Aanchir

Interesting... I suppose there will be a DesignByMe update very soon that also includes these parts. Any sign of new exclusive elements? The interface is now kind of confusing, but it seems a lot less constraining than I anticipated (if it indeed works like I think it does; I'm having difficulty getting it to work myself). EDIT: Okay, I figured it out. You can only attach one piece to the arms during the basic armor stage; anything else has to be attached during the tools stage.

Well, one thing's for certain: it's a lot easier to tell whether a theme did well than whether it did poorly. A successful theme generally lasts longer, and extremely successful themes like BIONICLE, City, Star Wars, and Ninjago are often mentioned specifically in TLG's annual reports. TLG obviously publicizes their successful themes far more than their unsuccessful ones, and so hard data on how successful they were is often easier to come by. If a theme "fails to meet expectations" (the most solid example I can think of is Galidor), it will often get merely a passing mention. Unsuccessful themes that didn't have high expectations or a large initial investment may not get mentioned at all-- it's the ones TLG made a big fuss about in the first place that people want to hear the details about. Generally, educated guesses based on the factors DaveE mentioned are the best info that's available about unsuccessful themes. The lifespan of themes is the factor I tend to look at most, just because I'm counting on both TLG and the retailers that carry their products being competent and a lot more knowledgeable about the numbers than I am. Some people are more cynical about whether TLG honestly knows what's best for the company, and that's somewhat fair considering how long it has taken them in the past to deal with failures. But I'm generally confident that no theme lasting longer than one year is a complete failure, even if it may become unsuccessful after a while due to the passage of time and changing demographics. All in all, when someone says a theme was successful or unsuccessful, you're welcome to challenge them-- ask for a source, or at least some piece of circumstantial evidence. Even I fall into the trap of making speculations but phrasing them as if they were well-supported facts. If there's nobody with a healthy amount of skepticism in a conversation, then it just creates an environment where further confusion will prosper.

I personally would prefer that they continue making variations on Fire Lord's design, just so that they have time to master titan builds at that scale. I think Fire Lord himself was a good start, and Rocka XL improves in some ways while becoming worse in others (for instance, his legs are more aesthetically pleasing, but his arm posability is even more limited than Fire Lord's, and his torso is far less cohesive). A lot of people upon seeing Fire Lord immediately assumed that the Hero Factory building system was inherently more limited than BIONICLE's, and I'd like to see set designs that defy that expectation. Once that happens, I can be confident that the new building system is "comprehensive" for action figure sets. Way to build up our anticipation.

Another new video. This one is pretty straightforward-- the four ninjas have a race on their dragons. But it's still pretty cool. The effects in these episodes and mini-movies are a mixed bag. I love how shiny the dragon ninja suits are, but the Fire Dragon's fireball looks a little out of place. Also, according to the latest LEGO Club Magazine, there will be six of these two-minute mini-movies, and they will be airing on Cartoon Network sometime this fall... not that this really matters if they're all going to be available online. I'm sure these might also make it onto a Ninjago DVD release as special features.

I don't have the set together... unfortunately, many years ago during my childhood I scavenged so many sand green parts from it that it was easiest just to disassemble it entirely, and it hasn't been together since. However, I have to say I really enjoyed it. There's a review by another member here. Incidentally, the Statue of Liberty set is at 1:55 scale, and thus within the range of what is sometimes considered "minifig scale" (which is usually 1:60 at its smallest)

If the Friends line due for release next year proves successful, then a Disney Princess line would have similar potential, assuming girls within the System age range express as much interest in the license as girls within the Duplo age range. It's kind of an unusual situation since TLG has never done a licensed theme targeted at a minority audience like girls before, so we don't know how the extra cost to make up for royalties would play over in a theme that's already targeting a niche demographic. But the fact that TLG is giving it a chance in Duplo could mean they'd also be willing to take the plunge with a System theme. Of course, if it were done with the Friends style of figure, then parts like the new mermaid tail from PotC or the octopus tentacles from Atlantis might not be able to be used, depending on how the Friends figures are assembled. That would be a real shame. But at the same time, until the Friends line shows real promise in terms of sales I don't think we should discount the possibility of girl-oriented sets using traditional minifigures... just two years ago we had the Large Pink Brick Box, and this year on the extended-line front there's a female minifigure clock with a clearly girl-oriented color scheme, so TLG obviously still recognizes the power of the minifigure as an icon for male and female audiences alike.

