Aanchir

High-Res friends set images from cache.LEGO.com: 41005 alt1 alt2 alt3 alt4 alt5 41006 alt1 alt2 alt3 alt4 41009 alt1 alt2 alt3 alt4 alt5 41010 alt1 alt2 alt3 alt4 41013 alt1 alt2 alt3 alt4 41015 alt1 alt2 alt3 alt4 Quite a lot of great images! Haven't even had time to look at all of them in detail myself; gotta check some of the other themes!

Official images can sometimes be slightly inaccurate... I would expect the new shark mold to be in every new set with a shark. The new shark mold is also on LDD already. I mentioned it here. In addition to its many cosmetic changes, it now has different connection points on the bottom so it can be placed directly on a LEGO baseplate without a 1x2 plate in between. Compare it to the old shark body on LDD to see for yourself! And wow, I'm quite surprised by the new City sets being on cache.LEGO.com already. Incidentally, here's the URL template to see the images in 4000px wide with transparency. EDIT: Love that the bus has ads for not just the bike shop, but the LEGO City Museum!

The pic of the two minifigs from the Dolphin Cruiser on a jetski and waterskis just reminds me just how much I wish TLG could print short sleeves on traditional minifigures. Unfortunately I don't think with their current printing machines this is possible since the arms are printed after the fig is assembled and the pad hits the arm only from one side. Ah, well... maybe one day. The jetski, by the way, uses the new 1x2 plate with single clip quite nicely for attaching the handlebars. Really proves the usefulness of that piece.

I don't see why having a little triangle of flesh on the torsos makes them completely unusable. Beards, certain types of armor, and some other neck accessorieswill allow the torso decoration to remain visible while still concealing that one offending spot of exposed skin, and if there's one thing the LotR/Hobbit themes have done it's offering a bunch of new and useful beard and armor pieces. Certainly it might make these torsos a bit less useful for army building, since if everyone in your army has a beard it might look a bit odd, but otherwise the torsos should still remain usable.

Yeah, the new dolphins are cool, though to be honest I'm not sure if I'd use them in a non-Friends layout as-is, because they of course have the same style of emotive, animesque eyes as other LEGO Friends animals rather than the black bead eyes typical of other LEGO people and animals. Of course, they do skirt one frequent criticism of Friends animals (their roundedness compared to other LEGO animals) since the classic dolphin was not much better in that regard. And they seem to have more connection points than the classic dolphin — like the Agents/Pirates shark, the back of their dorsal fins seems to be a handle for clips to attach to.

You could probably have a bunch of unique helmet accessories similar to the 2.0 helmet accessories. It probably wouldn't eat up too much of the budget if the 2013 helmets themselves are reused. Alternatively, trucker caps.

Sure, they could have, but if they're going to be using a character twice it doesn't really matter too much who it is. Sure, Rocka has already gotten a special form, but that was two years ago, and there's no doubt the shiny gold character is going to appeal to a lot of kids. Design-wise, I think Rocka is better suited to the jetpack than Bulk or Breez would have been. By the way, you know what might have made Jet Rocka (or any character they put in the jetpack) cooler? If they printed some kind of targeting reticle/HUD on the visor. On Rocka in particular, it could echo the eyepiece he had on his previous helmet, but since the eyes of most characters are about even with one another as far as I know it could also be swapped onto any other helmet. We'll call it... THE CRUSHER. As featured in the very first episode of Hero Factory FM! "Yeah, those ants took one look at the Crusher and left.... Never seen tiger ants move so fast." It'll definitely be interesting once Jet Rocka comes out to see if people can mod it well for other heroes. The color scheme of the jetpack might not contrast as well with certain characters (I worry that the silver helmets of Bulk and Breez might not work so well with a white and gray jetpack), but since most of its color comes from basic Technic panels and beams (which come in a lot of colors) that shouldn't be a huge problem for MOCists.

