vexorian

This is me gloating about my amazing detective skills: Anyway. I really hope the rumors of a 10 USD price tag for the card sets is false. Because 10.00 would really make this theme a sales bomb... There is no way they would compete with Bakugan and friends with that price... And AFOLs are not going to pay 10.00 for just a single minifigure...

10 bucks scalpers will just use industrial methods to cut the glue and manage to sell the SW minifigs glue and all...

Hi. They are mostly unsorted and mixed. I think that as long as she does not complete any set with the parts. 350$ is too much. So far, it strikes me more as a 100$ collection. Probably decent at that price but 350 is too much as long as she does not complete any set. You know, if the sets were complete, she would build them. The safer assumption to make is that the sets are not complete. She can find instructions in the web....I am a cheapskate in regards to used LEGO though. You should try negotiating the price. I doubt there are many people that would pay her 350$ and if you make a solid offer for even 80$ she might one day give up and try you. You should also consider the sorts of MISB sets you could find at 350$, that's an opportunity cost. The big base piece and some walls are interesting, but you could find them at bricklink much cheaper than 350$ if you wanted them. Another thing to consider is if you really have the space and time to sort them. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some great bits. But without a way to verify the sets are complete, the price seems large. I would really buy it if I could and the price was around 100 because it is a great bulk of pieces with tons of potential, but 350$ strikes to me as too much. It is ultimately your choice though. Edit: Ok, I was horribly blind about the minifigs, I found them. Maybe I would pay 120 because the minifigs increase the chance the sets are complete...

I don't really see the similarity... ... Good old Bionicle, a theme that got and is still extremely bashed for "being incompatible with true LEGO". Meet Hero Factory II, which will be bashed for being incompatible with true LEGO from now on.

Do you mean those custom figs are implied to be nazi even though they don't have any swastika? What's this come to? LEGO Indiana Jones?

I have to deal with second hand LEGO constantly, I had plenty of room to make mistakes and I did. I don't believe in short cuts. There is one thing. When LEGO catalogs themselves tell you to use water at 40 Celsius and mild dish cleaning liquid. They are right about it. The Dish wash is specially good because it is a chemical designed to remove bacteria and nastiness out of dish (on which we eat, thus we do put a lot of confidence on it) without causing discoloration and other stuff. What I do is just pick a small tupper ware. Select a set of the most notable pieces yet to be washed (I have so much second hand LEGO right now that I actually have to give priorities. Fill the tupper with pieces to the half. Then put the pieces temporarily elsewhere. Warm water until it gets to 40C or slightly less. Fill the tupper to the half with that water. Put some dish wash liquid (about a 'line') and then throw the bricks in there. Then I put the cap of the tupper. And cause some movement inside the tupper to create bubbles. Finally, I eventually try to get rid of as much water as possible, then take the tupper with the moist LEGO to an open space in which I have placed some reusable paper towels. I spread the pieces on the paper and leave them for a while until they dry. DO NOT USE THE SUN TO DRY. The sun is actually poison for LEGO and plastic in general thanks to ultra violet rays. I noted that such process is actually good for even printed pieces and correctly put stickers. In fact, I even did it with chromed pieces and I could not see any side effects. But I recommend you that if the piece is very special and it is painted with shiny paint or chromed, you do something more mild. It works great for dust and mild nastiness. But of course, that's not the only thing you'll find. There are other things that can happen: * Scratches/Byte marks. When you can see those at a distance without making any effort, just throw the piece. Unless you are into using custom pieces, you could try cutting the corrupted part out of the better one if possible and make a custom piece from it. * Paint, hard stains, "micro" scratches, mild pressure marks : Most paint and stains go away with Brasso. Micro scratches are those small scratches that can be seen under certain light conditions or if you make some good effort, Brasso can improve them as well. I use a cutip to spread Brasso on the piece and then do rotating movements with the cutip for a good while. At first it doesn't seem to work, but after a while it will work. * Brasso remains: Brasso is great to handle those things, but it can leave residual material that is ugly. So I use one of those products that are sold to clean up computers and glass in general. It is made to work in plastic. I also use a cutip with that liquid... In fact, I have gotten into the habit of using a cutip and that liquid to clean up some pieces that are very relevant, makes them shine... (ie: minifigs) * Oh, Brasso removes printing, chroming and good paint, so you should really avoid using Brasso on printed parts... But something I am yet to try is to put a layer of tape on top of the printed area before applying brasso to a printed piece that really needs it. I've seen in some sites that tape can work to protect certain areas from Brasso. But this should be only in case of a printed piece that really needs it... But of course, you won't have time to use Brasso on every piece that has micro scratches. Because micro scratches are everywhere. Those things seem to appear magically after use. So, unlike other things (nastiness, stains, byte marks), you won't have to be getting the pieces from a very irresponsible person to find them. * Acrylic paint: This does not go away with Brasso, at least not easily. Instead, use that stuff girls use to remove paint from their nails. You will need a lot of patience, though, and it is going to be very hard if the piece is too irregular in shape, and it might decolorate your piece as well.

