Aanchir

I think that while the controversy of the theme is a little bit overblown in some places like certain Facebook groups, it doesn't seem right to dismiss the controversy as stuff and nonsense from beginning to end. Remember that before the sets were seen in detail, AFOLs were often among the strongest critics of the theme, asking why a girl-oriented theme was even necessary instead of making the regular themes more gender-neutral. Once pics of the figs emerged AFOLs criticized the "segregation" of boys' and girls' themes even more, pointing out that girls introduced to LEGO through Friends would not be able to build their collection with sets from other themes, and that girls who were already LEGO fans could not include the Friends figs in their minifigure collections or in their play without difficulty. Now that the sets have been released and high-quality images of them have emerged, some of the criticisms like those aboutjuniorization have fallen by the wayside, and even some of the criticisms of the sets being "stereotypically girly" have become weaker with the realization that pink is not central to all the sets' color schemes and that there are very non-traditional sets like Olivia's Invention Workshop. Also, AFOLs with daughters have often reported that the sets have appealed to them successfully and have inspired just as much creative play. But even though some of the "cons" have become weaker and the "pros" stronger, there are still things to criticize about the theme, at least from a non-AFOL's point of view. We shouldn't trivialize the fact that many of the stereotypical aspects of girls' toys are still present in the theme to some degree. Even if this isn't something we all agree is a problem, it is a fact that for many people is reason for concern, given how inundated girls are with these same types of influences and how desperate some parents are to find toys for their girls that avoid these gender stereotypes. Even if boycotting LEGO is too extreme a response to this theme's weaknesses, it's not as though LEGO has totally skirted all of the pitfalls that girl-oriented toys and media tend to have, and we shouldn't ignore these areas in which the theme still has room for improvement.

I guess since the original post you quoted has been edited, it's too late for a "you wouldn't like me when I'm constipated!" joke. Ah well. I'm not sure how well a Hulk transforming feature would work in a set, but that's just because the Batman transforming feature in the Batcave set isn't exactly concise, and the Hulk figure is bigger to begin with. Depending on the size of the set (forgive me if I missed this), it could possibly be done, but I have some degree of doubt.

Thanks for the pics! The somewhat short and chubby designs with Disney-style eyes remind me of the film Lilo & Stitch more than anything else. Sleeping Beauty's Room, Cinderella's Carriage, and Cinderella's Castle are quite overwhelmingly pink compared to the actual movies they are based on, which is a real disappointment, but not really too different from what I'd expect in a girl-oriented line like Disney Princesses. The two Cinderella sets are probably the nicest in terms of architecture, although Snow White's set is the least overtly "girly" and so will probably be the AFOL favorite. I like all the decorated parts in the sets. Don't eat those apples, Snow White! I rarely keep up with Duplo, so can't totally speak to which parts are new, but I can say the parts selection is much more sophisticated than when I played with them. There is a lot more variety in plates, and they appear in more sets. There are lots of rounded parts, one of which I recognize from the similarly girl-oriented Creative Cakes set. Some of the castle elements also are familiar from Duplo's ambitious foray into medieval fantasy in the mid-2000s. At the same time, basic bricks and simple constructions are still the order of the day. It's nice to see that the builds, even for the large Cinderella's Castle set, still seem manageable to young kids. While some might prefer for preschoolers to be challenged, I know that a toy that frustrates them will not give them the same enjoyment as one that they can build, either according to instructions or based on their own imaginations, with relative ease. And the parts, even the larger ones, allow for a certain degree of versatility. While the smaller sets don't have enough parts to make too wide a range of things from one set alone, and their diverse colors would make meaningfully color-coordinated play a challenge, they compensate for this with relatively small and simple bricks that can be arranged and rearranged in at least a few different ways.

