Aanchir

Series 2 and Series 3 tribe information! Series 3 includes the Glorp Corp, Spikels, and Wiztastics. More pics here!

Joe Meno from BrickJournal also took some excellent photos of the Friends lineup. Check them out here! I love how many very adventurous play scenarios we're seeing! Nobody will be able to complain any more that the LEGO Friends characters don't get to go on real adventures. Dirt bikes, helicopters, rock slides, waterfalls, zip lines, collapsing bridges, and plenty of animals to rescue. The shopping mall is more traditional fare for girl-oriented toys, but it's still quite nice and includes such contents as a photo booth, sports equipment shop, beauty parlor, event stage, two restaurants (or at least, a restaurant with two counters), and a few kiosks. It seems to be built to a similar modular standard to Heartlake High, Summer Riding Camp, and Olivia's House. The odd set out, "Olivia's Ice Cream Bike", confuses me a little, just because I've never seen a stand or kiosk hitched up to a bike from the front. There's also a classy-looking fountain and picnic table and an odd, lonely mailbox. Still a nice set, just a little bit confusing with regard to its contents.

I don't think we'll get any more legend beasts this year, but there could certainly be more next year if this year's Legend Beasts sell really well. And I can't imagine why they wouldn't. They're great models at a great price.

Very cool design. Love the creative use of the hero seats/cockpits. The color scheme is original and slightly garish, but the colors are still very well-distributed. Great work!

I interpreted them as dripping ooze, myself.

Some LEGO City buildings are modular — 7633, 8403, 7641 (and its re-release 60031), and 3661, 4644 are all based on the same modular system. There may be other sets like this I'm not thinking of. But these are smaller than the LEGO Friends "dollhouse" sets. And the LEGO Group actually advertised the interchangeability of the first three. Have any sites posted thorough pics of these sets from the New York Toy Fair?

Well, by piece count, Rocka Crawler definitely fits comfortably in the same price bracket as Jaw Beast vs. Stormer and Evo Walker. Of course, some of those pieces are fairly small, but that could be said of any of those three. It's definitely a very different situation from Pyrox, who was on par with the $13 sets by weight but had a piece count similar to the $10 sets that year. With that said, Tunneler Beast offers a fantastic value for money by comparison. No cocoon or jumpers, but it's got a great piece count including some very useful building elements and some not-too-common recolors (bright red Y-joints and dark stone grey 4M beams). It's kind of funny that despite appearing in three sets, Rocka doesn't appear in a single "beast" set. He's the only hero who only appears in one type of set, not a mix of the two. You'd think the designers could have balanced his appearances out a bit better. Love that so many of these sets include the new 1x1 plate launchers! They're really well-suited to the Hero Factory theme, I think. Can't wait to try one out for myself!

The globe is a printed diving helmet. This specific pattern originally appeared in 4191 Captain's Cabin from the Pirates of the Caribbean theme and later showed up in 10224 Town Hall. I have it from the latter set. It's a great piece (or rather, pair of pieces). But it's very clearly a "historic" (i.e. not perfectly accurate) globe — California appears as an island in accordance with a cartographical error from some early maps. Anyway, this is a beautiful set! Six working cannons, a fantastic figure selection, some classy-looking micro-managers, a unique shape, and bunches of steampunk details. The pirate maps, portrait, and blueprint in the captain's cabin are stickers, not printing, which I suppose will disappoint some people. But they're still great graphic designs, and only the blueprint would be out-of-place in a historically accurate pirate layout. One of them is even a modernized version of the classic pirate map I remember from my childhood! The set also seems to have a fair number of play features — opening walls, retractable anchors, and of course the aforementioned working cannons. Can't wait to see what it looks like in real life!

It's a beautiful set. I think it has some faults, though. For its size, it's a bit light on play features. Its main minifigures, other than the dronelike Robo-SWAT, are available from several other sets. The Super Cycle, creative as it is, doesn't have the same level of humor as other "creative" models where it's readily apparent what they were built from. My younger brother got this set and is reviewing it for Brickimedia. He seems to like it. My twin brother and I skipped it in favor of other sets like Cloud Cuckoo Palace and Lord Business's Evil Lair.

$40? Awesome ninja vehicle? Awesome nindroid vehicles? Titanium Metallic basketball hoop? Yep, totally gonna make it mine. ToyArk's pics are also cool, though it's a shame we don't get a better look at the figs (especially Zane, who has fallen off his stand). I really need to know which version of Zane this is — if the arm colors are finalized, then it's either the non-battle-damaged variant (which is what I'm hoping for) or a new one entirely, and which it is could have a big impact on whether I get the Destructoid.

The new collab from AcousticBrony and MandoPony, and the fourth installment in their "Elements" series! It's fantastically upbeat and energetic, as any song about the Element of Laughter should be!

Keep in mind that the graphic novels are side-stories and that one is due for release in September of this year. There is very little chance that it will have any connection to future seasons of the show or future years of sets.

