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Aanchir

Eurobricks Ladies
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Everything posted by Aanchir

  1. Aanchir
    If the idea of not owning everything in a line is enough to make you lose interest in the line, you're probably taking your LEGO hobby too seriously. I was a BIONICLE fan, and it was well-understood in that community that owning everything was not going to be a realistic goal for most people. Even if you bought every set, even if you got every single blind-packaged collectible, there were things like the gold or platinum masks given away as sweepstakes prizes which most fans would never have an opportunity to own. And you know what? Most people just accepted reality as it was and bought only as many sets and collectibles as they were personally willing to pay for. They didn't get bitter about the fact that other people might own things they didn't. After all, it's not like they'd be any better off if those things they were missing were never produced or distributed in the first place. So I will never understand why for some LEGO fans, the idea of not owning every LEGO minifigure produced in a theme ruins a collection forever. If you decide you can't have a 100% complete collection on your LEGO budget, just don't make a 100% complete collection a goal of yours. Problem solved.
  2. Aanchir
    They do try to profit from the media and other things. They're certainly not selling those things at a loss hoping to make it up in merchandise sales. But the fact remains that BIONICLE is a toy line and LEGO is a toy company. They will never make anywhere near as much money on media sales as they do on toy sales, nor do they want to. If the LEGO Group were not seeking to sell toys they would not have created BIONICLE in the first place, because from beginning to end it was designed as a toy franchise. Even with many media franchises like Star Wars, it's well understood that licensed merchandise and media sales make up a HUGE piece of the franchise's net gross, even larger than ticket sales or home media sales.
  3. Aanchir
    With as wildly successful as it's been, I wouldn't be surprised if it has at least as much momentum as some other licensed themes like Cars 2. Additionally, it's possible that having at least a few sets on store shelves might help help bolster further home media sales, since the movie will remain in the public eye.
  4. Aanchir
    The Angry Kitty set is not an SDCC exclusive, but rather a set they're revealing there that's due for release in January. Which is great! It means more LEGO Movie sets in 2015! I'm guessing the Unikitty exclusive's face is just a 1x3 brick printed on both sides, which is a bit odd. Might not work in certain displays.
  5. Aanchir
    Omigosh! The set doesn't look totally unique, but it's good if you want to army-build Skeletrons and Micro-Managers. New Angry Kitty too! I wonder what other LEGO Movie sets we might expect in January!
  6. Aanchir
    Agreed for the most part, but while I don't think romance is necessary in the storyline, I also don't think it should be expressly prohibited. Even in the old BIONICLE, the little bits of romance we got (like Hewkii and Macku's relationship, or Matau's desperate flirting with Nokama) could be very cute or funny. And to be honest, I almost feel like the only reason Greg Farshtey was insistent on romance being non-canon was that he didn't want to have to deal with shipping-related questions as part of his day-to-day interactions with fans. Certainly he didn't hesitate to keep Matau's flirty characterization in the books and comics consistent with what it was in the movies, and there were also other parts of the books that could very easily be interpreted as romantic subtext. As a writer, I hardly think he was oblivious to that. I don't think the fact that BIONICLE characters are mostly mechanical really has any bearing on whether romance should be allowed. After all, this is a kids' franchise. It's not like any biological component of romance would ever be likely to come up anyway. But romance as a social construct gives you another level on which you can potentially relate to the characters. Even Hero Factory didn't have any rules against romance, and most of the characters in that franchise are completely mechanical. For that matter, one of the current romantic subplots in LEGO Ninjago involves two completely mechanical characters: Zane and P.I.X.A.L.
  7. Aanchir
    Hard to judge just from anecdotal evidence. At some of my local stores it seems to be selling quite well — some of them can't even keep all of this year's sets on the shelves. Though that could just mean they understocked them. I imagine the hype surrounding the LEGO Movie has probably had a big impact on all LEGO sales, not just the sales of sets and themes featured in the movie itself. None of us has sales figures for the whole theme. The people most qualified to answer are people who work in retail, and even they can only really speak to the sales at their particular store.
  8. Aanchir
    Yeah, it turns out I'm really bad at keeping up with my YouTube subscriptions. I only really noticed the song "Full Digital" when I was getting the Weekend Whip remix on iTunes and thought to check what else I might have missed. XD I already mentioned it in the sets topic, but there's going to be a Ninjago panel at San Diego Comic-Con, featuring some LEGO designers as well as the writers from the show. I wonder if we might get any interesting new information there. Maybe even some info on the movie, since the Hageman brothers are in charge of the screenplay for that as well.
