Aanchir

Hey guys. I was browsing Brickset's new parts database earlier (all parts sourced from service.LEGO.com's parts database), and found some parts that are probably from either this series or future series. Just dumping them all here since it'll be hard to spread them out across multiple topics: Sea Captain (Series 10) Seagull Nautical cap Nautical torso Face with thick gray beard Revolution Soldier (Series 10) Powdered Wig Colonial officer torso Stern face Bumblebee Girl (Series 10) Bee hat Bee torso Bee legs Bee wings Rosy-cheeked female face Honey pot Medusa (Series 10) Medusa head Medusa torso Medusa hair Skydiver (Series 10) Sky diver legs Sky diver torso Sky diver head Sky diver helmet (skate helmet in Bright Yellowish Green) Backpack Decorator (Series 10) Painter hat Paint bucket Paint bucket handle Paint roller Painter head Painter pants Painter torso Sad Clown (Series 10) Pierrot hat Pierrot face Pierrot torso Pierrot pants Black ruff Paintball Player (Series 10) Paintball player helmet Paintball player pants Paintball player jacket Paintball gun Face with devious smirk Tomahawk Warrior (Series 10) Painted face Body-painted torso Legs with loincloth Black mohawk Tomahawk Trendsetter (Series 10) Face with heart drawn on sunglasses Blonde wig Chihuahua Trendy pink torso White pants with chains Smartphone tile Librarian (Series 10) Female face with glasses Female torso with sweater vest Legs with Sand Yellow skirt Dark brown "Ginny" hair (HP) Roman Commander (Series 10) Plume for Roman Officer Titanium metallic armor torso with wolf inlay Armor skirt and sandals Angry face with stubble Grandpa (Series 10) Bald head Aged face with glasses and mustache Torso with suspenders Old newspaper Warrior Woman (Series 10) Historic female torso Armor skirt and boots Eagle shield Gold-tipped spear Black "pop star" hair Motorcycle Mechanic (Series 10) Punk torso with arm tats Punk pants Face with sunglasses and mustache Spanner/Wrench Baseball Fielder (Series 10) Baseball "away" uniform with catcher's mitt Gray pants with belt Face with confident smirk Tin Soldier (Minifigures Character Encyclopedia?) Tin soldier face with rosy cheeks Tin soldier torso Tin soldier hat Wind-Up Key Blue pants with side stripe Minifigure back plate Scientist (Series 11) Blue flask Yellow flask Sorry for being vague about many of these... it was hard to tell which parts went together on which figs. But it looks like there might be a lot of promise in Series 9 and beyond! EDIT: None of these seem to match the Series 9 summaries, and I have sixteen figs here... might these be Minifigures Series 10? EDIT 2: Graysmith found a baseball torso with catcher's mitt that makes for a 17th unique fig... basically killing any chances that these are all from a single minifigures series, although one might be the fig from the Character Encyclopedia. EDIT 3: Some more modifications based on observations by Eurobricks members and Brickset members. Also, added names from TheDailyBrick.co.uk.

The figs seem to have Bright Green (same color as this year's Garbage Truck set; a beautiful and underappreciated color), Bright Red (classic red), Bright Orange (classic orange), and Dark Azur. Nice spread of colors if you ask me. The ships seem to have the same color schemes-- after all, most of the green parts and blue parts on the ships do exist in the appropriate colors.

While the overall structure of the mechs was simple, the real artistry of the Exo-Force theme was in the creative weapon designs, both for battle machines and minifigure weapons. Also, the best of the battle machines were the ones that broke from a typical action figure design, like the Aero Booster, Uplink, Combat Crawler X2, Hybrid Rescue Tank, and all the robot battle machines of 2008. Also, the "action-figure-itis" was a big reason Lyi and I even took interest in that theme. At that time, BIONICLE was our primary passion, and anything stylistically compatible was a good buy for us. As for the stereotypical Asian aesthetic, it was certainly a lot better than the Indians in the Western theme. Back on the subject of Galaxy Squad, I love the colorful, iconic designs, and I can easily envision Galaxy Squad MOCs showing up at conventions for years to come. The diversity within the human faction seems to promote imagination far more than the uniform color schemes of some other recent Space themes. Can't wait to see someone make custom squads in other colors!

"Constraction" is TLG's term for action figure sets like BIONICLE, KK2, Hero Factory, etc. It's basically short for "constructible action figures". Anyway, keep in mind that if this is anything like the Ninjago show, large vehicles and creatures will be greatly simplified and stylized.

