Aanchir

Nope. An exclusive mold in a limited event-exclusive set is even less likely than an exclusive mold in a polybag. LEGO molds are incredibly expensive ($20,000 is an estimate I've seen before, though I've also heard claims that estimate is too conservative for certain molds), and LEGO justifies that cost by selling as many sets with that mold as possible. So even if LEGO gave away 2,000 free Masks of Time, they'd be putting themselves around $10 in the red for each one they gave away! Granted, LEGO could release the Mask of Time at an event like NYCC — but only if they were already planning to put it in an actual retail set next year. Sort of like how the Mask of Fire was released at last year's NYCC, then later showed up in different colors in this year's Tahu set and the Hero Pack. There is no risk whatsoever of the Mask of Time only being released as an event-exclusive mask.

Never say never. But it's important to remember that even in Bionicle G1, such sets were rare. For every year like 2008 or 2009 that had vehicle sets up into the 80 and 90 dollar price points, there was a year like 2003 or 2004 that didn't have any sets above the $30 price point (aside from combo packs like Takutanuva).

You realize "vehicles" includes such things as ships, chariots, carriages, wagons, etc? Granted, this being a "big bang" theme, it's entirely possible that they'll go for something wilder and more imaginative than in your typical LEGO Castle theme, but the mere confirmation of vehicles is hardly the end of the world. LEGO Elves managed to make its two vehicle sets feel "magical" without pushing them into the realm of science fiction. And anyway, a lot of people seem to feel like LEGO Castle has been a bit stagnant lately. Maybe a new twist of some kind is what it needs.

Also Krekka in LoMN! If they hadn't he would have been the same height as Nokama, as he is in the official set. Overall, I think Skull Basher's size is just fine considering he's set up as an adversary to Onua, who is the same height. Making him taller could run the risk of making his lower legs feel leaner/less bulky, since the add-on for his knees is a fixed size and would thus be smaller relative to the length of his legs. Don't get me wrong, a few taller villains could be good to have, but I think Basher's height is well-suited to Basher from an aesthetic standpoint. Chances are they wouldn't have needed to make him taller in the webisodes if they hadn't decided on the animated version of Onua being the tallest of the Toa, instead of one of the shortest as he's typically been in the past.

This might not pertain to an action theme specifically, but Amazon.com has two books pertaining to next year's "big bang" theme. The books will feature "the heroes, villains, vehicles, and locations from the top secret, NEW LEGO brand!" For those who don't know, a "big bang" is "a homegrown LEGO theme that's built around an arresting story, one that shows a high potential for creating a worldwide sensation and generating lucrative revenue streams from the Web, television, and spin-off products, just as Bionicle had done for the better part of a decade" (Brick by Brick, p263). Some previous "big bang" themes include LEGO Atlantis, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Friends, LEGO Legends of Chima, and LEGO Elves. Needless to say, the majority of these fall somewhere under the action/adventure themes umbrella, LEGO Friends being a rare exception. So this might very well be the new action theme people are expecting. Of course, it could also be a theme that falls under a more specific category. It has been a couple years since the last LEGO Space or LEGO Castle theme, and while most recent iterations of those themes have not been particularly story– or media-driven, that's not to say future iterations couldn't be. Perhaps it's been long enough since the LEGO Group's last attempt at a story-driven Castle theme, Knights' Kingdom II, for designers to be willing to give it another swing.

Specifically, it's from a toy called Coinstruction that you build with by sticking coins into the ends! My brother and I had those as a kid. Lots of fun, though it only really worked if you had a lot of change. My guess is the toy was probably conceived as a way to encourage kids to save up their coins, like a more creative alternative to a piggy bank.

I'll be there this year as well! Just put the finishing touches on my name badge yesterday (LDD pic because I didn't want to take photos ). You can see the MOCs I will be exhibiting here (scroll down to 2015). Most of them are Bionicle MOCs, but I'm also exhibiting a LEGO Atlantis submarine I built several years ago, my sculpture Delwyn Buckler which won the Best Small Creation award at BrickUniverse Raleigh this year, and my Blacktron Vivisector which won the Best Small Space Craft award at BrickFair Virginia 2014. I will also be exhibiting some of my 2D artwork at the Bionicle tables, like Gali - Master of Water.

