Aanchir

I don't particularly care if a set has to be partially disassembled to fit in the package. If the package can be re-used to store the set in any form, then I'm generally satisfied with it. It's not like Hero Factory sets are particularly difficult to re-assemble anyway. I think your assessment of how the packages open is also how I expect things to be, though. And I'm fine with that. It seems plenty convenient for the way I use my canisters, which is a place to keep the sets for storage or travel. I'd probably have been just as OK if TLG had introduced a similar "locking flap" box to those used for many extremely large sets (for instance, the Neptune Carrier), only at a smaller size.

In all honesty, Mega Bloks isn't that bad. The quality's not as good as LEGO by any means, but I'd rather see people buying a respectable clone brand like Mega Bloks than a less-reputable "bootleg brand" that outright duplicates LEGO molds. There's this one called Super Blox that's somewhat horrendous, copying even specialized LEGO parts like curved slopes and wedge slopes (although occasionally with minor changes, presumably to avoid accusations of plagiarism). Most of the time when I see people looking at Mega Bloks in stores, of course, they're looking at the Halo stuff or other licenses. If that's what they're after there's no way I can persuade them that LEGO will satisfy them more than the licensed product they desire.

Alien Mothership also has a sound brick. ANY electronic components are more expensive than non-electronic components of the same size by default. Consider the Robie House, also released this year, which costs $199.99 for 2,276 pieces. However, most of those parts are very small, basic elements (even if they're in the very desirable color Dark Red).

Just dug through files on LEGO's cache, and there are no images for those set numbers. I'm assuming these images, although probably taken from Brickset, are ultimately from cache.LEGO.com, even though it bothers me that the largest size I've been able to find at cache.LEGO.com is 840x630, smaller than the Brickset images. And the Brickset images for 2012 sets currently available are still smaller than those you can see with the zoom function on the shop.LEGO.com product pages! Anyway, Toxic Reapa's torso looks like it might be gappy from some angles, but I've been saying this since pics first surfaced of that unconventional armor structure. Black Phantom looks excellent, even though his fourth image clearly shows off the continued flaws in Fire Lord's leg design. The blade at the end of his mace does look to be Transparent Fluorescent Green rather than straight Bright Yellowish Green. Of course I expect this will be a quality of the render only, and the piece itself will be the same material as William Furno's Dual Fire Shooter, and thus won't have that same glassy transparency. The biggest news from these images, though, is from the packaging images. First, of course, is the confirmation that the packaging for the small and medium-sized sets is resealable. This is excellent news because it does away with any misgivings I might have had about canisters going away (assuming, of course, that the material is sturdy enough to be reused without tearing). We also have piece counts for some of the sets now. I, for one, am impressed. Hope images of the rest of the sets surface very soon!

It's a shame we have two pieces of potentially bad news for LDD in one month and no good news to balance it out. I seriously hope LDD updates continue to be frequent and continue to be significant in content. I also hope that Hero Factory parts available through Hero Recon Team and Pick-A-Brick continue to be added as HRT increases its palette, because that's IMO one of the best things to happen for that theme (besides, of course, the new building system that makes building with those parts either digitally or in real life genuinely a lot of fun).

Well, I kind of agree that the Kaukau isn't suited to this MOC, and Kiina's mask would be more stylistically consistent, but let me point out a couple things: Kiina's mask leaves the mouth exposed, and there aren't really any especially feminine-looking BIONICLE head pieces. Unless you have a way to make the head custom at that scale, then Kiina's mask would be tricky to use for that reason. Kiina's mask is TINY. The Kaukau itself seems a bit small relative to the rest of this figure, and that leads to the overall figure's proportions being a distraction from the structural component of the MOC. Overall, if I could make one recommendation for this MOC, it would be to either use the Kanohi Elda (although I know a lot of people disagree with me about it being feminine), to use a Kanohi Nuva (Either of Gali's Nuva masks are somewhat odd-looking, but IMO the Kakama Nuva is somewhat feminine if you have that in blue), or to attempt a larger, entirely custom face. I don't feel the Kaukau suits it. Anyway, on to the strong points of this MOC. I love the design of the upper torso, the design of the legs and skirt, and the organization of the color scheme. The hands seem a bit small IMO, but the arms are at a very reasonable scale, even if being more custom might have aided their posability. The model really looks feminine, which can be hard to pull off in a BIONICLE MOC even at this scale. Great work!

Excellent review! I like that the truck is Bright Green, a color which until recently was terribly underused in LEGO. I also love the functionality of the truck and the new hinge piece (which seems like this one revamped for modern times, including the addition of space to place tiles on the lower section to lock it). The size of the truck also seems just right in my eyes-- not too big, not too small. Thanks so much for reviewing this!

