Aanchir

My Collectible Minifigures file has been updated with all new decorations for series 9, 10, and 11! The update also made one correction possible: the Alien Villainess's faceplate can now receive decorations, and the decoration itself has been updated to map correctly to the piece, so it could be added. Remaining errors: The decoration for the hat of the Series 4 Street Skater is not available. The decorations for the legs assembly of the Series 5 Zookeeper are not available. The reverse (sleeping) exp<b></b>ression for the head of the Series 6 Sleepyhead is not available. The decoration for the dress slope of the Series 6 Lady Liberty is not available. The right side decoration for the legs assembly of the Series 8 actor is not available. The pointed collar for the Series 8 Alien Villainess is not available. The decoration for the face of the Series 9 Chicken Suit Guy is not available. The eye decoration for the headgear of the Series 9 Chicken Suit Guy is not available. The book from the Series 10 Librarian does not have any decoration surfaces mapped, although the decoration itself is available. The Seagull from the Series 10 Sea Captain does not have any decoration surfaces, and its decorations are not available. The back and arm decorations from the torso assembly of the Series 11 Barbarian are not available. The back and arm decorations from the torso assembly of the Series 11 Scarecrow are not available. The decoration from the skirt of the Series 11 Pretzel Girl is not aligned correctly with the piece. The arm decorations from the torso assembly of the Series 11 Evil Mech are not available. The Blacktron insignia decoration from the armor of the Evil Mech does not fit correctly on any of the part's three decoration surfaces, meaning either a fourth decoration surface needs to be added or one of the existing three is not mapped correctly. The decoration is, however, available. The bone cannot attach correctly to the hair of the Series 11 Island Warrior. The arm decorations from the torso assembly of the Series 11 Gingerbread Man are not available. The decoration for the mug of the Series 11 Gingerbread Man is not available. The decorations from the teddy bear from the Series 11 Holiday Elf are not available. The back decoration from the torso assembly of the Series 11 Welder is not available. The chest decoration for the cat from the Series 11 Grandma is not available. All parts where a decoration or decoration surface is missing have been colored 294 Phosph. Green to differentiate them from correctly-decorated parts. All parts and surfaces that should be colored with silver ink or lacquer have been colored 298 Cool Silver, Drum Lacq. All parts and surfaces that should be colored with gold ink or lacquer have been colored 310 Metalized Gold. All parts and surfaces that should be colored with copper ink or lacquer have been colored 139 Copper.

My advice is to just describe LEGO building as a hobby — and if you do a lot of MOCing, as a creative hobby. You don't owe anyone any more explanation than that. People who think that adults and kids can't or shouldn't enjoy the same things are behind the curve and probably in denial — after all, there are plenty of things like sports that society has arbitrarily decided are appropriate for kids and adults alike, even though they are inherently a kind of play. If your friends and family seem to think you're wasting your money, just find some things you COULD be spending your money on to compare it to. And perhaps look up the resale price of some older LEGO sets on eBay and Bricklink if they need convincing that LEGO sets are a worthwhile investment. Once you show people that with proper care a set is likely to appreciate in value, they should be a little bit more willing to look beyond the original cost of the set. All in all, you can't expect everyone to understand the things that interest you. It's just not realistic unless you're willing to let other people shape the course of your life. But at the same time, if you let people know that you're committed to something and not afraid of other people's judgment, then they will usually stop trying to argue about it and will learn to either accept it, or ignore it completely. Haha! It's alright. I'm not ashamed about being a brony, but if using that and other fandoms as a point of comparison helps you get your family to accept or approve of your LEGO hobby, go right ahead. But I still recommend finding more mainstream sorts of interests to compare it to, like music or sports (how many LEGO sets could you buy for the price of tickets to a big-name concert or sporting event?)

Slight correction: Asger Johansen is a concept developer, not a set designer, and he works for Advance, not the LEGO Group. He also describes this as a "new action figure theme", so even if it is something small in scale, it'll be something more like Ben 10 than like Super Heroes or Chima, which only have constraction on the side. The LEGO Group STILL hasn't ruled out the possibility of BIONICLE returning, to my knowledge. However, that was an incredibly remote possibility at the time — there would have been no sense in bringing it back so soon when simply continuing it had not been a desirable option. At any rate, I doubt that's what this is referring to, since it explicitly refers to it as a new theme (in contrast, he originally referred to the LEGO Castle reboot as "a new take on a classic LEGO theme").

Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised or disappointed if the 2014 Hero Factory lineup were intended to be a "grand finale." After all, the fact that Advance and Ghost are handling the TV episode themselves could mean that they intend for it to be a bigger deal than the previous episodes. I'd miss Hero Factory, naturally, but I have no doubt it would have a strong legacy in the form of the CCBS, unless of course the Mixels joints take the place of that entirely. And I don't really anticipate that happening so soon after they first appear. Overall, a new constraction theme MIGHT take the place of Hero Factory, or it might co-exist with it. There are signs that point to HF ending soon (the book series ending, a new constraction theme over the horizon, the amount being invested in the new episode), but it's not enough to draw definite conclusions from. And I'm not going to waste a lot of time weighing the odds. I'd rather just enjoy what's to come. Back when the rumors first emerged about BIONICLE ending in 2010, I posted a blog entry in which I explained that I didn't care WHEN it ended as long as it ended well (for the record, I felt BIONICLE's ending was plenty satisfactory given the circumstances). The same applies to Hero Factory. It's had a good run — not as long as BIONICLE's, naturally, but it's not like it NEEDS to last that long when pretty much every story is self-enclosed and the building system has already proven its versatility outside that one theme. There would be some things I would always regret about the theme, such as that we never got figures of supporting characters like Zib and Makuro or that some cliffhangers were never fully resolved. But I don't know that keeping the theme going longer would really change the course of things a great deal. So overall, I look forward to whatever the future might hold for Hero Factory and constraction themes in general.

I don't know that I'd call that an easter egg. They just have enhanced detail, same as the heroes. It helps that the legs of the jumpers are designed to resemble some of the same parts that the larger monsters use (specifically, the new talon pieces). I think it would have been more unusual if the CGI models for them DIDN'T use any pre-existing CGI assets and were instead made completely from scratch. I was actually trying to MOC traditional "constraction-scale" versions of the heroes and jumpers on LDD before this trailer came out. I built the heroes differently, though, using the square armor detail pieces from the summer Breakout sets for their shoulders and pretty much Brain Attack style torsos (minus the locking clamps). Even though the CGI models in the episode aren't truly buildable, I think they do manage to resemble the minifigure designs a bit more closely. Y'all who have zoomed in on parts of the trailer to identify who owns what mech are doing us a great favor, by the way. Good to know that Breez gets a machine, although I hope new versions of the other four heroes show up in the summer — the fact that at least one or two of the winter hero figures is being reused in the summer might not bode well for them.

Let's be fair here — the Gungan Sub set was pretty good for its time. It resembled the subject and had decent play features, even if those were not derived from the source material. A lot of the parts used in the more recent model were not available at the time of the original, and a lot of the building techniques used in the more recent one are rare even in today's sets — I can only imagine they'd have been discouraged at a time when the feeling was that younger kids were the main audience for the LEGO brand and that the level of complexity they could tolerate was much lower. Basically the designers were working with a faulty understanding of the audience that they were (or ought to have been) targeting. Some well-known designers these days are those who also have a presence in the AFOL community, like Mark Stafford, Adrian Florea, Adam Grabowski, Tim Ainley, and Marcos Bessa. Naturally, most of these designers started working in the past decade — the AFOL community didn't exist in nearly the same capacity before the Internet, after all. Another very important designer is Torben Skov. He's been working with the LEGO Group for over 25 years. One of his notable early achievements is that he is the creator of the ubiquitous Octan brand. He has designed for all kinds of themes — one of his recent models is Equila's Ultra Striker from LEGO Legends of Chima. Christoffer Raundahl is a long-time designer I greatly admire whose main involvement has been in constraction themes. He's been working on them since the beginning — so he's credited as the inventor on patent drawings for Slizer/Throwbots parts as well as for the new Hero Factory "character and creature building system" introduced in 2011. Astrid Graabaek primarily designs for the Creator and Friends themes. She's one of the designers whom I've been fortunate enough to meet in person, at Brickfair 2012. She was the designer for 10224 Town Hall and one of the designers for Palace Cinema. Henrik Andersen is most well-known as a designer for LEGO City. Any model with a license plate that has an "HA" on it is probably one of his. Another City designer is Pierre Normandin, and his sets can be identified in a similar fashion. Overall, these kind of details fascinate me and I wish there were one place you could reference to find out all of them! That's part of why I'd prefer a web-based resource to simply having the designers' names on the packages or instruction booklets. It'd make this kind of thing much less of a scavenger hunt.

The product descriptions we saw on Walmart.ca actually called them Mini-Robots. I like that a bit better than Mini-Heroes because it's more generic and could also be used to describe villain or civilian figures at this same scale.

Honestly, I don't know. Since it's extremely soft and rubbery, it'd be hard to measure even if I got out a pair of digital calipers. Visually, it looks the same size, and I know people have used them in place of ball joints on some MOCs, although since they're rubbery and easy to compress they could still function that way even if they were slightly larger.

