vexorian

XT4 seems to be supposed to look like an utter mess of a robot. The sort of thing you find in a robot scrap yard about to get recycled. Anyway, I think the saw might get some extra detail. Edit: Stringer... I am so glad about all the trans pieces this year, but he doesn't seem to have any back armor. I think it will look very wrong with the transparent torso...

Speeda demon looks cool enough. I think that if its price is the same as Scorpion or FL, it will be a good buy. Edit: Actually let's say the same about Stormer XL. Edit: In fact, if speeda demon was black I would be extremely happy right now. But the lime and gold combination looks very bad. Good for parts though. Edit: techno meltdownXT4 is god. Yes, The bley could have been black, but it helps him gives it that look of a trashed robot that lost armor. Edit: I had to shut down the sound so the voice over doesn't kill my brain. Nex is an utter joke, specially when it is shown right next to Breeze. I can officially say Bulk is win too. Edit: Core hunter, almost everything is nice about this guy, except the face. It makes him look like those awful Inika.

a) Consider frequency. In 2010+ this has become a lot more common than previous years. b) Ice planet and Rock raiders come from a time in which space themes had one "wave", but the same wave was in production for longer. I never said anything about grass being greener.

Use brasso, small applications and rub with paper. The first time, nothing will happen, but if you insist the printing will go away without side effects.

Yes, specially licensed. Yes. Definitely.

* Dances at Recon team's grave. * If this means they will now work on things that are not blessed-countries only or utter expensive then I welcome this.

I would. About XT's color scheme. But I am fairy sure it is a drone worker gone mad. If so I think that yellow+bley is a fitting color scheme. Sure yellow+black would have been much better, but we have already have quite a ton of black+yellow characters.

Compare the two pictures. One works well even without text because of its Narm charm. The other however is barely funny with text. We are getting bored. We need more pictures of the upcoming wave. Even more, let's get some Chinese factory worker leak stuff from 2013 already.

It is enough for me to upgrade it from close second place to close first place. Savage being second. Break out 1 third and ordeal last. But that's a topic for another day. I really think XT4 and Core Hunter need more pictures. With Core Hunter, it is quite hard to really know what's exactly going on. XT4 looks so wrong in the video that I am assuming he will look much different in the final version. Front saying that we will need to buy multiples, seems to signal something.

Will really wait for better pictures before judging XT4 and Core Hunter.

It is starting to look like TLG have shifted their strategy regarding waves. As opposed to the past in which it was common to have three waves. There seem to be some few "special" themes that are intended to last for years and other themes that are intended to have only one wave. I would say that Friends, NinjaGo and Hero Factory are the only non-licensed long-running themes that we have right now. (Not counting obvious things that were always supposed to last long, like technic and Creator). Meanwhile, Pharaoh's quest, Alien conquest, Dino and monster hunters all seem like one-hit wonders. Does anyone else think there was a significant change or is it all a coincidence? I really doubt themes like Pharaoh's quest, Alien conquest or Dino were intended to last longer and got abruptly canceled.

Yeah, LEGO stickers survive washing rather well (Not too surprising once you figure out that they are probably made to survive saliva as well). Specially if you follow TLG's own indications (40 degrees Celsius, dish wash liquid). To the point I don't really care about pre-selecting stickered pieces before washing anymore.

Actually, if Stringer really has trans chest, then I will have the total opposite opinion.

If Bulk is like Zwen's digital version (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) it will be the best hero ever. Although he should have two hand pieces. Stringer in the video looks cool, although I am not convinced about the blue yet. What I love about Voltix is that I won't have to spend in the Joker to get purple. He looks ok and is a great parts pack with all those hoses. Core Hunter, I still need to see more of. Won't matter if it happens to be the same people that did the amazing NinjaGo display. I guess they just don't care about HF.

Bulk is going to have some sort of weapon like the 2.0 shields but with two missiles. I think that once Bulk gets that thing, a bulkier torso will look like overkill.

XT4 is going to be great sans the bley. He is just built and posed oddly like it tends to happen in these silly toy fairs. Between Reapa, Black Phantom, Core Hunter and Bulk I am very satisfied with this year's HF. I'll pass on Nex. The orange-white color scheme should have died with 2.0, really.

