Aanchir

The issue with the grab bags is that the only reason they existed in the first place was to make back a fraction of the value of parts that couldn't be sold through their intended channels. From the outset, the LEGO Group would benefit more from reducing the issues that caused parts to be put into grab bags (damaged boxes, spilled Pick-A-Brick parts, etc.) than from trying to compensate in some small way for the consequences of those issues. Furthermore, while grab bags could offer great bargains on certain pieces, the truth is that they were NOT the epitome of quality. I often spotted grab bag contents such as gold treasure chests without lids and gold treasure chest lids without chests. Pick-A-Brick parts are often more mundane than what you might find in the grab bags, but there's a reason for that: the average buyer might not have any idea what to do with more specialized parts, whereas basic parts are simple and intuitive. This is especially true of parts that aren't even from the same building system, like getting a couple Hero Factory shells or Technic half-beams without the context of a Hero Factory or Technic set to instruct kids on their proper use. So for a lot of kids, the grab bags would offer an inferior play experience. That's not even getting into possible contamination issues or other quality issues. All in all, while getting a good grab bag haul could feel like winning the lottery, I don't think it's any surprise that the LEGO Group wants to be done with them.

It's kind of funny that these seem to have gotten the opposite reaction of the non-brick-built eagles in the Lord of the Rings theme, which disappointed a lot of people and led some to express a preference for the brick-built LEGO Creator Eagle from the same year. I'm sure even if these were prefabricated animals, there would be a lot of complaints that they are too specialized, too heavily stylized (keep in mind that they'd probably have the same high-detail eyes as the actual Legend Beast sets and Chima minifigures), or out-of-proportion. I have a hard time saying for sure whether the Legend Beasts are ideal for what they're aiming to represent, but one thing's for sure: they're excellent parts packs, they make much better stand-alone sets than just a prefabricated animal and minifigure would be, and they open up the opportunity for kids and adults to build their own legend beasts based on this template. So on the whole I have to say I prefer them to the alternative. I can't wait to see people MOC hypothetical Peacock, Rhino, Fox, Bear, Raven, Beaver, and Skunk Legend Beasts. I might even try my hand at it myself.

You may be right. I had interpreted that as some kind of suspension, but I suppose on a model this size, a splitting function could be a whole lot more likely.

The LEGO Movie site just put up a sigfig creator. Pretty good, I think, even though it lacks some details like freckles.

My goodness, this movie is probably going to be full of easter eggs. I can only imagine how many will be discovered once it's available on DVD/Blu-Ray!

As an owner of Rocky River Retreat, I'd say I prefer the Mountain Lodge because it is bigger and more detailed, even though the river and bridge are smaller and there is no boat. All things considered, many of the more interesting features of Rocky River Retreat were built from large, specialized parts, such as the mountain bricks, river plate, and roof tiles. This is not an issue with LEGO Creator, where small, basic parts are emphasized. Of course, that is perhaps also reflected in the price point: the Mountain Hut seems to be a $40/€40 set, whereas Rocky River Retreat was just a $30 set. Still, that's not a huge leap in price, especially taking inflation into account.

I don't think there's an explicit rule against having multiple set concepts, but it was definitely in their guidelines for helping a project pass review. The issue with a lot of projects is that if they begin as "theme projects", then even if they're subsequently narrowed down to a single building, any support it got before that change is called into question. And this applies for ANY major change in a project well after it is proposed. While the LEGO Cuusoo staff do encourage users to modify their projects if they have clear issues that will hurt them in review, major changes of that sort can sometimes be "too little, too late".

I actually prefer the final Voltix to the prototype, myself. His physique felt a lot more cohesive, and I like that the purple was made the outermost layer of armor rather than the middle layer. Speaking of purple, I'm glad we're seeing more of those rarer colors from the Breakout series like Medium Lilac and Medium Azur in next year's sets. Of course, it's a bit of a shame that certain colors like Bright Orange are still so terribly scarce.