Well, from an art/design perspective, "organic" doesn't have to mean actually made of organic matter or anything. It basically refers to shapes that imitate the curved and non-geometric shapes of many living things. A lot of Mars Mission spacecraft used heavily organic shapes (and, for all we know, might have actually included organic matter in the form of some sort of bio-technology). Even a lot of today's automobiles, like the Volkswagen Beetle, have what could be considered "organic" shapes. So an organically-shaped spacecraft isn't such an unrealistic vision of the future as it would have been in the early days of space exploration, where mechanical and geometric designs were often the most pragmatic. Of course, one argument often made against organic shapes to spacecraft (at least in deep space) is that there's just no point. A ship that never enters an atmosphere has no need to be aerodynamic, and so for things like space stations or other large vessels a boxy shape is still the most realistic. Needless to say, though, LEGO is a children's toy, and children like it when vehicles "look fast". Even many traditional Space sets thus used pointy cockpits like this to give sets a speedy look. Now that curves are so common in all LEGO themes, it's only natural that TLG would take advantage of the many curved pieces at their disposal to continue making their spacecraft as sleek-looking as possible.

Flick-fires in City-- a theme that as of yet has been pretty much devoid of even conventional firearms? I mean, sure, it's possible, but I wouldn't really consider it likely. I'm curious about the Friends theme as well. I hope the buildings are more substantial than many Belville buildings, even though I'm obviously not expecting anything as fleshed-out as the Creator houses. Even if "<insert that tiresome argument>" parts are used I'll be happy so long as the buildings have solid-looking walls rather than random lattices.

At ToyFair, he was called "Mamut", Scorpio was just "Scorpion", and Fangz was "NN". Do they really call him that? Nice! That's what I've been saying he is since he came out! Meanwhile on the back of the DVD cover is the mention of "pros Bulk and Stringer and rookies Furno, Nex, and Stormer". A lot of things are confused about whether or not Furno is still a rookie after RotR, and the truth isn't totally obvious, but calling Stormer a rookie is just Critical Research Failure.

I was a party pooper for a while too... I guess that's a popular one around here.

Absolutely not. That would be pointless, considering that pretty much any adult fan looking for value looks at price per piece, which that wouldn't have any impact on. Also, considering that it's about the opposite of what designers do in most themes (ever heard mention of "juniorization"?), it would be totally illogical here. The point of using plates is to give a more interesting texture, which is essential when building in microscale like this where people are likely to be looking at the sets up close, in great detail.

For me, when possible, both. I really liked how Space Police III differentiated good guy and bad guy vehicles by giving the good guys sleek star cruisers while giving the bad guys rugged, boxy automotive designs with beefy engines. "Curves vs. Angles" is one of the easiest ways to stylistically differentiate two factions. Similarly, Alien Conquest gives the ADU boxier vehicles, while the aliens have smooth and futuristic flying saucers. A similar dichotomy existed in many years of BIONICLE, where heroes tended to have more mechanistic designs and villains tended to be inspired by animals or monsters. There it was a lot less rigid than in Space Police III, though, given the overall tendencies to reuse parts and the need for new parts to have stylistic consistency with old ones. So in BIONICLE the overall looks were differentiated, rather than going for organic-versus-mechanical shapes for the individual components chosen. It's a similar contrast to the one used in the first year of Aquazone, where the Aquasharks had quite obviously animal-inspired vessels while the Aquanauts had stylish futuristic submarines-- despite the two themes using many of the same parts Overall, I like color-coding, but I think when it comes to differentiating factions there should be more to it than that. So in LEGO Space we see content differentiation (such as Spyrius's robots and flying saucers, which made that theme fairly unique), part differentiation (Space Police III's use of sleek windscreens for the good guys and boxier ones for the bad guys), and color differentiation (almost all themes). This has always been important to LEGO space, just to ensure that new factions don't feel like rehashes of old ones, but in today's two-faction themes it's a lot easier (and arguably more important) to establish a strict two-sided contrast in almost all aspects of set design.

