Aanchir

Well, keep in mind that these are fairly rare pieces, most of which only came in the largest sets of each particular line. And a lot of people have a real fondness for the way they let you vary a landscape without having to build it completely from scratch. Scarcity + demand = a considerable aftermarket value. I agree they take up a lot of space, and frankly I prefer regular plates to baseplates most of the time anyway, but I can see where these prices would come from. And no, I'm not planning to part with my raised baseplates anytime soon, thank you very much. You never know when they might come in handy.

It should also not be ignored that the red baseplate in set 231 may be an older, discontinued mold. Probably doesn't make much of a difference to MOCists but from an internal perspective, releasing a bright red baseplate of which an identically-sized version happened to exist dozens of years ago is probably not much different than releasing a brand new baseplate. Certainly it probably involves jumping through the same amount of hoops.

Hey, can't blame people for being ignorant of themes they don't collect. I've seen plenty of BIONICLE and Hero Factory fans comment on "new pieces" or "new colors" that had been in production for years in either System or Technic sets. BIONICLE set reviews used to be rife with this if I recall correctly.

...I had not even realized that about the Gorzan set. You're right, that IS epic. Hopefully it's something that makes it to the final set and isn't just preliminary.

Huh, you've got a good point; he DOES have a blue brain slug. I'm guessing Dragon Bolt's would be a lighter blue color, but it's hard to say from the video. I dunno, I think Warm Gold + Tr. Yellow is a lot better than Warm Gold + Bright Yellow (classic yellow), and I think it'd work just fine as a color scheme for Dragon Bolt. Besides, as nice as it is to have parts in new colors, yellow would not be the most useful color for those wing elements by any stretch of the imagination. Metallic colors tend to work better for weapons a lot of the time, at least when it's a knife- or sword-like weapon that's supposed to look sharp.

OK, that video shows it in a much more positive light than the previous pictures. Seeing it from an angle shows that yes, it does have some nice depth to it, much like the Portal of Atlantis. Additionally those bikes make a lot more sense and seem a lot cooler now that we can see that they launch from behind the waterfalls, not in front of them. The lion head sculpt also looks better when not shown from a direct front view. Towards the end of the video it's shown from front view, with the walls opened outward into one flat wall, and it's immediately apparent how bad an angle this is for the set compared to having the walls folded inward.

Saw what looked like an error in your thumbnails, and sure enough, in the LXF file you used 37 Bright Green for the entire base of the third model and several parts on the others, when the only two Bright Green parts in the set are one 6x6 plate and one 16x16 plate. All the other green parts should be 28 Dark Green (classic green), besides the 1x1 round plates which you correctly colored 119 Bright Yellowish Green. Don't forget, Brickset now has all the LEGO Customer Service part inventories on-site. They aren't all 100% complete, but they are almost invariably the most reliable way to ensure you are using the correct colors, besides checking the individual part pages from the replacement parts server and plugging the Element IDs from the instruction manuals into the URL manually.

Nice collection. I agree, Thornraxx is a pretty excellent parts pack. In fact, many of the Breakout sets have useful parts, and although my twin brother and I have all our Breakout sets with us at college, I sometimes find myself wishing I had duplicates of, say, XT4. (6x5 torso beam, 6M shells, and 7M beams FTW!)

I've been trawling through some LEGO customer service database pages, and I came upon a bit of an oddity. Anyone know what a classic green Boba Fett helmet (presumably the new style) might be used for? Not sure if it's a new Boba Fett variant fig or a character that only more dedicated Star Wars fans would be familiar with. Regardless, it's decorated, and I doubt it would be decorated if it's just a test mold like some parts in the database that never see the light of day.

Because blue wouldn't have the same contrast as yellow, and Transparent Fluorescent Green is the closest thing to yellow that hasn't already been used (not counting long-discontinued colors like Tr. Fire Yellow and Tr. Fluorescent Yellow, which are certainly not to appear in any 2013 sets). To be honest, it's almost more yellowish than it is greenish. For the record, Transparent Fluorescent Green is Furno's usual eye color, also used in Speeda Demon, Toxic Reapa, and dozens of BIONICLE sets. Bricklink calls it Trans-Neon Green. I suppose he could use Transparent Fluorescent Blue (Bricklink's Trans-Medium Blue/Stormer's usual eye color), assuming that's not what Frost Beast uses, but really, THREE blue brain-slugs in one wave? Doesn't seem like it'd be a really wise decision.

Well, taking that part of my quote out of context as you have done, to people from countries that have this sort of architecture, on which Jabba's Palace was clearly based. With that said, my comment clearly said a case COULDN'T be made (or more specifically, "a case could be made if not for the fact that it basically is just an extension of the already-established architecture of Tatooine, which was chosen for geographic (desert setting) rather than cultural associations.") Quote mining is no good, and frankly I don't like the implication that I don't agree this is a non-issue.

