Aanchir

Well, they sort of DO have specific names. "Mask of Earth" is about as specific as "Kanohi Pakari", which literally meant "Mask of Strength". The only difference is that with the English names you usually can't drop the words "Mask of" and still have people know what you're talking about, but I don't think that's a huge burden unless you've got a character limit. I love this contest! It's great that LEGO came up with a concept that demands creative thinking but is not a contest of skill like an art or building contest would be, so younger and less experienced fans do not feel excluded. It's also a fairly unprecedented type of contest for LEGO, and it should present a reasonable challenge for fans of all ages!

Something else to keep in mind is that a setting can change over time. Even if the Toa explore all of Okoto as it is now, there's always the possibility that the climax of one of their adventures might fundamentally change the island, making it like a whole new place. One example in classic BIONICLE is the 2005 storyline, in which the bustling cityscape was turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But a transformative event like this does not necessarily have to be so negative — look at Spherus Magna's restoration in the 2010 BIONICLE storyline, or even the re-assembly of the giant prototype robot in 2009. Right now, a lot of the Okoto scenery we've seen consists of improvised villages and abandoned ruins that hint at a better time long ago. But what if, somehow, those ruins were restored to their former glory? Not that I'm at all against the introduction of additional settings. Exploring a new place can be just as exciting as exploring an old place made new. But it's a bit early to say just what potential Okoto has or lacks in terms of exploration. One thing I've thought of that would be cool for a future story arc would be pirate-like characters from across the ocean coming to Okoto seeking the legendary masks for their own personal profit. I've seen some pretty strong indications that the Piraka might have originally been envisioned as pirate-themed villains, but I think with the right design choices you could create a wave of villains in which the pirate motif is even more integral.

Yeah, I got all of them. There was one gold brick that gave me trouble in that level — it was towards the top or bottom of the screen and you had to be zoomed in a very particular amount to see it. But not sure that's the same one giving you trouble, and it's been a while since I played the level so I don't remember the particulars of its location.

I think the "staircase" in the Creative Workshop set is supposed to be more of a step-stool. That way she can use it as a seat when she's working at the desk, but also climb up onto it when she's testing her wing pack. One thing that surprised me about this set is that there's only really one drawer. When I first saw the sets, I thought the designers had come up with a brilliant way of making two drawers, and my brother and I even came up with the technique I thought they might have used to do so in that space. But then it turned out it was just one drawer, which means we came up with that technique all on our own. I can understand the decision to have just one drawer, though, since my technique would probably not have allowed space for an ink bottle.

Technically, a real human skeleton has longer upper legs than lower legs. In fact, the femur (upper leg bone) is the single longest bone in the human body, while the tibia (one of the lower leg bones) is the second longest. I feel like if Pohatu's gearbox were raised like Lewa's, Onua's, or Kopaka's, he'd need some kind of shoulder armor to compensate, since it would make the distance between the torso beam and the shoulder joints that much more pronounced. If it turns out they are actual reanimated bones, then they might not be "put together" the same way that they would have been when they were alive. The horns on Basher or the extra arms on Slicer might very easily be from different skeletons entirely.

I actually really like the amount of friction of Pohatu's boomerangs. They stay in place when they're still, but with a quick flick you can switch them from closed to open. Kind of like... switchblade boomerangs. :P Granted, my family doesn't actually have the Pohatu set (I've just gotten to play with them since my brother got some of the boomerang parts at NYCC), so it could be that the looseness coupled with his gear function results in some awkwardness.