Yep! And if you were wondering, that softer plastic used for weapons like that is polypropylene. This is why some of the colors along the bottom row in this chart are marked with the prefix "PP". Parts in polypropylene, rubber, or even ABS will have a milky, translucent color like that, while the hard plastic transparent colors most people are familiar with are molded in polycarbonate (PC).

They're Nuhvok-Kal's copper Krana-Kal. The official name of the color is Reddish Gold.

More Airjitzu sets next year wouldn't entirely surprise me, if the first six are successful. There's not too much that could be done to differentiate the spinners themselves other than changing their color, but they could always alter the build of the launchers to freshen up the set's look. However, it's just as possible that other characters learning Airjitzu might be a show-only thing. Even if it is, it wouldn't surprise me if that's the impetus for the Ninja revisiting Sensei Yang's temple. It's possible that with their new experience in ghost-fighting, the ninja could then exorcise the place and use it as a new headquarters, as suggested in the Temple of Airjitzu instruction manual.

If I had to guess, it'd be because the few sets large enough to need "custom" limbs also need their limbs to be sturdier than a cross axle connection parallel to the limb would allow. If pulling gently on the hand or foot causes the limb to come apart, then it's not a reliable connection, at least not for the rougher sort of action play that constraction sets are expected to sustain. Granted, the cross axle holes in the sides can be used to "lock" the limb so that it can't simply come apart at the end. Most sets that used the G1 friction joint did exactly that (Krekka's legs being perhaps the simplest example). But if you are willing to bulk up the limb that much anyway, there's little reason you couldn't just use a regular Y-joint (plus a G2 friction joint if you really need the extra friction). It's also possible there are other problems with that joint that I'm not considering. I know from a response to a suggestion of mine in this topic that the amount of friction of a cross axle or cross axle hole can vary depending on whether or not there's a ball in the ball cup, which might present an issue even if you got all the tolerances right on the mold/print.

In my opinion, having hero characters who look monstrous or grotesque is good storytelling but bad toy design. LEGO toys are designed so a seven-year-old can figure out who's good and who's bad at a glance. And generally, they should be able to relate to the heroes more easily than to the villains. If these sets were being designed for a non-human audience it'd be a different story. But currently, LEGO sets are ALL designed for a human audience, and there's no reason at this time why they shouldn't be. The point of diversity in media is to give people from different backgrounds characters like them who they can relate to, so until we know of potential LEGO fans from a non-human background, "speciesism" (particularly directed against entirely imaginary species, like ghosts, undead skeletons, or snake people) is effectively a non-issue. Better for LEGO to focus on representation for actual under-represented groups, like women or the disabled. Besides all that, recent LEGO themes have plenty of non-human protagonists. For instance, every dragon in LEGO Ninjago other than the Overlord's dragon form and the Nindroid MechDragon has been a protagonist. For the most part, so are the legend beasts in LEGO Legends of Chima (I know no Chima characters are truly human, but most are humanoid/anthropomorphized, while the Legend Beasts decidedly are not). The Serpentine from LEGO Ninjago (other than the Anacondrai) have been portrayed as protagonists since the third season, and Zane (a non-human Nindroid) has been a protagonist since his introduction. I did hate the story of LEGO Mars Mission, but in that case it was for a different reason. In most themes with non-human protagonists, the antagonists are plainly portrayed as evil not because of their species, but because of their actions. The crooks in Space Police III, for instance, are shown clearly breaking the law in most sets they appear in, although it is a bit problematic that in a theme where aliens and humans live in harmony there were no non-human police officers. Mars Mission was much more morally ambiguous, though. The humans were waging war against an alien civilization that clearly settled Mars before them — the aliens had already designed their ships to run on the Martian energy crystals, so it's hard to argue the humans had any more right to the planet or its resources than the aliens did.