Do these sorts of things need to make sense? I had one in my childhood that was a Castle set and a Spyrius set.

What was wrong with last year's? It was one of my favorites. The "Toys and Activities" gave it a very authentic holiday feel. Besides, I wouldn't want to get the same content in my advent calendars every year. Theming the advent calendar based on a current City subtheme seems like a good way of escaping that trend. By the way, something I noticed that's extremely odd is how the calendar is police-themed but the inside image, on the part of the calendar where the compartments are, shows the Police, Harbor, and Space subthemes pretty much equally. Admittedly, when you think about it, a police-themed advent calendar is all that would make a great deal of sense for an advent calendar-- I can't really visualize Space or Harbour making for great holiday-oriented building content-- but I wish the inside of the box had been designed to match the contents more specifically.

Depends what you mean by "supposed to". Leaks are never supposed to happen, and while I appreciate the anticipation (I'd also like to see some images of what to expect next year) it's getting downright tedious reading pointless posts all over the place asking when pictures will show up. When they happen, they'll find their way here, just like they always do. Might be sooner or later than usual, but they're leaks. If they were predictable then companies would be able to stop them from happening in the first place. Really, the Super Heroes action figure sets are some of the ones we have the least reason to be hoping for pics of. After all, we've already seen most of them. There are some cool pieces, like a 2M joint piece consisting simply of a socket and a ball. The ball is locked in place, meaning the real function of this isn't as a joint but as a lengthener for the beam pieces used in Hero Factory. You can see this piece in the pics of Batman and Green Lantern in the first post (on their hips) It seems like a potentially useful piece, but it isn't used all that creatively here, and I'm sure we'll see more interesting uses of it in the Hero Factory theme. That seems to be the most revolutionary element the Super Heroes theme is contributing. There are other new pieces in the Super Heroes sets, but most seem to be just different types of shell pieces or weapon pieces. There certainly won't be such a radical change in the building system as there was this year. Hopefully, though, TLG's designers will become more comfortable with the building system and will come up with new and creative ways to use it for Hero Factory set designs.

What's wrong with "weird" color schemes like Power Miners, World Racers, and Alien Conquest? Instead of "weird", I'd call them "interesting". I might be a bit biased coming from a BIONICLE background, where colors like lime and orange were very, very common. But TLG has worked hard to eliminate many of their most obscure colors, and I think it would be silly not to make good use of the ones they have left (not that lime is especially obscure anyway). In the case of World Racers, most of the colors were pretty normal anyway. Today, lime isn't much more unusual than green was in the 70s and 80s. Purple, like the Alien Conquest alien craft sometimes feature, is unfortunately still a rather rare color that we should treasure. It's every bit as "normal" as green is anyway, being a secondary color in a slightly darker shade than the classic Bright Blue, Bright Red, and Bright Yellow primary colors. I won't give a lecture on why two-faction themes are the norm nowadays, because I'm sure you know already, and I have nothing to convince you of. Even when today's trends are understandable, that doesn't mean all fans have to like them. Personally, I enjoyed the one-faction themes I was lucky enough to live through, and I enjoy today's two-faction themes. Still, forgive me if I sound like I'm rambling. I'll admit that I enjoyed Aquazone (which was usually two simultaneous subthemes representing opposing factions) a lot more than, say, UFO or Exploriens. That didn't stop me from collecting the latter themes, though. Also, even with today's two-faction themes I don't necessarily try to balance the two factions-- in Exo-Force, for instance, my twin brother and I only bought the human battle machines, while our younger brother got the robot battle machines. Role-play is less fun with one-faction themes, but we adult fans generally have enough sets from previous years to make our own conflicts, if we even still role-play with the sets at all! As for the sizes and costs of sets, I don't see anything wrong with the Earth Defense HQ. All of the smaller vehicles included enhance the play value of the main vehicle tremendously. It reminds me of the Agents Mobile Command Center, though admittedly not nearly as cool for me since the smaller vehicles don't all fit inside the main vehicle. The play value of that set, not to mention the building of it, was completely worth the high price tag IMO. And as for single-faction themes having sets in every price range, that's true. You could get anything you wanted from those themes. But I cannot comprehend that anyone would want a set like this unless they had already bought a larger set from the theme (or, of course, unless they couldn't afford any larger sets). It's a small set with few useful parts and hardly any play value. The main advantage to two-faction themes is that the smallest sets today still come with role-play opportunities. This set gives you the opportunity to play out a conflict scenario without needing any other sets in their collection. Meanwhile, I don't see how Earth Defense HQ, with its many smaller vehicles, is any different than the Neptune Discovery Lab, which likewise included a vehicle large enough to exist as a mid-size set all by itself. And I think the Explorien Starship was every bit as empty and boring as the Alien Mothership this year. These were the sets I grew up with, and I loved them. In retrospect, they don't seem nearly as fun as I remember them. But inexplicably, I remember having lots of fun with them, so obviously they did their job better than I as an adult can even comprehend.

