Aanchir

I'm just curious to see if we ever get a set featuring King Halbert's castle in Knightonia. That would be a great set for the future! A peasant village with windmills and farmer bots could also be really fantastic. And maybe King Halbert's monorail/train/tram-like royal carriage that's appeared in some episodes of the show.

Here's a list of recent sets with them and here's a list of older sets with them (2013 and 2014 sets are on both lists since they could include either the new Design ID or the old one, but the two versions are more or less identical). It's not just older sets that have them, but you're right that the ninja in the ghost wave primarily used other colors due to the emphasis on black "Deepstone" weapons.

You could call that generic, or you could call it consistent. I think the latter better fits how it impacts my building. I don't find it limiting at all — in fact, I find it liberating, since I don't have to worry so much about parts no longer "fitting in" visually or functionally just because they're a few years old or even from a different theme entirely. This even factors into my enjoyment of the sets. Standing a Toa Nuva next to a Toa Metru or a 2003 Matoran next to a 2004 Matoran feels profoundly awkward, like they don't even belong to the same universe. But putting Stormer 2.0 next to Breez from Brain Attack doesn't result in nearly the same dissonance. Anyway, I've thought long and hard about what G1 sets I'd most readily recommend, and I think 8811 Toa Lhikan and Kikanalo might top the list. It's available used on Bricklink for not much more than its inflation-adjusted RRP, didn't have as many issues with fragile joints as 2008–2010 sets, and was generally a very strong design. Lhikan has a unique version of the iconic Kanohi Hau, an appealing color scheme, dual-function weapons, and a gear function. And the Kikanalo had a build that was complex but still posable and somewhat coherent (though its textures are admittedly a bit all over the place). Another recommendation would be 8699 Takanuva. It's an impressively large design with a creative build, good leg suspension, and a coherent color scheme. It has a shooter but no gear function. That one did have the fragile 2008–2010 joints, though, so getting it used might be slightly riskier, and I'm not sure it's worth the price it goes for new. The 2001 Toa are cheap enough used on BrickLink that if you're interested in classic Bionicle you might as well get one and see how you like it and whether you want to get any more. If you buy them as parts rather than as complete sets they might even be cheaper than their inflation-adjusted RRP. Needless to say, their posability was EXTREMELY limited (no articulation in their necks, elbows, or knees and limited articulation in their hips and shoulders), but they are iconic, coherent designs with cool functions and color schemes, and overall I think they've aged fairly well as long as you are willing tolerate the aspects that are rudimentary by today's standards.

I don't really know if it'd have made a difference if they were translucent. They still wouldn't fully match the transparent parts of the characters, since molding them in polycarbonate wasn't an option. Actually, I almost think the color matching might even be BETTER with the blades as opaque colors than as translucent colors. If I compare Rocka and Frost Beast's blade pieces IRL to Lewa and Kopaka's elemental blades, the elemental blades actually feel like a closer match for the other Tr. Bright Green and Tr. Light Blue parts, since they aren't as light and milky-looking. The only elemental blade color in the Toa and Creature sets that really bothers me is Tahu/Ikir's Bright Orange elemental blades, since they doesn't really match the hue of his Tr. Flu. Reddish Orange parts. Bright Red might have actually been a closer match there — it certainly worked alright on the chest printing of the Skull Creatures. On a side note, I do feel like it's a darn shame that Onua doesn't have any real crystal motifs on his weapon. Even if he didn't use the elemental blade piece specifically, any part with a sufficiently crystalline texture could have helped him feel more consistent with the other Toa.

