Aanchir

I always figured the "modular" aspect that gave the modular buildings their name was the fact that you could put them together in any order on a street, not that the floors came apart. Having separate sections is what a "modular build" usually means for a set, but I think in this case the modular buildings are modular in more than one way. Additionally, making the floors able to separate would be ridiculously complex on a set 1/4 the size in all dimensions, and would be especially pointless since the buildings are already easy to carry at their current size and couldn't possibly be given interiors at this scale.

Keep in mind that the Zombie's turkey leg and shovel were unique molds with different Design IDs than the "classic" turkey leg and shovel (in fact, this applies for pretty much every accessory from Collectible minifigures series 1 and 2) It's true that new molds from Series 1 and 2 kept being used in future series in place of the "classic" molds (even though Series 3 also had classic molds for parts that hadn't previously been in the Collectible Minifigures). But the zombie is the only collectible minifigure that uses a turkey leg or a shovel, so I think it's very believable that those parts are no longer in production. They said they'd look for replacement parts, which is almost certainly what was done with the "uniquely-colored" parts they somehow consider a selling point of the new collection: the warm gold scorpion, the black knit cap, and the silver metallic fish. But obviously their search for replacements was limited to the same parts in different colors, and not to different but similar-looking molds. Ogre, thanks so much for quoting the original e-mail for us. I won't deny that this minifigures set is fairly lame, but now in the very least we know why it is so lame. TLG's decision seems perfectly sensible in the light of that disclaimer from the original voting e-mail. It's also easy to see why the minifigures chosen were the most successful out of Series 3. The Elf is obviously the most popular army builder out of the series. The Space Villain has the most "classic theme" appeal, being an obvious shout-out to Blacktron. The Fisherman was out of series 1-3 the scarcest collectible minifigure to date (in terms of units per box). The Gorilla Suit Guy has obvious widespread appeal, just for being such a unique figure. And the Mummy, while criticized, was within those three series the figure with the most printing-- both arms, the fronts and sides of both legs, the front and back of the torso, and the face. Even with the number of mummy figures TLG has released he remains unique due to this level of complexity. All in all this whole incident seems like a case study in poor planning. But at the same time it does not seem like a case of TLG trying to "scam" fans out of the minifigures they want. That wouldn't be in their interest any more than it would be in ours. All they seem to be doing is trying to uphold a plan and a promise which they knew in advance would be difficult to uphold. If they had known exactly how difficult it would be I'm sure they wouldn't have had the voting cover all of the first three series.

Are you sure they were the Kendo Jay booster packs (the ones free with a $75 purchase at the LEGO Shop site) and not the Jay ZX booster packs (which are regular sets)?

Why must they have villains to fight? The long tradition of superhero "vs." comics should be evidence enough that it's easy enough to come up with contrived reasons for the heroes to fight each other instead of needing villains.

Lots of excellent new designs! I hadn't commented on Splitface, who looks wonderful. Meanwhile, Breez and Rocka look phenomenal! I like how you kept their "boots" very bulky. Breez's gun and Rocka's crossbow look phenomenal and innovative, and the "shield generators" the two have been given are a great way to interpret their new shields. Those cylinders on Breez's back are also a nice touch. And I love the color layering on both heroes, especially how both have lots of glowing details mimicking their eye colors.

Very neat custom foot design! They seem almost like hooves, which is kind of odd on a wolf-like figure like this. But at the same time, they're very innovative in design and look sturdy. If they can keep their balance in real life, that's the real measure of how well they are designed! One comment I would make is that the transparent green shells on the back are the wrong size (4M rather than 5M). But that's just a technical difference that in this case doesn't change the build. Overall this is an innovative and stylish design! Great work!

Well, the Hulk is very different because his legs are out of proportion the other way (way shorter than they should be rather than longer). Still, you're right, an intermediate size (more in proportion to the torso) should look decent. Good point about his sword! I hadn't thought about that, but I guess that would work and give you roughly what he wields in the pics we've seen! So that's almost certainly what TLG did. Still, it looks like it works!

Well, as far as I can tell he's not absurdly tall compared to the medium-sized Hero sets. The small Hero sets are typically 22 modules tall, and the medium-sized ones are 24 modules tall. From what I can tell Stormer XL is around 29-30 modules tall. Still tall, but still just around the height of many 2008-2009 BIONICLE canister sets like Antroz. Now, you still might want to downsize him, just as I might do even with some of the medium-sized Hero sets. I don't think it should be too hard to do convincingly since frankly his legs, even moreso than the medium-sized Hero legs, are probably out-of-proportion with his body.

