Clone OPatra

There are excellent reality-competition shows out there, like The Great British Bake-Off as Peppermint mentioned. I'm a devotee of that show and I'm an American. There are some good American shows too like Chopped which only have a little bit of farce and mostly focus on the contestants' actual skill. I can't see this working if it's aimed at children because it would probably be made to be too stupid, but I can't see them gearing a LEGO competition show towards adults either. If it's done with dignity as Bake-Off and Chopped are, it could be good, but much of competition TV is garbage. We'll just have to see what they go for.

Certain headgear actually works with the sweat-band head figures, and would with this one too. The bowler hat for instance goes quite far down on the head. It doesn't cover the back of the head, but that isn't necessary in all situations. The classic male hairpiece might also work.

Wow, people can complain quite a lot before even seeing a picture. Yes, I'll agree that printed wheels sound terrible, but Sir von Lego even told us that he has only seen preliminaries. How do we know the finished model will actually only have wheels? And even if it does, how do we know it will look bad, yet?

But Artanis, as people and specifically Aanchir detailed, there's no way to make a couch that looks right and has that function. If you think it could be done, provide a solution, but it just seems impossible.

That's equivalent to hour-long slot of TV, with commercials. Regular episodes will fit into a 30 minute slot, making them around 22 minutes.

That Sabine is so awesome! Actually, all of the Rebels characters look great - Sabine, Kallus, and the Inquisitor. LEGO did a great job with those. Some things here are pretty weird, though, like the new (as yet unseen) Droid Carrier. Did we really need a new one of those? And it's a laugh that it carriers way more droids than the MTT. Plus it'll probably be $60. While I love Senate troopers, it's a shame that these don't match the old ones. The old ones had blue CW Clone torsos, while these have movie Clone torsos. Maybe I'll get some anyway, but it's a shame they couldn't at least have done the Phase II Clone torsos. Troopers that look like this don't even appear in the films.

I was surprised to be quite impressed with the Rebels premiere. It was about 1000% better than the god-awful Clone Wars movie; the main characters were pretty solid, there was even a little bit of character development with Ezra, and (most importantly) it wasn't painful to watch. The chase and fight sequences were quite well done, though the animation will take some getting used to. The locations, planets, and atmospheric effects look wonderful, but the characters look too squishy. They're no horrible, and hopefully they'll improve, but the Clone Wars people looked much better by the end of that show. At the beginning they mostly had static hair, though, so things can change. The Rebels wookiees were ridiculously bad and almost painful to look at, but they were the only thing that were that way for me. None of the plot points made me scratch my head to a tremendous degree in the same way that many Clone Wars episodes did. I suppose the fact that the rebel crew saved only a handful of Wookiees from an entire slave planet was strange in hindsight, but these were specific Wookiees who had fought against the Empire or saved people or something. Kanan could actually help them, whereas he might not know what to do with a huge horde of freed slaves. The Wookiees were a specific mission. Kanan busting out the lightsaber didn't seem quite warranted to me, but whatever, the show had to do that to motivate the introduction of the Inquisitor I guess. I actually look forward to seeing where this goes.

No Aladdin and the existing Friends baby tiger as Raja? Boo. Give me a new full size Raja or Aladdin and I would've bought the set. As it is, it's not bad, but as a big fan of Aladdin it's not worth getting.

Looking at the front box minifig lineups, it looks to me like the super jumper actually stays attached to the minifig when in use. If that's do, it might work more like those plastic frog toys where you push down on the back and the whole thing 'jumps.'

As somebody who hasn't cared for most of the Ninjago sets (or even minifigs) in the past, nor has followed the story, I've got to say these sets are really appealing to me anyway. The new Ninja outfits are very detailed and look better to me than some of the previous designs (besides the Final Battle robe-like outfits, which were great). But the real stars are the 'cultists.' They look so deliciously evil, and their prints look well suited to a wide variety of nefarious purposes. The snake hats are pretty cool too. Besides the minifigures here, the builds like the Temple look like full-fledged buildings, which is quite nice to see in the NInjago line at a size and price range smaller than the largest one. The design of that temple looks so good. Even the Dojo Showdown set has more of a full-looking build than past dojos and training sets. I might have to pick a few of these up not just for the minifigures, but even for the build designs.

