Aanchir

Everyone having the same idea doesn't at all make it a bad idea. I think it'd be far better for LEGO to make their design decisions based on actual merit than just because they're trying to pussyfoot around the possibility of using any idea fans might have already thought of. Who knows? Maybe they might have designed that new shoulder piece in a way that it can be printed? Or might mold it in unique two-color blends for each Toa? There are plenty of ways for LEGO to take advantage of that piece that fans couldn't beat them to the punch. But even if they don't, I can't think of a poorer reason not to use a piece than "because fans thought using this piece would be a good idea".

If you stick a Y-joint into a 1.0 foot vertically and then attach a cross axle through the bottom hole, it works nearly as well as a 2.0 foot. Granted, I don't ever expect to see that technique in sets, on the grounds that it could be hard for kids to separate. But it's a useful technique to remember for MOCs. Speaking of which, I need to buy some more colors of 1.0 feet from BrickLink at some point... I actually only have the Bright Yellowish Green ones from the Breakout-series Breez, since I skipped the first year of Hero Factory. I actually like the 2.0 foot and don't see any particular need to replace it. No foot that can easily support a medium-to-large set's weight will be all that realistic, as I see it, but the 2.0 foot is plain enough to do quite nicely without drawing too much attention to itself. If they released a foot with molded toes like the molded fingers of the current fist piece, that could potentially be pretty cool. Speaking of the fist piece, I wouldn't mind either a new articulated hand piece or an alternate hand piece with an open hand. Granted, I don't know how useful an open hand could be other than to allow for a slightly wider range of poses, and you'd have to design it in a particular way so that it wouldn't be limited to use as a right or left hand. One that could hold and fling disks as part of a new action feature is probably too much to hope for. Articulated hands might actually be MORE realistic than that. My biggest worry with articulated hands is that they might be fragile or might require changing the number of fingers. I wouldn't demand a fully articulated hand — one joint in each finger could be fine, though I'm sure more could be possible.

Even though it's established that the LEGO Movie's universe represents the "play world" of Finn and his father, I think only the actual LEGO Movie series (not the spin-offs) will make the "real life" side of things an actual part of the plot. The LEGO Batman Movie may also be a story told by Finn, but that doesn't mean Finn is a character in it. Suppose you're writing a story that takes place during the American Prohibition era. Having prohibition laws in the story doesn't mean you have to also include the people who wrote those laws unless the story is actually about them. Even though they had a hand in setting up the events of the story, that doesn't automatically make it their story.

Something to think about with regard to potential sets is thematic unity. The Ninjago sets explore all kinds of colorful locations, but when it comes to the sets they generally try to stick to a specific visual language. So for instance, the 2011 sets featured white, black, and medium lilac Skulkin vehicles and locations as well as bright red, black, white, and brick yellow ninja temples, shrines, dojos, etc. The ice fortress and floating ruins from that year were cool locations, but would not have fit in with the overall visual language for that year. Obviously, this is not a strict rule — the Battle for Ninjago City set in 2014 featured totally different color schemes from the rest of the year's sets — but it's still a good thing to think about. Keeping things consistent adds a bit of a "collect-them-all" feel, because each new vehicle adds to your established fleet and the locations for the year will all look good on display together. The Serpentine mobile fortress from the first season could have potentially made a good set for 2012. Lots of good play features, and it fits the visual language of that year's vehicles. An Ouroboros playset could have also been cool and helped make up for the year's lack of location-based sets besides small shrines. In 2013 there were a lot of great vehicle designs that didn't become sets, like the Hover Glider, Stone Army Catapult, and Tusk Invader. Admittedly, they don't all maintain the samurai motif for that year as well as the Warrior Bike and Garmatron did, but they still look like they could have made great sets with lots of play value. In "Rebooted", Borg Tower is the most obvious omission. Lots of opportunities for great play features there. It'd be hard to get the sense of scale at a reasonable price, though! The Arcturus rocket would also be a great set that could be made to fit the color scheme of the Nindroid vehicles from that year, although it doesn't really maintain their trademark saw blade motif. In "Tournament of Elements", the main omissions I can think of are the paddle steamer and Chen's palace. The latter could include a prop that was surprising to see omitted — Chen's chair with all the buttons! In "Possession", the Cloud Kingdom could have been cool, but would not have really fit the visual language for this year's sets and packaging, and doesn't showcase a whole lot of potential play features. The Preeminent might have been a nice subject for a set which would definitely fit the visual language for the year, but it would be more or less impossible to create the impression of a giant walking city at any reasonable price point.