I'd like to point out an error I've seen multiple times in recent weeks. There is no longer a need to substitute for Chrome Gold and Chrome Silver. These colors have been on LDD for a while now, under the names 310 Metalized Gold and 309 Metalized Silver. They don't look entirely accurate since they have the same reflectiveness as any other metallic-colored parts, but these are the correct TLG equivalents for these two chrome colors. This advice also applies to anyone updating past LDD MOCs, especially since we should be getting an LDD update sometime this month. Remember that Superkalle's LDD Manager has a VERY reliable color chart for converting Bricklink color names to TLG color names. Additionally, for those with or without LDD Manager, the best color resource currently on the web is Peeron's color chart, which cross-references Peeron color names with Bricklink color names and numbers, TLG color names and numbers, LDraw numbers, and in some cases even pantones.

Thanks for the links, but I'd prefer to wait until the episodes air in the US, actually. It's less than a week before the TV series resumes here, and I'd rather watch it in higher quality than YouTube currently offers Episode 3 in. On a not-quite-2012 related note, the Jay and Cole books should be out in the United States now. I'll have to drop by a bookstore and pick those up. I greatly enjoyed the Kai and Zane books (ESPECIALLY the Zane book) and would love to read about Cole and Jay in greater depth.

No, the boombox in CM5 was just regular Lavender, which is lighter than Medium Lavender. Dark Azur (that is how all the official LEGO publications I've seen spell it, even though I prefer Azure since it's an actual word in the English language) did indeed appear in Alien Conquest and Spongebob Squarepants, so it's not brand-new to Friends, but I imagine it was probably designed for Friends initially and other themes just happened to use it first.

Well, it's a good thing LEGO can sell you those. On the other hand, I don't know where you might buy a shred of dignity, respect, or decency, since you also seem to be missing all of those things. Incidentally, I don't like Ninjago for its cards or spinners. Those are cool (I love the gorgeous character art for the cards, and the spinners are genuinely fun), but they're not the reason I'm a big fan of the theme. I appreciate the theme for its beautiful, intricate set designs, its complex and in-depth story, and of course the uniqueness and zaniness of its general concept. It would seem that you haven't given any of these things even the slightest glance. Of course, it's entirely possible to dislike Ninjago. There's no rule saying all LEGO fans have to like the same things, and people can have a variety of interests. Hence why many fans put forth an effort to appreciate various themes for their merits rather than insulting anyone whose opinions are different than theirs. Of course, sometimes that leads me to make foolish decisions, like trying to reason with obvious trolls, but I think it gives me a healthier worldview than I would have if I just spoke disdainfully of any theme I happened to dislike, and insulted people who for whatever reason did like those themes.

Well, that's good to hear! I was worried that LEGO's legal team was becoming quicker at taking down pics than I thought humanly possible! I wish we had a non-canister pic of Nex so that we could see what his weapon is like. His Plasma Gun seems to be pretty generic, but he's got another weapon on his other arm that uses a System antenna. I can't make out any of the details of the weapon itself, though! I wonder when better pics (i.e. more detailed catalog scans) tend to start showing up.

Well, nice job insulting every fan of the Ninjago theme on these forums, or rather, every fan of the Ninjago theme in the world. I happen to really like Ninjago. It's zany, it's got lots of well-designed sets, it has a well-written story, and in general it has been immensely successful with kids. It has a lot of the characteristics that I really liked about BIONICLE, and I hope that it will be successful enough to compare with that theme. I had never heard of the Spinja toys before, but it's interesting to see that the Ninjago concept isn't completely out-of-the-blue, but has been approximated by another company years before. Of course, Ninjago seems vastly superior to those products, but one wonders if they were in fact the inspiration for Ninjago, or merely an idea that two companies coincidentally happened to arrive at when trying to create a "battle top" toy franchise. Either way I'm sure TLG knew about the Spinja toys by the time the theme was ready for release, if only due to the necessity of avoiding intellectual property infringement. If the ending of Kingdoms has anything to do with Ninjago, it's because Ninjago was deep, inspired, and phenomenally successful while Kingdoms was a fairly generic castle theme that just failed to resonate with kids today. But that's not likely the case-- nearly every Kingdoms fan here on Eurobricks has by now recognized that Kingdoms was discontinued so that it wouldn't be competing with the Lord of the Rings products that TLG is releasing later this year. There's no need to spew pointless hate towards a quality theme still on store shelves, and there's never any excuse for spewing that same pointless hate towards everyone who for whatever reason is able to enjoy that theme.

