Lyichir

The glow-in-the-dark color that Takadox and Gadunka had wasn't a single color. It was a blend of Trans. Blue and the contemporaneous glow-in-the-dark color. The images we've seen of the blue jumpers don't have signs of obvious color blending, but then again they are just renders. But if they are blended, they would have to be blended with the modern, more opaque Glow White.

And you are no less ridiculous or childish in making that connection than they are. You are talking about an axle on a huge set that sticks out by a single module from a point a ways above the crotch. The fact that the set is only borderline humanoid makes the topic even more absurd. There are reasons I don't get Lego news or information from self-created YouTube personalities. Please don't bring that culture here.

I have to say I love the "polar exploration" logo from the new figs and sets. It draws from the recent City "near-space" logo, which in turn drew from the Classic Space logo of old.

Yeah... honestly, I think critiquing these by the same standards as regular sets is a mistake. These are impulse buys, often packed free with some other product like batteries. They're not meant to be works of art, and at best they'd introduce some family's kid to the ball joints and launchers of the Bionicle building system, or give an experienced builder some new parts or a new perspective on how old ones can potentially be used. Some of your criticisms would be off-base even if applied to a larger set. Only one tool? Why are you entitled to two? And for that matter, what's wrong with the very classic-Matoran looking feet of 6126? I also think it's rather deceptive to frame this as a review when you don't even have the sets on hand to review. You're basically just pointing and laughing at sets without taking into account what they are or how they're meant to be obtained. Giving a negative point for value when these are, at worst, free Lego parts, is ridiculous.

Perhaps there are Simpsons fans who have a birthday coming up? There are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone may prioritize early access rather than a fair price. Of course, they could just be impatient as well, but there's no point in judging unknown eBay buyers for their purchases when there's no way to know their individual circumstances.

Have you seen the one in the Scribble Face Bad Cop minifig from the Lego Movie series? That one sounds like it could better suit your needs. Let's see, what can I think of that I'd like? An acoustic guitar An American Football/Rugby Ball (I know they're different but the same mold could probably pass for both) A Seven-Branched Sword A tripod (like for attaching the old camera piece to) A wheelchair Not handheld, but a fencing mask would be nice (a modern fencer would be a great fig) A golf club and golf bag A new shovel (spade-like) An actual pair of scissors (no more using the feather piece as a lackluster substitute) A shepherd's crook Hook swords? ...That's all I've got for now. I'm sure I can come up with more, though.

I noticed this just yesterday when building the NinjaCopter. Specifically, some of the yellow Technic parts from that and the Unimog which I also built recently are far too orange (almost to the point where they could be confused for Flame Yellowish Orange). I'm pretty sure Technic isn't produced in China, but rather in the European factories. The yellow in my CMFs is far more consistent; only the hands are ever any different from the standard, and even then only slightly. And that could be a materials issue, since I think minifig hands use a softer, more pliable plastic than the solid heads or arms.

It's just hard to hinge parts along three different axes, especially in a model with so many ball joint connections. If the hinge align tool worked on ball joints it'd help, but the hinge align tool doesn't even work consistently with regular hinges. We're unlikely to see any updates to that sort of functionality until at least LDD 5.0, whereas the past few years have only given us incremental updates of LDD 4.0. And it could still be some time before the 5.0 update happens, considering that the LDD team no longer has a way of generating its own budget now that Design by Me is gone.