Why is good not worth fighting for just because evil will always exist? That would be like arguing against charity for the poor because poverty will always exist. Just because the fight between good and evil might never be over for good doesn't mean that it is no longer worth the effort to overcome it when it does arise. Anyway, it's not as though the ending heavily implied that the Overlord would come back, but the Ninja aren't foolish enough to assume he's gone for good. They recognize that they always have to remain prepared for threats to the peace of Ninjago, and the possible return of the Overlord is just one possibility they aten't willing to discount. Overall, even if the Overlord might return, this victory was far from insignificant. The Overlord's return was, after all, precipitated by factors he had put in place long, long ago, since he was perhaps directly and perhaps indirectly with Lord Garmadon's start of darkness, depending on how closely the Devourer's actions were tied to his will. It will take years and years for him to turn the balance back to his favor, if he even has the strength and forethought to do so at all.

I think it makes perfect sense to suggest the Overlord might return. It is often suggested that the very reason he exists is to balance out the good in the world, especially the good embodied by the First Spinjitzu Master. Thus as long as there is good in the world, evil will emerge to fill the void. Plus, I always think any ending to an adventure story should leave open the possibility for future adventures. Perhaps there are many stories like The Hobbit where the protagonist wants nothing more than to be done with adventuring, but an ending becomes all the more bittersweet if it suggests that the excitement that characterized the story is over as soon as the heroes complete their quest.

Honestly, yes, I see no reason why promoting a model this way is any less valid than any online method. The Cuusoo system requires that when you vote, you list the number of sets you'd buy and the price you pay, so it is a system set up with the honesty of supporters in mind. And if that can't be trusted, there isn't a solution in the world that could save LEGO Cuusoo. Because it's not as though non-AFOLs are inherently more deceptive than the people who actually like LEGO for LEGO's sake. You do make a good point about supporting with a social network account, though. That probably makes it a lot easier for people to cheat if they vote with multiple accounts. At least if people have to vote with Cuusoo accounts, the Cuusoo staff can easily be on the lookout for suspicious account details. As for listing multiple builds under one proposal, it is a place where Cuusoo needs to clarify its rules. In some cases of course it's justifiable as the project is just showing alternative ways a project could be realized (even the Minecraft project had multiple models shown representing the concept of LEGO Minecraft), but in others it's clear that none of the model ideas is solid enough to stand on its own without the support of the other models. I don't appreciate the bias against non-physical builds I see in your post, btw. It's perfectly possible to make thoughtful digital projects, sometimes even more easily than with physical bricks if the project creator doesn't have a sufficient collection of parts currently in production. I've seen a number of clever digital proposals that could become sets even more easily than the most popular physical proposals, though what I support still hinges on what ideas I like or could envision rather than on what medium the proposals use or how refined the proposal itself is. I've seen a gorgeous digital classic Mario vignette that I didn't support largely because I have no interest in buying such a set.

What's wrong with play-feature-driven sets? If you look back, many of the traditional space factions had play features that characterized them. Blacktron had all its major vehicles separate into modules that could be swapped around with one another. Blacktron II and Unitron had removable cockpits that could be swapped around between the vehicles. Every incarnation of Space Police has had detachable prison pods. I don't see why this feature would be any worse than any of those.

...In some countries. You can rarely assume with any certainty that release dates will be consistent globally.

What would eagles be doing in vehicles? It's a fantasy theme, and an eagle castle makes no less sense than the rest of it. I'm quite glad we're actually getting a castle set! I hope it maintains the animal motifs that have so far defined the theme's vehicles and architecture-- something like these would be a dream come true!

Hmmmm... not sure what to think of the robot figures. They have unique face molds, which I guess is cool, but I was kind of hoping for robot designs as simple and iconic as the Spyrius/Exploriens robots. Not fond of the torso armor design for the orange one (gives me too much of a Transformers vibe), but the torso and legs on the blue one seem decent. The astronaut minifigure costumes are quite nice. The bug ships aren't especially impressive to me so far, but I'm sure there will be more interesting ones in the lineup.

In LEGO Battles: Ninjago, Kai just uses the spiky rubber hair piece from the Exo-Force theme in Reddish Brown. So this might be what you're thinking of. Incidentally, that hair piece only currently exists in Medium Blue, Black, and Medium Lilac. The Sleepyhead hair piece is a popular one among MOCists, although it isn't quite as long or spiky as Kai's hair in the show. It's probably the closest approximation currently available, though. And if you prefer dark brown hair, it does exist in that color, though it is rare due to only appearing in the Team GB minifigure set.

Very nice designs! I like the variety of armor styles the two characters exhibit. They are definitely very well-armored from all angles.

