Aanchir

A lot of the made-in-China parts seem to be parts from the Collectible Minifigures series, vintage minifigure collections, etc. left over after production ends on the sets themselves. I'm not positive, though-- it could be that they deliberately make more parts than they need for these sets.

By body, do you mean just his torso, or his body as a whole? His legs are longer than his 2010 incarnation (in which the helmet debuted) and his torso is the same height but with narrower shoulders, so unless you have an idea of how to make him more "buff" then I can't think of how you might improve him. Also after reading Gatanui's Stringer review I feel oddly compelled to draw an illustration of Stringer rocking out with DJ-PON3...

Nice review! Stringer is obviously a mixed bag, like any of the smaller Hero sets, but he still shows some stunning design work with his adherence to his original sonic theme and his new yet tastefully-organized color scheme. While some might feel he is lacking in resemblance to his previous incarnations, nobody can possibly claim that this set was not designed knowing what character it was meant to represent, a charge I saw leveled from time to time against certain BIONICLE set designs. The lack of back armor is startlingly obvious here with the transparent torso shell, but unless TLG can add back armor without cutting down on the set's other contents or bumping the price up even further, I think many Hero Factory fans will gladly do without or create their own.

Incidentally, the one on the left could potentially be taken apart without necessarily having to destroy a piece... since the Technic bushings have grooves in them, you could carefully use a hobby knife to slowly push the axles out of the structure to the point where they can be pulled out by hand. The axle would likely be scratched, but still usable. My dad had to resort to a similar tactic to remove an axle which became lodged in a BIONICLE part much like the gear in Clone O'Patra's example above, though a bit more complex Specifically, I attached a Y-joint to one of the back holes of a Toa Hordika torso using a blue Technic pin/axle, then foolishly locked it in place using a 2M Technic axle through one of the shoulder holes. Since there was still a 1/2M gap between the Y-joint and the shoulder hole, my dad was able to force the axle out and no pieces were lost. The gap in a Technic bushing is smaller and would be a lot more fiddly to exploit in this way, but I believe it could be done.

Yeah, just as girls form a very small part of LEGO's customer base, women are seriously outnumbered by men in the AFOL hobby. That's part of why I'm glad the LEGO Friends theme has proven successful. Hopefully its success will lead to more girl-oriented and gender-neutral product design in the long run as girls of all ages learn that construction toys in general and LEGO in particular aren't just for boys. Some people have suggested that LEGO Friends is a step in the wrong direction and that LEGO could really capture a female demographic by evening the gender ratios in their mainstream themes and their marketing, but personally I feel there's no silver bullet and LEGO has to gradually change their image, their product lines, and their marketing approach if they want to make a real difference in the demographic makeup of their fanbase. Of course, I'm sure that the changes in number of female respondents to this survey has less to do with LEGO Friends (that's still too new to make a major difference in how many girls become adult fans, and I'm sure adult fans don't take up the hobby for those sets any more than they do for themes like City) and more to do with TLG's continued efforts to appeal to kids and adult fans of both genders with products like the LEGO Minifigures and direct-to-consumer lines. Along with licensed products, these two categories are a great way of creating new LEGO fans as well as bringing people who enjoyed LEGO during their childhoods back to the hobby.

Well, non-licensed products are at an inherent disadvantage because they don't have the same sense of knowing what to expect from the final product. Think about it: when LEGO announces a new licensed theme, or even when the name of a set from a licensed theme gets leaked, people get super-excited about what the model will look like because they have a very good idea what to expect from it. No matter how TLG chooses to build the Hogwarts Express, for instance, people will have a good idea what to expect the final model to look like. With non-licensed products it's different. You see the name of a non-licensed product, and unless the theme is based heavily on understood archetypes like City or Monster Fighters, there's little idea how the final product will be expected to look. And since a Cuusoo project can change significantly from original project concept to final product, it's hard to know what you're going to be paying for in the long run. An easier way to browse projects by category would be useful, but then it would fall upon the Cuusoo staff to make sure projects are categorized correctly. Some people might not realize that no, a set based on a book that is out-of-copyright might not have to be licensed from any third party. Likewise some people might suggest a set based on a deceased celebrity as a non-licensed project (since it's inspired by real life), not realizing that rights to said celebrity's image may belong to his or her estate. And if you subdivide things into themes you could expect even more chaos. In general I don't think any solution exists to create complete equity in how much support licensed and non-licensed or CGI and non-CGI proposals get. A person creating a licensed proposal based on something particularly trendy, particularly something trendy among LEGO fans, might just know their audience better than a person who creates a proposal based on a niche interest like classic cars or historical sailing vessels. A person who creates detailed CGI proposals may have an advantage over an average photograph of a MOC, but similarly a well-photographed model with some minor computer editing could easily displace low-quality LDD renders of a concept. It's all a matter of presentation. It should be noted that of proposals to reach 10,000 supporters, the first had no actual model pictures besides a couple concepts that didn't in fact make it into the actual product, the second involved photographs of a MOC rather than CGI, the third involved both CGI and photographs of concepts, and those since then have involved a mix of MOC photographs and CGI. Look at projects that haven't had strong support and I'm sure you'd likewise find a mix of CGI projects and photographs. It simply boils down to which projects in either category are presented more effectively and are based on concepts that appeal to a wide range of users.