The fact that Clutch Powers exists in the Ninjago TV show's universe does not mean that it and the universe of the Clutch Powers movie share a universe or continuity. Same goes for the appearance of Ultra Agents characters in that show. The argument for one "canon" LEGO universe that contains all themes is about as weak as the satirical "Grand Unification Theory of Television" that Dwayne McDuffie proposed in 2002. Sometimes when characters from one story are written into another story it's just meant as an inside reference, not a sign that those two stories take place in the same universe. Frankly, there is pretty strong evidence that Ninjago does NOT exist in the same evidence as The Adventures of Clutch Powers, namely that nobody in Ninjago ever refers to death as the extinguishing of one's creation spark. That does not discount the possibility that Clutch might at some point gain the skills to hop between universes, but it does diminish the likelihood that Ninjago is just another planet in the Clutch Powers–verse. And even if they were a shared universe, the possibility of time travel could not be discounted either — meaning that references to Clutch (whose story before and after the events of the movie are not well known) are not useful for timeline placement.

I have it on good authority that those light greenish-looking pieces are not glow-in-the-dark. There's no reason to think they would be, since the current glow-in-the-dark color is not nearly that greenish. Now, the white-looking cones on some of the ghost characters' weapons in that set? Those might stand a considerably better chance of being glow-in-the-dark. Hard to say. But knowing that those greenish parts are not glow-in-the-dark, they are almost certainly Spring Yellowish Green. DraikNova, even if they don't LOOK Spring Yellowish Green to you, that doesn't mean they aren't. Unless you have the actual pieces in front of you, a side-by-side comparison with existing Spring Yellowish Green parts is not possible, since colors in photos and videos can be distorted and do not always reflect the colors of those subjects in real life. As an example, in , the Tr. Fluorescent Green parts in that set often look more like Tr. Yellow, despite all the other colors being clearly recognizable for what they are.

The silver hands and feet match the heads, though. That's part of why I like them. If anything bothers me about the Toa's hands and feet, it's Kopaka's hands. He's the only one of the Toa with transparent hands and I'm not entirely sure it works in his favor. White hands might have been better. Strictly in terms of their skeletons, I think Lewa's colors are especially well organized. His "bones" alternate between black and grey/silver — his hands and feet are silver, his lower limbs are black, his upper limbs are Dark Stone Grey, his torso is black, and his head is silver. It's quite nice in my opinion, and I frequently use similar alternating colors on the MOCs I create on LDD. Lewa's color scheme in general is organized rather nicely, with its three main colors (Silver Metallic, Bright Green, and Flame Yellowish Orange) spread out very well throughout the build. Of course, it's a bit frustrating that he is the only Toa without any transparent accents, and even though I haven't made any permanent mods to my own Lewa set, I have tested to see what he looks like with Tr. Bright Green in place of his Flame Yellowish Orange shells, and I have to admit it's one of the better-looking mods out there. The loss of contrast is offset by the flashiness the transparent shells add. I honestly sort of wish that Gali's upper legs had been built with Dark Stone Grey 5M beams and friction joints like Lewa's instead of Black 6M beams. Not only could the extra friction be useful when posing her, but it would make the color blocking of her skeleton more consistent. But of course, her piece count is already higher than Lewa's and I believe the friction joints are a relatively expensive part to produce, so I can see why she didn't use them. She's still my favorite of the new Toa regardless.

In sets from 2014 onward, no bone comes in both grey and black, and there is a system to which ones come in grey and which come in black. Specifically, odd-numbered A bones and even-numbered B-bones only come in Black, while even-numbered A bones and odd-numbered B bones only come in Dark Stone Grey. The reason is to make it easier to tell them apart. If all the bones were black, then it would be very easy for inexperienced builders to accidentally use a bone of the wrong size or the wrong type in a set, or for ANY builder to have a hard time finding a bone of a particular size and type in a pile of parts. Just hypothetically speaking, imagine you have a hundred 4M A beams, a hundred 5M B beams, and a hundred 6M A beams, but only one 5M A beam. If they were all the same color, finding that one 5M A beam would be a chore — every time you pick up a beam you think might be the right part, it's much more likely to be a 4M or 6M A beam or a 5M B beam. However, with this system, only the 5M A beam will be black, and the other three types will be Dark Stone Grey. Even if you had other Black beams as well, you wouldn't be likely to confuse them for the one you're looking for because they'd be either a much different size (3M, 7M, 9M) or both a different size and a different style (unless, of course, they came from older sets before this system was fully implemented). This kind of system is nothing new. Technic cross axles have alternated between black and grey since 2002, for the exact same reason: making identifying and finding the parts you need less of a chore. That system is a bit simpler, though, since it just has to differentiate between sizes instead of between both sizes and "A" and "B" varieties.

