Aanchir

Good review, but I still fail to understand the complaints about non-clear-backed stickers. I've never had a problem with them unless they were put on pieces that simply can't support stickers (like Plankton's face sticker here). Is this really a major issue? I can believe that it doesn't affect everyone the same way, but I'm baffled how it widespread this is for a problem that I've never really encountered myself.

Neither. It's a code for use in-game in LEGO Batman II. There's also a LEGO City set next year with a similar code for use in LEGO City Undercover. Just a word of advice... if the LEGO Batman II code is anything like the LEGO City Undercover one, it'll be unique for each set bought, meaning you won't be able to simply share a code you receive with other people unless you don't plan to use it yourself.

LEGO has posted character art of Laval, Eris, Cragger, Worriz, and Razar on Facebook! Quite awesome-looking, though it's a shame we're no longer getting Ninjago character art from the looks of things... I invite Facebook users to go ahead and "like" LEGO Legends of Chima if you haven't done so already!

Kevin Hinkle said (or at least implied) that at Brickfair. Mark Stafford has since clarified that he was mistaken-- Chima was intended to be the "big bang" theme for 2013 whether Ninjago got continued or not. The two lines were developed independently, and the only way Chima is replacing Ninjago is in terms of it getting the lion's share of TLG's marketing budget, which would be true of any "big bang" theme.

You seem to be a bit confused about what Darking was saying-- he was saying the animated version of Bulk didn't have enough silver, since that's supposed to be his primary color. Personally, I didn't really see a problem-- his color scheme was more or less the same as the set's as far as I could tell. Really I never had a problem with excessive silver in BIONICLE-- it bugged me a bit in 2004, since I had imagined that silver dual-function weapons were supposed to be unique to Toa Nuva, but I got over it when I realized that the Toa Meru would have been awfully boring without them. Later series continued to use silver fairly deliberately IMO, rather than in places where other colors would have made a lot more sense.

I personally think Chima is more likely a pun on "chimera", what with the part-human animals. Not much obvious Asian influence in this theme, at least no more than a typical modern action cartoon has.

I wasn't particularly impressed with this until I saw the "vehicle" form-- it's so refined-looking you'd never guess it was a disguised robot! Great work there!

Bulk looks pretty awesome in that review, IMO. His weapons are still boring and I wish his hands were silver, but overall I like how his color scheme is organized and his helmet design has a lot of personality. Overall I've been having mixed reactions to the new sets, but overall they do continue to demonstrate neat ideas, IMO.

First of all, the hair Edna has is NOT female hair. It originated on the obviously-male Sumo Wrestler from Minifigures Series 3, and is more or less gender-neutral. And secondly, I highly doubt they're all meant to be Sensei Wu since they all have different styles of beard.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ninjago had more potential to return than some past story-driven themes, since it did end on a strong note rather than sticking it out until sales could no longer sustain it. With that said, not sure what to make of this news. The way they phrase it, I don't think it's meant to be news specific to the LEGO Message Boards, since it sounds like this is news they think even people not active on the message boards would take interest in. On a side note, take a look at the reflection in Zane's eyes...

According to the inventory in the instructions (cross-referenced with the customer service parts database) they're tr. bright green. But that probably matches the lime best anyway. Tr. Fluorescent Green in that material looks almost yellow.

No idea. My twin brother suggested that maybe those are Sensei Wu's ninja (excluding Lloyd) once they reach old age? I was thinking a little more cynically, that they might just be different early concept designs of Sensei Wu that the designers wanted to reuse to make the temple feel more ancient. But there's a certain charm to his idea.

The first one? You mean the one that's basically this pic in front of a painted backdrop? If so, I'm not seeing how it looks like a new face print, especially when we have this pic that seems to pretty clearly show the old face print.

A better example would be the Skulkin armor element from Ninjago, which was reused in tan on some of The Hobbit's goblin minifigures. With that said, I think the the design of the new crocodile head element seems pretty deliberately geared towards the Chima aesthetic, and as such I think expecting to see it for other licensed half-crocodile characters might not be totally realistic. That doesn't mean I'm going to discount the possibility entirely, though.

