Aanchir

I'll bet at least one of those is where the new Samurai X minifigure will be appearing! I wonder how many other new minifigures we might be able to expect. I hope "Battle for Ninjago City" has some actual city structures and not just a few vehicles.

Huh, new constraction sets. Wasn't totally expecting that. Some people are surely going to be disappointed that we're getting Laval and Cragger again, but it's interesting that some of those characters seem to be from new tribes (based on their names). Sadly, no new Legend Beasts from the look of things.

Why would there be IP issues? There have been plenty of LEGO mechs and other vehicles that transform (well, "convert"), including... ...the Atlantis sets 8077 and 8080 ...the Ninjago sets 9441, 9442, 9444 (this one actually converts in two different ways!), 9446, and 9449 ...the Exo-Force set 8118 ...the Legends of Chima sets 70006, 70007, 70009, 70013 ...nearly every human vehicle from the Galaxy Squad theme ...the Space Police sets 5979 and 5983 ...the Mars Mission sets 7644, 7645, 7647, and 7693 ...and finally, pretty much every 2004-2005 Alpha Team set. Just because Hasbro owns a brand called "transformers" doesn't mean any toy that transforms is imitating that IP. Not even the ones that transform from modern-day, real-world vehicles into fantasy robots. The real reason why the LEGO movie sets rebuild instead of actually transforming is because the entire movie is about trying to protect the spirit of free building against a megalomaniac who wants everything built according to rigid instructions and has an evil plot to glue everything in the LEGO world together. I imagine most of these "2 in 1" models will be built during climactic moments as the citizens of Bricksburg rebuild their ordinary buildings and vehicles in order to rise up and defend themselves against the oppressive Micro-Managers. With that in mind, having them "transform" or "convert" without having to take them apart and rebuild them would kind of undermine the whole premise — in that case, they'd still be the same models doing exactly what they were designed to do.

New post/review about the Legend Beasts and some of their tooth elements on The New Elementary!

I can agree here. The facial proportions of the Orient Expedition figs were sort of messed up. This fig is consistent with modern minifigures, including those in the CMF series, but still accurate to Johnny Thunder's classic appearance. I can't find a single thing to complain about.

Aw, man, are the Chima sets delayed throughout North America as well? The Legend Beasts were supposed to be what would help me get my LEGO fix until Toy Fair. Now I've just gotta hope the sets I got for Christmas are enough to hold me over.

While it makes sense for the USA and Canada to get them at the same time (more or less the same distribution channels), I think it's a bit surprising considering that some of our very first finalized images of the sets came from Walmart.ca, a Canadian website. And these images showed the North American packaging, with piece counts marked. Pretty unusual for a site to put images up that far before the release date, but not impossible. Perhaps they were dealing with a similar miscommunication.

I believe it's Dark Azur, same as in Heroic Heroes of the Deep and Jabba's Sail Barge. Anyway, nice review! This is a quite nice set with a very non-traditional color palette. I love how the LEGO Movie sets have not been afraid to use color schemes that might be considered "cutesy" or "girly", and have used them to great effect. I hope these sets sell well so we might see more pastel colors in other themes. The color palette and sticker sheet remind me of this set from my childhood, though the more vibrant colors help it feel less washed-out than the sickly-looking pastels of Paradisa. The Spring Yellowish Green (Yellowish Green on Bricklink) domes are something to behold, since up until now there have been scarcely any elements in this color, even though it debuted in 2012! It's also nice to see the color-coded tubes from BIONICLE and Hero Factory sets feeding the ice cream cannons. The flying machine mode is appropriately zany, while the truck mode would not seem at all out-of-place in a LEGO City layout. Well, except for its size, which might seem a bit over-the-top compared to other LEGO City vehicles. The Micro-Managers in general tend to be cool and diverse. I'm glad the flick missile launcher on this one works effectively. It'd be neat if those jets could fold up underneath like the legs and wheels of some of the others though. Thanks for the detailed review!