I doubt it. The villains from the seventh graphic novel seem like a general mishmash of character designs, not characters that would have been figs for any one theme. I see at least one who has what looks like a mohawk. D2C is short for Direct to Consumer. Direct to Consumer sets are the sets that you usually can't get from most retail stores, just LEGO brand stores and LEGOshop.com. Usually in the AFOL community, this is used specifically to refer to the fairly expensive sets like Medieval Market Village, Emerald Knight, Haunted House, and most Star Wars Ultimate Collectors' Series sets, but other things like magnet packs and certain polybag sets can also be considered D2C (when preliminary names for sets have been discovered on the LEGO Customer Service site, it's not uncommon to see a polybag set labeled D2C GWP, or "Direct to Consumer gift with purchase"). As of next year, most large D2C sets will be rebranded as a part of the LEGO Creator "Expert" line, though I guarantee that ones that tie in specifically with certain themes like LEGO Star Wars or Ninjago would still be labeled with those brands rather than the Creator branding. So D2C or LEGO Exclusive is still going to be the preferred term for those. I don't know if we'll ever see Kai's hairpiece-- to be honest, I'm not entirely certain it was designed with the possibility of molding it in mind, given all the clumps of hair sticking off of it at odd angles.

Depends how many supporters a project gets under a "licensed" name. When the project for a Technic/Mindstorms Tachikoma from the anime Ghost in the Shell got a lot of support, the Cuusoo staff messaged the owner to tell them that the anime was probably not appropriate content for LEGO to acquire a license for, and that they should do just what you're suggesting: remake it as a non-licensed proposal. However, eventually they decided that even that wasn't an option since many of the supporters had probably voted for it due to ties to the license and thus many of the model's votes were no longer valid after re-branding. Monster Fighters doesn't really have any content based strictly on stuff that is still under copyright, unless you're talking about the butler from the Haunted House who is quite blatantly based on Lurch from The Addams Family. That sort of reference (a single minifigure) is probably a lot easier to get past the radar than a full project "inspired by" a copyrighted IP, though. The Purdue Pete project got its supporters fair and square, and I imagine it will have strong appeal with fans of the school's sports teams. The real question is whether TLG could overcome the logistical problems of marketing to those potential buyers, who are probably concentrated regionally and thus do not represent a global or even national market. Chances are it could never work that well; however, that's no reason to badmouth the project. Cuusoo proposals are about what the person proposing them thinks would make a good LEGO product, not what they think would be marketable. And what about the really well-built licensed models that have actual creativity? Or the ones based on obscure licenses that get their support not from fans of the IP in question but from people who genuinely like the concept? You're thinking quite narrowly in terms of what would be licensed or not. A minifig-scale VW beetle? Requires a license. A SpaceX spacecraft? Requires a license. Even a replica of a famous painting might require a license from the artist's estate. Overall it's just a bunch of red tape that would lead people to be more squeamish about proposing any ideas inspired by real-world objects other than those which are obviously in the public domain. Yeah... this perhaps is the most terrible idea for Cuusoo I've ever heard in a long time. What if a person wants to support a Cuusoo project but doesn't have a credit card? Or is-- god forbid-- interested in saving money except for the sets they desperately want? Or just realizes how vile and abhorrent the idea of weighting people's opinions by how much money they spend is? Try again. "Biggest AFOLs"? Since when was Cuusoo about your stature as an AFOL? In fact, since when was there some sort of grade scale against which AFOLs can be judged on their passion for the LEGO brand? Overall, it's a sad day when I see this kind of god-awful pretentiousness within the AFOL community, by which AFOLs decide that the amount of money they spend on LEGO means they deserve more of a say in the company's business than other fans. Especially when considering that part of the point of Cuusoo is to attract new fans to the LEGO brand-- you're not doing a very good job of that by telling them their opinions have only one percent of the value of the wealthiest AFOLs' opinions. Let's not forget that LEGO is an expensive hobby and that part of the reason some people might not become AFOLs is that there simply hasn't been a product close enough to their interests for them to justify the huge cost. In that case, Cuusoo might be just the sort of thing those people might need to enter the fandom, and yet you're proposing building a $70 toll bridge between them and even coming within one-tenth of having the same say as a typical AFOL. Even some AFOLs might not buy LEGO directly from the company, either because they prefer buying vintage themes or because buying directly from LEGO in their country is not an economically viable option. Again, it's an expensive hobby, even more so in some countries than in others, and I say that as a citizen of the United States which is quite unfairly privileged when it comes to LEGO pricing. Overall, I've heard a lot of bad ideas for Cuusoo that could potentially kill it off entirely. Yours is perhaps the first I've heard that would not only kill it, but would make it deserve to die. Yes, my family has spent hundreds of dollars on LEGO in the past year. But even I can recognize how obscene this suggestion is, and how it would defeat the whole point of LEGO Cuusoo. Rather than being a gift to fans, creating a nonsensical hierarchy among fans based purely on spending would be a tremendous disservice to both the LEGO community and the LEGO brand.