Thanks for the review. I agree, the Breakout version of Breez is better than this one, but this one has potential and uses a lot of cool ideas it its design (the blade/spear and saw blade shield have a lot of stylistic consistency, and her new helmet is amazing). Overall I hope she will inspire dozens of revamps. My only problem with the spear/blade, other than the weird flexibility, is that those bright yellowish green spikes seem out-of-place. I also think her armor might look better if the upper and lower leg shells were switched, so the longer shin beams would get more armor coverage. It would also make her armor layout a bit more consistent, with lime shells being used for all the upper limbs. The brown piece on her back is a pitiful way of attaching the shield to her back; I was hoping for something that offered more coverage and didn't just stick out of the back so awkwardly. Finally, a silver metallic shoulder sphere would have been a lot nicer than the titanium metallic one, IMO. Shame that piece doesn't exist in that color, though of course Breez already has a fair number of recolored parts. The new head kind of frustrates me with its lack of a face, but it seems to be moving towards the same "form follows function" ideal that the new building system in general has enshrined in numerous ways. What bothers me a bit more than the lack of a face honestly is its more regular proportions, which I don't think create such a well-defined head shape as the Glatorian head and 2.0 helmet did. Could you take some pics of how the head looks with various other helmets and masks from HF and BIONICLE? I'm particularly interested in seeing how it looks with front-mounted BIONICLE masks.

Found an alternate picture of Bulk while looking for out-of-package photos. Pity it isn't very large, but it does show him from a bit of a different angle. This pic really makes me wish that hand were silver... I think he has enough orange in his color scheme without it.

I think the idea that CMFs are teasers to future themes is far-fetched and always has been. Yes, if they introduce certain parts for the CMFs they might later re-use them in another theme. They might even revisit ideas they used in the CMFs. That's just common sense. But it's silly to think that any of the CMFs are designed to serve as "teasers" when all of them seem designed to function pretty much independently of concurrent or future themes. You could argue that the Galaxy Patrol fig was meant as a teaser for Galaxy Squad, sure. You could also argue that the Series 1 Spaceman was meant as a teaser for Galaxy Squad. Or you could say the clearly Space Marine-inspired Alien Conquest figs were meant as a teaser for Galaxy Squad, and you'd have an argument that's just as strong-- which is to say, tremendously weak. There have been plenty of obvious examples of CMFs that reference past themes. There has never been a single example of a CMF indisputably referencing a future theme. The most they ever do is introduce parts which might be reused for similar figs in future themes, or explore ideas which might be revisited.

I think he was saying "the whole batch of disks has that problem with the voices"... so no, not awesome.

Personally, I prefer the white stickers to the clear ones in many applications, for the key reason that they don't show fingerprints, and the sticky side doesn't start to look smudged if you for some reason need to peel them off and re-apply them. I have never had any problem with the white-backed stickers, at least, as far as I can remember-- though I definitely had stickers in some of the Technic sets from back in the 90s, and if I had issues with those I have certainly forgotten about them. I still can't figure out why so many AFOLs seem to have problems with these stickers when I have not had any of the sort. I figure perhaps it's a climate/humidity thing, so it poses serious problems for some and doesn't for others. Regardless, if it is causing problems for a lot of people then that's something that should be addressed. On a side note, I should mention that there are some things that can be done with the white-backed stickers that can't be done with the clear-backed stickers as far as I know-- for instance, I have never seen a clear-backed sticker with a chrome finish. And that's something stickers are more or less essential for, since a chrome surface is not something that TLG is capable of printing (the only alternative would be to introduce a chrome element that would be used for all mirrors, which would be restrictive and costly). Finally, on the stickers issue, I suppose I should mention one observation of mine. It's been over a decade since we've seen awesome holographic stickers like this one. It'd be great if those could show up again someday, as I've always thought those were cool. Though it's possible those have been discontinued for some kind of safety reasons like the old-style magnets.

The instructions are up for the pool! Book 1 Book 2 Overall, they reveal a lot of things I hadn't realized about this set. For instance, the hot tub uses the new 6x6 round plate in Medium Azur as its base, and the diving board uses this rubber Technic element underneath so it has some "bounce" to it. Overall it's a quite nice set, though I wish the Transparent Blue elements it uses for its little waterfalls were in fact Transparent Light Blue (which would fit better with the base color IMO).

Very nice! Definitely exceeds my expectations-- the front view made me think the back of the vehicle would end up quite skeletal-looking. Instead it's as solid as the front, or perhaps even more so!

I always hear that claim, but I haven't had that problem with stickers in sets for years. Except, of course, stickers that are placed on a place where stickers simply should not go, like stickers that are placed across several pieces or expected to curve around 2x2 round elements (for example, the Plankton figurine in 3826 Build-A-Bob). This isn't to say the problem doesn't exist, but it certainly hasn't affected me to the same extent it seems to have affected other people. My stickers on my Power Miners, Atlantis, Agents, Aqua Raiders, and even Exo-Force sets tend to have held up just fine over the years. Could be a climate thing, with it only really posing a major problem in certain humidities or whatnot.

Nah, the "bowl piece" (if we're talking about the same piece) is just this element, which is over a decade old in that very color.

It's entirely possible that this game has a customization function much like the web version of this year's game.

Yes. It's also in the Rancor Pit in the SW theme, and there are several yellow ones in Eris' Eagle Interceptor (for the left and right talon on each foot).