Aanchir

The surest way to tell if you missed any parts is to look at the inventory in the back of the instruction booklet and read through each piece, making sure you used exactly the quantity listed. The sole exception is the Hero Core-- although not used anywhere in the build, it is not an extra piece and so will be listed among the other pieces in the instruction booklet's inventory.

Actually, it's interesting to see what they've done in some other (non-English-speaking) countries. The German site calls the Soccer Player "Fussballspieler" and the Football Player "Football Spieler", borrowing the English name of the sport. Quite curious that the site didn't localize the name for the Soccer Player since they have done so with most LEGO soccer things in the past. I wonder if they were deliberately keeping the name "Football Player" available for if they wanted to introduce an American Football player. If so, I'm surprised they didn't localize the name anyway and then call the American Football player something like "Linebacker" or "Quarterback". Though I guess the actual terminology of the sport is probably pretty obscure in countries that don't play it.

It's possible TLG might be required by law to print things like piece count on sets in certain countries and not in others. Or maybe they've found that US buyers tend to want more of that kind of information before making a purchase. Or maybe they find British buyers prefer more minimalist packaging designs. Or maybe they find there are more retailers in Europe and the UK that do business internationally. It would be nice to get an official statement from TLG about why this is, but I doubt it's anything insidious.

Interesting! I've actually never seen co-packs like these in the US, at least not in several years (there are some BIONICLE Rahkshi co-packs I remember from many years ago, but in general I don't see co-packs in stores).

Does anyone know if yellow sharpie works as well on Light Nougat (light flesh) printing as it does on actual Light Nougat parts? I would like to get one of these torsos as it is the same as Nya's party dress from various episodes of the Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu TV series as far as I know, but it has an open back which, yes, is printed in Light Nougat rather than Bright Yellow. I ask because for whatever reason, Light Nougat printing almost always looks darker than Light Nougat plastic (see here). And if the color of the print is already darker, I'm not sure Sharpie will be effective. If the base color of the plastic were lighter than the flesh printing some brake fluid might be effective, but with a bright red base I can't think of any effective technique for recoloring the printed "skin".

Yep, Stormer XL has the solid Bright Blue spheres rather than the translucent kind. I discovered this when I built him during Brickfair last weekend. I was surprised, since it was my first set with the solid blye spheres-- both the Ice Dragon Attack and Lightning Dragon Battle from the previous year's Ninjago series used the translucent ones. And I became more than a little distraught when I carelessly lost it (to be fair, I was carrying him around frantically looking for parts which I had thought stolen, which in fact my younger brother had taken without my permission and put safely on one of his own MOCs). But my distress was allayed when said younger brother told me I could borrow one from his Bulk & Vapour set, which I hadn't realized contained the spheres. I did know that solid blue spheres existed, of course. Together with solid Bright Red and Bright Yellow spheres, they were introduced in the LEGO Mindstorms series many years ago. But I hadn't expected them to make their way to Hero Factory so soon. On a side note, I almost almost almost grabbed a Medium Lilac (dark purple) Zamor sphere from the bag of prototype parts being offered to BZPower members at Brickfair. But I decided against it since unlike the unique molds or blended parts being offered in the same bag, this was a solid-colored part that I could just as easily mimic with any other color of Zamor sphere and some carefully-matched paint. Instead I grabbed a prototype transparent Bohrok faceplate (the early variant with the lens in the forehead), so that together with my twin brother my family would have two of these unambiguously rare parts. Personally, I'm not sure if I prefer solid-colored or translucent Zamor spheres overall. The solid-colored ones are a lot better at matching other similarly-colored parts, since even when not blended the translucent ones tend to look slightly different in color due to the much thicker plastic. They also have that nice swirly texture. But the transparent ones still often feel more "energetic" than any non-blended solid-colored spheres, which look more like bounce balls or paintballs than powerful energy blasts.

