Aanchir

I'm thinking no on the hands. The Hulk prototype seen at Comic-Con has more fingers and bulkier thumbs. It's possible that since these were prototypes the final set will just use the giant troll hands, but I think if they went to the trouble to make new prototype hands they'll probably go through with finalizing those parts.

That Statue of Liberty is incredible. These might be from a collectible minifigure series, or they might be promos of some sort, but whatever the case that particular fig has to be official. I've never seen a customizer or clone brand match the modern minifigure aesthetic so perfectly.

Many in-store PAB parts can also be found on the online Pick-A-Brick (for instance, many Hero Factory parts), but selections vary by store. No store will have the complete selection of parts that can be purchased online, and some parts in-store may not be from the online selection. Brickbuildr is a fan-site that keeps track of which parts are available from which stores, but updates are entirely dependent on visitors to the stores reporting their findings to the site, so many American LEGO stores' inventories haven't been updated in a long time.

Awesome MOCs! These heroes really have a sense of identity apart from the sets used to make them, which is a testament to both the part design of the 3.0 helmets and the creativity of the MOCs. One thing that bothers me is that Noble's launcher doesn't end up looking very powerful. You probably don't have the parts to do this, but if you ever get them I'd recommend replacing the 4M lightsaber blades with 6M bars. I love how the two heroes look like color-swapped reflections of one another. I might have been bothered by Noble having the same color face as his helmet, but since Stormer 3.0's helmet is so "open" it works well. Great work overall on these two! Yeah, the staff prefer to consolidate all canister-sized heroes built with the new building system in this topic. But it personally doesn't bother me-- it gives me one place to regularly check for updates rather than a huge cluster of topics.

Rising oil prices, rising steel prices, inflation, and a number of other factors play a part in that. Really, I'm quite impressed at how little sets have increased in price over the years, given the trend towards higher prices for just about everything non-LEGO these days. There's a topic about this in the LEGO General Discussion subforum.

Well, cheese slopes are made from polycarbonate, the same material as transparent pieces tend to use. I believe polycarbonate is typically used for non-transparent parts only when ABS would be too weak, since polycarbonate is a sturdier material. So if cheese slopes used LEGO's regular ABS, problems with breaking would likely be even worse.

Just figured I'd share that my family got the Master Builder Academy starter kit, and I was recently disappointed to find that one of the purple 1x1 "cheese wedges" and one of the green 1x2 "cheese graters" had already split down the middle. They haven't been in any unusual temperatures, although I personally wonder if there might have been some sort of improper temperatures or conditions during shipping. You'd expect a flaw that emerges this soon after getting the set to be a consequence of heat; I've never heard of cheese wedges splitting like this in less than a month after getting the set!

If you're asking when sets will be available, January of next year is the stated release date. So they won't likely be appearing in stores until November at the earliest.

I think a lot of people would disagree with many of these sentiments. First of all, a lot of people don't like specialized minifigure heads being used where the classic head would do (specifically, for human characters of any sort). Even many of the Toy Story figs got negative reactions from AFOLs who would have preferred regular minifigure heads used for characters like Buzz and Woody. TLG is also proud of their studs, and I can't even imagine them introducing a new head for bald or masked characters just to get rid of the head stud, which has since the beginning been an integral part of the minifigure's design. You might as well be asking TLG to give classic minifigures molded ears and noses. Personally, I feel Batman and Catwoman look excellent, just as they did in the LEGO Batman theme. As I see it, only Iron Man has a really big problem with his out-of-scale helmet. And as some people have observed, a body armor piece could potentially amend this.

