Aanchir

Short answer: from underneath. I don't know what pieces exactly it uses, but there's a 3M Medium Stone Grey axle connected between the Technic connector on top and some other piece with a cross axle hole underneath. This is consistent with the amount of space needed under the vehicle to account for the large engines.

Alright, thoughts on the individual sets: 44015 Evo Walker: Pretty cool for such a small set. I love the fact that many of the mecha use the System helicopter windscreen. I was just saying the other day how terribly underused that piece is. Not entirely sure what to think of those "bugs". 44016 Jaw Beast vs. Stormer: As the smallest "kaiju" set, it's no surprise this one is not one of the most impressive. But it's still got an awesome color scheme and some great parts. Medium Lilac spines and Medium Azur 3M beams? Yes please! We can get a pretty good look at Stormer here, and he looks AWESOME. Makes me very optimistic about the minifigures in general. They are, in fact, skeleton/robot type builds, so there should be plenty of potential uses for those minifigure parts. 44017 Stormer Freeze Machine Beautiful! No idea what that cylinder thing on the back is. Rocka Stealth Machine and Evo XL Machine also have them. But in any case, the mech itself looks amazing. 44018 Furno Jet Machine: Very cool model in general. One of the people in a Facebook group I'm in built some minifigure-scale constraction mechs once it was announced that next year would focus on those kind of things. He wasn't that far off the mark as far as torso construction was concerned! 44019 Rocka Stealth Machine: Pretty cool mech for the most part, though it doesn't exactly scream "stealth". The claw is nicely built. Not my favorite of the mecha, but it's still plenty unique. 44020 Breez vs. Flyer Beast: Wow, Breez looks pretty on top of things! Pun intended. Flyer Beast looks pretty good in general, though the standard fist seems odd for a giant monster like this. Color layering on the legs looks a bit odd but overall this seems like a neat model. 44021 Furno and Evo vs. Splitter Beast: Whoa, this looks awesome. Furno has an energy sword from this year's Ninjago sets, and together the two heroes are using a chain like the one Breez used as a bridle in the previous set, this time to trip up the massive Splitter Beast. Overall, Splitter Beast looks plenty ferocious, and the two-headed design works quite well for him! Kind of neat how he and Flyer Beast both have torn up bits of scenery: Flyer Beast had a radio antenna, and Splitter Beast has what looks like a streetlamp. 44022 Evo XL Machine: A very non-traditional build, but how effective that will be remains to be seen. But overall, it looks very much like a powerful mecha, which I guess means it fulfills its goal.

I'll agree when you can show me a Duplo set that uses complex SNOT techniques and ball-and-socket articulation. The Legend Beasts are remarkably elegant, for brick-built creatures at that kind of scale. I guess there's not a whole lot more to discuss about them here, considering they aren't in fact constraction sets (but hey, can't go wrong with ball-and-socket joints!).

Are you referring to "new pieces" and "big pieces" separately, or "new, big pieces"? Because the only new pieces I see are small detail elements. Well, except for those talon pieces on the spider which are also used in Ninjago and Hero Factory. The Legend Beasts are all pretty awesome. At first I was a little disappointed with the lion and wolf, but it didn't take me long to warm up to them. While it would have been cool to have new buildable molded creatures with interchangeable parts kind of like the 2001 Dinosaurs sets, these are extremely elegant as brick-built creatures, with a great balance of printed detail and sculptural elegance. The Scorpion Stinger's color scheme is a bit awkward, but I love how it uses some of this year's Chima constraction weapons, and the way it stores spare ammo for the ball shooter is ingenious. The Spider Stalker looks very cool, as does the Rock Flinger. The Bat Striker's head is very well-sculpted. Looks adorable! Lots of clever minifigure weapons too. Overall, I'm surprised at how much I like the direction Legends of Chima is taking. EDIT: And the Legend Beasts DO use the joints from the Mixels sets! Hooray!

The other thing about the Mini Shops series is that any one of the individual shops MIGHT have sold well. But by grouping them all together under one project, it obfuscates which building appealed most to each supporter. If there were four shops and only 25% of the voters were interested in any one shop, then no single shop REALLY had 10,000 supporters. But you can't break things down that way because it's impossible to know just which of the shops made the project appeal to which supporters. Any predictive value the Cuusoo platform might have had is suddenly down the toilet.