I think in terms of licenses, it's pretty obvious why some themes are short-lived movie tie-ins and others are very long-lasting. A licensed theme basically has to follow all the same rules as other merchandise for the franchise. Star Wars sells merchandise pretty well whether there's a movie in theaters or not (even more so thanks to the Clone Wars TV series). Harry Potter did as well, back in the early days of the franchise when hype for the books and movies was still phenomenally high. It looks like the Cars theme might be the next to see that same level of consistent sales, since Cars is a major merchandise-mover and has been for years whether there's been a movie in theaters or not. As you mention, the Super Heroes theme could also be long-lasting if it is handled right. In contrast, Toy Story sees a spike in and merchandise sales when there's a new movie out, but at other times merchandise sales dwindle far behind those for these other franchises. There's hardly even enough hype to keep the films in the public consciousness. The same applies for Pirates of the Caribbean, which I fully expect might come back when another sequel is over the horizon, but which just isn't as consistent as Star Wars when it comes to moving merchandise. Meanwhile, Prince of Persia and (going back a bit farther) Speed Racer were hugely underwhelming in the box office, and so the LEGO theme naturally couldn't continue for much longer. This is the risk of licensed themes: their main advertising is often in the form of the license itself-- the movie they're supposed to tie in with and the other merchandise on store shelves. This means that with a licensed theme TLG is giving up a certain amount of control over the theme's success or failure and placing it in the hands of the company with which they have a licensing agreement. I don't think the short-lived licenses we've been seeing are signs that TLG doesn't care as much about licensed themes as they used to, but rather that they've become a bit less selective about which licenses they create sets for, seeing as they are now in a much better economic situation than in the early 2000s and thus in a fitter state to take small risks. No longer must a license have consistent staying power to be a safe and profitable economic decision.

I have plenty of rubber BIONICLE parts and they held up just fine after years of building, play, and sifting around in bins. I'd assume this is the same material. Admittedly, though, those rubber BIONICLE parts aren't printed, but still I don't think there would be a serious problem there. Did the small raptors in Dino Attack have any problems with wear and tear?

Well, I imagine 2011 sales are also a factor. Keep in mind that 2012 set designs in most (maybe all) themes have already been completed and designers have moved on to designing sets for 2013. I think HF has a good chance of continuing past 2012, considering the great reception Hero Recon Team has had.

Can anyone here who knows both English and Danish help translate this article for me? It discusses the reason's for BIONICLE's success and later its ending, and has some details about LEGO's intentions for Hero Factory. I ran it through Google Translate so I have a pretty good idea what it's saying, but I think someone who actually knows both languages could give me a more streamlined and logical translation. In other news from the same site, Christian Faber has been working with Advance for 25 years. He's an art director for the advertising agency Advance who has been majorly involved in both BIONICLE and Hero Factory.

I think that seems pretty likely. That was mostly what I was expecting as well. Of course, since I don't have Waspix or Toxic Reapa, it's hard to get any feeling for how the torso as a whole will look. I certainly hope that it doesn't look too gappy from certain angles or anything...

Because of this, as well as the background in leaked retailer's catalogs.

I'm not sure what color will be used for Series 7, but I just observed that the colors for the packages so far seem to resemble colors from the LEGO corporate color palette (which can be seen on page 48 of LEGO's Brand Manual). In that case, purple is probably out of the question, unless new colors have been added to the corporate palette since 2010, which I will not discount given the prominence of purple on Friends packaging and promotional material. Of course, sampling the colors from some of the images on Grogall's Brickshelf, they're not exact matches, so it could be they are just sampled from actual LEGO brick colors, if not made up entirely. In either of those cases, then purple would still be a possibility-- thankfully, as the pink color on LEGO's corporate color palette would probably look absurd.

I doubt that the reason has anything to do with public perception. After all, how many parents look at where a toy was made before buying them for their kids? I suppose there are some socio-economically-minded parents who oppose outsourcing for a wide range of reasons, but I'm pretty sure the majority of parents and kids wouldn't think twice about buying a LEGO set just because of where it is produced. We AFOLs, of course, know better. We recognize that there is a difference between Chinese-made and non-Chinese-made parts, even if some (like me) don't feel that it's a real difference in quality. Certain parts with more advanced printing are more likely to be made in China, and many parts have either slight or obvious differences depending on where they are made and what molds they use. But to the average parent, products being made in China is commonplace, and I imagine a lot of buyers here in the U.S. who actually look at where things are made wouldn't necessarily think an Eastern European production facility is any better than a Chinese one. So I'm pretty sure the reason for the change in production is actually production-related rather than perception-related.

