Aanchir

Labels on bottles are new, but printing on bottles is as old as the bottle piece. Some of the PotC sets from the same wave in which it was introduced had bottles printed with a "ship in a bottle" pattern. Meanwhile, green bottle pieces do exist without printing, in the Horizon Express, and the version without printing is much more likely to be reused than the version with printing, since CMF prints don't tend to reappear in other themes.

I wouldn't be surprised if kids tend to think lions are awesome and heroic, since they have been the heraldic symbol of the heroic factions of LEGO Castle time and time again. To be honest I've got no problem with the lion faction, although I do have to admit that if it weren't for that faction fewer people would be drawing Thundercats comparisons. I have seen one somewhat surprising complaint about the lion faction, but which makes a bit of sense when you think about it. A user on deviantART expressed that they weren't all that optimistic about the Chima TV series because the lion faction characters have printed mouths. And while this isn't a problem in set form, this user wished that the lion faction's mouths were molded so that they could be as expressive in the TV series as, say, Pythor was in the Ninjago TV series.

While I can understand your reasons for disliking this wave, how would ending the line entirely prevent a decline? It's not like there's anything inherent to the Hero Factory theme that's responsible for the trend you're seeing. A replacement line could just as easily continue in the same direction, and I'd hate for constraction sets to be discontinued entirely. Personally, I have no problem with the rubbery consistency of the brain slugs, as they still seem to match the color schemes of the sets they're on fairly well (besides Scarox's which never really matched any of the other parts of his color scheme even in the earlier pics we had seen).

I don't think so. I believe that strategy of cutting down the number of elements produced referred to how many elements are in production in any given year, not how many the company is able to produce overall. And I, for one, don't really keep track of when elements go out of production, and it's only really obvious that a part's been discontinued (whether temporarily or permanently) if a different element is simultaneously put into production to take its place. So I wouldn't be surprised if the number of elements in production stays pretty consistent from year to year, or in the very least, only increases at a rate consistent with improvements in TLG's production capacity.

Wow... seeing actual non-CGI photos of these sets casts them in a very different light. On one hand, the lighting quality is terrible, but on the other hand, seeing the characters in a view other than head-on makes some of them look a lot more appealing (particularly Pyrox and Ogrum). Rocka's pic seems to make the new torso piece look quite awful, though. It doesn't seem to curve over the shoulders as much as previous torso shells, and thus feels like it desperately needs back armor of some sort. His silver feet and hands also feel quite out-of-place. The new flame element on Furno XL and Pyrox is gorgeous! Breez's leg armor doesn't bother me so much now, but her color scheme is organized so chaotically... not really a fan of that. Overall, I can't wait for reviews to start popping up. Looking forward to learning how Bruizer and Scarox's functions work. It's probably nothing too exciting, but it'll be good to know for sure.

Alternatively, if you know any brick-and-mortar stores that carry the minifigures series, you could try raiding them for one each of the scarcer figs, and then buying a complete box online. A lot of stores I've been to in the US have employees who are well-aware of the various ways of identifying figs inside the packages and who will sometimes even help you to do so. And an advantage to scarcer figs is that they might not be the first to disappear since they're the least likely for customers to find by picking up a random package. If the stores haven't already been cleaned out by more adept minifigure hunters who are specifically looking for those figs, you might have a good chance. Also, I'm interested in seeing what the prices will be like for the rarest figs in the aftermarket. Their rarity will drive prices up, but since only the Forest Maiden is an "army builder" fig in the traditional sense, they might not have the same demand as the scarcest figs from previous series. If this fig distribution proves anything, it is that TLG is certainly not weighting the distribution with the intent of creating "chase" figures for army builders, since all but one of the traditional "army builder" figs is six-to-a-package, and the rarest figs seem to be the ones that LEGO's core audience of preteen boys would want the least of: specifically, female figs and male figs with mundane professions. I'm not the least bit happy with this trend (I love the diversity of female figs in the Collectible Minifigures, and artificial scarcity hurts the average buyer's chances of getting them), but it should at least show that TLG isn't trying to exploit a certain fanatical segment of the audience for these figs, instead trying to cater to their core audience just as they should.

Because that entire list of names was either a hoax or the listing for an unrelated series. Since we've got some evidence to suggest the name lists for Series 10 and Series 11 are authentic, and I highly doubt that anyone would have known about Series 12 so far in advance, I'm leaning towards thinking it was a hoax.

That depends. It could be something cool like a gear function. Or it could be something as mundane as the striking-tail function in this set, where it's just a matter of spinning a knob to make something directly attached to the knob rotate forward.

