ZORK64

My opinion about these sets remains pretty much the same as before. But here a few new thoughts thanks to the closer pics: - Frost Beast's head looks adorable. - Stormer wears much less white than usual. I'm surprised by this, but I like how he gets transblue and silver into his colour scheme. - Okay, why does nobody extends Jet Rocka's wings? Seriously, it loos like Rocka is wearing a Bohrok-Costume this way. - Surge looks fabulous thanks to his posing. And of course because he comes with awesome pieces. - Yeah, Dragon Bolt's jaw looks goofy due to posing. But aside from that, I'm looking forward to get him. All in all, yeah, if not with the Chima Ultra Builds, LEGO will get me with Hero Factory.

I agree on this, but considering that it's not upside down on her bag, I suppose it's also a mistake. These new pics are good, a bit dark, but at least closer. I don't like the gold on Gorzan, mostly because of the contrast to black and dark grey. But the others look even better. I'm still sure about getting Eris, and perhaps Cragger. About the rest... maybe Laval, Worriz or Razar, but I'm a bit sceptical about Gorzan.

I think that of all of the heads. Razar really grows on me now, same goes for Gorzan.

OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST HF WAVER EVER. Two white sets, two blue sets (and one of them is really large) and a whole bunch of other nice things... it's like LEGO read my mind. There are even a few wings here and there. Stormer looks awesome (though his sword isn't blue, but yeah, there are plenty of sets he could borrow one from), and Frost Beast looks also pretty cool. Both are sure buys for me. Surge manages to become even more awesome than Stormer because he got wings. Also, that helmet is a masterpiece. Dragon Bolt looks a bit too small in comparison for his head, but I still like him and he looks like a great parts pack. Again, two insta-buys for me. Evo doesn't interest me that much, but his design is well-thought and looks decent. Aquagon on the other hand really got my interest by now, even if it's only as a fantastic parts pack, so I'll go for Aquagon. Jet Rocka looks kinda bleh, if you ask me. It's a little bit better with the wings extended (I really don't understand why he isn't shown with flipped out wings there), but still very chunky. Depending on his price, he still might be a good parts pack, since Technic parts are also helpful for building large and massive torso constructions. Heck, LEGO will make even more money out of me this year than they did in the past year.

Finally a few better pictures. Since everybody else starts this list with Eris, I'll do so as well. I think the problem with Eris' head is simply the neck. The neck of her minifig isn't covered with feathers, and her beak is not as dominant as it seems to be on the Ultrabuild. But even if it doesn't look really like Eris, it's still a cool head design. Also, I like axes, blue, white and wings, so yeah, Eris is an Insta-Buy (so she won't sit neglected on the shelves - or if she should do so, I'll buy a whole bunch of these once they go on sales). Gorzan looks alright, and I agree it's a shame his banana belt was omitted. The pic there is too dark to judge him properly. But odds are still fair that I'll get him just to try pulling of an Optimus Primal MOC. Laval looks cool, and I don't mind the HF feet all that much (although his legs look very thin compared to his arms). Cragger looks also good. I consider him an almost sure buy just for the colours and the weapons. Worriz looks also cool. Is it possible that his armour is copper? Even if not, I like his design, altough it's similiar to Laval's. And Razar is basically a black and evil version of Eris. He looks interesting, but I'm not sooo excited about him. But odds are still good that I might end up owning him. In short, I'm curious about the final sets.

Building brick themes which are similiar and compatible with LEGO are kinda rare here in Germany (at least in super markets and toy stores, some cheaper stores tend to sell stuff like Best Lock though), so I didn't even knew about the existence of Mega Bloks for a long time (and I also didn't paid much attention to it). By now, I happen to own a few sets from their Halo line (mostly smaller sets which focus on figures), a few marine dudes from their Dragons Universe and one of the single figures from the WoW line. I agree on the quality of the Mega Bloks being inferior to LEGO bricks, and at least the Halo sets I own (the Moon Goose and the Brute Chopper) contain many specialized pieces, but I like the more poseable (mini) figures. I wouldn't prefer them right over the adorable and timeless LEGO minifig, but I still like them for what they are - small action figures which are to some extend compatible with LEGO. Because of this, I'm also looking forward to the Starcraft sets.

Nice MOC, I like the gun design, mind if I use it?

I like your take on Stormer, and I also kinda enjoy his utterly huge gun. My only complaint about him would be his arms. They would look really poor compared to his massive legs if you remove his weaponry. But aside from that nice job!

I wonder how I missed to notice this. Also, yellow limbs.

Oh man... Aquagon looks kinda boring to me, but he got two blue swords. I would get them just for these. (though his head is also cool)

Breez looked to me also slightly more feminine than the other characters, at least in the first wave, Breakout and Brain Attack (her 2.0 form though looked quite bulky and masculine). As I mentioned already at some other occasions, Breakout Breez looks fairly female to me mostly because she strongly reminds me of Samus Aran though. But it's also because of her sleek helmet. On that note, I didn't expect Gali to be a female - the first catalogues and such in Germany referred to Gali as a male, which also didn't helped that. The first Bionicle set I owned which actually looked female to me was Kiina. Back on topic: I agree on the weird shape of Eris' head. It looks like it got something like a chin. Also, it doesn't seem to split into three "spikes" at the back of her head like it does on the minifig. I do like her wings though (same goes for the raven guy - his head looks good though). I also like her axe. Just like to mention that Laval is missing his sword on this pic, so I wouldn't bet on them being final. As for the rest... I can't judge them properly form that tiny picture.