This depends on how willing Peter Jackson is to let the franchise die... I'm not confident that movies could be made from other Middle-Earth stories like those in The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, especially since those wouldn't have the benefit of familiar franchise characters tying them together, but there are other potential ways of trying to keep the franchise alive. For instance, how about re-releasing the original Lord of the Rings film trilogy in 3-D as is being done with the Star Wars films currently? I'm sure this possibility hasn't been ignored. I agree that the books alone simply won't move merchandise the way theatrical films will. There will continue to be LotR merchandise, of course, but it will likely consist of niche products like tabletop role-playing games. Still, the biggest disadvantage of LEGO licensed themes is also a pretty significant advantage. TLG may have little control over the license's power to move merchandise, but at the same time this relieves them of a lot of the responsibility for marketing the story, the characters, and the franchise as a whole.

The build-a-mini stations I've been to didn't allow you to get parts that didn't form complete minifigures... I'm a bit jealous of your haul. I've only ever bought one package of Build-A-Minis. MINIFIG 1: Unprinted legs in Bright Orange (Orange) Torso with police print in Medium Blue Head with thin-mustached criminal print in Bright Yellow (Yellow) Ball cap in Bright Orange Handcuffs in Medium Stone Grey (Light Bluish Gray) MINIFIG 2: Legs with cheerleader print in White Torso with halter top print in Bright Orange Head with youthful freckled print in Bright Yellow Short ponytail in Dark Brown Push broom in Reddish Brown MINIFIG 3: Mermaid tail in Earth Green (Dark Green) Torso with mermaid print in Bright Yellow Head with freckled confident/scared print in Bright Yellow Long ponytail in Cool Yellow (Bright Light Yellow) Cutlass in Dark Stone Grey (Dark Bluish Gray)

Something I should point out about this brick is that it has one severe drawback-- it could very easily get stuck inside certain parts, like 1x1x5 columns. A regular Technic axle doesn't have this problem because it can slide in and out of the piece freely, but the presence of studs here would make it connect more securely and thus become difficult or impossible to remove (depending on which version of the column is being used). This problem would be present for pretty much any type of "2-sided stud" without any type of rim separating the upper and lower connection points.

I'd like to point out that computer games and such only account for SOME of the popular projects. It's true that many of the successful projects are based on licensed properties, but for every hugely successful computer/video game proposal (EVE Online, Portal, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft) there's a successful TV/movie-based proposal (Shaun of the Dead, Firefly, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Star Wars Dark Bucket, Back to the Future). The common denominator of all of these isn't being extremely nerdy properties but rather being properties whose fans have a strong online presence-- and yes, that includes a lot of nerds. On a side note, the majority of these are also ones whose fans strongly overlap with LEGO fans-- thus the number of Star Wars projects, since it's an existing LEGO licensed theme, the success of the Minecraft project, since the game's "creative building" premise is almost perfectly in sync with LEGO brand values, and the strong support of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic project, since LEGO fans are already fairly open to blatantly merchandise-driven brands. I'm a bit surprised you haven't heard of Portal, since it's become such a huge internet phenomenon-- I'm not much of a computer gamer and have never even played it myself, but I am well aware of the premise as well as the associated memes like the infamous "THE CAKE IS A LIE". Needless to say, the gameplay and the script have both been praised as creative and engaging. It shouldn't be ignored, though, that a strong online fan-following doesn't guarantee a project a lot of success. Most of the proposals that did get a lot of supporters usually had very well-designed concepts with a lot of work put into both design and presentation. This was in most cases necessary to gain the attention of fan sites (like the video-gaming news blog Kotaku, which has mentioned many of the great video game proposals) and people associated with the IP involved (like Simon Pegg, who mentioned the Shaun of the Dead Cuusoo proposal during a talk show appearance). Once plugged in this way, projects have usually seen significant increases in their amount of supporters. But there are plenty of "nerdy" projects that haven't even made it off the ground, like Oky's beautiful Avatar: The Last Airbender project, this Super Mario project, and many less impressive concepts based on IPs like Portal, Star Wars, or The Legend of Zelda.