Besides that, I don't think Ackar's color scheme would have suffered in any measurable way if his Dark Stone Grey hands had been Silver or Metallic Dark Grey (pre-2010 gunmetal). And I agree, Ackar's color scheme was hurt by the sparse use of neutral colors, as was the 2010 Tahu's. The Toa Mata, Bohrok, and Toa Nuva used bright colors quite well, but a lot of people seem to neglect how important their black, grey, and silver parts were to their color schemes. A color scheme dominated by bright colors often just looks garish unless there are some neutral colors to balance them out. Frankly, I really love the frequent use of metallic colors in CCBS. Silver Metallic and Titanium Metallic in particular are extremely fun colors to build in, since they are neutral (meaning they can be paired with anything) without looking dull, and their shininess really helps the contours of the parts stand out. I don't understand the weird aversion people have to sets that use more than one metallic color, either. Gali and Onua are easily my favorites of the new Toa, and while that's not strictly because of the multiple metallic colors in those sets, I think both sets look much better with multiple metallic colors than they would look if all their metallic parts were the same color. And that's not just conjecture. I've swapped Onua's Warm Gold detail pieces for Silver Metallic ones, and Gali's Silver Metallic torso shell for a Titanium Metallic one, in both cases because I genuinely thought the sets might look better that way. Turns out, they didn't. As far as the other CCBS gripes mentioned above, it's hard to really blame any of those things on the CCBS. Speeda Demon and Jet Rocka could both qualify as vehicle sets. Fire Lord, Rocka XL, Witch Doctor, and Black Phantom all qualify as true "titan" sets any way you slice it, and I'd argue that Evo XL Machine and the new Darth Vader figure from the Star Wars constraction series do as well. If CCBS "killed" these types of sets, it's taken its sweet time doing so. And I don't even know what "Technic being integrated directly into the building system" is supposed to mean. There's nothing less "direct" about the way Evo XL Machine, Jawblade, Rocka XL, Tunneler Beast, Dragon Bolt, and the Protector of Fire use Technic than the way BIONICLE sets would have used it. I'm guessing this complaint is based on the idea that the new Toa's Technic gearboxes are snapped to their torso beams instead of the torso beam and gearbox being a single piece, but that's a bit like complaining about the Toa Metru's thigh armor snapping to their thigh beams instead of the beam and armor being a single piece. By having the gearbox and torso beam as separate pieces, both pieces are more versatile than they could ever be as a single piece. And as a bonus, it makes the new Toa look much better in profile than if their shoulder and hip joints were vertically in line with each other.

She is a major character from the tenth graphic novel The Phantom Ninja. So far, that is her only appearance. She is the daughter of the mayor of Nom, and she and her father were captured by Nindroids when the town was occupied.

They've done these for quite a few themes, actually. Currently, there's a Friends playmat (jungle on one side, Heartlake City on the other), Legends of Chima playmat (two connecting jungle/swamp scenes), City Playmat (two connecting road scenes). There is also a new City Playmat (with stickers!) coming out this year. Previously there was another Friends playmat with Heartlake City on one side and some rural roads on the other (reference). The only Space playmats I know were the Exploriens Floor Puzzle and Space Floor Puzzle from the 90s, back in the days when RoseArt was friendly with the LEGO Group instead of running their own sleazy clone brands! I think part of the reason there haven't been floor puzzles for more recent Space themes is that generally, individual space themes aren't as lucrative and aren't projected for as long a life as themes like City, Friends, Legends of Chima, and Elves (even though we tend to think of individual Space themes as "sub-themes", they haven't been branded that way since the 90s). Another factor is that acting out a space battle doesn't always require any kind of ground the way that, say, acting out a LEGO City police chase or rescue does.