Speeda Demon completely slipped my mind when I wrote this since I don't own him (though I actually could, he's on sales in the LEGO store... but I don't want more lime green... hmmm...). My bad. As far as prices go, I can live with them given that Hero Factory is still cheaper than some other toys I invest my money into, like Transformers (which are quite expensive in Germany) or Tabletop miniatures (which also became very expensive because Games Workshop became kinda greedy in the past year), especially when you consider that LEGO parts are quality wise pretty great.

Are there any pictures of guys who aren't Jet Rocka out yet? I'd like to see Stormer, Frosty, Surge and the Dragon... Rocka himself looks okay. I'm surprised that his jetpack looks so TECHNIC-y though, since the last sets kept TECHNIC parts to a minimum.

I second that. The lack of pupils looks weird on them. I'm also not a big fan of the asymmetry on the chests. But I can forgive these issues, because these guys come with many, many new colours and stuff.

Considering this, I appreciate the "juniorization" of LEGO since I prefer to create more stable MOCs. It's also one of the reason why I usually prefer LEGO figures over other Action figures - they're sturdier.

I must confess that I didn't read any Manga or expierenced any other fiction of Transformers Kiss Players firsthand, but judging from what I read about it on the TFWiki (and partly TVTropes) it contains plenty double-entendres (both visual and in dialogues) I'm uncomfortable with. Despite this though, I'm glad that Kiss Players didn't feature anything outright explicit, but it comes very close to crossing that line. In short: I didn't wanted to bash Kiss Players, I only wanted to say that we don't need any more form of fiction with robots (as seen in Bionicle) doing squicky things - Kiss Players already covered that. And allow me to leave it at that - I don't want to derange that topic anymore, since I'm also really looking forward to the Chima Action Figures. I agree with you on this. Calling Chima a ripoff of Thundercats makes as much sense as calling Harry Potter a ripoff of Lord of the Rings or Uncharted a ripoff of Indiana Jones (funnily enough though, the protagonist of Tomb Raider was originally a guy but was replaced with Lara Croft to avoid too many similiarities with Indiana Jones).

I'm very, very sorry that I brought that up. In fact, I'm so sorry that I'll edit my post a bit. The idea of Bionicle in that regard hadn't even crossed my mind yet (and I don't want it to happen - Kiss Players was enough). I'd also like to remind all of us that not necessarily everyone in the furry fandom has to think that way. Since I never watched Thundercats, I can't really judge on that issue, but considering that some of the Hero Factory designs got a slight Transformers vibe IMHO, I guess that's a rather subjective matter. I, for example, don't really care about the storylines of any of the LEGO brands (though I watched a few films from Bionicle and Hero Factory), I simply buy the sets for the sake of MOCing, and same will apply to Legends of Chima as well (for the very same reason I bought Eris' Eagle Jet today, and I'm very happy with that set). Because of that, I don't bother myself that much with issues like the creativity of the plot/setting or how well the story telling is.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Yeah, I expected these too. I'm honestly thinking about buying Eris' eagle jet just to get a fair load of these (and a whole bunch of winged minifigures). "Can't let you do that, StarFox." I'm sure you meant something that refers to Bulk 3.0, but I just recently saw again, so yeah...

Most of them are already sold out in my local LEGO store, except for XT4. I'm not really tempted to buy a second one though, since I still have enough bones and shells flying around here (what I actually could need were hands - maybe I'll make a PaB order someday again...).

KreO plastic seems also quite good quality wise (though the only non LEGOs I can compare it with are a few Halo sets from Megablocks), only the ball joints are a bit weird, but these probably won't be a big issue for GI Joe sets.

Shipping (and... erotic fan art) seems apparently rather common in the Furry Fandom (a friend of mine is a furry). From that viewpoint I can understand why Chima doesn't bode well with the community - after all, they still look blocky and robotic, and not very furry-like. But I guess that's off-topic enough. Wait what? Wings made out of minifigs?!

I agree with you on the price inflation and (partly on the size issue). Luckily Transformers figures get everyonce in a while price cuts here in Germany.

At first I thought this topic is about KreO, but then I opened the link and... huh. I'm on the fence about these guys. Some of them look really, really bad since 90% of their alt-mode kibble hangs pretty useless around in the robot mode, and they look kinda gappy here and there. But if these guys could be somewhat inscale to Hasbro's regular TF toys (sure, unlikely, but hey, hope dies last...), I'd gladly pick up a few sets to recreate a few of my character designs from Fall of Cybertron. Otherwise, I'm fine with LEGO. Though the idea behind these guys is cool.

It's nice to see some new pics of the sets! I don't care much about Laval's feet, his head looked really nice in that video. Cragger though appeals a bit more to me because of his blades. Since I passed on Hulk, I'm looking forward to Gorzan, I can't really judge on Razcal yet.

Yeah, that surprises me a bit. What's the reason for the dislike?