vexorian

I think the Inika had some very nice ideas and color schemes (I specially like Jaller's and ... er the rock one) but I feel the whole line was ruined by some of the worst features possible. Some of the Inika just were the victims of using two colors in the same pieces and and unlike Malum's they look just wrong (eg: The white-blue toa Inika) Then we have the rubber masks, which are probably the number one reason they and the Hordika are the only Toa I have not purchased a single new set of (I did buy a pair of used inika really cheap) Plus the light-up feature in weapons forced all the weapons to look the same. edit: The best feature from the Inika's year was the inika/piraka build. I believe the reason it was used for so many years is that it works, it really does. The two-part torso allows some flexibility in height and shape without making it too complicated. The mahri had some improvements (specially the non-rubber masks) but somehow they did not really impress me that much. It could be because water accessories were never big on me. Most toa mahri look kind of skinny to me. Phantoka and mistika were great years, basically refining all the good ideas that were around since 2006 into nice packages. Gali mistika is a great design (once you decide that it is not gali but a terminator) I mean, it has such unique parts like the silver scipe.

I like "Viral" and "Iceberg" specially their head designs. Iceberg's brutal look with giant pieces of ice made me suggest that name. Viral's head is really my favorite though now that I notice the pics don't do it justice. Strange, it is probably because in real life you focus more on the eye rather than the toa mata "brain". As for the rest, they are ok.

I went to my local toy store and it turns out they finally have the early 2010 sets. So no wonder I bought this:

/\ | That's just wrong. I think that the only thing we could do is to stop buying LEGO until this gets fixed. Good luck with THAT :).

Just click on the picture in google then use the "Full-size image" link.

Seeing both images , it does seem that they are two different companies (I mean bootleg set vs. cool tractor + the logo quality is much higher). Also the report of great quality in the OP. Someone should consider contacting the blue "Click Brick" company about this. Edit: Hmnn on second thought it appears that Thrund is right and as "click brick" seems to be a good quality company that is not well known, those guys at ebay are trying to use that name to sell bootlegs in disguise. Edit: Hmnn their logo seems to change, it seems this "Click brick" is part of FIA toys

Bley and stone changes themselves were positive imho. The new colors just look better. Although they are not as neutral of a color as dark gray and light gray were. I do have issue with many of my old gray pieces not being useful for MoCs of the recent themes. The new brown color looks a little bad to me in comparison the old one. It is hard to explain, I just think a tree made of the old brown looks better than one with the new brown.

We are not comparing LEGO with unreasonable expectations of perfection but with realistic precedent LEGO itself made until the 1990s. I had plenty of LEGO sets in that decade and the yellowing of white bricks is really my worst issue, very few bricks I own from that age have broken and I don't remember anyone breaking from normal usage. Color has been all consistent among very different sets and themes and years. You would think that if LEGO's intention was to keep up with the quality it would have improved or at least stayed the same after almost two decades of tech improvements, yet it got worse. I remember an article mocking mega bloks and complimenting LEGO about how they survived their 2000s crisis by avoiding the outsourcing pitfall... Yet about 2 years after the article we had seen LEGO outsourcing production to China just like the rest of the industry. What's worse is that price did not seem to go down after the quality reductions. Of course, fault is to costumers including AFOLs for keeping up purchasing LEGO sets even with all those issues. I guess though that the other problem is that TLG does not really have a global competitor that focuses on quality. We only have megabloks which seem to compete using things like licenses, lower cost and articulated minifigs there are also oxford and cobi which are region constrained.

I want a Starcraft LEGO theme. Terran and protoss models would be awesome and they can use bionicle style stuff for Zerg a-la vikings.

Yeah, I found it. It is cool. Except that Goliaths never use their rockets against buildings. Plus a bunker with 2 marines and 2 firebats should survive against two dragoons. But I am nitpicking.

The mystika toa all had great designs, but it was very regrettable that they are not like the original toa in any possible way. Gali is for example completely unrecognizable. I think that the world would have been a much better place if the 2008 toa kept those designs but were a new team. Anyway, I think 2009 was a great year in terms of designs. Almost every character had its own look and the skrall and Vorox ensured builds weren't all cloned. Plus most of them look great except both dark green ones (dark green + lime just does not look right). For the old times, I'd go with toa-mata and bohrok. The toa mata may not look like a big deal now. But compare them with the slizers and the roboriders and they were quite a positive change (even though builds started to get repetitive) and bohrok were all cloned but also great army makers and I can't think of a canister set that had better features packed in such tiny format. Plus the bohrok pieces are very useful, so useful that HF still use bohrok shields and canopy...

Here are pics of the set http://www.megabrands.com/Shop/MEGA_Bloks/Halo/Halo_UNSC_Pelican_Dropship_96824/ . Indeed, when mega actually try to have a good design they do a good job, that's impressive. The minifigs though are a huge turn down for me. Plus I am still unable to find a mega-selling store in this place (I did find pirates of the caribbean in on, but mega did an awful job in those in comparison to HALO). I also wonder if I would buy it instead of a large space police set for the same cost even when the LEGO set would have half the pieces (I am aiming towards Hyperspeed pursuit right now). Also that's more green than I would really need, so piece count is not as helpful to me in this case as the cool design. I am personally more impressed by this: http://www.megabrands.com/Shop/MEGA_Bloks/Halo/UNSC_Shortsword_96835/ except for the ugly one-piece cockpit+canopy :!

I got to say that I prefer yellow skinned a lot. Specially because once you go peach, it promotes differentiation by color of skin, which does not suit a toy like LEGO. For licensed sets, it is probably a good idea (even though that may as well be the reason I have not purchased any yet) else people wouldn't be able to recognize Lando from Han Solo but I hope they never use them in non-licensed sets, I would probably stop buying LEGO if that happens. Anyway, at least there will be a new set of pirate accessories and clothes even for yellow-skin fans. Plus it will not matter for skeletons and monsters.