Really? For 2013 there were four new parts (Samurai crest, Samurai face mask, General Kozu upper body, and elemental sword blade). 2014 has at least six (Ninja face mask, Kai hair, Cyrus Borg hair, Techno-Blade, Nindroid face mask, General Cryptor body armor). That's not including Lloyd and Garmadon's hair piece, which might appear in other themes like Star Wars, or the two new building elements that have been spotted in the Ninjago sets and have not yet been spotted in pics of other 2014 sets. Even counting those, it's nowhere near as many new molds as there were in 2012 (nine new spinner parts alone, if you count the spinner itself as a single part, plus 16 new minifigure parts and four new weapon parts) or 2011 (13 new minifigure parts, five new weapon parts, a new spinner, and three new dragon parts). But the theme was a lot larger those years, both in terms of number of minifigures and total number of sets. I agree the parrot wouldn't have worked, and I think the crow is a better fit than the seagull, though the method for Zane to hold it is kind of awkward. Overall, I don't know that the Falcon would have gotten a new mold even if there were the budget for it. There are lots of other things that the designers could have used an additional new mold for, after all, such as a new weapon for the Nindroids or another new building element.

Not really. The only three "pearl" colors in sets nowadays are 297 Warm Gold, 315 Silver Metallic, and 316 Titanium Metallic. Any others have been discontinued at various points over the years. So while the full history of pearl colors is fairly complicated, it's relatively easy to identify the pearl colors in a modern-day set. Anyway, the NinjaCopter pics are a godsend because I promised someone on deviantART that I'd link them to better pics of Pixal once those became available. She's quite an attractive minifigure, though the set description doesn't tell us anything we couldn't already tell from the pics. The solution the designers came up with for how Zane can hold his falcon is effective, if a bit bizarre. Also pretty cool that the Nindroid hang glider in that set can clip to the back of the other Nindroid vehicle. Something I noticed the other day that I find a bit bizarre... the minifigure identified on the package as "General Cryptor" is identical to the figures identified as generic Nindroids on other sets like 70723. Don't tell me that the designers can't differentiate between characters THEY created... To be fair, though, I made the same mistake when we saw the first batch of pictures on the K-Mart site. I wonder what else we might see those gold parts on the sides of the launchers used for. I'm thinking either Hero Factory or Legends of Chima. Maybe even both. The Hover Hunter looks a lot better now that we can see it from the front. I had figured its body and wings were solid, but the gap above the saw blade gives it a little bit more style. It's interesting that the saw blade is mounted from below, not above. Also, using those blades as a sort of a rollcage is brilliant and makes those clip pieces on the back make a lot more sense. It does seem awfully expensive for its piece count, but I guess the number of large pieces might play a role there.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with Speedorz shells being reused. Generally, if a part gets reused, that's a sign that it was designed well enough for multiple applications. In contrast, when a part is only used once for a single set or handful of sets, that's usually a sign that the part was fairly specialized. I pulled my brother's CHI Worriz out of its package yesterday and was marveling at the quality of its design. But I can't help but feel uneasy about its extremely specialized pre-assembled head piece. Lovely part design aesthetically... but what else might it be able to be used for in the future? I had hoped that we might see future Legends of Chima constraction waves with recolors of these head pieces for characters like Windra, Grumlo, LaGravis, and Crooler. Having seen that there aren't any constraction sets due for a January release, I am a little bit less optimistic about this possibility, though perhaps it's just going to end up being a "one wave per year" thing and we'll see another batch of constraction sets next summer. I can only hope...