Yeah, but NONE of those have to do with Lego. Product recalls happen with goods produced in other countries, too, but Lego's rarely done ANY recalls (the only ones I can remember weren't even due to safety, but simply due to defective parts that could destroy themselves through normal use). Yeah, there's a lack of oversight by the Chinese government, but Lego is in an oversight position as a key client for the facility we're discussing. And Lego has shown, repeatedly, that they care. About quality, and ESPECIALLY about safety I DO think that people who are worried about quality because of safety reasons are being hysterical. We have literally seen no evidence to suggest that anything of the sort you're suggesting is happening or would ever happen in the facilities Lego uses in China, but because those things have happened in different facilities in China in the past (China being, if you'll recall, one of the biggest countries in the world), under the purview of other, less meticulous companies, some people (including you, Lego Historian, who had always struck me as rational in the past) seem to think that it's only a matter of time before the same thing happens with Lego. But Lego's relationship with these facilities is becoming closer, not farther apart, and I expect that means the amount of oversight is increasing as well. I'll eat my words if we ever see any sort of recall of Lego due to contamination... but I don't expect that to ever happen. EDIT: And finally, just to clarify, I wasn't even talking about safety concerns when referring to hysteria. I was referring specifically to the tendency to conflate non-issues (parts not made in China with quality issues or part design aspects like softer plastic) with the meme of poor-quality Chinese parts. But then you went and gave a perfect example of another kind of hysteria around this same issue.

When I saw the TMNT delivery van, "Pizza to Go" was the first thing on my mind too. But I feel like the building could use more of an update. The building as you have it would be dwarfed by most modern city buildings (or even some vehicles), and the car door for the pizza oven seems a little bit dated.

Yeah, the brains are hardly like headcrabs. If anything, the sound effect being similar could be considered an homage. But really brain-like mind-control parasites aren't a new idea, and were in fact used by Lego before: remember the Krana from Bionicle? The brains are essentially the same thing with less subtlety. Regarding the Invasion from Below line, there seems to be more of a clear inspiration from Pacific Rim. But again, that's an homage, not a ripoff (unless you think taking any inspiration is a ripoff, in which case Pacific Rim itself is a ripoff of the original Japanese kaiju films). Lego has a long and storied history of making themes based on pop culture. Adventurers was an homage to Indiana Jones, whereas Pharaoh's Quest was an homage to The Mummy series of films. Alien Conquest was a send-up of alien invasion B-movies, and Mars Mission drew more from the "space horror" genre pioneered by Alien, and Galaxy Squad drew a lot from "bug-themed" alien warfare like in Starship Troopers or Ender's Game. The 2007 Castle theme was based a lot on high-fantasy like Lord of the Rings. Alpha Team was sort of a send-up of things like The A-Team, and Agents was an even more blatant send-up of the spy film genre exemplified by James Bond films (or even the earlier parody of the genre, Austin Powers). If Hero Factory's latest waves are ripoffs, then all of these fan-favorite Lego themes are also ripoffs. But that's an awfully tall order.

So since VIP early access to the Simpsons House is going on starting tomorrow, can we assume that the early VIP access starting Feb. 17 is for MetalBeard's Sea Cow? We don't know of any other exclusive sets yet...

I think the main thing that stands out to me as missing is Theed Palace. I know most everyone has an opinion on the quality of the prequels, and in retrospect even I admit they weren't as good as the original trilogy. But they were released in the formative years of my childhood. I loved the climax of Episode I, and couldn't wait to see how Lego could depict the epic battle between Obi Wan and Qui Gon versus Darth Maul. Yet even to this day, it hasn't happened. Despite having some extremely playable scenes (slide the laser gates in and out between the Jedi and Darth Maul! Catapult Obi-Wan to the higher catwalk!), that scene has yet to be represented in Lego. Even when a Queen Amidala fig was finally made, it was inserted into a set from a scene she wasn't even in. And even considering the overall lack of location-based sets, it's surprising that this many years later the closest we've gotten to a Theed Palace set is the paltry scenery in the various Naboo Starfighter sets.

