Shakar

Stormer XL's box art is probably the most underwhelming of the lot. Stormer's strong point is his wide shoulders/narrow waist look- in other words, the "inverted triangle" shape typical of a powerful looking male body. The box pose, with the slightly open legs, the sword covering his narrow waist and the arms folding inward, unfortunately give the impression of a more diamond looking shape, which really looks a lot less impressive. Hopefully the back box pose will do him more justice.Oh, great job vexorian! I'm saving those now.

If the lightning pieces on Voltix don't look like that as a result of photo editing, then I understand what Front meant when he said that him and other designers had "tears in their eyes" when they saw the pieces. They look great! All the sets look gorgeous, thanks for the link. Also, amazon.it has the summer sets listed, but they'll be available on september, like it's customary for Lego summer waves in Italy. :hmpf: What is interesting, anyway, are the prices Stormer XL and Speeda Demon are listed for. Amazon often is cheaper than Lego Shop, but that it doesn't seem to be the case with these sets (Voltix is listed at 12.99 Euro, Nex at 8.99 Euro, etc). Yay! I wasn't that happy to spend 35 Euro on SD, and expecially not to spend 25 Euro on Stormer, that would be overpriced. Lots of typos. I shouldn't type so fast..

Not to minimod but xxlrocka, try at least to comment on the MOC. Anywyay, this looks great! I love the head, the horn attachment is very clever. The tail is pretty well made, too. I can't pick any problem in this MOC, except the eyes, but I can't thibk of a better way to potray them than what you did. Does the torso use a torso bone?

Got Joker today. Yuck. But the pieces- oh, the sweet pieces.

I can't believe I didn't think of that. That seems the best guess, and the most aestetichally pleasing solution. I initially thought of something like Iron Man's back construction, hoping I'd be wrong since the ball joints sticking out would have been ugly to say the least. But that piece would solve that problem.

.Anyway, this started out an experiment to see how well would Stormer fit on the bike. Given he's going to be slightly shorter than French Phantom, I'm pretty optimistic. I'd argue the main problem is going to be posed by those wiiiide shoulders of his, since they may create trouble when it comes to hold the handlebar. Oh, and those giant feet, forgot about'em.

LIVING THE DREAM http://www.majhost.com/gallery/shadow/Randomness/fivebadband.jpg It's every bit as confusing as it looks.

Thornraxx's missing too- I figured I'd put only the humanoids there, since they fit well. It started with BP only, but then it became a 3 men party.

HEY GUYS STEALING SOMEONE'S BIKE ISN'T NICE YOU KNOW

Goodness, those zombies look beautiful. I need some of them for my graveyard (which is just a modified version of the one from Harry Potter) and some heads to build some zombie medieval soldiers for my evil army....

I'm disappoint, Bulk's and CH's canisters boxes bags lost some of their..redness. Maybe the kids were scared of all that blood colour. Jokes aside, I really liked all that red, it made them unique. The sand blue colour is cool but a bit overused, especially if you think of 2010 HF and 2003/2004/2008 BIONICLE. The box art in those sets and the other ones, anyway, looks great. Also, I don't know what that currency is supposed to be, but I noticed that Black Phantom and Stormer XL have the same price tag, like in that Italian site I posted a few days ago. More evidence that Stormer is going to be priced like BP outside USA? I certainly hope so.

Yup, and speaking of Stormer- there should be one more new piece in his lower legs, which connects the white 2.0 torso plates to the leg bones, since the middle ball joint is already used by the 5M shells. It should be something like a 3x1 liftarm with a ball joint replacing the middle hole. I'm willing to bet the same piece is used in Speeda Demon's bike to attach the gunmetal torso plates at the sides.

Yeah, I played with BIONCLE pieces too, and they work fairly well with them. I wish they made those extenders in more colours, black at the very least. They have an enormous potential.

Black Phantom is by far the best example of FL build, he looks very badass and menacing, he has dat Arachnix drone, he's a lot of fun to play with and he has lots of good parts (especially if you don't have any Ultrabuild Superheroes like me). So, I say go for him- Rocka and Splitface are great, but they don't bring out anything new in terms of construction/parts, except Rocka's helmet and shield and SP's helmet halves. Get them at some point if you can however, I still think they're some of the best 2012 sets. But BP is a more satisfying buy due to the shocking amount of new parts- especially those wonderful socket extenders.

