Aanchir

On this note, I'm quite curious about what kinds of tools/weapons to expect in 2016. Will they do dual-function weapons for the Toa again or not? Will any of the sets have launchers, and if so, would they be new designs or adapted from existing designs? Will the Toa's weapons resemble the types of weapons they had this year (i.e. Lewa still using an axe, Tahu still using swords, etc), or will they change them up for variety's sake?

The minifigure is Silver Metallic (Flat Silver), not gunmetal (Titanium Metallic/Pearl Dark Grey). That would make a Captain Phasma figure even simpler, since a lot of the parts will already be available in Silver Metallic from Jango. The only question is whether they'd have two figures as visually similar as the First Order Stormtrooper and Captain Phasma together within a single wave. But seeing how prominently Phasma is featured in other lines of The Force Awakens merchandise, I actually wouldn't be surprised for her to be in the first wave of The Force Awakens buildable figures, even with the First Order Stormtrooper already confirmed.

Beautiful new song inspired by the latest My Little Pony episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" It's the 151st song in my MLP fan music playlist on iTunes.

There's an Okoto letter hidden in every other summer webisode. Episode 10 has a "Y" (above a doorway at 1:00), episode 12 has an "I" (on a corner column at 0:04), and episode 14 has a "U" (on the grave marker behind Gali at 0:24). Since there are believed to be nine webisodes for this half of the year, it seems we'll have five letters by the end. A number of people have guessed that they might be the letters of the word "Unity", only scrambled.

Besides Galidor-style click hinges being extremely awkward and limiting articulation (and the joints rarely looking much better than these sets from many angles anyway), part of the point of this building system is that it is a unified system of shells and beams and not a disparate selection of prefabricated limb pieces. Getting more realism than this would probably require much more specialized parts that lack that trademark LEGO versatility.

I do not expect LEGO to talk much about Nexo Knights at NYCC. Obviously as a "big bang" theme it'll be a big deal for the company, but probably not something that they expect Comic Con attendees to care about until it actually begins. You didn't see them promoting Atlantis, Ninjago, Friends, Legends of Chima, or Elves at Comic Con prior to those themes' launch. It wasn't until Ninjago was up and running and actually had a fanbase of its own that LEGO started to hold panels for it at SDCC. At these kinds of events, LEGO is much more likely to promote themes attendees are already familiar with on some level, like Bionicle or their various licensed themes. Unless LEGO repeats last year and focuses their entire NYCC presence on one theme, I think it's perfectly plausible that Bionicle will be represented on some level. Fan Expo Canada was last weekend, and the LEGO booth featured Bionicle building tables. One of the official Fan Expo Canada tote bags was even Bionicle-themed, featuring the key visual of Tahu fighting Skull Grinder on the other. It was apparently their third most popular design.

Believe me, I totally get what you're saying! A lot of the time many devoted LEGO fans seem to think that LEGO isn't doing a good job if every buyer doesn't want every set. But really I'm sure they do just fine with typical buyers getting just a few sets each year. Look at LEGO City, which has new police stations and fire trucks just about every year. Obviously there aren't a lot of buyers who enthusiastically buy up every new police and fire series year after year. But for LEGO what's important is to have those highly popular standbys out for new buyers just getting into the City theme, while also having a variety of other sets that "mix things up" like the "Great Vehicles" sets (which are different every year) or this year's new Deep Sea Exploration sets. I think something similar could be said for constraction. Next year we're getting new versions of the Toa, and it wouldn't surprise me if their builds are similar to this year's versions. But I don't think LEGO is counting on every Bionicle fan who bought this year's Tahu lining up for next year's Tahu. Instead, they probably expect those fans to gravitate first towards the new villain and supporting characters — and then, if they have money left over, look at which of the new Toa stand out most from the previous versions. LEGO is an expensive toy, so they fully expect most of their buyers to pick and choose. As for pieces, it's true that new pieces can be a good way of enticing buyers to buy new sets. But with that said, I think a few new pieces can go a long way, especially if also you use the existing pieces in new and different ways.

I can see how that'd be a problem for somebody who thinks reuse of pieces is something that ought to be hidden. Personally, I don't feel that way. Any good building system should be built upon a foundation that it can refer to again and again whenever the same design needs come up. If a figure needs a forearm five modules long with connections on each end and in the center, and you have a basic beam exactly that length, it'd be a waste not to use it. When new design needs come up that can't be efficiently met with existing parts (like how to create a limb that resembles a skinned human bone, or how to create a shin that mimics the shape of human muscles), that's when new elements can be introduced to complement the basic ones.