How do we know that a Mega-Core Magnetizer re-release would sell like hotcakes? It's a set I only knew from posters and so forth, since it was before I was into LEGO. AFOLs are a tiny, tiny segment of LEGO consumers, and while they are significant they might not be enough to justify the cost of all the elements that would need to be brought back into production for such a set. And elements that would need to be brought back into production don't just include those like old-style hinges that are decidedly obsolete. Many of the parts in the Mega Core Magnetizer haven't been produced in the correct colors, with the correct decorations, or in some cases at all for over a decade! TLG has changed their production significantly in the past decade, so some parts might need to be completely redesigned just to be produced. Molds for certain parts may have even been destroyed in the intervening time since the set's original release. Meanwhile, any changes, however minor, will be seen as flaws by some people-- the more things you change, the more people will decide not to buy the set. And what about kids buying the sets? Sure, some kids might be interested in certain old sets. But frankly, a lot of market research is put into the design of today's sets. This research is intended to help TLG custom-tailor sets to what kids will be interested in. A Legends set can't have that. It will have been designed for an entirely different generation of kids than will be able to buy the re-released version. Furthermore, the set will no longer be new or revolutionary. This set, when it was originally released, contained something kids couldn't get from any other manufacturer, or from any other LEGO set. Today, besides a "retro" design, there is no redeeming value in this set that isn't present in any sets currently available. Even sets from the past two decades can be extremely dated. Nobody would be fool enough to release the original LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System, with its original software, to today's kids. It's old, it's dated, and a loyal re-release would reflect the original product's flaws as well as its assets. LEGO isn't the only company that's focused on moving forward. A lot of people like classic cars, but car companies focus on creating new cars with new designs. With LEGO, it's really just a matter of whether the demand for the original products makes up for the cost of producing them again. The fact that TLG hasn't produced any LEGO Legends sets since 2006 suggests that it doesn't. And one last nail in the coffin for a lot of sets LEGO might consider re-releasing: the people who loved a set the most when it was new are often the same people who still own that set. A new one, even if it were an exact replica, would be a shallow substitute for the sentimental value of the original.