Thanks for the review! I'm personally a big fan of this set, which crams a lot of the most interesting Echo Base scenes into one playset. What color is the medical droid's body? Is it just regular Sand Blue, or is it a "pearl" color? I'm extremely curious because last year and this year there haven't been any pearl blue colors on the color palettes which LEGO has released, and in fact the last one (Sand Blue Metallic) hasn't been on the palette since 2005. Since they have most of the same pieces, you could very easily just modify the new one to resemble the old one. Unless, that is, you prefer the new one, and if you do that's probably why TLG introduced it. When is the last time stickers actually had this problem? I hear people mention it all the time as a disadvantage to stickers, but I have plenty of sets that I've owned for years where the stickers are still attached just fine. In fact, the only stickers I've had that currently have difficulty sticking are ones that I've deliberately removed at least once (not a good idea if you ever intend to re-apply them). This includes STAMPs (Stickers Across Multiple Pieces) where the pieces have become separated, but I don't think this set has any of those so there's no reason it should have this problem. I agree the med bay is the best part of the set, but I don't think its "crampedness" is a problem. It looks as though there's plenty of room for minifigures to stand around. In this case crampedness does seem more of a problem; we can agree there. Personally, I don't buy sets for accuracy, even licensed sets-- I buy them for familiarity. In the case of this set, there's plenty of stuff that immediately made me think, "I remember that!" I think it's a very good playset-- not quite as good as the larger Cloud City from 2003, but still a great likeness of the scenes it's meant to replicate. Really, there haven't been many location-based Star Wars sets that are a perfect replica of the scenes they're meant to embody, but I think that the familiarity aspect is the important factor. I'm a big fan of the most recent Death Star set, which packs a lot of great scenes into a small space. Being able to simplify a subject while retaining the most important design elements is a critical part of set design, and I think it was handled well here. If you want a better display piece, it doesn't look like it would take much modification to spread the parts of this set out further using parts from your personal collection. Something you didn't mention in the review were those flick-fire missiles. I like the whole structure of the "guns" they're attached to. And as my twin brother pointed out yesterday when looking at the high-res pics, the flick-fires themselves are incorporated very nicely. I'm a big fan of the current style of flick missiles, as they are small and (for me) easy to work, as opposed to ones like in the TIE Crawler which are large and impossible to work. It's possible I just have smaller hands than a lot of AFOLs, though.

They stick out a bit far folded back. Not much of a problem, of course-- it's dreadfully difficult to make realistically-folding wings on a humanoid figure.

Personally, I think the heads look OK with the Hero Factory parts, specifically because few of the sets use extremely mechanical-looking HF parts, and because the heads are stylized to look somewhat angular. Together these factors make the Hero Factory parts look natural on a number of the figs. Ironically, one of the most mechanical-looking among them is the Hulk, who doesn't even have any excuse that could be used for the other characters like "power armor" or what have you. And believe me, I've seen plenty of action figures that use just that excuse for a radically-different costume than the classic character, usually with some sort of action features. Iron Man's body, interestingly, doesn't use any pre-existing Hero Factory armor. Instead, he uses the new printed chest piece as well a new torso armor piece underneath that. So I suppose the designers decided that the regular Hero Factory torso armor piece didn't look mechanical enough-- at least, compared to the others. Something else I noticed: while it's hard to be totally sure, it looks as though Batman's weapon is co-injected with Silver Metallic and Titanium Metallic plastic. It ends up looking pretty cool, with a lighter-colored blade than the rest of its structure.

Very neat! Although a little bit garish, the grey really helps tone down the color scheme. Are those dollar bills reserved for Bricklink orders of more pink and purple pieces?

Pretty nice! Kind of reminds me of some of the camouflage stickers in the final wave of Exo-Force sets! At the same time, I have to say I kind of prefer the sleek simplicity of Nex's color scheme without stripes. Don't get me wrong, those 3M shells look great with those stripes, and would be awesome in a set (even though it may be a while before they could print those across the front and side surfaces like that, and stickers would be even more complicated). But I think printing on the chest piece and helmet would distract from the mechanical texture of both these pieces. Perhaps it would look better in actuality than in this digital mock-up, however. No real way of knowing at this point.

Nice use of Toa Mata torsos! While the legs in general don't quite match the aesthetic of the torso (which is a lot smoother and less angular), they're my favorite part of this MOC. One thing I'm not too fond of is the wing structure. While it works in terms of shape, the various pieces used for the wings don't match stylistically. Swapping the Air Katana for the medium-sized Mahri blades might be an improvement, as long as it doesn't disrupt the overall shape. How do the wings look folded back?

