Aanchir

...Strangely, that makes sense, what with pretty much everything being made of plastic. Still, kinda weird that they put that in the set. It's bound to confuse some people.

This one., used to attach Waspix's middle set of limbs.

Already mentioned in a separate topic specifically for that type of inconsistency: Category errors in 4.1.8.

Yes, but then again the Series 1 Minifigures used almost entirely new molds exclusive to Made-In-China figs. Since Series 3, however, certain figs use pre-existing molds with pre-existing Design IDs (for instance, the Samurai's armor is the same as that from the Ninja theme). So it's hard to say whether the Forestman's precedent is still valid.

No, I was agreeing about how the upper torso shells on Reapa were attached. The Waspix piece would make sense for that. But the lower torso shell wouldn't work the same way, so I was suggesting how it could be attached. It's nice to see that piece more widely used, if that is what is being used. It's kind of annoying how Waspix is the only current set using it.

I can't say I like this MOC. On one hand, I understand your criticisms of the original set. On the other hand, your model seems to be mostly just the original set decked out in loads and loads of clutter. There's nothing cohesive about it, and the cohesiveness of the original set is one of the reasons I liked it in spite of its flaws. I can't think of any realistic suggestions I could make to improve this model besides removing all the extraneous details and starting from scratch. It does have some redeeming values-- the hip area feels much more solid tham Fire Lord's. But otherwise, the color scheme and detail pieces all feel very badly organized. One big criticism I've seen of the actual Fire Lord set is that he has too many colors that aren't well organized-- with that in mind, it was probably a mistake to add lots of transparent fluorescent reddish orange parts, transparent bright orange and transparent red blended flames, and dark stone grey chains without removing colors from the color scheme to allow for those changes. How's his posability? Does the new hip design make it better or worse? Also, is it difficult to balance him in his various poses with so many added parts contributing to his weight?

You can't be talking about the Batcave, right? In a lot of ways it seems more substantial than the old one. As for the other sets, they're not much different than the past vehicle-versus-vehicle Batman sets, except with (in some cases) a more colorful comic book style. The designs themselves tend to seem very high-quality from my perspective.

Yes, but look at his face-- it's pretty clear he's not happy about it. I like both of these sets in some ways and dislike them in others. The colors of the Flying Dutchman's Ship are pretty badly organized, and his face seems a bit iffy. It would have been excellent if Brick Daddy's head could have been used, since it would have had a decent beard-shape and his hair shape in the back. Unfortunately, it's far too small and probably wouldn't work with that hat anyway. On the other hand, in general the set uses some clever building techniques, and the figs are probably about as well-made as they could possibly be. Well, with one exception-- Dutchy should have gotten his dining sock. The birthday party set is pretty decent, but I don't like Squidward's house in this set. The original was no work of art, but this one seems more blocky than rocky. The "party" elements outside are well done, though. I love the amplifiers made from treasure chests The interior of Spongebob's house bugs me a bit-- if that's supposed to be his catapult bed, it's much less appealing than the original version. Spongebob's house has a lot of pyramid-shapes on it, probably to give it more of a pineapple texture, but the end result doesn't feel too authentic to how it's depicted in the show with mostly-smooth walls. And it doesn't feel much like a genuine pineapple shape, for that matter-- just a stylized pineapple with a few hideous growths. I like how the sloped "roof" sections are now attached, but otherwise I feel it pales in comparison to past versions. A better improvement would have been using hinges to make the walls more smooth, IMO.

Definitely a fan of the new Batcave. It's good to see a new interpretation of it in any event, and the colorful design really speaks to me. Bane's drill is creatively-designed, and all the new figs are excellent (even if Batman's grin is a bit weird). I wonder what the other Batman sets will look like... I guess the color schemes will be similar to the Batcycle/Bat-Pod in this set. If the Batwing looks like its image on the big display screen, I'll be very impressed. It's not as stretched-out-looking as the old one, and I like that.

This MOC is brilliant! I love those tiny horses! The trees aren't bad either. Although my brother points out that the people are holding their lances on the wrong sides-- they're never going to hit each other that way!

