Lyichir

Last year at Brickfair one of the designers who works on the Collectable Minifigs confirmed that "Kel" was the name of a Canadian friend of his. So it's likely that the other names come from somewhere, but it's not necessarily limited to LEGO employees.

This is just incredibly awesome. I was already amazed before I saw the underground segments, and now am even more so. I was particularly tickled by the 1x1 tiles with spider printing being used for Aragog's children.

Minifig hands are not intended to be removed, so no. You'd have to include the entire torso, and that translates to a significant extra expense.

I can't tell, but the lack of '08 and '09 info might be because this is an old video. Especially with the "the first chapter of BIONICLE is complete" quote, I reckon this was produced around the end of 2008, before the decision to end BIONICLE. Perhaps this video was an internal thing for Advance employees, celebrating how far they had come with this theme, and it's just being released to the public now.

To some extent, I view fleshies as a necessary evil brought on by licensed themes. It all started with Lando Calrissian back in the original Cloud City set, where the dark-skinned Calrissian appeared alongside other yellow-skinned characters. This faux-pas could well have undermined the status of the traditional yellow-skinned minifig as racially neutral. Yet I'd be the first to say that a yellow-skinned Lando wouldn't look any better. LEGO eventually reconciled this, starting with the NBA sets and making its way to licensed themes, by using semi-realistic skin tones for all figs based on real people or actors. But in the end, flesh-toned figs don't affect me much. LEGO has progressed to a point where there is enough variation in both fleshies and non-fleshies that a MOCist can stick to the type of their preference. Still, I can see where the fleshies can interfere with LEGO collectors' plans, such as a Castle builder who wants to use Legolas's hair to add to their non-fleshie elf army. As for me, I rarely do much fig-customizing anyway, preferring to build within themes that already have established characters. I don't need to worry about fleshies polluting my Ninjago MOCs, nor do I need to worry about non-fleshies polluting my Star Wars MOCs. It's a win-win.

Those civilian-type figs you suggested didn't sound all that interesting to me, except the squire. I would rather LEGO make figs that couldn't be put into a future castle theme as easily. For instance, instead of a typical medieval king and queen, I'd like to see ones resembling Victorian or Elizabethan royalty. Instead of a typical "knight in shining armor", I'd like to see a conquistador. Still, I can see the desire for medieval figs, especially during this drought of traditional Castle themes. If they did a king, knight, squire, etc., I'd be happy with it so long as they are distinctive enough to stand out from the variations of these characters we've seen in the castle theme.

Don't know if this is relevant to you technic builders, but this piece can also accommodate 3.2mm bars between the "teeth" (essentially, anything a minifig hand can grip). This compatibility would be hard to use functionally in a Technic model, but it's great for aesthetic detail, and was used for such many times in Exo-Force. Perhaps it could be used to bind older (non-Power Functions) wires together so that they don't get caught in the works of a MOC using numerous motors?

I think he will, and I'm kind of glad. Otherwise he'd be like Frenzy from the Space Police line, and his rectangular torso could become misaligned with the rectangular base of his neck, which just looks weird. The other Ninjago characters this year with this sort of neck attachment (Garmadon, Skales, Fangtom, etc.) have extensions that inhibit their neck's movement, and I see no reason why the generals later in the year won't follow this trend.

It's not just about people who missed out on the sets not being able to accept it. I am the proud owner of a UCS X-Wing. And to be honest, it looks like crap even compared to the UCS Y-Wing that came out only four years later. Some collectors care about more than the numerical value of a set: there's the aesthetic value to consider, as well. There's a reason I worked hard to rebuild my UCS Y-Wing but am content leaving the X-Wing in pieces.

Zane's father hardly counts, since the fact that he's not technically Zane's biological father kind of removes the need for a mother. Kai's dad may not have been single either, seeing as the story started with Kai and Nya orphaned. Also, I doubt we'll get any of these characters' parents in sets. At best we might get their faces in another theme, but the somewhat plain parents of the ninja probably aren't too exciting for the younger fans of Ninjago who largely like the theme for its action. Luckily, for many of them the faces are all we need; others may need hairpieces in new colors, but none need brand-new hairpieces like Kai does.

I wasn't talking about a reissue. I was asking whether they should create a brand new UCS X-Wing, designed from scratch. The UCS X-Wing and TIE Interceptor are over a decade old, and it shows. But I suppose even a 100% new design could be blasted as a "reissue" by collectors!