41007 and 41008 have been added to shop.LEGO.com, at least in the US. One of the pics of 41008 suggests that a) the ball in the set is indeed the classic soccer ball mold and b) there will be a new ice cream cone piece! Very awesome and I can imagine dozens of other uses for that element, especially if it shows up in more colors. The girls' swimsuits both look nice, and there seems to be a lot of play value in the pool set what with the shower, restroom, snack shack, slide, and hot tub. The pet salon set seems less exciting to me, but the girls have nice outfits and it's nice to see the Fabuland sign return.

Great review. One correction I'd like to make: I'm pretty sure the Cyclops is Olive Green, not Sand Green. Unless the color looks really, REALLY distorted in these photos, which I doubt because all the other colors look crisp and authentic.

Not too many obvious easter eggs in the minifigures' bios this time, but I did love the waiter's quote: “Good evening. May I recommend this fine green plastic bottle with a picture of grapes on it?”

Let's not forget 11291, a new car building element. It can be seen on page 22 of this instruction booklet, and so far is coming out in at least Bright Red and Dark Red.

Oh, of course. Sets are almost invariably available through some channel or another before their "official" release date. In fact, it's not uncommon for sets to start showing up through legal channels up to a month in advance. Now, normally in the LDD subforum, sets still can't really be submitted to the "sets built in LDD topic" as soon as they start showing up because it takes a while for instructions to get online. But this year TLG has been surprisingly prompt about this: instructions are already online for most of the January 2013 City, Creator, Bricks & More, Technic, and Galaxy Squad sets.

LEGO doesn't manufacture the shirts themselves; they license them out. And I believe the companies they license them out to prefer to play it safe by making them in sizes according to those themes' target audiences. There are some LEGO shirts in adult sizes I believe, but they're mostly based on LEGO Star Wars and other licensed themes. One of the things I've loved about Ninjago is that it's been successful enough to "play with the big leagues" and get a lot of media/merchandise that is otherwise reserved for licensed themes and classic LEGO-- but then again, almost all of that still ended up being very kid-oriented. Nevertheless it does my heart good to walk through a store's clothing department and see a LEGO shirt that is popular not because it is tied to some retro license like Star Wars or Batman but because it's based on something being designed and marketed in the here and now. As I understand it, other countries do have more variety in kid-oriented LEGO clothing, but most of that doesn't make its way to the US... once upon a time, we could find a lot of LEGO apparel in LEGO brand stores, but not any more unfortunately, except the occasional LEGO Star Wars shirt.

I think he means this decade as in the most recent ten years, not the decade as in beginning and ending with a zero. A decade can be any ten-year interval in those terms, it doesn't have to start and end at a predetermined date. So if you were saying the Kingdom of Forthesakeofargumentia has had "a century of peace", you wouldn't be talking about peace since the last year ending in 00 or 01, you'd mean a century starting a hundred or so years before you make that statement.

I wouldn't say Misako did nothing. In the very least she was the driving force behind character development for Wu, Garmadon, and Lloyd for the last seven episodes. And while that is pretty much the definition of a satellite character (existing only to drive the character development of the "main cast"), it was enough to make her scenes very enjoyable for me. Perhaps part of the problem was that in a way she was somewhat "mary-sue-ish". She didn't really have any significant flaws of her own, and so there were really no personal challenges she had to overcome. But at the same time, this could also be said of Nya. I imagine part of it was that with so few female characters, the writers felt pressured to make the ones they had as badass as possible. But as a consequence those characters got even less plot involvement than they would have gotten if some flaws had been given to them. Naturally, of course, I'm not surprised the writers took this route. After all, The Legend of Korra has a central character who's very badass-- but when her flaws came to the forefront a lot of fans started to say she was "whiny". I imagine six-to-eleven-year-old boys might jump to the same conclusions if the episodes started to feature plotlines that were focused on the personal challenges of the female characters. That is, if they weren't already turned off by episodes in which the female characters, not the male Ninja, played a central role. Hopefully Chima will be able to do better by its female characters. It has more of them, which might give it a slight advantage... or it might mean that each gets less screen time. We'll have to see, but I know Ninjago managed to acquire a lot of fangirls and I think TLG owes some good characterization to its female characters for that periphery demographic's sake.

Whoa, that's incredible. I wonder if that comes in a kids' XL (the closest LEGO shirts not aimed at AFOLs typically come to fitting me). I suppose this means that yes, we will be getting well-illustrated character art in 2013. Which makes me quite happy. I wasn't sure if that was going to continue since there weren't going to be any more spinners (and thus, no more cards).