Iron-Man is the reason they should have focused only on inorganic characters for this line. Imagine A sentinel, Brainiac, War Machine and whatever instead of the messy looking guys. Iron-Man is truly nice looking. The only reason I won't bet him is that I don't want to finance the SOPA lobby buy licensed sets anymore. But kudos to the designers. Albeit the silver bits in Captain America and Hulk really make up for their success in Iron Man.

I think the shape matters more than the material, and elasticity is more useful than roughness in preventing breaking. But I don't really know. Edit: Wrote that before Front's post. I'd really rather all bones stayed in neutral colors. What was great about 2.0 was that since all bones were black, it was a lot easier to make models of different colors. If bones begin getting too much color variety it will get very difficult to find enough pieces for MoCs. In fact, please TLG, make all bones black from now on.

I don't care, I still need to complain because they are ugly. They are a step backwards in articulation. The visual incompatibility segregates Friends from other themes. They are race-differentiated (and I am dark skinned and I think it was not anecdotally harder for me to identify with yellow figs as a kid than a Caucasian kid, thank you very much. At the very least, even if it was hard for me to identify with a yellow figure, most Friends and SW human figures are peach colored and it would have been harder for me to identify with them). And it worries me that TLG still try to pull these awful non-official figures as if they ever had any success whatsoever trying so. I mean, it is frustrating to see such a beloved company still try the same think over and over again and fail over and over again and demonstrate the definition of insanity. New minifigures made TLG lose so much money and time so many times already that I feel the need to point to show stronger opposition so that this doesn't happen again. When friends flops and gets canceled (Willing to take bets, it is easy to sell these sets to little girls that are relatives to AFOLs, but they would be getting any other theme anyway and TLG's intention with this theme is to capture some chunk of the girls that were not asking for LEGO before the theme), I hope TLG attribute the failure not to the great designs in the friends line but to the urge to unnovate mini-dolls. And the push to make new figures. The designs of the sets are a great start. I really hope that in their next attempt to make a line that attracts the 50% of the target population they go with great set designs and normal minifigures and non-pink boxes as opposed to worst minifigs, truly duplo-like designs like Bellvile and 100% pink bricks. But for TLG to make a decision they need feedback, and they will use feedback from all sources and views. So what TLG will need is for all of us to keep voicing our opinions. Yeah I'll admit that I have avoided reading the posts in this 700 pages thread, besides of being too long it is full of quick dismissals of the subject and also some horrendous anti-feminism generalizations and I don't want to be banned. I was talking about official articles and posts which limit themselves to putting controversy between quotes and then go into defending TLG so very much because the sets are not 100% pink and the minifig hair may be reusable in real minifigs. Yay great. The petition and blog posts are being unfair / ignorant when they say that the sets are simplified. Thanks to your links I can confirm that the SPARK campaign and the petition is wrong and spreading misinformation. (Let me point out though that this is in part LEGO's fault, not in being sexist but in not informing the public correctly. The marketing gimmick to make boxes pink does not help, either. Edit: Neither does TLG's own promotional image to appear in Ruth Davis Konigsberg's article, in which Friends characters are nonsensically tall). I am keeping my original opinion , however: "Yes, Virginia, LEGO are being sexist". I have come to this conclusion from reading the business week article that shows TLG complete mindset about the topic and confirmed it when LEGO club magazine got split. They "manlyfied" all the other themes and now are bragging for making a theme that has pink boxes. "Boys want mastery", "girls want detail". TLG is basing business decisions and set designs of all themes on research that is brutally sexist. That article made me realize why every set nowadays needs a flick fire missile and detail is getting lost. Why Creator sets are 90% made of cars and why LEGO City has basically become a police state in which policemen and thieves out-populate everything else. They are not doing something I can endorse. What I would like is for all themes to be a little less about flick fire missiles and a little more about detail and beauty like friends. They can make a theme that is more oriented to topics such as puppies, pop stars and nice houses that have a healthier girl/boy ratio, which is great. But can't all themes have beautiful detailed sets that are also complex to build? Can't minifigs be compatible between all fig themes so that a boy that likes SW and puppies could use both sets? Again, that's just what I would like, and it is just the opinion of a random Bolivian AFOL, but I think TLG needs feedback and I am doing just that. ------- BTW, whatever happened to: http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/factsfigures/timeline1960.aspx ? It is mentioned in the time.com article and supposedly said something about “10 characteristics of Lego” that included “For girls and for boys.”

