Lyichir

I have to correct you about the softer plastic. That is not used so that less expensive molds can be produced, for the most part. It's primarily used specifically for the properties of that plastic. Part of the reason it's often used on specialized head molds is that it is not as brittle and thus can be used to make long, thin or sharp protruding segments that would otherwise be too fragile (like Kit Fisto's tentacles, Yoda's ears, or the spiky Exo-Force hairpieces). If those parts were molded with the standard ABS, these parts could snap off during production (costing the Lego Group money) or worse, when a child is playing with them (potentially creating a safety hazard if the edge that is left is sharp and/or jagged). This is also why you see sharper details on the CMF spear (with the soft tip) than on the classic spear (which itself was remolded with softer plastic for the Hero Factory theme).

I don't think a realistic military theme would be a good idea. Lego has good reasons to avoid portraying real-world conflict, particularly its position as a globally-operating company (meaning it serves many markets where real war is a delicate topic). I would, however, be okay with more "pseudo-military" themes like Dino Attack (militaristic tanks and choppers and such versus giant monsters) or Pharaoh's Quest (historical militaristic vehicles like biplanes and halftracks in a non-war setting).

This is why I dislike Youtube as a Lego community or Lego news source. So many videos (like this one) contain a small snippet of factual information (if even that) and 20–30 minutes of speculation and rumor-mongering.

Exactly. That's one of the things I like about Hero Factory, actually. It makes fewer excuses about its nature. That makes it easier to explain the theme to people ("No, honestly, they're not robots, even though for the most part they have no biological features in the sets!" versus "Yup. Robots."), and makes the "set forms" (which in almost every case is the original depiction of the characters) more obviously canon. It frustrated me to no end the way some Bionicle fans couldn't grasp that Hero Factory heroes, despite being robotic, had just as much free will and personality as Toa. They had been conditioned after years of Bohrok and other drone-like robots to insist that robots must always be soulless entities, when Hero Factory is far from the first or only sci-fi story where that's not the case.

The one pictured in the bio has a fake "crack" (with the two ends slightly misaligned yet still joined in the middle with a thin groove to simulate the break). Seeing as that unique helmet design is one of our primary pieces of evidence that Benny will in fact appear in a set, I can't imagine he'd use anything but that special helmet.

I actually think we haven't seen him for a different reason: that his set could potentially be a retailer-exclusive (hard-to-find) set. Those are almost always the last sets to show up, since their reveal and release is entirely at the discretion of that retailer. Toys R Us could easily want dibs on a "retro" set like a neo-classic space ship for Benny would probably be. An alternative I've considered for why we have yet to see Benny is that he could be an exclusive fig for something like one of the DK guidebooks. But that's probably less likely, especially considering he has a unique helmet mold.

I still wish there were some way to run PovRay (and LDD2PovRay) natively on Mac. I just tried to figure out how to download Wine to my MacBook and had to quit after being flummoxed by techspeak and vague instructions. I want to be able to use LDD2PovRay to put finishing touches on some Cuusoo projects, but if I can't get it to work then a number of my models may never see the light of day.

Part of the thing that makes HF sales so hard to gauge is that I don't think it was ever meant to be a "big bang" theme like Ninjago or Chima. One of Bionicle's issues was that its budget (for new molds, etc.) didn't pay off as much as it needed to. Despite its revolutionary building system, HF has been more conservative in its advertising, media, and even set design (often favoring recolors over new molds). Muddying the issue further is the fact that Bionicle's early success was at a time when many of Lego's other brands were struggling, so it was unsurprisingly trumpeted on high. Hero Factory exists during the heyday of successful Lego themes like City, Ninjago, and Friends, so Hero Factory's sales, even if they are sufficient (as we have been told repeatedly), are largely a footnote to Lego's overall success, rather than a hallmark of it as Bionicle was. It's possible that Lego could replace Hero Factory in coming years in the hopes of creating a more ambitious theme like Bionicle was, whether or not Hero Factory has as much of a decline as its predecessor did. But it's still too early to say. All we have now is evidence that Hero Factory is currently pursuing a new direction, and a Lego set designer is working on another constraction theme (which could be a one-off theme like Ben 10 or a theme like Chima that runs alongside Hero Factory, for all we know).

I supported this as soon as I saw it! It's a positively gorgeous design, and unlike many Wayne Manor models I've seen, it's got a massive amount of detail that keeps it from being boring compared to the Batcave that lies beneath it. The Batcave itself is amazing as well, packing in plenty of detail without ever feeling cluttered. I don't know what your chances of passing review are (it'd depend on whether people value it according to what it's really worth, whether the terms of Lego's license with DC allow it, and numerous other factors). But there's never any harm in supporting, and I for one would buy this in a heartbeat if it were available. Good luck!

