Aanchir

Those are such fantastic tribe names. I read that article but must have missed the part where it gave names for some of the later tribes.

I've seen a lot of comments about how the Chima constraction sets are more impressive than this year's HF sets and I don't understand it. This year's HF lineup is perhaps the most imaginative lineup the theme has ever had, with very few standard humanoids (in contrast, every previous wave was at least 50% standard humanoids). Do people actually prefer standard humanoids to more imaginative designs despite their frequent complaints of how repetitive Hero Factory sets are? Or is there some other fatal flaw of this year's Hero Factory lineup that I'm somehow missing?

Well, very few stories are "written by TLG". Story-writing is not their business, and most of the writers for LEGO TV shows, books, and movies are not actual employees of The LEGO Group. The main exceptions I know of are Greg Farshtey, long-time editor in chief of the LEGO Club Magazine, who's written all sorts of books for some of the LEGO Group's most story-intensive themes, and Daniel Lipkowitz, who has also been involved in writing for themes like Knights' Kingdom II and designed several BIONICLE alternate and combination models. Even the story briefs for a lot of LEGO themes, as they appear in the catalogs, are not necessarily developed in-house. A lot of that stuff has historically been done by Advance, an advertising agency that has long held LEGO as one of their clients. Their LEGO Group division, known as "Rocket", has a strong working relationship with the LEGO Group designers, but they are not technically employees of the LEGO Group. Really, anything that the LEGO Group puts their stamp of approval of is "official" for that respective theme unless they say otherwise. The world as depicted in the LEGO Movie is "canon" to that theme — but it might not be canon to the BIONICLE theme, or to the Fabuland theme, or to the Classic Space theme, regardless of whether those themes cameo in the sets. This sort of obsession with "canon" is what inspired comic and TV writer Dwayne McDuffie to create his "Grand Unification Theory of Television". From his perspective, if a single crossover was ever enough to say with certainty that two franchises existed within the same universe, then in his words, "The last five minutes of St. Elsewhere is the only television show, ever. Everything else is a daydream." (for the uninformed, St. Elsewhere was a medical drama which crossed over with other franchises, themselves often crossover-prone, multiple times before ultimately concluding with the twist ending that the entire show and all its characters had been an autistic child's imagination).

Nifty MOC! It has a cool color scheme and a lot of personality! However, I don't really tend to like MOCs that are only presented in video format. In this case, the video is terribly jumpy and in some shots it's hard to see the MOC as a whole, so it's especially difficult to really look at this model in depth. If you could perhaps shoot some photos instead and upload them to a site like Flickr, they could get a lot more feedback and more of that feedback might be positive, since people could see the model more clearly without having to pause a video at multiple points and hope the camera's in focus.

I like Surge's mech in concept, and I think people may be judging it a bit too harshly considering how few pics we've seen of it and how badly it's posed in those pics. With that said, I agree, it has some flaws that are quite clear in those pics, most notably how front-heavy it is without the flyer portion attached.

Helicopters have a lot of play value. They can fly through the air much like planes or spaceships, and they have spinning propellors. But additionally, they can "hover" in a stationary position, take off and land vertically without a need for a runway, and lift or lower people and things without having to land and load or unload. I don't think it's any surprise that kids seem to love them. Anyhow, I love that this upcoming Arctic lineup has not just a plane, but a Skycrane. The last one we had in a set was in the Dino theme — I don't think LEGO City has ever had one.

This is true in some cases, but keep in mind that the LEGO Group has been producing parts in other countries for decades, and has put forth a valiant effort to keep quality, human rights considerations, and the like reasonably consistent from country to country. I see no reason why a factory owned by the LEGO Group in China would be held to less stringent standards unless the people of China were not capable of meeting those standards, and I can't fathom any reason why that would be the case. A lot of companies use overseas production as an excuse to escape the regulations they would be held to in their home countries. But LEGO has been produced in countries other than Denmark for a long time, and many of the most strict standards the LEGO Group has to meet during production have been self-imposed. Frankly, considering that they're opening a plant in a country that has a reputation for production and ethics problems, I fully expect them to maintain even closer oversight than they do at their established plants, at least until they are sure that the importance of the LEGO brand standards are fully understood by all the people working there.

