Aanchir

For me what made Galidor parts so extremely limited were their super-specialized textures and limited connection points. Some Ben 10 parts like the feet and upper legs had dreadfully few connection points, but others like the lower legs actually had more connection points than Bionicle parts of the same size. And texture-wise, it was a far cry from Galidor or even G1 Bionicle. Everything was very smooth, like classic LEGO, and in hindsight it's easy to see those smooth surfaces and 3.2mm pin holes as a forerunner to CCBS shells. I kind of wish I had more Ben 10 parts, even though in a lot of ways CCBS has evolved past them (more connection points, limb beams that can be chained endlessly, etc). I've seen many great uses of some of those parts in MOCs since the sets came out. Of course, there are several reasons I didn't pick up the sets at the time. They had a very poor price-per-piece, which is probably one of their biggest similarities with Galidor. I was still feeling burnt out on Bionicle (didn't even get into Hero Factory until 2011 when the promise of the CCBS compelled me to give it a try). And perhaps most importantly, I had no interest in the Ben 10 IP. Even if the sets had been phenomenal designs, that alone might've discouraged me from buying them.

The light-up Inika tools may have all had the same function, but only two of them were swords (much like the Mata weapons). The others included an axe, a crossbow, a harpoon, and a drill. (plus, Hewkii had a chain and Nuparu had claws as secondary weapons). I think their biggest fault would be their size and shape limiting their versatility, rather than them not having enough variety. Although given how many times I've heard people talk about them as if they were all swords, maybe I'm wrong about that. I feel like the builds of this year's weapons help to make up for the core crystal blade piece being the same across all of them. The only two Toa weapons that strike me as "too similar" are Gali's and Pohatu's. Besides one having a propellor and the other having a flail, and some other decorative differences, both are staves with a single blade at the end. By comparison, the weapons of Lewa, Tahu, and Kopaka all feel very different despite all being sword-like. I also quite like how the crystal motif is so ubiquitous across the new Toa masks, weapons, and armor. It's a really neat way of making them feel upgraded/energized. Though I'm a bit disappointed that Onua's weapon doesn't have more of a crystal motif. With that said, I do think last year's Toa weapons were generally more appealing to me. It's not even so much about the varied molds for me, so much as the creative secondary functions and the weapon choices that felt so well-suited to the characters. Of course, I know that the dual-function weapon gimmick would have been hard to pull off two years in a row. Even in G1, the Toa Metru weapons never felt as impressive to me as the Toa Nuva weapons. But still, I can't help feeling like the 2016 Toa and their weapons struggle to measure up to the 2015 versions, which got so much right.

I'm not sure what toys-to-life games you're thinking of where a single brand-new character and vehicle cost $7.49. From what I've seen, Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and Amiibo single-character packs tend to be $13 to $20 RRP. It's only older characters, pre-owned characters, and non-character widgets like the Skylanders Trap Team trap packs or Disney Infinity power disks that I've seen for $10 or less RRP. What's more, those Skylanders and Disney Infinity single-character packs generally don't seem to offer nearly as much physical play potential OR as much in-game content as a LEGO Dimensions Fun Pack anyway. Most Disney Infinity and Skylanders character packs seem to only include a fairly static toy character and one corresponding in-game character... admittedly, with their own skill tree, something LEGO Dimensions characters don't have. If there is in fact more to each figure pack than that, then neither Skylanders nor Disney Infinity is doing a good job advertising it on their websites. By comparison, with a typical LEGO Dimensions Fun Pack you get not only a four-piece LEGO minifigure with five points of articulation and a corresponding in-game character with several different abilities, but also an upgradeable, rebuildable vehicle and a complete adventure world (if it's a character from a franchise you haven't already unlocked). With the Starter Pack and Level Packs, it's a bit more debatable whether you're getting a fair value. And if you're just in it for the bricks, then all LEGO Dimensions packs are definitely expensive compared to regular sets. But I see little debate whether the Fun Packs are priced fairly relative to other Toys-to-Life character packs.