I love both, honestly. Mini-heroes are a godsend when it comes to location and vehicle designs (I've never been any good at designing custom BIONICLE or Hero Factory vehicles, and these could very well change that), but full-size figures are still obviously superior when it comes to character design, since you can equip such a variety of gear to them. I'd love to see the mini-heroes used further. An arc with mini-villains who get their own, more brutal looking battle machines could be incredible, as could an arc with submarines and aquatic monsters or villains, in the same vein as LEGO Atlantis. But full-size humanoid figures are nice too. I agree with Lyi — having the two coexist kind of like the BIONICLE figures and playsets or the Chima constraction figures and playsets would be fine by me. Or, we could just stick with one or the other. I'm sure there is plenty of fun and creative building potential to be had either way.

I dunno about the beast heads (haven't had a chance to build with them and see what they can be useful for other than heads), but I think there are loads of ways to use the minifigures outside the Invasion from Below storyline, as long as you continue to build at that smaller scale. They're plain enough to serve as generic hero frames rather than having a whole lot of mission-specific gear. I'm still hoping to build an Assembly Tower that's compatible with the minifigures, and as far as battle machines are concerned, it should be no harder to design new hero battle machines for the existing heroes than it was to design new hero upgrades using existing helmets.

Not necessarily. Medium Azur Y-joint pointed down, with an 2M axle or axle-pin connecting the Y-joint to the three-way connector that holds the three cocoon segments together. One of the three cocoon segments is partially hidden behind one of the ones that is showing on that image, if I'm not mistaken, since it's partially folded open.

I don't think it's something the designers didn't think about when creating the mini-doll. In contrast, they specifically kept the mini-doll hand shape the same and tried to keep the design reasonably simple (compared to the slightly grotesque sculpted designs of Belville dolls) in order to maintain a "LEGO" look. Likewise, BIONICLE and Hero Factory figures are designed to be reasonably consistent with LEGO Technic design standards, even if they're much more elaborate than the simple, functional parts that define the rest of LEGO technic. But what is recognizably LEGO to a modern-day LEGO fan is not the same as what is recognizably LEGO to an average filmgoer. I think if you put BIONICLE figures or Friends mini-dolls in the film as conspicuous background characters, people would start asking what Transformers and Polly Pockets were doing there (especially since the film already includes some non-LEGO contents like the Kragle). It would take up valuable running time to put these kinds of characters enough in the forefront to explain their significance and make it clear that they are LEGO characters. This runs directly counter to the sense of familiarity that the filmmakers were trying to produce with their extreme attention to detail. Even Fabuland, referenced multiple times in the film, didn't get any of its characters or sets in a direct cameo. And Mindstorms was completely absent from the film, and Technic parts only appeared within the context of System models. I think it might be easier to work these kinds of models and characters into a sequel, since the first movie solidly set up the nature of the universe for viewers to understand, so they wouldn't have to question the universe so much the second time around. But with BIONICLE and Friends in particular, the movie would have to treat things with some delicacy. Those are both themes that have their own self-enclosed story structure — they are not as crossover-prone as many more traditional themes like LEGO City, Pirates, Castle, or even Ninjago. There's also one other possibility for why Friends might not have made it into the film. The movie has been in development for quite a while, and Friends didn't really have an opportunity to prove its potential until two years ago. Perhaps the filmmakers weren't sure whether including LEGO Friends would be a liability or an asset, and by the time they did, it was too late to give any Friends characters scripted roles. Even Ninjago didn't get a whole lot of screen time, and it had been the LEGO Group's most successful single product launch of all time.

Looks to have potential. The song is a little bit blah, but all we're hearing here is the chorus, so hopefully it's got a little more substance than what this video shows. Great visuals, and great concept — I've long been wanting to see a storyline that has the Mane Six form a band, and the Equestria Girls universe is perfect for that since it's a universe where they've become good friends before they've had a chance to settle in to very specific roles. I'm interested in how Twilight Sparkle will be integrated back into the story. I know the Equestria Girls universe almost certainly has a Twilight Sparkle of its own, but if she's anything like the Twilight Sparkle we met in the Friendship is Magic premiere, making friends is probably not the first thing on her mind. And it would definitely be weird if a bunch of kids at your new school tried to befriend you based on preconceived notions of you that might not hold up in real life. If only the toys were anywhere near the visual quality of the characters from the show... I have been quite disappointed by the current Equestria Girls toy offerings. The show went to great pains to ensure that the character designs were faithful to their pony versions. But the toys manage to be even more inaccurate to the characters than the regular My Little Pony toys are — they all have more or less the same makeup and eyes, rather than having diverse eye patterns like the regular My Little Pony toys, and they gave the characters horse ears like their "magical girl" forms while failing to give Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash believable pegasus wings.

Well, there are some new things being tried, even if they're not as huge as some of the ways last year's Chima sets or this year's HF sets broke the mold. Cragger is basically like last year's version, but now he has shoulder armor attached to some of the unused balls on his neck. Mungus has wider shoulders than a typical build, without relying on Technic connections like Frost Beast... though the method for this is not super-creative and I can't say it looks especially good. He also has an articulated trunk!

The thing that bothers me is that the villains' vehicles don't have any unifying motif. I liked the original Agents where the same orange-and-black color scheme was used for all the villain vehicles and bases. Even if there's something tying these villains together in the story, it's not really being reflected very clearly in the product designs.