Well, in a fantasy story, the terms are often used somewhat interchangeably, at least when referring to types of fantasy people (elves, dwarves, goblins, giants, and the like) rather than types of fantasy beasts (dragons, sea serpents, manticores, gryphons, and so forth). Tolkien popularized this fantasy usage of the term "race". That arena picture is really cool! I'm loving the architecture of the Ancient City!

What exactly is super-special about Kulta's build? Honest question. As I see it there's nothing particularly extraordinary about his build other than the chest plate sitting one module forward and two modules higher on the torso beam than it does for the other three humanoid skull villains. Also, if you want to make Skull Warrior taller, the easiest way isn't to swap his limbs for longer ones but rather to add friction joints to both of his knees. Personally, though, I think the shortness of the other skull villains is exaggerated by all those comparison shots, since Tahu is over two modules taller than an average Toa. I think a comparison to a more average-sized Toa like Gali or Lewa would give a better sense of their relative heights. Here's a run-down of the character heights: Warrior, Slicer, Basher, Pohatu, Onua: 23 modules Gali, Lewa: 25 modules Kopaka: 26 modules Tahu, Grinder: 27 modules Average Toa: 24.833 (24 and 5/6) modules Average (Humanoid) Villain: 24 modules Makuta of War is right that there's plenty of precedent for villains smaller than Toa — just look at the Bohrok, which at their tallest were about chest level on a typical Toa Mata, or the Vahki, which stood about 22 modules tall while the Toa Metru stood 24–26 modules tall (24.667 modules on average). Compared to those examples, villains that are less than one module shorter than the Toa on average aren't really all that bad. As for the Toa, their proportions definitely have a lot of variation, and the proportions of Tahu and Onua in particular are extremely exaggerated. However, I don't think any of the Toa sets suffer for it — the slightly cartoony proportions actually suit them pretty well. I do agree that Tahu's proportions can be greatly improved by shortening his upper leg beams by one module, but I don't think this is a deal-breaker by any stretch of the imagination. I disagree that the first year and a half of Hero Factory had it right in terms of price points. On the one hand, yes, villains always seemed larger and more formidable than the heroes. On the other hand, it meant that the heights and builds of the hero sets had little to no variation compared to the villain sets. Villains already often allow for more variety than heroes no matter what their price point because you can add "deformities" that might seem grotesque or unsettling on a hero character (like adding additional arms or legs, making one arm considerably longer or bulkier than the other, or even making them entirely non-humanoid), whereas it's much harder to work variety into heroes without raising their price point so you have a higher piece count to work with. I think the Breakout series did a great thing by varying up the price points among both factions, which resulted in some fantastic set designs like Toxic Reapa (a $9 villain) or Bulk (a $13 hero). I don't see any reason that villain sets should be categorically more impressive than the heroes that are ostensibly the theme's main focus.

Click the book cover on Amazon to read the preview. It probably doesn't work on mobile devices. The first six pages are provided to everyone, with additional random pages for Amazon Prime members. The latter is where people are getting spoilers from the middle and end of the book from.

Amazon.com has a six-page preview of the new chapter book "Quest for the Keys" which comes out next month! Story-wise, it seems to be just an adaptation of the TV episode "Unite the Magic", but it has a lot of additional details that were not in that, like flashbacks to Emily's childhood memories of her grandmother. It also reveals that Emily's parents are scientists. I wasn't sure whether I should add this book to my wishlist, since I figured it'd be just an adaptation of the TV episode, but now I know I'll be getting it for sure! A second chapter book will be coming out in January. I'm not sure what its story will be yet, though. It could be an adaptation of the webisodes, the start of next year's main story, or even a new side-story of some kind.

This chart (which I recently updated) might be useful, though it uses the official names (in which the color of Vastus's hands would be Bright Yellowish Green). There are a lot of "fan names" for colors like Lime Green, Metru Red, Keetorange, etc. as well.

As my brother has pointed out, the Toa were summoned when the stars aligned, and the Mask of Time's power in G1 was to slow down or speed up time, not to allow for time travel. So it's entirely possible that the mask was used to make that planetary alignment to happen ahead of schedule. Perhaps there might be some connection between G1 and G2 besides the obvious "G2 was inspired by G1", but I definitely don't think that they are the same reality (even Greg Farshtey has said multiple times that that would basically defeat the purpose of a reboot), or that the Toa are the G1 Toa. I really can't think of any possible way that could be revealed without opening up a huge can of worms.