Remember what I've said in my post about the difficulty of judging the difference in the plastic? Issues number Issues number 1 and 3 could be because of dye issues. Issue 5 certainly is. Issues 2, 3 and 4 could be because of the different molds, with 4 even potentially being deliberate (the determining factor there being whether the arms and legs are consistently looser or whether they vary: variation would be indicative of a quality issue). I'm not disputing that quality issues (including the ones you mentioned) exist. That doesn't mean the hysteria doesn't exist. It does. I've seen it. In the absence of reliable information misconceptions are formed, and the meme of low quality parts leads people to perceive ordinary traits of parts as defects. At the same time, it leads people to ignore the fact that quality variations are not a new thing: if a box says any parts in it are sourced from China, people tend to assume that any part with a quality issue "must have come from there". I would LOVE for Lego to be more transparent about this so that it would be easier to separate the fact from the hype. But I doubt that's going to happen any time soon. Nor is Chinese manufacture simply going to go away: Consumers are used to low prices, and those are going to depend on producing in low-priced economies (which includes China as well as Mexico and eastern Europe). There's no reason why Chinese manufacture can't get better in the future. The Chinese government does little in the way of regulation, but Lego is in the position as the factory's client to incentivize quality. And I believe they're doing so. The quality issues seen in the early days of Chinese manufacture are getting less and less widespread. There were numerous discolorations in my full collection of Series 1 minifigures, but I've seen fewer and fewer in each progressive set. People can feel free to boycott sets with Chinese parts, but by doing so they'll be missing out on some great sets and figs, all because of a factor that isn't going away but is becoming less and less of a problem as time goes on.

No beast features regular blue so far, it's true. But the MAJORITY of them feature Dark Azur, and for all we know that could be the color used in the summer jumpers. Let's give it a little more time. NY Toy Fair's only a month away.

See, I just don't understand this evaluation. I look at some of the Lord of the Rings sets (like Helm's Deep, Weathertop, or Orthanc) and I see models that surpass even Lego's own Castle themes in originality and complexity. Obviously they're not as accurate as AFOL models, but these are meant to be affordable sets for kids to be able to put together. That doesn't make them bad designs. I don't think they're relying solely on the exclusive minifigures alone to sell the sets, although, as I said in my previous post, there are and always will be kids and adults who care more about the minifigs than the builds, so having exclusive figs is a viable way of appealing to those buyers. I don't think you're correct that minifigures in other themes are universally less detailed than figs in licensed themes, either. Certainly figs in themes like Castle and City tend to be less detailed, since their faces and torsos are made to be generic so that you can mix and match them to fill out a city or army. But compare licensed figures to other character-based figs, like those in Ninjago, Chima, or even The Lego Movie, and you'll see a more similar level of detail.

Just because there are legitimate concerns does not mean there is no hysteria around it. I have seen more misconceptions and untruths spread regarding Chinese manufacture than I can count. Most notably, I see the perpetuation of the common misconception that "ABS" is some magical formula that only Lego has access to, and lesser parts lack. In reality, not only is ABS only a type of plastic formulation that is used by many, many companies, but there have always been Lego elements that use different types of plastic—most notably Polycarbonate, which has been used for transparent elements for decades, but also softer or rubbery plastic formulations used for certain minifig tools or flexible elements. I'm glad to see you acknowledge that even the slightly different plastic used in the Chinese plants is, for the most part, ABS, but regarding "grade" of ABS, I didn't know that there even was such a scale, or that the Chinese ABS would be a different grade if there is. Certainly the ABS in China is sourced differently, but I've seen no indication that it's "lesser" in any measurable metric. It doesn't help that it's hard to tell how many of the known quality issues with Chinese parts is even related to the differently-sourced plastic: textural quality is influenced by molds (with the Chinese facility using different molds for the common minifigure body parts, among others), and color consistency is influenced by the dyeing process. My point about intentional design decisions was regarding things like I discussed in the previous post: concerns about softer plastic (which is used deliberately, since many part designs would not work as well if at all in hard ABS as is used for standard bricks), or differences in mold designs (such as the newer torso and leg molds for the CMFs, which are just newer versions that will probably work their way into the other factories sooner or later). Once people get it into their heads that there are quality issues, they start seeing even regular aspects of part design as defects.

I'm still hoping that the set other than the one we've seen Samurai X in contains Nya in her new costume from the show. EDIT: Also, could the car you all are discussing be the one from the MechDragon set described as "Nya's car"? I know it's currently the wrong color, but the Ninja could use the Techno-blades on it or something in a later episode.

Well, for one, they'll be only TWO episodes one after the other, because of commercial breaks. I don't expect all the episodes to lead into one another cleanly, but if the premiere and finale are two-parters then at least they'll work out cleanly.