  9. Aanchir
    Even if it had, it probably wouldn't have succeeded, since LEGO Ideas can't support new molds or proposals for full themes. It was a good proposal, though. I would be VERY impressed if we ever saw a girl-oriented constraction line.
  10. Aanchir
    Because you could create any character with any gender and any powers and there was absolutely nothing in the official story saying your character could not exist in that universe. In fact, on the contrary, the Hero Factory storyline began by establishing that there were thousands of heroes on missions all across the galaxy, including providing briefs describing past missions involving various heroes on various teams. Even if you didn't personally find the storyline inspiring (and I, for one, did), the point is that it did a great job of not actively limiting fans' creative exp<b></b>ression. There were no rigid rules about what kind of powers heroes and villains could or could not have, or about what colors represented a particular power, or about what powers or colors could only belong to a particular gender. You could even send your original hero characters on missions with the canon hero characters and it wouldn't contradict a thing in the official storyline, provided you didn't kill off any canon characters or anything silly like that. It seems like encouraging fans to create their own characters and stories was a huge factor in how the Hero Factory storyline was set up, judging not only by the creative freedom the official story afforded but also from things like the Hero Factory call center and the Hero Recon Team service that encouraged kids to create and share their original ideas. Even the Hero Factory online gallery included photography tips for sharing your creations, going a step beyond what had been featured on any of the other LEGO.com galleries. Obviously, not all of these things proved successful. Hero Recon Team in particular was no more profitable in the long run than the Design byME service it was based on. But there was still a very clear and concerted effort to encourage fans to express themselves creatively, which is an admirable goal for a LEGO theme.
  11. Aanchir
    Somehow I missed the new promotional song "Full Digital" from The Fold, which came out last month: There's also a full version of the remix of "The Weekend Whip" featured as the opening theme in the current season: Just downloaded both to my iTunes and added them to my Ninjago playlist!
  12. Aanchir
    Depends what kind of "improvement" you're hoping for. Personally, I feel that while the Glatorian and Hero Factory heroes utterly failed to improve gender ratios in the sets, they did improve freedom for fans to create their own characters. And when we're dealing with a creative toy like LEGO, I honestly feel like that's a factor just as important as what genders the characters have in the official sets and story. But LEGO was never really a "unisex toy". Let's not make that mistake. The toy industry was already fairly gendered by the time LEGO bricks emerged on the scene. While the LEGO Group certainly tried to promote their brand as a toy for both girls and boys in the early days, I think that the public was already somewhat inclined to perceive construction toys as a "boyish" interest (especially since older construction toys like Erector were marketed specifically toward boys). Hence why the LEGO Group made attempts to market specifically girl-oriented toys as far back as 1971 with their somewhat regrettably titled Homemaker theme. Even before that, there were a lot of boys pictured on the packaging for sets, and not nearly as many girls. I do not think it is in the LEGO Group's interest to abandon gendered marketing altogether. I do think, however, that the LEGO Group should try to cover a full spectrum of gendered interests, from toys that are targeted specifically at boys and specifically at girls to whatever blend of demographics might be found somewhere in between. Look at The LEGO Movie as an example of one of these "in-between" themes. Despite being unequivocally girly in its subject matter, other than the minifigures, 70803 Cloud Cuckoo Palace has demonstrated amazing sales strength. In fact, I feel like most story-driven themes have the potential for this kind of cross-demographic appeal, because good storytelling is something people of any gender can appreciate. In an interview earlier this year, Dan and Kevin Hageman (the writers for the LEGO Ninjago TV series) estimate that around 30% of the show's audience is female, and I feel like this is something the LEGO Group should seek to capitalize on with the theme's set designs and storytelling. Furthermore, I think society is evolving. Boys are already responding better to female protagonists in media than conventional wisdom might dictate. Soon enough, that willingness to accept and even identify with characters of the opposite sex might extend to the toy aisle. And this is a factor that I think merits a better approach to sex and gender in BIONICLE. Even if the LEGO Group doesn't include a lot of female characters in the theme's sets and supplementary media to start, they should avoid placing limits on what gender fan characters or their own characters can have. Because if a boy or girl wants to create a female fire Toa or a male water Toa, they shouldn't have to feel like those creations are directly at odds with the official storyline. And in case it turns out that girls and boys DO respond better to female characters than the LEGO Group anticipated, the LEGO Group shouldn't write themselves into a corner that makes it difficult to adapt their marketing strategy.
