Aanchir

I'm very confident that they'll be sticking with the current Toa. With that said, it would be strange for them NOT to have new versions of the current Toa, because that would basically mean having NO versions of the current Toa on store shelves for the first half of 2014. Sets generally aren't designed to stick around on store shelves and in catalogs for more than twelve months, excluding larger sets like castles, pirate ships, motorized trains, and exclusives like modular buildings that need longer lifespans in order to live up to their full sales potential. I haven't seen any reason to believe these rumors. They sound to me like a combination of wild guesses and wishful thinking. But of course, if we do see any real evidence supporting these rumors, that will cast them in a new light. In the meantime, I think it's far too early to give ANY such rumors much credence.

A "Mary Sue" is slang that usually refers to a character who's written to be too perfect or idealized, without any realistic flaws to help them seem relatable. TV Tropes has more information.

It's all on the LEGO Club Website! I believe you might need to be signed in with a LEGO ID that is tied to a LEGO Club Magazine subscription to get into the "LEGO Club HQ" section. Once you're in, just click the "Magazines" tab at the top and it will take you to a page where you can find these and other digital magazines.

Nice! I was mostly sharing about the US because it's what I knew the specifics of. I think in some countries, the Yellow Brick edition is a full magazine, but in the US it's just an insert that comes packed with the regular magazine. Just looked through some of the UK editions, and they're very cool! I like that the UK Yellow Brick magazine for January 2015 got an Elves teaser on the last page. That's one disadvantage of the US Yellow Brick edition being just an insert rather than a full magazine — there's not a lot of room for teasers of that sort, since it has to fit the content related to the current sets on fewer pages. I wonder if the March issue over there might have even more LEGO Elves info than we got over here.

In the United States, LEGO has three separate magazines. Their Red Brick edition is the classic LEGO Club Magazine, covering most of their themes including more "grown-up" sets like the Technic and Mindstorms themes or the new Helicarrier from LEGO Super Heroes, but usually not including girl-oriented themes. Their Green Brick edition, or "LEGO Club Junior", is targeted towards younger kids, featuring a lower reading level, simpler building instructions, and activities like coloring pages that appeal to a younger audience. It still covers many themes but focuses on sets that will be at the building level of younger kids, including some from girl-oriented themes like LEGO Friends and LEGO Disney Princess. The Yellow Brick edition is a shorter insert that covers girl-oriented themes specifically, and girls who subscribe to LEGO Club Magazine receive both the Red Brick and Yellow Brick editions as part of their subscription. I've noticed that material from the Yellow Brick edition is often more reading-intensive than material from the other two editions. All three editions are also available digitally on the LEGO Club website, along with some special theme-specific inserts like the BIONICLE insert and Star Wars insert from the January-February issue or the Ninjago insert from the current issue.

Actually, Gali's shoulders are the same height as Tahu's or Pohatu's. They just aren't raised like Lewa's, Kopaka's, or Onua's, or widened like Tahu's, Kopaka's, or Onua's.

I don't know if the LEGO Group would even have any definitive sales info at this point in the year, less than three months after release. More likely this cover was planned in advance to tie in with the Hero Pack promotion this month.

I ought to mention just how great this set's proportions are compared to previous Toa. Seriously, last week I pulled out Toa Metru Vakama from his canister (the Toa Metru being extremely popular in terms of their proportions and articulation), and the new Gali totally blows him out of the water (no pun intended). Her shoulders are less absurdly broad, her torso less flat and narrow... even her arms and legs have better proportions. Same applies for the taller Toa Metru like Nuju and Nokama. It's great to see how far set designs have come in the past ten years!

There are at least eight ghosts, not counting possessed Lloyd. I believe there may be at least one ghost I have yet to identify, though — not sure if it's a unique ghost or a variant of one of the other ghosts. I haven't really analyzed the Toy Fair pics and videos in painstaking detail.

Incidentally, the Yellow Brick Edition of the March–April LEGO Club Magazine has a detailed feature on LEGO Elves. I'm always impressed with the depth of the reading material in the Yellow Brick edition. According to the quiz on page four, I'm a wind elf!

It's also important to remember that while to an adult CCBS is about as simple as basic LEGO building, to a child it can be a little more challenging. The first type of building kids tend to learn is stacking — this is just as possible with basic bricks as it is with Duplo, but a system like CCBS or Technic where parts attach together at various angles instead of just vertically can take a bit longer for kids to learn, much less master.

Actually, when LEGO sends review copies of sets to people, they are allowed to keep them. I've been the recipient of several such sets. There's also the possibility that reviewers like that might order them from overseas so that they could get a review posted while it's still globally relevant.

Saw that last night. Pretty cool! I especially like how it looks like if you buy two, the river side on one will line up perfectly with the ocean side on the other. The app has finally been added to the US app store, so I just spent some time playing through the Izdur Ocean and Sparkle Rock levels. It's definitely pretty fun, and I like the beautiful graphics and immersive environments (as well as the puzzle gameplay), although I would love a game with more storytelling. Maybe if we're lucky there might eventually be some more in-depth online games or video games.

Still not in the US app store, unfortunately. Wonder how long it will be before it shows up here... the description certainly makes it sound fun.

I'd like some antagonists in a future wave as well, but I don't know if they have to fit the "evil ruler" archetype. I'd be just as happy with a character kind of like Sam Sinister/Baron von Barron in the Adventurers theme: a morally-deficient rival who cares more about personal gain than virtue.

A reminder that while the Dareth vs. Nindroid polybag was sold individually at some stores (and online), it was intended to be a gift with purchase, so the goal was to encourage people to buy other LEGO. So, as an example, they could say "free exclusive Gali mask with any LEGO Bionicle purchase" or "free exclusive Tahu mask with a LEGO purchase totaling $25 or more".