I kind of wonder whether the decision to give Rocka the jetpack might have had something to do with not having room in the budget for an additional new helmet... after all, Jet Rocka is the only set this year that doesn't have any unique molds at all as far as we've seen. Other than Jet Rocka, not one of the mask or helmet pieces from this wave has been reused for multiple characters. In 2011 and 2012 the reuse of helmets/masks was much more common (Drilldozer/Fire Lord, Jetbug/Nitroblast, Scorpio/Waspix, Black Phantom/Voltix/Speeda Demon). I agree Stringer or Nex would have been good to have this year instead of a second Rocka, though not necessarily as the pilot of the jetpack... after all, hypothetically any hero could have been put in the jetpack with Nex or Stringer taking their place as a smaller set.

Yes, Technic snaps differ. Just as an example, a 2M Technic friction pin has a circular hole through it, while a 3M Technic friction pin's hole is more rectangular due to to varied thicknesses. This can be seen on the parts on LDD (if you zoom in on these parts) or in real life.

The reason, as described in Secret Mission #3: Collision Course (in a passage I had apparently overlooked, since I was opening it looking for a DIFFERENT passage related to this issue) is that Rocka designed the jetpacks. Page 40:

The thing is, if you wanted to post your own personal theories about the nationalities of the CMFs and weren't interested in making your list open to discussion/critique/suggestions, why make a topic for it? It could just as easily be posted in one of the existing CMF discussion topics, or in a personal off-site blog. When someone posts a topic like this it is implied that they want feedback, and it's not good sport to only welcome positive feedback while rejecting any negative feedback or suggestions that conflict with your own thought process. Overall, Itaria No Shitaku, you're doing an OK job in that in many cases you're actually responding to criticism rather than just ignoring it or rejecting it with a flat "your opinion doesn't matter", but some of your comments still seem a bit rude. Sure, a one-second Google search will tell you a lot of things. But what it tells you depends on your search terms, and an individual's personal knowledge is no less valid because a Google search suggests something different. On the subject of Elizabeth Blackwell, she was BORN in England, but moved to America early in her childhood and is well-known for her accomplishments and contributions in America. So it is really subjective whether you consider her "nationality" American or British. As for Florence Nightingale, according to Wikipedia, she was born in Italy to a British family and grew up in England. But I'd argue that neither Florence Nightingale nor Elizabeth Blackwell have a strong connection to the minifigure, because the CMF Nurse looks like a more modern nurse than either of them, and where nursing was invented or which countries and individuals are highly associated with nursing doesn't have any real bearing on her. Aristotle is considered the father of marine biology, according to Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean a marine biologist minifigure should be assumed to be Greek, particularly if he/she had, say, red hair and freckles. I don't mean to say your research is invalid, but looking for who is credited as creating a profession doesn't seem like a very reliable way to determine a minifigure's nationality, particularly when the inventor of that profession is from a wholly different time period than the costume of the CMF in question. EDIT: While I was making this post you posted an awful, pretentious reply to an earlier comment, which really peeves me. I don't care if you're an expert on these topics, that doesn't excuse the condescending attitude you're taking to a simple plea for respect. Even if you're an expert on these topics, you're not immune to criticism, and people are entitled to offer their critique no matter how much research or prior knowledge they have on the topic. That's the nature of a public discussion forum.

Jet Rocka doesn't particularly excite me, but that's mainly just because Rocka is not a character I normally collect. Last year, the Breakout wave, was the first year when there were exactly nine hero sets (and thus,a systematic way to divide them up with my two siblings), so I got Breez, Stormer, and Surge, three of my favorite heroes from the 2.0 series. My twin brother got Furno, Bulk, and Evo, and my younger brother got Rocka, Nex, and Stringer, three heroes he had loved from the 3.0 series (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!). Continuing this trend, my twin brother has gotten Bruizer and Furno XL this year, and I've gotten Ogrum (we have been unable to find Breez and Bulk anywhere-- the main places around here to buy LEGO, Barnes & Noble and a New England toy store chain called Magic Beans, don't seem to stock the smaller Hero Factory figures). So the summer sets I'm looking at will again be Surge and Stormer, and the corresponding villain sets.