I wouldn't say they botched PotC; I just think that PotC isn't as good a franchise at pushing merchandise as, say, Star Wars or SpongeBob SquarePants. With that said, it's possible that the sets did well, and TLG's just not confident they'll have lasting success when there aren't any new movies in theaters. The theme could easily come back when a new installment is over the horizon. Of course, I tend to have a more positive view of a lot of sets than many people, so perhaps you're right and the PotC sets simply didn't meet customers' expectations. This same factor, of course, does make me worry whether a LotR license would have staying power. And while I don't feel a theme has to be a multi-year success to be enjoyable, I would rather see TLG explore the potential of Kingdoms more thoroughly unless they feel another castle theme would offer more lasting creative opportunities.

Well, we haven't had spinner sets where the characters weren't available in sets yet. But there are spinner sets that have minifigures not in other sets. Besides rather trivial differences like the skeletons in spinner sets having horizontal hand clips and the skeletons in other sets having vertical ones, there's also the more significant case of Bonezai, whose white-spiked armor piece is only available from his spinner sets. Hence him being the only spinner set my twin brother and I bought (although we also have spinners from some of the building sets). Incidentally, I wonder what store exclusive sets there might be in the upcoming wave. In the first year of Ninjago, store exclusive sets tended to include spinners, including some that didn't come in other sets (like Jay DX's spinner). I wonder if the same might be true next year. If there are store exclusive sets we haven't seen yet, that might also mean that some of the characters who only appear in booster packs and spinner sets so far might also appear in other, larger sets. I also wonder if there are any figs next year who won't get character cards. I hope not-- it was perhaps a forgivable oversight in Samukai's case since he's almost impossible to spin on a spinner (his center of gravity is too high), but not so much in Jay DX's case.

The lower shell could possibly just attach with a 3M bone piece (same kind used for Fire Lord's neck). I love non-traditional builds like many of the villains use, although I worry about them sometimes because, being non-traditional, it's harder to predict how they'll look from all angles. I'm pretty sure Thornraxx and Jawblade have mostly-cohesive designs, but Reapa I'm less certain about. Wish we had new pics of the small and mid-size sets' packaging...

I actually think the cans in the Recycling Truck set might actually be Medium Azure, which is lighter than Alien Conquest's Dark Azure. Both colors will be appearing in next year's Friends sets. Anyway, still kinda disappointed that the police badge has changed from the snazzy version that had been current for years, with the four-stud pattern. Of course, I'm glad that otherwise, the special "POLICE" patterns match last year's, even though these sets' color schemes tend to have heavier use of blue than last years', which favored white. Why is the Garbage Truck set covered in recycling logos? It's flat-out misleading, IMO. Finally, look at the base of the "POLICE" sign in front of the jail! It seems to be the brick piece used elsewhere, but it has no vertical grooves. This suggests to me that the piece's two sides are not identical. By alternating the sides with and without the vertical grooves, or by exclusively using the sides without the vertical grooves, you could change the look of a brick wall made with these pieces. Very fond of these sets overall. I'm not really into City, so I probably won't be buying any, but I still like to pay close attention to City since I feel it sets the standard for "real life" in LEGO, and all other themes are variations on that standard. And for the most part this upcoming wave gets my approval. EDIT: Note that the police/forest ranger torsos come in both male and female varieties! Both can be seen in the police station set! I also can't help but love the "redneck crooks", even if they're still wearing prison stripes. Hope we get more wonderful LEGO City mini-movies like this year's showing off the fun stories you can create with these sets!

Sand purple was discontinued years ago. The convertible uses Medium Lavender, a new color seen here. Its uses prior to the Friends theme are on a LEGO Minifigure clock's legs, and as printing on the new Sebulba minifigure. Many of the light blue parts also are not Medium Blue, but rather Medium Azure, another new color seen in the first link. Although there may be Medium Blue in some sets as well. For instance, the set with the dog being washed has a wooden bucket in what looks like Medium Blue. Teal is also long-discontinued, if you're talking about the kind used in BIONICLE, Technic Competition/Cyber Slam, and Rock Raiders (Bricklink's Dark Turquoise). The teal in these sets tends to be Dark Azure, the new color that debuted in Alien Conquest. I agree the models and the accessories are pretty desirable compared to past themes with non-minifig figures. Although I have mixed thoughts about the new animals. I think their detailed "anime-style" eyes would look downright weird next to minifigures, who tend to have simpler decoration. At the same time, they'd probably look better with minifigs than many Belville critters, such as that monstrously-huge rabbit. The new bunny is at a much more reasonable scale.