There was a big issue with the lime green joints in 2007. Apparently a lot of them didn't cool properly when they came off the mold, which made them extra brittle (compared to other colors of joint that year, anyway). From my experience, Glatorian fists and most other 2008–2010 ball cup pieces were prone to breakage regardless of color. I think part of the point to the 2008 redesign of all the ball cup elements was to add additional friction. But as a side effect, it made them a lot more brittle. I wouldn't consider that a worthwhile trade-off. As for my 2001–2007 sets, some of the ones I've played with the most (like the ones from Toa Mata Kopaka) have had issues with joints breaking AND losing friction. Even some of my friction joints with the rubber inserts have lost friction over time! With regular Y-joints, at least, I usually have spares to replace them with. 7M double ball cups, which I've had some structural issues with since they were first introduced in 2005, are harder to replace, since certain colors only came in one or two sets and they mostly didn't appear in bulk parts buckets. The friction of my CCBS parts has generally held up without issue. If any did start to lose friction, I'd probably just start using them in places that didn't need to support so much weight. That's better than having them crack or shatter, which in most cases reduces a part to near-useless. Another note: when a ball cup does start to lose friction, it can sometimes mean it's been used to support more weight or inertia than it should in the first place. So it's useful to either use friction joints to support heavier parts of a model or to build some other kind of suspension like pistons into your larger MOCs! This is true for any era of parts.

Guys... we have a G2 alphabet! Credit to BZPower's Votuko for making the discovery in the preview of the new chapter book! EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that X and Y are probably transposed! No idea why the book would have them out of order, but switching them would make a lot more sense.

I don't know... on most of them, the red is minimal enough that it could just be an accent, like the red spikes on Mantax and Takadox, instead of needing to really be a major part of the color scheme. For instance, TheOneVeyronian's Skull Imitator Corphos doesn't seem to use any other red parts besides 2M cross axles, and even if those weren't there I don't think the splash of red on the torso would hurt the color schemes. Skull Grinder's chest plate is maybe the only one that would need to be used with other red or reddish orange parts, since it uses a LOT of red.

I've seen a lot of chatter about whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that the Protector of Earth is one of the most "masculine"-looking protectors. I personally am not seeing that as a huge issue in the first place? I mean, sure, the Protector of Earth has broad shoulders (which are stereotypically masculine), but on the other hand, she's also the only one who fits the stereotype of an "hourglass figure" (pretty much all the other Protectors' sides are perfectly straight, without any narrowing of the waist) . So while it's a character I'd never have assumed to be female, I think I can picture her as a woman about as easily as any of the other Protectors. Bear in mind also that among the original Turaga, the only female character was the one with ridiculously short legs and ridiculously long arms. Neither of which is really a feminine stereotype. I'm already warming up to the names. They sort of remind me of MNOGII names. All but Bingzak, anyway.

The "father to son" bit is something that could have easily just been poor phrasing, since it was copied and pasted for all the Protectors. LEGO used male pronouns for Breez on the Hero Factory site at one point before correcting it, so it's not impossible for them to make mistakes about genders, especially if they're not even talking about the characters individually in the first place. However, the (NOT copied and pasted) description of Gali's "powered up" mode on club.LEGO.com that identified the Protector of Water with male pronouns was a little bit harder to dismiss, so unfortunate as this is I basically saw it coming. Hopefully future story years might have better gender ratios.

People asked for gibberish names, and that's what they got. For those who don't like the names, the characters fortunately also have perfectly serviceable titles that should work about as well as any name in most applications. I'm not totally thrilled with these names, but I might get used to them eventually. And even if not, I don't intend to let them get in the way of my enjoyment of the story. Well, a preview of the Ninjago graphic novel was handed out at the LEGO booth, at least.

BZPower included a pic of Vader's back in their New York Toy Fair reporting.