I think Dorayaki is referring to LEGO Universe hairstyles, not Ninjago hairstyles.

I recently drew Jay and Nya from LEGO Ninjago. These are the first drawings of mine to get beyond the doodle stage in several months. Might draw the other Ninja if I can come up with some interesting poses for them. In the meantime, I've already started coloring these two.

It looks like the many kids dressing up as Ninjago characters for Halloween have not gone unnoticed. Man, my brother and I were dressing up as obscure LEGO characters before it was cool. [/hipster] There have definitely been some awesome ones this year, for instance here and here. The Green Ninja was apparently a popular costume last year, with these two being particularly outstanding. Feel free to search Google Images for "Ninjago costumes" if you want to see more! There's definitely no shortage of them! I just found these amazing Kai ZX and Nya costumes from last year!

Those two parts don't actually go together: the window is too small for that frame. 60594 can either have a four-pane window using two 3854s or two 60608s, a solid compartment with two 60614s, a diagonal lattice window using two 2529s or two 60607s, a glass window that opens vertically with part 60603, or a barred window with part 62113. 60594 was basically designed to replace the earlier 3853, which was itself too wide a frame to house part 4133. The window 4133 goes to a deeper window piece, 4132. These days 4132 and 4133 have also been discontinued in favor of the new window frame 60598, which can accept all the same types of window panes as 60594.

Not sure what the Flextronics deal has to do with modern sets since the LEGO Group has "insourced" the majority of their production these days. I only learned the LEGO Group had partnered with Flextronics to produce parts from a press release several years back about their decision to buy the production facilities from Flextronics and end that partnership.

The issue with Rhinos is that they'd need to introduce a new Speedorz shell. Having another Gorilla speedor helps them get their money's worth out of that mold, the same way reusing the wolf shell for foxes, skunks and bats does. And sticking with Gorzan helps keep the size of next year's cast of characters in check. The reason we don't see as many wolf Speedorz probably has a great deal to do with the fact that TLG can use the wolf Speedorz shell for so many different things. In any event, chances are next year will have a new Gorzan minifigure just like it has a new Eris minifigure. So this set offers another way for people to get that fig other than the Gorilla Legend Beast.

Just found prelim pics of some Speedorz sets on Tamayk.com: 70136 Banana Bash 70137 Bat Strike (this one we've already seen finalized pics of, thanks to Kmart) 70138 Spider Bash 70139 Sky Gate 70140 Stinger Duel (I don't watch the show so I don't know who Shadowind is, but I know he's important)

Nope, there's definitely a common thread between the LEGO Movie and Time Cruisers/Time Twisters. They're both what I like to call "potpourri themes", blending concepts from various unrelated themes into something new and crazy. You get shades of that in themes like Ninjago (ninjas and other historical/fantasy elements in an anachronistic, high-tech setting) or BIONICLE (biomechanical aliens on a tropical island, using magical powers to fight evil), but sometimes the zaniest and most imaginative themes of this sort are ones like the LEGO Movie where the only unifying thread is an unbridled spirit of creative play. In themes like BIONICLE and Ninjago, there's a certain distinctive flavor that can be lost if you venture too far from the theme's unifying traits (for instance, I don't know how well Ninjago could handle a space opera storyline, and BIONICLE took itself VERY seriously compared to most LEGO themes). But in a franchise like The LEGO Movie, anything goes!

Yeah, I have them on a hard drive somewhere. Someday one of us should probably get around to sharing them, considering the sets are now mostly off store shelves so there's no longer a lot of risk involved for the LEGO Group if the pictures are disclosed.

As I said in my post, that's just a complete palette swap of the artwork from Breez vs. Flyer Beast, so it might not be finalized, and even if it is, it might not have been drawn to resemble Splitter Beast to begin with. The same way Stormer, Rocka, Evo, and Furno clearly don't have identical helmets, even though their helmets are identical on the art on the top of the other five sets.

