Zarkan

As if Sahmad's tale wasn't already enough proof that Greg can write well, now we get the final chapter of a book that somehow manages to make a decent conclusion out of the two final comics. Seriously, while I was rather upset about Bionicle ending, this epic and emotional conclusion to Journey's End almost makes it worth it. I still would rather have had the Element Lords as sets and major storyline characters, but dare I say it, this might just be more epic. I'm really glad that, overall, Mata Nui's two years of appearances did good justice to the character, combining his status as a legend of Bionicle with a very likeable personality. In addition, it's nice to see that the final confrontation brings us full circle, with Mata Nui fighting against his "brother" Makuta and defeating him. Once a great spirit in legend, now a great spirit in person, returning to his universe and saving it from destruction. And now we might have a "find the great beings" storyline? Awesome - and considering what Reign of Shadows revealed last entry, I'm betting Bota Magna has something to do with it. Let's hope that whowever goes and searches for them runs into the aformentioned bio-mechanical dinosaurs in the process, and perhaps some Agori and Glatorian from Bota Magna as well.

Actually, that plan was scrapped a while ago (thank goodness). Now, instead of one film based on the Hobbit and one "bridge film" made partly out of Tolkien's unfinished works, there will be simply two films based on the Hobbit. This likely will mean that, unlike the first three movies, they won't have to cut barely anything out, as two 3+ hour films leaves a lot of space to fit everything in and have it flow as smoothly as the LOTR trilogy.

What I'm more disapointed about is that the poseability of the scorpion doesn't look nearly as good as the poseability of the one in Aquaraiders 2007. At least, the legs in the former don't look nearly as flexible as the ones in the latter. Also, what's with those two gears on the tail - is there some sort of action feature we don't know about?

Just dropping in to say that I've watched several episodes of the current Clone Wars Series, and I just can't seem to get into it. Honestly, the entire thing seems incredibly slow paced - even during the action scenes. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by the incredibly fast paced animation on the first series, but the battles in the new one just feel very lackluster and unexciting. Also, I hate how the Jedi in this series are so underpowered. Sure, the Jedi in the old series were overpowered, but that's what made them so cool. They were practically gods, where as the new clone wars series seems to be limiting them as much as possible. Take the most recent episode, for example - how on earth is a simple space pirate giving a trained, lightsaber wielding Anikan Skywalker a good fight, especially considering how many other powers Anikan has at his disposal. Heck, these space pirates shouldn't even stand a chance against three Jedi and four bounty hunters - in the old series, Ani and Obi would probably wipe them out in about half a minute. And it would be awesome, unlike this episode. Anyway, not really interested at all - I'd rather watch shows that actually leave me with someting other than boredom.

Wow, that set looks awesome! I dunno if it's been posted before, but if not, then thanks a lot for bringing attention to it! Things I can make out in the photo are a grill, mailbox and green garbage can, a street lamp, a treehouse(!), and what looks like a full interior and perhaps even a couple exclusive minifigs! Man, this one is a winner for sure.

