Aanchir

Well, the 1x1 plate with the downward beak/tooth seems to me like it'll have all kinds of excellent sculptural uses. The A-Frame plate is another excellent piece. It allows for a perfect 45-degree angle shift that is generally much more sturdy than you could get with a hinge plate. I agree with you about the ball and chain, though. I guess it's a little more compact than a Technic ball and short chain would be, but with connection points on just one end, I don't see it being nearly as versatile as existing chain elements.

I'd like to see the minifigures remain in sets as well, but only if we can continue to see epic new designs based around them. After all, the constraction building experience should still be central to the theme. And we don't want another year of sets to feel like a complete thematic repeat of Invasion from Below. Perhaps a journey beneath the sea with submarines and giant sea monsters, in the spirit of Atlantis or Aquaraiders, would be a cool new direction to take. Or, as some people have suggested, hero mechs versus villain mechs like in Exo-Force. In any case, while I loved the full-scale figure sets, the minifigures have opened up lots of new possibilities for sets, and I don't think the Invasion from Below series has exhausted those possibilities.

It wouldn't surprise me — sales of the green ninja minifigures from the classic ninja theme skyrocketed after the 2012 Ninjago story arc began.

The rubber flex rods have been in Technic sets since at least 1999. Mine (which were all from sets released in 2000 or later) are all perfectly intact, except for those that have been chewed up by children or dogs, or which have otherwise gone through unconventional wear. If you have been able to keep your regular ABS LEGO parts in good condition you should have absolutely nothing to worry about, especially with a set that is primarily a display model. As for the Tower of Pisa model's tile, I don't know what to say. Perhaps back then the LEGO Group didn't think buyers would really care until feedback about that model led them to realize that they would have to change their policy moving forward. As a general rule, the LEGO Group learns from their mistakes. It may not seem fair, but to use a cliché, "life isn't fair". You can't really expect a company like the LEGO Group to foresee every potential issue with a set like this the first time it comes up. Perhaps one day there will be a reissue of the Tower of Pisa, just like there was a reissue of the Sears Tower to reflect its change in ownership, and THEN the LEGO Group will have an opportunity to make up for their previous omission. I'm glad you like the model overall though! I agree, its creative and unconventional build must have taken a lot of experimentation to get right. I like it way better than any of the previous skyscraper models, which were generally quite plain, with the possible exception of the Seattle Space Needle.

Let's be fair, though. The Green Grocer, the third modular building (second among AFOLs who refuse to include Market Street), had this same problem. Sure, you could theoretically get to the other floors using the fire escape, but that's not what fire escapes are for. They're designed for emergencies, hence why the bottom ladder doesn't reach the ground — it's designed as a way to get down without cutting through the other floors, not up. And arguably, Green Grocer had it even worse than Parisian Restaurant. In the case of Parisian Restaurant, there might be some merit to the argument that a single family owns the whole building, and maybe rents out the loft. In Green Grocer, though, there were clearly four mailboxes on the bottom floor, suggesting that there are supposed to be at least four independent tenants. I love Parisian Restaurant's floor plan. It might not entirely make sense without willing suspension of disbelief, a trait it shares with the single set of escalators in the Grand Emporium. But like those escalators or the elevator in Town Hall, the outdoor stair makes the model different, and (in my opinion) refreshingly so. When you look back, it seems like pretty much every one of the modular buildings has done something new as far as getting from floor to floor is concerned, except Market Street and Palace Cinema. Café Corner had very traditional stairwells. Green Grocer added a fire escape. Fire Brigade had a fireman's pole. Grand Emporium had escalators. Pet Shop had the first spiral staircase. Town Hall had an escalator. And now Parisian Restaurant places its stairs outdoors.