The Inika were not the first sets to have disproportionately long arms, but treating it as equivalent to the Mata or Nuva is a bit disingenuous. The Mata and Nuva still had their wrists more or less lined up with their thighs (not too unrealistic), while the Inika had their wrists lined up with their knees. I don't think anybody has ever tried to claim that the Inika were the first or the only sets with weird proportions. What's more, many people in the Bionicle community have been complaining about the Inika's "gorilla arms" since the 2006 sets came out. If you think it's just a post-hoc complaint that sprung up as a way of validating the 2.0 heroes' proportions you're kidding yourself. It's true, Bionicle characters are not humans and their proportions do not have to be humanoid. However, that doesn't mean proportional changes are utterly meaningless. Making the shoulders or hips wider or narrower, making the arms or legs longer or shorter... these things change how people see the characters. A character with unrealistically wide shoulders will typically look powerful and burly, while a character with unrealistically narrow shoulders will typically look slight and delicate. A character with unrealistically long arms will often look somewhat cartoonish and ungainly, like an orangutan. Sometimes you might want those things, other times you might not. So the fact that Bionicle proportions don't need to look realistic doesn't mean that the WAYS they're unrealistic shouldn't matter to people. Some people are just more bothered by unrealistically long arms than by unrealistically large hands or feet, and that doesn't somehow make them hypocrites. Now, if a person were to praise the proportions of one set and denigrate the proportions of another that were actually largely unchanged? THEN they might need a reality check. But generally, that's not something I see happen too often.

Letting it go to review would mean giving people a false sense that it might pass up until the review results are announced (which could be months from now). Honestly I think it's a lot better for LEGO Ideas to reject projects that conflict with an existing product as soon as they can reveal their reasons instead of leading people on.

Interesting. Looking at the table of contents, it kinda surprises me (in a good way) that the NRG ninja and Kendo ninja all get pages of their own. In the original edition they just had one page for all the NRG ninja and one for all the Kendo ninja. The second facial expression on the new Jay figure is yet another pleasant surprise! I look forward to adding this book to my collection!

Even if they were transparent colors, they'd really only have the sort of milky translucency as Toa Hordika Vakama's blazer claws and the Brain Attack/Legends of Chima swords, since they're made of that same sort of plastic. So they wouldn't have been a perfect match color-wise either way. I think LEGO did a good job in most cases selecting solid colors that closely resembled the sets' transparent colors, the exception being Ikir/Tahu. The Bright Orange tip of their crystal blade pieces isn't nearly reddish enough to match the Tr. Flu. Reddish-Orange parts those sets use so extensively, and they don't use Bright Orange or Tr. Bright Orange anywhere else on their designs. I actually think it might've been better if they'd just used Bright Red for their crystal blade pieces, same as how the skull creatures used Bright Red on their chest prints and on the tip of Skull Grinder's staff.

Slight correction: Season Two was released on Blu-Ray. But yeah, I don't know if LEGO or Warner Bros would be interested in putting exclusive minifigures in DVD sets, especially for past seasons that have already been released without minifigures.

Their music, actually. It's two people (Jay Vincent and Michael Kramer). And I agree, the musical score of the show really adds a lot to it. I hope that the music for the movie is either made by them or heavily inspired by the music they've written for the show. I also hope they keep a lot of the voice talent from the TV show. I'm a bit more concerned about that aspect since it's not unheard of for theatrical movies (even animated ones like The LEGO Movie) to want to get big names to help put people in seats. Despite not being A-list Hollywood actors, the voice actors for the show are extremely experienced and great at what they do. It's not that I doubt other actors could measure up, but if the voices change noticeably I think it will be a point of contention for many fans of the show.

Given the right circumstances, yes. You have to bear in mind that a theatrical movie is the kind of thing that can create a surge in demand. So if there was a LEGO Marvel Super Heroes theatrical movie then yes, a CMF line for that theme would probably be a good call! That's something I think AFOLs often miss out on. Sets, themes, and minifigures aren't made because there's a NEED for them, they're made because there's an AUDIENCE for them. Sure, there might have already been a set of such-and-such a character or such-and-such a vehicle or such-and-such a location two to four years ago, but if there are enough younger fans that there's a substantial audience for a new version, that can be all the justification LEGO needs. Just look at LEGO City: AFOLs routinely get on that theme's case for being repetitive and having police and fire waves every year, and yet City still routinely ranks among the bestselling themes and the bestselling sets each year. Whether or not the need is there, the audience certainly is, and from a business standpoint that's generally the more important factor.