This is a fantastic MOC. I don't know whether or not it was in bad taste to MOC this, but as I see it this is about as sensitive to the victims as such a MOC can be. The detailed-yet-simple-yet-moving depiction of this reminds me of a journalistic photograph, and coming from a newspaper family I mean this as a high compliment. It would be neat to see more similar MOCs to this, depicting a current event as it does without satire but as a realistic, non-biased depiction of what took place.

Do we even know if season three is for 2013, or that those titles are legit? Or that the pirates are the main bad guy, and not just a faction like the Venomari or Fangpyre? From what I can tell there are a lot of possibilities. Those season three titles could be completely bogus, like "Daniel Rocka" or "Peter Grate" in Hero Factory. If they're real, there's nothing saying that the pirates are the main bad guy. For all we know, season three could be a "filler arc" that airs this fall, before next year's sets are even revealed, and these episodes won't have anything to do with upcoming sets. And even if it is Pirates, it could be handled well. Let's not write off 2013 as "the worst year of Ninjago" when we literally know nothing about it.

This is a really inspiring story. One thing I have feared about devoting my life to LEGO is that the hobby will get harder for me as I reach old age, and my eyesight and joints begin to wear out. But you've managed to maintain your LEGO hobby even without use of your hands! It just goes to show that where there's a will, there's a way!

Lloyd has all four elements, presumably in balance with one-another. He doesn't actually start acting as the green ninja in episode 10; this was just the episode where his identity as the green ninja was revealed. The green cards in the spinner game use all elements equally, and Lloyd ZX's spinner crown includes all four elements. Yesterday I looked through the new sticker book while at a bookstore, and noticed that it did in fact have stickers of the green ninja's emblem. It seems to be an Ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail. This has many meanings: traditionally, it symbolized the cyclic nature of life and rebirth, and the concept of eternity. In Ninjago, the fact that Lloyd first unleashed the Serpentine and now must undo what he has done deepens the personal meaning of this symbol for Lloyd.

I know the common cycle of redesigns of the same ships can irk some Star Wars fans. I personally think that many of them improve upon the old sets dramatically, particularly this year's X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But looking at the new X-Wing, I realized how outdated the classic UCS X-Wing has become. My question is this: what would the LEGO Star Wars fandom think if a new, improved version of some of these oldest UCS sets were released? Would it be a good move to take advantage of the many advances in LEGO designs over the past decade, or would it devalue and violate the sanctity of these classic models? [Disclaimer: I am far from a current LEGO Star Wars fan. I have not bought a Star Wars set in years, but I do like to pay attention to the theme because the redesign cycle provides a great metric for judging how far LEGO designs have come since the turn of the new millenium.]

It wasn't for ninja, so don't get your hopes up. Aanchir was referring to the colors used for the four main knights in Knight's Kingdom II, and for the hair colors of the main characters in Exo-Force. Imagine if LEGO had used those same four colors for the ninja in Ninjago! While it'd be cool to have ninja gear in crazy colors like that, I'm fairly happy with the colors (and elements) that we got.

I posited that one way LEGO could potentially reach a licensing agreement with Hasbro is cross-licensing. LEGO licenses the minifigure design out to many other companies for things like the key lights and minifig clocks. What if LEGO and Hasbro could facilitate an exchange where LEGO got to make sets based on a Hasbro property, and Hasbro got to produce non-building-toy LEGO-branded products? Perhaps they could make larger minifig "Action Figures" with a range of motion similar to the figs in the LEGO video games. I know LEGO has never done anything like that before. But it's not outside the realm of possibility; it just depends on what lengths LEGO is willing to go to to facilitate making a Cuusoo proposal into reality. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of this project; if it reaches the required number of supporters, would it become the first project to reach the review stage and get rejected? Or would LEGO surprise us all and find a way to make it work?

