Aanchir
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Incidentally, the Elves sets are listed in the Argos catalog, and it seems like an early suspicion of mine was correct, and this theme will be aimed at a slightly higher age range than LEGO Friends or LEGO Disney Princess. All the sets down to the very smallest are marked as ages 7 and up, whereas Friends sets of comparable price are marked as ages five or up (for the smaller sets) or six and up (for the larger ones). Hopefully this will help the theme to better coexist with those other two themes.
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Apparently it does! BZPower showed one of them in their Glowkies review!
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Emily Jones's character video has been posted! Is it just me, or is that Ashleigh Ball as Aira? EDIT: Also, could the character on the right be Skyra from the summer wave?
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My favorite of the new sets in general is 70786 Gali Master of Water. She's a very elegant, streamlined design, with a great color scheme and awesome equipment in both battle mode and adrenalin mode. But if you had more variety in mind, there are other options. 70789 Onua Master of Earth is by far one of the most unique Toa, though also one of the larger and more expensive ones. He's the same height as Pohatu but around twice as wide, And 70790 Lord of Skull Spiders would give you a very different building experience than either of the sets you've already built, since it's all built around a unique Technic function. Plus, Lord of Skull Spiders would give the characters you have a larger enemy to fight!
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Personally, I think Lewa's lankiness is one of his most endearing features, so shortening his arms or putting larger shells on his legs aren't even on my radar as changes I think the model needs. And I'm not sure what you mean about the adrenalin mode impeding the gear function — I think it works just fine in both modes. Wouldn't his gear function need to support the same weight either way? It's not like you're adding new pieces in adrenalin mode that aren't connected to his gearbox in battle mode. The only change is the load on his wrists, and they have to support less of the weapon weight in adrenalin mode, not more.
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My brother recently bought Onua at Barnes & Noble, and I have to say I love his design — probably even more than Kopaka's! I love his short, stocky design, his hunched posture, and his weapons in both configurations. The only thing about the design that bothers me is the different colors for the upper arms and upper legs, which I still don't understand. I think either one or the other would have been more appropriate. The silver and gold in conjunction don't bother me, but I didn't really expect them to. One of the first things I did try was to switch his gold armor shells with silver ones from the other Toa and Protectors, which seemed to me like the easiest fix to the concerns other people had raised. And it DOES work... but to be honest, I actually find I like it better with the gold ones, which contrast nicely with the purple shells. Coloring the Silver Metallic parts Warm Gold would probably have been overkill, though. As it is, I think the colors just balance out nicely.
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Well, I mean, the Toa had the same sort of memory loss in 2001, and there was at that point no older continuity for it TO be referencing. So yes, we will probably learn at some point where the Toa came from, just like we did in the old story. But it's a bit too early to say whether the Toa's past will be connected with the previous continuity. The issue with this type of piece is that it would not allow you to attach an armor shell to all four sides of the beam — just the front and back. The ability to use an armor shell in any orientation is one of the big advantages the current shell and beam designs have allowed for, since you can now give a model a different look without needing to resort to a different piece. That's not to say there would be no advantages to new types of beam with more Technic connection points. But they would certainly not be able to take the place of the current ones, merely complement them. I have no doubt that it will have SOME similarities, just as pretty much all the Toa masks have some similarities to the Toa's previous masks. With that said, I expect that it will cover the forehead as well as the front of the face, due to both the comments at NYCC and the fact that if it didn't cover the forehead the mask-knocking-off feature would not be compatible with the new Mask of Time.
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I'm flattered to hear people still think fondly of that NYTF coverage, even with as long as it took me to get it all posted! I think it was April before I had posted updates from all the different themes... there's a reason that other sites' coverage isn't always so in-depth (though I'm sure if I were more organized I could have had it all finished much quicker). That year, the tickets I received were actually on behalf of BIONICLEsector01, and I'm not sure if they received tickets this year (if they have, they haven't asked me to represent them). But you can generally count on BZPower to post nice, thorough New York Toy Fair coverage, and they usually have all the themes on display covered by the end of February. And they give quite a bit of attention to action/adventure themes compared to some other sites.
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Great to have confirmation! I imagine the same will be added to the other Skull Spider pages before long. It's a bit silly that it has four images with the same header text ("Beware the Creepy Skull Spider") and description. One for each set that includes a blue skull spider, of course, so it's not a glitch, just a slightly goofy way of presenting the info. LEGO.com homepage. It was up there as one of the "highlights" as recently as yesterday, and unfortunately, there was not any version without the big play button in the middle. The new BIONICLE frontpage highlight just includes a picture of the Tahu set (with the uncomfortable-sounding caption "Explore Tahu").