I think Benny is extremely likely to show up in a set or two. Look at his character bio on the Lego Movie website. The crack in the helmet in the CGI pic to the left doesn't match the one in the movie, and in fact it looks like it could be a new mold meant to simulate a cracked helmet (note that the two cracked ends are "joined", and one end even seems thicker than the other). The print quality on his torso also looks more like simulated wear rather than the more realistic wear in the movie screenshots. EDIT: Also, the left pics in every other instance reflect the set depictions of the characters. For instance, the piece on Emmet's back is attached by a bracket, whereas in the movie screenshots it seems to be fused directly to his back. And Vitruvius' staff is the brick-built one, not the chewed-up lollipop from the movie.

Okay, the new update did add one MAJORLY useful functionality to the software. There's now a scrollbar on the decorations menu for elements like the minifig head which have too many decorations to fit on one screen!

You're really reaching for a way to make this issue about men, aren't you? Good grief. It's a ridiculous notion, in part because Lego's design team doesn't care about aftermarket prices (except in those occasional instances when they bring a rare part back to satisfy high demand). There's no conspiracy here to drive the value of male minifigs down, so get off your high horse.

I would love to see something like that, but I don't know exactly how practical it would be. Lego sets rarely have just one designer—between concept, sketch model, and final set, the sets pass through a lot of hands, many of them taking on very different roles. Occasionally a designer slips a signature into a sticker or print (examples include the "Stafford" engines from Agents or many, many license plates featuring initials or names on them), but usually your best resource for knowing who designed what set is to get it straight from the designers themselves. Mark Stafford, for one, has both a Brickset bricklist and a MOCpages where he tallies which sets he had a part in designing, along with notes about which other designers helped along the way.

I disagree with this. Take a look at the Super Heroes theme: while the minifigs are indeed a big draw, the current fig selection tends to favor "big name" heroes (and lately, favors those who feature in movies around the time of release). The DC range has only featured one non-Batman, non-movie set, and the same number applies for non-movie, non-TV show sets in the Marvel range. Figs of cult favorite characters like Squirrel Girl would be more likely to see the light of day via a minifig series than they would in normal sets. Now, a series entirely comprised of B-list heroes probably wouldn't sell that well either—but many of the A-list heroes have had enough costumes and depictions in years of comics and other media that it would be easy enough to feature a unique Batman, Spider-Man, or Iron Man along with the classic depictions of more niche characters. And I think fans would appreciate those characters and costumes getting a wide release through a minifigures series to being limited-supply exclusives from Comic Con or a similar event, as so many have been. I bought less of Series 10 and 11 than previous series because it became infeasible to do so. I didn't like those series any less than earlier ones. And while I couldn't have known how difficult it would be to collect Series 10, by the time Series 11 rolled around I could assume by previous experience that I would not be able to buy many of the new series. I know what cherry picking is, and I know that I was not doing so, since I have no way of knowing why any member other than myself voted any particular way. What I was pointing out was that the question you asked was phrased poorly. An "implied" quality test is not the same as an explicit one, and if that was what you intended by the question you should have asked "Do you like these upcoming series more than previous series?" Nonetheless, I understand that that nitpick probably wouldn't account for more than a miniscule percentage of the respondents, which is why I explicitly said so in my post. I then went on to point out the real problem with your conclusion: that "The general audience says that TLC didn't make a smart move into making CMF of the movie" assumes that the response "I will not buy as many of this series" meant "I think everyone will buy less of this series" when that is absolutely not the case. The conclusion that can be drawn is that the majority of respondents to this poll (which only constitute a "general audience" in regards to the tiny percentage of Eurobricks members who responded, Eurobricks members themselves being a tiny percentage of Lego fans) plan to buy less of these series, which reflects only on their personal levels of interest and not on any opinions they may hold about Lego's business sense.

Taking away from the current use of dual-sided heads is indeed the biggest problem with this proposal. Currently, dual-sided heads are used primarily for giving the same character multiple expressions, and they typically work quite well for that. This solution would eliminate the ability to give the same fig a range of emotions. Sure, in at least some cases you could exchange the head for alternate emotions instead; but why do that when you can just as easily exchange heads to change gender? There are other problems with this, too. Kids who are used to the reverse side of the head being an alternate expression might be confused by the male-to-female transition taking its place. The proposal would make little-to-no sense in story themes like Ninjago where most of the figs explicitly depict individual characters, not to mention licensed themes where Lego simply doesn't have the option of inventing "genderbent" versions of characters. And the proposal would be pretty ineffectual for changing the gender of a fig whose body or hairpiece was already explicitly gendered, like a bare-chested torso or a hairdo with pigtails.