In general, I think saying anyone but a LEGO set designer could design a set would be fairly demeaning. I'm not going to belabor it, though. It's just one of my pet peeves when that argument is used, whether it's in reference to something good or something bad. Say the set's hideous, say it sucks, it won't bother me too much. But treating any sort of creative work like it didn't require the effort/experience of the person who designed it tends to strike a nerve with me, because it assumes that by seeing the end product we can automatically judge all the work that went into it. I agree on just about all of this. I also agree that there's more detail that could have been put into the back of the Black Pearl. I just feel that compared to other ships in the franchise, it's rather plain, and so I don't feel the LEGO version really needs much improvement. Now, I'd love it if some MOCist would make a revamp of this set once it's out-- and frankly, I look forward to it if you decide to do this yourself! You can't see effort. That's the thing that particularly bothers me-- that assumption that the end product clearly shows all the effort behind it. Really, though, effort isn't visible as a measure of how complex a set is. As I said, making a set as simple as possible can be just as difficult as making a perfect likeness. Frankly, somebody could look at a lot of modern art, including Cubist, abstract, or non-representational works, and say "a four-year-old could have made this". And really, in the same vein as the infinite monkeys reproducing the complete works of Shakespeare, that's probably true-- there could very easily be a four-year-old who on an impulse draws something not unlike the artwork in question. But this sort of thinking ignores the thought processes behind the work, instead just seeing the artist as a means to an end. And I think that's just the wrong perspective to have, especially when you're dealing with people who for whatever reason have chosen some type of art or design job as their profession. Again, I'm not going to belabor this. I find that sort of comment extremely insulting in any context where you haven't actually seen the effort behind a design. You can call a set ugly, disappointing, or even utter garbage, but I don't think it's acceptable to demean the designers (whom you don't even know) just on an assumption that they aren't doing their best. Because on the off chance that they did their very best, that they put their design effort towards characteristics other than making a realistic or detailed likeness (believe it or not, there is more to set design than just that), you're telling them they wasted all that effort.

Yeah, stickers on 2x2 or 1x1 round parts usually don't like to stick. I generally approve of stickers in a lot of situations, but this is one of a few places where I wish LEGO would stop using stickers unless they can fix this problem. The phrasing of your last sentence made my day, by the way. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Probably so. The products are real Comic-Con giveaways. Hard to believe people are already selling them for exorbitant rates just a day after they were first released, though.

The Batman in The Dark Knight looks almost nothing like his original counterpart in Detective Comics from the 1930s. For that matter, neither does the Batmobile in any Batman movie. Frankly, though, there are a lot of toys out there today that feature more stylized depictions of superheroes, often with costumes they never wore in other media. This is normal for makers of action figures, and I don't see a real problem with it (sometimes it's even fun to see an interpretation of a classic character designed more for play value than for practicality). The TV show The Batman was one I enjoyed greatly, even though it radically re-imagined the design of villains such as Bane and the Joker. Now, depending on how Joker is pulled off in these sets, I might have different feelings about him. That remains to be seen, as I'm not totally sure how a good purple suit might be made using Hero Factory parts. And he's not nearly as musclebound as the heroes who have been seen so far.