To be honest the 2.0 system is awesome, is great and ever since 2.0 appeared around here I have dedicated most of my money to get more and more 2.0 pieces. But the second you move away from smaller-than-medium-sized robots with thin articulations it really, really fails. I am including large creatures, system MoCs, small creatures with bulkier armor (although I am getting close to getting something here). HF is great to build what it was designed to build. Other things not so much. In fact, I am not going to say this is fault with HF 2.0 system, but with the current molds available. Before you flood me with images, I am not saying it is impossible to do other things. I am just saying that it is very, very hard to come up with something that looks well and is out of HF's comfort's zone. It is specially clear in the web, I find it hard to find 2.0 shells used in any MoC that is not a bipedal hero or villain. Who knows though? Once HF usage in system sets like 9455 becomes more widespread, system fans might figure out how useful the bones can be.

Sure after LEGO insisted so much that guys with prosthetics and monsters are bad guys it is hard to tell which side is good with this one.

Those three guys are awesome. but I can't allow myself to get excited about this. There are too many Licensed themes and it is unlikely the cursed retail stores around here will brought any other theme that is not licensed and not town or NinjaGo. The werewolf is new. I think the coincidence is due to LEGO prioritizing on finishing prototypes for the minifigs that didn't have a good alternative. I think it is really, very unlikely for TLG to release CMF in sets. You can mark my words. And afterall, they didn't reuse the ninja in NinjaGo. Nor did they reuse the mommy in Pharaoh's quest. The minifigures will likely be very similar to their CMF counterparts but have different prints, TLG can order new minifigure prints very easily. I'd expect Franki and Dracula to dive a little more into scary territory than the comical territory from CMF. Hah, there you go. Same molds, different prints.

It is getting frustrating that it seems that LEGO fans have taken it their obligation to join the bandwagon of defending Friends because they see the controversy (In fact, it begins with the tendency to belittle the topic by constantly putting the word controversy in quotes. Guess what? This is a controversy, we are still discussing it and it has been weeks already. ) That is the only possible explanation I can think for so many AFOLs going full apologist for the mini-dolls. Considering they are no worse than Jack Stone, it is very hard to be supportive of them. Which reminds me, the article is well researched and all but I have to disagree about this: The opposite in fact. Yellow minifigs are race-less. The excuse for peach and racial differentiation in licensed sets is that they have to look like the characters. There is no workable excuse for racial differentiation in Friends. And is in fact quite lame if we consider that the businessweek article mentioned how LEGO thinks that girls are supposed to identify themselves with dolls. tl;dr: To paraphrase the great Seinfeld show, the mini-dolls don't offend me as a feminist, they offend me as an AFOL. --- The other common one is to show us that pink is not really so used in the theme. Did you consider that the boxes themselves are pink? That is already enough to show that TLG are abusing stereotypes and promoting the standard that girls = pink. Pink is not used everywhere in the sets but it still seems like a mandatory color as there is always pink in one set. And of course "LEGO is only doing what they need to profit". Is this the same AFOL community that so easily (and deservedly) complains about oversized boxes and low quality plastic? Hey when LEGO oversizes boxes they are increasing their profit because more people will buy them thinking that the sets are bigger. Who cares if it is not green? --- About the article: Well-researched is probably the best way to classify it. This is the first time something from AFOLs I read about the topic actually mentions the source of the controversy. Finally I can actually look up to the SPARK petition and figure out if their claims are outrageous. Back in page 4 I claimed that it is true, Friends are too stereotypically girly. Worse, ever since the 2000s just about every non-creator theme has gone towards the stereotypically boyish way. In fact, even Creator seems to have issues lately as 5 out of 6 sets are cars. LEGO are clearly being sexist, read the businessweek article. Claims such as boys like mastery, girls need detail are sexist. Worse, the UK LEGO club magazine is ominous in that LEGO is working for full segregation of boys and girls. And the article's data actually supports this. But hey, they are doing this for profit, so it is all right. --- Duplo is not really that successful. Bionicle sort-of succeeded in its early days but then not so much. Bionicle and HF don't count anyway as they are not minifig themes (duh) but constraction figures.

This annoys me because megaupload much like youtube actually removes files if reported correctly as infringing. And this shut down happened without a trial.

Hmnn, someone is really ripping you off, that or taxes are too high. Around here the price factor is around 1.41x times the S@H cost. Which I find to be pretty fair.