released by LEGO in all time, like the modular buildings and the direct-to-consumer sets. I would like to see a revival of the Legends line so that the new generation of LEGO fans would get some exposure to sets that many of us grew up with. But ultimately, the legacy of LEGO's past lives on in the fanbase today, and that's how we can still enjoy all the fun that the old sets have. We may never see old themes in their entirety be remade ever again, but hey, that's why we have communities like these to talk and reminisce about all the sets of a time gone by.

A big congrats to Rufus for his newly claimed zombie head! I'm sure you'll make a fine addition to a wonderful staff - thumbs up to you!

Since your pictures are from Brickshelf, you'll need to deeplink them for us to be able to view them. Please refer to this tutorial if you're not sure on how to do so.

Outstanding review, and outstanding set. I really enjoy the fact that LEGO is diversifying their alien minifigs even further with the new Alien Conquest line, in addition to Space Police and the Collectible Minifigures. It reminds me strongly of the Life on Mars minifigs. Liking the yellow and blue color scheme too. Actually, it even resembles 8303 a little bit

I keep all of my old sets built and on display for nostalgia's sake. However, I usually dismantle many of my newer sets as well as my entire Bionicle collection to harvest Technic and other useful pieces. Since last summer, I started to keep many of my MOCs built for good. I'll take MOCs apart if they eat up a lot of pieces in my collection, or if I'm not totally satisfied with them.

You know, this reminds me of Night at the Museum, only in LEGO! The banners on the front look very nice, a fun little tease as to what's inside. I like how it's designed so it can open up easily and expose the chock-full of detail interior. Beautiful integration of LEGO's themes yesterday and today.

I now am able to load the file successfully. I suppose it was the track that was problematic, although using the 9V track in previous versions of LDD didn't seem to create any problems. In any case, thank you all for your help in this strange dilemma!

Beautiful new skin! Loving the minty green. Great little displays in the banner as usual! Thanks a ton Hinckley

Thanks for the review, Clony. I think the code on the poster is intended for the upcoming Pirates of the Carribean video game, which isn't even released yet, so that'll definitely have some kids scratching their heads as to what to do with the code. Until May 10th at least. But I digress. It's great to see old pieces like the skeleton head make a comeback. The detailing on the minifigs is really phenomenal and seems like they just keep on getting better and better in all these new licensed themes. I especially like the subtle details on the older cannibal like the lil' beer belly he has. Only makes us anticipate what LEGO has in store for us next

Wonderful review, Jim. Admittedly (and embarrassingly enough) I've never seen any of the Pirates movies so I can't comment on any of the sets' movie accuracy, but in terms of aesthetic appeal this set I think is among my favorites in the line. I particularly love the beer bottles. All of the promotion that TLG is doing for the theme, with the poster and the trading cards, is pretty neat too.

Golden T-1 Typhoon Reviewer - By Fangy in commemoration of my Gold Badge - thank you fine sir!