After looking at the cars a week ago, now it's time for the remaining 2014 Shell Ferrari Promos. Namely: Set Titles: Finish Line & Podium, Shell Station, Shell Tanker Set #s: 40194-40196 Theme: Shell Ferrari Year of Release: 2014 Price at Release: Promotional Item Just browse the pictures? Flickr set INTRODUCTION Thanks once again to LEGO for providing these. Doing a Shell and Ferrari promotional series, it makes good sense that LEGO would make some cars. LEGO has a history when it comes to Ferrari of making things like finish lines, pit stops, and trucks, though, so I guess these non-car sets were to be expected. I wouldn't call these set anticipated in any way, though. Besides for the tanker, which looked like a solid mini truck from the pictures, the others really looked unexciting. Let's see if my mind can be changed 'in the brick…' 40194 Finish Line & Podium It wouldn't be a race without a finish line, so here LEGO comes providing us with one. The premise at least sounds ok. BAG This finish line looks pretty bland really, but not horrible. What immediately strikes me is that LEGO jumped on the minifigure train even though all of the actual cars are mini. The referee, or whatever you call it in a race, must be a giant. There's also the winners' podium in the background, even though there are no drivers to put on it. Hmm… INSTRUCTIONS & DSS Just like the car sets, these ones all have the instructions folded up neatly with the DSS and boring every-time-the-same card in a little baggie. A wonderful way to avoid many a shed tear due to crumpled instructions and stickers. Compared to the cars, this sticker sheet falls into the 'not dreaded' category. We do get the honor of stickering a minifigure, though. Takes me right back to the stickered Classic Space figures. Is this a subtle hint that Classic Space is coming back? It must be! Actually, stickering Ferrari figs is just what LEGO always does (even with this suit guy who has no Ferrari-ness to him whatsoever, unless shiny suits are a Ferrari thing). PARTS Unlike the cars, which mostly had at least some interesting or cool parts, this set has few. In fact, after this one I stopped taking parts pictures. In this set all I note are the grey 2x4 panels and I guess the black fence and white post pieces could be useful to some. And tiles. Always tiles. (Note that the white pole piece is missing. I don't know if it was actually in the bag and fell into a black hole as soon as i opened it, or was never there, but I can't find it.) MINIFIGURE Usually I love minifigures. I swoon all over them. I spend as much time in a review on the minifigures as I do on the entire set. But this guy is just bland. His face is a dime a dozen, his stickered outfit is boring, and the big headphones still look silly. A better face would have lifted this guy up tremendously, but LEGO always goes as bland as possible with Ferrari. FINISH LINE Well, here it is. Not much to behold. It does look pleasing, and its few details certainly help with that. The camera, lights, and tiles all have a good effect. Each side has a clip to hold the little accessories, which helps you keep it all together. Again, the pole should be white, not trans-blue. Two panels get these simple V-Power stickers, which convey that real-life ads-on-the-side-of-race-track effect. These definitely make it look less bland, though they lessen the usefulness of the panels. I actually don't know what this thing is a supposed to be. Is it some sort of electronic board one can hold to keep track of everyone's position? Kind of like the little screen thingy at the Podrace in Episode 1? Even though the finish line looks nice enough, it has a glaring flaw: it's so small that only one car can fit through at a time. Altogether this makes for a finish line at one scale, car at a bigger scale, and a giant minifigure at another scale. It just makes the whole thing kind of silly. PODIUM We get this podium, which is great and all, but this too has next to no playability because we're lacking, you know, PEOPLE to go on it. LEGO really should have bagged (haha) this finish line idea and just made a winners' lounge with this podium and a couple drivers on couches. Heck, they've done a similar enough set to that before. All in all, this set is a real pass. It looks fine, but the finish line is too small, the podium goes with nothing, and the minifigure is really nothing anyone needs. 