You aren't going to be able to buy hands or arms separately through any channels, I can assure you of that. To my knowledge, torsos are only ever sold pre-assembled, most likely because TLG doesn't want to encourage swapping of minifigure arms, hands, and legs. The torso-arm, arm-hand, and leg-hip connections can become damaged if you separate the parts. It is possible that new pre-assembled torsos could be added to Pick-A-Brick that contain these arm and hand colors, but it's doubtful unless those torsos were recently produced and included in sets with that torso-arm-hand combination. They're not going to pull five-year-old parts back into production just for the online Pick-A-Brick and Design byME. Now, one way older and rarer torso assemblies might be brought back into production is through the vintage minifigure collections. And if that were to happen, then while online PAB probably wouldn't include them (I think the vintage minifigure collection parts are produced in China, and so I don't think that it would be practical to pack them into orders halfway around the world in Europe), Build-A-Mini stations at LEGO brand stores often include parts from these collections. Of course, things like flesh arms and hands tend to only occur in licensed themes, and I'm not sure if TLG can produce licensed figs for their vintage minifigure collections. Chances are paying royalties would get a bit messy if the figs belonged to different licenses by different companies, or if licensed figs and non-licensed figs were packaged together. Surely LEGO Star Wars has been around for long enough that an all-Star Wars vintage minifigure collection would be possible, although I'm not sure if there would be a demand (and figs from after the advent of fleshies aren't all that "vintage" anyway).

The Mars Mission alien vehicles had some great black parts including the large quarter-circles with sloped edges. I'm not totally sure how great these would be for Blacktron, as it really depends on what sort of aesthetic you want to go for. Blacktron I had a very dart-like aesthetic, as did many other themes around that time, whereas Blacktron II had a greater emphasis on bubble-cockpits. Space Police III bad guy vehicles also had some great black parts, as do some of the Atlantis sea monsters.

Now, this is where you and I have to disagree. The printed parts were one of the things I most hated about the UFO theme, and possibly one of the reasons I have such a pro-sticker attitude today. Many UFO printed parts had what I consider excessive detail, and I've never used any of them in MOCs outside the UFO theme. And considering I haven't made UFO MOCs since the theme was new, these printed parts mostly have served to take up space in bins. Some of the UFO printed parts like those giant quarter-dish pieces wouldn't really have worked with stickers. They're not smooth enough and cover too big a space for stickers to be applied easily. But other pieces, like the angled wings that narrow from four-wide to two-wide could easily have had stickers without any difficulty applying them. The Alien Conquest theme tends mostly to have stickers that look easy enough to apply, are printed on white (some people prefer clear stickers, but I dislike them-- they show dust and fingerprints too easily), and have basic designs. Another area where stickered Alien Conquest parts have an advantage over printed UFO parts is size. Most stickers in Alien Conquest cover only a small-to-medium area of the set. In contrast, UFO had a lot of huge, <insert that tiresome argument> parts (hard enough to use on their own) printed across a broad area. What this means is that the UFO themes were often relying heavily on these decorations for their aesthetic. In contrast, Alien Conquest sets tend to look fine with or without their stickers, and the stickers are used sparingly for logos and occasionally texture. It makes the stickered parts far more versatile and the builds of the sets much more intricate in comparison. Anyway, that's enough ranting about that. I can totally respect many sorts of printing. But UFO strikes me as possibly the single worst example of the use of printing in LEGO themes. As for the Alien Conquest minifigures, I love their color schemes. One reason I love them is that the three most vibrant colors (Bright Yellowish Green, Bright Reddish Violet, and Dark Azur) have such wonderful contrast against each other. It is a bit odd that Dark Azur would make its debut in this theme where it's used almost exclusively for minifigures, but I think it's a wonderful color that helps fill the gap left in the bluish-green area of the spectrum after Bright Bluish Green (Bricklink's Dark Turquoise) was discontinued so many years back. The bright blue vehicles and bluish-green uniforms of the ADU are a bit unusual, to be sure, but I think this actually helps balance out the ADU and aliens in terms of realism. The ADU has somewhat more realistic future-military vehicles and uniforms, but a cartoony color scheme. In contrast, the aliens have ships with muted color schemes, but following cartoony, B-movie design principles. Admittedly, the blue vehicles of the ADU are extremely unusual, especially with the pixel camo (what could they possibly be blending in with?), but all in all I would have been bored by grey vehicles. It should be noted that while I like the theme's colors from a design perspective, I haven't bought any of the sets yet, and color scheme is indeed a factor in this. The colors just don't seem too much like ones I need in my collection, or ones I would really like to MOC with. But the main factor in why I haven't bought any Alien Conquest sets has nothing to do with set design-- it's just that I've chosen to invest in Ninjago, and don't have the budget for both themes.