The building in the Fire Emergency set is probably condemned. As for why, probably either because a) derelict buildings like that can be more of a fire hazard than others since they are not maintained or kept up to fire safety codes, or b) because they were afraid that showing a house with people living in it on fire would be too scary for kids, particularly if they had experienced or been close to someone who had experienced a house fire. The building in the set with the police helicopter is boarded up because that's the kind of place where shady no-gooders congregate.

There's a difference between promotional images that wind up in official magazines and catalogs and "teaser images" that are released through social networking sites and not meant to have any redeeming artistic value.

No, definitely not going to City. There's absolutely no reason to think that when LEGO City sets have been getting consistently more complex over the years. I liked the Jack Stone line a lot more, actually, because it integrated Technic connections heavily. This has the SNOT connections on the front and back that allow for more diverse building, but the sides are quite bare, whereas the typical Jack Stone chassis had Technic holes on every side. Yeah, but I was kind of hoping that the "for young builders" line would be something like the typical Bricks & More sets that make viable parts packs or brick packs for non-FOL building competitions. I can understand that it's probably not as bad as I'm making it out to be-- it's just quite a disappointment to me since the Princess set has some nice parts that would appeal to AFOLs, whereas this is the only unique element from the Firefighting set. I was expecting the new wheel wells to be more specialized than those in the City theme, but I didn't expect them to be a part of one solid chassis brick.

I've seen a lot of girls with short hair like that. I even used that hair piece on a sigfig for a friend of mine that I made for her birthday last year. Now, girls with short hair like that often still need to deal with all sorts of stereotypes (since short hair like that is sadly still associated with lesbianism in some circles), but it's still considered socially acceptable most of the time.

I wasn't trying to say sales figures justify a bad toy-- just that your alternative example (TLG releasing a salon outside the Friends theme) was not a real option at all, so the choices were really between releasing a salon in the Friends theme and releasing no salon. Those quotes may sound shallow, but the same thing could be said about many of the "action features" and play scenarios TLG advertises in their boy-oriented themes. And I don't see how it really makes the set itself a negative influence on girls, as I can't imagine any girl (or for that matter, any kid) who shapes their play based strictly on what is written about the set in physical and online catalogs. These are just expressing the kinds of things a girl might do with the set. Also, I'm really, really sick of some criticisms of the mini-doll. Calling the classic minifigure "androgynous" is laughable when the vast majority of female minifigures have had printed curves and eyelashes for decades now. And how does the Friends figure tell kids that they have to have a certain body image any more than the classic minifigure tells them they have to have sharp corners and facial deformities (no ears or noses)? LEGO Friends is less stylized in general than classic LEGO, but it's not as though the figures are unnaturally skinny or busty as so many criticisms seem to suggest. They look like typical preteen/"tween" girls of healthy weight, unlike the hourglass figures of female minifigures in most other themes. Before we go any further, neither Lyi nor myself was saying young girls in general love these things. It's just a thing that young girls (at least here in the US; draw your own conclusions) often like and that retailers tend to capitalize on. I don't necessarily think these have to be unhealthy habits (nothing wrong with wanting to look your best; I wish more boys cared about this myself), though if I were writing the set descriptions I'd have traded the word "gossip" for "socialize" since "gossip" has negative connotations (often involving the spreading of rumors rather than just small-talk) and "socialize" has positive connotations. While this is true, I think this particular organization comes uncomfortably close to "moral guardian" mentality-- the idea that certain ideas are "dangerous" and should be kept away from kids. If they were merely offering advice to parents, that would be OK, but it seems almost like they're instead trying to send a message to industry that they are failing at what they do, as if it were industry's place to take care of kids rather than parents'.

The Hoth set is not bad, but I'm definitely disappointed... in the past couple years, we've seen tons of brilliant re-imaginings of previously-released sets, like the Gungan Sub, the Podracers, the new X-Wing, the new Y-wing, and the new TIE Fighter. Whereas this snowspeeder has no major changes from the previous one besides colors... and the Snowspeeder is one model that could really use some updating. I don't mind remakes of already-released vehicles one bit, but it feels frustrating when there aren't any significant changes from version to version. (Disclaimer: I don't collect LEGO Star Wars sets; I merely observe. So my thoughts on them probably don't make a lick of difference to TLG or the LSW community at large.)

The names that had been circulating among AFOLs were translated from another language. These are the official English-language names.

Could just be an androgynous-looking dude... really without lipstick, there's no way to know for sure whether a fig with sunglasses is female. Back in Res-Q, the character who was identified as the main character in LEGO Magazines was female, but used the generic black-sunglasses face and a generic Res-Q torso.