It should be considered that one of the big observations about girls' play patterns which the LEGO Friends theme is founded upon is that they really project themselves onto the characters they are playing with, hence why the theme is grounded in real life, why the figures are made more realistic than the more stylized design of classic minifigures, and presumably why there are fewer male and adult characters in the theme than ambiguously-youngish girls. Anyway, at Brickfair we were given a real treat in the form of a LEGO Friends panel by set designers Astrid Graabaek and Fenella Holden. I learned a lot of things I hadn't known about the theme previously. For instance, I had known that Olivia's dad Peter had a different torso mold than the girls and I believe I had also seen that he had different arms, but I hadn't realized that Olivia's mom Anna also has a different torso from the rest of the girls (slightly bustier and probably some other, subtler distinctions). Bricklink doesn't make this distinction since it can more easily differentiate between the torsos by their decorations, and I have no LEGO Friends sets of my own, so I never noticed the difference. Peter also has a uniquely-shaped face, which other people had probably noticed earlier. The LEGO Friends line has about a 50/50 gender ratio on its design team, which in some respects doesn't match up with its keenly gender-oriented design but still probably stands out from most LEGO themes' design teams. LEGO Friends was in development for four years, and was originally expected to be a standard minifigure theme, but the testing and research done by TLG quickly showed that many girls just didn't identify with the minifigure, and some even considered its blocky design kind of ugly. So at that point redesigning the minifigure became a goal for the theme. The LEGO Friends figure had many concepts including a couple more Belville-like face sculpts, which were simplified into the smoother and more iconic final design, and arms with rotating hands and molded fingers, which were likewise smoothed out when girls felt the chunky arms and skinny wrists weren't appealing and when designers decided that the simple, U-shaped hands of LEGO minifigures were an iconic way of making the figures instantly stand out as LEGO. The designers of the Hagrid figure could have learned a thing or two from this design process! Apparently LEGO Friends was also originally expected to be a much smaller theme, but reactions from retailers and play testers motivated TLG to expand it into the massive launch it received. Regarding the number of handbags in the theme, I forget whether it was Astrid or Fenella who made this comment, but apparently it was challenged by some of the male designers in the department. But the female designers observed that there are no more handbags in Friends than there are swords in certain more boy-oriented fantasy/historical themes. There were other things I didn't get an answer about, of course. After the panel I asked Astrid and Fenella if they knew whether the robot in Olivia's Invention Workshop was based on Alpha Rex from LEGO Mindstorms, and neither of them knew (they weren't involved in that set's design as far as I'm aware). I think it's still pretty likely, though!

The Brickfair bricks are only available to registered attendees. This year's brick was yellow instead of white, which threw some people for a loop but ended up working fine on my name badge in the end. Brickfair was excellent this year. I spent a lot of time with friends from BZPower, got to chat with LEGO Friends designers Astrid and Fenella, and saw a lot of interest in "Rise of the Dread Colossus" during the public days. I also bought some stuff from vendors and took advantage of the LEGO store discounts, so I should have enough LEGO to keep me occupied for quite a while.

Even if his dream/vision wasn't an ordinary dream, it wasn't necessarily literal either. The most important aspect of the dream was the fact that the Green Ninja shared aspects of all four Ninja, which could have been to foreshadow the role all four would have in training Lloyd. The actual events of the dream might not have foreshadowed any real events, but it could still have been meaningful. Or the writers could just be inconsistent. Wouldn't totally surprise me.

Huh. Quite curious. I knew LEGO Friends would be getting an animated TV special, but I didn't totally expect it to be the series that would get a full TV series. It's aimed at a very different demographic than the Ninjago TV series, after all. Curious how it will turn out. It could very easily help flesh out the universe of LEGO Friends even further, and I'm sure fans of that theme will find lots of inspiration for building in it just as fans of LEGO Ninjago found inspiration in the Ninjago TV series. It's still quite unusual that we don't know of any plans for another series targeting young boys, though, since those are such a reliable demographic for both LEGO sets and TV shows. I wonder if Wil Film will also be behind the LEGO Friends series. They did a great job producing the Ninjago series and designing colorful characters, vehicles, and settings.