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Not gonna discuss the contest here in particular because there's a separate topic for that, but I do have to point out here that there's nothing wrong with "generic black and red" villains. It's certainly not anything classic BIONICLE shied away from. Griping about villains being black and red is kind of like griping about fire characters being red and orange. Color schemes like that are well-established cultural shorthand for those kinds of characters and concepts. Of course, tropes like that can be (and ARE) subverted. Hero Factory's last main villain was Black, Medium Azur, Tr. Flu. Green, and Warm Gold, and its underlings were all the colors of the rainbow. In fact, the only "main villain" in the Hero Factory theme who was primarily black and red was Black Phantom. Ninjago's Overlord (and in fact, many of its major villains) have frequently made great use of the colors black, white, and purple, with red used sparingly. Legends of Chima's most recent main villain was Sir Fangar, whose color scheme consisted mostly of White and Tr. Light Blue. So assuming BIONICLE will never break from the "red and black equals evil" trope is a bit premature. However, at the same time, color schemes are often used to convey meaning, and so they generally aren't chosen arbitrarily. Black and red are conveniently associated with evil: black because of its association with darkness and the unknown, red because of its association with blood, fire, and (consequently) danger or violence. Hero Factory, Ninjago, and Legends of Chima have likewise used white in major villain designs in part for its association with bones. Ninjago's Overlord and Hero Factory's Queen Beast used gold for its association with power and authority. But black and red villains are ubiquitous for a reason, and the ubiquity of the trope adds to its power.
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Battle for the Gold Mask Semi-finalists and Winner
Aanchir replied to VBBN's topic in LEGO Action Figures
I've seen the idea of size or piece count limits pitched on BZPower, and I think it's a bad idea for a contest as open-ended as this one. If you have a contest where the contest THEME is "less is more", then sure, a limit like that is fine. But that wasn't the theme in this contest. The theme was "build the baddest villain you can imagine", and for some people it goes without saying that "the baddest villain they can imagine" would tower over a typical hero or civilian. The fact that bigger models tend to win these contests doesn't make them less valid than smaller ones. It just means a lot of people actually like these kinds of models, and as such it's all the more reason NOT to prohibit them. In a contest to find out what the public likes best, you can't prohibit things just because you think the public will like them best. It's completely counterintuitive. Now, what WOULD be good for open-ended contests like this one, but probably not this one in particular, would be size classes. So just as an example, you could have one category for "small" models less than 5 inches/12.8 centimeters/16 modules in any dimension, one category for "medium" models less than 10 inches/25.6 centimeters/32 modules in any dimension, and one category for all models 10 inches or larger. Winners would be selected for each class, so you wouldn't have to worry about small and medium models not getting recognition. However, that would not have likely worked for this contest because it was already subdivided into six different participating websites, and thus needed to have a single winner from each website. To get that, you'd end up having to pit the winners in each size class against each other anyway, and so you'd likely arrive at the same outcome, with larger models dominating in the semifinals and finals. Plus, there was only a single grand prize to give out. -
Onu-Metru's tunnels were not simply mines, but archives, which were basically like a big museum. They store information from throughout the Matoran Universe. What purpose does this serve? Well, I guess you could consider it Mata Nui's "memory banks", recording diagnostic information from his body. If something went wrong somewhere in his body (an invasion by Visorak, or a civil war between Matoran, or even just a natural disaster), the Archives would keep a record of what happened, why, and ideally, how to prevent it happening again. As for why the Matoran had to mine them out, I suppose you could compare it to synapse formation in the human brain.
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English-language product descriptions! 41071 41072 41073 41074 41075 41076
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The Ninjago website has been updated! The US site (http://www.lego.com/en-us/ninjago) is a bit hard to get around. The GB site (http://www.lego.com/en-gb/ninjago) is much more navigable, with everything accessible from the top navigation bar. Neither currently has any 2015 product info... yet. The new characters page (http://www.lego.com/en-gb/ninjago/characters) is fairly lackluster, using inconsistent and outdated character art and containing sparse information compared to last year's character page. The videos page is also very disorganized. But there are some great new features like a story resource with a recap of previous story chapters and more in-depth character info (http://www.lego.com/en-gb/ninjago/explore), and the return of downloadable wallpapers and posters (though the selection is currently a bit scarce).
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I believe they're from the UK edition of the LEGO Club Magazine.
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LEGO just posted a 25-second character video to their YouTube channel, featuring Azari! I am so excited for this theme! The tone is epic and adventurous, and the characters seem really engaging already. I am hoping, perhaps a bit naively, that the app for this theme might be a point-and-click adventure game. I loved the BIONICLE Mata Nui Online Game growing up, but in a lot of their boy-oriented themes, LEGO tends to favor action games. Point-and-click adventure games are one of my favorite video game genres, and I think this theme would be a perfect fit for one!
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The art style for these is cool but I agree that it doesn't capture the uniqueness of the character designs. It feels more like concept art than a finished product (esp. due to inaccuracies in some of the masks). In fact, that's probably exactly what it is — concept art or a style test that the marketing team saw fit to publish. The comics in the instruction manuals might have been the final result of these concepts. What's strange to me is that in exactly one frame of Pohatu's comic, the Protector mask looks finalized. In the rest of the comics, it looks like a preliminary design.