Possibly. But "evergreen" is a term LEGO uses for a lot of their themes that they plan to keep returning to again and again, whether or not they get rebooted or re-imagined. Castle, which is frequently re-imagined, has typically been identified as an evergreen theme. But so has City, which has never really been radically re-imagined. The biggest break in "continuity" for LEGO City was when they switched from an eight-pointed star with four studs to a five-pointed star with no studs on the LEGO City Police insignia. On the subject of reboots, there's been a lot of debate about the Ninjago movie and how it might relate to the TV show. All we've heard is that it "diverges from the TV show". But does that mean their continuities will be entirely separate, like the Transformers or TMNT movies and cartoons? In that case, it could arguably be considered the Ninjago theme's first continuity reboot, and the question arises whether that will mean the end of the previous continuity or whether the TV series will resume from where it left off after the movie. But "diverges" could also mean something like some of the Pokémon movies or some other anime movies, which tell stand-alone stories separate from the main TV series. In these cases the movies more or less acknowledge the continuity of the TV series up to that point (the characters and their abilities are more or less the same as when they were last seen on TV), but future installments of the TV series generally do not acknowledge the events of the movies. In any case, I don't imagine there will be any rebooting of the Ninjago storyline before the movie comes out.

I wouldn't be so sure about that, to be honest. I guess I can agree that in most cases the printing wouldn't be a good fit for Bionicle or Hero Factory, but the shaping is pretty generic. If we got a pirate-themed Bionicle wave like I've been contemplating lately, I think this torso shell could potentially work quite well for one of the villains. And of course, never discount the potential for MOCs that don't fit neatly into any established universe, like this, this, or this. There's really not a lot about the printing on these torso shells that singles them out as Star Wars parts — it's not like any of them are emblazoned with a Rebel Alliance or Galactic Empire insignia, or with the name of the character who wears them. So while I don't for a minute expect to see these prints in non-SW sets, they could be reused in non-SW MOCs just as easily as Star Wars minifigure torsos.

This. The reason sites like BZPower and Mask of Destiny sprung up back in the day is that Bionicle discussion was not really welcomed on other LEGO fansites, and yet other venues for discussion like social networking sites didn't exist. Now that social media is a thing, it's much easier for fans of ANY franchise to congregate on social networking sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, DeviantArt, etc. instead of having to make, promote, and manage discussion forums of their own. Just creating a site like BZPower or Eurobricks, let alone getting it to thrive, is a lot of work.

You kept bringing this up in your BS01 reviews too, and I don't see why it's a serious issue? The Skull Spiders attach to the faces just as well as any other mask. You often can't wrap the legs around the head like the misleading images on the back of the boxes tend to indicate, but there's nothing saying they have to be that way, and in fact the comics that come with the Toa and Protector sets just show the legs dangling. I'd call that a problem with bad CGI rather than bad storytelling or bad Skull Spider designs, same as how Tahu's box art has one of his shoulder armor pieces attached at an impossible angle. Anyway, I should make a correction on Andrew's summary of the book preview, which actually establishes that many villages have fallen to the Skull Spiders (a change from G1 that not a lot of people seem to have made a big deal of is that on Okoto there appear to be several villages per region). I think the animations that show massive swarms of Skull Spiders also do a pretty good job establishing them as a credible threat. It at least shows that a full swarm is something that nobody but a Toa with their powers fully realized could hope to hold off indefinitely.

Don't worry, I'm a dedicated fan of the Ninjago TV series and there's nothing about these changes that seems like it'd offend fans of the show. However, I do think doubling the tail feels a bit awkward. I think one thicker tail would have looked better than two thin ones.

Yeah, if these are in fact the small sets replacing the Protectors, I expect a lot of shared elements like masks/faces and functional elements. But as far as builds are concerned, there are all kinds of possibilities. Given the broadness of the term "creature", it'd be quite cool if we got a range of different creatures — some swimming, some flying, some on four legs, some on two. How much do we actually know about the size categories? I regret to say I paid no attention to pricing when I was checking Amazon.de, and the sets aren't there now so we don't have that as a resource any longer. Overall, though, I do not think any of the Toa need an increase in price in order to get an impressive upgrade. CHI Laval and CHI Cragger in 2014 helped assure me of that. Yeah, Kopaka is in a combo pack with Melum, who is presumably the ice creature, so that explains him being separated from the other Toa in his numbering. I don't know how many new armor pieces would really be needed to considerably upgrade the Toa. After all, a lot of recent sets manage to derive a lot of personality from very few new molds. Not to mention that there are some new molds from the Star Wars constraction sets that would be available to Bionicle sets as well, so with some of those plus some brand-new molds it'd be fairly easy to make new Toa stand out from the old ones.

Well, just looking at these names, I think we've got a good starting point for speculation. The creatures have what appear to be proper names (which suggests they might be one-of-a-kind instead of just nameless drones), and one of them comes with a Toa in a "unity set". This suggests that they are in fact allies to the Toa (or will become such, anyway). Also, the most likely villain set is called "Umarak the Hunter". We hadn't figured out what exactly that character would be hunting, but if they're a literal hunter it could be these very same creatures that the Toa are seeking to unite with. Suddenly we have the makings of a "harmony with nature" arc, a notion that was sort of used in the 2005 story but that was then a bit tainted by the whole "your natural instincts will lead you down a path of darkness" theme. Having the Toa unite with animal companions would certainly be a bold new direction for the Bionicle theme, and one I greatly approve of. Also, I wonder if perhaps the Toa will unite with these creatures not just figuratively but also literally? As in, new "power up" or combination models? That way there could be "animal power" versions of the Toa kind of like in the 2005 Bionicle arc or summer 2011 Hero Factory arc, but perhaps without the angsty corruption themes of the former and with a more elemental theme than the latter. This would be good timing for such a concept, certainly, what with Legends of Chima (the latest magical animal character theme) not continuing in 2016.

