Aanchir

His weapon is built using existing pieces-- in this case, one of the 8M "engine block" shells introduced in 2011's Fire Villains (92215), along with some classic System pieces (a loudhailer/megaphone and an antenna).

Monster Fighters definitely has the story potential for a TV series, what with its diverse characters and potential for "monster-of-the-week" storytelling. But a full TV series probably hinges on the theme getting another wave, and we have no way of knowing whether that would happen or how they might expand the theme to give it greater longevity. Certainly if they're going to invest in a full TV show for a theme, I'd expect it to be one like Ninjago that they can keep going for several years, and not just one like Atlantis that they plan for a single year and then expand if it proves successful. I'd also expect it to be one that they're promoting heavily in ways other than just with a TV show. With that said, I'm curious whether it might in fact be LEGO Friends that is planned for a TV series. Like Ninjago, it seems to have been designed for the long term. Like Ninjago, it's been marketed very heavily since the beginning of the year. We know the LEGO Friends theme is planned to have its own mini-movie at some point in the year, along with some books. LEGO Friends would be a risky concept for a TV show, because girl-oriented TV shows, like girl-oriented building toys, don't necessarily have the best track record for success. At the same time, it shouldn't go unmentioned that one of TLG's main competitors, Hasbro, has been heavily investing in television programs based on its more girl-oriented brands like My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, and Care Bears. And at least a few of these programs, My Little Pony in particular, really seem to have paid off. Since the LEGO Friends theme seems to be proving successful on store shelves, it's possible that a TV series could be the logical next step. A LEGO Friends TV show, like the toy it's based on, would target a different demographic than LEGO Ninjago, and so in terms of cultural immersion it could be a very good thing for TLG. Also, Cartoon Network (which will be airing the new LEGO TV series, whatever it turns out to be) would have a vested interest in broadening their own demographic, since they currently lack any girl-oriented programming, and have seen success in superficially-girly shows like The Powerpuff Girls in the past. Obviously if it does happen, I'm not at all expecting the kind of boundary-crossing phenomenon that has been seen with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I think there are probably only a certain number of story creators who could really pull something like that off by design, and even MLP achieved its success with unintended demographics partly through chance. Hopefully the LEGO Friends TV special, and a TV show if such a thing actually happens, will at least achieve what MLP:FiM originally hoped to accomplish by being a girl-oriented TV program that parents and siblings don't find shallow and nauseating. It will probably depend at least in part on how great a risk TLG is willing to take, and I can't say I'm brimming with confidence. But of course this is all just speculation. The new LEGO TV series, whatever it is, is slated for 2013, so for all we know it could be a brand-new LEGO intellectual property rather than one of the themes already announced.

