Clone OPatra

How exactly do you think it looks sacrificed for play features? Both vehicles look very complete to me, and the opening mechanisms are unobtrusive. While they don't scream TMNT to me, the truck and van are a pretty nice truck and van.

Seeing these more finalized images is a major letdown. Besides for Karai and the footsoldiers (who look neat even if you dislike the direction being taken with them as footsoldiers), the minifigures are utterly gross. The turtles are freaky and awful, and Megan Fox gets the silly cheek bone treatment that has been plaguing minifigures recently. The vehicles still look nice, but those turtles are a major turn off.

You can't do something big every year. That kills subtlety like I kill rabbits.

Plenty of sets, old and new, have been pretty fantastic (the entire Egypt and Orient Expedition Adventurers lines, anyone?), but my favorite set would probably have to be 4840 The Burrow from Harry Potter. It was a great-looking model, great value for money, and offered a slew of important Harry Potter characters that I thought we'd never see officially in LEGO form after the HP line had previously trailed off. Three of those characters, plus the printed-pants on Ginny, remain exclusive to that set! I loved it so much in my review that I got called a pedophile. But I don't care, the Ginnyfigure is worth it.

I'd take that with a big grain of salt. Some people in the comments section at least are saying that they haven't seen the info on any other websites. If even a rumor isn't on more reputable websites, I wouldn't trust it too quickly.

Lovely MOC of a lovely movie design. Great application of the printed slopes from that Sith Speeder set as well. It was sad not to get Dark World sets just for the minifigures they would've given us, but one can always build stuff oneself, just like this! It's surely more beautiful than what LEGO would've made anyhow.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the movie trailer. They've kept the Turtles' classic sense of humor and goofiness, and my biggest fear was that they were going to drop that. The Turtles don't look very ugly to me, either - just take a look at the old man-in-suit Turtles in the old films (which are only kind of good, really), and they too look fairly freaky and ugly. I don't know what people expect mutant turtles to look like, but this is good-looking rendition in my eyes. April is certainly not very much like any April that ever was before, and so in that way, that aspect isn't great. I'm no huge Megan Fox fan either. But then again, the trailer doesn't show you enough to pass judgement on how she will be in the movie. Seeing that the Turtles might actually have personalities, I'm excited for this now.

Scarlet Witch looks like a random vampire baddy from any Buffy episode. Maybe Whedon was having a throwback in the costume shop. These designs will probably look properly epic from careful angles with lots of CG going on in the actual film, though.

I too was struck looking at these that besides for the last one, they don't give off an overtly Exo-Force vibe. They are really nice mechs, don't get me wrong, but the first two don't feel very Exo-Force-y. I think the last one works best within Exo-Force because it has brighter colors and has weapon-hands. The ridiculously huge machine gun is a total Exo-Force thing. The others definitely seem like they'd be on the robot side due to lack of arms and hands, if they were to fit the theme at all.

Since this movie isn't out yet and we have no idea how they are handling the plot (i.e. what the plot even is), I wouldn't get concerned yet. I'm actually glad somebody is having the sense to not allow every actor cameo into the movie; as I read about the production of the movie, I couldn't believe how many characters were being added since it sounded like it would turn into another muddle of a million characters and next to no plot (cough X3 cough). From what I've gleaned from a few interviews, most of this movie takes place in the past timeline and not the future one, so it makes sense that they're cutting down the future one to just what it needs to be to serve the film. I guess we'll just have to wait a few months to see. I also see that the Comic Book Resources article was updated with another source claiming that the original source was bogus and that Storm isn't being cut down. Seems like quite the rumor storm, eh?

I couldn't agree more. Minifigures in Licenses need to capture the essence of who they are trying to portray. The essence does not necessarily line up with 'exactly how the character looks in the movie.'The original yellow old Obi-Wan had such an Obi-Wan quality to him - small, thoughtful-looking eyes and mouth, and grey beard. It did the job perfectly. Am I over-analyzing a minifigure? Maybe, but that's just what happens when you try to put a feeling into words. The new one, while perhaps more detail-accurate, just looks like some smiley old guy to me. It's not that way with every figure, though. I think the new Han does a wonderful job of capturing the essence of Han. Both of his expressions are spot on, and that makes him a much better Han than the previous standard-Han versions. So LEGO can do it, but sometimes (maybe a lot of the time recently) they've been missing the mark as far as I'm concerned. (It's one reason I really like the Clone Wars figures - they always capture the essence of the character.)