I didn't expect the figure to turn out to be real, but it stuns me that a Chinese knock-off company would actually make molds of parts that don't exist in LEGO to be more authentic to a never-used LEGO character model people like. Not really meaning that as praise for the company — it probably just goes to show how much technology has progressed in that even a company fixing to make a quick buck off gullible buyers can generate something this convincing without even having a physical item to base it on.

I'm fairly certain she's lifting that bottle to put it in the recycling bin. Of course, that tells us nothing about the context in which that bottle originally became empty (all bets are off), but the scene on the box art seems very innocuous to me. In my childhood, I was quite attracted to the Roboriders packaging design. First of all, the canister was an innovative packaging design. While I'm glad Hero Factory has moved beyond canisters just for the sake of space considerations (I have a sizable collection on account of being a BIONICLE fan), there's no questioning the shelf appeal this gave the sets. Additionally, the lids were usable as building elements, and were used as wheels for the combination models. And that's not all! Put the canister in the freezer, and a code appeared on it for an online game. Really, though, the art of these canisters was stellar in its own right. Here you can see the art as depicted on the instructions, which shows it flat and without obstruction. Each one showed how the "virus" that acted as the theme's antagonist had mutated the very landscape into horrendous monsters, which loomed behind the speedy Roboriders. While I really hated the notion of enemies in a theme like this which you couldn't build, these nevertheless afforded the theme a strong sense of mystery and danger, even with hardly any story media to add depth or complexity to the backstory. This was in a sense just an extension of the packaging design trend established by the Throwbots/Slizers, but those sets did not present it nearly as well on a shelf. First of all, the packaging took the form of a cardboard box around the reusable canister, and although there was a cutout this really meant the reusable canister offered little to no improved shelf presence. Additionally, this meant the environmental monsters and hazards were often only visible on the sides of the package,whereas on the Roboriders they tended to surround the image of the model. Finally, the environmental monsters in Throwbots simply tended to be more cartoony and less fearsome than the grotesque creatures that erupted from the environments of the Roboriders. Incidentally, this marketing technique has continued on more recent box art. The Glatorian series from the 2009 BIONICLE lineup often had nonspecific figures looming ominously in the background. More recently, LEGO Hero Factory started featuring villains in the background of the Hero sets' canister art beginning in 2011, and in 2012 they also did the reverse, putting heroes in the background of villain sets' packaging art. This tied in to the new trend of each Hero being assigned to capture a specific villain, and each hero-villain pair sharing an environment and combination model. The 2012 Hero Factory packaging art is gorgeous in its own right, with colorful and diverse sci-fi backgrounds.

There are a couple of color errors here that you missed: The visor, head and transparent shells should be colored 311 Tr. Bright Green, not 48 Tr. Green or 49 Tr. Fluore. Green. The Technic pin attached to the shield should be colored 5 Brick Yellow (Tan), not 283 Light Nougat (Light Flesh). To avoid these kind of errors in the future, I recommend going to the set's page in the Brickset database and clicking the parts tab. This will bring up the set's inventory from the LEGO Customer Service replacement parts pages, which list parts by their official LEGO color names. The one problem with this feature is that like the LEGO Customer Service replacement parts pages, it won't list any parts for which images aren't included in the database. If you're unsure about the color or Design ID (part number) of a part that isn't pictured, go to a page like this one (feel free to bookmark that so you don't lose it) and replace the seven-digit Element ID in the URL with the element ID corresponding to the part you want to look up. Since 2006, Element IDs have been included in the inventories listed in the back of most sets' instruction booklets, which makes this perhaps the most reliable way to look up information about a part, hands down. It's just a little bit more work than checking the set inventories on Bricklink.

I feel somewhat disappointed in how little I've bought this year, since I no longer have the excuse of "saving up for the staggered discounts at Brickfair". I do, however, have the excuse of "most stores near me have a dismal supply of LEGO". It does my heart well to be able to say that yes, LEGO HAS been more inspiring to me in the past three months than usual. I've managed to create a substantial number of Hero Factory MOCs this year, many of which I'm quite proud of. I'm still not especially skilled as a MOCist but I hope next semester I might continue to get plenty of practice.