As Kadabra says, "Mata Green" is one shade darker than Bright Green. In TLG's color naming system, "Mata Green" is called Dark Green. Bricklink and Peeron just call it Green. It is a bit confusing since normally the "default shade" of a color will officially be Bright Red, Bright Blue, etc., but green is the exception. Incidentally, "Metru Green" (which Bricklink, Peeron, and most AFOLs call Dark Green) is officially called Earth Green, which is a shade darker than Dark Green in TLG's color naming system. Here's a chart I put together on LDD a long time ago showing the most systematic color names in TLG's palette. Some of the colors have somewhat surprising relationships with one another-- for instance, "Dark Tan" is officially Sand Yellow, one shade darker than "Tan", which is called Brick Yellow. "Mata Brown" (TLG's classic brown color) is officially Earth Orange, and thus has the same relationship with Bright Orange (classic orange) as "Metru Blue" (Earth Blue) has to "Mata Blue" (Bright Blue). The pre-2004 Pink and Dark Pink colors are Light Reddish Violet and Medium Reddish Violet, respectively, and thus they are both lighter versions of Bright Reddish Violet (Magenta). [/colornerdery] Anyway, I'm definitely fond of Stormer XL, though I'm curious what he would look like with a Breakout torso shell instead of a 2.0 torso shell for his abdomen. I don't mind that he uses stickers, and I think they help his design greatly, though I can't say for certain whether I prefer the stickered versions of his drones or the versions on the preliminary model shown in the Toy Fair press kit, which were blended much like his sword. In any event I like him much more than Rocka XL, whose design seemed much more cluttered to me. Speeda Demon is a cool design, and I think his Bright Yellowish Green primary color goes well with his Medium Lilac bike. But in terms of MOCing potential he doesn't have that many Medium Lilac parts, and some of them are Technic parts that wouldn't necessarily work well on a non-vehicle MOC. Also, his bike just doesn't seem to have the same charm as the Furno Bike. That set was armored very well so it didn't feel very framework-like at all despite an extremely simple build. This one, on the other hand, has lots of bare Technic beams and gappy areas. Core Hunter is cool-looking, and I actually quite like the use of Titanium Metallic for his claw and Plasma Gun. After all, it helps them stand out from his extremely simple color scheme. Of course, I might have greatly preferred his Plasma Gun if it had been Bright Red or Black on top and Titanium Metallic on the bottom. I like Bulk's color scheme until you get to his black feet, but those are easy to replace with either Titanium Metallic or Silver Metallic through Pick-A-Brick. I'd prefer Silver Metallic because it would help organize his color scheme-- Titanium Metallic for his torso and limbs, Silver Metallic for his head and extremities. Incidentally, I really don't think the silver Hero foot on Rocka's back makes much sense in the context of that set, but at the same time I'm grateful for it because if not for that, the Silver Metallic foot piece would probably no longer be on Pick-A-Brick! Nex and Stringer are still amazing, and I feel their color schemes are organized very well despite not having torso shells in their primary colors. Both also firmly adhere to their thematic origins (Stringer's sonic theme and Nex's "tech" theme). They're the kind of sets that make it abundantly clear that these Hero Factory sets were designed with these specific characters in mind. Stringer might have been better if his amplifier shell detail had been Black instead of Titanium Metallic, but he still looks awesome. Voltix looks cool to me. Unlike some people, I don't think he desperately needs more purple. While including more purple parts might have been OK for MOCing, I think his color scheme makes a lot of sense with his Titanium Metallic primary color, Bright Red secondary color, and Medium Lilac "auxiliary color", which ends up feeling like one solid suit of armor. The black feet again interfere with this slightly, but it's nothing a Pick-A-Brick order can't fix. As I've mentioned before, the main improvements I can imagine would be making his blue wires solid blue rather than blended with transparent, and possibly removing the transparent blue blending from his lightning pieces. While the lightning pieces do look awesome in their revolutionary three-color blend, it keeps them from matching the sphere and tentacle as well as they should. I still find XT-4 a masterpiece with his non-humanoid proportions and his well-balanced asymmetry. The only change I could see myself making would be matching the color of his laser to the color of his eye.

Those horns are a cool feature, and the color scheme is decent, but overall there are some flaws that keep me from really enjoying this MOC. The main one is the proportions-- the body is far too long compared to a legs. A good rule of thumb is that the legs+feet should be around the same length as the torso+head. Obviously you don't have to always abide by this rule, as there are times when you might not want realistic proportions, but in this case it could have helped the MOC a great deal. Also as optimus99 said, all your links go to the same picture so I can't really judge the other aspects of the MOC besides those I can see in the main image.

Let's not call that color medium green. Medium green is already a color (a discontinued one, but still, no need to create confusion). TLG, Bricklink, and Peeron all call Green Lantern's primary color Bright Green. I wouldn't want to remove the blue wires, although if TLG released solid blue ones without blending I'd use those in a heartbeat. Also, the whip is bright yellow-- it has never been orange; it just looks orange in some pictures compared to the lightning bolts on his head and back because those are blended with transparent blue and thus skew greenish. A lot of people have all sorts of ideas about how to improve Voltix's color scheme, but I worry that some of them (like coloring the whip black or removing the blue wires) really make him lose the electrical motif that defines him.