Here you go. It's not great, but it shows the sets from a different angle than the previous pics we've seen.

I agree it's not part of the Architecture line (rather, it's part of the same series as the LEGO factory promotional sets), but I don't see why you think it's ugly. Simple as it is, it's a fantastic likeness of the subject. And the subject is quite a classy building at actual size — it just doesn't make for a particularly interesting LEGO model. In any case, I'd take this set over the bland Empire State Building set from the Architecture series any day.

Has anyone shared this video from the German Toy Fair yet? Great attention to detail in that little jungle hut. It's sparse on the luxuries of many of the other Friends houses — the beds are just 2x6 cots, rather than the cushy 4x6 plush beds of the Heartlake City houses, and the kitchen area is not divided from the other rooms at all. But it does have one luxury you wouldn't want to be without in the jungle — a ceiling fan! Also a solar panel or solar water heater on the roof! Way to live off the grid! Tiki torches out front (cleverly constructed from ice cream cones and spyglasses), and a small little bathroom with an outdoor shower.

For a second I had no idea what you were talking about, since CHI Cragger and CHI Fluminox also both use Tr. Fluore. Reddish Orange forearm bones. Then I realized that you were talking about CHI Panthar's upper arm, not his forearm. Anyway, do we know that's not an actual forearm/lower limb bone being used for his upper arm? Normally, sets use upper limb beams ("B" beams) for the upper limbs, but there are examples (such as Jawblade and Fire Lord) that use lower limb bones ("A" beams).

There DOES exist girls' LEGO Movie clothing, though, so you might be able to find some online. For instance, there's this shirt and this pajama set. I love that the pajama set has Unikitty on one side and Angry Kitty on the other! Here's a shirt with three Unikitty variants on it, and here's another LEGO Movie girls' shirt pattern, this time featuring Wyldstyle. The LEGO Wear brand sadly isn't very well distributed in the United States, but if you're willing to pay a bit more maybe you could find a seller who ships overseas?

It's beautiful! I'm definitely going to be picking up that one rather than the Kai Fighter. Kai Fighter is great, but I've had a hard time liking it as much as Jay's Storm Fighter, which I already have. But this is a design that doesn't have to compete with any previous designs — it's something entirely new. Also is that Min-Droid on the flying saw blade machine chasing Kai? If so, then that makes it that much easier for me to skip Destructoid and Kai Fighter alike. To be honest, I kind of wanted Destructoid, since it's another creative vehicle design and I've never gotten a set with one of those disk-spitting functions. But since it looks like the Zane in the battle set might be the undamaged version, I'd rather get that and skip Destructoid. I guess I might pick up Lennox's Lion Attack from last year sometime if I get the chance, since I love that design to pieces.

Just found this picture which shows the Chima constraction display at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, but from a wider angle that shows the packaging art. It makes the sets look gorgeous — Vardy isn't posed so stupidly, Cragger's color scheme looks better, and Laval's shoulder armor covers his shoulders better (that might be a render error though, since I can't figure out quite how that'd work unless that new spiked armor part is hiding more connection points than it seems). So maybe these sets might turn out decent after all. CHI Panthar still looks pretty awful IMO, but the official pics help redeem some of the others. Hopefully reviews with competent posing and controlled lighting will make the sets look better as well. I'll be waiting patiently...