That's actually normal for a Skycrane. And personally, I think it looks just fine. I like the dinosaurs in this theme, too. I wonder whether this would be more than a one-wave theme. Realistically many of the dinosaur parts could be reused on other types of dinosaurs.

The "official" release date for Series 6 is January, same as Series 3's was this year. So it will probably start showing up before Christmas this year. If I had to place bets, I'd expect Series 7's "official" release date to be April, so it would start showing up in stores next year around the same time Series 4 did this year. Since we haven't seen or heard anything about Series 8 except from people who work for TLG, it's probably due to be released some time next summer or autumn.

The Commando Droids look like Dark Brown to me, but of course it's hard to tell from the pics. If they are a new color, it's not one of the new colors we know about already-- those are mostly just the pastel colors from the Friends theme. I'm not sure how I feel about the new C-3PO (I was rather fond of the old one), but I like most of the other new figs

I think the "office nerd" is a computer programmer, hence his "C:\" mug. The "shipwreck survivor" is also probably our Jungle Boy we were promised in the S5 blurb at shop.LEGO.com. Hard to say which fig is my favorite, but useful parts abound. For example, the Swimmer's medal, the new flower stem piece used by the hippie and bride figs, and Red Riding Hood's basket (which also appears in the Friends theme in some more unusual color I can't remember off the top of my head).

This site had finalized images of the Friends sets yesterday, but now the site seems to be down... I was in the middle of a chat and so didn't have time to save them. Noteworthy changes I noticed include that there's more pink in the final theme. Or rather, the pink is more visible in the pics-- I hadn't noticed any pink in the robot lab set's prelim images, but it's there. Also, the tools in the robot lab set unfortunately aren't the blue from before, but instead Medium Lilac (Bricklink's Dark Purple). There were a couple other changes-- for instance, the color of the floor of the rabbit hutch is yellow in the final set, apparently, and the animal hospital now has a lime-green cross-shaped sign over the stable-- but in general stuff tended to stay mostly the same. On a side note, the basket of the S7 Little Red Riding Hood minifigure seems to be the same basket from Stephanie's Convertible in a more ordinary color.

The smaller recycling truck set and the Ambulance have the same grille decoration with "CITY" logo! That might mean it's printed! Still disappointed that the word "Ambulance" on the ambulance set isn't mirrored (here in the US at least that's the norm so you can tell what it is in your rear view mirror if it's coming up behind you), and that the smaller recycling truck set has no recyclables. Perhaps it's just designed to be a regular garbage truck, and in that case the banana, fish, and 1x1 doggy doo-doo (just guessing here) might make sense, but in that case there's no reason the vehicle should have recycling symbols on it. But otherwise, I'm very impressed with these sets. Incidentally, did anyone save the pictures? The site that had them now seems to be down, unfortunately.

Incidentally, as I pointed out in the Hero Factory topic, Green Lantern's energy construct thingy is two separate pieces, and the spiky part on the end is actually one half of Black Phantom's mace. Pretty nice, IMO. Still a big fan of Batman and Green Lantern, and still not sure what to think about Joker. Meanwhile, that site that had the pics is now down. I hope someone saved them...

Black Phantom didn't change too dramatically between the prelim and the finalized version, but he demonstrates just how much a high-quality, well-cropped image can improve upon the look of a prototype image with unfinished textures. I noticed when looking at the Ultrabuild Super Heroes sets on the same site that Black Phantom's black mace-ball is just two of the piece used on the end of the Ultrabuild Green Lantern figure's power ring blast. It works very well in my opinion. Breez and Evo are still my favorite heroes. Nothing much has been newly-revealed about the heroes besides that Evo's chest pattern, which I had thought was a concrete-like texture, is in fact more like a circuit board pattern. Pretty nice, and it suits his name fairly well (even though I would have preferred Nex to have a pattern like that, seeing as he's "the tech guy"). Great to have these finalized pics!

I see a bundle of grapes, but yeah, your explanation makes more sense. Unless, of course, it's just decorative and not symbolic of his allegiance in any way at all.

That's what I did when I unlocked LDD Extended mode. I don't think it matters where you put the line, really.