Can anyone generate a file with all the new decorations, or otherwise create some kind of pictorial reference? I've never known where to find them myself, and usually get my list from other people. Even the new decorations on 2x2 tiles would be helpful, as I'd be able to see them clearly and identify which parts they go on.

Now, to be fair, Nex's specialty has always been communications technology. Like teh interwebs. Anyway, good to get some screenshots so I can look at these designs in detail. I like what I see, though some of the mechs look yellow or gold in some pics, and I hope that's just the lighting — I don't think either Rocka or Evo really needs another. I definitely see some heroes we haven't seen in the first wave of sets, though it's a bit difficult telling who's who in this dramatic lighting. The new monsters and machines look very neat. The heroes and "jumpers" also have been scaled up quite nicely. I take back what I said earlier about the heroes not looking like their minifigure equivalents — in some of these shots it's easy to see the similarities.

OK, first things first. That is a BEAUTIFUL trailer. Advance did a good job with that one. I'm a little bit disappointed that the heroes in this only bear a passing resemblance to the minifigures (since they largely reuse assets from previous episodes). But they still look really awesome. They at least have the distinctive kneepads from the minifigures, though it's a bit of a shame their beefy shoulderpads have lost. Are the machines we see at 0:22 new sets, I wonder? And is it one or two? A two-cockpit machine would be cool, though I'd think the best heroes for that would be Nex and Evo, and Evo already has enough. :P The flying machine that Surge is piloting at 0:27 is AWESOME, as is the beast at 0:28 with four legs that end in talons and two claws like Waspix has. The two beefy beasts at 0:43 are also quite cool. And the "queen" at 0:47 is BRILLIANT! Overall, someone behind the scenes has really been stretching their creative muscles. I can't wait to see how many of these models wind up in the sets! I'm almost grateful for the delayed release in the United States since it means I can wait until Toy Fair to plan my purchases!

Except by accident — the Techno-Blade from the new Ninjago sets and the penguin from the new Friends animal packs have been in there since the LAST update, as has a new hose piece that is making its first appearance in the LEGO Movie sets. That's part of why I'm a bit sad that this big update came now. If it had been a January update, we might have seen more parts. As it is, we probably won't see another update this size until March or April. Then again, perhaps some parts might be added in smaller updates in between.

I don't know what you mean when you say kids don't like robots. I loved robot figs when I was a kid, and if this year's Ninjago and Hero Factory sets are any indication, robots are still very popular with the young ones. The CMFs are also a pretty popular product lines with girls, regardless of LEGO Friends. Younger kids aren't necessarily as concerned with keeping all their figs consistent as adults are.

I imagine that during the marathon they'll air a trailer that tells the premiere date for the new season. The marathon seems like one of the best times to start showing that to ensure that everyone gets the memo.

The last episode aired sometime around Thanksgiving (I remember watching it during the few days I spent with my aunt and uncle in New Jersey), so it's already been a hiatus of slightly over a year. But at the same time, it looks like the theme's fanbase hasn't dwindled considerably since then, so I think it stands a good chance of coming back strong. I think a January premiere date is most likely. If it were sooner than that, I think we'd have gotten a specific date by now — it doesn't work to Cartoon Network's advantage at all not to publicize it. My guess is that they will air the first trailer announcing the new season's premiere date during the four-episode Ninjago marathon that Cartoon Network is showing this Saturday.

Can you link to the "Ninjago facebook page" you're talking about? A Google search for "LEGO Ninjago December 18" brings me to a Wikia page dated from July that cites this post from April as its source. The page is an UNOFFICIAL Ninjago page (which is, alarmingly, posing as an official page — the real page is https://www.facebook.com/OfficialLEGONinjago). A LEGO Message Boards post from July repeats the December 18 date, complete with a falsified premise based on the eighth graphic novel, which has since been discovered to be a stand-alone story like most of the graphic novels have been. Clicking the hashtag you mentioned took me to this, yet another completely unofficial page with atrociously poor grammar and inane posts. And it's linked from a Twitter account that's just as sloppy and unofficial. That's one of the sad things about Ninjago being as popular as it is — hoaxes like this can spread like wildfire, and generally nothing short of conflicting official information can put them to rest. Some people were talking about the "purple ninja" up until the actual sets for 2014 were revealed.

Well, in terms of price point and piece count, Drop Ship was already bigger than Witch Doctor (by five dollars and fifty-eight pieces, counting the sticker sheet) But I get your point. Last year I actually tried building a larger Hero Pod that could fit a small or medium-sized hero from the Breakout series without disassembly. I didn't get especially far, though, and it didn't have nearly enough accuracy to the show model to make its large size worthwhile. And even if I had succeeded, it would have had only the height and width to accommodate Furno Jet Machine — certainly not the thickness.