I don't know if I like the digger (the functional arm is nice but looks much less refined than non-functional varieties). The dump truck, on the other hand, is beautiful! But does it fit a minifigure in it? It almost looks like the linear actuator takes up needed cab space.

That looks fantastic! Out of curiosity, what building do you intend to use it on?

In general, a part's softness has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with what qualities the part is supposed to have. In general, soft pieces allow for sharper detail since edges won't snap off either in production or in a kid's hands. Softer parts are often used for safety, as well: for example, the old spear piece was remolded in a rubbery plastic for the Hero Factory theme, assumedly because kids are more likely to jam large figures into one another violently, which could be dangerous with the rigid spear piece. I've never had any experience with a part that is supposed to be hard being softer than usual, or vice versa, no matter which factory the part came from. That's another thing I dislike about the Chinese plastic hysteria: while it may have started with legitimate color quality issues and the like, the stigma against Chinese parts leads intentional design decisions to be branded as quality defects. The meme of low quality being so widespread leads people to see problems even when they aren't there.

I would disagree with that. Just because you personally aren't interested in the builds of themes like LOTR doesn't mean it's the same way for everyone. For example, I got the recent Podracer set last year primarily because the build was so superior to the one I had in my childhood. Did I like the updated minifigures? Sure, but I certainly didn't get the set for them—I have very few fleshie figs so the ones in that set aren't really useful to me at all outside the context of that set. The same applies to most of the sets I get. I absolutely DO take figs into account when purchasing from my preferred themes like Ninjago, but that's primarily because I have a finite budget and would rather get a set that offers me a great build AND unique figs than one that offers me a great build but only duplicates of figures I already have. The build is still important to me, and if a set wows me enough I'll get it regardless of what figs are included. I'm sure there are a lot of kids who think like you do, but I'm sure there are a lot of kids who think like I do as well, and there are probably even kids who don't care at all which figures they get, and just buy the sets they want to build. That's the wonderful thing about Lego: there's no one "right" way to play with it.

I've never been preferential to one theme, but the themes I've collected have shifted over time. When I was a kid in the mid '90s, I collected all sorts of themes. Space, Aquazone, Castle, Adventurers, Western, Paradisa, you name it. As I approached 10 I started getting into things like Technic, Mindstorms, and Throwbots. Those fed directly into Bionicle, which became my "primary" theme during the beginning of my teenage years, superseding themes like Star Wars (which I stopped collecting as consistently after the shift to "fleshies") and many other System themes. In my mid-teens I started being drawn back into System themes, starting with themes that could contribute to my Bionicle collection (like Knight's Kingdom II and Exo-Force). By the time I went to college I was a fervent fan of "action themes" like Agents, Power Miners, Atlantis, and Space Police. When Bionicle ended I was glad to be done with it, but I got sucked back in to constraction when Hero Factory introduced the amazing new building system. But that was about it. At college it helped to limit myself to about three themes per year (plus the Collectible Minifigures, of course) since it helped to have consistency among my parts when I only had a portion of my collection. Now that I'm out of college, my primary themes are Ninjago and Hero Factory, but I'm much more free to branch out. I've dabbled in Chima, Alien Conquest, and Friends, and am set to dive into the Lego Movie theme headfirst. I just started building the Unimog (my first big Technic set in years). But a lot of themes have fallen by the wayside. Notably, I haven't gotten any Castle sets since the first year of Knight's Kingdom II. And while my little brother occasionally gets a set from a licensed theme, I personally haven't gotten very many in ages (the only exception in the past two years was the newest Podracer set, which I couldn't resist due to perfectly updating a set from my childhood). I've still dabbled in themes I don't get on LDD, and can tell how far themes like Castle have come since the days I collected it; but with a finite budget, I mostly stick to the story-based themes I love. As for the original poster's question? I say go for it. Stepping out of your comfort zone can be awesome, and while I haven't gotten any Monster Fighters sets save for the Haunted House (which I haven't even built yet), I can confirm that it's an excellent theme.

You have my contact details, right? They're the same as Aanchir's.