40195 Shell Station What does a gas station have to do with racing, you ask? Hmm… just about zero. At least this thing actually looks more like a pit stop anyway. I'm not sure what LEGO's set-naming department was thinking. BAG Honestly this set looks even less exciting than the last one from the artwork. It's some odd sort of structure, and I can't even tell what it's supposed to resemble. The artwork also makes no sense; this hut thing seems to be in the middle of a race track of sorts, and bottles are just left on the road. Meanwhile smiley guy with his giant wrench is walking carelessly out onto the course. INSTRUCTIONS & DSS These stickers could actually be useful for customizing and making your own Shell MOCs, so that's something. Otherwise, not much going on here, but at least no bad stickering either (besides for putting the non-square Shell stickers on square tiles). MINIFIGURE Here's another super-boring, stock minifigure with a stickered torso. There's something about this guy that makes him a little better than the one in the Finish Line set; maybe it's just the color blocking. He also could go well with the female attendant from the last round of Shell Ferrari promotionals. STATION So what is this thing? I still don't know. It implies that a car should drive through it, even though all of the tools and stuff are on the outside. At least it comes with those cool big grey sloped pieces for the inside. I suppose this thing resembles a gas pump at which one can refuel one's automotive vehicle. The price ticker just seems very afraid or excited, though. It's screaming AAAAAAAAA. This side doesn't have much too it besides for that little red rounded construction (no idea what that is) and some lights. The lights make me think pitstop because they count up to green and then the light thing lifts up and off you go. Honestly my knowledge of racing comes solely from playing those arcade games where you sit in a big chair and have a steering wheel, so don't quote me on anything. The other side holds the spritz bottle for when your car gets a iddle widdle dirty, and a fire extinguisher for when you car internally combusts. Also, a wrench. I hear those come in handy when fixing engines. Of course this model is also to scale with approximately nothing else from this line, so the attendant is left rather confused when a car does come around. This set just strikes me as odd. If you want the big grey slopey parts or the panels with window cut-outs, maybe consider it, but otherwise it's a pass I'd say. 40196 Shell Tanker Now this concept finally makes enough sense. We got some mini-cars, so let's get a mini tanker to fuel 'em up. LEGO has a history of making pleasant mini trucks, so my hopes are set high-ish. BAG It's a truck. This is a Shell promo, so it's a Shell truck. It's driving on a country road, as if delivering fuel to somewhere. My god for once in this review SOMETHING MAKES SENSE. INSTRUCTIONS & DSS We're looking at the kindest sticker sheet of them all here, folks. Easy-peasy. Thank heavens. PARTS There are actually some nice things like slopey bits in this struck, but I really just wanted to highlight this very SNOTty piece. You don't see these too often. TRUCK Here she is: a well-appointed truck. Pleasing color scheme. Nice details. Good curves. All one could really ask for in a truck. The wheels still do stick out, but the size of the whole thing draws your eyes away from this issue. It's not detrimental to the look, as it is with a couple of the cars. The designer has sprinkled in some good detail parts to convey truck-like details. We've got exhaust pipes, grills, and whatever the grey 1x2 with bar is supposed to be. The tank itself also looks quite good. The back features appropriate details allowing you to let out the fuel, along with some blinky lights. Looking good. The only thing that's slightly weird is the big gap between the cab and the tank that you can see from some angles. They used a red SNOT piece in there since they'd used one for the back, but didn't tile it up at all. This is the only significant flaw in the model, and you can't even see it from every angle, so it's ok. It's quite a good little truck. The only thing it lacks is a pull-back motor. Last time, LEGO did the cab of a Scuderia truck (which is only ever used for transporting stuff, not for racing), and they added a pullback motor just for kicks. How fun would a road-raging tanker truck have been? I jest; this is actually a good set. CONCLUSION I wasn't wildly in love with all of the car in my review of those sets, but in hindsight they were pretty good for what they were. At least compared to two of these sets. Both sets with minifigures here really do not make sense, or just fall flat because of scaling. You could have the Finish Line in the background of a race scene for some forced perspective, and that's about it. The truck is the only good thing here. In the last Shell Ferrari series, there were also seven sets, but six of those were vehicles and one was a crew of three minifigures with minifigure-sized equipment. That set was also out of scale with the cars of course, but it tied well enough into the theme by being a pit crew. The 40194 and 40195 here just feel like confused attempts to add in some variety with non-vehicle builds and shoehorning in minifigures. It doesn't work. LEGO could have kept the truck as it is, changed one of the sets to a 'winners' circle' or something, and made the last set another car. The cars are the cool things.