My brother makes a good point of how many designers might be involved in any given set, but I think it WOULD be great if we saw a little more emphasis on the design side of things in regular LEGO play themes. Currently, other than designers who are active on AFOL forums, the main places we hear about who designed what are on the LEGO Creator, Technic, and City designer blogs and of course the designer videos that occasionally pop up in themes like Ninjago, Chima, and Creator Expert. We also get some info about the designers in the Master Builder Academy manuals and unlockable online materials. I think an online resource might be the best place to put this kind of information. That way it'd be accessible to anyone, not just to people who own or otherwise have access to the original set. It'd be great if every theme had a section for "designer profiles" where it would show the designers for that theme and the sets they had a hand in designing. Like the LEGO Creator designer profiles, but a little more in-depth.

The Hero Factory figs, if you're talking about this year's minifigures, have exactly the same articulation as any other minifigures. If you're instead referring to the full-scale constraction sets, that's a whole different ball game on account of size. You might not have realized it if you don't collect constraction themes, but the BIONICLE and Hero Factory sets between 2006 and 2010 had a major issue with their joints snapping just from simple assembly and disassembly. The ball cup had to be redesigned TWICE to finally solve this issue. That's why there are three versions of the 2x2 brick with ball cup: the first design was too fragile, the second design was too fragile, and it took a third design to finally solve the issue. Now, this isn't to say the joints CAN'T be made smaller. Next year's Legend Beast sets from the Legends of Chima theme and Mixels sets are introducing new ball cups based on the classic LEGO "towball". But these parts were allegedly in development for a good six years to ensure that they measured up to the LEGO Group's quality standards. Designing ball joints that are even smaller to be used for articulated minifigures would be a tremendous challenge. I've read that at least some of the clone brand figures that have ball-and-socket articulation can be rather fragile as a result. And because of the LEGO Group's high standard of quality, things might be even more difficult for them — after all, such tiny ball joints might be even more difficult to design when you're limited to a range of materials that has to meet incredibly high standards for color fastness, chemical safety, and other factors. Plus, you'd want to make these design changes without infringing on the classic, iconic look of the minifigure. All things considered, I think the costs of redesigning the minifigure with greater articulation outweigh the benefits.

This is an awesome set that uses some brilliant building techniques to replicate the real landmark. Personally, I like it a lot more than 10181, even if it is slightly simplified and stylized (and of course, much smaller).

I dunno, I think the Fire Temple was plenty substantial. The Blacksmith Shop, too, at least for its size. 2012 didn't offer a whole lot in the way of settings, but I was satisfied with the Temple of Light... it's no Fire Temple, but still a great display piece with lots of space to play around with the minifigures. On the whole, I think the best sets in any "play theme" are less like a backdrop and more like a full stage. Plenty of space, props, and action features for telling stories with the characters, but only as many walls as are needed to convey the setting. And I think Ninjago has done alright with that. Not as well as LEGO Friends, perhaps, but still alright.

I think it's just two layers of armor — an outer silver/dark grey armor and an inner light grey armor. I believe Eris has similar armor in next year's sets. Sculpted abdominals are not uncommon in armor. A lot of Roman and Greek armor had abs pressed into the breastplate, and many Chima characters' costumes are pretty heavily inspired by that classical era (for instance, the armor skirts of the lion tribe).

I don't think it's so bad. The only part that's gold is his printed crown. And the other colors don't really seem to clash at all, IMO — after all, the grey is perfectly neutral.

I'll admit, the NyaXCole ship tease in that video is pretty blatant, so I imagine it WILL be an issue that comes up in an episode. At the same time, I can't imagine the writers destabilizing the NyaXJay relationship that they seem to have had so much fun writing. So as such, I imagine this apparent "love triangle" will be resolved in the course of one episode... for all we know, it may just turn out to be a wacky misunderstanding. One thing's for sure: all it took was those few clips to rustle some jimmies within the fandom.

Yep! You can see them all in this gallery (not mine). I don't think there was anything wrong with the Ordeal of Fire combi models. They were pretty boring humanoids with somewhat awkward proportions and articulation, but visually, they looked about like what you'd expect from a combi model. The color schemes weren't even too bad — each had only three or four non-neutral colors, and two were mere accents. So really no worse than the classic Nui-Kopen from BIONICLE, and in some ways arguably better than the well-loved Toa and Toa Nuva Kaita models, or the slightly less memorable Bohrok Kaita models that came between them. Likewise, I think the first and third combi models here looks quite nice. You can't judge combi models by the same strict standards you'd use for set designs because they are inherently limited to a certain parts palette. The important thing is that they do something new and interesting with those parts, and that they put at least a bit of thought into how the colors and motifs are distributed.