The general audience on Eurobricks. Or, perhaps more accurately, the general audience on Eurobricks before we know who most of these characters are, since none of us have actually seen the movie yet. And in fact, looking at the numbers as they stand now, I see 17 who think doing something other than the standard numbered series is good and only 16 who see it as bad; not an overwhelming majority by any measure, and for the moment not a majority at all. There are more members who say they might buy fewer, true, but that number is not necessarily indicative of the source material of the fig series. The question is phrased vaguely enough that it also encompasses people who planned on buying fewer figs no matter what the series contained, because of unrelated circumstances (personally, I've gotten less of the past few series than I did with earlier ones, not because of a lack of interest but because it's harder to justify sitting in a store and feeling all the packages now that I'm home from college and rely on others for transportation). And even though that's probably not the case for the majority who voted that way, that's still a tiny percentage of members on a site that itself only comprises a tiny percentage of Lego fans. Those voters thinking they personally would buy fewer is not even the same thing as them thinking Lego has made a bad decision! For instance, in the case of the Simpsons figures, I doubt I'll buy a single one, but I'm not self-centered enough to assume my opinion is typical of Lego's entire audience.

It took me a few minutes to understand what you were talking about with all those acronyms. :P I never quite realized what a boon short names like Furno and XPlode were to comprehensible discussion.

Or it got into a fight with one of the other monsters (we don't know whether they're friendly with each other). Or it accidentally collapsed a building on top of itself or something.

Actually, that looks much better! The gap between the cockpit and the base is still there, but the feet are covered and the front is far more streamlined. I wouldn't be surprised if the instructions are what's wrong here, since every picture of the set has the cockpit closed this way (and in terms of design, this is the only configuration that makes the shell detail make sense). Could you get a picture of the front with the cockpit closed that way?

That is beautiful! All the shapes are perfect (or as close to perfect as you can get in Lego), and the finished model is wonderfully beefy.

I have to say I'm disappointed with how the paw piece fits over the windscreen. From the official pics I had thought the windscreen actually slotted between the paw piece and its shell detail, but if you say the fig's legs keep it from fitting that way I'll take your word for it. That side-view is appalling.

I don't know what you meant about this set not having a lot of MOCing potential. I for one don't have a single one of the mini Technic Turntable, which has never shown up in a constraction set before. Meanwhile, the set has a bunch of XT-4 torsos, which are always nice, along with plenty of those 5M yellow shells and the tried-and-true Titanium Metallic shell covers. Not to mention those connectors with two ball joints and two pins, which I never seem to have enough of. That Hero Factory printed shell looks quite nice, and this set has two of them (far more useful than Evo Walker's one). All things considered I think I'll pass on the walker and opt for this, which is a pretty decent model with some amazing parts selection.

Here's mine! (Flickr) I don't need the DVD, but I sure wouldn't mind some polybags!

This series looks great! There's already a number of these that jump out at me (particularly President Business), and I'm sure the others will become even more appealing once I've seen their role in the movie itself. There are bunches of neat new parts, too, many of which could be useful on non-character-specific figs in the future (like the Barista's hairpiece, the "beehive" hairdo, and the coonskin cap) The fig ratios are a bit disappointing as far as gender ratios are concerned. Every female fig except for Wyldstyle only shows up two to a box, and even Wyldstyle shows up fewer times than her male co-stars Emmet and President Business (and the oddly-common Panda Suit Guy). But this is a small complaint. As AFOLs we have many options for getting the figs we want, and I'm glad to at least be getting this much variety in female figs.

One thing that would complicate the theory that The Lego Movie is a movie within the Lego universe is the heavy use of life-size real-world objects in the movie. So far, we've seen a chewed-up lollipop (Vitruvius's staff) as well as a tube of Krazy Glue and a battery (seen in the Lord Business' Evil Lair set, and likely to be key elements of the film's climax). There's nothing there that couldn't feature in a film for minifigs, but these giant household materials make far less sense in a context where "life-size" and "minifig-scale" are essentially the same thing. I think it's far easier to just accept that the Lego Movie has its own canon just like Lego Island, or Lego Racers, or Lego Universe. I love crossovers between themes, but I'm not under the illusion that those crossovers between themes are or even can be consistent with one another, nor do I think there can only be one interpretation of a theme and how it relates to other themes.