  13. Aanchir
    Probably that this is just what they'd want us to think if they were trying to fool us.
  14. Aanchir
    I wonder why the sets are so inconsistent about the amount of 1x1 round plates they include as blaster ammo? Bulk Drill Machine randomly has three extra 1x1 round plates in the inventory, Tunneler Beast and Breez Flea Machine each have one extra in the inventory, and the other four sets have no extras in the inventory. Maybe once the set designs were finished the designers just threw in however many extras they could while keeping the set under budget, but that seems a bit counterintuitive because Bulk Drill Machine is the largest set at its price point by piece count even without the extra ammo. On a side note, I wish more of the sets used Tr. Bright Green ammo for the minifigure blasters, just because it's a scarcer color for that piece to begin with. Currently only Surge & Rocka Combat Machine uses 1x1 round plates in that color in the Hero Factory theme, and in other themes it only appears in these sets. Anyway, just corrected any errors I made in these sets when I built them on LDD. I'll upload them to my Brickshelf once the correct helmets are available.
  15. Aanchir
    I care for several reasons. For one, I think society is beginning to evolve and the LEGO Group should do its best not to fall behind. Conventional wisdom dictates that boys generally prefer to play with male action figures, and sales figures generally tend to back that up. But there's no guarantee that this will always be the case, especially with more boys learning to enjoy media with female protagonists like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or The Legend of Korra. Also, LEGO is inherently a creative toy, and it's generally a bad idea for official storylines to put a codified limit on kids' creativity. If a kid wants to create a female fire Toa, or a male water Toa for that matter, the official storyline shouldn't dictate that such a thing is wrong or impossible. And I think we can agree that BIONICLE is about much more than just "robots fighting other robots". I've been active in the online BIONICLE community since 2006 and I can say with certainty that you must not have been hanging around the same BIONICLE fans as I was, because BZPower (one of the chief BIONICLE fansites) has always had quite a bit of activity from female members. Some of the fan community's premier artists and writers are female, as are a number of BZPower's admins (Lady Kopaka, Nikira, GaliGee, Hahli Husky, Turakii #1 Lavasurfer, Brave_Dragon, Jiayi, Kayru, Tufi Piyufi, and Nukaya are just SOME of the women who have at one point had major involvement in the BIONICLE fan community on BZPower). Obviously male fans are the majority, but female fans aren't an insignificant demographic either. It seems this is often the case with media-driven LEGO franchises, because Ninjago also has a very strong female fanbase. The Hageman brothers, who write the TV series, estimate that about 30% of its viewers are girls, and there are lots and lots of female Ninjago fans on sites like deviantART and Tumblr. Sometimes a girl will not even discover a franchise like this except through her male peers or siblings, but if the franchise happens to have an exciting story and compelling characters, then it's easy for her to get hooked regardless of her gender. This is correct to an extent. Still, as I said, society's attitudes about gender are evolving. Before LEGO Friends existed, not one of the "stereotypically girly products" LEGO put out met with nearly such great success, and the reason is that a lot of parents were stuck thinking of building toys as "a boy thing". LEGO Friends has broken down that barrier, and I think as a result you're likely to see the number of female LEGO fans in general expand in the years to come. And while themes like LEGO Friends might continue to be the main draw for many girls, who's to say that some of them might not also take an interest in "boy-oriented" themes like Ninjago or BIONICLE? And even boys' attitudes are evolving. I think these days a lot of boys are less likely to think of female characters as gross or lame today than fifteen years ago. That doesn't mean that they'll necessarily be lining up to buy action figures of those characters, or identifying with female characters on an intensely personal level, but in the very least I think they might be more keen on creating their own female characters and telling stories with them, and the LEGO Group should try to accommodate that by reducing the arbitrary restrictions on what colors and elements can only belong to a particular gender.
  16. Aanchir
    I just think setting up titan-sized Toa as the default versions of certain characters would be kind of pointless, even detrimental. Not only would they be more expensive, but it'd be next to impossible to release a lot of larger villains to oppose them without the prices rising dramatically. Even BIONICLE pretty much never had sets more expensive than $30 except for certain Rahi and vehicles, and most titans were just $20. I agree that figures similar in size to a typical Hero Factory hero (around seven inches or eighteen centimeters) would be ideal.