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I dunno, a scarless Kai would be kind of weird. On the one hand, he's never had the scar in the show, but on the other hand, he's ALWAYS had it in the sets. And a scar isn't the kind of thing that just goes away. If it were a matter of his hair color being different or something like that that could be easily reconciled without completely breaking from continuity with past releases. A scar, not so much. Anyway, I kind of wish that magazine came out in the US... if only for the posters!
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I wouldn't mind a new foot, but I haven't got any issue with the current 2.0 foot as far as sets are concerned. Maybe something slightly smaller that looks more like a bare foot and less like a boot could be interesting or useful, like the feet of the Toa in this topic. It'd certainly complement the hand pieces nicely. I've tried a number of times to make realistically-proportioned custom feet on LEGO Digital Designer, and what I've found is that on a typical Toa-sized figure that would be a bit ridiculous. On a figure 25 modules tall, a realistically-proportioned foot would be only around four modules long! All things considered, I much prefer the slightly exaggerated size of Toa Mata feet or 2.0 Hero Factory feet, which look more powerful and provide a more stable foundation for a figure that size. In any case, I'm glad we're no longer seeing feet like the Toa Metru or Toa Inika feet with exaggeratedly long heels. The Toa Metru foot was half a module shorter than the 2.0 foot in the toe but an entire module longer in the heel. I wouldn't mind more 1.0 Hero Factory feet in my collection. When built as intended, with a Y-joint placed horizontally on top of the foot, the proportions are rather ridiculous, with the kind of elongated heel I dislike so much. But by sticking a Y-joint in vertically and putting a 2M cross axle through the bottom cross axle hole, what you end up with is a foot proportionally similar to the 2.0 foot but more slender, with a more pointed toe and a higher arch. Probably not a technique the LEGO Group would ever use in a set, but it's great for MOCs.
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Prices for LEGO vary by country, even among countries that use the same currency. Click the "Prices" tab here to see how wildly they can vary. In Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands the set was €45. In Austria, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany it was €40. And as that catalog shows, in Latvia they were €50!
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It's important to remember that even the live-action portion of The LEGO Movie is a work of fiction, and as such it might not be just like "real life". In The LEGO Movie's universe, those parts and figures might have been introduced in other themes. This isn't a problem that is exclusive to The LEGO Movie, either. TV Tropes has a whole page on the Celebrity Paradox. Even if a work takes place in "our world" rather than some fantasy world, it will often (by necessity) take place in a version of our world that is slightly different from our own. In the TV shows Sherlock and Elementary, both modern-day adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories, nobody ever asks Sherlock Holmes "Hey, isn't it ironic that you and a lot of your friends and enemies are named for characters from Sherlock Holmes stories?" Rather, it's implied that in those shows' universes, either the Sherlock Holmes stories never existed or simply aren't as well-known as in real life.
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Frankly, I like the idea of Ekimu being protector-sized. I like the idea of a being of a being of extraordinary importance, skill, and wisdom taking the same humble form as one on of the island's elders or villagers. This isn't some legendary warrior we're talking about, after all — rather, it's a legendary mask maker. An elder character more ancient even than the Protectors. I also think that him having a shorter stature could potentially allow him to remain a mentor-type character to the Toa in future years without raising the question of why he doesn't simply fight by their side or in their place, which would be an easy question to raise if he were made out to be a being of incredible size and power like Axonn. Giving him a smaller size helps reinforce that he is a character for the heroic Toa to rescue/defend, not the other way around.
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When I was a kid, around the same time I got into BIONICLE, I was a big fan of the MegaMan Battle Network series of video games. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was just the newest series of MegaMan games, and that the other versions of MegaMan I saw on the Internet who looked different and had different stories were from different game series that the Battle Network series was inspired by, but not directly a part of. Now, I got into BIONICLE around when I was ten, and MegaMan Battle Network when I was 13. It's possible that younger fans (7–9) might struggle more with differentiating the current generation of a franchise from previous generations, and in this day and age I'm sure younger kids like that are becoming more and more active on the Internet. So it remains to be seen just how the younger BIONICLE fans handle this. But it's nothing other franchises haven't dealt with before. Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, My Little Pony, G.I. Joe, and other toy franchises from the 80s have had plenty of different story continuities by now, and the advent of the Internet has not crippled them in that respect one bit. In fact, it makes information on when and how they have been rebooted over the years more accessible to people than ever before. Without the Internet, imagine how much harder it might be for a My Little Pony fan today to figure out why the characters on the old-school My Little Pony DVD they rented look so different from the ones they know from TV or their own toys!
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But I thought we were operating under the assumption that the sets were the reason why BIONICLE can't stick with the same main characters for more than three years like Ninjago does? In that case, Hero Factory is all the proof you need that it can be done. If it's the story that's the issue... well, that brings us right back to Ninjago, which has not needed a complete cast change in its entire run. Hero Factory's story also had more depth than people give it credit for, but I won't bother going into THAT because it's not really relevant to the question of whether BIONICLE could keep the same main characters for more than three years.
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Apparently so, yes. The plot of the game involves him stealing the Ninja's elemental powers and the Ninja having to get them back. If I'm remembering correctly, anyway.