I'm fairly certain that those are the 4M printed shells from Fangz with the longer end turned upwards. It'd be great if 3M transparent fluorescent reddish-orange shells were available, though.

I just read the bios and weapon descriptions on the Hero Factory site-- hadn't even thought to check them when it first updated. They're pretty excellent, though it's a shame the apparent character development Bulk seemed to have in Savage Planet is completely ignored. Character development only works if you're consistent about it! Sadly, if the bios here don't reference it, then I doubt the Hero Factory "Secret Mission" books will. Speaking of which, Amazon.com has a preview of "The Doom Box", the beginning of which is eerily similar to one of the BIONICLE Legends books. This made me feel extremely skeptical of it since the narrative style in general seemed to fit in with BIONICLE better than with Hero Factory, but there seems to be a sneak peek at the second book in the same preview which seems much more appealing and adds real depth to the universe with a flashback at the early days of Alpha 1 Team. I love the bios for Nex, Stringer, and all the villains. The weapon descriptions are also pretty great. Meanwhile, I just got back from Brickfair. During the event I went to a LEGO store to get most of this year's HF sets I was missing at a great discount. I've built Stormer XL, who looks pretty incredible "in the brick", and Thornraxx. Still looking forward to building Breez. I'll probably also want to make some Pick-A-Brick orders to help modify these heroes a bit, though I'll need to make fewer than I might have thought, perhaps, since I also got some assorted HF 2.0 parts at a low price from one of the vendors.

Whoa. The new animations on the products page are pretty darn cool. Stormer XL's in particular is intense, especially when he jumps down close to the camera. Same with Stringer's when the camera rotates 360 degrees around him as he does a handstand. XT4's and Speeda Demon's are also pretty incredible and cinematic. In general they are a huge improvement over earlier product page animations, and even those had shown slight improvements between waves.

If anyone wants to find me at Brickfair, I'll be wearing my 2009 BIONICLE hat and, of course, my name badge. My name badge this year is smaller than it has been some years, but should be just as distinctive with its four differently-colored Hero Cores. The blank 1x8 brick is a stand-in for my Brickfair 2012 brick while the blank 1x6 tile is a stand-in for a tile printed with my screen name (Aanchir). Both will be added as soon as I've checked in at the registration desk tomorrow. I look forward to connecting with some people! If anyone wants to find me at Brickfair, I'll be wearing my 2009 BIONICLE hat and, of course, my name badge. My name badge this year is smaller than it has been some years, but should be just as distinctive with its four differently-colored Hero Cores. The blank 1x8 brick is a stand-in for my Brickfair 2012 brick while the blank 1x6 tile is a stand-in for a tile printed with my screen name (Aanchir). Both will be added as soon as I've checked in at the registration desk tomorrow. The Ninjago Wiki tile is a gift from my brother Meiko. He will have others at the event. I look forward to connecting with some people!

It could also have something to do with that they already have a black-suited Batman figure, and they figure kids will want a new Batman costume to be in a new color. Also, it could be possible that the press images or concept images they were provided for designing the TDKR set were in misleading lighting... I believe that has happened before.

It'd be really sweet if the medal color in each minifigure were randomized, but that would be difficult from a production standpoint and could make the "collect-them-all" frenzy even more chaotic as some people sought to get a full set of gold, silver, or bronze medals. Besides, one of the only things I know to have been randomized to such an extent was the BIONICLE collectible packs (some of them would include two of a certain category of mask and three of another category, with each category of mask including a wide range of possible shapes and colors). And given the huge demand for these minifigures I don't think TLG would want to do anything like that which would complicate or slow down production.