Well, there do exist swimsuits that resemble miniskirts, and given how expensive the production of these minifigure parts likely is (they have printing that's even more complex than most traditional minifigures, along with a couple pre-assembled parts) I have no doubt that TLG might prefer to have only a set number of prints and molds in production for a while. Especially when those prints and molds are ones that can be used for tank tops, swimsuits, etc, rather than more specialized ones that are more limited in function. With that said, I hope the range of Friends clothing does improve next year. Currently, even the range of casual clothing is somewhat limited-- only Peter wears blue jeans, for instance, and Anna has the only longer skirt. Since Friends has proven successful I have no doubt we will see the selection of outfits improve as the years go on.

To be honest, I think the lack of 1x1 plates as extras provides further evidence that it's primarily related to the weight check, since 1x1 tiles are, in fact, included as extras, and 1x1 plates are not. How are 1x1 tiles more likely to bounce than 1x1 plates when they have more smooth surfaces to land on? Plus, many small Technic parts are not included as extras, specifically because they are included in bags with smaller parts which would go through a more precise weight check. And flick-fires, perhaps some of the most likely parts to get lost since they are designed to go flying through the air, are not normally included as extra pieces. The likelihood of parts getting lost doesn't strike me as nearly as good a reason for extra parts as the likelihood of parts not getting packaged in the sets in the first place due to not sending up red flags during the weight check.

It's a shame you won't be there, but hopefully by the time you are next able to attend I'll have that airship model I've been working on on LDD fully designed and built in real life! Just wanted to share that Brickfair recently revealed two of the LEGO employees who will be presenting at the event: Astrid Graabæk (designer of the Town Hall) and Kevin Hinkle (the North America community coordinator). Sounds like it should be a very fun event! I look forward to attending!

Putting in extras to prevent missing parts from slipping through the weight check has always struck me as the most likely scenario, since that tends to be the typical reason in mass production for including more than the needed amount of something. Just include one of each lightweight part, and it might be left out without being caught by the weight check. Include two, and it won't matter if one of them is missing. And if both of them are missing, then it will make a bigger difference in weight than if a single part were left out. Other common extra parts include some minifigure accessories like handcuffs, visors, binoculars, revolvers, etc. Even the antenna doesn't seem to be an exception. It's not the lightest part by any means, but according to Bricklink it's lighter even than a 1x3 plate. And since it tends to be bagged together with larger parts rather than tiny parts, it may go through a less precise weight check than bags containing lighter parts like 1x2 plates and tiles. That isn't to say there aren't exceptions, though. The Taj Mahal set had 17 extra 1x6 plates all bagged together, a decision the weight check cannot possibly explain.

Great review. In some ways, I feel this set is somewhat underwhelming compared to the Technic-intensive "construction" subtheme from several years back. But on the other hand, this set is far more impressive than many other dump trucks/haul trucks its size, especially with its simple but stylish hauling bed. Earlier dump trucks this size would normally have used a pre-fabricated hauling bed rather than a brick-built one. The dynamite is not entirely new. It debuted in 2009 and was used in the Pirates and Power Miners themes. The bracket is new, though. Its part number is 99207 and it began making its earliest appearances in this year's Avengers licensed sets, along with many other new bracket pieces.

I'm glad to see that TLG has not given up on this gaming model just because of LEGO Universe's failure... that implies that they are aware of the reasons LEGO Universe was unsuccessful and will avoid them this time around. I'm not too much of a gamer in general and have never had the patience to even dabble in MMOs, but still I recognize there are a lot of people who do enjoy that type of gameplay, and there's no reason TLG shouldn't take advantage of that if they can maintain their core values while doing so.