Pretty certain that most if not all of H.P. Lovecraft's stories are out of copyright. And TLG has had no problems releasing literary figures like Sherlock Holmes under generic names in the Minifigures theme. However, I could be wrong, and it's definitely worth reading up on the copyright/trademark status of any works you reference.

Huh, my mistake. No idea how I even ended up looking at a post so old...

Bear in mind that both of the "DK Readers" covers are obvious prelims... the author's name should make that obvious. As such, both are subject to change.

Keep in mind that release dates are rarely consistent worldwide. While it is surprising if these are indeed showing up in stores before we've even seen high-quality preliminary or finalized images, it isn't all that unlikely if they happen to be due for a January release in the country in question, especially since Toys 'R' Us usually gets special privileges when it comes to releasing sets ahead of schedule.

I think it's also a matter of needing the animal eyes to provide the characters' expressions and filling in the rest of the animal faces so the heads aren't totally useless without the masks.

I dunno. It worked pretty nicely for Ninjago (in that a brick-built spinner with four colored sides took the place of a die). Not sure if Speedorz functionality could really be built into one of the LEGO board games, but if they can manage it it might turn out pretty cool.

Page 17 of this PDF has a preview of a page from Graphic Novel #7. Hard to say what exactly it will be about at this point-- it certainly seems that like the previous graphic novels, it is telling a brand-new story rather than just exploring the core story as it is told in the TV series. Funny that we should see our first preview page for graphic novel #7 before we've even seen the cover of #7 or any preview pages from #6.

Just wanted to share a few random tidbits I found through Google searches. Page 137 of this catalog discusses the Chima books but also tells some things to anticipate from the Chima brand: Board game sounds like it could be neat-- I liked the Ninjago board game. This also confirms constraction sets and a TV show... assuming it is talking about Chima, but with all the hints we've gotten at this point the likelihood of it being anything else is infinitesimal.

I don't entirely know the justification behind not allowing "magic building" in commercials but allowing "quick building", but I imagine the presence of real human hands makes things a lot clearer for kids that the scene is in fast-forward. It also might have something to do with offering a sense of scale so kids can see how small the pieces are as it's being built. I agree, that Pirates commercial probably wouldn't be allowed to show the ships themselves being built that way, but the figures playing with them might still be fair game since the ad makes it pretty clear they're not a part of the product being advertised. Regardless, it's not as though showing hands "quick building" a model instead of showing "magic building" does any real harm to the advertisements. Perhaps they make the commercial feel a little less "magical", but I personally think that sense of realism really cuts to the heart of the LEGO experience and shows that it is a tactile, hands-on activity rather than purely a matter of dreaming up a model.

I have no firsthand knowledge of this, but all I know is that this has consistently been given as the "official" reason for why alternate models aren't shown on the backs of boxes anymore unless instructions are available (either in the set itself or online). And it doesn't seem at all far-fetched to me. "We" may have understood that they were only suggestions, but it should be remembered that we probably wouldn't be AFOLs if LEGO building didn't come naturally to us. For others, the ability to build straight from the imagination is not nearly as intuitive. Also, if the "suggestion models" are largely ignored by the people who aren't becoming frustrated with trying to replicate them, then they're not really doing anyone much good. On the other hand, pictures or video showing off the completed model's functions, showing it from different angles, or giving a snapshot of a possible story you could tell with the set will all offer an incentive to buy the set that shouldn't lead to disappointment for anyone once they have the set in hand. There are a lot of laws regulating advertising, especially advertising for things targeted at kids, because kids are extremely impressionable and could easily become misled by an ad for a toy showing it doing something it can't really do. ADVANCE Copenhagen, the ad agency that has been making ads for LEGO products for decades, has a lot of LEGO ads on their YouTube channel (here), and they give insights into many things that wouldn't be legal in ads today-- for instance, showing a helicopter set flying without showing hands holding it in , or showing the "magic building" from the ad above in .Not going to get into the economics or politics of the role of regulation in a free market economy, but in general a lot of governments have historically been willing to stop short of an absolute free market for regulations that are meant to protect their citizens, and children are often viewed as some of the most vulnerable when it comes to advertising.