If you want scale, just note that the claws should be about the height of a minifig... So it is VERY large. I estimate that it double Kardas in each of the three dimensions, that's 8 times larger.

It's the legs. They have looked like that ever since the prelims and didn't change. They look like a mess. Almost like a low quality MoC from the first years of Bionicle. They look bad to me and it is very hard to picture them working well when playing with him or posing him. For a titan, it is almost 80% about the legs, the legs make the titan. You can see more of the legs here: Something I noticed about the villains is that the flame piece is a solid color. I just wish it was the trans bright orange that is normally used in system.

Out of all Nuva weapon functions, I can't remember any that was easy to pose.

I care about fire lord. Him being so ugly makes him a very good piece pack. Here you can picture Breeze's review: Take Nex, replace yellow with green, enjoy.

Incidentally, Kopaka and Lewa Nuva's masks are the only I legitimately like. Kopaka's because it actually looks like the Mata version, something which no other nuva mask has come close to do. And Lewa's because it actually looks cool and good, another thing no other nuva mask has accomplished... Lewa also had the only nuva weapon feature that actually made sense. Yeah, I hate the Nuvas. The mistikantoka are not that great either.

I love this.I hope/wish it was a new rule not to ever have sets with unique parts in HF. It was one of the downfalls in Bionicle. To rely on making new molds instead of caring on other things. A lot of fans are complaining about the new system. But note that I can probably see the same complains appearing among comments from the time in which studless replaced studful in Technic sets and when Bionicle appeared the first time.Fire lord looks bad in the prelims, and I knew it was not going to change by much. They are basically starting from zero again in regards to the titan build system. If you remember the first titan from the Bionicle build system era, Blaster, he was pretty much like the Kaita. It took Bionicle a lot of years and new molds to develop a good titan build using Bionicle's build system. considering that Takanuva was probably the first titan that had both good strength AND articulation in legs AND arms, and that it was released 8 years after Blaster, it really does show how difficult it is going to be to have a titan using the new system... Another thing is, that the hero sets now have a lot more building than the 1.0 version. You even get to build the shields and the helmets. They have much better piece ratios. If you compare the new heroes to Bionicle canister sets , it is a bit unfair. Their intended audience and price range makes them compete with the Bionicle stars. And the stars had much less of a build experience than even the 1.0 heroes. The villains are worse off than 2009 glatorians, but the new villains are looking much better in regards to build time than the 2010 ones IMHO. The new system is increasing the piece counts and the number of things to do when building figures. I like that.

LEGO is such a brand about constructible things, that one of the appeals in the magnets could have been mixing them together, like you could always do with minifigs. Even if you just wanted magnets for your fridge, I think this move is detrimental to the experience. Yeah, entitlement. It is not like we paid their salary or anything. I think the gluing makes the production more expensive. I don't think it is gonna be worth it. The cheap Chinese plastic was enough of a discouragement to get the magnets instead of the minifigs from sets if you could afford the sets anyway. Just because you see the complaints in AFOL sites it does not necessarily mean only AFOLs are against it. An assumption does not counter another assumption. There is just so little actual data so far. It seems that everybody who has actually heard about this change so far is either in disagreement or is actually wants people not to buy any magnet sets in the first place. It is not like AFOLs are the only ones that used to buy these things to get cheaper minifigs. Many parents probably did the same thing. But the point of my post is, after a read word by word of the TLG statement. c) It is all because of StarWars. a) They know consumers won't like it. b) For consistency they did it with all themes even though it was only necessary to do it for StarWars and they know consumers won't like it... Suddenly consistency is more valuable than consumer satisfaction. It just doesn't really strike to me as a sane decision and I was just voicing that concern. I cannot imagine a way for me to actually find and buy a magnet set anyway, so it does not really affect me directly. But I still think we need a better explanation than this consistency thing...