The cool thing about the playmat is it's double-sided, so there's one side with a lot of ocean and one side with more land (including some lava fields). I believe that you can even link the two sides together, if you're willing to pay for two of them and have space for that. The land side has a river that looks like it should line up with the one on the ocean side.

Everything you just described about Von Nebula is what makes him so interesting to me. He is a profoundly flawed character who projects his own character flaws onto others and is more interested in vindicating his own grudge than in attaining power (which he already has in spades). And his grudge is not just against Stormer, but against a world that, in his eyes, rewards self-indulgent recklessness — because the idea of selflessness, the idea that a person like Stormer would put their own life at stake for any reason other than fame and prestige, is an alien concept to him. He doesn't try to make up for his mistakes because he is completely in denial about the fact that he did anything wrong. And yes, he is insane — but not wildly irrational and psychotic like the Joker, because things like denial and obsession can exist even without that level of crazy.

Well, he's one of the few villains who was purely interested in causing trouble for the heroes (or at least, one of the few who was interested in that and not really trying to hide it). A lot of the other villains were interested in taking control of some location or stealing some resource, and in those cases "hit and run" might mean leaving without what they came for. Incapacitating one hero or even one team of heroes would not amount to much in the long term if it leads to Hero Factory or even local police stepping up security around the location/resource you were trying to seize and raising the priority of your capture. I think Von Nebula could have been a much more relatable character if we got to see more of what became of him between the botched mission and his return as a villain. Was he actively expelled from the Hero Factory, or did he simply not have the guts to return there and take responsibility for his poor decisions? What became of his Hero Core? How did he earn the loyalty of the other villains? Rise of the Rookies had some great stories, but that last episode was hurt by the entire arc focusing intently on how that mission had affected Stormer (and how that in turn colored Stormer's interactions with Furno), instead of how it had affected Von Ness. So Von Nebula's motivations have to be inferred from his words and actions during and after that mission.

I wasn't arguing that we knew WHY all those characters turned evil, or even that we should. Frankly, I don't think you need to know a character's backstory for them to be interesting if they have an interesting personality. But you said that Hero Factory villains had no characterization, and that they were just described as being evil, which is patently untrue. How many villains in BIONICLE turned evil for an utterly shallow reason? Other than Zaktan, who lived a miserable life as a slave before the Dark Hunters recruited him, and might believably want to get back at the world for that, we know nothing about why the rest of the Piraka turned to a life of crime. Except, of course, that their species was engineered to be violent and bad-tempered, which isn't really much better than Meltdown who we're told was "built bad". Likewise, Roodaka was always ruthless and traitorous as far as we know, and most of the Barraki became brutal conquerors and dictators as soon as they were given the chance. Yet these were all still compelling characters in their own right. We didn't need to see their "start of darkness" to understand how evil, twisted, and dangerous they were. The thing about Von Nebula is that he is a coward. Not only is he afraid of danger, he's afraid of owning up to his own mistakes. The reason he wanted revenge on Stormer is because as he saw it, Stormer made him look like a fool and was celebrated as a hero for it. Von Nebula doesn't understand Stormer's selfless heroism. He thinks of Stormer as a self-righteous glory hog and sees his victory in New Stellac City the same way. If Stormer had just made the sensible choice and retreated, Von Nebula thinks, then nobody would have faulted him for doing the same. After all, they were both just rookies, and nobody expected them to be able to handle the drone attack on their own. But instead, Stormer took an insane risk and, in Von Nebula's eyes, made him look like a gutless deserter while Stormer came out with a sparkling reputation. Ultimately, his failure to understand Stormer's real motivations is his undoing when he assumes Stormer would never let a rookie like Furno take a decisive victory away from him. In reality, though, we're shown multiple times that Stormer hates being in the spotlight. Remember that Power Core billboard he hates so much? He's isn't interested in fame and fortune, he's just interested in doing what's right. Von Nebula doesn't have that heroic impulse. He acts in his own self-interest and assumes everybody else does the same.