Actually Lavertus's outpost DOES use 8M shells, according to the inventory in the back of the instruction manual. 6M shells would not be big enough to cover the concealed lasers. Drilldozer's chest armor is one I know a lot of people miss, but having gotten several from a vendor at Brickfair Virginia... it's not a very useful piece at all. There are only a small number of beams that can take advantage of both ball snaps, and on a standard torso beam it uses up two of your most valuable connections and covers up one more beyond that. While it seems like a bit of a waste for the LEGO Group to have only used it on one set, its versatility is inherently limited by its design. It'd be nice for 9M beams to come back (my latest MOC, Caitlyn Gauss XL, would never have worked without them), I understand why we haven't seen them in a while, and it's not just the introduction of the friction joint that's to blame. There simply haven't been any individual figure sets that are tall enough to need them. Even the legs on Fire Lord, Black Phantom, and Rocka XL were incredibly out of proportion with the torso. Witch Doctor is arguably the only Hero Factory figure that's been large enough to use those beams to its fullest, and that set cost $5 more than any subsequent Hero Factory figure. Personally, I'd still love to see a Hero Factory vehicle that uses those 9M beams as a frame, or another figure set on par with Witch Doctor in terms of size. But figures of this size have always been a bit excessive compared to the size of a hero, and that's more true now than ever with heroes reduced from seven inches to two inches in height. Can we stop saying Dark Maker already? It's never been official, never been convincing, and always been stupid. The name was every bit as phony as "Rampant Oceans" and "Empire of Frost", and the only reason people believed it for a minute was that some of the fake set names released the previous year managed, perhaps by complete coincidence, to be slightly applicable to the actual sets that ended up being released in the summer.

I think part of the reason we haven't seen LEGO sheep might be that the settings where you expect to see sheep are not as conducive to sets as the settings where you expect to see other farm animals. Cows are frequently associated with barns and pigs with pens, but when I think sheep, I think wide-open pastures. Since LEGO animals are more often than not an accessory to a building kit, not the actual focus of a set, this means there has to be a buildable structure where a sheep would be appropriate but it's deemed more worthwhile to introduce a new animal than to reuse an existing one. This doesn't mean I never expect to see sheep in a set — you could cram them in a general sort of farm set with no more trouble than any other new farm animal — more easily, in fact, because unlike larger animals like cows, horses, alpacas, etc. they wouldn't need to be pre-assembled from multiple molded sections. I'm just suggesting why they might seem so "late to the party" compared to other common farm animals. Next time there's a full farm sub-theme I think it's incredibly likely that sheep will make an appearance.

Doesn't really make much sense since Surge's new voice in the "Invasion from Below" episode is very, very similar to Nex's old voice. If you were to go with media-related factors, I'd think more important factors are that Nex and Stringer are largely comic relief characters. Kids love comedy, but when a character is defined by humor and personality rather than by their action potential in a combat situation, it might cut into the sales of action figures of those characters. Personally, if you had to omit heroes for budget reasons, I can sort of see why Stringer might have been omitted. With his heavy use of black it could be easy to confuse him for an "evil" character. It would upset this year's visual language. As for Nex, perhaps the designers thought his colors were too similar to Bulk's. Another possibility is that since Nex and Stringer were both absent from Brain Attack and Nex was absent from the Breakout TV special, the creators figured fans wouldn't notice their absence as much as the characters like Bulk, Rocka, Furno, Surge, and Evo who have played consistently important roles in the past couple years.

That's the same as what I do as well. Though I find that if you use something less sharp than a craft knife (scissors are good, particularly grade-school "safety scissors") it's easier to cut through just the back surface, even if you have to run the scissors across a few times to get a clean cut.

LEGO tends to show off most of their new products at Nürnberg I think, but we don't tend to get a lot of photos from there because I believe photography is prohibited on the show floor (or at least in the LEGO Group's booth). I believe some websites do get special press priveleges to shoot photos and video, but not a lot. So New York Toy Fair in February is the first time we tend to get a lot of high quality summer set photos and videos.

It's definitely one of the deepest stories for any current theme, even if it doesn't have such an intimidating level of depth as BIONICLE did. On a side note, if that vehicle IS the Overlord's, I hope the colors change. I have really liked the visual language established in this and previous years, with gold being used extensively for vehicles and locations associated with the heroic Ninja and being almost completely absent from vehicles and locations associated with their enemies.

Since XL and Titan basically mean the same thing in constraction terms, wouldn't XL Machine and Titan Machine also mean the same thing? And by extension, wouldn't Evo XL Machine and Evo Titan Machine mean the same thing? In any event, nobody's going to be buying the set thinking it's something other than what it is since you tend to at least see a picture of the set before buying it, so I don't see how the name is a serious issue.