The most precision you can get with any scaffolding equipment (as far as I know) involves less of a scaffold and more of a process. It takes advantage of the minimal difference between the center of the hole on a Technic brick and the center of a stud on a headlight brick by using a 1x1 headlight brick, 1x1 Technic brick, a Technic pin with stud, and a 1x2 plate. The process itself is very fiddly and I can't exactly describe it, but by using this tiny offset I was able to create this LXF which should be free of any overlapping parts or unnecessary gaps. The most precision of all, of course, would be from editing the placement values of the bricks in a raw LXFML, but to be honest that kind of math makes my head hurt.

I agree that the lack of LEGO values like creative building was probably the Ninjago TV show's biggest weaknesses when compared to other LEGO TV/movie productions. The closest thing that ever occurred in the TV show was the "Tornado of Creation", which thankfully was used more than once. The use of imagination to transform the Golden Weapons into vehicles was also a nice touch, but still there was no actual building shown on screen in the series. At the same time, the storyline and characters were pretty compelling, for me anyway. I've read a few reviews that praise the series for not feeling like the characters were "ripped from some toy chest". So I hope that another series, if it does have more of a focus on building, doesn't become super-gimmicky. I don't think I'd want anything like the old "LEGO Maniac" comics where a real-world kid was whisked into a different LEGO theme each issue to solve the characters' problems by "building like crazy" and throwing together some wacky combination of sets that would save the day. This is meant as no offense to the LEGO Maniac character or those comics, which I enjoyed greatly in my childhood, but I don't think storytelling like that is deserving of or well-suited to a full television series. I haven't seen The Padawan Menace so can't really attest to its quality, but if it did feature building without becoming excessively gimmicky, then that's easily the type of storytelling ideal for a LEGO TV show.

Here's a news article including the official press release for the upcoming season of Ninjago. Doesn't really tell us much we didn't already know; mostly just a refresher on who the characters are. Speaking of characters, the cartoonnetwork.com characters page is also updated with new info on Lloyd.

Welcome to the herd. :) The Legend of Korra season finale was really good IMO. But I need to stop losing touch with how divided the fandom can be about these things. I've heard that a lot of people hated the finale, even if they had enjoyed the rest of the series. With LoK over for now, I'm going to have little incentive to watch TV regularly, but thankfully the Ninjago TV series will be back next month, so that should hold me over at least until I get back to college.

I wouldn't say "was only supposed to last one year". TLG considered making it a one-year theme at one point, but I think from early on they were prepared to follow up on it if it proved successful enough (they would have needed to, because at that time the amount of time it took to design sets and have them ready for production was a whole year, possibly even longer). I think this is probably the case with many themes that are only initially planned for one wave/one year. TLG might keep unused sketch models from the first wave in reserve so that a new wave of sets doesn't necessarily have to be created "from the ground up". The exceptions would be in cases where TLG didn't want to create their own competition by having too many sets of a certain "genre" on store shelves at one time. In these cases (I think Pirates likely fits in this category), I can imagine new waves potentially being spaced out enough that design for the second wave doesn't have to take place until preliminary sales figures for the first wave become available.