I never understand the amount of whining I see about flick-fire missiles. They work all right for a projectile that lacks any kind of specialized launcher, and are incredibly unobtrusive if you don't have any interest in firing them. They make great building elements, add barely a thing to the cost of a model, and are easy to swap with basic Technic pins if you're really and truly unable to tolerate them. All things considered, they're probably one of the LEGO Group's best projectile designs, certainly a lot better than rubbish like this disk shooter (which tends to empty its ammo with the slightest tilt and is near impossible to integrate into a model without it sticking out like a sore thumb), or this ugly and asymmetrical shooter (which was still hard to integrate, could only fire this specialized projectile element, and was about as feeble as a flick-fire when it came to launching distance). Anyway, both versions of this model look gorgeous. The air intakes for the engines of the flying machine are amazingly clever, as is the placement of the curved railing for the catapult platform. The main gun is also quite elegant. As for the "normal" build, it has the aesthetics of the new Castle theme but also some of the detailed stone foundations we've gotten used to in themes like the Lord of the Rings. It's also got some lovely textures above the gate, a nice locking mechanism for the gate itself, and a nice distribution of colors, with a warm brown interior and cold grey exterior. The catapult cart is quite nice for its size. Much nicer shaping than many of the catapult carts I'm used to from the 90s, and much more historic-looking than the little flick-fire ballistas that are sometimes included in today's Castle sets. The little lanterns aren't bad either. My main criticism is that with just the slightest changes (a vertical stabilizer of some kind and some side fins), the "flying machine" mode could have qualified as a Vic Viper! That feels like a missed opportunity.

Good review! I'm very fond of both modes: the truck and the flying machine. I think making the flying machine sleeker would kind of ruin the look. As I understand it, it's supposed to look silly and ridiculous. It's far from the kind of model that President Business would approve, but that spirit of reckless and unbridled creativity is exactly what makes it the perfect weapon against his Micro-Managers. The water pipe cannons and the plunger cannon on the flying machine are ingenious, as is that gunner's seat with a toilet bowl windscreen! The Porta-Potty in the converted model definitely sets a high standard for such models with its high detail. I was not sure how well the "wing" elements would work as its sides, but they end up giving it a very nice shape. The truck is also a nice, sensible-looking model.

My guess is that Goriz was just a preliminary name for an existing set, plain and simple. Same as some of the names that appeared in background graphics in the 2011 retailer's catalog. WHICH set is a complete mystery, but it doesn't entirely matter. I don't think it'd be a cancelled set, since that stage of the process would have taken place long before the writing of LEGO shop blurbs.

This is one of the silliest topics I've ever laid eyes on. Short answer: LEGO Friends will retire when the time comes to retire it. Chances are another girl-oriented theme will then be introduced to fill the void. It has never affected the amount of shelf space available for LEGO Star Wars or Super Heroes, and retiring it wouldn't have any significant impact on shelf space for those themes either.

It's not lazy, it's just how you get your money's worth out of an existing design. The boys' clothing designs aren't reused significantly more often than the girls' clothing designs, but there simply aren't enough boy characters to reuse the existing designs AND introduce a variety of new ones each and every wave. That's not true of the girl characters.

I didn't play soldier, but perhaps I grew up in an era where military conflicts were treated with more of a sense of grim seriousness than a sense of glory. We appreciated and honored those who served the United States in our armed forces, but at least for me there was an understanding that war was a "necessary evil", not something I ever wanted to be a part of. It was a departure from the life I was used to, but unlike the sense of escapism I got from pretending to be a knight or pirate or super hero, the concept was more "chilling" than "thrilling". I think the real difference between 20th century military conflicts and the earlier conflicts explored in themes like Castle and Pirates is that despite how much war has changed since World War I, the imagery is still frighteningly close to what families are familiar with from real-life news coverage. By painting a veneer of spaceships, ninjas, aliens, robots, anthropomorphized animals, or any kind of fantasy over things like tanks and fighter aircraft, it becomes less familiar, and thus, less scary. Earlier conflicts, on the other hand, do not need to be separated from reality on such a profound level because the reality they are presenting is already centuries apart from the reality that today's kids and families have experienced.

I got the last two 2013 Ninjago sets from my wanted list for Christmas: Warrior Bike and Cole's Earth Driller! I'm not at all disappointed by either, even though my expectations for Cole's Earth Driller were fairly low. It turns out its boxy shape really suits it, and has enough detail to keep it from feeling TOO plain. Its sticker sheet is also full of awesome details! And while the planetary drill is not a brand-new function, it's good to see it again after four years without it. The Warrior Bike is not a perfectly elegant design (I feel like the "face" looks somewhat lackluster from the sides), but it's still quite neat. It's a bit of a shame that next year's enemy vehicles do not have sculpted motifs tying them together like the skeleton, snake, and stone warrior vehicles, but I suppose that helps in a couple ways — it reduces the conceptual overlap between Ninjago and Chima, and makes the enemy vehicles feel a bit less repetitive than some of those from previous waves. The ninja minifigures this year were excellent. Even though they're incredibly similar, they have dynamic color schemes and just enough differences so that they don't feel like complete palette swaps. It's neat that the 2014 ninja costumes are going to be borrowing some of the design elements from the 2013 costumes, such as the unique badges and buckles for each ninja, while also bringing in some of the uniqueness of the ZX and NRG costumes. The stone warriors are also neat and unique designs, even though there are fewer of them than previous enemy minifigures, a trend that seems to continue in 2014. It doesn't bother me a whole lot since 2012 had gone too far in the other direction — I still have only twelve of the seventeen Serpentine minifigures. And since at least 50% of the enemy figures tend to be used as generic goons in the story anyway, there's little sense in having so many variants to keep track of. It's a shame that Nya went a year without a new design, but her characters page on the new Ninjago site seems to indicate that 2014 will be bringing her back into the spotlight. All things considered, despite its reduced scale, 2013 was not a bad year for Ninjago sets. On to 2014!

