Kaijumeister

As a young child, I found absolute delight in playing with the minifigures, and still do as a teen! Nevertheless, I have always considered both the build AND minifig portions of a set as equally vital aspects of the building (and playing) experience, the minifigures add depth and more life to the build while the build itself offers an exciting environment for the minifigures to populate. While Lego is clearly aware of the appeal of minifigures (and how many people are willing to buy sets solely for them), they rarely (IMO) truly exploit the fact. What I absolutely love is that with most themes, Lego offer interesting builds (most of the time) along with detailed and well designed minifigures to compliment them, which not only enhances the playing experience, but is a testament to Lego's increasing quality over the years. However, licensed themes often prove to be an exception to this, this year's Star Wars winter-wave spring to mind. The sets are well designed for the most part, but it's evident the emphasis is on the minifigures themselves - for example the AT-AP commercial ends with pictures of the boxed sets AND the minifigures, which (to my knowledge), hasn't been done before. The Superheroes line also seems to suffer from this flaw - 2014's Marvel sets are clearly emphasising on minifigures instead of builds, the Hulk Lab Smash especially harkens back to the days of much simpler builds, while still offering superbly designed minifigures. But time and again licensed themes also offer minifigures and builds which compliment each other well - the Lone Ranger theme is a shining example of this. I think generally, it's a matter of patience. Kids want to play with what they just bought as soon as they open it, and while the building experience most definitely is fun, it can also be tedious (as most have said already) for the younger age groups, they want something to play with as soon as possible - enter the set's minifigures (though as Aanchir has stated, Lego is beginning to spread out the minifigures across multiple bags for the larger sets to also focus attention on the building aspect). Minifigures are an extremely important aspect of all System sets, and while Lego certainly puts a lot of effort and detail into their minifigures, they certainly won't tip the scales to favour them over the build, they did start off as a building block company after all, and will never forget these roots, the build makes the set as much as the minifigures do - it's all a matter of being patient with the builds for the younger fans.

The official website has animations up for most of the sets, they look great!

Thanks for the review mordatre! Looks like a fun set and those Death Star Gunners look stunning! So excited to try out those new stud-shooters.

Generally this wave looks to be a huge step down from the excellent Episode II sets that were offered this summer, though in terms of play features LEGO really have improved. The spring-shooter looks compact and effective, and I look forward to trying it out in person. No you aren't, I absolutely love the entire concept of blasters held by minifigures that can shoot studs, so cool! those are going to be absolutely fun to play around with.

After taking a one-year hiatus from Hero Factory after the underwhelming Brain-Attack sets, 2014 looks set to be a great year for the theme. The concept alone of Mecha vs. Kaiju is appealing in itself, and it's a perfect and natural fit for constraction figures without converting them into system sets, the herofigs look excellent! The episode trailer looks fun and full of action, I'm absolutely stoked for NYTF to see the summer sets, looking forward to seeing how Surge's mech plays out.

I must say I am absolutely loving the amount of effort put into these sets by the designers! The focus on creativity is something that has been absent from most themes (excluding Creator) for a long time, and the ideas running throughout this theme (a plumbers van that can be rebuilt into an plunger-shooting aircraft? Brilliant!) are great, I have no doubts it will be a smash hit with all audiences. In terms of pricing for these sets, I am pleasantly surprised, I never expected the Melting Room to be below £20, £13 is a great price! It's good that most of the 2-in-1 builds are at the 30$/£ pricepoint. In terms of minifigures, the Robo-SWAT figures in these sets look absolutely amazing, along with the civilian and CITY-styled minifigures. All in all, an absolutely fantastic theme.

The Spider-Copter is indeed a S.H.I.E.L.D vehicle, there's a S.H.I.E.L.D. sticker visible behind the fuselage. I also have an inkling that the upper-cockpit has a trap door, you can see Spider-Man's webbing attached to the inside of the cockpit, and it makes sense as a suitable play-feature for having Spidey swing out from the copter. In my opinion it's a shame that Lego is taking the "unnecessary bunch of vehicles for a hero who doesn't need them" route, it's a pain seeing Hasbro producing so many ridiculous vehicles for Spider-Man (and Iron Man!), and is something I never thought LEGO would do, but all the same these are for kids, though maybe too much so this time round. The Trike set looks good only for Electro, it's great having Lego use the translucent arms outside of Jek-14 finally, Definitely a set I will pick up. The Captain America vs HYDRA set also looks great, and I'm loving the minifigures. All in all though, a pretty disappointing first half of 2014 for the Superheroes line (though the minifigures are wonderfully done, as expected), here's hoping that the X-Men sets will be of a higher standard, and movie-version GotG sets sound promising, though I must say I'm not expecting much! Maybe TLG will kick it up a notch for the Age of Ultron and Batman vs Superman films.