Aanchir

Post-2010 Hero Factory parts in general actually tend not to break. There are exceptions-- some sets will use older styles of joints, and you'll want to be slightly more careful than usual with those (examples include the head piece used in the 2010 and 2012 Hero sets-- any parts that use a joint resembling this one should be used with caution). But for the most part the "breaking joints" issue from BIONICLE has been eliminated. Other tips: This should go without saying, but when you're just starting out a collection it can be best to try to obtain sets with compatible colors. The "new building system" everyone's raving about was introduced in the early 2011 sets along with the new style of Y-joint. Any sets before that will be a bit harder to build with since they will use more Technic-style or BIONICLE-style building techniques. Bricklink and the online Pick-A-Brick site are your friends when it comes to getting extra parts for MOCs. This especially applies to parts within the new building system, since those started being added to Pick-A-Brick in early 2011 and even those which have been removed often have reasonable Bricklink prices as a result. Get yourself acquainted with the selection of bone and shell pieces. For instance, there are currently four torso bone sizes (5x6, 7x9, 9x9, 9x11), which have very different applications. Some people get frustrated with the proportions of the parts they have, not realizing that other options are available in other sets. The ABSOLUTE BEST way to become acquainted with the Hero Factory building system and the parts it includes is through LEGO Digital Designer, which has a nearly-comprehensive list of Hero Factory parts (some helmets and a few of this year's newest parts are missing, but in general it's got a great bank of parts). Goof around with it either before or after you get your first Hero Factory sets to experiment with your options. With that said, LDD is not always a good substitute for real-life building, especially when working with complex multidirectional hinges like Hero Factory ball joints. So if you want to really get complex in your building, you're going to want to get the physical parts you need in your collection.

The pirates presumably shouldn't exist in the new timeline, but there's enough confusion about that already in the show that bringing back the pirates wouldn't be a total surprise to me.

It's just a fan video contest; it won't actually lead to any Hero Factory products except on the off chance that the winner is so inspiring that LEGO takes a dive and does a full co-promotion with all that that entails.

In fact, I think if anything this list confirms that the "Rampant Oceans" wave is bogus since none of the villain set titles sound the least bit oceanic. About time, IMO. There's no reason people should have had any faith in that rumor to begin with-- not when we had a perfectly good 2012 series for people to be excited about without having to look for rumors sprouting up long before legitimate info had any reason to surface.

These sound incredible! Question: Do the Football Training and Swimming Pool sets use the same ball pieces as in the old LEGO Sports? If they are the same I know a LOT of people will be happy. At Brickfair in Chantilly, Virginia this year there was much demand for those pieces for use in the Great Ball Contraption, one of the event's most popular features with the public. Definitely not stereotypically girly stuff in any way. I was a bit worried that depending on how the target market reacted to the first year of sets TLG might be encouraged to go with stuff that is more culturally reinforced as "girly", but if anything it seems like they have truly branched out into more diverse stuff. I look forward to pictures.

How is Rocka overused? Before 2013 he has been in exactly two waves, just like Evo. Sure, he got an XL form in one of those waves in addition to his 3.0 form, but by that logic they should stop featuring any of the heroes from 2010 (since EVERY ONE has been in at least three pre-2013 sets, and Bulk in particular has been in four). Keep in mind that with both Furno and Rocka we're still in a wave which features neither of them (though it's a part of the same story arc as the early 2012 arc that did). So it's not like we're getting Furno after Furno after Furno here like we were in 2011.

Thanks! So the sets are (just guessing on the names, since the English names probably won't be direct translations): 70500 Kai's Fire Robot (now THIS sounds interesting) 70501 Samurai Bike 70502 Cole's Power-Drill 70503 Golden Dragon (nice to have that one confirmed) 70504 Garmatron 70505 Temple of Light (no idea what this is, but I'll bet you anything it's connected with episode 24 of the TV series which has the musical track "Temple Showdown") It'll be a bit frustrating if those are all the sets (which would imply that Zane and Jay don't get full-size vehicles of their own, though they might get little ones like Zane's snowmobile from 9445 Fangpyre Truck Ambush), but still it sounds like there'll be a good variety.

Why are you asking me? I'm not staff or anything; I'm just a normal member like everyone else. On a side note, just found two book titles here that are almost certainly Legends of Chima: 978-0-545-51652-5 New LEGO® Theme: Origins: A Starter Handbook $6.99 978-0-545-51649-5 New LEGO® Theme: Chapter Book #1 $5.99 So it's seeming very likely that Legends of Chima will be heavy on the multimedia angle much as Ninjago was.

Not set-related but I found the titles of the Hero Factory Secret Mission books #3 and #4 here. They are "Collision Course" and "Robot Rampage", respectively.