A non-patterned bedsheet can be an easy backdrop to rig up if it has no major creases. Preferably it should be a color that contrasts with your MOC; a neutral color if possible. Usually I just improvise a backdrop from my surroundings (not very professional, I know) but this solution has served me well when writing reviews and photographing MOCs. I'm sure some more proficient MOCists can offer you better advice, but I figured I'd give my two cents in case you wanted a "cheap & easy" solution.

Errrmmm... Not sure what to think of this MOC. For one thing, it's mostly a recolor of Hulk. Some of the changes you made are a bit awkward, like the extra Hero Cores, which end up feeling distracting rather than helpful. But most importantly, I have to say the Hulk's build simply does not work for a female character. I was wondering whether (and fearing that) someone would use Hulk's chestplate for a Breez MOC, but even now I can't tell if your intention was to use it ironically or taking the "they're robots; they don't have to look feminine" line seriously. I'm afraid making a female character this absurdly masculine just doesn't work for me. The one thing I do like about this MOC is the color scheme, which is organized somewhat nicely with the exception of all the extra Hero Cores.

In the Agents theme, a few of the sets have stickers labeled with the brand "Stafford Engines", a reference to set designer Mark Stafford. Later this brand got re-used on the racing uniform of the Minifigures Series 3 Race Car Driver. An obscure BIONICLE one: in 2002 and 2003 there were collectible rubber masks/brains called Krana. The back of each Krana featured a three-letter code written in BIONICLE's Matoran alphabet. The codes were never used for anything as far as I know, but the first letter of all eight provides the letters needed to spell "BIONICLE". Not sure if that one counts since it's not a cross-theme thing, but I'd say it's more than obscure enough to be considered an easter egg. Similarly to the "NNENN" on the Alien Defense HQ's "Vic Viper" model (underneath an image of an actual viper), "NABII" is printed on two of the stickers of 7067 Jet-Copter Encounter. Nabii, a.k.a. Mark Stafford, designed the set. In non-set-related Easter Eggs, the Space Police district headquarters in the Space Police III web animations include display cases showing Space Police I and Space Police II uniforms. Inside the same headquarters is a printed tile depicting an issue of Brickjournal! In another video, a billboard is seen reading "Enjoy M:COLA: The Magnetic Beverage", with a logo that references M:Tron. "The Adventures of Clutch Powers" is loaded with them. There's a kind of heavy-handed one where the scientist who provides vehicles and other technology for Clutch's team is named "Artie Fol". His name badge simply reads "A. FOL". Clutch Powers himself has a LEGO reference in his name, since "clutch power" is how TLG describes the connectivity between LEGO bricks, and one of the features they consider emblematic of the superiority of LEGO bricks over those of competitors (which may be too loose or too tight). The lead female character is named Peg Mooring, which I believe may be a LEGO Technic reference? Obvious visual references include this statue resembling the famous sculpture "The Thinker" and the ancient monument LEGOhenge (which is mentioned by name). The LEGO Atlantis TV special didn't have too many easter eggs that jumped out at me, but there was the newspaper "The AFOL Times" shown towards the end. The BIONICLE movies had a lot of easter eggs written in the Matoran alphabet, but in most cases there was no intended meaning (words like Technic and LEGO would sometimes show up, but the context tended to just be some place where they wanted to add detail with some writing). The Hero Factory online game "Mission: Savage Planet" has one moment where a character tells you a password to access something. The password is "SLIZERS". On the Hero Factory site from 2010, the Customer Testimonials page had one obscure reference. One of the robot customers listed is named Cristal Matrix. This is a reference to Crystal Matrix, the username of the founder of the BIONICLE wiki BIONICLEsector01. They're no longer on LEGO.com, but in 2011 the Ninjago Weapons Dictionary had a weapon called the Nick Dagger, which is described as "rocking" and having "super-star stabbing and staying in power". It's an obvious reference to Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger. More from the 2011 weapons dictionary here. In the LEGO Ninjago TV series, an in-universe video game mentioned once and seen occasionally on billboards and other advertisements is Sitar Legend, an obvious reference to the real-life video game Guitar Hero. LEGO Battles is already a multi-theme crossover, but one of the cutscenes for the "Space" campaigns features a skeletal astronaut wearing a Blacktron II uniform. That's all I've got for right now, but I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting.