The new molds are one main reason AFOLs like the Friends theme, but the mainstream success, which comes largely from girls who weren't previously LEGO fans, has far less to do with the new molds. After all, if you've never bought LEGO before, then all molds will be "new" to you. I won't say the new molds don't play a role in creating new fans, but that's the case with any theme (besides perhaps Creator or Bricks & More). People wouldn't be nearly as interested in Ninjago if it didn't have so many cool ninja weapons, for instance. The point of creating new molds isn't just to appease AFOLs, it's also to fill a void that would otherwise be present in your new toy line. And in the case of Friends, that includes creating new figures that will appeal to girls who don't identify with the classic minifigure. If TLG could create gender-neutral sets that would correct the gender imbalance in LEGO buyers, they surely would. Hopefully we will see more of that now that Friends has demonstrated that yes, girls can enjoy building toys in the same numbers as boys. But that doesn't mean that boy-oriented and girl-oriented toys are a bad thing. A one-size-fits-all approach would not only risk alienating LEGO's strong reputation with boys, but also potentially not go far enough to even make a dent in LEGO's weaker reputation among girls. And it would marginalize any girls who do in fact have traditionally "feminine" interests or boys who have traditionally "masculine" interests. Are those individuals really undeserving of TLG's attention? The Friends theme is far from stereotypical. It's groundbreaking in a number of ways-- it breaks from toy industry tradition by marketing building toys with the same level of building value and play value as boy-oriented toys to girls, it breaks from LEGO tradition by introducing a newer, more realistic minifigure that still has interchangeable body parts, and it breaks from design tradition by being based not just on traditional market research and focus-group testing but rather on an anthropological study of how play patterns differ between girls and boys. Some aspects of it seem somewhat stereotypical, of course, like how some of its subject matter consists of things that girls have historically shown a strong interest in, like horseback riding and fashion. But in this way, is it really any more stereotypical than the City theme, which has subject matter boys have historically shown a strong interest in, like fire engines and police cars? It features many nice pastel colors, which is fairly normal among girls' toys, but aren't City, Hero Factory, and Ninjago sets just as stereotypical for including lots of bold primary colors like boys have often been shown to like? It'd be feeble reasoning to suggest that TLG should turn their backs on any and all aspects of successful toy design just to avoid stereotypes. Overall, I can't think of a single way in which the Friends theme is categorically inferior to any other LEGO theme. The sets are just as complex as boy-oriented or gender-neutral sets with the same price point and recommended age range. They are designed with the same emphasis on both building value and play value as any other theme. The set designs are just as diverse as in other themes, and are no less of a healthy childhood influence than other theme. Obviously they don't appeal to everyone, and some girls and boys will have different interests, but that is true of any theme, and I don't think it's fair to treat LEGO Friends differently than other themes just because it happens to be aimed at a different demographic.

There's a topic specifically about Australian price discrepancies here. Frankly, though, the answers LEGO gives for the price discrepancy sound fairly reasonable to me. Sending an individual package of something to one specific location definitely does not have the same costs associated with it as sending full shipments of sets across an entire country. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason LEGO costs so much in Australia is because the prices nationwide are raised to subsidize the higher costs of distributing sets to the more remote areas of the country. I won't claim Australian prices are fair, any more than the uncharacteristically-low prices we get in the U.S. are fair, but doing business on a global scale is complicated. The only reason I could think of for TLG charging higher prices in Australia when they don't have to is if Australians, for whatever reason, were willing to pay absurdly higher amounts of money for LEGO bricks in general than other parts of the world. And given the greater accessibility of Asian clone brands and the relatively weak presence TLG has in Australia compared to Europe or the United States, I see no reason that would be the case. I don't ever expect to see full pricing equity worldwide, but certainly I do hope we see Australian prices go down somewhat since TLG surely minimizes their audience in Australia with these preposterous prices.

Regarding the likelihood of new Ninjago sets in 2013: I asked Kevin Hinkle to clarify whether we could expect a new wave of sets in 2013. His response was that yes, there should be one more wave of new products, but he couldn't offer any time frame. Just to be certain I had all the bases covered, I asked him if this new wave was separate from the September wave we were already expecting. His response was that he wasn't quite sure if the September wave was the one communicated to him by the marketing team, but his guess is that there will be another new wave after those which have already been shown. So we still don't know what to expect with any certainty, but let's be honest with ourselves-- typically we don't even have this much of an idea what to expect until a list of the next year's sets has been leaked. In other news, we've got a press release about next month's new season of the TV series. It doesn't really tell us anything to expect that hints at possible new sets, but rather just a recap of who the key characters are. It does mention there will be a new online game on the Cartoon Network website, though it doesn't sound all that appealing from the description alone. I wish there were more heavily story-driven LEGO online games these days...

I dare say that today's LEGO sets are perhaps the best out of all my time as a LEGO fan (starting around 1994-1995). I can't really attest to the quality of earlier sets because I have difficulty thinking of them in the context of when they were released. For instance, some LEGO Space sets from prior to my time as a LEGO fan were quite good, but paled in comparison to later designs. Likewise, there were some Castle sets before my childhood that were admirable in some respects, but also fairly simplistic. Obviously set design occasionally took a dive, particularly in the late 90s, so there may have been peaks in the 70s or 80s, but I have a hard time judging that since I didn't experience these sets in the sequence in which they were released so I have a hard time keeping track of what preceded and followed these fan-favorite set designs.