I found this (in before someone says "it's Spanish"- it's Italian ): http://www.plasticiedintorni.com/hero-factory-c-348_294.html?page=1&sort=2a Two things to clarify: 1)The summer sets aren't available yet. 2)Sets have a 1-2 Euro price mark-up- sets like Thornraxx and Stringer are 10 Euro, Voltix & co are 14 Euro, Black Phantom is 22 Euro. That being said, it's interesting to note that Stormer XL, who was listed as $24,99 at Toy Fair, is priced at 22 Euro like 19,99 Euro set Black Phantom. Then there is Speeda Demon. He was $34,99 at Toy Fair, right? He's priced at 33,50 Euro there. In conclusion, I hope this indicates for Europe a 19,99/29,99 Euro price tag for Stormer and Speeda respectively, since I feel 24,99/34,99 Euro would be too much for them. Oh, and Speeda Demon became "Speeda Daemon Spade". Which I like quite a bit, actually, but I wonder where it came from.

Not mine of course, I thought it would have been nice to show.

So mine must be just a "bad apple" then, thanks to those who answered. Indeed, all other helmets are of high quality- I'm especially impressed by Black Phantom's sturdy and finely detailed helmet. And Aanchir is right. Most pieces this year aren't produced in China, and most of the time there's nothing wrong with made in China stuff anyway. EDIT: Whooops, wrong colour!

Well, it's about as sturdy as the other helmets, but the plastic is lighter, and the detailings aren't quite as sharp as the 2010 helmet. My Surge and Breez helmets look exactly like their 2010 versions. I can easily fix that problem with Stormer and Bulk by simply using the 2010 pieces, but I hope it doesn't happen with Stringer, as I never bought his 2010 version.

Wait, does that shield piece have an axle built-in? Looks like a prototype (not saying the piece inside the polybag is, I'm simply talking about the one pictured there). By the way, my Breakout Furno's helmet looks like it's made of a cheaper looking plastic compared to the 2010 piece. Does anyone have this problem?

That's it, I'm buying Hulk. He has lots of good bones, and I can hardly wait to play with the new chestplate. Him and Joker are in my to-buy list for now- they're the ones with the best parts. Maybe I'll buy Green Lantern and Iron Man later in the year...as for Batman and Cap America, I care for them only due to 1-2 parts each (the blue torso plates and the katana in the former, and the new shin guards in red in the latter) so I'm skipping them.

Indeed, the pic isn't new, but the stellar resolution is. On the other hand, I got Furno and Black Phantom yesterday, which means my HF 2012 collection is complete for now. Furno is better than I thought (and his chest flames are keetorange to my surprise- so, a different colour compared to Surge's yellow lightning motif). And BP- love love love. Get him, NOW!

Awesome stuff! I especially like the heroes line-up, in particular Nex, Surge and Bulk (I like how you made him taller than everyone aside from Stormer, and I surprisingly love the green head). Evo's lilac should be darker, however: it's not so much of a set faithfulness thing (I really don't mind little tweaks like Furno's yellow, dark blue and orange on Stringer and the aforementioned green head), it's more of a matter of colour contrast (yellow and that lavender-ish colour you chose are both light colours).

This. I'd rather have packs containing bones (just not bley ones, please) and, why not, cladding.

Well, we still have Breez, Nex, Bulk, Thornraxx, XT4 and Core Hunter to see..and then there are those storylines about the Doom Box and Speeda Demon's "Legion of Darkness", if the books do follow the TV show storyline. I just watched part 1 in English. Stormer's upgrade doesn't make much sense- the only difference between his new form and the 2.0 form are those droids- he could've driven the bike in his 2.0 form just fine, no need to upgrade him. I understand they had to use his XL new form for the show (and he does look badass riding it), but they've could at least come up with a better explanation. Whoa, Voltix's voice is so...deep. And Speeda Demon's is higher than I thought it would be. Lastly, poor Surge just can't catch a break lol.

I wonder when the Italian dub will come out (yes, it exists- yes, I was surprised about it). Hopefully the villain voices will be good, although I always favor the English dub, watching Hero Factory stuff in my language feels weird for some reason (I had the same feeling with BIONICLE). @ TheDesuComplex: ask and you shall receive. Be warned, the pics are fairly large. The reason the boosters on the back are attached in a slightly different way is because I didn't have a third copy of this piece. And I didn't have those wheel pieces that were used in the handlebar, so I replaced them with generic gears. Anything else is faithful to the set's design- the only differences are colour related. And as a bonus for everyone, Surge and Evo- they're taller now! They have hands on both arms! They have back armour! Evo got a wide shoulder torso like in his original form (consistency FTW)! Surge got blue hands! And Evo got his purple lilac back!