The preliminary picture clearly showed a Sebastian. He's coming this time. (Though he's the same size as Flounder.)

The new cowl on that face looks so much like Big Daddy in Kick-megablocks to me. I can barely see it as actually Batman.

What you've experienced is the only official LEGO store in the continental US that sells sets above regular retail price. I believe it's because the rent is so high in Rockefeller Center. All other LEGO stores sell sets at the correct price, as do the other big chains like Target and Walmart (usually).

Well, I can't say I fully understand the tone of the above post, but I can say that I gave the racers a little pull back and they went quite a pleasing distance. My entire apartment has exclusively tiled floors, so it's hard to actually test the cars against each other because the gaps will make them turn. The F12berlinetta, 250 GTO, and 512 S will all go faster than the F138 due to smaller amount of tire on the floor (so less friction), so I'd guess whichever of those is lightest would go fastest. The pullback motors certainly add a fun dimension, though I wouldn't personally use them as a deciding factor between which cars to get.

VROOM VROOM. What's that noise? Tearing up the roadways of Singapore, it must be… Set Titles: F138, F12berlinetta, 250 GTO, 512 S Set #s: 40190-40193 Theme: Shell Ferrari Year of Release: 2014 (?) Price at Release: Promotional Item Just browse the pictures? Flickr set INTRODUCTION Many thanks to LEGO for providing these sets for review. This is the second 'wave' of promotional racecar sets from Shell, which includes three more sets as well (a tanker, a pitstop, and a finish line). A combo review of those three sets will come soon, but for now, let's take a look at the l'il cars. Full disclosure: I am not much of a car person, or a LEGO car person (besides Cars cars since those cars were super-cute), but I am a LEGO person and an articulate person, so needless to say, I'll have opinions. I ALWAYS have opinions. Ok, let's roll. 40190 F138 The F138 is a Formula One car designed by Ferrari to be used in 2013. I guess these types of cars don't last very long because there was also a 2012 version and there is already a successor? I don't know, I'm just reading Wikipedia here. Don't judge me. Anyway, Formula One cars aren't exactly a new formula for LEGO; there have been lots of them. So maybe this subject matter isn't as exciting as some of the other cars in the series, but lets see how it fares just as it is. BAG Here's our friend the F138 cruising along some test-course-looking thing outside of a… hangar? Idk. Again, you've probably seen lots of red LEGO Formula Ones, so not that exciting. But do you see those yellow-looking rims on the wheels? I didn't before I opened it. Interesting. I have 'back of bag' pics for all of these sets, but honestly there's not much to see back there. If you want to see them, check the flickr set (linked below the stats, above). INSTRUCTIONS & DSS The instructions for all of these sets, along with the horrendously awful sticker sheets, come neatly folded in a separate little plastic bag with a trading-size card thing that has a picture of the cars. In my wisdom I didn't photograph these in number order, so you'll the card thing later on. Here's what the baggie looks like though (as you can see, it's the baggie for 40191, but no big dif). Now for the actual instructions and DSS of 40190. All of these sets come with truly awful sticker sheets. Of course mostly tiny parts make up these cars, and that means lots of tiny stickers. And I mean lots! Perhaps the cars would look bland without them; I wouldn't know. I painfully applied the stickers to stay true to LEGO's wishes. This set only had two stickers on 1x1s, so that's something. 1x2s aren't so hard to apply. PARTS The star of all these sets for many might be the parts selection. The F138 actually has one of the least exciting selections of the bunch, and one of the smallest. It's 48 parts including extras, and not many rare ones. The red tooth part has only appeared in two sets, so that's something, but you only get one here. The only other really neat thing is the four wheels which are printed in yellow on the ends. To my knowledge, this part has never been printed before, but I could be wrong. Regardless, the effect is pretty cool. Note that the colored 1x1 studs are just to swap color of 'driver' in the car; each color gets one extra. MODEL As luck of numbering would have it, this is the first car I'm looking at in the review and also probably my favorite. The stickers make a lot of sense on this car because real Formula One cars have tons of advertising all over them, and as I said before, these stickers aren't too terrible to apply, as things go. Overall it just has a really nice shape and really resembles the type of car that it's supposed to be. Plus, it's built quite differently than the last Shell Ferrari promo Formula One, and looks much better. The only possibly weird parts use is the white clicky hinge parts - I'm not sure what those are supposed to resemble, but they don't actually look bad, so it's all good. If it ain't bad, it must be good. Sound reviewing logic courtesy of CloneyO. One complaint I am going to have on some of the other cars is that their wheels stick out too much and look silly. On this type of car, the wheels do stick out, so they don't look silly on the LEGO version. Hooray! The