Late to the party again, but no way am I not commenting on these semi-new pictures, considering that they may have changed my opinion of Hero Factory somewhat. I don’t know if I’ve stated this on Eurobricks, but I have said elsewhere that my big gripe with Bionicle’s replacement is not that it exists (unlike many people on BZP and elsewhere). My problem is that for the most part, the designs of the Hero Factory sets have seemed like a step down from Bionicle. Having looked at these most recent images several times, however, I can now say that I was wrong to some extent. I still hate the “heroes” with a passion, but for the most part the box sets seem to at least match the quality of Bionicle’s box sets (if not surpass them). Here’s my thoughts: Meltdown – From the moment I saw him, Meltdown was about the only Hero Factory set that I fell in love with instantly, and that view hasn’t changed. Sure, he may be a bit simplistic compared to most Bionicle canister sets, but that doesn’t detract from his awesome, unique look. More importantly, he is the only set in the entire line that takes advantage of Hero Factory’s seemingly looser story constraints, using an elemental/power association that we would have never seen in Bionicle. I honestly love the idea of a villain who has the power of radioactive waste, and putting actual toxic barrels on Meltdown’s shoulders is a really rad idea. Combine that with an awesome claw design, a sweet face, and some great re-colors (regular yellow fans rejoice!), and you get a really distinctive set. Thunder – Another strong set, though not as good as Meltdown. The face really screams evil, and the non-symmetrical weapon designs are a nice touch. I love his “claw of doom,” and the usage of the Mata-Nui shoulder armor with the Hero-Factory exclusive armor looks great. On the other hand, the color scheme is nothing to get excited about – After the vibrant, colorful sets Bara Magna brought us, grey and silver is even more boring than it was before. But hey, at least we get a new color of Stars feet. Xplode – How typical that the set with the worst name also has the worst set design. Seriously, whoever designed this “thing” needs to be fired, as do the people higher up who approved of it. He easily takes the spot from Pridak as the worst Bionicle-line set ever, mainly because of those utterly ridiculous armor plates. Who on earth thought that attaching them like that was a good idea, let alone pairing their massive girth with Xplode’s tiny arms? The usage of the Av-Matoran limbs is also shudder-worthy, and the placement of the back armor is nearly as bad as it is on the arms. A few good re-colors and a nice, Piraka-like face can’t save this mess, nor can a box art that doesn’t even try to hide the set’s flaws. Corroder – Though the new images as a whole have increased my approval of many of the box sets, this is probably the only set in the entire line that I’ve done a complete 180 on. When I first saw the Toy-Fair pictures of Corroder, I was completely unimpressed, but now I’m in love with him. The weapons rock, the design is decent overall, and the face looks even more Piraka-like than Xplode’s face. All of this is partly due to the sweet box-art, which easily has the coolest pose of any of the sets. I approve! Von-Nebula – And now we are back to the crap-heap with this mess of a titan. While clearer pictures of sets generally make them look better, every new shot we get of this guy only makes him less appealing. Between the bad hand design that looks far worse here than it did on 2007’s Maxilos, the weird placing of the shoulder armor, the even-weirder use of the Bohrok headplates, and more gaps than the Eifel Tower, it’s hard for me to find something good about this design. To top that off, they’ve given him a lame recolor of Hydraxon’s mask – seriously, out of all the villains, the leader is the one that doesn’t get a unique face? I’m sure finding it hard to believe how this disaster got through product testing and evaluation. Rotor – Two words – no, not Pohatu and steroids, though those may fit – but pure awesomeness. Rotor is easily one of the most unique and inventive Titan sets I have seen in years, and perhaps the only one I may end up buying. Besides the fact that he comes with an awesome selection of re-colors and new parts, he also has the benefit of a strong, innovative design. Both weapon designs are very well thought out, and the use of the Phantoka-jetpack is genius. The propulsion device, as weirdly-named as it is, is a real beauty, and the tubing detail and the face finish off the design nicely. Man, I’m just in love with this guy! Furno-Bike – Definitely the more ascetically-pleasing of the two vehicles, mainly due to the orange and black color scheme. I’d never thought we’d see the semi-transparent Borhok shields done in a new color – that alone makes this set win. But, the design itself is also well-executed, with some nice lines and cool new tires. The only thing that would have made this better was a more unique driver, but after two years of generic pilots in Bionicle vehicles, I guess I can’t really expect Hero Factory to be any different. Drop-Ship – A lot more generic than the Furno Bike, but it still has a decent design, and I love that the pilot includes a re-colored helmet. Unlike the reuse of Hydraxon’s face on Von Nebula, this makes perfect sense, and it looks nice to boot. The reuse of the Midak Skyblasters is annoying, however – in fact, Hero Factory’s lack of new launchers ironically is one of the things that most makes it seem like Bionicle with a different name, rather than a truly unique theme. I’ll get more into that below, but for now I’ll end by saying that I hope the set does well. I don’t want to see large technic-based sets totally disappear from the action-figure lines, as they’ve improved so much since 2008. Oh, and a couple of other thoughts on the line: - What currently worries me the most with these sets is prices. Those online-retailer listings that popped up a bit ago were enough to give me a good scare, and I fear that they and other factors (Ben Ten, Stars prices) indicate that we will be seeing a massive rate increase. Considering how most lego prices have gone up this year, I wouldn’t be surprised, but Bionicle’s prices have already risen so much from the line’s outset that a further increase would likely hurt Hero-Factory’s chances of succeeding. At the very least, it will mean that I won’t spend a penny on the new line, though I may change my mind once they are on clearance. Then again, I have heard signs that Ben 10 is doing well despite the overcharges, so maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. - As I said above, the reuse of the Thornax launchers, Zamor spheres, and Midak Skyblasters really annoys me. Since 2004, Bionicle has had at least one new launcher each year, and sometimes more than one. Since Hero Factory is a brand new line, you’d think they’d be even more obliged to give it a unique launcher, but for some reason they’ve decided to use old ones instead. And this could have a far greater affect on the success of the line than higher prices will, as it will no doubt undermine TLC’s attempt to make Hero Factory look fresh in the eyes of kids. - Finally, a word about the story. While the character descriptions released with these images are as generic as the ones that went with the heroes, I don’t want to totally give up hope of the storyline being at least decent. If it at least reaches the level of Exo-Force’s first year, I’ll be happy, as I was one of the few who enjoyed it before it got rushed in 2007. And that means I want to see something that resembles an ongoing storyline, whether it be online comics, movies, or something else. Even better, why not use more than one form of media – Bionicle, after all, has always had a huge mixture of storyline drivers, and if Hero Factory wants to live up to it’s legacy, it should as well.