A good, but today rather out-of-date, book about The LEGO Group as a company is The World of LEGO Toys by Henry Wiencek. I first read it when I was in middle school and it gives a lot of insight into the company's history including the history of LEGOLAND parks and other side-ventures. Another book I grew up with was The Ultimate LEGO Book published by Dorling Kindersley. This is one that provided endless inspiration for me as a child, from its pictures of concept art and prototype models from the Rock Raiders theme to its thorough, detailed features on various models at LEGOLAND Parks, including the Minilands. Because of this I would say it's never too old to be worth taking a look at. More recently, The LEGO Book by Daniel Lipkowitz was released. Unlike the others which are primarily reference books, this one reads more like a retrospective of past sets and themes. It features lots of details of both older and more recent themes. A new edition with updated information is due for release later this year, so I recommend waiting to pick that one up. The older edition often comes as a co-pack with the bonus book Standing Small, which is a similar retrospective focusing more specifically on minifigures and the characters they represent. Not so sure about the newer edition, since it is yet to be released. LEGO: A Love Story focuses not on specific sets or strictly on the company, but rather on the LEGO phenomenon as a whole from the perspective of an AFOL who discovered the fandom after returning from his "Dark Age". The author, Jonathan Bender, has a background in journalism and so provides a quite detailed and mostly unbiased perspective on the fandom, including some of its less innocent (read:raunchy or otherwise politically incorrect) manifestations. There is also a lot of the book devoted to the history of the LEGO brand, but it still comes from the perspective of the AFOL community, not sugar-coating any of the more controversial decisions by the company in the past few decades. The story is told in the first person, explaining things about the fandom roughly in the order the author learns them. In the meantime it is framed by his life experiences along his path to AFOLdom, including his attempts to cope with the pressures of starting a family. I have always had a soft spot for the more story-driven offerings among LEGO's various themes, so I personally get great enjoyment from Greg Farshtey's BIONICLE and Ninjago novels and guide books. However, they are obviously aimed at kids and so might be beneath your reading level. And of course, they will have little to no redeeming value for you unless either you are a fan of these themes or you have a younger relative who is. I have never read the books for many other story-driven themes like Exo-Force and Knights' Kingdom because these, too, were aimed at a younger audience, though today I wish I had given them a chance when those themes were still current. So those are the books closest to my heart, personally. Hope some of them can offer you the same enjoyment.

Anything larger than the scale of this Rancor would be very expensive, and probably even more so if brick-built instead of specially-molded. If a brick-built Rancor at a realistic scale were in fact included, then either the price point would have to be bumped up dramatically or a lot of the other environment details would have to be cut-- and even with the smaller, brick-built one, people are complaining about how the Rancor Pit itself is too small and lacking in detail! Also, as I mentioned, a decent-looking brick-built Rancor would probably involve a lot of complex building techniques, which would essentially mean it could never appear in any sets besides a UCS-type set aimed largely at advanced builders and adult collectors. Personally, I think having things at a realistic scale is overrated. Even in LEGO City, or the more AFOL-oriented Modular Buildings, things are typically scaled down significantly. "Minifigure Scale" as any kind of absolute standard is largely a myth, since the scale of sets that include minifigures depends more on what looks OK and is still affordable than on how accurate or realistic it would be if you swapped the minifigures out for similarly-sized human figures. Just look at how few LEGO City street vehicles fit the appropriate number of passengers for a vehicle in that class, or for that matter how there are no LEGO road plates with more than two lanes.

Wow! Nice work! She looks very feminine and yet her proportions are still modest. The soft lighting goes a long way in this picture, and I like how you added detail to her design without eliminating the smooth surfaces and contours that are typical of Hero Factory parts. Overall this kind of reminds me of the stylized versions of the sets which appeared in the BIONICLE movies. The proportions and details were adjusted to make them feel less "toy-like", but they kept many of the hallmarks of their toy designs so they remained instantly recognizable. The same applies here. My own art tends to skew more towards a set-like appearance, which reduces the lifelike quality that a character drawing like this really ought to have. For example, here's my own Breez drawing. As you can see, the more feminine proportions seem much more forced when applied to the same blocky robotic frame, and I had a hard time making the pose appear natural (though that could just be my own inexperience with action poses showing and not a consequence of my style in and of itself). Great work! I'm glad you were able to find inspiration in this year's sets, and I hope you can continue to find inspiration in this theme in the future!