Yeah, so many movies these days have been ruined this way. Deadpool, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mad Max: Fury Road, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. Seriously, Hollywood? Nobody wants to watch movies with humans in them! Serious answer, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that meta-narrative — in fact, I think it's one of the key things that made The LEGO Movie so profound, since instead of a generic "hero's journey" it helped pack the story with messages about storytelling, family, and childhood. But I also don't expect humans to be a part of The LEGO Ninjago movie. I think that meta-narrative will probably stay relegated to The LEGO Movie and its direct sequels, not spin-offs like this one or The LEGO Batman Movie. The most I could see them bringing the meta-narrative into either of these movies would be as an end credits gag or something like that. Someone from Finn's world may or may not be telling the story in all of these movies, but unless they and their world are a part of that story, then neither needs to be shown. The same as how movies set in the real world do not have to show any kind of deities, regardless of whether or not the filmmaker believes in them, except in cases like Bruce Almighty or Monty Python and the Holy Grail where one of those deities is an actual character in the story.

Besides katana colors, another thing that would be neat and useful is shuriken colors. There's no reason why all shurikens have to be gold. Silver Metallic and Titanium Metallic would work just as well — arguably better, from a story perspective, since you wouldn't risk confusing them for the Shurikens of Ice. Of course, the reason katanas come in so many more colors than shurikens or the Dragon Sword of Fire is probably that they're used in so many more sets. Last year shurikens came in nine sets and the Dragon Sword in just four sets. By contrast, regular katanas are used all over the place, probably both because they're some of the most generic ninja weapons and because they're compatible with multiple types of sword holders. Last year's sets included nine with katanas in Silver Metallic, eight with Black, twenty with Warm Gold, eleven with Spring Yellowish Green, and one with Titanium Metallic — about 32 sets in all! More katana colors wouldn't be a bad thing, and I'm sure we will see more in the future, but designers may not see an urgent need for that since there are already four or five colors available, so it'd take somewhat specific circumstances (like a new faction that uses katanas but needs different colors from the ninja, like last year's ghosts) for none of those colors to suffice.

He was still evil when the white version first showed up in Season 3, but at the end of Season 4 he ended up helping the good guys against Chen. Whether that makes him "good" is debatable, but the ninja did see fit to reward him for his aid. In the Ninja DB-X box art he is presented as a bad guy, fighting against Sensei Garmadon and wearing a harness matching the belts of Chen's followers, but this box art does not reflect the events or even the circumstances of the show. I kind of think the reduced detail on the white Pythor figure is made up for by the stylish Anacondrai harness (in the same style as Chen's followers). Mind you, in the show he never actually wears this harness, and his patterns in the show do still include the gold markings.

Toa Mahri Hewkii was the same color (Flame Yellowish Orange) as Mata Nui and Keetongu, though... in fact, the only canister set that used actual Bright Yellow as a primary color was Bitil. I didn't mind the switch to yellowish-orange for stone characters, because yellow and orange are basically how a lot of the Po-Matoran in Mask of Light and Legends of Metru Nui looked anyway (i.e. here, here. here, and even here and here). I had actually used Bright Yellow on a movie-styled Hafu MOC I built back in 2006 (if you can see it through the terrible, terrible picture quality), and if I'd had Flame Yellowish Orange in the same quantities I'd surely have used it. instead. Bright Orange and Flame Yellowish Orange are largely just brighter and more saturated versions of the Brick Yellow and Dark Orange that those Matoran characters already used frequently. Back in '01–03 brown was a bit of an odd duck since it was one of the only Toa primary colors that wasn't highly saturated. It was ironic, though, that it ended up being replaced by brighter colors well after all the other primary colors had been replaced with darker ones. The original brown color from Pohatu, Earth Orange, basically has the same relationship to the Bright Orange from Tahu as Metru Blue (Earth Blue) has to Mata Blue (Bright Blue). So it was pretty weird in 2006 and 2007 with Jaller, Hahli, and Matau using these dark "Metru" colors and then Hewkii using a color brighter even than most of the Toa Mata colors. If he hadn't had so much Titanium Metallic and later Black to offset it, he'd have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I personally do not agree, but it's an annoyingly widespread opinion. Obviously, Ninjago is primarily aimed at kids — but so are the vast majority of LEGO themes. And you rarely hear people saying the same thing about themes like LEGO City, LEGO Castle, LEGO Pirates, LEGO Scooby-Doo, and LEGO Super Heroes, all of which are typically aimed at even younger kids than Ninjago. Needless to say, any AFOL who holds sets like Ant-Man Final Battle, Tow Truck, Brainiac Attack, The Mystery Machine, and Fun in the Park - City People Pack (all aimed at ages 6–12 or 5–12) in high esteem, but who considers Anacondrai Crusher or Raid Zeppelin (aimed at ages 7–14) too childish, is in serious need of a reality check. They might not like Ninjago, and that's fine, but they can't prefer sets and themes aimed at even younger kids and rightly claim it's because Ninjago sets are too childish! It shouldn't. If you're an AFOL or TFOL and you're not exclusively buying sets aimed at ages 10+, 12+, or 14+, you need to come to terms that the thing you're enjoying is primarily meant for kids rather than for you. If you wouldn't accept the "adults can enjoy it too!" justification from a brony, how can you expect people to accept that from an AFOL or TFOL like you?