I was in a Barnes and Noble yesterday and happened to spot the "young readers" book Detective Chase McCain: Stop That Heist in the children's section. I was actually quite impressed with it. Click the Amazon.com link there to see a preview. Generally I like any LEGO book that has illustrations drawn specifically for it rather than using stock art or animation screenshots, but in this case the story itself was also compelling. The LEGO City Museum is having a gala, and it's a costume party. During the party some crooks (also in costume) try to steal the museum's blue diamond, but luckily Chase McCain is there to pursue them. In true action-movie style, each one of the crooks has their own particular set of skills. One of them is even a woman, something I don't believe we've ever seen in a LEGO Town or City set (all criminals/convicts have been men, haven't they?). Overall, it's not Ocean's Eleven, but it's still a much more compelling story than most LEGO City picture books or even most City-themed LEGO magazine comics, since the book goes out of its way to make sure the characters driving the action have unique personalities.

Medium Azure bikes have been in this year's Pink Suitcase and last year's Adventure Camper. I imagine this one is the same color. I've grown quite fond of Medium Azure. At first I was not sure if it and Dark Azure were too similar in color to be useful, but overall I like how Medium Azure basically looks like how Transparent Light Blue might look if it weren't transparent. Emma's Splash Pool used this to great effect last year, and I'm kind of disappointed that the water features in Heartlake City Pool use regular Transparent Blue instead, which doesn't have the same effect.

Yep, you can even see here that the Technic connectors on the backs of the arms aren't fully pressed onto the 3M Technic friction pins. Again, this is a problem that could be fixed without too much hassle: just swap the 3M Technic friction pins with some 4M axles with end stop and a handful of 3M half-beams and everything should come together without parts being in compression. Overall, I wonder if the designer was challenging himself not to use any Technic axles in this model (there are hardly any Technic parts besides pins, beams, half-beams, and of course the helicopter rotors). In general, the upper arms would probably be one factor I'd rather see changed greatly if this became a set. They're nice and bulky, but unlike the legs, their range of movement is terribly limited. With enough experimentation I'm sure TLG's designers could arrive at a way for the arms to be more posable without sacrificing the model's bulky aesthetic.

So I have mostly finished reverse-engineering Christoffer Raundahl's amazing Hero Factory titan MOC that was displayed at LEGO World. The Flickr page includes a description, error list, and link to the LXF file: Hero Factory MOC by Christoffer Raundahl by Aanchir, on Flickr I'd love if we could get an actual set like this... granted, not exactly like this, since this uses some illegal connections, but most of those could be easily corrected with just a handful of additional pieces. I estimate a total piece count of 225 pieces (perhaps closer to 240 with illegal connections corrected) and, based on Pick-A-Brick part costs (which, at least in the case of smaller sets, are about twice what the total price for those same parts would be in a non-custom-order set), a price of $50–60. Of course, my estimate may be off significantly: Witch Doctor, who was similar in size to this figure but perhaps a bit taller and naturally far more skeletal, was just $30, and he had over 100 pieces more (even though to be fair many were small, detail elements whereas this MOC uses lots of bulky shells).

Chima very well die in the same manner as Exo-Force, but I think it's awfully early to be predicting its death. After all, the sets tend to be nice designs and if they can sell without the support of the background story, then even if the show bombs it should be easy for TLG to make back the cost of their promotion of the theme and simply opt to invest less heavily in its story media in future years (kind of like how BIONICLE stopped having movies between 2006 and 2009, but continued to have comics and chapter books, which require less of an upfront investment to maintain). Early on I expected the show would help flesh out the story greatly and explain the character dynamics, but seeing as it has been mediocre in a lot of ways so far, it has to be wondered how much support it would even be offering the theme if it continued on this path. A lot of the mythology, the one part of it that does seem to have sufficient depth, seems slightly irrelevant to the sale of sets, since the "legend beasts" don't feature in any of the set designs, and any richness it offers could be achieved much more cheaply through comics, books, or even shorter "webisodes". Overall, the fact that Cartoon Network seems to be putting a lot of support behind the show themselves fills me with some degree of hope for it. Granted, Cartoon Network is often castigated for making poor decisions about which shows they air and which they axe, but at the same time this at least indicates that they will likely at least let the show have its first season to prove itself instead of cancelling mid-season and leaving TLG in a sticky situation the first year running.