If that is what you mean, then we have no information suggesting a Monster Fighters TV show at all. Those word bubbles on the name cards describe TV advertisements, not actual TV programs. See also here, here, here, and here. So I guess there's nothing more to discuss. Perhaps the moderators can close this topic, or perhaps they can just change the title and make it into a topic speculating about the mysterious LEGO TV show we know we'll be getting. This topic remains complete speculation either way.

Great review. This build is certainly unique compared to many of the other Creator houses, given the landscape around all three builds. I'd like to make a few corrections, though. The 16x16 bright green plate (91405 has only appeared in seven sets, and since the piece itself was only introduced last year it may still be new to many builders. It is, however, still easy to obtain since it's available through Pick-A-Brick. The brick yellow (tan) 8x16 plate (92438) is even rarer-- this mold was also brand-new last year, and the tan one has only previously appeared in 2508 and 4644. Your review seems to confuse them with the 16x16 baseplate and 8x16 baseplate, which are different than the ones in this set in that they are only half the thickness of normal plates and have no anti-studs on the underside (making them much less versatile). Last year regular plates, not baseplates, became the standard building surfaces in many themes, although baseplates still see occasional use in sets like the Modular Buildings.

I think it's understandable why they kept it with limited options, though. After all, if they had made it just an online version of LDD, then it would have been redundant. Part of the point, I think, is to have a simpler, more intuitive building system for younger builders, not to mention to have something that continues to be compatible with the games "Mission: Ordeal of Fire" and "Mission: Savage Planet". Hopefully there will in fact be future updates that provide more of an incentive to use the new Hero Builder, or at least fix some of its flaws. Making heroes built with it compatible with the Breakout game, for instance, would be cool, although that of course already has its own customization system so that might not work out too well. Overall, though, I wasn't expecting anything that was a much better experience than LDD. I am slightly disappointed that there's no "animate" option besides changing the poses, but it's not like I expected to use the Hero Creator much more than I had before the update.

I think it works just fine on Voltix; it's one of his three main colors along with Bright Red and Medium Lilac. If anything I feel the black feet he and Bulk use does both sets more harm than the gunmetal, since using black for the skeleton hardly justifies using it for the feet when there are already three other colors competing for top spot. I definitely don't mind the titanium metallic this year too much, but it would be nice to see more shells in silver metallic to balance it out. More blue and bright green would also be appreciated greatly, although I can see why lime tends to be preferred over bright green. Lime just has more of a "high-energy" feel, which suits poisonous characters like Corroder and Toxic Reapa. And since there's already a green Hero, I can see why they wouldn't want a hero set with some other form of green as the primary color.

So it turns out herorecon.LEGO.com now redirects to the main Hero Factory website. And sure enough, this means the Hero Creator on the main site has been updated to the new, 3D version. Known changes: Unity 3D web player now needed to run the Hero Creator Heroes can be rotated while building Two body types to build from-- classic Hero Recon Team hero and Toxic Reapa Parts no longer limited to those existing in real life, although not all real-life colors can be used "Pose" button puts your Hero in an action pose More parts available-- 2001 "Fire Sword", 2002 "Ice Blades", 2012 blade from Batman/Breez/Black Phantom/Stormer XL, etc. 2.0 head now has glowing eyes Gallery and Hero Creator now hosted on HeroFactory.LEGO.com Heroes built before update cannot be edited Things that stayed the same: Name options and other story details (favorite food, etc.) Heroes you've built before are still in the gallery. Building process is still more limited than LDD, though probably more intuitive and engaging for younger users. Heroes can still be used in Mission: Ordeal of Fire and Mission: Savage Planet, though they are probably simplified and standardized just like those on the old Hero Creator. Here's my first Hero built with the new Hero Creator What are your thoughts? Think you'll be using the new Hero Creator more, or less? What do you think could still improve the experience?