I don't think LEGO has ever released specific rankings of where all six Bionicle color groups fall in terms of popularity, just anecdotes about which colors sold best and which sold worst. It's possible that the popularity of green, black, and blue sets simply can't be generalized as easily as red, white, and brown sets. So for instance, in one series the green set might've sold best out of those three colors, and then in the next series the blue set might've sold best.

Brilliant MOC! It feels extremely unique and detailed! If there's one thing I'd suggest, it's that it could use some of the peaked roof motifs like you see in a lot of the Elves sets. Without them I feel like it almost feels too modern for Elvendale. What color are you using for the tan parts? It should be Brick Yellow, but it almost looks like Light Nougat (the skin color of the light-skinned Elves). It might just be the software you're using making it look so rosy, though. The crawling ivy on the sides is nice, though the rest of the side walls could use some more decoration — maybe even just using another color like Medium Nougat for the bottom row of bricks around the perimeter. The airship is great and I love all the features you incorporated into the observatory itself, including both brick-built and printed/stickered decor. It's very smart that you came up with a way for the observatory to open so you can see the "planetarium" area inside. Overall, this is probably one of the most creative LEGO Elves MOCs I've seen to date! Fantastic work!

LEGO posted pics of the exclusive fig here and here! Pretty nice! Interesting that the leg printing is different from Kai's (in the show, none of the ninja had leg printing with this costume, but LEGO added it to these two figs, I guess to make them feel more special). The comic book is a cool accessory for him. Wonder when we might get Cole in this costume. I'll be honest, I was kind of hoping for Skylor's new costume or Nya's Season 3 costume, but getting Jay in this armor is cool too!

Hmm... I don't think upper legs that short really work with those lower leg shells. It makes it look like the knee cover reaches way up onto her thigh, even if it's actually right over the knee joint. The all black back armor also feels rather odd without any black anywhere but the torso. Though I understand that your color options are very limited when using that torso construction.

Don't worry, I don't hate you one bit! I must have misread your post. I know my posts can sound abrasive sometimes so please try not to take it personally — it's something I struggle with when I have strong opinions about a topic, and it hurts me a lot when I find out somebody thinks I'm holding a grudge against them. The Toa Metru had great proportions and articulation for their time, and story-wise they were fantastic! But in terms of builds and colors they were really samey. The same that could also be said for the Toa Hordika, Vahki, 2004 Matoran, and Rahaga. It was just something LEGO struggled during that period. Summer 2005 was when LEGO started to play around a bit more with colors, shapes, and proportions again, with sets like the Visorak (who had differently sized legs and different secondary colors) and the Toa Hagah (who had different color blocking, varying armor shapes, and varying metallic accents).