Gender: Male Occupation/print on torso: Frankeinstein look-alike. Type of headgear: Hair + Pronounced forehead. Type of facial expression: Confused Color on torso/legs: Black? Accessory: shoe platforms. Gender: Male Occupation/print on torso: Space hero - Hmnn I am thinking of the likes of Flash Gordon or Buck rogers but in fact, mostly of Duck Dodgers as I am more familiar with him than the non-satire ones :P Type of headgear: Space helmet Type of facial expression: Brave/Heroic/Arrogant similar to the Space police minifig in container heist. Color on torso/legs: Silver/Green Accessory: A sci-fi gun, needs curves. Gender: Neutral? Occupation/print on torso: Statue. Type of headgear: Stone-colored hair. Color on torso/legs: Stone gray Accesory : Stone-colored sword Gender: Male Occupation/print on torso: Stereotypical villain Type of headgear: Magician's hat Type of facial expression: swirly mustache, evil laughter. Color on torso/legs: Black (white shirt + black tie print). Accessory: dynamite and cape. Edit: Ok, I swear I wrote this post before reading Tanotrooper's , ouch but well, my vote goes to that fig idea.

Oh boy the stickers are just painful. I remember that after missing the chance to get a Destroyer droid I was really giving a serious thought to getting C3PO at least for the pieces but I guess I would have gotten pretty disappointed if most of the gold were stickers (albeit the technic wings in gold would allow me to build pretty epic mechs, hmnn) specially those stickers that cover more than one piece are just wrong. The actual model is pretty poor, it just does not look like C3PO. I think that these technic starwars models basically jumped the shark, they were great in the first wave with the pit droid, destroyer droid and battle droid, but the next waves had some things that were pretty dubious, we have the unrecognizable C3PO and R2D2 but worse, the Darth Vader and Storm Trooper which are just wrong as technic models (they are human!). I wish LEGO would retake this idea now, because 6 years of Bionicle evolution has really improved the design of large technic figures. Some very tall Bionicle 'titans' have great leg posability AND stability thanks to the new leg and waist designs. Although I hope the cool functions are kept (that's something in which Bionicle titans got much worse in comparison to the first models). Plus gold pieces have become less of an issue and they could really make a C3PO without so many stickers this time. The Mindstorms R2D2. I wonder if you will do a review of THAT, it looks awesome and a cousin of mine found a bag of used parts that contained many pieces (albeit not the important ones and some tons missing).

The skeptical cynic in me thinks that Beckham truly giving hints to LEGO will end up in some very lame sets that are very expensive because they are Beckham-designed. Although... If he loved building the Taj Mahal then he is pretty serious at this, maybe he is very good with LEGO, maybe he even posted MoCs in EB and we don't know it was him! o_O. Hmnn, the sets that are made for more mature audiences have 16+, like the UCS licensed sets or the modular buildings. usually when sets have 7-16 they are very simple and well... I don't usually buy them to keep them built but for the pieces or something.

Are links to the pictures allowed? If not then you left one in the last page.

meh, I sometimes wonder if megabloks are actually competing against imaginext rather than LEGO. I think PotC theme could rock even though the movies never interested me. Finally a chance to have a LEGO ghost ship.

Nice review. I like this set (although I guess I'll never see it in my whole life). Finally an apple product that is worth purchasing for its retail price! (10 bucks for such a collectible, yay!)

Hmnn, I actually hope the dark red is a mistake or something. I am not sure about other people but when I see both mata red and dark red in the same figure it often looks awful. It is like each color would make the other look like rubbish, it causes some negative feedback. And it does seem a little random that so few bits are dark red.

I once bought a bulk of bionicle pieces that turned out to have plenty of pieces from this droid ( unfortunately, not all). The recolors in metallic blue are pretty unique, but my favorite pieces are definitely the trans-red pieces used in the gun, they are acceptably not unique to this set but they are still very nice and useful. The other recolors would be great if I had any idea where to use them (I don't regularly make blue robots, you know). Thank you for the reviews. Before your next reviews (and hoping you did't yet dissassemble the other droids) could you please make some pics of the sets next to a minifig? Specially for the destroyer droid I am really interested in knowing the scale.

Wow, that's awesome.

IMHO whenever you share instructions it is always a good idea to include a license. Specially if you say that something is copyrighted to you. (Since you don't include a license but include a copyright note, then I wouldn't be able to assume you are fine with people redistributing your instructions). If you include a copyright notice you need to also include a note about what are accepted uses, and whether other people can redistribute or modify your work. To be honest, I don't think that would be a good idea. Perhaps if you replace "Relatively decent" with "lower than bricklink's equivalent to the pieces' cost" and instead of giving their pieces back you keep the pieces/mocs for your own collection or do get rid of them through bl or something. Maybe then it would be a lesson. But most likely the kids will get extremely excited/greedy after the first "sale" and try again until they sell all their pieces so that they can get a new set (which they will try to resell as a MoC in the future). I wouldn't let them go with it. I would discourage them by saying that they might regret losing their MoCs like that in the future or by saying that re-selling their toys is not allowed :/ . In the extreme case they still push with the idea, I would really tell them that assuming they manage to sell their MoCs they wouldn't sell that much. Yeah, it would break their hearts but sometimes it is necessary... Or maybe if it is so easy for them to get rid of their MoCs then they don't really like LEGO that much but the novelty and it would be better to switch to an alternative until this phase ends.

I guess it depends on what your definition of most basic.