This set was intended as a special token for press, not for collectors. Hardcore collectors, as you call them, would probably get all the sets anyhow.As to Lord Business, LEGO just stuck in set-versions of all the minifigures. That's the way Lord Business comes in the Lair, so that's the way he is here. It would have been more odd if they'd created a new Lord Business face just for this set!

This set seems like a direct copy of the Thor and the Cosmic Cube polybag, which is quite funny to say the least. The best thing about this poly is that it includes the rarer Emmet face. That front smile is a winner.

In LEGO Lord of the Rings you get a huge amount of accessories including clothing and weapons that you can access at any time during free play to use with whatever character you want. This probably works the same way.

Why does Leo not have the printed legs in the TMNT Juniors set? I guess that creates a 'variant,' but not a particularly desirable one. Shame.

That video confirms how awful the new Luke looks even in animated form. His cheek-lines are just so wrong. I really hope somebody at LEGO wakes up and starts cutting back on the hideous extra lines on all of the minifigures' faces. The new Obi-Wan also looks pretty off. While the previous versions each did a pretty good job in their way, this new one's face doesn't remind me of Obi-Wan much at all.

Those links also require one to be logged in. You should be able to right click the picture to get the actual picture code, and then paste it in here.

The Rockefeller Center LEGO store also sells the sets a bit above US RRP (to cover the insane rent, from what I've heard). Stuff might still balance out to being cheaper than the UK because of LEGO's pricing. I'm not trying to get into that can of worms in this topic, it's just a fact to think about. Those two, LEGO store and TRU are about it as far as buying LEGO in Manhattan goes. There's also a LEGO store in the Queens Center Mall, accessible on the subway, if you want to make the trip. It sells sets for RRP.

You can find all store info at stores.lego.com. (Or also at Google.)

Sorry, but I don't think this really deserves a topic. Plagiarizing of content is one thing; taking a name, not as much. You should probably contact the person if you wish to deal with the issue.

They care about creating a new canon, not maintaining the old (mostly nonexistent) one. They're not going to erase everything that was ever created in the EU, since even Lucas incorporated some EU creations into the films, but they are still going to do what they want. You can already see this happening in the Clone Wars series with fairly big revisions to things like Mandalore. The new films are going directly into a timeline that is covered in EU stuff, and there's just no way that they are going to tell stories that line up with the 'established' EU. It's just not going to happen. Just because they have Leland Chee, who knows everything ever about all Star Wars, does not indicate that they are seeking to stay within the framework of previous works. It's a whole new ballgame, for better or worse. Personally I don't care what they do as long as they make good films and release a statement saying that the Yuuzhan Vong are hereby eradicated for all time.

If changing the name of an EU planet gets people riled up, just wait until Episode 7. Sorry people, the EU is dead to the creators of future Star Wars content.

I think you're just using the old green-lightsaber color as opposed to the newer one that's been around for the last few years. The new one is a much greener green, while the old one was yellow-y.

These episodes are not meant to be a 'wrap-up,' answering all questions. They were just what was in the pipeline, and it's nice that we got any more episodes at all (or maybe it's not if people want to un-see these). It's nice that in some of these episodes the show is actually grappling with some big themes, though. It's quite apparent in EpIII that the Jedi are aware everything is going wrong, but they're pretty confused and don't know what to do about it. They know there is some Sith at large who is not Dooku, but they are having trouble figuring out how to unearth this person. The Syfo-Dias episode didn't give them any information that would help them uncover Sidious. At this point they can't just stop the Clone Wars because they've found out that Dooku ordered the Clones. The Separatists actually have their own ruling body anyway that thinks it's continuing the war effort. Even with the info that Dooku ordered the Clones, there's not a lot the Jedi can do.

AusAFOL makes some great points about how Megabloks currently is tailoring itself towards a different demographic with a lot of its lines. Most of the Licenses, and the style of them, are quite different from what LEGO offers. At one time Megabloks seemed to make lines that directly corresponded to LEGO themes. LEGO has space, Mega does space; LEGO has race cars, Mega has race cars; etc. They still do make some construction-site themed sets and the like, but for the most part their stuff seems pretty different. Of course, I don't know if a parent or grandparent in the toy aisle would make such a distinction, but even then I think a random gift-buyer will not a difference between hard-core guns and stuff and LEGO's more colorful themes. What Mattel could do is move Megabloks more in line to directly compete with LEGO. Kreo's stuff is a lot more LEGO-like than Mega right now, and Mattel could bring Mega back into that realm in a bigger way. The Barbie stuff is already so freakishly similar to Friends that I did a double take the first time I saw a display of it in a store. I doubt Mega would move away from all of the Mature-game licenses, but Mattel could widen the offerings to put out more LEGO-like sets.