Part of the reason for the confusion is that in TLG's official color naming system, most colors don't have a de facto "normal" counterpart. It's typical for even the "classic" LEGO colors to have a modifier in front, so classic LEGO red is Bright Red, classic LEGO green is Dark Green, classic LEGO brown is Earth Orange, etcetera. Bricklink's Dark Turquoise is Bright Bluish Violet, Bricklink's Magenta is Bright Reddish Violet, and Bricklink's Dark Green is Earth Green. Confused yet? Here's a chart I whipped up back in the day. This mainly applies for this basic spectrum of twelve hues, many shades, tints, and tones of which are discontinued. Outside that spectrum, all bets are off. And that's where you get a lot of color names without modifiers in front, like Nougat (Flesh), Lavender, and Lilac — which more often than not are lighter than the "medium" variants like Medium Nougat (Medium Dark Flesh), Medium Lavender, and Medium Lilac (Dark Purple). Very confusing. So generally you can think of the value range in five main levels: Light, Medium, Bright, Dark, and Earth. But any color without one of these terms in front of it isn't necessarily going to play by the same rules.

Sorry! I've been meaning to get around to updating my decorations file for a long time, but unfortunately since it has gone several versions without a full update, I do not actually know how many decorations are missing. I'll basically have to generate each decoration, one by one, from start to finish. And I am not looking forward to that one bit. Honestly, creating these reference files was much easier when I started out than several updates later. I am no longer on the same computer I used to generate these files in the first place, and my current computer (a Mac) is not capable of running LDD Manager. Even generating just the NEW decorations is tedious enough work, and you may remember that people had to point out decorations that I missed multiple times even with such a smaller workload. If somebody else wants to create their own up-to-date and comprehensive decorations reference file I would be very grateful to have that terrible load off my shoulders, possibly for good. If not, I suppose I will get around to it eventually, but I can't promise to make it a top priority. There are too many real-life priorities stressing me out these days, and I usually need my "LEGO time" to be a source of relief, not an additional source of stress.

74261 does not have connectivity with any 10.2mm ball with guides, such as the center ball joint on parts like 90609 or 90607, or the shoulder and waist joints on parts like 90625 or 90626. It also collides with the square guides if you try to place it using scaffolding at any angle that is not within a certain margin of a 90-degree interval. It should have both connectivity and free one-axis rotation on any ball with guides, as in the neck construction of set 44009.

Personally, I'd hazard a guess that that's a mistake on the publisher's part. It wouldn't be the first time that a callout in one of those guide books indicates the wrong part of an image or misidentifies what it's pointing to.

I don't see why you think the Outland Base needs upgrades. It's not supposed to be a huge, formidable base, as I understand it. It's more like a small bunker or encampment — something Lavertus, working alone, could have thrown together for security after his banishment.

The Overlord is basically the main villain of the Ninjago storyline. It is a nebulous evil entity that is implied, in the graphic novels, to have been responsible for the creation of the Great Devourer, which was responsible for Lord Garmadon's corruption and gave rise to the Serpentine. The Stone Warriors were also created to serve the Overlord. The Overlord first appeared on Ninjago after it was created by the first Spinjitzu master, Wu and Garmadon's father. Ninjago was a place of light, and the Overlord emerged because light and shadow are in equilibrium. The Overlord and the first Spinjitzu master were mortal enemies and fought many battles. The first Spinjitzu master protected the people of Ninjago from the Overlord's conquest by splitting Ninjago in two. The Overlord's half of Ninjago sank, leaving only a single dark island where the Overlord's presence remained strong. The Overlord's machinations eventually resulted in Lord Garmadon finding this island and taking command of the stone army. However, when the tide began to turn in darkness's favor, it increased the Overlord's strength and allowed it to possess and transform Lord Garmadon. Lloyd defeated the Overlord in the most recent season finale, saving Ninjago City. In the current story arc, the Overlord has returned as the "Digital Overlord", a virus that has taken control of Borg Industries (which was built at the site of that climactic battle).