Well I think I just found the weirdest thing. Yes, it's an official LEGO project (much like the Hero Factory video project earlier this year), but it's still downright bizarre. On the other hand, looking at Cleatus there I do have to agree that he looks like he'd fit in just fine in the Hero Factory story and design style. I have to offer my compliments to whoever at TLG saw that and had the initiative to get Fox Sports on board with a project like this. Hopefully there will be some quality submissions for this project that will meet the storytelling potential of this random-but-awesome idea.

Yep, Earth Green is the official name of Metru Green. Personally I like how HF has mostly stuck to using the more vibrant colors rather than the bold colors used in BIONICLE so often from 2004 and onward, but I can agree with you that we need more blue villain sets. Sounds interesting, but I hope there aren't only eight sets for the first wave. Then again, eight is still a decent number, and it's possible there might be fewer since there have been rumors that there will be constraction sets in the Legends of Chima theme (kind of like how Knights' Kingdom had both constraction and minifigure sets). Not too fond of those villain names (except Bruizer, which sounds like an EXCELLENT villain name), but I'm sure I'll warm up to them over time. Thanks so much for sharing. Some stuff might still have the potential to change, but I don't doubt your list in the slightest. Thanks for going out of your way to share this with us even though HF isn't one of the themes you follow!

TLG knows that the pics will get leaked-- otherwise they wouldn't be bothering to do damage control when the stuff does get leaked. It's true that they might have some motivation for getting the fanbase excited, but 1) often the leaks come from known members of the fan community, not incognito official sources and 2) why would TLG bother to leak poor-quality images ahead of time when they know that fans will be doing that for them as soon as the retailer's catalogs come out? As for the book covers that feature spoilers, TLG doesn't leak those deliberately either. The publishers of the books do deliberately reveal them, but more to get people excited about the books than about future sets. In fact, the people at the publishing companies who send those book pics to the major online retailers probably neither know nor care which book covers feature new toys on them. And again, TLG is forced to do damage control. As much as TLG would like fans to get excited about things, they don't need to leak images to make that happen. In fact, they have a pretty significant motivation not to leak images. They don't want fans to be excited about toys that they aren't yet able to buy, because then they'll be less excited about the toys already on store shelves. Better to have them excited about things that send an immediate message to retailers about the toys' popularity than to build excitement in advance and risk it waning. Of course, TLG probably doesn't care too much if dedicated fans know about stuff in advance. What they're worried about is that if ANYONE outside the company knows, there's the risk that the knowledge will spread like wildfire, and then everyone will be able to know-- including competitors who can then imitate TLG's marketing and product design plans a lot quicker than they could otherwise. Some lower-quality brands might even be able to rush similar products to market just a few months after TLG releases the originals. And suddenly TLG's "new and different" product is just a high-priced example of something every other company is releasing that year. In short, LEGO knows that trying to keep secrets from dedicated fans is a losing battle. But they still have every reason to want to keep things low-key for as long as possible.

I would love to see a custom decal of Nya's party dress from the Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu TV show: It's basically this torso but with the sash from this torso around the waist on both the front and the back. If anyone could do this it would be much appreciated. I will be back later to edit this post with some screengrabs from the episodes it appears in.

I don't know; it could definitely be cool to have more styles of ball-joint-to-stud connector bricks in the spirit of these, these, and these. One of the things I love about Hero Factory's building system is that a lot of the parts are stylistically similar to System parts (lots of smooth, shiny surfaces), and I'd love to see more functional integration of those parts into System-based building, even if it takes some new part designs to manage it. At the same time, though, I think a System-based mecha theme would be better-suited to "bridge the gap" between the two building styles than a theme like this where the System-scale figures and constraction-scale figures are (presumably) completely independent of one another.

Agreed. And I get the feeling that if Rocka was ever going to have a first name, that whole debacle made it a lot less likely to happen now. If TLG gives him a first name that isn't Daniel, then kids who thought the name "Daniel Rocka" was official will think TLG is contradicting themselves, which reflects badly on the company. Whereas if they just keep calling him "Rocka", kids can keep believing whatever they happen to think regarding the first name issue. While we're on the subject of Rocka, does anyone think there'll be new Hero characters next year? I personally like that we stuck with the nine we have this year. But I wouldn't be opposed to more Hero characters, especially if they add more diversity in personality or gender. If there are new heroes, it could also be cool if instead of being brand-new characters they made sets of some of the heroes on other teams like Lucas Valor, Nate Slick, or Emily Wise. But on the other hand there are probably people who would rather have those characters' designs be left up to MOCists' and artists' imaginations.