I often read comments about how LEGO Cuusoo has failed as a crowdsourcing initiative, and it baffles me, considering how high-quality the previous LEGO Cuusoo models have all been and how much they stand out from previous LEGO sets. The two science-based sets that came out of LEGO Cuusoo while it was still Japan-exclusive were both very nice sculptures that are pretty much unlike anything the LEGO Group had released since the Discovery Kids line in 2003. The Minecraft set broke from the typical licensed theme formula in that the models were designed primarily as modular display pieces with non-traditional figures, not to mention the fact that the product was based on a video game rather than a cartoon or Hollywood blockbuster. Currently, it has to be understood that LEGO Cuusoo is operating on a very small scale relative to the LEGO Group's overall operations, which makes sense. It'd be tremendously risky to put a platform like LEGO Cuusoo on the same level of importance as the more traditional sorts of market research used to plan new themes. So instead, we get one or two LEGO Cuusoo projects each year at best (remember, assigning designers to create LEGO Cuusoo products often means taking them away from other more traditional projects). Compare that with the rate at which LEGO Cuusoo projects are getting to review, and you'll quickly realize that the LEGO Group not only can, but MUST be choosy about which projects carry the greatest potential with the lowest risks. Rejected projects aren't by any means a sign that the platform is failing — rather, they're a sign that it's working to its current peak potential. If the LEGO Cuusoo products continue to sell well, perhaps LEGO Cuusoo will get a more significant operating budget and will be able to accept more projects per review cycle.

This is a very good point about something that is often overlooked: there's a benefit to having a toy brand be visually unified, even if the source material or promotional material portrays more diverse sorts of storytelling. I've noticed this a lot in Ninjago: in its first year, Bright Red and Black buildings with white flags and rice-paper windows tended to dominate the theme, while in its second year, almost any architectural features in the sets would be Sand Yellow and Dark Stone Grey snake-themed prisons and shrines. This is not at all a full portrayal of the diverse locales the Ninjago show and other media portrayed in either year, but as far as toys are concerned it's probably a very good branding decision, because even people who don't follow or understand the story of the show will have a sense that the different sets go together and will be able to tell, in an instant, what "story year" they are attached to. Ninjago is a sort of a funny example in that its heroes and their vehicles do NOT have a unified color scheme, unlike some LEGO factions like Alpha Team, Agents, Power Miners, or the various Castle and Space themes. But even so, it does make it pretty clear which vehicles go together in that the ninja heroes' vehicles always use gold as a prominent part of the color scheme, while their enemies' vehicles never do (and the enemy vehicles of course have very obvious color schemes and structural motifs to identify their particular faction). The Super Heroes theme also has had this trait to a great extent... for instance, the Avengers sets used the same colors and motifs for all the alien vehicles and S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles. With this in mind, is it any surprise Batman can be such a reliable foundation of a successful toy line? After all, his fleet of vehicles and gadgets has always had very unified colors and motifs. And this is the kind of thing toymakers dream of. Nothing makes a kid want to complete a collection quite as much as the feeling that the toys they have and the toys they don't have are designed to go together. With many other superheroes, Batman's flagrant level of branding would seem utterly ludicrous (which hasn't stopped a lot of toymakers). But with Batman, it's practically mandatory. It's what makes the character and his vehicles distinctive and shows that yes, this is a Batman™ product. A lot of people wonder why the Super Heroes theme does not have a lot of location-based sets... and this is in part because a lot of the locations in superhero franchises (even Batman!) lack this sense of distinctiveness. The Daily Planet and the Fortress of Solitude are of course a staple of the Superman brand. But a person without prior knowledge of the franchise would not understand, at a glance, the significance of these locations. The Fortress of Solitude might seem like an evil ice lair, and the Daily Planet like a mundane office building. I doubt even the Daily Bugle would have appeared in the Super Heroes theme if it didn't have the giant screen of J. Jonah Jameson screaming what character the location was significant to.

For real? Do you know if anyone got pictures? I'd love to get to see some photos of 70725.

The color is called 315 Silver Metallic. It replaced 131 Silver between 2010 and 2011. Bricklink calls it Flat Silver, though they also call certain Silver parts Flat Silver. It should not be confused with 316 Titanium Metallic or its predecessor 148 Dark Grey Metallic, both of which Bricklink calls Pearl Dark Grey. And yes, I'm pretty sure Evil Wu's hat is that same color.

I didn't notice until now that Vitruvius has a tie-dye T-shirt.

It's not that they think it's the best, just the most commercially viable. The Portal project was good but it was unfortunately created before it was well-understood that LEGO Cuusoo could not support full themes or new molds. That's two points against that, and that's not even touching potential licensing or brand fit issues. It was a beautiful project and I hope Team Jigsaw has more luck with their planned Legend of Korra project. But I can think of plenty of potential — and perfectly valid — reasons it might have been rejected.