The reason the curved ramp elements from LEGO Island Extreme Stunts (and from the Gravity Games subtheme of LEGO Sports) are inaccurate is because it is not specially-designed for skateboarding sets. It was originally a curve element from the Ultimate NBA Arena set, used to keep the ball from rolling off the court. Thus, it was designed from the beginning for functionality, not realism, and certainly not for application in a skate park. My family actually owned the Mega Bloks 9157 Skate Park you linked to. It was decent, although quality was lacking and I was quite grateful when I got some real, official LEGO skateboards and didn't have to use Mega Bloks ones. Although to be honest I lost interest in building things that involved skateboards long before I got my hands on an official LEGO one.

I haven't seen the episode in question, but the latest season has been a bit inconsistent when it comes to Zane's abilities. In "Darkness Shall Rise", Zane gets sprayed with Venomari venom but claims it doesn't affect him, whereas in an earlier episode he had been forced to use his "Falcon Vision" when a Venomari Serpentine spit at him. Of course, that instance can be explained by him upgrading himself for Venomari immunity, since the Falcon Vision itself demonstrates he is able to upgrade and modify his robotic body in certain ways. The "Nindroid's can't dream" incident sounds a lot more inexplicable, unless that was an instance of his "sixth sense", and now that he knows his nature as a Nindroid he knows better than to think of it as just a dream.

I fail to understand how less simplicity equates to less imagination. The 1999 LEGO Star Wars sets came on the heels of themes like Rock Raiders and Town Jr. which were reviled by AFOLs for their "juniorization". And it showed. Studs-up building except with very rare exceptions, unrealistic transparent blasters for both ships and minifigures, and loads of basic bricks where more advanced hinge-based or slope-based building would be preferable. Mismatched colors, giant, specialized parts, and loads and loads of click-hinges were the order of the day. Sets like this one show a level of complexity that back then only the occasional AFOL-oriented sets would even dream of. Consider the hinge-based shaping of this set! I can hardly think of a single set that would have used that kind of technique prior to around 2006. To see such a technique in a regular, non-AFOL-oriented set even then would have been unthinkable. Likewise, the new TIE Fighter set has realistic wings for the first time, with lots of lovely details. The new X-Wing dumps the horrendously-unrealistic "wing cannons" that had been used so often since 1999 in favor of more accurate laser cannons that depend on creative use of Technic components (and let's not ignore the fact that the new X-wing has zero flick-fire missiles and its "proton torpedoes" in fact clip onto the ship in a way that doesn't involve any action features) The new Y-Wing has engines with the struts at a more accurate 45-degree angle from the "horizon line", and using SNOT techniques and color layering for the nose where sets of the early- to mid-2000s might have used overspecialized printed elements and huge curved slopes. The new podracers introduced last year pack way more detail into vehicles about the same size as the originals and far more accurate. Yes, there are more flick-fire missiles today than there would have been back in the day. This is because flick-fire missiles are cheap, versatile, and unobtrusive action features that don't detract from any set that includes them. Compare that to the Technic blunt shooter which was awkward, unwieldy, and required parts of the ship to be "built" around the function. I'd prefer a Gungan Sub with two harmless flick-fire missiles to one with an inexplicable splitting-apart-and-rearranging function like the 1999 one. I, too, have fond memories of 1999, back in the days when I collected and built LEGO Star Wars models with a passion. But I don't let those memories blind me to how far sets have advanced since those dark days when kids were expected to have so little building ability and were never given sets with design techniques more advanced than the ones they could easily dream up themselves.