whole back thing, whatever that's called in car lingo, is a neat design, and I like the single light. Very smooth and snazzy. Overall, this car has got the goods: good looks, good design, just not great parts. It only goes down hill from here. 40191 F12berlinetta When I saw 'F12berlinetta' written as all one word on the packaging, I thought LEGO had goofed. But I guess not. Old reliable (aka Wikipedia) tells me that's how it's supposed to be. It's basically a super-car made by Ferrari for public consumption, provided one is a member of the super-wealthy public. Super-car, super-wealthy, geddit? Like the F138 above, this car also debuted for 2013, so we're looking at recent stuff here. BAG Coming as not much of a surprise, the F12berlinetta appears on the same course as the F138. Maybe this is where Ferrari tests their new cars to ensure that they won't 'spload,' causing a multitude of tears to the driver, that person's friends and family, and the general public. From this picture you immediately notice the strange gappy design in the side of the car. INSTRUCTIONS & DSS Here's that little card thing I promised to show. All it is is a picture of six out of seven of the sets (no tanker), and the website Shell.com/LEGO on the other side. It would've been cool if these cards were different for each set, but they're not. The DSS for this set is actually the least dreaded of the bunch. There are three stickers on cheese, but the sheer amount of stickers clocks in at much less. Since I built this car first, my expectations for DSSes were set quite falsely. PARTS Not many rarities here, but nice nonetheless. I especially like the six red headlights, which thankfully cannot be adulterated by stickers. The Cars parts have some nice new prints, useful for everyday purposes. Having peaked at the Wikipedia entry for this car, I can't help wishing that the whole thing had been done in dark red. We already get a mostly-red car with the F138, and LEGO hasn't done an all dark-red car I don't think. That would have added a nice dimension to this model (and provided slightly more interesting parts due to color). MODEL When I first built this one, it really seemed rather bland to me. Since it uses the parts from the Cars sets, it looks to me like any other car that uses those parts. I didn't even know how this could be approximating something in the real world. Having looked at the real version, I understand why LEGO chose these parts for the shape and they actually do a tolerable job from the front, but the car still just seems ho-hum in appearance. Some of the design elements really don't quite come together. For one, the cheese graters in the side. Are these supposed to approximate curves? I guess they're distinctive, but they just look weird. The stickers on these side panels also don't quite work. They're supposed to look like the doors and door handles, but they don't blend well with the rest of the model. Perhaps they should have been designed to be a bit more cartoony. One thing this car does have going for it, though, is it's rear. As we say in the colloquial, 'it got a donk.' But actually, the little exhaust stickers are quite nice. The real car is of course smooth and curvy back here, while this is all angular and cheesy, but it looks nice on the model. In fact, it's the best looking part. I guess whoever designed this one was a butt guy. Sorry not sorry. The real unsightly feature of this car, though, is the wheels sticking out. They look straight-up goofy. Wheels don't stick out like that on real cars. LEGO needs to figure out how to make car models that don't do this. Overall, this model isn't a terrible approximation of it's real-life counterpart, but it's not good either. As a LEGO model it's pretty bland, the color is nothing cool or exciting, and there are some design flaws that just come off as weird. Not my fave. 40192 250 GTO Now LEGO takes it back to the 60's with this retro vehicle. Twas a time of funky curves and the like. Perhaps what this car most has in common with the others so far is that it costs a ton of money if you want to buy one in the real world today. BAG This artwork starts to mix it up a bit, showing a different part of the mystery course. The hangar thing still presides in the background, but now we get a pile of tires closer up to stop the 250 GTO from spinning out. We also get to move out of the 'red car' category into something more interesting and delicious. INSTRUCTIONS & DSS Due to the large car pieces being used once again, the sticker sheet for this car like the F12berlinetta is not so bad. Only two cheese stickers here. It's only a shame that one must sticker nearly all the tiles. PARTS The parts selection in this one really shines. We get ten(!) blue headlight bricks, which are not so common to begin with. They've been in a lot of sets over the years, but they're not in a lot of sets currently. Blue tiles and cheese aren't the most common things either, so that's cool. And most interestingly, LEGO made new Cars-style car parts - both of these are new. The hood section is curvier than any before, and the windows section is like a mini version of the previous one. It seems they really made these for this car, at least for now. MODEL The new hood piece does help add curves to the model, which is otherwise very naturally boxy. Looking at this next to pictures of the real thing, you can tell why LEGO made its choices. It was