  17. Aanchir
    I don't want the Toa to be drastically different sizes, and I wouldn't want any of the Toa to be the size of a $20 set, but I wouldn't complain about getting $5 "Matoran" and a mix of $10 and $15 "Toa". Just look at the Hero Factory sets from Brain Attack. The $10 heroes were only one module (8mm) shorter than the $13 heroes, despite the sets having different piece counts. That's a smaller difference than with the Toa Metru, who were all at the SAME price point but differed in height by up to two modules. I think you could easily do the same thing with Toa — some could be slightly taller, more muscular, and have more elaborate tools/weapons to justify a higher price, but the overall height would not need to be much different.
  18. Aanchir
    It doesn't even have to be a true reboot for them to do that, necessarily. I've always thought it'd be cool if a revived BIONICLE did like the Legend of Zelda so often does, so have the same continuity as existing games but having brand-new incarnations of the characters. So you'd have a Tahu, a Gali, a Lewa, but they might not be the SAME Tahu, Gali, and Lewa as the original BIONICLE. I think it'd be a bit liberating, yet it wouldn't leave people who enjoyed the original series feeling like the new story was taking the place of the original. Names in BIONICLE were never gender-specific, so there's no reason a new Tahu or Kopaka would have to be the same gender as the original Tahu and Kopaka. Elements were gender-specific, for the most part, but I'm sure the writers could find away around that if they wanted to, especially if calling Lewa "Master of Jungle" does describe an actual change in his element (though I don't really want that — as unintuitive as it is for green to represent air, I wouldn't want air to stop being one of the main elements). Sadly, I don't think it's all that likely for the LEGO Group to change the genders of the characters appearing in these sets. The story-driven themes since BIONICLE ended haven't really been any better with gender diversity than BIONICLE was, after all. Chima has fairly diverse female characters, but there are still only eight female characters out of the 59 characters appearing as minifigures — less than one female character for every six male characters. So expecting better gender ratios in the sets might be more than we can hope for, at least at the start. Still, what's more important to me than the gender ratios in the sets is the way gender ratios were codified in the story. I strongly dislike the way gender was tied strictly to element. It's a stupid rule to impose on a whole species, especially in a LEGO franchise where you want to encourage fans to be creative. Shouldn't fans be able to give their original Toa and Matoran characters whatever sort of appearance and powers they want regardless of gender? Chima, Hero Factory, and Ninjago offer fans at least that much creative freedom — there are no arbitrary rules of "this tribe is all male" or "this is a female power". So if the official story does away with that rule, that alone will be an improvement in my book, even if the sets themselves still only have one female character for every five male characters.
  19. Aanchir
  20. Aanchir
    Yeah, that would be pretty surprising. But at this point there's really no way to say for sure whether Hero Factory will have any new sets next year. I would hope so, but if the new BIONICLE takes Hero Factory's place I probably won't complain. I'm confident I won't be disappointed by the design quality.
  21. Aanchir
    A lot of people have made a big deal of the number of sets, but for a debut wave it's not all that extraordinary. Hero Factory had 15 sets in its debut wave, as did Legends of Chima. Ninjago had 16 sets in its debut wave (in all of these cases I'm referring to regular-issue sets, not things like polybags which are often distributed through different channels).
  22. Aanchir
    I don't know, it could be that things like "Fire Defender" refer to elemental guardians like in this concept art. In that case, they could definitely be adversaries for the Toa. EDIT: Here's a gallery of similar concept art. Coincidentally, there's even something that could pass for a "Skull Spider". But I'm also interested by the set numbers. They start at 70778, but sets only exist for sets up to 70728. If these names are legitimate, then it could be that the intervening numbers belong to other themes, or to unannounced BIONICLE sets with a different marketing strategy. But a gap of 49 numbers is highly irregular, at least with what we've seen since the switch to five-digit set numbers for all sets. Skull Spider sounds plenty Rahi-like to me. At least as much as Chute Lurker, Doom Viper, or Ash Bear.
  23. Aanchir
    I believe this site has been reliable in the past. I remember they were one of the first places to reveal pics and information on some of this year's sets in themes like Legends of Chima. Since this is a site that actually sells sets they wouldn't exactly benefit from trolling the fan community.
  24. Aanchir
    Apparently so, judging from a Google search. Not that the image really needed another nail in the coffin. :P
  25. Aanchir
    There are very strong hints suggesting that it is. However, we're also starting to see obvious fake "leaks" pop up so best to use discretion.
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