Color Encyclopedia - This one is from this post by Hinckley, so I'd assume the title is from him. I'm very flattered.

I was just looking at a prelim pic of Stringer and trying to figure out how his weapon works. It's not entirely clear how it's built, and he's holding it very oddly in that pic. It almost looks like an electric guitar... Wait a sec... Yes. Yes it does. If this is in fact by design rather just a coincidental resemblance or a misleading preliminary image, every doubt I might have had about the quality of the Stringer set will be banished from my mind. Because giving Stringer an electric guitar would be the BEST. POSSIBLE. THING.

The Fisherman's fish looks like it might be sand blue, but it's hard to tell. Does this product have a set number or anything yet, or are this synopsis and image all we have? This set is kinda cool, but since my family has a complete collection of Minifigures Series 3, I see no point in getting it just for the differently-colored parts-- unless, of course, there's some fancy collectors' packaging or something, in which it has some collectible value that the individual figs did not have.

I have done this occasionally. It's often very easy to do with the smallest ($8) Hero Factory sets, even though I occasionally avoid doing it with those just because the box images sometimes fail to match the instructions. BIONICLE canister sets were also easy to do this with, because typically the sets in any one series of six were near-identical, so once you had built one you could easily repeat the process several times without needing instructions. In general, though, I like to use the building instructions most of the time. Part of this is just that I feel the instructions are a key part of the LEGO building experience. Additionally, if you're building a set with someone else's help (as is often the case with me and my siblings), the instructions offer a way to divide up the set. My brothers and I have worked out an elaborate system for deciding who gets what steps and substeps when building a set! Bag-building, of course, is impossible to do any other way than as a "Puzzle Build", unless you use online instructions or something.

I'm fond of the larger boxes myself due to how often I have to take my sets to and from college. With the larger boxes it's easy to fit the entire set-- and possibly additional sets-- into one box with minimal disassembly. The boxes with the tab for closing them securely are even better for this purpose. Of course, I recognize TLG is trying to cut down on their box sizes, and so I anticipate that before too long I'll have to make my LEGO transportation habits different. Ziploc bags seem to be a trusted method of transporting partially-disassembled sets and MOCs, so I may end up transitioning to that. In the meantime, though, re-packaging sets in their original boxes (sometimes more than one set to a box) hasn't failed me. And boxes I don't need for transporting sets can easily be flattened to conserve space. Some boxes, such as that to the Brick Calendar and Robie House, seem specially-designed for fitting the whole set in the box, so I think oversized boxes will still be with us for quite a while when it comes to these types of "specialty" products.

I've had Christmas crackers at some Christmas dinners with my family sometimes, so they're not completely unknown in America. But they're not especially well-known either. I figure the only reason I have had them at Christmas dinners is because my grandparents were extremely well-traveled and culturally aware (or perhaps because one of my uncles on that side of the family is from Australia). Similarly, at Christmas dinners with the other side of my family, we had opłatki, but that's just because that side of my family is of Polish heritage-- that's no more of an American tradition than Christmas crackers are.

I'm a big fan of transforming or otherwise magical weapons myself. I haven't seen the episode where the Ninja get their vehicles, but I'm hoping (though not expecting) the transformation to be partly on account of the "power of imagination" or something to that effect. If so, then it would explain why the very traditional Golden Weapons of Spinjitzu turn into very modern sorts of vehicles-- they would naturally turn into the vehicles that the Ninja imagine, which suit their individual personalities. Additionally, it would help tie in one of the core LEGO values to the TV series. While the "Tornado of Creation" sort of did that, it would be nice to see a more deliberate example of creativity at work.

I kind of disagree. These particular dogs seem designed to resemble German Shepherds, which are a very typical breed of police dog. So I think it makes sense to continue using these dogs for a police set, and is not "cheap" at all. If TLG were to introduce a new dog for anything, I'd like to see a new dog mold around the same size but with floppier ears. It could be printed as a Dalmatian for Fire sets, or in different colors as any number of different breeds. But apparently, according to Wikipedia, Dalmatians don't have the same reputation as firefighting dogs in other countries as they have in the United States, which might explain why we've never seen one in a LEGO set.