Fabuland and BIONICLE did cameo in the film (albeit not in roles where they would interact with minifigures), but to an extent, so did Friends. There's a Heartlake City highway sign, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are other references I missed — after all, I probably never would have noticed the Blacktron Fan and Fabu-Fan minifigures if they weren't in a set and some of the trailers! I think perhaps mention of Friends was avoided not due to controversy specifically, but rather due to complications it would present in storytelling. The LEGO Friends figures are very different from the minifigures who made up most of the film's character base. Not commenting on that difference would seem strange and might confuse some viewers who weren't familiar with LEGO Friends, but taking the time to comment on it could slow down the movie. So basically the same reason the BIONICLE universe and characters never played any role in the story. In any case, it's hardly the only theme that was omitted from the theme, or even the only category — Technic and Mindstorms played no prominent role in the movie, at least beyond the Technic parts that made up part of the System constructions. And yeah, I'd love to see a more action-oriented theme with minidolls. The LEGO Group has been trying to get a lot of mileage out of the LEGO Friends theme's success, sticking some adventurous content into that theme like the new jungle-inspired sets. But at some point I'd like them to introduce a second in-house girl-oriented theme (not a license) with a clear emphasis on action and adventure, and maybe even a bit of fantasy and magic.

There was a Benny poster at LEGO stores if you gave the clerk the code phrase "Spaceship! Spaceship! Spaceship!" I don't know for sure about Vitruvius.

I have to disagree here. Kids will pretty much always be more reliable buyers of any LEGO theme, simply because LEGO is a toy company and older kids and teens are less likely to spend money on toys and more likely to spend it on things like music and video games. You don't stand to make a whole lot of money by targeting people in the age group that's inherently more likely to be growing out of your product. It's hard to say if BIONICLE was ever really targeted at older teens or whether those were just a periphery demographic, but from the look of things, kids grew out of BIONICLE just about as quickly as with LEGO in general. The theme cycled through new groups of fans throughout its lifespan, like any theme that lasts that long. The "lifelong fans" who followed the brand with a passion and stuck with it into their late teens or adult years (myself included) were outliers, just like the AFOL community as a whole. And something else to keep in mind is that having a theme "grow up" with its audience doesn't always work. A number of BIONICLE fans who were around for the beginning actually disliked later attempts to make the theme "darker and edgier". They wanted it to stay true to the brightly-colored character designs and adventurous tone of the early years. That's the inherent risk of trying to tailor a story to a changing demographic. It's often safer to assume that fans like a franchise for what it is than that they like it in spite of what it is — unless you have actual, measurable data that suggests fans tend to like certain parts of the franchise more than others.

According to the "Face Off!" guidebook written by Greg Farshtey and published by Scholastic, Nex managed to defeat XT4 and return him to villain containment without an issue. Of course, not everything in the "Face Off!" guidebook meshes perfectly with the chapter books, but I don't think something as major as a character death would differ between media.

That's good enough for me! I hope he can bring just as much humor, heart, and inspiration to a LEGO Movie sequel as he did for Wreck-It Ralph. Wreck-It Ralph and the LEGO Movie have a lot in common. They each use original characters for their main cast, and they are each a love letter to a particular medium — Wreck-It Ralph for video games and the LEGO Movie for... well, LEGO. The trick with writing a LEGO Movie sequel with the same heart as the original is to do it without retreading old ground. The LEGO spirit of creative play was central to the original, and a sequel will have to find a part of that creative spirit that the first movie didn't explore in-depth.

The Drop Ship set actually isn't terribly out-of-scale with the HF mini-robots, since in the show Hero-Craft like it have a much larger capacity (often large enough to carry a full team of heroes). So you could probably adapt the Drop Ship set to the mini-heroes if you redesigned the interior of the cockpit. Still, scaling things up or down is always fun, so it'd be an interesting challenge to try making a down-scaled Drop Ship. Well, a HF series could be interesting, but you're right, it's too different to throw in with a regular CMF series. To date, all collectible minifigures have been based on the standard minifigure design, even if some will substitute other parts for the hands, arms, or legs. There hasn't even been a skeleton of any kind in the CMFs, and skeletons are the most traditional specialized minifigure design there is! Am I the only one who thinks it's cool to have Breez in another set? The Breez minifigure only appears in two sets — Flyer Beast and Breez Flea Machine. So while she does already get a machine of her own, she, Bulk, and Surge really got the short straw when it came to set appearances. And since she's the only female character in the team and perhaps the most important character in this year's TV special, I think that's extremely regrettable. You keep talking about how Nex and Stringer died in the books. That never happened. I do not believe there exists any evidence in any of the books that any of the heroes of Alpha 1 Team have died, unless you can direct me to a chapter number, or better yet, a page number. Thresher is an interesting minor character, and one who could be created with existing molds since traditionally he has the same helmet as Bulk. But I don't think I'd want to see a recolor wasted on a character as minor as him when there are still heroes like Nex and Stringer who have not appeared in sets.