I figure he's talking about cheaper for the consumer. The average price of a set in 2011 was $12.45 and the most common price was $8, instead of the average price and most common price both being $15 as they are this year. But it's also important to remember that the only reason Hero Factory's second year (22 sets) was so much larger than its first (13 sets) is that its first year included only a single wave of sets in the summer and its second year included both a winter wave AND a summer wave. When comparing two sequential years that have the same number of waves, there's far less reason to expect a big change in the total number of sets. I think it's plausible that the total number of Bionicle sets in 2016 might be close to the total number of Bionicle sets in 2015.

Bear in mind that sometimes when a part lacks friction it can mean the mold itself is wearing out. Steel LEGO molds don't last forever, and the more parts they produce, the more wear it causes to the mold itself. Thus LEGO has to retool or replace molds once the wear on the mold reaches a point that it can no longer produce parts meeting the LEGO Group's quality standards. A similar issue sprung up regarding this part from the Exo-Suit set. They were produced from the same mold that had produced that element since the 1980s, and obviously ones struck in 2015 had much less friction on the anti-stud than ones produced when the mold was new. Since then the mold has been replaced, so new instances of that part should have a much firmer connection. And not all molds are designed with the same lifespan. Maybe some molds that produce CCBS elements are just due for retooling or replacement in the near future.

Overall, I can't help but feel like the new wave is going to make a lot of people happy no matter what species the creatures are. After all, one of the big criticisms of this year's sets and story compared to the classic sets from 2001–2003 is that there is not a lot of wildlife, with the only animal sets being monsters like the Skull Spiders and Skull Scorpios. The 2016 range, with at least six creatures and three beasts, seems like it will change that. With that diversity of wildlife coupled with a "hunter" as a villain, I think nature will be a central theme to next year's story. There are some story-related things I can't help but wonder about, like whether the creatures will be one-of-a-kind legendary creatures or common ones. I can imagine the story for the year working out nicely either way, but making them common creatures could give the sets more "army-building" (or I guess more like herd/flock/pack-building) potential. Depending on what kind of parts they use, people could even potentially create palette swaps of them to create a more diverse range of wildlife.

Luke's holster is easy. It's just one of these on the back of each leg. I don't believe Cody has a holster of any kind. Cody's building instructions are already online.

Generally in today's sets, the black and grey beams are different sizes, same as how differently colored Technic axles are different sizes. So the 7M beam with a knee joint like Vader uses is Dark Stone Grey by default, while a 6M beam with a knee joint like Luke uses is Black by default.

I don't remember that particular conversation. Of course Google Trends data can't tell you everything. But that doesn't make it meaningless. Hero Factory not driving as much search traffic at its peak as Bionicle did can indicate a lot of things, like that the online Hero Factory community was never as large and active as the online Bionicle community (which I don't think was ever even up for debate). Still, you can't go so far as to use that data to indicate that Hero Factory was unsuccessful, any more than you can use a comparison between Ninjago and Bionicle to indicate that Bionicle was unsuccessful. That kind of conclusion would be assuming data that Google Trends can't give us, like what kind of budget was invested in each theme, what kind of returns were expected on that investment, and whether the search interest was reflected in actual sales.

Nothing to be ashamed of! Not even LEGO anticipated Ninjago becoming as big a deal as it did. Like any "big bang" theme, there were a lot of hopes riding on it making a big splash with its arrival, but its strength wasn't expected to last anywhere near as long as it did. As of this year, it's become an evergreen theme like LEGO City, which is a big step for a theme that was very nearly discontinued two years ago. Ninjago's success is extraordinary, even for a "big bang" theme. I'm sure some people in the Bionicle community might feel a bit miffed that Bionicle fans couldn't make enough of an impact for the theme to spring back so quickly after its cancellation the way Ninjago did. However, it's two very different scenarios. Bionicle had experienced a long, slow decline, and by the very end many of its most devoted fans were well outside its target audience. There had already been multiple attempts to reinvigorate the theme, to little avail. Whereas Ninjago's success was soaring by the time what was meant to be its final season had aired. Take a look at Ninjago vs. Bionicle on Google Trends, and realize that interest in Ninjago was at its peak when the decision to continue the theme was announced in December 2012, generating over twice as much search interest as Bionicle had in any month since Google began tracking this data in January 2004.