Thanks for the in-depth reply. However, I have to point out that whether or not boys are "hardwired" to dislike female figures and so forth, there are influences on boys and girls alike that lead them to want different things. Nature vs. Nurture is a very interesting subject on its own when it comes to gender roles, but from a marketing perspective nature and nurture boil down to the same thing: powerful influences outside of LEGO's control that lead boys and girls to want different sorts of toys and media. I have no doubt that boys and girls from birth can enjoy the same sorts of toys-- otherwise there would be little explaining why girls and boys tend to buy and play with Duplo to about the same extent. But as they get above the Duplo age range, they start to seek out different play experiences. Whether that is because of some type of inherent mental development, because of entering grade school where peer pressure has a more profound influence, or some combination of the two, the types of things girls and boys at these ages enjoy tend to diverge. Moreover, while you're right that conventional wisdom can't always be counted on when it comes to this sort of thing, keep in mind that TLG is not in much of a position to challenge conventional wisdom in such a profound way. Their past attempts at getting girls to buy LEGO sets have had mediocre success for the most part. If a company is to challenge conventional wisdom regarding what girls will or won't like, then it would be a company that already has a significant female audience. These are the companies that can probably afford to take such risks. But as it is, TLG is already "pushing the envelope" just by trying to market a building toy with this level of construction quality to girls. The closest I've seen in recent years was Mega Bloks's Hello Kitty license, and I have no way of knowing whether that enjoyed any significant level of success. It certainly didn't try to challenge girls with any type of building complexity, that's for certain. I apologize if I sound like a LEGO fanboy grasping at straws. I have difficulty being judgmental about any issue like this where I don't have all the facts, and so from my perspective TLG is putting forth a valiant effort to make the Friends theme a stronger and more constructive toy than past attempts. But I don't feel they're in any position to change the nature of how toys are marketed to girls. On a side note, some people have observed that the City theme has more balanced genders in many of its sets next year. I wonder whether perhaps TLG is deliberately timing this to correspond with the Friends theme so that they can have two comparable attempts at marketing products to girls and then compare their levels of success with that audience?

True, but that's been the standard for Duplo figs for years (although Duplo figs have had a tendency to use the darker 18 Nougat rather than the lighter 283 Light Nougat for Caucasian figures' skin tones). Licensed figs were the first fleshies among standard minifigures, but these aren't standard minifigures and as such there's no reason to expect them to be bound by the same expectation. Besides, if these figures had yellow skin, I get the feeling they'd give off a weird Simpsons vibe, unlike the standard minifigure which with its more heavily-stylized design doesn't give the impression of a human being dipped in yellow paint. Anyway, great review! I think this is a very cute set for this price point, and I agree the vibe is rather similar to Paradisa, with its emphasis on vacation and leisure. Thankfully, the sets for this theme have more variety, so it doesn't have quite the same feeling of pastel, sun-bleached seaside decadence (the more reasonable color scheme helps things considerably as well). As for Emma's outfit, I have to say I've seen plenty of swimsuits that look pretty much exactly like what she's wearing, except possibly with more garish colors and patterns. The shoes are the only things that perhaps seem a bit odd in the context of this set. Ironically, on the Friends figs, I think the rubbery hair seems to look better. The more matte finish just seems to fit the more realistic designs of the figs IMO, whereas the plastic minifigure hair here almost makes their hair seem greasy. Of course, it would still have been cool if the Friends hair had been regular ABS plastic for use on standard minifigures, but I reckon it should work at least as well as the mohawk from Minifigures Series 4, the two Exo-Force manga hairpieces, or the mad scientist hair from Agents and Minifigures Series 4.

Additionally, Kelly McKiernan has confirmed that Rocka had not, in fact, been given an official first name at the time that the name "Daniel Rocka" appeared on the DVD, so it looks like it was a mistake by the DVD manufacturers rather than a legitimately assigned name. My DVD has Daniel Rocka in the credits. It's a real shame that they would do something like that and get people's hopes up. Before, Daniel Rocka was just an unauthenticated rumor-- they could presumably have given the character any first name they wanted, and there would only be a bit of backlash from people who had gotten used to the name Daniel. Now that the name Daniel Rocka's appeared on the DVD, they might have difficulty giving Rocka any first name other than Daniel, seeing as so many people will now have reason to believe the name is official. Anyway, I'll try the Breakout game again soon. I hope that even with the bugs that are still present it remains enjoyable.