Another thing to consider-- since it obviously isn't trying to have flat walls on the sides like the modular buildings, it could very easily hinge open somewhere around the center. I think that would work well visually for a haunted house so each room could become a sort of a diorama. An open back could accomplish the same thing in some sets, but this one looks so deep that an open back alone might make all the rooms very dark and hard to access for play.

I like the car's design in a lot of respects, but the seating area for the minifigure feels extremely awkward. Jack MacHammer looks like he might tumble out at any moment! I'm sure some builders won't mind modding the seating area though since they might want to remove the bulky launcher anyway.

Good review. I like that this set uses a similar action feature to 2258, and that it is less conspicuous here. At the same time it doesn't seem to have the same effect when it's just a few leaves/branches being knocked aside rather than a thick grove of bamboo being slashed with a sword. The car is nice and compact but not at all <insert that tiresome argument>, closer in design to some of the cars in the Indiana Jones theme than to the simpler vehicle designs in Pharaoh's Quest and Adventurers. The tree is also very intricate and cohesive-looking, although it would have been cool if those spikes and bones were glow-in-the-dark. The front of the tree is also very flat compared to the back and sides. The Werewolf here is great. I don't have much preference between this guy and the one from Minifigures Series 4, which have very different design considerations. But I definitely prefer this werewolf with his slightly geometric face design to the one from the LEGO Studios "horror" wave or the Harry Potter theme. This one feels a lot more like it could be related to the LEGO dog-- either style-- than the old one did. The fur on the back of his head is a lot more detailed than I expected, though-- I guess no more detailed than a typical LEGO minifigure hair piece, but I was expecting some flat "tufts" of fur in layers rather than such intricate texture. The claws on the werewolf look much better than I thought they would, mainly because they're curved.

How was "The Spirit of Competition" a typical love triangle? For one thing, there were at least four points, if you count Bolin. Not a huge divergence from a bog-standard love triangle, but overall I felt the episode was at least as original as the more romance-oriented episodes of A:TLA like "The Fortuneteller" or "The Cave of Two Lovers" (both of which, I have to say, were somewhat sappy and would have bored me immensely if they weren't loaded with comic relief). I've been loving Legend of Korra. It's got great music, a deep cultural component (even in A:TLA the technological level was far from the only thing making the four nations unique, and the same is true here), and that continues to be true of Republic City's culture what with pro-bending, the anti-bending movement, and of course its very Asian visual and architectural styles. It truly feels like what the 1920s-1930s might have been like if A:TLA's history rather than our own had provided the cultural background. Obviously the complexity of the storyline is a matter of opinion, but Korra's storylines are at least complex enough to move me emotionally in the same way that Airbender's storylines did. I also find myself investing in the characters in just the same way, and wondering about what's still to come. There's absolutely no conceivable reason why a cartoon like Legend of Korra wouldn't have any editors at all. Script editing happens for pretty much anything that goes on TV (at least, everything that has a script ). Chances are the production for Legend of Korra takes pretty much the same form as the production of Avatar: The Last Airbender except perhaps for the creators applying experience they got through working on A:TLA.