Well, awful inconsistent visual styles were around even before fleshies. Remember the Indians (and the bandit Flatfoot Thomsen) in the Wild West/Western theme? Not only did they have sclerae like the Clone Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, or NBA figs, but they had noses. Every. Last. One of them. This is part of why I don't think the fleshies issue is such a huge deal. And from what I've heard, at least with characters in Light Nougat (Bricklink's Light Flesh), yellow Sharpie is a pretty effective solution if you want your minifigures consistent. Other races from licensed themes in colors like Earth Orange (Brown), Reddish Brown, Brown (Dark Flesh), Dark Orange, Nougat (Flesh), or Medium Nougat (Medium Dark Flesh) are more problematic, though (somewhat frustratingly) these skin colors are rarer for minifigures than Light Nougat.

No, the wings are made of these if the prelim pics are any indication. That's what Huw meant by "the same parts as the minifig sets" (paraphrasing here).

That's true, but in the photo we've seen (preliminary or not), the shells were clearly regular Trans-Blue. Not so sure about the blades. Regardless, if it turns out those photos are still preliminary, then all bets are off. On a side note, I'd say that Eris's minifigure is plenty sexy as far as minifigures go. If the furry community was expecting the male characters to have rippling muscles and the female characters to have sleek curves then they clearly don't understand the nature of the LEGO minifigure. Now, I may easily hold the Eris constraction set to a higher standard since she WILL be less blocky and geometric by default, though to be honest I think most HF parts have enough of a balance of angles and curves to look fairly unisex.

Medium Azure. But yeah, "Turquoise" makes me think Transparent Light Blue, like Shakar linked above. Brain slug will be Tr. Light Blue if anything, because all of the brain slugs so far have been transparent colors and I see no reason that would change for the summer sets. Because of the material and surface finish, they all look translucent rather than transparent, but they're certainly not an opaque color like azure. Refresher on terminology, because I see people getting confused about transparent/translucent/opaque a lot of the time. TRANSPARENT means it allows light straight through, like glass (any color; doesn't have to be clear). TRANSLUCENT means it allows light through, but scatters/diffuses it, like frosted glass. Brain slugs, Vahki eyes, etc. are all translucent (though the names for the individual colors are still Transparent Green, Transparent Light Blue, etc). OPAQUE means it doesn't allow light through. Most LEGO colors are opaque, though keep in mind that opaque plastic can still typically allow light through if it's thin enough-- hence why one hallmark of low-quality or defective LEGO pieces is translucency, even if the piece is ostensibly the same color as opaque parts. As far as I can tell, the brain slugs are these colors: Bruizer: Tr. Bright Orange Ogrum: Tr. Bright Green Scarox: Tr. Green Pyrox: Tr. Yellow Frost Beast: Tr. Light Blue Aquagon: Tr. Blue Dragon Bolt: Can't tell; if the Brainify app is comprehensive then he just re-uses a color that's already been released like Tr. Yellow. If not, I'd guess Tr. Fluore. Green (Trans-Neon Green).

Not me, personally. Witch Doctor is perhaps the only titan-sized set big enough to need more than the standard hand piece, and once you get to a scale like that it would be more worthwhile to build hands from scratch using parts like Exo-Force robot arms than to have a separate specialized element for the task.

A lot of the criticisms I'm seeing (besides voice acting) could just as easily apply to Ninjago's pilot. The villains in the Ninjago pilot were mostly either dumb or had weak motivations, the one female character, Nya, served as little more than a damsel in distress (seriously, she was involved in a single fight towards the beginning and was promptly captured), and very few of the characters seemed very developed. The heroes were fairly immature-- besides Cole, we had the hotheaded Kai, the bad joker Jay, and Zane whose distant and humorless personality was much shallower than in later portrayals and whose principal character trait at the time, his "sixth sense," was used almost purely as an excuse to utter cheesy lines like "I sense we won't be getting out of this one!" So in general, I don't know what to think about the criticisms I'm seeing here. They all seem like things that could improve over time, besides the voice acting, and to be honest I've hardly ever seen a voice acting criticism amounted to much besides a random bias against high-pitched voices or certain accents (examples: Kiina and Berix from BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn, Lloyd and the Overlord from LEGO Ninjago, Mark Surge and Will Furno from LEGO Hero Factory). Haven't seen the TV special yet so not reading spoiler tags, but I'm hoping to catch up soon.

See, I don't feel that way. The other lion head sculpts, IMO, make brilliant use of SNOT techniques to create an irregular shape, whereas this feels very squarish. And perhaps it's just a matter of the sets I tend to prefer, but I don't see how a more squarish brick-built lion head sculpt would feel "more LEGO" than one using more imaginative techniques like those in 70115 (which I'm happy to say I recently acquired). Now, I can see how perhaps a blockier look might have been deliberate to give the impression of a castle rather than a streamlined vehicle, but I still think a more streamlined look would suit the set better just as it did on the gate in 70115. The parts are available, and the scale is not impossible to manage with smoother curves. I imagine the design of this one partially came down to cost-cutting. Perhaps since not all the figs are shown here, there might be a vehicle or something that comes in the set which we're not seeing, which would make the temple itself more forgivable. Perhaps other views might convince me to like the set more, though. I know from experience that a direct front view of a model isn't always the most flattering, and being able to better see the dimensionality of the lion gate might show it in a more positive light.