It's entirely possible that they COULD have made a LEGO store and chose not to because it would have been unfair to the wishes of all the voters who wanted a Starbucks, 7-Eleven, etc. Kind of the same way that they COULD have made a non-licensed Tachikoma set back in the day but determined that it would be unfair to the wishes of the people who were voting for it based on the Ghost in the Shell tie-in. That is one issue with "theme" projects in general. I admit, I LOVED the Space Troopers project, the Legend of Zelda project, the Thinking with Portals project, and the Mini Shops project. But they were all originally designed as "theme" projects, before it was well-understood that the LEGO Cuusoo platform was only designed with single products in mind. Any of those individual product ideas for any of those themes could still be cool... but they'd lack the same depth of appeal that they had as full hypothetical themes. Contrast that with the Exo-Suit, which NOBODY would vote for expecting anything but a single product. You're bound to disappoint far fewer people, and that means the LEGO Cuusoo support process is a lot more valid as a predictive method in the case of that project.

I have high hopes for the Exo-Suit. Naturally, the original concept model has a lot of flimsy or illegal connections, not to mention using several discontinued parts. But I'm confident that the LEGO designers can come up with a design that is a little simpler and sturdier without losing the greebly goodness that made the Exo-Suit model so immensely popular. Especially considering how many amazingly useful parts have come out since the Exo-Suit was first designed! A lot of the rejected projects that I would have loved to see realized in LEGO had a certain liability in common: they started their lives as "theme projects". While in some cases the creators had narrowed them down into a few individual sets that could be released independently, they lost a lot of their inherent appeal when reduced to a single model. Examples of this include The Legend of Zelda, Thinking with Portals, and Space Troopers. Brilliant concepts for themes, but not optimized for single sets, particularly single sets that do not include any new molds.

It's not aimed at AFOLs, so its success won't hinge on whether AFOLs are interested in playing. But at the same time, I am sure at least SOME AFOLs will be willing to put up with kid-friendly "sacrifices" and find redeeming value in other parts of the experience. After all, the majority of LEGO sets aren't aimed at AFOLs either, and plenty of AFOLs still manage to enjoy them just fine. I won't be playing this game just because I've never had the work ethic or attention span for MMOs... in fact, these days, I barely have the work ethic and attention span for video games of any kind. The last video game that I had the patience to play all the way through was the wonderful nostalgia trip that was the Mata Nui Online Game.

I agree. Molding marks can be a bit bothersome sometimes, but they're a fairly minor issue in comparison to this. Generally, you should ALWAYS expect parts in a new set to be in at least as good condition as when they came out of the mold. So real, visible, post-production damage is something that should be addressed.

I've always felt more or less the same way about video reviews. I almost never watch any video reviews with the sound on unless it's relevant (i.e. if the set has a sound brick). Of course, there's some merit to talking during video reviews. There are some things, like the weight of the model, that a video without voiceovers can't easily tell you. But at the same time, from my experience, most talking during video reviews strikes me as a mere distraction from what's actually happening on-camera. I don't hold this against video reviewers, though. There are almost certainly a lot of people on sites like YouTube who DO like their reviews to have commentary, and want to know what the reviewer thinks of the set or figure. And I can't say I haven't warmed up to the Brick Show after I was able to pick up two of this year's Legends of Chima constraction sets from them at Brickfair at less than 50% of their shelf price. They've found a comfortable niche, and we shouldn't fault them for that just because their style doesn't appeal to us. My favorite video reviewer might be Artifex Creations. He uses a lot of cool video techniques, including amazing time-lapse builds and wonderful 360-degree turnarounds of sets and minifigures. And most of the reviews are kept mostly hands-free, so no fumbling attempts to indicate certain details that slow down the actual video.

In Day of the Great Devourer, it's part of a piece titled "Taking the Bait". Here it is on Michael Kramer's Soundcloud: http://m.soundcloud.com/michaelkramer/taking-the-bait

Yeah, I definitely think the designs will be close to the designs of the minifigures. At the same time, I would still expect them to be constraction-like in their scale and level of detail instead of looking as accurate to the minifigures as, say, the skeletons in the Ninjago cartoon. After all, this is being done by Ghost, and it's not as though Ghost used minifigures in the Toa Terrain Crawler scenes of the , in the , or even in the CGI scenes of the and commercials.It'd really break willing suspension of disbelief for many watchers if the level of detail for the heroes to have considerably less detail than previous appearances or even than secondary charaters in this upcoming TV special.