For some reason I thought it was going to be Spece eBay and not eSpaceBay. I don't get how my mind works some times. Is this the last Black Friday strip or will it have more parts? I sort of have a theory how Ronald got there so early...

Well, I am talking about the new balls themselves. Specifically about the three holes they have for which I'll refer to as bowling balls because that's what they look like in pics. I've been wondering if these holes are in the 2011 system sets or if they will be used in them one day.

I bought it yesterday out of impulse for casually seeing that it was the last Dark Panther in the store. This is actually the medium sized sets from the robots' faction I like the most out of the few I got (I got the Shadow Crawler and the Iron Condor before it). I dunno, it may as well be for the extravagant amount of content it has. The devastator without blended trans colors is also really an improvement, I got to say. It is amazing that it manages to be a mobile base, being able to deploy three minions and use its laser. And its cockpit design is really the first one that hasn't completely disappointed me. It also looks ready to jump like a panther when needed. It is just so much for just 15.0 USD. Best deal out of an exo force set I found so far.

And that works great, until you turn 15 and suddenly no relative will imagine that you may actually like that one box with 7-14. I feel it should be 7-99 for some sets. It is ever so hard to go to a store to buy a sets that says 7-14 and get looks or assumptions that it is a gift for a kid ... When the set itself is something large that can be easily enjoyed by an adult.... The 100 USD sets are not just for children and teens, seriously. Jig Saw puzzles are way a lot more boring for an adult than a large LEGO set and they have 7-99 written...

I don't get why is it desirable of a company to have "consistency" in regards to a feature that is negative and hated by consumers... If StarWars minifigs cannot be sold individually due to a deal with Hasbro, why should it affect all themes? That does not really add up to me.

I have actually seen the resemblance to those bootlegs in HF ever since the first wave. It is actually because of the smoothness. The smoothness is really something that LEGO should have done with Bionicle years ago and it is good to see they finally did it with HF.

Shouldn't the new system sets (which I think use the new ball socket) use the bowling ball joint as well? Or do they use it already but it wasn't point out in the reviews? If not, is it planned to add the bowling ball holes to the system pieces in the future?

I would have personally found paying an extra money unit (9.99) a fair price if they had a single piece to cover the back. Without it I am feeling very discouraged to get the heroes that happen to have contrast between the armor and the black skeleton in the back, they look just awful.

The more HF 2.0 reviews I see, the more I love those new joints. the mocer in my is actually excited because I'd like to be experimenting with those things soon. Too bad I'll probably have to wait a whole year before seeing them on local shelves. This guys looks very nice. I've been excited about the orange armor ever since I've seen it the first time in Fire Lord's pics. I hope next wave has more transparent goodness in other colors.

I like the double sided masks. One of the bad habits in bionicle was to over rely on new molds for each set. If instead a single mold can be reused interestingly like this I think it will force more imagination when making heads for mocs. I kind of like Nitroblast. He is a cool guy, shoots at heroes and doesn't afraid of anything. I think in this wave I'll be looking forward to getting all the villains. He looks great actually. And I am getting some huge urges to get as many of the new articulation pieces.

Definite grow of the beard for Hero Factory. I mean, this is actually so much better than bionicle in many ways. The new construction systems seems very interesting, and since it is based on those smallish parts a lot more flexible than Bionicle's. The only problem is the back side, but it seems that thanks to the color scheme, unlike Nex's it does not look as bad in this case. I am also excited about the combiners, because they look great in the picture, and since all heroes are basically the same set of pieces but in different colors, you will be able to buy two of the same hero and make a combiner using only its pieces so that you have a consistent color scheme. I think I'll get two Evos and two of another hero for that.

Uh oh, the back is a really turn off for me. As a Bionicle fan, I stand the back looking worse or plain in comparison, but that thing is a bare naked stick , makes it feel like the heroes are sticks disguising as heroes. I was loving the set until I saw that. This is a great review and I really did not expect these things to be reviewed that soon. Thank you for that. Plan reviewing the combiners?