Worse than the Bohrok-Kal? Worse than the 2008 Matoran? Worse than the Stars? You've GOT to be joking. Ball snaps and ball cups ARE Technic connections. And in my opinion, a number of the connections used in CCBS are more versatile than the ones on G1 Bionicle shells, not less. I can do way more things with a 3M CCBS shell than with a Toa Metru thigh shell, or with a 7M CCBS beam than with a Toa Metru shin beam. You'd wager wrong. This MOC by Christoffer Raundahl (who designed various G1 Bionicle sets including Cahdok & Gahdok, and was one of the inventors of the CCBS) is without a doubt a complex and engaging build, arguably more so than ANY Bionicle titan set, and I say that having gone to great lengths to reverse-engineer it. There's nothing remotely "dumbed down" about it. It's not just LEGO designers who can make amazing CCBS creations, either — another of my favorite MOCs is IGU's Scorpion King. But nobody can make MOCs this impressive with any building system if they're not imaginative enough to recognize the possibilities it offers. I disagree wholeheartedly. Most of those examples you listed from before 2007 are rather repetitive clone builds. The Protectors manage to have more personality than many of those examples in spite of having identical masks, thanks to their much more varied physiques, color schemes, and equipment. The 2015 Toa likewise have more personality than many of those examples due to their diverse proportions and silhouettes, creative dual-function weapons, and vibrant color schemes that don't follow a repetitive formula. If you genuinely think the Toa Metru, Toa Hordika, or Vahki (all of which had formulaic color schemes and identical or near-identical builds) have more personality than the 2015 Toa, frankly, you've lost touch with reality. EDIT: Whoops, my brother beat me to the punch. Sorry if some of the points I made sound like a repeat of what he said.

I don't know if I'd make that assumption. Something to remember about constraction is that it's not just another theme like Ninjago or Nexo Knights. And it hasn't been a "subtheme" of Technic since 2004 or so. Rather, it's its own product category. As such, a constraction theme doesn't necessarily have to sell as well as System themes to justify its existence, so long as it caters to a different type of builder than those themes. Mind you, I wouldn't have anything against the prospect of the constraction category continuing as spin-offs of other themes. But I don't know if the performance of Hero Factory and Bionicle G2 would be reason enough for LEGO to give up on original constraction lines. LEGO had decades of failures to develop a successful girl-oriented play theme, and yet they never gave up on that. Likewise, the Juniors theme seems to be doing well even after previous attempts at "transitional" themes like Jack Stone and 4 Juniors underperformed. The LEGO Group isn't one to give up that easily when it's a whole segment of their market that's at stake.

My Walmart didn't have the event and also nobody there even knew anything about it.

I was actually thinking that it'd be funny if as an end-credits gag they showed a real Batman (played, of course, by Will Arnett) playing with LEGO Batman. Unlike The LEGO Movie, it wouldn't be strictly a part of the story, just a joking implication that if Batman played with LEGO, this is the sort of story he might tell.

Even if Finn DOES decide what happens in The LEGO Movie's world, that doesn't mean there's no point. It just means that we know who created the story. To put it another way. Suppose you're watching a movie where the characters come face to face with God or a similar omnipotent creator figure. Just because the entity who created that world and dictates what happens there is shown on screen, doesn't mean there's no longer any point to anything that happens in that universe. After all, those things still happen, there's just now a meta-reason why they happen. Emmet's world is no less real to its inhabitants than our world is to us. It's not impossible to imagine some greater entity pulling the strings — there have been people who believe that about real life in some form or another for millennia. But unless you have a really fatalistic mindset, believing that doesn't make real life "pointless". Nor should that be the case with a fictional movie.

Your BB-8 looks fantastic! It's awesome that you were able to create a sturdy spherical shape using so many non-spherical Technic elements, and even incorporate some of BB-8's gadgets. The big sticking point is still the magnet problem. The main LEGO-compatible magnet piece that is still in use today is the train buffer magnet. However, I realize it might not be strong enough. The other working Wall-E project on LEGO Ideas uses the classic magnets from the 90s, but as you seem to be aware, those magnets are no longer usable in LEGO sets for safety reasons (and I'm not even sure if they'd be strong enough for a model as rugged as yours anyway). I don't know if any working BB-8 project on LEGO Ideas will truly be viable until the magnet problem is solved. It is true that LEGO does make changes to LEGO Ideas projects during development and even, with the Doctor Who project, was able to introduce new molds by working them into the design budget for another theme (LEGO Dimensions). However, those new molds were purely cosmetic. If they had not been created, the set could hypothetically have used existing parts, and in fact, the original proposal DID use only existing molds. I do not think the LEGO Group would approve a project that fundamentally depends on new molds to function as advertised. However, I believe your BB-8 model is closer to being a viable LEGO product than any other of its kind. And I agree with you that Technic models are far too often based on "real life" vehicles without much of a sense of fantasy. I have supported your project and hope that between now and the project reaching review a solution to the magnet problem presents itself!