Agreed on this point. Depending on what animal head designs there are, buyers could create new minifigures for themes like Pharaoh's Quest mimicking different Egyptian deities, create new aliens to populate a Space Police display, or (and depending on the designs, some people may want to remove some of the printing for this) create grotesques to decorate a Gothic/medieval fantasy castle or church. On another note, since we've heard that the vehicles will generally have animal motifs, I wonder if we'll see any buildings with animal motifs like in the early Knights' Kingdom concepts. While a lot of people hated the unrealistic touches in that theme, I personally love some of the ideas that didn't make it on account of being too science-fantasy for the eventual theme the designers settled on.

I have seen this updated version in a few bookstores and have been debating whether or not to get it, but overall I'm leaning towards not getting it. My reason for this is that as much as I love many of TLG's recent themes, one of the things I loved most about the original edition was how it offered a trip down memory lane, compiling set and story information as well as quality images for themes that existed back before that sort of thing was readily available online (for instance, the names of the various pirate captain minifigures, the packaging designs for some early Space themes, etc). I've looked at some of the new pages for my favorite themes like BIONICLE, Hero Factory, and Ninjago, and it's really all information I already know or could find without any difficulty elsewhere. The pages on new themes also call to attention how insubstantial any of the information in the book is. With older themes, even insubstantial information can be really valuable since that information isn't as widely available as it once was. But (for example) BIONICLE's conclusion is described in extremely little detail, and of course it fails to elaborate on the reasons it was cancelled. LEGO Digital Designer gets a page that does describe some of its history (including the history of LEGO Factory and LEGO Design byME), but nothing especially informative about the development side of things-- mostly just info on its functionality, which users of the software from those days should already know pretty well. It'd be great if someone who does have both editions could list all the pages that have new information so I can tell more easily if there's anything substantial that's been added which I missed when flipping through it in a bookstore. But if the majority of what's been added is just very recent LEGO themes and developments, then I might as well stick with my old edition.

I think he was making the opposite point. Daniel Rocka showed up on IMDB and Wikipedia, then on an actual official DVD, then was announced as an unofficial name that someone manufacturing the DVDs mistook for official. It really shows one of the more serious consequences of falsified information, in that it's more likely to create lasting confusion than to actually officially fill a void in the story.

Yeah, right now I'm not expecting any spinner sets next year, which will be a shame. If it weren't for Legends of Chima, we could at least be hopeful that the 2012 spinner sets and booster packs might stay on store shelves for longer, but as it is I'm not too confident in that possibility. It's possible they might stick a spinner or two in some regular sets, but I'm doubting it considering that this year the only non-spinner sets to have spinners were dedicated arena sets. Hopefully we will still get card-style art of the new characters and costumes, though. That's always been one of the coolest things about the Ninjago spinner sets IMO, and they have had that style art for non-spinner characters like Samukai and the Serpentine generals in the past.

While I don't have a problem with specially-shaped minifigure heads for non-human characters (and these ones seem pretty nicely designed, with traditional minifigure/animal eyes rather than more cartoony eyes), I kind of agree that the animal heads are one of the things kind of turning me off in this theme. If there is a huge multimedia presence for this theme in 2013 (including, most likely, a TV show), I'm kind of curious how well the faces can be animated to have different expressions, since that's a big part of helping the audience relate to the characters. If Wil Film is doing the series I have no doubt they have the expertise to add life to these characters, but right now, seeing them only as minifigures, I just can't manage to feel the same connection to them as I did to our first glimpses of Ninjago characters.

I never considered the spinners a "cheap" way to get the minifigures in the first place. I buy them pretty much only when I have to. In general, I don't think it's a good idea to buy the spinner sets unless you really value the cards and spinners as well as the minifigures, because otherwise you're paying $10 for a single fig that you could (usually) get in a regular model set which will give you a much more versatile selection of bricks for your collection. One of the first things I have done every time a new wave of Ninjago sets is revealed is worked out the least costly way to get the minifigures and must-have (for me) model contents of that wave. It got a bit iffy this year what with how many figs there were (including the spinner-exclusive NRG Ninja), but I can generally get most of the figs I want without having to get all the sets and without having to get more than a few spinner sets/booster packs. There are definitely exceptions like Lloyd ZX and Pythor who only appear in the costliest sets of the year, and who it might make sense to buy separately even if you pay a huge surcharge that isn't getting you a good value in versatile parts. But in my case I'm as into the theme in general as the character designs, and I couldn't pass up the brilliance of the Ultra Dragon after seeing it at Toy Fair. The new Kai minifigure does look incredible. I hope he has shoulder armor in the sets, but if not I already have extra copies of that shoulder armor. The new Ninja gear for 2013 isn't as unique as the ZX costumes but I still think it's incredible-looking, and I'm glad TLG seems to be releasing it for all five Ninja. The new costumes are reminiscent of Sensei Wu's black kimono from 2011, which I think really helps to emphasize how far the Ninja have come in their training. On a side note, wonder if once the Ninja get these costumes in the show, there'll be a new intro. I've been quite impressed how quickly the intro has adapted each time the main cast has changed, either in group makeup or costume design. Since a lot of shows only have a new intro with every new season I'm quite grateful Wil Film has chosen to break from that trend with this 26-episode series.

