Lyichir

If you want the 2015 Toa, get them. If you don't, don't. I will say that you might still be able to find a lot of them on clearance at this point. If you think you might ever want the 2015 Toa, now's the time to act on that, because once they're gone the price will almost surely begin to rise again. The 2016 sets will remain available for a good year or so, so there's really no rush to pick those up.

You mean the tower itself, or just the carrier? The carrier can drop the tower off the back to be driven independently. Quite a neat feature if I do say so myself.

A single mold would produce all eight Krana, and since they were randomized, it didn't matter that all Krana of the same color would get mixed together.

Based on the pictures, it almost looks like the minecart can go down the slide. Very interesting if that is the case. To me, all the sets look stellar. This might be my favorite theme these days—it just hasn't disappointed me yet!

Does that mean it's safe to assume that Axl himself shows up in that set, as well?

That's not much evidence of anything in this case. Sure, if he has Trans. Yellow accents, that would have to be a new recolor—but so would every other part he uses in that color! What's up for debate is whether or not he DOES have Trans. Yellow recolors or whether he sticks to Trans. Fluor. Green. Time will tell... I personally hope for Trans. Yellow, since it'd probably pair better with gold.

I would actually expect that it isn't. Keep in mind that these descriptions are based on seeing the actual sets (or prototypes of said sets) physically, not on images like the ones that caused confusion with Pohatu. Trans. Fluor. Green and Trans. Yellow may look similar in some renders, but they're pretty unmistakable in real life.

I'd certainly like to see mini-dolls appear in things like Lego Dimensions and The Lego Movie 2. The latter is probably more likely than the former—considering the time skip between the first and second movies, it's possible that Finn's sister will fall neatly into the age range for mini-doll themes by the second movie. Lego Dimensions is a tougher question, since the game hasn't been great about unlicensed themes anyway and the most prominent licensed theme with mini-dolls is, as you say, a Disney property. I should note, however, that Lego Worlds DOES have both minifigure and mini-doll characters—the first major media project by Lego to feature both.

I don't see why a slide is disappointing—I love a good slide, and they've been absent in Elves up until now. Medium Azur is a good color for some sort of underground waterfall/river.

Reminds me of one of the first BrickFairs. At the door prizes the first night, Todd Webb, the organizer, commented on a Bionicle set (Tuma) being given away that it was "about as Lego as Lincoln Logs". For what it's worth, the Bionicle contingent took it in stride and the next day a Lincoln Logs playset was on display alongside the Bionicle MOCs. Cut to today, when Tuma's been immortalized as one of the sets Jesus is holding on the cheeky "What Would Jesus Build?" T-shirts at the merch booth.

It's possible that maybe since London Toy Fair and Nuremberg Toy Fair are the same week this year, Lego had to divide some of the themes between the two if they couldn't have two sets of each ready in time. Which isn't to say that's necessarily the case, but I'd wait until Nuremberg starts in the middle of the week before jumping to any conclusions...

I dunno... a mini-doll with "child" proportions could conceivably work for both dwarves or for regular children in the Lego Friends theme. But I don't personally expect anything of the sort from these upcoming sets...

Always.

Considering how little detail they went into with Bionicle, I would take the "simpler story" bit with a heaping helping of salt. Even if they were told something along those lines, it may have been in comparison to the G1 story (which we all know was convoluted as hell even at its best) rather than in comparison to this year's story.

The trouble with that sort of revenue generation is that it's pretty much impossible to actually quantify. As a business, Lego deals in hard numbers, and there's just no way to reliably tell how many sets or parts people were inspired to buy as a direct or indirect result of building on LDD. And unless you can quantify that, or create a quantifiable revenue stream, you'd have a very hard time actually convincing Lego that the program is worth the time, effort, and cost it takes to develop.

FOUR summer sets? Be still, my heart! It is curious that the queen dragon is in a separate set from the Shadow Castle, though... I had expected them to be part of the same set, to help explain the castle seeming smaller than the Sky Castle from the vague pictures we've had. Either the castle is bigger than I suspected or it includes some sort of other content...

Not just the female hairpieces—even the male one from Farran and Johnny Baker has a hole in the back for accessories. Naida wears a flower in her hair in Naida's Spa Secret. But otherwise you're right, they haven't really used any accessories.

I like the phrasing of "did the right thing and posted the full images". Considering that leaking confidential images in the first place is a far cry from "doing the right thing"...

We know their names and numbers, which is more than we know for, say, Elves. I would be very surprised if the summer Nexo Knights sets AREN'T at all the major Toy Fairs, considering that it's Lego's "Big Bang" theme for this year (and as such, the summer sets will probably be hot Christmas items).

I don't really foresee Lego suing anyone for digging into or modifying LDD's assets, unless it was to create a competing software or physical clone bricks that would be sold for money. That said, I can't think of a better reason for Lego to give up any pretenses of keeping the program updated than AFOLs breaking the license agreement to either co-opt LDD's assets for other programs or give LDD capabilities it was never meant to have. Lego did not intend for part files to be modified or analyzed by end users and they certainly aren't going to try and make it easier for them by continuing to deliver up-to-date parts.

I don't think that's necessarily a confirmation of anything... just high hopes is all. But considering Ninjago is an evergreen theme now, those hopes aren't necessarily unrealistic.

Actually, that wouldn't be surprising. Didn't Lego say that future Power Functions would be based on the same standards as the new WeDo educational sets? This upcoming summer wave could be the one that makes that transition. EDIT: Apparently that's exactly what'll be happening. The new WeDo motors are literally called "Lpf2.0 Medium Motor" in Lego's customer service database.

You probably shouldn't attempt to identify it by its silhouette, since that's most likely just a placeholder for the actual display fig. It even seems to have a ninja hood, like past Ninjago books have had, suggesting that they simply reused an existing silhouette graphic.

Maybe in the later years of G1 it was clear how each year was tied into the last, but it definitely wasn't in the early years. In 2002, the Bohrok were presented as a completely new threat unrelated to the seemingly-defeated Makuta, and it was a surprise for a lot of people when Makuta was revealed to still be alive (and be responsible for the Bohrok's release) in 2003. I think the new story seems like it's remarkably coherent by comparison—presumably, Ekimu will send the Toa on a new quest himself now that he's awakened, as the end of the animations implied. Really, given that the Netflix series will probably be the main form of story media for the new year, it's way too early to complain about the story not making sense, because for all intents and purposes the main 2016 story hasn't even started yet. Also, the explanation for the Toa Nuva's transformation was in the BionicleStory.com web serials, not the books—and considering the books were the main story media for the later years of the original theme, I'm surprised the story seemed nearly as coherent to you without you reading them.

Ah, shoot, my bad. I did a google search and it gave me the dates for LAST YEAR'S event... I didn't notice that the year wasn't right. Starting on a Wednesday should've tipped me off... Oh well, it's still not too long to wait!