Oh my gosh... 60042 has the first female crook in LEGO City! Jolly good, I say! That prison van in 60043 is refreshingly unique. The vehicles and building in 60048 are also very nice and unique. Same goes for 60046. My, the LEGO Group certainly isn't letting another police wave stop them from finding new ways to innovate. The only set I find fairly mundane is 60044, but I like how those multiple screens are arranged. I wonder if the jail layout in 60047 is inspired by the LEGO City animations created by M2Film.

My brother just posited an interesting question about the 2014 Hero Factory stuff... do you think the switch to minifigures and minifigure-scale mecha might make it any more likely for Hero Factory sets or models to show up in The LEGO Movie?

Well, that, plus the renders tend to be higher quality on finished package designs. Look at the Chima "Legend Beast" art on Mesonak's Majhost to see how sloppy the prelim rendering can be. There are no grooves to indicate where two bricks of the same color meet, etc. The prelims for licensed themes can be even worse, with placeholder parts galore. Sometimes even in constraction themes there are superficial differences in the prelim renders for some new parts and the details of the final parts (example: the lack of a chin guard on the helmet of the preliminary Stormer 3.0). But you're right that the BUILD rarely changes considerably at this stage, at least when we're dealing with renders rather than photos.

Well, I have mixed feelings about these sets. Aesthetically, they're great. But the pinks and purples deviate greatly from the source material, which is a bit disappointing. Still hoping to get an Agrabah Palace in a future wave. Though with this theme's emphasis on magic and romance (and lack of villains or anything similarly scary) I'm afraid Jasmine might get relegated to a Magic Carpet scene. To be fair, though, that IS one of her most iconic scenes, but I love me some exotic architecture. Overall, I just feel like these have the same sanitized marketing strategy as other Disney Princess merchandise. And while that doesn't hurt the quality of the toys themselves, I feel like it reduces the well-roundedness of the franchises the characters were plucked from and replaces it with a much less meaningful context.

Actually, I do see at least one new part not featured in the first three we saw. 40501, 40502, 40506, and 40507 all have a 1x2 plate with three tiny teeth sticking out of the side. This piece is also used for the claws of the Legends of Chima Legend Beast sets. Incidentally, the Legend Beast sets also use the same tiny ball joints as the Mixels. I'm not sure when their date of release is, but they might be appearing in stores sooner than the Mixels themselves. Neat to see piece counts for these sets. Evidently, out of series 1, Zorch has the fewest parts (45), while Volectro has the most (70). Unless Krader has more or fewer parts than the ones we've seen here.

Why is everyone talking about Jaw Beast having transparent bones? As far as I can tell, his bones are just Dark Stone Grey and Medium Azur, same as Thornraxx. I don't see what the issue with Evo Walker is either. It's not remarkably large or impressive, but we wouldn't expect that of a set that size to begin with. Is it necessarily what everyone would think when they hear the name? Of course not. But that doesn't mean the set itself is lackluster. It's a pretty clever-looking walking turret. And we don't know for sure that Splitter Beast actually splits. Note that the illustration on the top of that package is just a palette swap of the one on Breez vs. Flyer Beast, and the one for Evo Walker is just a palette swap of the one on every other package. Let's not forget that "preliminary" doesn't just mean a poor-quality render of the actual final package. Some things, like the art at the top, presumably ARE going to change slightly before release. And as I mentioned in my previous post, all the mechs use the LEGO City helicopter windscreen, though Evo Walker does seem to confirm it's attached to a new "cab" element that holds the minifigure. It's also visible in the pic of Stormer Freeze Machine.

But the gist of my point is that those are about the OPPOSITE of the problems you'd get from using reprinted Duplo animals. The flaws you'd get with Duplo animals are excessively rounded sculpts and overspecialized single-piece designs. I thought the lion's face was awkward when I first saw it, and still think that to a certain extent (it's probably not as bad without the awful pose and render complicating things). The gorilla's head is also terribly blocky. But other than that, I think the sets are remarkably elegant — including the rest of the body for the lion and gorilla.