That is true... most of the store exclusives in BIONICLE weren't characters essential to the story, and given how few story media there are in Hero Factory it's no surprise that Vapour was largely irrelevant to the main plot of 2010. Still, even though Hero Factory is a story theme, I'm kind of surprised that the inability to include a character in the story is a serious enough hindrance to sales that stores wouldn't want an exclusive set. I guess that most Hero Factory advertising is story-driven, though...

Not sure if anyone's posted this yet, but there's a 1-minute trailer for the Ninjago TV series. Here in the US, it will be debuting December 2 on Cartoon Network, according to the latest LEGO Club magazine. In this video we see the Green Ninja for the first time, a snakeman crane with a wrecking ball (maybe a summer or exclusive set?), and various vehicles in the way they will be depicted in the show. There is a large green warrior of unknown identity-- possibly a mech-like vehicle for the Green Ninja? Apparently, indeed, Lloyd is responsible for releasing the snakemen, who according to LEGO Magazine are called the "Serpentine" here in the US and possibly elsewhere.

I quite agree, but at the same time maybe switching the Ninjago spinners to another production facility means that production elsewhere is improving? After all, I believe one of the European production facilities was recently expanded. Since I'm pretty sure one reason for producing these parts in China in the first place was because it could handle that volume of production, it's possible expansions to production elsewhere will allow global production to start matching the complexity of some Chinese-made parts. Not trying to defend those allegations; just wondering at possible reasons for the switch to non-Chinese production for these sets.

Perhaps, but I'm unsure how well this flickfire version will work. The version used in the Batman, Agents, and Power Miners themes wasn't perfect in terms of functionality either, and didn't tend to mesh well with vehicle designs, but at the same time I'm afraid a flick-fire version might more likely become jammed, with (for instance) one of the missiles not launching as well as the other one. Of course, this unpredictability is present in any type of function that hasn't been used before. Frankly, the only way for us to be assured that all action features in upcoming sets are reliable would be if sets only reused action features from previous sets, and that would be boring. So don't think I'm excessively skeptical of this particular set; I just try to be aware of all sorts of uncertainty in set design so fewer things catch me by surprise.

Good question. There haven't been many since the first wave, though, and I'm not exactly sure how limited edition sets are decided. I think, all things considered, retailers would rather have limited edition sets from wildly successful themes like City, Star Wars, and Ninjago, and I don't think Hero Factory compares to any of those themes in sales. Then again, the possibility's still out there. What sort of set would you want as a limited edition release, if there were one? Something like Bulk & Vapour or Karzahni, with multiple figures, or just a new and unique villain set? Perhaps even a hero set of some sort, maybe at a large scale like Rocka XL or Toa Mata Nui?

Phosphorescent White (the pre-2006 GITD) has been discontinued, so I think we can say with certainty that the new Hero Cores won't glow in the dark. Anyway, kind of a cool design. At first glance it's a little chaotic-looking, but the same applies to the upcoming Rocka set, and like that set it starts to look better once you can see what all the parts are being used for. I think the flames coming from his jetpack are a little underwhelming-- did you try using the larger flame piece 85959? Although that flame piece in real life tends to be blended, and LDD does not allow this, it's still a bit more formidable than the regular LEGO flames.

Haven't seen the original comic myself, but the artist has the art w/o dialogue on his Flickr photostream. You can get a pretty good idea from that what's going on. I kinda like it; it reminds me of the similar holiday crossovers for LEGO Alpha Team in 2004 and for Time Cruisers in 1996. Even knowing that the main objective is "advertise as many sets as you can in this ONE MAGAZINE", it's always amusing to see LEGO characters on a zanier, more playful level.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the comic. On one hand, the pacing isn't that great (although not as bad as I anticipated based on the first page). On the other hand, considering that it more or less tries to be a direct adaptation of the TV special, I can't say it could have really been done better. They more or less cover every relevant plot point as best they can within the limited number of pages. And I know that similar comics for BIONICLE have also occasionally felt a bit abrupt when they try to cover movie scenes. In terms of how things were depicted, I think one of the biggest flaws of this comic is that like in the TV special, Furno doesn't actually use his bow to shoot anything. In the TV episode I believe he throws it or something, whereas here he just flies up and uses it like a knife. It's a wee bit absurd. Meanwhile, that puzzle page in the magazine is lovely. I hope it gets featured in the online club magazine preview, so that we can get an image with more ideal color quality and less of a seam where the pages meet (also because that way it's often possible to get it without text).

...And when it gets into badly-mislabeled Bricklink colors is about where my eye starts to twitch and my face curls into a horrible grimace. Either 131 Silver or 315 Silver Metallic, just to let ya know. Although in all seriousness those are far from the worst instances of Bricklink conflating totally different colors of parts together.

The Amidala minifigure will appear in a summer set. That was confirmed either when it was revealed or shortly after. So far we haven't seen any summer sets (to my knowledge).