Even if you can't get them replaced, reporting this to LEGO Customer Service could help them know to look into this issue so they can prevent it in future sets. I've personally had parts break like this but never this regularly, and usually after years of use.

Clarifying on this: People can waffle as much as they want about what UCS/Ultimate Collector's Series means, but the meaning of D2C/Direct to Consumer is incontrovertible: sets that are designed to be sold/distributed primarily through shop.LEGO.com and LEGO Brand Retail rather than other retail channels. It's not a special status bestowed upon especially large, expensive, or "grown-up" sets. It's just a classification for how LEGO gets the sets to consumers. 10251 and 21128 are D2C sets, but so are promotional gift-with-purchase polybags like 30603 and 30602.

On Facebook earlier today I pulled some quotes from that absurd BrickFanatics article and addressed them in turn: "I found this years modular the Brick Bank lacking compared to earlier sets with LEGO forgetting that these sets were/are aimed at adults who don’t care for play features"? Speak for yourself. Plenty of adults love a good play feature, and the Brick Bank's play features are all very tastefully integrated so I don't see how any of them hurt its value as a display item. "What sort of parent is going to drop £170 on one set"? American parents in 1989 were evidently OK with spending the equivalent of £153 in today's money on http://brickset.com/...Seas-Barracuda. And motorized LEGO City trains (aimed at an even younger age range than the Minecraft village) have been priced at £140 apiece for years now. For that matter, parents routinely spend large sums of money on other non-LEGO gifts like video game systems. Parents spending a lot on their kids is not some new or surprising trend. "AFOLS have little to no interest in Minecraft"? That's sheer ignorance. Many, MANY Minecraft players are adults and I've seen plenty of posts from AFOLs who enjoy the Minecraft theme. Heck, the original LEGO Minecraft Micro-World became a set because it only took ONE DAY for ten thousand Minecraft-loving adults to support the project, and it was one of the most successful LEGO Ideas sets! I personally have no interest in Minecraft but I'm not fool enough to think that all AFOLs feel the same way. "Where are parents going to find £170 to drop on a large set like this in the middle of the year with summer holidays, expensive school trips etc coming up"? That's not very important, now, is it? After all, LEGO schedules most of their big non-exclusive releases for the summer, but that doesn't mean they expect to sell the majority of those the minute they hit shelves. Rather, summer LEGO releases typically hit their peak sales in the run-up to the Christmas season. The same will probably happen with this set — releasing it in the summer just makes it available for a longer window of time in advance of that shopping rush. "This year I’ve yet to spend a penny on LEGO and can honestly say I don’t see that changing anytime soon"? Good for you. More amazing LEGO sets for the rest of us. I for one have been thoroughly enjoying this year's LEGO Elves, Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and Bionicle sets. Overall this article just feels whiny to me. There's nothing wrong with skipping sets you don't like, but claiming LEGO is on the decline because not enough sets are tailored to your interests is taking things a bit far. The fact that you don't appreciate what Minecraft has to offer doesn't make LEGO Minecraft any less valid. I don't have any personal interest in Minecraft, but a lot of people do for perfectly legitimate reasons. There aren't many games with a world as profoundly interactive as Minecraft's (even creative toys like LEGO can't allow for the kinds of interactions between materials that Minecraft has), and there are a lot of gamers who are willing to make some concessions on how a game looks in exchange for that kind of creative liberty (generally, you can't have both — if Minecraft worlds were photorealistic they'd be a nightmare to try and render on a typical home computer). Sure, there isn't a need for a Minecraft line, but no LEGO theme (not even in-house ones) has never existed because of there was a specific need for it. Rather, themes exist because there's an audience for them, and that's just as true of LEGO Minecraft as of a lot of other themes. According to this press release, LEGO Minecraft was even one of the top-selling LEGO product lines for United States retailers last year. That's huge.

