vexorian

I love the mommy ship, it seems it will have four large transparent plates which I guess mean that the mothership behaves as a portal of some sort, that makes a lot more sense than a brick-built mommyship at that scale, because mommy ships are supposed to bring other ships with them.

You can see that in the HQ set there is a blue suit astronaut with one of those guys on the head, it seems they are some sort of alien parasite.

I would rather have giant mechs than giant creatures or vehicles. Did you know the exo-toa is 1.0 Heroes-compatible? and it may even be compatible with the 2011 heroes, but I did not try yet (and I won't until the heroes arrive to my town and that's probably going to be 10 months...)

I guess the sets for which we have no images are as progressed as the other images, but they are not visible because they contain stuff from the upcoming movie which ought not be leaked yet.

Impulse sets are around $3 they have minifig, accessories and bricks, and the minifig is the normal quality.

collectable minifigs don't cost 12.99 ...

I wouldn't trust anything higher than 50 Celsius for minifig plastic. It does not happen all the time but I have experienced random decoloring and other nasty things with high water temperatures. Melting point is not necessary for issues to happen. There is a reason TLG recommend 40 Celsius... I guess 70 Celsius may not be that bad, but I would not be surprised if some plastic colors are more susceptible to damage than others. That said, I guess that if you want a minifig and not a magnet, possible damage is a risk you could take.

Before these recent years, the China-made parts were truly awful and easily recognizable. Minifigs from Battle packs were clearly just wrong, with their yellow being closer to lime and that awful gloss. That's why people hate that stuff. It has improved recently it seems. But even collectable figs have those offsets in some printing...

I'd like a convention center which is being used by comic freaks :)

I don't want Bionicle to come back, I think it was about time it died. I think HF won't last more than 3 or 4 waves because a theme shouldn't last that long, it would be replaced by a new action figure theme. (which would probably keep HF's build system)

Yes, I doubt it would survive wave 3, and then it will be replaced by another theme. And it seems pretty intentional. Brands get old. I think that Bionicle lasted way too long and overall TLG became a victim of Bionicle's own success with fans going irrational and expecting it to last forever... HF won't last many waves, and It will not be because of low sales but because they are planning it not to last 10 years. And I wonder, is that a good thing? This forces the themes to be actually good or die. Overall, LEGO is supposed to be selling toys not stories. The toys must be good, the construction system innovative, the sets interesting and the point should be creativity. HF does not have a 10 years long story, but it will allow kids to design their own heroes at a cost, and it will be very profitable for TLG. At the end, most of the people buying Bionicle didn't do it for the story. We had a bunch of people in the Internet that stated themselves to be big fans of Bionicle, but they just cared about the story, but the thing is that they weren't buying the sets, and that's not financially good for LEGO.

It would probably burn out not because lack of creativity from TLG but because of consumer exposition. Series 3 have not even arrived all countries and we are already know all about series 4, I am starting to think series 5 pics will start appearing soon and that's 48 minifigs to worry about, in a year when the figs finally arrive my country, I will have 64 figs to collect in a single pair of months. This year it was precariously doable 32 figs, but 64 will be crazy, In my opinion this sort of over exposition will discourage people. For series 2, you needed 58.1549 purchases to complete a set, if we were to imagine that the amounts for rarity group were divided by 2, it is not very accurate because of odd numbers, but how about: 25% chance to get one fig, 40% chance to get one of 3 figs and 40% chance to get one of 4 three figs, the number of purchases is 26.088, but it is very speculative because we wouldn't know what probability distribution TLG would use for 8 figs. For example, if they made each of the figs equally likely, it would be 21.7429, and if they made one minifig VERY rare (1/60) and the other equally likely, the average required purchase would be 63.0134, so TLG has a lot of freedom there. What I can tell you is that less minifig types per wave would increase availability, unless TLG also moved to 30 figs per box. I am not trying. I didn't even get a chance. I was lucky to even get 6 figs of series 1. If I could have do it, I would have tried for series 1 and 2, but that's the sort of interest that would easily burn out with so many figs per year. In 2010 it was simple with 32 figs, 64 figs next year and I don't think so...

Once you transition from dark ages to AFOL, there is little time left before it will be rather impossible to hide the hobby once people get into your house... It is just one year after my dark ages ended and I already have space issues, and I didn't even rebuild most of my old sets.

Nice, informative review. I don't like the large droid, something about it makes it look out of place imho.

I love this set, the canon is gorgeous and you can never have too many droids. But the price seems a little too much for what you'll get. I just think that in 2011 there are going to be much better things you will be able to do with 39.99 ... I hope I can find this set at a sale or with a damaged box so that I can pay only 50% of its price...

I just hope they stop it with the badges. It introduces a piece that is only useful for that set and not for MoCs, reminds me of all the horrid printed things roboriders came with.

The closest thing to a wing in that pic is the sword from 8103:

UNIFIL wear baby blue precisely so they don't look dangerous to the other armies that may be in the regions ...

Doh, it is a little bad that not even typical parts that come with spares don't have them in this series. I was really looking forward to amass trans yellow visors.

I received: 7145 Von Nebula 7162 Rotor 7706 Mobile Defense Tank. Although I bought all of them , I just saved the opening ceremony till after Christmas -[ . In a way, I also count 8086 Droid tri-fighter as one of my self xmas gifts, but I opened it before the 25-th :) <scrooge>My family wouldn't even buy me a impulse set, great!</scrooge>

Metallic is great, but it is fragile. Not as fragile as chrome but still. I really regret putting millenia's slizer head on warm water because it ruined the piece :(. I have to mention something. Although I like the specialized heads in SP3 villains, I still prefer snake's design. Because it is just a minifig head with special printing and he is even still yellow. For that reason he is got far more compatibility with other minifigs than the other villains. For example, the torso can be used as a tatooed body for a city fig. And the head can use other hair and helmets That's also one of the reasons I really, really hate megabloks figs. They aren't compatible with each other. A big source of fun recently for me is to use the minifig system to create new characters and it is very fun to swap accessories together. It is less fun with Kranx than with Snake because you can put a mime's hat on him... So, I think that although some heads with different molds are fun once in a while, I hope they stay a very small minority.

NN is often used as unnamed in my language. In English it even works as short for "No Name", so I think that it may also work that way in Danish.

They should keep the thornax launchers, at least for 5 more years really. If Bionicle history is any indication, TLG can do much, much worse than it. And I like the fact that you actually build the launcher, the ball does not fall off, the launcher actually shoots and as long as it uses the right color scheme it is not intrusive.

Seems like we'll have tons of large sets this time. Uh oh my wallet will suffer. I am excited about just about every large set but firelord. Rocka XL, Witch Doctor and Scorpio all look like interesting guys. Waspix will probably be a winner too. It looks the heroes are closer to 1.0. It worries me that it is yet another wave of heroes, it reduces the chances that my store will import the 2.0 ones. It also seems to me that the storyline involves going back in time, and battling the witch doctor and his beasts...

Since the first post was about life style items, the battle pack was probably one of those minifig packs that don't come in boxes.