I hope so! I've been wanting animal companions for the Toa for so long! Of course, I've also read another theory on BZPower — perhaps the creatures start out as aggressive wild creatures and the Toa have to tame them. That way you'd get both a potential conflict scenario and a series of companions for the Toa.

Perhaps! I guess we won't know until this year's webisodes start coming to a close.

Seems to me that between the rapid shooters, pop-off masks, dual-function weapons, gearboxes, and other action features, this year's Bionicle range has had a LOT of gimmicks. Certainly at least as many as the theme had at its peak in 2002. The biggest difference between this year and the later years of Bionicle is that the gimmicks are divided up differently — for instance, the 2006, 2008, and 2009 sets had basically no gimmicks or action features whatsoever for the villagers, while the 2015 sets give rapid shooters to the Protector sets to compensate for their lack of gearboxes or dual-function weapons. I expect the 2016 sets to have a similar number of gimmicks, maybe with a different style of shooter for variety's sake. I'm not entirely sure if they'll keep going with dual-function weapons, but if those do go away I think there's a good chance there might be another gimmick to take their place.

Personally, I hope that some LEGO Elves characters might be added to LEGO Dimensions at some point, although I recognize that in this current wave it's unlikely. Right now we're more likely to hear about new characters from the already confirmed brands than new brands entirely. Still, imagine a pack with Naida and a mini Adventure Ship, or Aira and a mini Pegasus Sleigh!

There's no reason to assume the sets that showed up on Amazon.de make up a complete list.

Yeah, even in the sets, the headgear pieces aren't literally supposed to represent masks. They're just designed that way because it allows the faces to be printed with more colors and expressions than they could be otherwise.

Maybe he'll be a store exclusive? :???: There's any number of reasons he might not be on Amazon, but what I find more surprising is that his set number won't be in sequence with the other Toa, which suggests to me it might somehow be a different type of set.

It seems that way, but he was actually resurrected at Ekimu Tower as the Toa of Titanium, and then captured by Master Makuta to use as bait so the other Toa would enter his Tournament of Elements. Er, on second thought, let's not jump to conclusions. He might be coming out later in the year as part of a co-pack or vehicle set.

No. "Toa" wouldn't be translated at all if that were the actual name, and this year's sets use "Meister" as a translation for "Master", so if next year's sets use a different word in German they probably use a different word across all languages. It's doesn't surprise me that the Toa can go by multiple description or titles, just as BIONICLE: Mask of Light called Tahu the "Spirit of Fire" instead of "Toa of Fire" or "Master of Fire".

I actually don't especially like the Kopaka test video. On the one hand, it's an really cool glimpse of "what could have been", but on the other hand the cartoony movements and background really don't jibe with the almost photorealistic textures and shading. It's kind of the same problem I brought up earlier with the LEGO Friends webisodes taken to even greater extremes. Plus, the more realistic style leaves pretty much no room for expression in the masks. Comparing the final webisodes to the test video feels a bit like comparing the Bohrok webisodes from 2003 with the Toa Inika and Piraka webisodes from 2006. The latter are a lot more realistic, but the former has a lot more personality.

If the Toa do get new masks, I can see the designers looking back at previous masks of theirs for inspiration. just like they did for this year's masks. But I don't think there's any reason to expect straight-up remakes or redesigns of the Kanohi Nuva. I'd sort of prefer recolors, to be honest. But now that there have been so many recolors of each Toa mask, new molds might actually be more likely. Hard to say.

Of course not. That's because these are free webisodes and not a TV series or movie. With a TV or movie budget, it goes without saying that the animation would be a lot smoother and more refined. The classic Flash-based Bionicle webisodes were similarly full of shortcuts that could look very awkward under close analysis. LEGO isn't hiding behind the excuse of "style" — in fact, they haven't really been in a position to make any excuses for the animation shortcuts, because they haven't done any panels or interviews on the subject since the webisodes really got going. However, to their credit, they did choose a style where those animation shortcuts are a lot less obvious than if they'd gone with a more detailed or realistic style. If you look at the LEGO Friends webisodes, their animation is a lot more awkward because they're striving for a level of detail and realism that the budget simply can't support.

I don't think "big bang" themes are ever licensed.

Yep. In the show, the ghosts can transform people, creatures, and inanimate objects into ghostly versions of themselves. That's how Stiix goes from how it appears in its first appearance in the show to how it appears in the City of Stiix set.