I'm fond of the resealable bags. They perform the same storage and presentation functions as canisters or boxes, but they can also collapse to the size of whatever is inside them, and collapse completely flat when they're empty. So they don't take up nearly as much space as rigid canisters did. I think there were a number of reasons why the sets switched to bags instead of canisters. For one, it's more cost-efficient, since bags require less volume of materials and weigh less when it comes time for distribution. Labels also can be printed directly on the package rather than needing stickers to be applied. They can be either hung on a rack or arranged on a shelf, depending on what kind of space a store has available, and with bags, multiple sizes of sets can use more or less the same style of packaging, varying only in size. And they cannot be broken into without visibly mutilating the package. That's in addition to all the benefits they offer for the end-user as far as storage is concerned. The main advantage canisters had that bags lacked is that a canister could be designed for use as additional building and play materials. The LEGO Group has done a lot to take advantage of this over the years. The Slizer/Throwbots sets' canisters were not only storage for the sets and collectibles, but they also could play the role of the characters' spaceships, and could be attached to a belt for ease of carrying (bit of an odd feature; don't know how many kids took advantage of that). The RoboRider canister lids had a Technic pin hole so they could be used as wheels on combi models. The canisters for the old Racers impulse sets could unfold to become launchers. The Toa Mata canisters from BIONICLE resembled the canisters the Toa arrived in, and the lids could act as the Suva shrines where they stored the masks they weren't wearing. 2001 "Dinosaurs" sets had lids that could be used as a rocky base for building, similar to the later Barraki canisters. The Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal canisters resembled the nests that the Bohrok emerged from, and included pieces to hang the rolled-up figure from the canister lid. The back sticker could be removed, after which the front sticker served as a decorative backdrop to what was now a mini display case. The Toa Nuva canisters performed no story or play function, but the lids still had connections for collectible storage or use as building elements. The Rahkshi and Kraata canisters had connection points for the collectible Kraata slugs, and the Kraata canisters also had a pin hole so they could be used as building elements. The Toa Metru canister lids had a connection point for a single Kanoka disk and a pin hole so they could act as building elements. Two Toa Metru canister lids could be combined into a Matoran stasis pod. Vahki canister lids had space for a single Kanoka disk, though it was not a rigid connection. Knights' Kingdom canisters from 2004 and 2005 were designed to resemble castle towers, and had spaces to rest System plates. Toa Hordika, Toa Hagah, and Visorak canisters had storage for Rhotuka spinners Piraka and Toa Inika canister lids featured a "try me" feature for the light-up elements and storage for Zamor spheres. Toa Mahri and Phantoka "frames" could act as scenery. The Toa Mahri ones had connection points for collectible storage or building. Hero Factory canisters could be carried and deployed as Hero Pods by the Drop Ship set. Most canisters were also designed to be stackable, something that can't be said for the new bags. Then again, this is mostly a shelf display issue, not a storage issue, since the end user doesn't have to worry about whether the bags are neatly arranged for storage purposes. Overall, the benefits to the end user and the huge number of canisters taking up space between my bed and window have together helped convince me that the switch to bags was a worthwhile decision.

I wouldn't say there's been enough pop-culture stuff this season to call that a complete 180. After all, the premiere two-parter was an original adventure story without any reliance on pop-culture reference. The only explicit cultural reference in Castle Mane-ia was the title, which is no different than the title references in the season 1 episodes "Boast Busters" or "Call of the Cutie" (which was originally going to be just "Call of Cutie" before it was decided that referencing an M-rated video game might not be too popular in a kids' show). "Flight to the Finish" was pure slice-of-life storytelling, and I'd go so far as to say "Rarity Takes Manehattan" was as well, even if it did have some cultural references in the form of "Bridleway" and "Hinny of the Hills". So really the only episodes that really delved into popular culture for their source material were "Daring Don't", "Power Ponies", and "Bats!".

I think it was just a joke (since mammoths are extinct in real life).

Keep in mind that these set pictures are preliminary, so we shouldn't make any assumptions about colors at this stage. Love all these details. No, sadly, I don't know who designed this year's sets. Sometimes the designers share their own set designs on their Facebook pages, but I don't have the time to look those up right now. And I most certainly am NOT admitting that I have done so in the past. Yeah, agreed. Hero Factory has never really gone to great lengths to hide its silliness. Hero Factory FM reveled in it, the Hero Pad challenge videos were pure slapstick, and several bits of media include crossovers with the real world and references to the LEGO company and its Hero Factory product line.

What do you mean "can't get them to fire at all"? Are they not shooting forward, or are they not even coming all the way out of the launcher? Either way, try inserting and removing them from a Technic hole multiple times or triggering the launch mechanism multiple times. Just like some hinge functions, I feel like flick missiles have to be "worn in" a little bit to reduce their friction if you want them to be most effective. I get far fewer "misfires" with the buggy now than when I first built it.