Which Toy Fair was this mentioned at? There was no "announcement" about it at the LEGO Collectors' Preview in New York (it may have been mentioned to an individual visitor or group of visitors, or perhaps announced later at the actual Toy Fair event) and no mention of it in the press kit I was given. If it was the New York Toy Fair, I'm surprised it took so long for this information to emerge here on Eurobricks-- we've known for a couple months now that there would be another LEGO TV show to capitalize on the success of the Ninjago TV show, but I had been operating under the assumption that it hadn't been revealed yet. Guess I could have been wrong! Monster Fighters is an interesting choice for a TV show, because it had seemed to me like it would be primarily driven by web media. But I guess this probably explains the detailed sketches, paintings, and story information in the Monster Fighters web videos. I am kind of curious how it might fare compared to Ninjago, seeing as Ninjago has a lot of facets TV producers like to include in shows-- youthful protagonists, a fair number of supporting characters, and of course colorful character designs. At the same time, Monster Fighters is perhaps more suited to "monster of the week"-based storytelling. If the TV show proves successful, it could also be advantageous to the toy line itself. Up until now, I had assumed TLG would steer clear of monster archetypes that were very obscure and specific, but a successful story component could allow TLG to introduce a wider range of antagonists, just as Ninjago has done this year with the five Serpentine tribes which each have unique powers. If you have any links to sources where I can read more about this development, I'd greatly appreciate it. Chances are I won't be investing in Monster Fighters the way I have been in Ninjago, but I do want to keep a close eye on it. And since that was basically my attitude about the first year of Hero Factory (a theme which I have been collecting since its second wave), who knows? I might end up going back on this decision!

If this does in fact happen ("in negotiations" could mean a lot of things), then I'm hoping for the best. At any rate, Hero Factory's various media has been so varied in both mood and quality that I reckon there won't be too much uproar even if it does disappoint. Live action is an interesting idea, and certainly implies an Earth-based film, which I don't mind. I've heard multiple people tried to write screenplays for a BIONICLE movie in that theme's early days, and they were often rejected because they involved introducing human kids to the BIONICLE universe (presumably from writers who figured it would be too hard for kids to identify with robotic characters). But Hero Factory has done "crossovers" with Earth multiple times before, like in Hero Factory FM, the 2010 product ads, and the Hero Factory designer videos. So such a decision would be nothing new to the theme, which has a loose story that allows for such things without automatically breaking willing suspension of disbelief. Overall it will be interesting to see where this leads. My main hope for it has nothing to do with the movie's eventual quality. I just hope that TLG won't be forced to give up too much creative freedom on such an ambitious venture.

When you're on the page for any of the individual tracks, right-click on the music player frame and click "inspect element". The frame that pops up should show a filename ending in ".mp3" somewhere toward the center. Click on that to go to the "resources" tab, and then right click the white, textless box on the right and click "Save As". There may be a simpler way of doing this, but I don't normally use Google Chrome and only figured this out for you using trial-and-error.

Some great photos of the Ninjago Miniland's grand opening can be seen here. I continue to be impressed seeing in detail how some parts of the attraction were built. From YouTube videos alone I couldn't appreciate how well details like the sails of the Destiny's Bounty and the rotors of the Rattlecopter were scaled up. The Bounty also gives me some ideas about how I might scale it back down into a minifigure-scale show-accurate Bounty, something I've been attempting for some time on LDD.