Most hilarious news I've read in quite a while. Tell me, was there ever a controversy like this over the actual Star Wars films, and this is just being used as a platform for bringing it up again, or are the people protesting this set simply completely out-of-the-loop? A case could definitely be made over the actual portrayal of Jabba's Palace in the Star Wars films having offensive cultural undertones... if not for the fact that it basically is just an extension of the already-established architecture of Tatooine, which was chosen for geographic (desert setting) rather than cultural associations. In any event, I can see how this could quite rightly outrage a person who had never heard of the Star Wars setting it's based on and simply saw this being given as a gift to a similarly-unaware kid. That would definitely be more than a bit awkward. However, you'd think that a bit of research would reveal this to be just a wacky misunderstanding and nothing worthy of organized protest/petitions.

Umm, no, that's not true, because frankly themes generally don't end until their popularity has already begun to dwindle, at which point it's better to go with a smaller release that doesn't limit the number of fans who will cash in for each individual set. But realistically, Ninjago simply WOULD NOT be continuing in 2014 in any form if it weren't going to be promoting new sets, so that more or less guarantees some sort of 2014 representation. In Ninjago's case, I imagine TLG was somewhat late in deciding the theme would continue (Mark Stafford did confirm that "it really was ending"), but "just a few months ago" seems a little harsh. Mark Stafford announced on his Twitter in AUGUST that he was working on 2014 products (and that he had begun 2014 sketch models in July), which suggests that the design process for summer 2013 sets would have had to start before then to be finalized in time for release-- unless of course we wanted a rushed summer wave. And with this in mind, it makes perfect sense to me that Ninjago's success might not be expected to last for over another full year. Most non-evergreen themes could have easily petered out after two and a half years. This hiatus probably won't kill the theme-- Adventurers and Alpha Team both had similar breaks and then came back strong enough for multiple new waves. The only question is what form Ninjago will be continuing in.

The Lion Chi Temple is nowhere near as stellar as I was expecting it to be. The lion head sculpt is frankly the blockiest, least impressive one I've seen in the theme. Lennox's Lion Attack, Laval's Royal Fighter, and the Ultimate Speedor Tournament all have more impressive lion head sculpts. Now, there are definitely some creative design features here, such as the Chi aquifers that feed the two bikes, but on the whole things in this set either feel blocky and basic or jumbled and chaotic. Nowhere near the carefully-sculpted detail that I have become used to with this theme. Looks like the lion head can raise and lower, perhaps, but that doesn't really redeem it in my book. Overall the set's not hideous, but I was clearly mistaken in thinking it would be this theme's Portal of Atlantis or Fire Temple. At least Lagravis looks nice, with his new armor design.

Those are bones and shells only in the same sense that Toa Metru upper legs were bones and shells. Which technically, by TLG's terminology, they are. The existence of bones and shells is NOT something exclusive to Hero Factory or even TLG; it's a very common-sense way of making buildable action figures. Regardless, these sets do not use the ball joint as their fundamental basis the way the Hero Factory building system does, since the way the shells connect to the bones is clip-based and the way many of the bones connect to each other is clearly clip- and handle-based. The only ball joints I see anywhere in these designs are the shoulders, hips, ankles, and wrists-- in other words, the places a lot of regular non-buildable action figures have ball joints.

Those scales on the prototype crocs seem pretty obviously a part of the mold to me... and yeah, the Gamorrean Guard from the Star Wars sets is a little bit overdesigned, though it's somewhat of a different case when dealing with a licensed theme where TLG can't control the amount of detail inherent to the characters, but rather just how much carries over to the minifigure.

Personally, though, even Jawson seems great to me compared to those prototypes. I see a lot of excessively fine detail on the proto-crocs that I don't see on Jawson... The wrinkly-looking "scaled" texture, the tiny bumps running down the top and sides of the head, the tiny protruding teeth (not at all like the teeth on Jawson, which are more basic-looking)... Really, the prototype crocs seem to me like they were chopped off some other type of action figure, given a quick LEGO paint job, and fitted to the torsos with some clay. I will concede that the eyes of the prototype animals are far more "LEGOish", being black dots with white sparkles as I typically prefer. But they struggle to show the same level of expressiveness as typical minifig eyes or even the eyes of the Pirates/Agents sharks, which I'd say is the fault of the molds more than anything else. Also, even with these simpler eyes I'd have preferred "helmet-style" heads like the finalized figs just by virtue of their capacity for alternate expressions. Truly figs like Laval show the advantage this offers. Forehead-scraping is not an issue I have ever had with figs from my recollection.

I agree, those crocs in the video look the OPPOSITE of "LEGOish". Too much detail in their sculpting, rather than the stylized, angular design the croc head piece in the sets has. Plus, the crocs in the sets have head ridges more like the back ridges of the actual LEGO crocodile. Overall, as usual, it's obvious just WHY the preliminary stuff didn't make it to the final toys. Chima may finally have BIONICLE beat when it comes to awfulness of preliminary character designs.