If the official set had been like this, I guarentee that it would have sold just as well, if not better. Great job the modifications - they work wonderfully and are simple enough for just about anyone to make to their own copy of the kit.

Some new news about the future of Alantis: TLC's internal magazine "The Brick" revealed that the theme will be continuing with new sets and a new storyline in 2011, making it the first non-licensed theme to be confirmed for next year.

Thanks for the review, Copmike! Glad to see that the quality is high and they're not using the rumored "random parts" method of distrubuting them. And, considering how cheap they are, I'll be sure to pick up at least a few of these when they come to my area.

"But it reminds me of MNOG, so it automatically is awesome anyway!"

Oy... eleven bucks for the "impulse" sets? And 18 for the "canister" sets? And I thought the prices for Star Wars sets were bad.... Of course, these could only be the prices on that particular website... but if that is how much they will retail for in regular stores, I think TLC"s lost a lot of potential customers.

Interesting idea - but I really doubt the magazine is going to get any more interesting than how it is now. Huh, that's odd, because the comic in my copy of the magazine is 3-D.

Character descriptions are as generic as ever, and I doubt they'll improve when we get the official english versions. Also... I'm surprised no one else has commented on this.

Same here, especially since I believe Greg said we wouldn't be seeing him again. But seriously, if there is any proof that Greg can write well, this serial is it. Sahmad just plain rocks, and I'm liking how Telluris seems to be more of a inventor pretending to be a villian than actually evil at heart. The way he was crying over his Skopio-bot sounds like how a science nerd would cry over a failed experiment - and that is totally hilarious. Oh, and I can't forget that this chapter also had one of the biggest landmark moments in the entire history of Bionicle: a mention of romance! Man, I never would have thought that we'd actually see this in the official storyline, but here Sahmad is longing for his former lover. How cool is that? Now, if only we actually had some established female agori characters...

Great new updates. The first chapter of Journey's end was worth it just for the awesome "Unity Duty Destiny" riddle, but we also got a great scene with Kiina and Ackar, as well as the first hints as to how the info about Tarduk in the guide book fits into the storyline. And Chapter 14 of the front page blog was epic, with some wonderful artwork and the confirmination that, yes, there are other civilizations in the Bionicle world. It was only expected, but it's nice to finally hear about it in the actual story.

Well, there are some people that think they canceled it because of the Maori lawsuit, but I dunno if there's any evidence to back that up. And anyway, I believe the official statement about the cancelation said it was due to glitches and delays, not low standards. Perhaps it was just taking too long and too much money to make.

Don't forget the gosh-awful picture of Vakama in the last panel of the final comic (no, not the one before that, but the one that looked like it was wearing a paper cutout on his face and holding a stick with little squiggles at the end). But really, I've never liked Sayger much period. Perhaps its that I just couldn't get over how sloppy a lot of his work was, particularly whenever he drew a full-body pose of the Piraka. I don't thing there was a single panel in any comic where their spines looked like actual spines. It always looked like he took about 5 seconds to do them, and that really hurt the Piraka's overall liook in 2006.

Gosh, I'm just shocked at how horrible Xplode is. How the designers thought that his armor and body actually looked good is beyond me. He's probably the worst canister set ever - and, as someone who never thought a set would take Gali Mistika's place in that catergory, that's not good. Other than that, the new armor on the Heroes still looks way to big. It doesn't help that the limbs are really small in comparision, either. And the arm/gun pieces are possibly the biggest wastes of ABS I have every seen on a product made by lego. Oh well, at least Rotor and the two vehicles are looking decent. But considering that we could have gotten the Element Lords this year if things had gone as they were originally planned, that's not making me feel much better.

BZP just posted a link to a sneak preview of Graphic novel #8. And it looks awesome. Also, Sayger fans will rejoice - personally, I'd rather have Zainer do the entire thing, but I've got to admit that Sayger's doing a much better job than he did in 2007. Non-generic Skrall and a sweet Element Lord of Fire? Count me in.