especially nice of them to make this car blue and not red, since I've found images of red ones online and LEGO seems to love red race cars. One of the big issues of this model, though, is that as a small LEGO model by nature it's not very sleek. The big parts can only do so much - it still comes off looking like a boxy rectangle on wheels. It's a good effort, but it doesn't quite work. The back, as you might of noticed, has an odd construction with a hinge to try and capture the angle on the back of the real car. It's sort of 'extending' the cheese slopes. Since it has a gap in it, though, it kind of looks like a spoiler. The biggest flaw in the model is once again the goofy wheels. If the sticking-out wheels weren't doing well on the F12berlinetta, here they really much up the look. They make the car look like it has huge floppy clown feet. The choice to use some studded plates on the top also isn't helping. Tiles might have made the thing give off the effect that it's curvier than it actually is. Once again, the model sort of looks like its source material, but it's just not a great model. The wheels throw it off, and otherwise it's too long and boxy to really be aesthetically pleasing. Great parts this time though. Maybe I'm biased because it's blue and blue is cooler than red. You can judge for yourself. 40193 512 S Moving forward in time just a decade, LEGO still stays retro with the 512 S. Again I've found pictures of red ones of these, so it's very nice that the powers that be chose not to go the red route. Yellow is awesome! As is everything. BAG Taking a really close look at the bags, it turns out none of the backgrounds are actually the same, though 40190 and 40191 are very similar. This one is more similar to those two than it is to 40192, though now the hangar thing is farther away. It's a snappy looking package, having a yellow car and whatnot, and a car that's completely different than the other ones. INSTRUCTIONS & DSS The 512 S has the worst DSS of all, with 11 stickers and six that go either on 1x1 tiles or cheese. It was really a stickering nightmare. I haven't hated stickers so much since the last Podracer set. I recall Anakin's pod was quite horrendous. PARTS What immediately jumped out at me in the parts were the wheels with gold trim. If I'm searching BL correctly, these have only ever had silver trim before (as in the F12berlinetta). The small bow in yellow is exclusive to this set according to New Elementary, and the larger one is very rare in this color. The printed windshield piece is of course exclusive as well. Overall, yellow is just cool. MODEL If you can get over the terrible stickers, the model really comes out quite slick. I still wouldn't exactly recommend applying stickers because I would personally use these sets for parts were I to have gotten them in the wild, but like with the F138, the stickers really work on this model. It's a racecar - it needs its number and racing stripes (not the movie about a Zebra racing with horses). It's a smart-looking model, no doubt about it. The low profile makes it look very fast and sleek, and it has a unique look, standing out from the other three in this batch. The tail/exhaust area has some great SNOT shaping to it; in fact, all of these cars use cheese very well, though I like this one especially. LEGO also made this car not suffer as much from the sticking-out wheel issue by bumping out the sides. The real car does have the wheels completely enclosed, but this looks fine on the LEGO model because it's a low-down racecar anyway. I was a little perplexed by the gap behind the windshield, but it turns out that the real car has an exposed driver and no roof, which this is trying to capture. It looks a little odd, but it's ok. I didn't fudge up with the '12' sticker on the 2x2 tile; the instructions actually instruct you to put it off to the side at an angle. The cheese stickers really were a pain, but again, I think they work for this model. Overall, the 512 S is probably my favorite car. It's got a pleasing, different design that just calls out 'swoosh me!' I love me some yellow, and the gold rims are ballin', so this car really hits it home in my book. CONCLUSION LEGO has certainly made a nice effort with these four, picking varied source material, varied designs, and varied colors. Most of them have some nice parts on offer; I would certainly use them for parts, as I've said. Maybe build them once to check out the designs, but not apply the stickers. Looking at them from a completed-model perspective, some work better than others. 40191 and 40192, using the bigger car type of parts, just don't look so great to me. 409191 is ok besides for the sticking-out wheels and strange cheese graters, but 40192 is really rather ugly. It's a shame, because blue is pretty, but the design doesn't work. The two low-down racecars are much better. Formula ONE cars have been done like crazy by LEGO, but 40190 still looks great and is a little model I'd want to keep lying around for some fun zooming. Did I ever mention that these all have pullback motors? Where they do. They work pretty well. 40193 is the real winner though, since the 512 S is something different and looks very cool in LEGO form. The stickers were awful, but the finished model truly comes together. Now that you know what these offer, it's up to you whether you want to pick them up, should you have the opportunity. I would do it.