I'm surprised so many people dislike the color. I think Dark Orange is an excellent color for a brick building, and in fact the modular schoolhouse my brother and I were designing on LDD is primarily Dark Orange and Brick Yellow (tan). We might have to redesign that so it uses a color that hasn't been used before, depending on whether there are any other colors that would look appropriate and have the right parts available... but it's not like it was a 100% finished design to begin with (we'd been having trouble coming up with a satisfactory concept for the chain-link fences around the playground).

I agree. Here you can see that in the show they're quite visibly different. Granted, the show isn't always exactly like the sets (watching Savage Planet earlier to get screenshots, I observed that Rocka's claw piece is based on a preliminary version rather than on the final part, and of course there are stylistic differences like giving all weapons visible handholds), but in this case I see no reason the feet would look that different from Hero feet if they weren't different at all in the set.

It's neither political correctness nor copyright laws, since Little Red Riding Hood is neither politically controversial nor under copyright. I think it's just a matter of making sure the minifigures are depicted as archetypes and not specific characters. This allows TLG to take more liberties in the product descriptions and minifig designs without young kids feeling that TLG got it "wrong" because it doesn't match their preferred movie or storybook depictions. Someone in the topic about the VIP minifigures set mentioned how a kid had disliked the Elf greatly because it didn't look like one of Santa's elves-- these are probably the types of situations TLG tries to avoid by using generic names over particular character names. "Grandma visitor" is a bit of an odd name, but I don't get the "creepiness" aspect people are going on about, and I don't want to hear it explained. I'm happier not knowing.

At this scale, getting the sails better would be difficult, although I acknowledge that Matija Grguric's is better in some ways. In others, though, it strikes me as less impressive-- for instance, the sails of the set are smoother-looking. Also there are just as many gaps in the MOC's design as in the set's, and no windows. I'm not "glossing over" the problems with the set; I think they've been stated enough times that to repeat them would be redundant. If you insist, the set has lots of gaps. The sails are terribly imprecise. That's about the limit of the major flaws to the set. To some people, these disadvantages outweigh the advantages; for me they don't necessarily. It's at least as good as many of the other Architecture sets in that it's a recognizable stylistic depiction of the building in question.

That's never happened with my Exo-Force hair from as far back as 2006, or with my BIONICLE Krana and Kraata from as far back as 2002. There was at one point a problem (sometime in the mid-2000s I think, although I'm not sure as I didn't encounter it myself) with rubber tires being sticky straight out of the package, but from my experience this isn't something that develops over time-- I have rubber tires from Technic sets of the 90s that are still in roughly the same condition they were in when I got them.

I never thought the medallions were meant to have a 1:1 relationship with real-world animals. I figured they were just stylistic representations of the elements the Ninja embodied. For instance, a lot of people feel Jay's medallion looks like an octopus or squid, but I feel it seems more like just a thundercloud. If not that, a jellyfish perhaps-- at least that has the "stinging" characteristic that could be an analogy for lightning powers. Kai's and Zane's are definitely both based (at least in part) on big cats of some kind, but other than that I see no definite connections to real-world animals.

They obviously have to simplify things to make them concise and appealing. It'd take a lot longer to say "Sometimes he's super strong but kinda dumb, and that's good for the Avengers, but sometimes he's a scientist without super-strength, and that's pretty good too!" Keep in mind also that they're marketing the character, not just the product. So even if the product can't shift between being super-strong and being scientifically-minded, the character can, and as long as they don't imply that the product has a legitimate transforming function they can use both assets of the character for marketing.

It's a special edition (store exclusive). Not sure what store it's exclusive to, though. Thanks for all the descriptions and links! The descriptions for the NRG characters are also quite interesting: Also, since the update to the Characters page on the Ninjago website, I couldn't help but notice how many minifigures there are this year. 2011 had 20 different minifigures, not counting skeleton warriors who lacked armor or who had no or alternate headgear. 2012 has at least 33 new minifigures, not counting ZX ninja who lack shoulder armor.

No. The same Kendo mask appears in several other sets: 9446, 9455, 9456, 9457, 9551, 9558, and 9563. It's a lovely piece, but it's not exclusive to this set by any means (although it is new this year).