That's great to know! If Witch Doctor's complex design wasn't obvious enough, we now know that his designer has a great deal of experience under his belt!

Well, considering that recent battle packs (including the rumored 2012 Star Wars battle packs) include two factions each, we might be headed in that direction again. The Alien Conquest battle pack even includes a civilian, making it the closest we've come to a three-or-more-faction battle pack in years. Of course, in the case of the old troop builder packs, there was a significant difference in that the characters were often drawn from themes spanning multiple years. Since we no longer have single-faction themes today, that might not be as necessary. You'd be able to include both good guys and bad guys from the current year. But at the same time, the "troop builders" also never had unique minifigures, so I doubt we'd see space civilian factions introduced just to be included in those sets-- they'd have to appear in other sets as well. Or in the very least, their parts would need to appear elsewhere in that year.

Reddish Brown is often inconsistent whether parts are made in China or not. So I don't think those cows are a "great example" of the differences in Chinese plastic. Additionally, texture can be a result of a part's surface finish, which varies depending on the mold and has little to do with the type of plastic. Since to my knowledge all cows are made in China, it's impossible to tell whether the mismatching is a consequence of what type of plastic was used, where the cows were made, when the cows were made, or possibly just inherent qualities of the cow mold. Many collectible minifigure parts would be better examples in that certain ones from S3 and onward are not, in fact, new part designs, and can be compared with other parts bearing the same part number. For instance, one could compare the banana that comes in the S5 Zookeeper with one from a pre-2009 set and identify differences much more reliably. Or for a thinner part more likely to show differences, you could compare swords from this year's Ninjago spinners with pre-2009 Ninja swords. Something that I think I ought to mention about Chinese parts that I've observed, which has nothing to do with quality but is an easy way of distinguishing the parts. If a version of a part debuted in the collectible minifigures, then any parts from China will likely use that version. Thus, swords in the Ninjago spinner sets have octagonal hilts and the number 88420, whereas swords from other Ninjago sets will have square hilts and the number 30173 (incidentally, the same number as the classic pre-2010 Ninja swords but a different shape).

Probably because the helmets on their own (without visors) look more like space helmets than like Castle helmets. It's easy to just sort of imagine a transparent visor on the old space helmets, covering the face. And in fact there are some AFOLs who prefer the classic helmets for this reason, feeling the modern crash helmet piece feels incomplete without a visor and doesn't resemble a space helmet nearly as much.

I voted Space Police, Blacktron, and Spyrius. Space Police, of course, because it's a classic theme and because Blacktron is nothing without the Space Police as protagonists. Blacktron because it is also classic and TLG clearly has a special place in their hearts for this theme. Spyrius just because I love the way it's a semi-hardcore twist on the flying saucers and giant robots that no B-movie space villains should be without. But as with Blacktron, such a theme would not be good unless a "good guy" faction were included. I definitely don't think M-Tron could ever really be revived. It was a very gimmick-based theme, the gimmick in question being the use of magnets. And while magnets haven't been seen much in recent sets, it still wouldn't feel at all fresh or new from my perspective. Furthermore, a civilian-based Space theme with unclear purpose doesn't lend itself to too many role-play opportunities (some things I've seen suggest the M-Trons are a mining company, other things suggest that they're a rescue organization, and all that sources seem to agree on is that they have advanced magnet technology). Perhaps M-Tron civilians could be included in a Space Police/Blacktron set as characters for the bad guys to terrorize-- I have no idea (frankly, Classic-Space-inspired figs might be better for this purpose). But in any event, M-Tron doesn't seem to have what it takes to be a self-sustaining theme, particularly now that we've moved beyond single-faction themes entirely. So that's my perspective. Any new sci-fi theme, whether a revival or not, would be best with both "good guys" and "bad guys". Civilian factions might be able to be included, but I doubt they could support a theme on their own since they don't tend to excite the imagination as much as "good vs. evil" conflict.