There aren't any whites showing. The white part of the print is just a little "sparkle" like on all minifigure eyes. You're not alone in misunderstanding this, though-- I still think it's absurd how so many sites including the venerable Bricklink refer to these sparkles as "pupils" for no conceivable reason. Good question. If TLG is willing to mold Rancors, they could mold any animal! What's to stop them from molding bears? Or Dewbacks? Or Dragons? Or-- heaven forbid-- horses? We had better hope that TLG doesn't continue down this slippery slope or they might run the risk of being consistent about which animals are pre-molded! I exaggerate, of course. Truth be told I'm fine with some "semi-brick-built" animals like the Ninjago dragons as long as they have relatively organic-looking shapes (i.e. avoiding too many right angles and rigid-looking surfaces), printed eyes, and the same level of detail we come to expect of other human and animal minifigures. But there's a limit to how well this can work for licensed themes where TLG has to be very specific about the appearance. With the Rancor, an accurate brick-built version could end up brittle, prohibitively expensive, complicated to build, and not enough like its intended subject for kids to identify with it as a living creature. I've seen some gorgeous brick-built Rancors over the years, and they all tend to be huge and use several very advanced building techniques. Neither would have worked very well for a set like this which is aimed at TLG's core audience of children who lack any exceptional amount of building experience. We mustn't forget that to many young builders, even the most basic SNOT techniques aren't all that intuitive and they expect their models to use primarily studs-up building. TLG designs many of their sets, especially licensed sets, to provide a moderate degree of building challenge, but with a successful theme like LEGO Star Wars they can't afford to give the sets the same complexity as AFOL MOCs. To do so would require a higher median age range, to say nothing of price.

I agree that the Street Fighter proposal's rejection was not totally expected. I wish people would stop bringing up LotR/Star Wars/Indiana Jones/other licenses when talking about how TLG has a "double standard" regarding Cuusoo proposals. It has to be understood that in many cases, how TLG applies their own guidelines depends on how their customers-- not logically-thinking and open-minded members of the fan community-- will perceive them. Street Fighter has a reputation for being pretty violent and bloody, even if that blood has been heavily toned-down on Nintendo systems. The movie franchises TLG has made into sets, on the other hand, have pretty sturdy reputations as classics, and in the cases of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, hail from a time when there wasn't as strong of a moral panic over what film content was appropriate for children. A sad consequence of this is that it will probably be many years before video games are treated the same as films in judging how they fit TLG's criteria. The immersive nature of video games has caused a stir among the moral guardians for years, especially now that the level of realism in video games has increased exponentially. Suddenly, the violence that parents were perfectly happy exposing their kids to in movies is no longer OK. It's TLG's right and obligation to play it safe when it comes to choosing their licenses. And sometimes there might be business reasons for choosing certain licenses that they might have rejected years before. After all, any license-holder TLG rejects is a license-holder who might take their IPs to a competitor. But TLG has a strong reputation for being a child-friendly brand, and they have a strong incentive to preserve that reputation. It makes sense that they'd be more willing to bend their self-imposed rules when dealing with a hugely-popular franchise kids will be inundated with marketing from anyway than when dealing with a license agreement that might result in one or two products and will appeal largely to a niche audience of adult fans. So no, it's not entirely "fair", but it's not completely unsound reasoning either.

It's the same double-sided head as on every Lloyd Garmadon and Lloyd ZX figure, from the looks of things, so you don't need to get the Character Encyclopedia to obtain it. But the rest of the costume (besides the shoulder pads, of course, which are on the Kai ZX and Zane ZX figures) is exclusive to this book. We've seen a different (probably earlier) version of this cover, which identified the figure as "Lloyd Garmadon" rather than "Green Ninja ZX" and didn't show the actual minifigure parts behind the transparent screen, just the minifigure photo on the cover. I am surprised at how this figure is packaged. It's a change from what we've become used to in the other Dorling Kindersley reference books like the LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia, where the minifigures come fully assembled. Also, I see no sign of any weapons in there, so I guess earlier information that suggested it would come with a "fully-armed" Ninja minifigure may have been preliminary. What a shame. Still, it's not like we could have expected anything exclusive, besides perhaps an existing weapon in a new color.