I still think Stringer's weapon is a guitar; that's how he seems to be holding it in some of the pics, and I feel it can't be a coincidence. As for Bulk, I don't see any gunmetal on him besides his gun, the "rifle" pieces on his shoulder weapon, and maybe the shell detail pieces on his lower legs. All his other shells seem to be either orange or silver. I don't think it's wishful thinking at all. Bulk's parts shouldn't look at all like BP's armor from the retailer's catalog, since all the Hero pics are renders rather than photos, but as for your other concerns I expect all the Heroes will have chest patterns-- no reason not to at this point. Preliminary photos don't always show the same stage of development for sets by any means-- remember that the preliminary fire villains all were photos, none of them had printed shells, and all of them had transparent fluorescent reddish orange shells, whereas the preliminary villains we saw for the first Breakout wave were almost completely finalized.

That was top-of-head printing. Figs can have printing on top, on the back, and on the front. The "top print" area overlaps the sides a bit, but I don't know if it does so enough to work well for the wings on Cap's mask.

Thanks for the pics. Stringer definitely looks Bright Blue (Mata Blue), but it could be a new color. If it is I'm not sure how I'd feel about it since it seems so very similar to the Bright Blue we know and love, but maybe the difference is greater in real life. Speeda Demon looks cool and very unique. I wish his bike were as stylish as the Furno Bike though. It feels a lot less cohesive. Even with the new building system they can do better I'm sure. Maybe finalized pics will show it in a better light, but in this pic it's a bit cluttered looking. Love the jet engine, though. Stormer XL's shoulder shells seem to be solid blue in this pic-- the same color as Stringer's torso-- but they look transparent fluorescent blue in the TV episodes. So I wouldn't call all the colors confirmed just yet. All the heroes look excellent, and I'm sure they'll look even moreso in finalized pics. Villains also look nice, though Voltix's color scheme is crazy. Hopefully some of his yellow will be transparent in the final thing... that'd make him a lot better-looking IMO.

Blaaaah I don't want to make a habit of correcting LDD sets again, but when an error stands out from the thumbnail I don't feel comfortable keeping it to myself. In this case, all of your brown parts are colored 217 Brown (Bricklink's Dark Flesh) rather than 25 Earth Orange (Bricklink's Brown), and your baseplates are colored 37 Bright Green (Bricklink's Bright Green) rather than 28 Dark Green (Bricklink's Green). From the thumbnail no other color errors stand out, but those two errors are extremely common so I feel obligated to point them out so you can avoid them in the future. One other possible error stands out from your description: 6562 is available on LDD, so there's no need to replace it with the version with friction ridges.

You realize "new fig designs" are what happen every year for pretty much every theme? the BZP news article was probably something from the Q&A at Brickfair Alabama, and Jim Foulds's answer to the question was almost certainly a joke, seeing as the things he revealed are things that would apply to pretty much any year of LEGO (at least, any year since minifigures were first introduced). He might as well have just said "there will be sets in 2014" and we'd have known all three of the facts he provided about the 2014 wave of sets just by inference. BZPower continued the joke by posting it as a news article. If LEGO Dino sets continue, it will be either in 2012 or 2013, but until there have been 2013 sets released then even LEGO probably won't know for sure whether it will last into 2014.

As other people point out, it would be difficult to separate the floors if the elevator were operated by any kind of pulley mechanism unless the elevator were already on the floor closest to the mechanism. Unless the elevator shaft were made its own separate (vertical rather than horizontal) module I don't see how that could have worked out. Of course, I have seen products where elevators with a similar mechanism to the set have made it a bit less obtrusive, but LEGO is not an ideal medium for the style these products use. They would need the gap between the inside of the elevator shaft and the outside of the building to be near one plate in thickness, and would need fairly thin walls if more than one fig was meant to fit inside the elevator comfortably. And don't even ask me how a fully enclosed elevator would have any playability, given that it would be difficult to place minifigures inside or remove them when they get on or off. At the same time, I'm hoping the ingenuity of the LEGO fan community will shine through and we'll see a lot of revamped elevators for this set once it is released!