I just got Lord Business's Evil Lair today, and I noticed some differences between that version of President Business and the CMF version that I hadn't noticed before. Specifically, his jacket is buttoned up, while the CMF version is unbuttoned, and his "angry face" is not as angry as the one on the CMF version. The reverse face was obviously different (the CMF version has a stern expression, while the one in the Evil Lair has a robotic visor), but I'm impressed that the torsos are also unique. I love how the designers took care to make so many unique variants of the characters, so that even ones who appear in multiple sets wouldn't necessarily feel like exact duplicates. Emmet is a great example. Main variant — Determined smirk on one side, screaming on the other side. Appears in 70800, 70801, 70802, 70808, 70809, and 70815. Secondary variant — Cheeky smile on one side, worried expression on other side. Appears in 30280 and 70803. Tertiary variant — Wide open smile on one side, angry snarl on the other side. Appears in 70814 Construction Worker Emmet — Wide open smile on one side (different from tertiary variant), wide open smile with closed eyes on the other side. Appears in 71004. Pyjamas Emmet — Winking on one side, yawning on the other side. Appears in 5002045. Western Emmet — Wearing a mustache. Appears in 5002204. Robot Emmet — Wearing a robot disguise. Appears in 70816. That's a lot of Emmets! But although every one but Pyjamas Emmet have the same torso and leg decorations, there are a total of 12 unique faces! These sets will be a treasure-trove for people wanting to make LEGO Movie stop-motion brickfilms!

As I understood it, that wasn't the lesson of the movie at all.

Some of the other Machines (specifically, Evo XL Machine and Stormer Freeze Machine) do have hands, even if they don't use the regular HF fist piece. I think the standard fist piece is appropriate for a machine this size, especially when it has weapons like these swords that might look a bit funny on a regular Y-joint.

Beautiful revamp. The thing that bothers me most about Stormer Freeze Machine is how skeletal it looks compared to the other machines. This model completely re-imagines it, fixing that flaw by making it beefier and reducing some of the clutter. If you had one of those Tr. Light Blue storage cylinders for the back then it would be perfect. I'm not 100% sold on the Hero Cores on the shoulders, but the shoulders would be too plain without SOMETHING there, and the added theme-specific detail they provide helps take the place of printed shells. That beast is also looking incredibly slick! What's the piece count for this?

I wouldn't say it "crushes the last hopes". This type of polybag set pretty much never contains exclusive parts, since they're not widely distributed. But there might be something more akin to the black brain set, with possible recolors, as a future LEGO shop gift with purchase. Even so, I definitely do not expect to see new molds in any set that is not available as a standard retail set. So if Nex and Stringer do show up in a GWP-type set, they will have to use recolors of other helmets. And I agree, it's GREAT to see a polybag that contains an actual constraction figure, rather than just accessories. There are some flaws to this set, mostly due to price constraints, like the lack of controls. But it's still the first impulse-size constraction set since BIONICLE to contain a constraction figure, and that's a definite plus. Sadly, I can't read the piece count except for the last number (1). I can count at least 26 parts in the picture for certain. If the piece on the back is one of these instead of a shell, that means there are at least 28 parts, counting the two pins that would be needed to attach it, but that still leaves three parts unaccounted for. Maybe there's a minifig weapon attached to the back somehow. I guess we won't know for sure unless someone can obtain and review this set.