Plot twist: The new Hero Factory sets use LEGO Friends mini-dolls. On a more serious note, I just remembered that last time I was trawling through the LEGO Customer Service replacement parts database, I DID find some curious new minifigure parts... 16000 MINI ARM, RIGHT, UPPER PART in Dark Brown, Dark Green (classic green), Black, Aqua (Light Aqua) 16001 MINI ARM, LEFT, UPPER PART in Dark Brown, Dark Green, Black, and Aqua 16013 MINI ARM, RIGHT, LOWER PART in Medium Stone Grey (Light Bluish Gray) 16014 MINI ARM, LEFT, LOWER PART in Medium Stone Grey 16016 MINI ARM, RIGHT, ASSEMBLED (spelling out because the Eurobricks word filter would change it to "Megabloks" otherwise) in Dark Brown 16017 MINI ARM, LEFT, ASSEMBLED in Dark Brown 16360 MINI UPPER PART 2K, NO. 2742 in Sand Yellow (Dark Tan) All but this last one are in the category "Loose Parts", meaning that in sets they will appear as sub-parts of a pre-assembled part. However, naturally, the "ASSEMBLED" arms are probably combinations of the upper and lower arms. The last, being in the category "Mini Figure", is a fully-assembled minifigure part, but it may or may not include some of the others mentioned. Anyway, from the colors listed these certainly don't sound like Hero Factory minifigures, but I feel like some theme, at least, is going to be seeing newer and more complex minifigure arms. Friends, maybe? I dunno. In any case, I figured I'd be alright sharing these here while we're talking about new and innovative minifigures, before I forget about them again. Carry on.

I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen the Mixels ball cups in any other themes whatsoever. I had thought we might see them in Ninjago, but no dice. Then again, I guess since the Mixels themselves are a March/April release rather than a January release, we won't likely see them in the January 2014 wave of any theme. In the meantime, the Mixels don't seem like they'll be terribly expensive, so it shouldn't be hard to buy a few of those in order to accumulate enough joint pieces for some real experimentation. Glad to know the Hero Factory sets from next year don't disappoint, though! I'm quite excited to see pictures. Even though we've heard the main idea of next year's sets and some brief descriptions, it's not quite enough for me to properly visualize them.

Peeron has never been the quickest to update, and while it scores some points over Bricklink as far as color names are concerned, it still has some weaknesses. It DOES have one very useful resource, the Peeron color list, which cross-references Peeron and Bricklink color names with official LEGO names. However, it is not 100% reliable because often there is not a 1:1 relationship between the names used on fan-created databases and the official names, and you often have to deal with parts being listed incorrectly in whichever database you're referencing. If the Brickset database is not complete enough for you, then there is another reliable non-user-generated resource: just replace the seven-digit part number in this URL with any six- or seven-digit Element ID from the inventory in the back of a set's instruction booklet to see that part's entry in the LEGO Group's replacement parts database — no need to go through Brickset or the main LEGO Customer Service site. This solution is ideal because even parts that do not have pictures uploaded to the site are included in the database. The disadvantage is that the LEGO Group only began printing complete set inventories with Element IDs in instruction booklets around 2006, so you might have a much harder time verifying older sets' colors this way.

The issue I have with that is that regular minifigures are not optimized for part-swapping. You CAN switch the individual hands, arms, and legs, but after a certain amount of mixing and matching it can weaken those connections. Whereas the BIONICLE minifigures, Exo-Force robots, skeletons, etc. have arm and leg connections that are designed so they can be assembled and disassembled indefinitely, much like constraction figures. Plus, those LEGO skeleton and robot parts can often be reused for totally different applications, including as details on larger constraction models. Furthermore, keeping a certain amount of molded versus printed detail would help make the transition to minifigures less jarring for people who are already Hero Factory fans, and could potentially mean less of a disconnect between the characters' cartoon appearances (which will presumably still be high-detail designs so as to remain consistent with the designs of secondary characters like Zib and Makuro) and their minifigure appearances.