Well, for purist solutions, you could always try to work these into your MOCs. But I have a feeling you're talking about sets as well as MOCs, and using those for smaller sets could really screw with their proportions. I'm sure a thin coat of paint on the inside of the ball cup might make a difference, though it might wear away after a certain amount of use.

That behind-the-scenes video was fascinating. You really get a feel for how much of a triumph this was for an ad agency and a VFX studio that had not really collaborated on something this ambitious before. If I'm not mistaken, the largest collaboration they had done previously was the BIONICLE Mistika mini-movie focusing on the collection of the keystones, the discovery of the vehicles, and ultimately the awakening of Mata Nui. But that didn't come close to 22 minutes in length, and did not tell a story nearly as thorough or self-contained as this one. It was basically a heavily abridged version of the events of that year — still an artistic triumph, and certainly as epic in tone as the BIONICLE franchise deserved, but not the same as a full 22-minute TV special. At the same time, it does sort of explain some of the perceived flaws in the mini-movie, though it does not quite justify them. The fact that the ending was changed so abruptly really highlights just why it left so many unanswered questions (like where the acid pool drained to and whether the queen might have survived). You can sort of understand their desire to keep the Queen Beast looking "beastly" and dangerous even up until the end, and I definitely appreciate that this didn't have a perfectly neat and tidy ending, but the execution of those changes leaves something to be desired. It would have been easy to answer some of those questions by either having Bulk confirm that the Queen Beast survived or having its roar echo through the caverns as they were leaving. As it is, her survival is just barely implied by the draining of the acid pool and the fact that the heroes followed through on their promise to seal up the tunnel. Overall, I think the folks at Advance and Ghost did a fantastic job for their first endeavor of this caliber, and I hope they continue to collaborate on future projects like this, whether those be for the Hero Factory theme or other LEGO themes. As for the new set pictures, it's great to be able to see these sets more clearly. Queen Beast looks fantastic, though I feel like her front legs could use an additional joint just like her back legs. Great to see that amazing new shell detail being used in Hero Factory. Can't wait to see it in more colors. Surge and Rocka Combat Machine looks all right, but you can definitely tell that parts of it are a little bare-bones. It's not going to be the next Dragon Bolt or Evo XL Machine, certainly. Bulk Drill Machine looks fantastic. Very nice beefy structure, and cool functions. Breez Flea Machine looks quite nice. I am slightly disappointed with the claw function, since it is clearly just a flick missile rather than having something where you pull back and release the claw to fire it. But maybe it works better as a flick missile. I guess that remains to be seen. Certainly the winch is a really cool feature. Rocka Crawler looks cool for a small set. I'm surprised that it has a new, Warm Gold printed shell instead of just reusing the Silver Metallic one from Rocka Stealth Machine. I don't care either way, though it's a bit of a disappointment that it got a new printed shell and Breez Flea Machine seemingly didn't. I like the new Surge and Bulk mini-heroes. Tunneler Beast looks fantastic, though I don't know if this is its best angle. Crystal Beast looks awesome in the official pic. I like that the nest appears in the backdrop of all three beast sets. The cocoons look great. The blue-backed jumpers also look nice, though I'm disappointed that none of the new sets have red jumpers. I wonder if the Combat Machine uses black-backed jumpers so they don't match the machine's color.

It's also not especially sturdy — unlike the similar connector used for Queen Beast, Tunneler Beast, and Rocka Stealth Machine, the pneumatic "T" connector doesn't have as much friction with the Y-joint and can pivot freely. I've never been too fond of Hydraxon's hand design — while it does give a certain range of articulation, it's not especially realistic in its proportions and doesn't look very natural in certain poses.

This article is full of interesting information. I started following Matthew Ashton on Twitter as soon as I read this article. He's a really cool guy! And today, I checked who he follows to see if I could find any other LEGO designers I ought to be following. I was surprised to see a lot of Twitter feeds I recognized, and not for LEGO-related things. Turns out he's also a brony! Kind of explains his love of Unikitty...

I like it for the slapstick, primarily. It's simple, silly stuff, not something you have to think about. And that makes it ideal for airing during commercial breaks, since it won't distract from whatever show is actually airing at the time. I don't get quite as much enjoyment out of it as I get out of the LEGO City mini-movies, which are similar in length, rely almost purely on visual gags, and have upbeat music that matches the pace of the action. But they seem alright at what they do.

True. It's not unfair to us Americans as much as it is fairer-than-usual to our cousins across the pond. The American price-per-piece is still far more equitable than the Imperial Flagship ($180 for 1664 pieces). Obviously, a higher price is going to be off-putting to a lot of people, especially those who are already uneasy with a non-traditional pirate ship. But from what we can see, the Sea Cow is every bit as elaborate and ornate as you'd expect of a D2C set, and I'm sure there are lots of goodies in the set that we haven't seen yet. I wonder what faces Emmet will come with in this set. It'll be nice if he has the same face as in Emmet's Constructo-Mech, since that face is otherwise exclusive to that set.