The Ninjago fan community on Tumblr frequently manages to impress me! Both in terms of their creative abilities and their sense of humor. Sometimes there's a bit of drama, as with any fandom, but for the most part I feel like it's a great community and I wish I could be a bigger part of it.

Good review! I was just building 70604 Tiger Widow Island the other day and was struck by the superficial similarities to this set. The flag stickers in 70604 even feel very Islanders-esque in terms of their colors. But of course the stone face in 70604 is a lot more aggressive, and the building more Japanese-inspired instead of Polynesian-inspired. I looked up this review so I could see how else the two sets differed. Other than those I mentioned before, the biggest differences are that 70604 has a craggy bridge and rock column instead of sandy beaches, a giant spider instead of a crocodile, and flying machines instead of boats. And of course, 70604 has more than twice as many pieces and doesn't sit on a solid baseplate. Still, I can't help wondering if 70604 was inspired by 6264. I'm friends with the designer of 70604 on Facebook, so I guess I'll ask him. I think a lot of Pirates fans should look into adding 70604 to their collections! It's a great design for a mysterious island hideaway even if you take away the futuristic bits like the sky pirate figs and flying machines. Even though it's unlikely, I'd love to see more Islanders allusions in Ninjago or other themes. :)

Trains are a difficult case because they really can't be convincingly expanded to more than eight studs wide without introducing a new style of track. And also of course because train layouts tend to be quite large and expensive to begin with, and making them larger and more expensive might limit their already small audience. So while the scale of other LEGO City sets gets more realistic, trains sort of get left behind. However, just because changing the scale of trains is difficult doesn't mean that all other City sets ought to stick to increasingly limiting and outdated design standards.

Usually I just call myself an AFOL or LEGO fan. I would disagree about needing to aim for a complete collection to call yourself a collector, though. A complete collection is just one type of collection, and it's not even the ideal type of collection for everybody. I collect My Little Pony toys and my collection isn't anywhere close to complete even if you break it down by series, but while I generally don't self-identify as a collector, I think I still qualify as one. Collectors are allowed to exercise discretion in what they want to have in their collections. I think it's honestly kind of sad how many LEGO collectors come up with ridiculous excuses for why certain sets don't count as the thing they collect instead of just being honest and saying "it's the sort of thing I collect, but I'd rather spend my money on other things". For instance, the people who insist that the Market Street isn't a REAL modular building because it's LEGO Factory themed, or that the Sandcrawler isn't a REAL Ultimate Collectors' Series set because it doesn't have a nameplate.

How did Rebooted mess everything — err, anything — up? If anything, it seems to be one of the most consistently named seasons around. In some countries (such as Australia), Season One was "Way of the Ninja" and "King of Shadows" and Season Two was "Rise of the Snakes" through "Rise of the Ultimate Spinjitzu Master". In other countries (including the United States, France, Great Britain and Germany), Season One was "Rise of the Snakes" through "Day of the Great Devourer" and Season Two was "Darkness Shall Rise" through "Rise of the Ultimate Spinjitzu Master". But I'm not aware of any countries where Rebooted ("The Surge" through "The Titanium Ninja") has been identified as anything other than Season Three. The Australian DVDs do continue to complicate things by identifying both Tournament of Elements and Possession as Season Four (darnit, so much for keeping things consistent), but for Rebooted, at least, they were finally in sync with most other countries whose DVD numbering I'm aware of. Numbering aside, though, I'm just now realizing that the Australian DVDs for Rebooted, Tournament of Elements, and Possession have some pretty amazing cover art!