The Light Yellow that was used prominently in LEGO Island Extreme Stunts was, as far as I have been able to tell, discontinued in 2004 or 2005 and replaced with Cool Yellow (Bricklink's Bright Light Yellow). Bricklink occasionally says a newer part is Light Yellow, but then again Bricklink also tried to tell us that Hamm's plug from the Toy Story sets was Fabuland Brown, and still conflates wholly different metallic colors to an embarrassing degree. In any event, Light Yellow has been absent from TLG's color palette for several years and is probably never coming back. Want to know what's on TLG's current color palette? Just open LDD in Extended Mode. All the colors in the Solid, Transparent, and Metallic categories are still on the 2013 color palette with the exception of 208 Light Stone Grey, which seems to be absent in pictures I've seen.

Very neat! I love seeing small creature MOCs like this! You did a good job keeping the color scheme organized and the proportions consistent. The head is simple but still has a lot of personality, as does the rest of the design. The only real criticism I have is that given the way the head is attached, it doesn't seem like he can very easily look side-to-side-- I'd rotate the 5M beam 90 degrees myself since looking up and down can be achieved by changing the angle of the body and legs. Regardless, this is a minor issue and it's entirely at your discretion whether you think it's worth making a change.

First of all, they haven't had much time to plan a Ninjago attraction, since it was at one point intended to conclude after 2013. So yes, it IS continuing, but the park organizers had little to no way of knowing that far enough in advance to plan a project like this. Ninjago, for the most part, was a riskier bet, not a safer one, since TLG did not anticipate its appeal lasting more than the typical 2-3 years for a play theme, and newer themes typically have more hype surrounding them than older themes by default. As far as most people knew, opening a Ninjago attraction in 2013 would have been more or less like opening an Exo-Force attraction in 2008. Better to tie an attraction with a theme that was on the rise than a theme which was (as far as anyone could project) on the wane and soon to be discontinued. I don't know where you're getting the info about Chima sets being shelfwarmers and Ninjago sets flying off the shelves. I'm generally very skeptical about anecdotal evidence like that as support for whether a theme is successful or not, because often it's just dependent on which theme has more fans in a particular area (I've seen this kind of evidence used to proclaim the imminent death of Hero Factory for about as long as the theme's been in existence, and yet that theme's known to be continuing in 2014). Now, I've been at college pretty much all year and there aren't many toy stores in my immediate area (those there are tend to stock sets somewhat sporadically), but I haven't seen any signs of either theme significantly outselling the other. From what I've witnessed, the smaller sets from both themes tend to disappear quickly (still haven't been able to find Kai's Fire Mech anywhere since I made up my mind to look for it), while the larger sets take longer to clear out (some stores seem to have quite a few Garmatrons still in stock). Overall, if sets lingering on shelves was a sign that the theme as a whole was suffering, then it's easy to understand why Ninjago was going to be discontinued, since two of these same toy stores I mention STILL haven't cleared out their stock of Skull Trucks from 2011 or Samurai Mechs and Bite Cycles from 2012.

Yep, it's specifically Bricklink's Bright Light Yellow (226 Cool Yellow by TLG's naming/numbering scheme). Anyway, this is a lovely set both inside and out, and really goes to show the kind of detail that has become standard for LEGO Friends. I can easily imagine someone buying multiples of this set to create additional classrooms and perhaps a complete basketball court, but the content it has (a bathroom, a basketball hoop, a cafe, some lockers, an art class, and a science class) stands pretty well on its own. Also, is that a new handbag? It's a nice design; the print is definitely new to this set.