There are those windscreens I found in TLG's database earlier this year! Also the spacesuit for Unikitty is an adorable touch. I wonder if this set will be for a mid-year release. That'd explain why we hadn't seen it until now.

Interesting point! I hadn't even thought about how the foot design of Evo Walker could allow for that kind of thing. I'd definitely like to see some pictures of that.

I don't really think there NEEDS to be a larger villain set, especially since there will probably be combi models for the summer sets as well. It's always nice to see large Hero Factory models just as evidence that it can be accomplished, but the scale of Hero Factory sets in general and these minifigure-based sets in particular does not demand that sets be enormous to tower over a typical hero. Think about it this way — a small hero or machine set is about the same height as a Toa Mata or Toa Nuva. A medium-sized hero or machine set is just ever so slightly taller. And in classic BIONICLE sets, the largest humanoid villain (not counting the weirdness that was the Bohrok Kaita) was Makuta, who was less than ten inches tall — not even the height of sets like Black Phantom! From the look of it, I imagine the new "queen" set will be close to Makuta's height.

While minifigures DO tend to drive up a set's price (especially ones with a lot of prints or new molds), the Legend Beasts have WAY higher piece counts than the Mixels. Each Legend Beast has between 100 and 120 pieces, which is about twice the piece count of a typical Mixels set. The fact that they have a higher price should not surprise anyone. I think the value per piece of the new sets should not be radically changed by the addition of minifigures, though. After all, previous sets have also included lots of tiny detail elements like spikes, fingers/clamps, flick missiles, and chain links, not to mention Hero Cores. Having minifigures instead is not a huge change.

I'd hesitate to pass judgment until we know the weight of the sets. I was looking at the weights of sets recently on Brickset out if curiosity and found that by weight, prices for sets by weight tended to stay somewhat consistent, only rising significantly among the smallest sets when they switched from canisters to lighter foil packaging that didn't add so much to the total weight. Comparing prices by weight even explains some quandaries that seem to emerge when looking at price-per-piece, such as why Pyrox is a medium-sized set despite a rather pitiful piece count. The medium-sized sets, at any rate, are rising in price in all markets in 2014. And this seems fair, since by piece count they are in fact larger than previous medium-sized sets.

I personally love the Chima sets, but other than the Legend Beasts I've had a hard time committing to collecting the theme, since the first three episodes of the TV series disappointed me so much. I've only skimmed the books, but I have enjoyed those much more than what I saw of the show. I really ought to give the show another chance, since normally I am good at enjoying things even if they're mediocre, and I'm sure it's had a chance to improve from the stilted, exposition-heavy premiere episodes. And I actually like Laval's voice myself. Together with his adorable face, the childlike voice makes him very kawaii! :3 Of course, at this point, even if I give the show another chance and end up enjoying it, I doubt I'll end up collecting the theme with the same level of dedication as Ninjago or Hero Factory. I just don't have the budget!

Yes, it is still on the palette. Tr. Bright Green was introduced in the Atlantis theme in 2010, but it was not meant as a replacement. Furno XL, Surge, and Dragon Bolt are all sets released this year that use Tr. Fluore. Green (Trans-Neon Green) as an eye color. Dragon Bolt and Surge also include other Tr. Fluore. Green parts like 3M shells and Surge's visor. I haven't seen any Tr. Fluore. Green in next year's HF sets, but it's still a major presence in some other 2014 themes like Legends of Chima.

McDonalds has some say in what they use as toys, and they generally want toys to be something kids can play with right out of the package, with minimal assembly. Sad but true. There's also the risk of losing parts/choking hazards/etc. Even though McDonalds offers separate toys for toddlers, they might still be wary about any liabilities attached to the toys they distribute.

It's actually Tr. Bright Green, not Tr. Fluore. Green/Trans-Neon Green.

I've considered it, but the issue with adding a cape is that it would obscure the back of the figure. Now, sometimes this is a good thing since you don't have to put so much effort into making sure all sides of the figure are armored or streamlined — just look at the actual Furno XL set if you need an example. However, when you've already gone to great lengths to armor the figure from all sides, adding a cape makes that effort feel like a bit of a waste.