Hate to nitpick, but that's not true at all. Jetbug was a giggling maniac, Fire Lord was addicted to energy, Von Nebula was a revenge-driven traitor who blamed others for the consequences of his own cowardice (and saw the worst in everybody), Splitface had a split personality (duh), Core Hunter was an unfeeling serial killer, Speeda Demon was a speed-obsessed thrill seeker, Witch Doctor was driven by jealousy, XPlode was a backstabbing, self-interested crime boss, Drilldozer was dumb muscle, Black Phantom was an ambitious, conniving chessmaster, etc. None were just "evil for evil's sake".

August is the official release date we heard at New York Toy Fair.

Closest I can think of is this, and due to the Technic connections that might not suit everyone's needs. Bones like that are fairly easy to build custom from basic Technic, though.

Some countries just don't get the theme-specific magazines like that. Even the United States never gets them. Maybe there are just more kids who buy and read magazines in Europe than other parts of the world, or something like that.

"Big Bang" just means a brand-new theme that LEGO is devoting a considerable amount of their marketing budget for the year to. Atlantis, Ninjago, Friends, Legends of Chima, and I believe even The LEGO Movie were all "Big Bang" themes. And it's normal for it to be used in placeholder titles for books to avoid spoiling the identity of the new theme before it's announced publicly.

I don't think there's anything to worry about. You could say the same for LEGO Ninjago in 2011. The 44-minute special it got in the beginning of the year covered pretty much the entire story for that year. But at the end of the year, there were new episodes to accompany the new sets. LEGO Ninjago's first TV special ended on a mega-cliffhanger, of course. Garmadon escaped the Underworld through a portal, and everybody watching knew he was bound to show up again. But the LEGO Elves special leaves things just as open for future stories. Emily may be able to get home once she brings the keys to the portal, but this definitely won't be her last visit to Elvendale. By the way, I finally played through all five levels of the LEGO Elves app. Haven't unlocked everything yet (you have to play through each level five times in order to get all the secret items), but I've at least gotten to see all the settings. It's cool that Skyra is the "host" of the fifth level. This is the first time we get to see her character art. Next time I play I'll take a screenshot. It's a shame you don't unlock a profile of her after clearing the level, though — instead it just unlocks Emily's profile.

There's a big difference between rumors circulating six months before release and rumors circulating nine months before release. Obviously some 2016 BIONICLE info is bound to exist at this point, but it's very unlikely that we'd be hearing it at this point.

I'm pretty sure it will be! But at the same time, it's hard to say just which direction the story might go from there, let alone how long it might be before new episodes start to show up. After all, "Unite the Magic" basically covers the entire 2015 story as far as sets are concerned. Bear in mind that when the original two-episode Ninjago TV special was posted online, it was broken up into four episodes. So "Way of the Ninja" became "Way of the Ninja" and "The Golden Weapon", and "King of Shadows" became "King of Shadows" and "Weapons of Destiny". It might be a similar situation here, with "Unite the Magic" being broken up into two eleven-minute episodes for the website after initially airing on TV as a 22-minute special. I'm definitely excited to see where the story goes from here and what new web content might be showing up in the future! Oh, also, the other day, they finally fixed the "Meet the Characters" and "Explore Elvendale" features on the LEGO Elves home page. "Meet the Characters" doesn't offer a whole lot of new information, though it does offer some great pictures and rhymes. "Explore Elvendale" gives us some more awesome pictures and information as well as some new place names. The parts of the Elvendale map that correspond to the summer sets are not yet clickable, so that's something to look forward to in the months to come. None of the sets focus on the Desertlands, Ivy Beach, or the Highland of Helyan, so I wonder if they might be explored in future years.