The aversion to religious themes doesn't extend to themes like Pharaoh's Quest because there's no one to be offended. Practically no one practices ancient Egyptian religion these days, and thus no one's going to start associating said practioners in their classroom or workplace with evil undead mummies. As for the guns, those were justified by the undead mummies and stone creatures (not living, breathing creatures) constantly trying to kill the heroes. Also, Pharaoh's Quest bordered on a historic theme, depicting as it did filmreel-type heroes in mid-1900s vehicles, and historic themes get some leeway in the weapons department (the tommy guns of Pharaoh's Quest are not commonly used in modern times, and as such fall under historical weaponry like the muskets in Pirates). And since the guns never came close to being used on humans, it's a completely different thing than guns in, say, LEGO City. But this is all sort of off topic. I think a safari theme as you described would flop, big time. The farm theme owed part of its success to being a part of LEGO City, which is a successful line in itself. A safari theme would be so removed from that that it would need to be part of another theme. And launching a theme based around observing wild animals would be really hard, since there would be very little action and not a whole lot of building, either. Conflict doesn't have to be between people. The conflict in fire fighting is the firefighters vs. the fire. The conflict in a hospital is doctors vs. whatever threat to the lives of their patients is in play. Even road repair has "conflict", in that the repair crew has to fix the road in time for it to be usable again. Zoos have little conflict; the visitors are there for a relaxing day off, and the zookeepers are there for their routine animal care. You could create conflict by, for instance, having an animal escape, but I can see real-life zookeepers protesting such a set because it presents them as negligent. Some of the sets you mentioned do not include much conflict, it's true, but those do include a lot of action. Vehicles, in general, are exciting for kids. Zoos may have go karts for taxiing the zookeepers around, but not much more than that. And keep in mind that a lot of those sets, while they aren't sold by conflict, don't require as many new specialized molds as a zoo would. That keeps the set price low and helps LEGO to make a return on investment. That's why I keep saying that a zoo set isn't impossible, but it's not feasible until many of these unique animal molds have already been designed and payed for in other themes. And because of the lack of conflict, I think a full zoo set (with maybe three or four different animal enclosures, at $80-$100) would sell better than a full theme (which would risk kids getting their favorite animal in a smaller set and then passing on all the others).

The theme would have to make clear that the hunters are not just hunters, but poachers, if such a theme were to skirt controversy. The hunting lobby is alive and well, at least in the USA. And even if it were a animal-rescuers vs. poachers-type theme, it might still be too violent. After all, very few villains in LEGO theme are blatantly killers. The LEGO City theme includes no guns whatsoever, and I imagine the guns being used on animals (even by the bad guys) would make a theme even more controversial than that. There's a bit of a paradox in this sort of theme design. Conflict sells, and is usually essential in stories. Kids want to be able to role play with their sets, and it helps to sell those sets if they can clearly understand who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are. But LEGO's violence policy is there to keep violent conflict (one of the most prevalent types of conflict in the world) unrealistic enough that kids will not connect LEGO sets to stories of violent crime and war their parents watch on the news. I'm not advocating that LEGO stop producing conflict-based sets, or that they relax their violence policy. I'm just waxing poetic on where the lines are drawn. But that's getting off topic. I still think a circus theme could be good for introducing a few varieties of "zoo animals". Unlike a zoo theme, not all Circus sets would need new animal molds: there could be a set with performing elephants, and one with a lion tamer, but clown, trapeze and daredevil sets could work equally well. Once some of these iconic animals had debuted in other themes, they could more easily be brought over to a zoo set, and the zoo set could be filled out with existing animals like alligators and monkeys without needing to introduce many new molds at all.

Stormer XL IS Stormer 4.0.

The exterior looked kind of plain, but the interior... WOW! I love the kitchen, all of the furniture, and the kid's bedroom! [rant]Also medium dark flesh is a terrible color name. LEGO's name for it is medium nougat, which makes a heck of a lot more sense.[/rant]

Yessssss. I dearly hope the helmet it refers to is not meant to be the obvious hood he wears in the set, though. But this is awesome! I hope this begins updating regularly, and frequently!

The problem with a Safari theme is that hunting in general can be controversial. It loses much of that controversy when it involves rounding up dinosaurs, or self-defense on a diving expedition. And I don't know whether LEGO has an explicit rule against religious themes, but they clearly like to play it safe. This is extremely evident in themes like Indiana Jones, where scenes like the amazing climax of Last Crusade were omitted from sets entirely. I would like some religious ideas used too, primarily in the form of, for instance, angels and devils as Collectible Minifigs, or historically-significant religious figures like Friars for medieval themes. But less abstract representations of religious icons, especially sets ripped straight from the Bible like Noah's Ark, should probably be avoided at all costs.

Ugh, no. Printed river baseplates are even more restrictive than road plates, and less justifiably so. A river plate can only ever depict rivers of a particular width, with a uniform pattern of eddies and currents, not to mention identical shores, and with a set-in-stone color for both the water itself and the shoreline. In real life, rivers take on organic shapes with an almost fractal-like randomosity, whereas river plates can only make rivers that go straight or curve exactly 90 degrees. Even standard single-color baseplates with a brick-built shore come out looking better than that sort of "river plate", and in terms of set design it's better to simply build two shores and let your mind connect the dots and form a "river" between them. In most cases, such featureless landscaping is better off omitted from sets entirely, as kids are less likely to want to build a bluff or shore than to build actual interactable elements of a scene like boats, bridges or other riverside structures.