Lyichir

"Bang bang! Shoot shoot! Bullet bullet bullet!" I got this fig today. Haven't opened him yet.

I just played through the first level of the 3DS version and was pretty disappointed. In fact, I feel a little bit cheated, since the Gamestop employee who sold me on the preorder assured me that the handheld versions of the Lego video games were just as good as the home console versions these days—and unless my memory of games like Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman are clouded by nostalgia, this game clearly fails that test by being only slightly better than the Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS Lego games. I'm going to see if I can make a return, but their returns policy explicitly states that they don't refund you for games that have been opened, so I don't have high hopes.

Not really a certainty... But regarding a possible sequel, I had an idea that could work even with the notorious twist in the third act... I don't see why the movie's ending rules out the possibility of a sequel as good as the first one (or as relevant to Lego and its fans).

If you can't just bend them back into shape with your hands (from my experience, doing that should be enough), try leaving them under something moderately heavy like a dictionary. Large weapons like that have a nasty tendency to arrive bent (largely because after being molded the parts are deposited into a large bin while still warm, so the ones at the bottom can get bent out of shape).

I'm sorry, that's not a fact. Even if there is a biological component there, it's not the only component: there's a huge societal component that can't be ignored. For example, once pink was considered a more "manly" color than blue, before mass media and marketing cemented the pink/blue divide in Western culture. And of course the amount of variability in kids means that even if the majority of boys choose to play with cars and the majority of girls choose dolls, there's always going to be an overlap of boys and girls who subvert that expectation. So while a certain level of gendered play may be "natural", that's no excuse for the hyper-gendered nature of toys and toy marketing in this day and age. This doesn't mean I'm calling for Lego to be a force for revolution in the toy aisle. Even as the second-biggest toy company in the world they don't have the power to single-handedly tear down decades of sexist attitudes in the toy industry (and trying to do so would only sacrifice their hard-earned position in the industry). And I appreciate the Lego Friends line for both getting girls building and for providing a much-needed source of "girliness" to Lego's product catalog (after all, just because pink shouldn't be all that's offered to girls doesn't mean there shouldn't be any for the girls who want something pink). But to pretend that there isn't a problem, or that Lego can't improve moving forward, is dishonest. Full gender neutrality may be a distant speck in the horizon, but every little bit helps. After all, even if adding another female police officer doesn't attract girls to Lego City, it can hopefully help young boys transition to an adult world where they'll see that kind of thing more and more with each passing year.

Simpsons House uses mostly small parts, including a lot of basic bricks. Sea Cow uses tons of big parts like Technic wheels and panels and Pirate ship hulls. Just another example of how price-per-piece isn't the most reliable metric.

None of these are actually from Ninjago (which is the name for the current, zany ninja theme). They're all from the original, more historically-accurate Ninja theme from the late '90s—specifically, from 3053 Emperor's Stronghold. Hope this helps!

Constraction is a different form of building than traditional Lego. Whereas with standard Lego you largely use existing figs and make environments and vehicles for them, in constraction you build characters themselves. The CCBS (Character and Creature Building System, the system used for Hero Factory and Chima) allows for varying levels of complexity. It's true that many of the sets, especially the smaller heroes, largely use similar parts on similar skeletons. But even that offers plenty of options—as an example, a single "bone" piece allows any given "shell" piece to connect in four different orientations (or eight if you count opposite connections). Add in the wide range of different shells and shell details (parts that attach over the standard shells), and you can create all sorts of unique figure designs even at a small scale. At a larger scale, even more opportunities are opened up. You have the option of either using a Technic-intensive build, like Witch Doctor, or working primarily with the CCBS (which can be more difficult, since most basic torso beams are optimized for standard-scale figures, but still offers plenty of unique options). Plenty of parts exist for integrating ball joint parts with Technic connections for larger or more complex figures. And don't limit yourself to just humanoid figures, either; a unique design goes a long way. The CCBS is in many ways easier than earlier Bionicle parts to integrate cleanly and smoothly with System builds, as well. The smooth aesthetic of basic Hero Factory shells works well with brick-built mechs or similar models, and shell detail parts attach using 3.2 mm bar connections—the same size connection as minifig accessories.

And what kind of math do you tell it to do? Basic arithmetic? Maybe a graph or two? Mathematics isn't dead. Science and engineering still need people with a good understanding of math, not to mention programmers (i.e. the people who teach the computer to do the math for you). In any case, saying that girls shouldn't get involved in STEM fields because STEM is obsolete is almost as ignorant as saying they shouldn't because their brains are wired differently. But at least instead of disparaging 50% of the human race, you're only disparaging the ones who have an interest in education.

Perhaps. But there are a number of scenes that are noteworthy (Cyrus' workroom, the falling elevator, the lobby, the factory), and the tower itself has a striking shape from the outside that I'd like to see represented in Lego. Not to mention that at this point, the only way there would be a set we don't yet know of would be if there were a large Direct-to-Consumer set. We can probably be certain that there are no small sets unaccounted for for the rest of the year.

It depends on what they put in it, but yes, it'd probably be big. However, size and price aren't necessarily the same thing. Orthanc had a very complex build with lots of exterior detailing, whereas a more "framework-like" design could help allow Borg Tower to reach a similar price point at a larger scale (and it'd still be plenty recognizeable so long as it maintains the same crooked profile). For example, Orthanc hardly used any window frames or even large columns to build up its height. The more industrial Borg Tower could do so to significantly reduce its parts usage.