What makes you think "Ninjago is being ended for this"? The more likely situation is that they knew Ninjago would have to end before too long (they didn't want it to have the same cancerous growth as BIONICLE did), and created this line specifically to fill the void Ninjago left with something similar enough to serve the same function (game-driven, multimedia story theme) but different enough that people didn't just feel like it was the same thing they had already done for the previous few years. Really I've realized there's some kind of perverse attitude among all fanbases that if something ends, the blame automatically falls on whatever replaced it. And in most cases, this is pretty irrational. Companies don't just end successful product lines so they can take a gamble with something new and different. But keeping things going for longer than is logical just gets them caught in a rut, at which point they will start losing fans faster than they can gain new ones. Two-and-a-half years is a decent lifespan for a LEGO product line. It's the same length as most of LEGO's story-driven product lines since 2000, the main exception being BIONICLE which fizzled out quite disappointingly when TLG realized that they couldn't keep it going nearly as long as they had hoped. And I'm quite grateful that TLG knows better than to let the same thing happen to Ninjago. They seem to be quite consciously bringing things to a close so that they don't leave existing fans hanging with an open-ended conclusion, don't bore people to death with year after year of the same ideas, and don't drive fans away by introducing new ideas that stray from the original intent of the theme. Legends of Chima, frankly, bores me. I think it might be a theme I pass up entirely, unless certain sets show up with parts I'd like to have or the story proves enticing enough to inspire me. But I'm not going to blame it for Ninjago's failure or dismiss it as an inferior theme, because I know a lot of people who Ninjago never really appealed to might like Legends of Chima a lot more, and a lot of Ninjago fans will consider this a great new product with many of the same design considerations. If LEGO were to just keep all of their existing themes around until they could no longer afford to do so, then there would never be the potential for great new ideas-- including themes like Ninjago that nobody could have anticipated five years ago.

That is true, but I think it's hugely implausible that any TV episode would be based on one of these books. The more likely scenario is that a book like this could be based on an unreleased TV episode, and my post was mainly trying to point out that this doesn't seem to be the case with this chapter book. If there were to be an episode based on this story, it would have to be radically different. It's true that the titles here may be correct, but frankly IMDB doesn't have an especially good track record about these things. Sure, the Ninjago episode titles were accurate, but in the meantime IMDB has never successfully predicted anything about the HF show as far as I know, to the point that it wasn't even known originally that Savage Planet and Breakout would be two episodes each. The idea that it would have information about a TV episode supposedly airing this month when no more reputable source backs it up makes me a bit skeptical. Not to mention that the plot synopsis seems like something anyone could have written just by reading the plot description of the book and making flailing assumptions that the other not-yet-featured 2012 villains would be showing up in it. In general I've become quite disillusioned with IMDB's predictive abilities. While I don't completely distrust any non-official sources of information (some rumors shared here and on Brickset have turned out to be true even if they have an unconfirmed "friend of mine" source), I am always wary when info magically appears on IMDB (or for that matter, Wikipedia) without any record of where it originally came from. For some reason there are people who enjoy making up nonsense to see how many people they can fool, and I don't enjoy being a victim of that kind of charade.

I have doubts that the 2013 sets will be more than one wave, so I doubt we'll see new sets of the four original dragons-- especially if they were bigger than the original dragon sets. That would basically prohibit the inclusion of any other large sets if TLG wanted to maintain a range of price points I'm also curious what the golden dragon would be like. If it's a new form of the Ultra Dragon, would it still have four heads? Alternatively, if it's a new dragon entirely, then what would become of the Ultra Dragon, and how would the new one hope to measure up to the expectations Epic Dragon Battle set for an "ultimate dragon"? Regardless, a gold dragon is a neat idea and I'd love to see what it'd be like.

Recently picked up three LEGO-related books: Hero Factory Secret Mission #1: The Doom Box, Ninjago Graphic Novel #3: Rise of the Serpentine, and Ninjago Graphic Novel #4: Tomb of the Fangpyre. The Hero Factory chapter book was good, really fleshing out the universe established in the TV series with good characterization, a suspenseful plot, and lots of imaginative characters and settings. The Ninjago graphic novels were also good, although Tomb of the Fangpyre is a bit odd in terms of figuring out where it fits in the story. Presumably it takes place after all the Serpentine tribes are unleashed and Lloyd has joined the group, but the way the story is told Lloyd seems to join the Ninja within this story, which if true would contradict the television series. I believe these comics are the same ones featured in the Ninjago magazine published in Germany.