The Avengers Helicarrier project actually reached review and was rejected at that stage, rather than being archived like this project was. But it was for more or less the same reason — the SHIELD Helicarrier set was officially unveiled in January 2015, so development on it would have begun many months before the Ideas project was pitched in May 2014. Even more moderately-sized $30 or $40 sets usually begin development fifteen to eighteen months before they're released — huge exclusive sets like the Ghostbusters Firehouse, SHIELD Helicarrier, and UCS Star Wars sets are generally in development for even longer. That isn't to say that the Ideas project would have stood a chance otherwise... it was unrealistically large and (as a digital model) might not have even been able to support its own weight, so turning it into a set would have basically meant starting over from scratch. The project creator made a valiant effort to reduce its size, but even that only reduced it to 6700 bricks, which would have meant a $500 or higher price tag.

It seems like this summer, Titanium Ninja Tumbler, Airjitzu Battle Grounds, and Samurai X Cave Chaos will all be store exclusives in the United States, since none of these were shown at New York Toy Fair. However, it's unclear which will be for what store. I imagine Samurai X Cave Chaos will probably be a TRU exclusive, by virtue of it being a $120 set and TRU generally getting the largest exclusives. In general, the trend seems to be at least three Ninjago store exclusives per year, except for 2013 and 2014 which both had far fewer sets than usual.

I think plenty of people still care about the beautiful craftsmanship of sets... but frankly, lots of sets have beautiful craftsmanship, and most people don't have the money or space to buy all of them just on those merits. The minifigure selection can be a good way to narrow your choices down. In my case, I didn't buy Chain Cycle Ambush. Not because it's a bad set, but because there were so many other amazing sets out there that also had minifigures I didn't already have. If I hadn't already gotten Airjitzu Zane and Wrayth way back in May, then maybe I might've chosen differently, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Still, minifigure selection is not the only factor in what sets I get. If all I cared about were minifigures there are a LOT of other sets I could skip, including some expensive ones. For that matter, I could save a lot of money just getting the figs from the more expensive sets on BrickLink. But then there are all kinds of amazing sets I'd miss out on. Thinking about what minifigures I have and which I still need just makes it a little easier not to buy everything.

From my perspective, a "mismatch" is honestly sometimes more realistic. Compact cars like in 3177 and 7939 realistically should not be the same width as a police interceptor like in 60128. Nor should an air show stunt plane like 60019, a private plane like 60102, and a jumbo jet like in 7893 all be the same size. Google "airport fire engine" and you'll see a variety of trucks much like 6440 that can be massive compared to an ordinary municipal fire engine. Complaining about things not being the same doesn't hold water if in reality they're supposed to be different. Of course, LEGO City and LEGO Town alike are cartoon versions of reality, not a flawless reflection of it, but that kind of abstraction generally means more license to vary the sizes and appearances of things, not less.

I'm not sure how you think Ninjago is petering out... it was one of the LEGO Group's top five themes last year, it's recently had some phenomenal set designs, and a lot of the comments on social media have high praise for the latest season ("Skybound"), despite it not even having aired in the United States yet. The age range for the sets was recently expanded with the theme's first AFOL/TFOL-oriented D2C set and its first Juniors sets. Even the LEGOLAND parks have started taking advantage of the theme's momentum with lots of new Ninjago-themed attractions. Besides, the LEGO Group declared it an evergreen theme just last year, so for it to be "on the way out" so soon would mean something's gone horribly wrong in less than a year's time, and I've seen no indication of that. I don't see how bringing back a bunch of old villains somehow closes the door on new adventures, either. It's true that some franchises do play that card as their swan song (Bionicle being a good example in LEGO terms), but that doesn't mean that's the only way that card can be played. Superhero cartoons and comics bring together their old villains all the time. The LEGO Group was a much weaker company for a lot of that time, though... that alone is a major difference in circumstances between now and the early naughts, and might change how many sci-fi themes they can sustain these days. Still, you're right that there are a lot of LEGO themes with sci-fi leanings these days, so having those AND Star Wars AND a new Space theme might take things over the limit.

You could potentially make some nice transparent or mostly-transparent stands using these parts from set 7962. I can't remember if I've seen people actually do this but I've definitely seen other people suggest it.