After numerous attempts to design a set-like version of Borg Tower on LDD, I'm really hoping we get it later this year as a D2C set. Not only does it have great fig potential (including pre-evil Cyrus Borg, new Nya, and maybe even the ninja in their teacher outfits), but the number of iconic scenes could give it loads of play potential—in the first episode alone, you have falling elevators, Borg's office/lab, and the Nindroid assembly line, and if the tower reappears as a setting later we could see even more. It's also got a great exterior shape that would be iconic even if simplified for a set. This is all just speculation, of course. I've only heard rumors of a D2C Ninjago set and have no idea if they have any merit. But if there were to be a D2C Ninjago set this year, Borg Tower would be the ideal subject.

Aanchir and I bought a bunch of those torso armor pieces at Brickfair a few years back. Believe me, you aren't missing much. Because they cover up most of the best connection points on the torso, it's hard to use a single one of them creatively on a model, let alone multiples.

I can recommend Cloud Cuckoo Palace. The build isn't that complicated, and to do anything more with it might require more than one of the same set (since a lot of the parts of the set are rare or non-existent elsewhere). But it offers an experience quite unlike any other set. The bricks with bow work great as bubbly clouds, the candy-striped columns are quite clever, and the round tiles are used to great effect as candy-colored cobblestones. The colors add a lot of variety to your parts collection, even if you keep the set together—there are a ton of extra parts. In general, I wouldn't recommend Cloud Cuckoo Palace as something that would fit into any existing collection. But you should get it precisely for that reason: there's nothing else quite like it, and there's no telling when something similar will show up again.

There are a number of reasons why we're unlikely to see monorails again. For one, it would cost a lot to bring back the molds. Secondly, the old monorail was honestly a pretty poor design (not really a true monorail, since the whole thing rested on a large platform). Thirdly, monorails no longer represent the bright future they once did; nowadays the only monorails you see are at theme parks and similar attractions, and the new future of mass transit is represented instead by mag-lev or bullet trains. This limits the appeal of monorails to kids.

Zane's not battle damaged, because both of his arms are white. I hope it's the same suit as in the Destructoid set, so I don't have to pick that one up just for undamaged Zane.

Many brick engraving specialists can print parts like this with similarly photorealistic images. Tommy Armstrong is the main person I know who provides this service.

Pretty impressive for a ship made from only two sets (especially non-Space sets)! I love the rocket array on the back!

I think it's different. The CMF one has a molded badge, whereas I think the new one just has a printed badge.

Does that mean it's more flexible? Or does it just mean it's thinner? Even the flexible tails of the brains were pretty heavily reinforced, which made it somewhat difficult to pose the figures they were attached to at times. A thinner, sheetlike part made in that material could very well have the kind of flexibility necessary to be folded down. It could very well be a different material (lord knows Lego has options), but I was just giving an example of the kind of material that might work.

I do think that Lego is a quality educational toy for both genders. It's part of the reason why I'm such a supporter of the Lego Friends theme: I think that Lego is, on the whole, a better toy for kids to play with than most alternatives in the "pink aisle", and if Lego has to dress itself in the trappings of typical "girls' toys" to get more girls buying and building with Lego, it's better for the girls who do so in the long run. Now, I can't read this article itself as I'm not fluent in Italian, but I doubt Lego on its own would be enough to fix the gender imbalance in STEM fields. But it could certainly play a part in making those fields seem interesting to girls at a young age, when they're most impressionable. It'd then fall on educators to help them maintain that interest through their schooling and on into higher education.

Fantastic! Spyrius and Ice Planet 2002 were my first Space themes, but I probably never would've thought to build something like this.

I think it's like the same rubbery plastic the brains were molded in. That'd make them flexible enough to get the Heroes or jumpers in or out I think.

Maybe, but the fact that the Friends accessories have the same part number for the whole bag and never come individually suggests that they're an exception: a set of different parts that get molded and packaged together. It is true that most molds print multiples of the same part at a time; I remember an anecdote from a Lego employee (forget who) about 5 module Technic axles (I think?) being paradoxically more expensive to put in sets than larger axles at one point, because the 5 module axles were being produced from an older mold that produced fewer at once.

The main reason why sites use alternate names for the colors is that because the official names were not widely known until fairly recently. Lego's online database of replacement parts is a fairly recent thing. My brother Aanchir did a lot of work several years back trying to figure out what Lego's official color names were, and a lot of his sources were obscure things like Bionicle mask Collector's Guides and the like (which remain some of his main sources for colors that were rarely used for anything other than that). It gets more confusing as well, because Bricklink often conflates rarer colors like transparent or metallic colors (for instance, Bricklink's Copper actually refers to as many as four different colors). But that's the issue with having a database that is completely user-generated, and for a long time that was all AFOLs had to go on. Regarding Brick Yellow, that's just part of Lego's tendency to denote colors by modifiers rather than by unique names, as shown here. Brick Yellow seems to have little in common with Yellow, but put on a spectrum with colors like Sand Yellow (referred to by most AFOLs and Bricklink as Dark Tan) and the rare color Brick Red, it starts to make at least a little bit more sense.