Another possibility other than a full-size store exclusive set could be a store-exclusive polybag set like this one.

Good review! The articulation of the ankles would be greatly improved if the ball cups were on the feet and the ball joints were on the legs instead of the other way around. But the mech definitely has loads of personality!

Agreed. When I first saw Onua I definitely wanted to see what he'd look like with just silver instead of silver and gold, though more out of curiosity than dissatisfaction with the actual design. I tried it out as soon as my brother got Onua, and I agree it looks kind of boring. I prefer the gold. Of course, set design DOES involve making sacrifices sometimes, so it's a mistake to think EVERY decision the designers make is on account of their creative vision. But it's usually fairly easy to tell which decisions were made to keep things under budget, make things sturdier, simplify the building process, etc. and which were made for creative reasons. I do like villains to be colorful in some way (and I think the new skull villains are plenty satisfactory in that regard), but I do not miss sets having the same elemental powers and color schemes for the heroes and villains. Color is a powerful tool for showcasing things about the characters, but how you use it can have a big impact. Some sets use color to delineate powers, others to delineate faction, others to delineate rank, and still others to do some combination of the three. In LEGO Ninjago, for instance, the first year's enemies (the Skulkins) DID have elemental affiliations, although this was mostly symbolic for the villains as they did not use actual elemental powers in the story. As such, the skeletons' loincloths and the spikes on their shoulder armor were matched to the elemental colors of the Ninja. They also all used white, black, and red to identify them as the Skulkin faction (as well as purple on their buildings and vehicles). Conversely, the Serpentine in 2012 did not have really strong elemental affiliations, except on the Spinjitzu trading cards (where Fangpyres were Fire, Hypnobrai were Ice, Constrictai were Earth, and Venomari were Lightning). So the color schemes that identified them by tribe were not the same as the color schemes that identified the Ninja and Skulkins by element. All in all, no matter what colors you're using, it's important to think about what message those colors convey. Unless the new BIONICLE skull villains have elemental powers like the Toa and Protectors, it would probably have been a bad idea to give them the same elemental color schemes. But using the same transparent colors as the Toa helps to diversify them while also providing clear "matchups" between the heroes and villains. The prominent use of silver and gunmetal helps reinforce the "mechanical skeleton" look, and the Tr. Flu. Reddish Orange accents on all of them help reinforce that they are all part of the same evil faction. Whether or not future villains use what we think of as elemental color schemes, I think it's almost a certainty that their color schemes will be different than these current villains, unless they are likewise supposed to be mechanical skeletons within the same faction (which I doubt; LEGO likes to mix things up from year to year). Yeah, they've done some great books since BIONICLE ended. Ameet Studio is responsible for the illustrations in the Ninjago activity books and the European handbooks, the Legends of Chima activity books and storybooks, and the LEGO Friends activity books and chapter books. They already showed their design acuity back when they were doing BIONICLE guide books, but they've come a long way since the days "Makuta's Guide to the Universe" (which was beautiful despite mostly just using stock art)!

The LEGO Elves website has had a major update! I made a list of most of the new content right here!

The shop.LEGO.com description does call it a waterfall, but I think that was a mistake on the part of the writer of that description. It makes a lot more sense as a crystal wall, and there is no waterfall at this location in the webisode.

I agree, this theme has some very elegant character designs. And I don't know if the characters could have been nearly as elegant as minifigures. One great advantage of the mini-doll is that their outfits have actual dimension rather than just being printed on as flat decorations. Great review of the adventure ship, by the way! People could have said the exact same thing about the minifigure when it was first introduced. Well, except that the previous style of figure used in the "Homemaker" and "Building Set with People" themes didn't have a name. No theme's figures are going to be exceedingly versatile right off the bat. But at the same time, mini-dolls become more versatile and customizable with each new character and outfit introduced. It's true that unless we get a considerable redesign we're not going to get interchangeable hands and legs or anything like that, but on the other hand, LEGO usually doesn't encourage removing minifigure hands, arms, and legs anyway (since it weakens their connections). The mini-doll is not flawless by any means, but I feel like it has about as many assets compared to regular minifigures as it has flaws. Some people will grow to like the mini-doll and some will not, depending on which of those assets and flaws actually matter to them. But every difference the mini-doll has from the classic minifigure has a reason for its existence.

The wind key also comes in Aira's Pegasus Sleigh. So it's in both of the summer sets.

I've heard about some girls who hate the mini-dolls and some who love them. But of course, it has to be remembered that part of the reason for the mini-doll was to bring NEW girls into the LEGO hobby, so girls who could already find joy in existing LEGO themes are not necessarily who they are targeted at. For me, the type of figures does not dictate whether a theme is good or bad. After all, one of my favorite themes is BIONICLE, which is at an entirely different scale than any type of minifigure or mini-doll. I also loved the Exo-Force theme, which used the same minifigure parts as other themes but had an entirely different design language for their faces. So I tend to judge themes on their individual merits and not on whether their characters are compatible with ones from other themes. I do like that we're getting more mini-doll themes because it multiplies the versatility of existing mini-doll parts from a customization standpoint.

I don't see how having the orange and other transparent colors in even amounts would be a good thing. The orange is an accent color like the purple on Evo 2.0 or the brown on Vorox, not a primary or secondary color (except, of course, on Skull Grinder). By all rights, it should be used sparingly so that it doesn't dominate the color scheme. Now, that doesn't mean the color schemes are immune to criticism. There are definitely some of the skull villains who arguably might look better with slightly more or less of certain colors. But using the orange and the other transparent colors in equal measure would probably be overkill.