Well, MLP has done a remarkable job appealing even outside its original target audience, so I don't think that would be a huge problem. The young girls who are fans of the show and toys are a significantly loyal audience on their own. But when you have an adult fandom that pays hundreds or even thousands of dollars for custom-made character plushies on a regular basis, it's hard to imagine people simply ignoring MLP building toys, especially if they have the quality LEGO brand name attached to them. Not that that's likely to happen, but I'm confident that neither TLG nor Hasbro will have any reasons to think this product will not have strong demand-- at least, assuming that the LEGO Friends theme does its job and demonstrates that girls are a viable market for building toys. I'm not going to lie: I want to see the MLP project reach 10,000 supporters whether it becomes a product or not, and I think it would be a good thing both as a member of the "brony" community and as a LEGO fan. If the MLP project is rejected, Hasbro is still certain to take notice of how much support it got, which might inspire them to make MLP building toys or other products aimed towards adult collectors (hopefully if they do so the figures won't be as hideous as the "Kreons" in their Transformers and Battleship lines). And I think it will be valuable precedent for LEGO Cuusoo to see a project get rejected for reasons other than inappropriate content. Also TLG might create measures to encourage more feasible licensed proposals. While I think a rule against projects where licenses can't be secured would be pointless, stifling, and impossible to enforce, there are other possible solutions like perhaps giving licensed products some intermediate threshold after which they will enter into licensing discussions with the rightsholders and share the results of those talks as soon as possible. In general there are a lot of Cuusoo proposals that "push the envelope" and could be valuable in further shaping the Cuusoo platform into a reliable form. The MLP project is one I can actually give my full support due to liking both the model concept and the franchise enough to actually buy such products. But it's far from the only project that could run into licensing issues but still gets my support. The Scrabble project would be an amazing product IMO, but it would have even more serious licensing issues than the My Little Pony project (since Hasbro owns the rights to the Scrabble name and concept in the US and Canada while Mattel, another competitor in the toy industry, owns them in the rest of the world). In my opinion, since the point of Cuusoo is to gauge demand for potential LEGO products, it isn't doing its job if users limit their support to what they believe is "realistic". I base my support purely on whether I would buy a product of any proposal, and I think the Cuusoo platform as a whole will benefit if others do the same.

From what I've heard, even those can leave scratches. It usually doesn't make any difference on opaque parts, but transparent parts are a whole different story. Removing prints from transparent parts without leaving any visible scratches could prove challenging.

I think part of the reason that location-based sets are hard to design, though, is that the chances of them being recognizable and well-received are much slimmer than with the iconic vehicles of Star Wars. Remember all the outrage over last year's Echo Base? Even though it went above and beyond in its attempts to incorporate multiple familiar scenes, a lot of people struggled to see any significant resemblance to Echo Base in the design as a whole. Often with location-based sets the emphasis has to be on either interior detail (Echo Base, Home One, Cloud City) or on external appearance (Battle of Endor). Some sets have tried to balance the two and ended up scarcely resembling either, like the older Jabba's Palace. What this Jabba's Palace does remarkably well is depicting the location from both the interior and exterior in a way that makes it look familiar. I can't think of a single location-based Star Wars set that has done quite this well at that. But at the same time, it seems doing so is extremely costly. While I have no doubt that the many complex figures drive up the price significantly, the observations about the set's weight relative to its piece count make it clear that the large plates, curved roof slopes, and large wall elements aren't cheap to include in a set. I'm certainly hoping that Jabba's Palace proves successful in order to show TLG that yes, massive location-based sets with equal attention paid to the interior and exterior can pay off in sales, but since some AFOLs seem to consider the price exorbitant, I can't be sure that its success will be enough to send that message. And until TLG gets the idea that buyers will be willing to pay more for this kind of set, then I think locations like Theed Palace are still a ways off.

The MLP controversy would not be cleared up until TLG actually tried to obtain the MLP license from Hasbro, since it is possible for TLG and Hasbro to cooperate on something if they think there will be a mutual benefit. It's extremely unlikely that it would happen, but that's just because Hasbro and TLG both happen to be major toy manufacturers. Since Kre-O products are already manufactured by an external company (the Korean clone brand Oxford), it's silly to assume that Hasbro would never give a toy license to any other toy company. The odds of them giving it out to a major company like TLG are just much less favorable than giving it out to a company like Oxford that doesn't present any competitive risk. This might be part of the reason there is no "pre-screening" process for licenses. In a situation where obtaining a license is unlikely but possible, TLG will have a much stronger position in the negotiations if they have both evidence that a lot of people support the partnership and statistical data on what kind of people are among the supporters. Opening the negotiations before they have begun to build their bargaining position could be a lot riskier, and even media-based licenses with no licensing complications could end up being turned down if TLG's only supporting argument is that "a person on the internet proposed this neat idea!"