I wouldn't say it was awful (it looks decent, although I didn't own it), but I prefer this one as it better resembles the ambulances I'm used to in real life. The new one is not too tremendously large IMO, as it seems mostly to scale with attempts I've made to build SUVs (which are around the same size as an ambulance or smaller). My attempts at making a Ford Excursion usually end up 19 studs long, while this is (if I'm not mistaken) just over 21 studs long. Perhaps it could be made one or two studs shorter, but for the most part it seems to be to that same scale (1:36) I usually prefer for road vehicles.

The head and 3M shells are indeed in the incorrect shades of Transparent Green, but the correct colors are available. The shells should be 49 Transparent Fluorescent Green and the head should be 311 Transparent Bright Green. The eyes of the Arachnix Drone and the Zamor Sphere should also be Transparent Bright Green (incidentally, this is one of the first transparent Zamor Spheres I've ever seen that is confirmed as a single color rather than a blend of two colors). For future reference, a good trick to use to determine if you are using the correct colors is to use the last page of the instructions, which has the Element IDs for the various parts. By plugging the seven-digit numbers listed for the parts into the URL of this page, you can see the color name for each part next to "Exact Color" (except in the case of blended parts, which will always be labeled "MULTICOMBINATION"). You might want to wait to post corrections on this model until after the LDD update next week, because I'm pretty confident there will be new Hero Factory parts in that update just as there have been in most of our other recent updates. Great work on what you've been able to put together so far, though!

Personally, I don't understand how the stickers can be more "papery" than usual if they have transparent backing rather than solid-colored backing. I don't plan to get this set, but if I get another set with transparent-back stickers I'll perhaps be able to see what you mean by that. As for the actual content of the stickers, I'm mostly impressed. The LEGO City grille sticker looks extremely stylish IMO, as does the "dashboard" sticker. Some might have preferred a printed piece for this, and I agree it's a part for which a printed piece could have worked well since it would fit most six-wide vehicles and not just ambulances, but a sticker is still OK in my book. The one sticker I really don't like is the one on the hood reading "AMBULANCE", and that's for one reason: at least the ambulances I'm familiar with here in the United States tend to have the word "AMBULANCE" reversed so they can be easily read in a rear-view mirror! I'm a bit surprised that they included both a hairpiece and a helmet for the civilian fig, but I guess it makes sense-- they wouldn't be putting him on a stretcher and into the ambulance with his helmet still on, would they? Great review overall. I'm very fond of this set's design partly because we've had so few ambulance sets, and so this one had a lot of room for improvement over its predecessor. I just hope we continue getting "emergency" sets that measure up!

I don't like comments like this; they seem to ignore the effort and experience that goes into even sloppy-looking designs. If you look at the angle of the main building from the rectangular base, that doesn't strike me as the work of an amateur, but rather the work of a professional. If the sails show less professionalism that could just mean that the designer had different priorities than getting the sails exactly right. But IMO even the sails are a lot more sophisticated in design than anything I could have thrown together at this scale, echoing their familiar flaring shape in a way that couldn't be mistaken for any other building. I'm curious what the price point for this set will be. Amazon.co.jp prices it a bit higher than the Brandenburg Gate, and I think that seems reasonable, since it seems similar in size but with a much more complicated base.

Well, IMO the Space Villain is by far one of the best S3 figs-- The elf is the only one I can understand having near as much appeal. I can easily see how, if desirable S1 and S2 figs like the Zombie and Spartan were unavailable, many of these would have been among the most popular.

Turning the MOC on its side to make a weapon like this seem to move against gravity... it's an amazingly simple and lo-tech technique, but I never even considered the possibility until I saw this MOC! Absolutely brilliant, and the end result works perfectly! The architecture of the building may not have been historically researched, but the overall impression is still wonderfully traditional- and rustic-looking.