Some of them actually don't, at least not confirmed ones. The fan community likes to make up last names for them, which sometimes gets annoying when they can't settle on one last name and some settle on giving them middle names and hyphenated last names that combine all of the more popular fan choices. Jay has a last name because the last name of his parents (Ed and Edna Walker) is confirmed in the credits of some of the episodes they appear in. But this is the first time Jay's full name has been used anywhere. Zane's father's name is Dr. Julien, so some fans refer to him as Zane Julien, but again, his full name has never been used officially.

Great review! Jango and Obi-Wan are some of the sets I'm most excited for both in terms of looks and pieces. This guy's got loads of great new elements and recolors, and looks really well-armored. Besides Boba, I think the new helmet would be great for a set of Sabine Wren from Star Wars: Rebels. Because really, we need to have at least SOME female characters in this range of sets, and if it takes putting a girl in full armor and a helmet to keep people from worrying about it alienating boys, so be it.

This guy's probably the Star Wars constraction set I want the most. It's a great-looking set in its own right but also As for the price, don't forget that he has both the new shoulder armor, very solid back armor, and armor on the back of his calves. So despite having a lower piece count than some of the sets that have more Technic-based weapons and gadgets, he has a lot more meat to him than most of the other $20 sets.

Nice review. I personally quite like Luke's head piece. It's simplified enough that it doesn't look nearly as creepy as the Galidor and Belville heads did. I would love to have this head (and some of those Light Nougat hands) for MOCs, since the head is generic enough to be useful for human characters outside of Star Wars. But on the other hand (no pun intended), this set doesn't offer much else in terms of interesting recolors (at least, not ones that can't be gotten from other sets like Vader), so it's not high on my wanted list. Obi-Wan and Jango seem a lot more appealing to me at the moment. Oh, the silver metallic bit from his blaster is an ice cream cone piece originally introduced in Brick Yellow/Tan in the LEGO Friends theme.

Yeah, for all we know it could be a historic kingdom that had advanced technology introduced to them by space aliens or time travelers, Doctor Who style.

The Ninjago characters page got a big update today, with bios for 24 characters from the summer sets (well, 23, anyway — Lloyd gets a page and images, but his actual bio is blank for some reason). The only characters who don't have pages are the exclusive ghosts from the booster pack, the non-ninja characters from the Temple of Airjitzu, and bizarrely, Soul Archer. Even though most of the lower-ranking ghosts share just three different designs, they all get unique and quirky bios that are definitely worth a read.

Those six-shooter pieces were in Bionicle sets as early as January... so in the U.S., at least, they were in non-licensed themes BEFORE they were in Star Wars. The bit about sunk costs isn't really pertinent, since it's not a question of whether LEGO would LIKE to use the part outside of LEGO Star Wars so much as whether they're ALLOWED to. They put plenty of money into developing lots of Star Wars parts, like Vader's new two-piece helmet, but they can't use them in other themes however much they'd like to since it's clearly based on a prop/costume piece that is Disney's intellectual property. If the features were more ambiguous, like many of the Clone Wars hair pieces or the new spherical shoulder armor from the Star Wars constraction sets, then LEGO could more convincingly argue that the mold is their own intellectual property that they are free to use in any of their themes. I'm not saying the Wookie bowcaster is DEFINITELY an IP-locked design. I'm just saying that at this time, it's not yet clear. Sometimes it can be surprising which parts are IP-locked and which are not.

Does it really make sense to expect to see Chewie's new bowcaster in another theme? I mean, it's pretty obviously based on the Star Wars prop and doesn't resemble a real-world bow at all, so I think it would be locked about as firmly to the Star Wars theme as the clone trooper pistols and helmets. If the LEGO version were designed with a more generic crossbow look it might be a completely different story. But it's not.

Particularly for a free web series. You know, a series that we're not paying for and LEGO is. Even in G1, we never got webisodes as intricately detailed as these paintings. The most "cinematic" web videos we ever got were , and the years we got those they were only able to give us one per wave (as opposed to a series that tells a complete story). It's LEGO. The whole point of it is using the same parts in different ways to create different models, not creating over a dozen new parts for every six sets. And LEGO doesn't use CCBS in other themes to increase the building system's profits, they do it to increase those themes' profits by expanding them into the action figure market. I'm sure by now, five years in, the CCBS has already paid for itself many times over, particularly since it can continue using the same foundation of basic parts wave after wave, like how all LEGO building systems are supposed to work.