I'd say it is insulting to say that a professional designer's model is something a ten-year-old boy could have built. There are a lot of decisions that go into designing a LEGO set, and those decisions are often rooted in the extensive background knowledge and design experience of the set designers. It's essentially like saying a ten-year-old could have written The Lord of the Rings. Whether or not there is some magical ten-year-old who can produce such a celebrated fantasy world, it's still demeaning to the writer to say that their hard work could as easily have been done by a person without the same expertise or background knowledge. Meanwhile, as seen in Hinckley's photos, it's not just a straight black wall-- it's on a hinge, as are the side walls of the captain's cabin. While this is a simple enough technique for an AFOL (and even for some particularly apt kids), it's every bit as complex as I feel a the Black Pearl's stern needs to be (hey, it was good enough for Brickbeard's Bounty, the flagship set of the 2009 Pirates line). The Black Pearl is not an especially complicated ship compared to the other ships in the PotC franchise, and so using advanced building techniques where they aren't necessary would be wasteful. Personally, as a MOCist I often try to imagine my MOCs as if they were sets, and you might not believe how difficult it sometimes is to simplify a complex idea without removing the most important characteristics. So just because a set is simpler doesn't mean that less hard work and design experience went into it. In this case, practically the whole ship is scaled down compared to the Queen Anne's Revenge, and I personally feel it was done fairly effectively. As mentioned, the main flaw I see in the set design is that ugly hollow area between the figurehead and the bow of the ship. The interceptor isn't nearly as familiar a ship as the Black Pearl. If TLG were to release another ship from the franchise, I imagine that they'd make the Flying Dutchman-- something that might very well justify releasing the Black Pearl as a smaller vessel. It's entirely possible that there were plans to do just that, even if they are not still standing (and we don't know that there aren't). We know the Black Pearl has been designed since February at least since its piece count, price, and the film it is taken from have been known since the New York Toy Fair. I imagine the reason for it not being shown until recently, rather than because it's a recent design, is because TLG planned a later release for it and wanted pictures kept under wraps until its release was closer. The fact that a forum of adult fans tends to dislike what is at its core a kid's toy doesn't really strike me as evidence that the set is inherently bad. In the beginning of BIONICLE, that theme was massively rejected by AFOLdom, but today there are many AFOLs on this very site that grew up with it and appreciate it as a theme. As I see it, obviously any kid will be able to tell that the QAR or the Imperial Flagship is a better set than the Black Pearl; I'm not denying that. But I take issue with how many AFOLs had unrealistically-inflated expectations of this set. I'm sure kids who are looking for a pirate ship within this price range will be plenty happy with this set. When we first learned about the set, there were some minor grumblings about price point and piece count, but in general there was a lot of anticipation. Since pics emerged, however, nobody's stepped up and proposed big improvements that would maintain a similar price point, besides the occasional people who suggest alternative minifigures or minor color changes. Instead, people suggest the Black Pearl should have been a higher-priced set in the first place, with some people going so far as to suggest it should have been to the caliber of the Imperial Flagship! Personally, I think TLG is wise to price it and release it as they currently have planned, even if it is not much more extravagant than the typical LEGO pirate ship. Of course, I'm not much of a LEGO Pirates fan, so I may be a bit naive in thinking that $100 dollars is a high enough price point for any non-D2C set from a licensed theme. I also may be getting behind the times, considering how Ninjago's flagship set, the Fire Temple, is a non-licensed, non-D2C set with a $120 price tag. But I still can't help but think that the Black Pearl is not such a special ship in the grand scheme of things and does not demand a hugely-intricate LEGO incarnation like the QAR-- or, were it to happen, the Dutchman.

I keep hearing the word "medium green", and it always makes me cringe because I have no idea what color it's supposed to refer to. I'm assuming it means Mata Green (28 Dark Green), which is two full shades away from the actual Medium Green (29 Medium Green), a long-discontinued color. In between the two colors is 37 Bright Green, another color that's been used a lot recently, even if it hasn't made any appearances in constraction sets. Needless to say, there's a lot of room for confusion with LEGO's color naming system, so I don't really often insist people use one particular naming system. But there are instances where people could be a lot clearer. For instance, the color introduced in Prince of Persia is Medium Dark Flesh (Bricklink) or Medium Nougat (TLG). Just calling it "nougat" causes confusion, because there is no Bricklink or Peeron color by that name, while TLG has a separate color called 18 Nougat (which corresponds to Bricklink's Flesh). Similarly, calling the green in these sets "Medium Green" will only cause confusion among LEGO fans who are more familiar with the color Medium Green on Bricklink or in TLG's color palette, rather than the BIONICLE fan term.