As I speculated earlier, these prelims could have been taken long ago, before the newest stormies were in production or at least before they were put into the designer's bins. We don't know how the schedules line up.For a minifig like Jar Jar who has been around a few years, they have the real thing. But the stormies have only been in production for a matter of months.

Stormtroopers. Strange things happen in prelims. These prelims could have been taken before both the newest OT and Rebels stormtroopers were finalized. Noticed that the summer wave OT and Rebels stromtroopers are not in any of these pictures.

Anakin's starfighter is definitely inspired by the old show. You can clearly see the big air intake things. How odd.

The Juniors vs Friends/Princess argument is unconvincing. Juniors is actually one theme, albeit with a spectrum of sets. Friends and Princesses are two themes. There's no theme called 'Girls' that has some city sets and some Disney sets. Soon there will be this Elves thing with minidolls, also its own theme. As far as it applies to AFOLs, Juniors requires just one topic anyhow - the set discussion. Possibly review topics as well. Friends and Princesses on the other hand are subjects that AFOLs work with in MOCs. That makes a big difference.

Friends and Disney Princess are not very similar. One is fantasy castle stuff based on source material. The other is real(ish) world type stuff. Is it just the minidolls that make them seem similar to you? Here's a key difference between Licensed themes and non-Licensed themes: people are primarily drawn to Licensed themes because they like the License. On EB that generally translates into people who want to discuss the License material itself. People are drawn to other categories, like Historic, Town, Space, etc. because that's the stuff they like to build. That's why there are a ton of MOCs in non-Licensed forums, and comparatively few MOCs in Licensed. The Licensed forum is where 'fans of properties' go, with just a few exceptions. Everywhere else is where 'people interested in building certain type of subject matter' go. Please don't take me to be saying that people who like Licensed themes can't or don't MOC, I don't mean that at all. Just in general, Licensed is less focused on building than other forums.

I'm not coming from a place of being resistant to change. There are just more Star Wars builders and train builders out there than there are Superhero builders. Forums are not just about the set discussions; those take just a few topics. The rest, and bulk, of each subforum is taken up with MOCs. Superheroes does not even get that many MOCs on its own compared to the likes of trains. Maybe trying to compare fanbases was a poor argument on my part, but when we compare number of builders it's fairly clear. We don't need a separate Superhero forum just so that the two discussion threads and an average amount of MOC threads can go there. Sure, you're right, as a LEGO theme Superheroes is getting big and is poised to stick around for a long time, but neither of those factors is enough for it to warrant its own whole section. Some Licensed themes do get into grey area. Lone Ranger could perhaps have gone in History. I'd say going forward anyone with a Western themed MOC is better off posting it in History than in Licensed. Something like PoP could also have potentially gone in History. And Minecraft could move to Licensed. So sometimes there are plenty of possibilities.

LEGO might have gone its own direction marketing Friends and related minidoll themes to girls, but Eurobricks site structure is not dictated by LEGO's decisions. The internet, people on this site included, were up in arms about there needing to be 'girl themes,' but AFOLs show just how similar those girl themes are to every other theme. MOCs should go in the forums where the subject matter relates, and saying 'girl theme' isn't subject matter. These 'girl themes' are just themes, with certain color pallets and yes, different figures. They still should be broken up based on their actual content. Superheroes also should not be broken off from Licensed because it's not enough of its own thing. Plus, the majority of MOCs in Licensed currently are Superhero-related. If Superheroes were taken away, the Licensed forum would be left fairly dead. Comics might have the same amount of fanbase as Star Wars out in the world (debatable), but I don't see it yet when it comes to LEGO. Down the line that could be a discussion to have, but for now LEGO Marvel and DC aren't big enough to go anywhere other than right where they are.

Cap's wings should just be a print IMO. Helmet roughly the same size but with no side protrusions. Even if he gets the blue head with flesh face print treatment for under the helmet, it would be better than the last two Cap figs.

Sure: the ARC Trooper helmet, most likely the Old Republic good-guy helmets, just to name two off the top of my head. It's more odd that that CW pilot helmet only appeared in one set, just because there are plenty of ships and contexts that LEGO could have used it in. Still, that doesn't exactly make it likely that it will appear again at this point.