I had forgotten the part where the bridge was dropped, but as for the big fall in the climax, Bulk obviously survived just fine, and from what we saw in the fight scenes the beasts are remarkably sturdy, so the possibility for survival was most definitely there. Obviously the heroes thought so as well, since they went ahead and sealed the cavern in accordance with Breez's promise. We don't even know if there were actual developed jumpers in those cocoons. I saw the cocoons more as eggs than as infants. But even setting that aside, I think talking about "infanticide" in the context of underground monsters is sensationalizing things a wee bit. The creatures were intelligent enough to commmunicate with Breez, sure, but the same could probably be said of most animals in the Hero Factory universe. I agree, the finale wasn't without any loss or ethical missteps, and it would have been nice if someone in the episode like Breez had commented on it after the fact, but it seems downright ridiculous to treat this as if the heroes have committed some kind of war crime. Her line is actually "activating boot rockets!" And as for the unresolved cliffhangers at the end of this episode and the last one... has anyone considered that they might be to encourage further storytelling from fans? After all, that way there's room for kids to create their own "Invasion from Below" and "Brain Attack" stories without having to set them between the beginning and end of each episode. Since the Hero Factory theme has had a really strong focus on getting fans to create their own characters and stories I think that might be the most likely function those cliffhangers are meant to perform, besides of course a suspenseful "stinger" at the end of the episode.

You obviously can't please everyone. One of the biggest complaints I ever see about the LEGO Ninjago and Legends of Chima TV series among LEGO fans is that nothing is visibly made out of LEGO and there's barely ever any building. I don't think it's "product-pushing ego stroking" for the building experience, i.e. the single most defining feature of the Hero Factory franchise, to be a part of the TV show. In fact, it's been a central part of the franchise since the beginning, hence the "assembly tower". I was actually a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see the process of building the underground vehicles to the heroes' specs. I just watched the episode. Overall, I was impressed. The voices (there are five different voice actors, and they are not ADVANCE's in-house talent like Hero Factory FM used) didn't seem bad to me. If anything, I liked them better than the incredibly forced voices that were used for Stormer and Bulk in Hero Factory FM. However, since the voices are new, it is sometimes difficult to tell who is speaking, particularly when the speaker is off-camera. The pacing seemed a bit off in places. More than the voices, what bothered me sometimes is that often the characters didn't stop talking, even during climactic action scenes or scenes that perhaps should have been quiet and suspenseful. Of course, right when I started to notice this becoming a problem, there WAS a quiet, suspenseful scene (the one with Bulk, Breez, and Evo climbing down into the crystal cavern). So it's not a problem that affected the whole thing, just certain parts of it. Another pacing issue that bothered me is that at many points, it felt like a more involved and memorable musical score would have been more appropriate to maintain appropriate rising and falling action. Even moreso than the Hero Factory series as a whole, the music felt generic and forgettable. There were no distinctive or iconic themes that stuck with me, unlike Ninjago or the original BIONICLE movie trilogy. The CGI was excellent, in my opinion. Lots of fantastic scenery, awesome character designs, and powerful action scenes. The action didn't feel stilted like it does in some LEGO TV episodes or series. The scene in the magnetic field deserves special praise, I think. Props to the folks at Ghost for setting a nice high standard their first time doing a full-length LEGO TV special. I've seen a lot of criticisms of this because allegedly, the heroes seem too violent. But at the same time, I think this deals with the episode quite effectively. Breez does turn out to be right in the end in deciding to negotiate with the queen instead of relying on force. I think it is likely that the queen and much of her brood did survive in the end. And I don't believe any of the actual beasts, even the jumpers, were lost to the acid. All we saw fall in the acid were cocoons, which hardly amounts to "genocide" like some critics on BZPower attest. Characterization was solid in spite of the new voices and any worries I might have had regarding Evo's bio on the new website. His personality here was more or less the same as it was in Breakout — a powerful rookie who struggles a bit with self-control. It was nice to have Breez as the standout character. And surprisingly, Furno and Stormer both took a backseat, disappearing entirely for a substantial amount of the episode. If Rocka had been captured instead of Surge, then all three of the theme's usual main characters would have been out of the picture during the climax. Finally, Surge calls his vehicle a combiner, and that STILL bothers me. Just getting that out of the way right now. I guess it's a bit better in that it's two vehicles that actually combine and not one thing created from the parts of two other things. The reason I hate the term "combiner" as used in constraction themes is that it seems to confuse subject and object — a combiner, taken literally, should ostensibly be something that combines, not something that other things are combined into.