Some people definitely are. There's a whole topic for discussing that here. I'm not too particular one way or the other. Bright Green is an underappreciated color IMO, and while it might be too bright for some layouts, it's no less realistic or aesthetically pleasing as a rule than classic green (Dark Green in the LEGO Group's official nomenclature). This is far from the first set to use Bright Green as a color for grass. It's a common grass color in Friends, Creator, Minecraft, and Classic (formerly Bricks & More/FreeStyle/). Here are several different examples of previous sets with Bright Green grass. Of course, I still remember in 2012 when the garbage truck and recycling truck from LEGO City and the Green Lantern buildable figure from LEGO Super Heroes used Bright Green extensively, and a lot of people thought it was an entirely new color! In actuality, it's been around since at least 1994, mostly as baseplates and foliage.

I generally prefer printed LEGO animals to non-printed ones. This particularly goes for printed eyes with a little sparkle in them like modern minifigure eyes have, but none of the parrots have really had that. Nevertheless, I think the printed parrot is perhaps the most "finished"-looking of these three. Now, of LEGO parrots in general, my favorite would probably be the macaw from LEGO Friends. While its rounded shape and cutesy proportions are designed to accompany mini-dolls rather than minifigures, its colors and patterns are simply stunning! I wonder if the LEGO parrot might be due for a substantial redesign soon. The LEGO owl, dog, horse, bear, crocodile, and now monkey have all been redesigned in some capacity. Obviously it should still be somewhat geometric so it doesn't feel out-of-place among blocky minifigures, but LEGO has shown with many of their recent animal designs that they can keep animals geometric while still making them more lifelike than their counterparts from the 90s or naughts. And now that the LEGO Group has more molding techniques in their wheelhouse like the overmolding used for various recent minifigure parts, I think they could potentially create a parrot that's even better than the classic printed one!

Frankly I prefer Lewa with Bright Green. Dark Green worked alright when he had Bright Yellowish Green to offset it. But I think Bright Green is a much nicer primary color when taken on its own. Lewa, Gali, and Pohatu's new colors are now all closer to the same brightness as Tahu's traditional Bright Red, and as a bonus, Lewa and Pohatu's color are a nice "happy medium" between their darker classic colors and the hyper-saturated colors they had in the Phantoka sets. That said, I do sort of wonder if maybe a future version of Lewa might be able to use Dark Green together with a Bright Green primary color, the same way this year's Gali and Akida sets use Bright Blue together with their Dark Azur primary color.

Everything I have seen indicates that the Hagemans are still writing this and Charlie Bean is directing (not Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who directed The LEGO Movie). We've had this discussion before, though. If there is a story I've missed that says other writers have taken their place then please fill me in, but I have yet to see anything that credits writers besides the Hageman brothers.

Warner Bros. knew the LEGO Batman Movie would be coming out in 2017 when they made the announcement that they were pushing the LEGO Ninjago Movie back. If they thought two movies seven months apart would be too much fatigue, then surely they would have pushed it to a later date than that in the first place.

I don't think that type of story is really as "hated" as you think — there's a reason why Spider-Man has long been one of the most popular Marvel superheroes. Spider-Man was one of the first teen superheroes in comics who wasn't somebody else's sidekick and had to deal with the usual trials of adolescence alongside his crime-fighting career. Rather than being a "Mary-Sue hipster", he was quite the opposite — a rare superhero for his time who actually had to deal with challenges of everyday life as well as emotional insecurities that teens could relate to. His superhero persona was an escape from his very real civilian life, rather than his civilian life just being a ploy to hide or facilitate his superhero adventures. And these types of stories aren't just designed to be a hit with kids and teens — very often, they are, which is a part of why people keep telling them. As a matter of fact, I just recently got into a show that fits that very "high schooler by day" mold, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. Sure, it has lots of cliche and tropey elements, not to mention a somewhat formulaic "monster of the week" storyline. But I still thoroughly enjoy it, in large part because it's full of endearing characters with lots of quirks and vulnerabilities. Ironically, even though LEGO Ninjago has never exactly been this type of story, the lyrics of its theme song The Weekend Whip allude to this kind of "double-life" — dealing with tedious and mundane challenges on the weekdays so that when the weekend arrives you're ready to do all the more exciting things you've spent all week anticipating.