Yep, and they also got frontpaged. Oh well, can't win everything.

Fantastic review, Zorbas - your pictures are numerous and well taken. From the moment I saw the first pictures, I was certain that this would be one of the few 2010 sets I would add to my collection. Besides the fact that it included four brand new pig molds, the design of the tractor and pen looked fantastic, and the color scheme and minifigs were great as well. Your review has only confirmed these beliefs, and I'm fairly sure I'll add it to my collection eventually. Unfortunately, this also means I'll have to rearange my display shelves again, as my current Farm display is alrealy a little too big for the shelf it is on.

Some new info just surfaced on BZP - according to Greg, the green mist that floated into the EP tank is NOT antidermis.

In before anyone flames Greg for supposedly killing off over a half a dozen characters in the span of a few paragraphs. Seriously, it's so obvious that they're going to escape - as long as Brutaka has the Olmak, just about any situation you can think of is probably escapable. Of course, knowing that his mask is damaged, they'll probably be teleported to an alternate universe where Artahka and Karzahni's roles are switched, and Makuta Spiriah is the king of the MU. Otherwise, nice to see the Toa Mahri appear again, and Artahka's appearance is very interesting and unexpected. I was exoecting Gold and some other color, but dark green and grey? Oh, and it looks like ol Terrydacks is trying to create some sort of super Makuta - and in the process he has completed the process of killing off all of the Piraka. Heh, somebody's not going to be happy about this....

First of all, what the heck is with that Bionicle logo on all of the Hero Factory sets? I know that this was announced a while ago, but it looks really weird, especially since the actual Hero Factory logo is on the top of the box. I guess I understand the strategy of this move, since it's basically TLC saying "look, this is close enough to Bionicle that you won't even notice that the original theme is gone," and yet it feels kind of cheap somehow. Now, to the individual set comments: Thunder: Probably the best of the canister set villians (except for Meltdown), even though he looks like he's only slightly more complex than the impulse sets. Decent color scheme, some cool new pieces and recolors (silver Stars feet for the win), the face is decent, and the background is superb. However, why on earth are they reusing the Thornax launcher if this is a brand new line? Taking 2009's gimmick and replacing the spiky fruit with Zamors does not qualify as innovation, and neither does putting lame stat bars on the front of the box. Oh, and they're using Ben 10 limbs in the sets... just terrific. Xplode: This might as well be one of the worst posed sets I've ever seen in Toy Fair pictures - but at least I can mostly tell what he looks like. And he doesn't look that good. Come on - a red vorox armor on top of a 2008 makuta torso is just not good building, and it looks absolutely horrible. And while those red armor pieces look interesting, they're barely even covering his limbs or body at all. Only good thing is that, again, there's a few recolors in Mata Red. But that sure won't be enough incentive for me to buy Xplode. Corroder: What the... this is even worse! Av-matoran limbs for arms, no chest armor, Ben 10 limbs, and extremely silly looking weapons - this might just be the most unattractive villian I have ever seen. Worse, unlike the last two sets, there's no recolors, and barely any useful pieces besides the lime head and weapons. William Blaze: Nothing much new here, but once again I'm really wondering how anyone can actually like that new torso mold. It looks far too big on the actual set, and that emblem on the front drastically reduces its uses. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's worse than the Hordika torso, which already was a very poor piece of plastic. Preston Stormer: Again, nothing much to say here, except that his color scheme looks terrible now, and his weapons don't look nearly as cool as I thought they did in the early photos. Come on TLC - they were fine the way they were, and now you had to change them for the worse! Drop Ship: Recolored Glatorian helemts, Midak skyblasters, Kopaka wings and Lewa jetpacks... seriously TLC, show some originality! Still, this model aint that bad, and I have to admit that I like the concept. Furno Bike: Again, not really that original (we already had a bike in the 2009 Bionicle sets), but the construction looks very solid, and I like that we're getting new tires. Von Nebula: Gunmetal Hydraxon helmets, blue spikes, and mantax pincers was not what I imagined when I first heard this guy's name. But, I have to say that I'm not as displeased as some of you are - partly because this set seems more complex than most of the Hero Factory lineup, and partly because he's a haven for recolors. After all, you really can't go wrong with more parts in gunmetal, or recolored Tridax pods for that matter. Rotor: And the best set was saved for last! Besides having lots of recolors and an interesting concept, this guy seems very solid in his design, and that head looks very awesome. This might be the only one I'll really consider buying, as he looks like he would fit right in with my 2008 sets.