If there's one sort of comment that makes me bitter, it's seeing someone comparing professional design work to something a child could have done. Perhaps I'm just jealous because I wasn't designing cost-effective, marketable sets when I was ten years old. But in general, I feel these sorts of comments are extremely insulting, especially considering that MOCs of this caliber by ten-year-olds never tend to crop up anywhere, whether in the LEGO Magazine's cool creations, Brickshelf, or at LEGO fan conventions. This sort of comment isn't a realistic criticism of sets; it's just a tasteless insult that demeans the hard work of people who probably did their very best to make sets with all the most important design considerations. Really, how is this set any worse than this classic ship? You could argue that because it is a likeness of a ship from another company's intellectual property, it ought to be more impressive. But whether licensed or unlicensed, it has the same function as that ship: a simpler and more affordable ship that's an alternative to the larger flagship of the theme. A lot of people suggest that the Black Pearl should have been the flagship of the theme, but consider this: it is by far one of the least impressive pirate ships in the PotC franchise. And the reason is obvious: it was the first pirate ship in the franchise, and being a "good guy" ship in later films it always had to be significantly outclassed in terms of size and design by the opposition. Even though the QAR is the same size, it still is much more grand and intimidating in design than the Black Pearl, and so pretty much necessitates a higher-budget set. So this is what we get: something that basically amounts to a scaled-down QAR with fewer skulls. And in general, I think it was designed well for a LEGO pirate ship. There are things about it I think amount to design flaws: for instance, the big empty space behind the figurehead is pretty ugly. But in general, I feel it shows just as much design effort as the QAR or the "typical" LEGO pirate ship: the only significant difference is that it is designed to meet a lower price point, and so it had different design considerations.

What I'm trying to figure out is why people assume Hero Factory will be going away. These sets are coming out next year. We have almost no knowledge of next year's sets, so there's no reason to assume a lack of Hero Factory 2012 news means the theme is doomed to be replaced. At the same time, Hero Factory going away remains a possibility, and it'd be a darn shame if that were the case. I certainly hope that Hero Factory, if it doesn't have sets in early 2012, will in the very least only be taking a brief hiatus. Keep in mind that even the Ben 10 line didn't displace BIONICLE entirely, and coincided with the release of the BIONICLE Stars, so I highly doubt that Hero Factory will disappear so abruptly if sales for the theme have been impressive at all. And TLG has often had multiple constraction themes running at the same time: in the case of Knights' Kingdom II, both constraction themes were able to remain successful without cannibalizing each other's sales. From press releases, there will be six constraction-based sets: three from Marvel, and three from DC. There are obviously the four we've seen: Batman, Green Lantern, the Hulk, and Iron Man. Ones we have not seen include the Joker (no idea how they'll pull that off even in a cartoon style-- he isn't as much for skintight costumes and muscle suits) and Captain America. Anyway, I'm largely impressed with these sets. Batman, Green Lantern, and Iron Man look great. Heavily stylized, of course, but no worse than some of the other action figures and toys currently on store shelves. Hulk is the big letdown from what we've seen so far. His color scheme frankly doesn't work for him. He needs darker skin and possibly purple (268 Medium Lilac) or dark blue (140 Earth Blue) pants to be a great likeness of the character, and it would also make him a little less eye-searing. And all the Titanium Metallic makes no sense at all. There are some useless parts, of course. The head pieces can't really be used for anything other than the characters they're meant to depict. And Green Lantern's glowy power ring effect piece seems like it'd be really hard to use, given its size, awkward shape, lack of connection points, and lack of symmetry. But other parts, such as Hulk's huge chest piece, Iron Man's new torso shell piece (also used on his shoulders), and of course the abundant recolors, all look very useful indeed.

As far as minifigs are concerned, I'm largely impressed. Obviously Hulk and Iron Man are unfinished, and out of the two I'm more impressed with Hulk. His hands look like the Giant Troll hands from fantasy-era Castle, but with four fingers instead of three. Love Poison Ivy's hair printing. The Wonder Woman, Wolverine, and Thor figures are all outstanding. Joker's not bad either, even though he doesn't have the same maniacal look as the one in the LEGO Batman theme. Interestingly, Batman's costume here is different than the one he's been seen in on the website, suggesting that we might get multiple figs of certain characters. Perhaps not, though-- only time will tell. As for the Hero Factory-styled buildable figures, I'm again impressed. They're much more appealing to me than Build-A-Buzz, even if they're extremely stylized versions of the characters. Batman is cool and while not a great likeness is at least as cool as many similarly-stylized Batman action figures seen on store shelves. Green Lantern looks cool, even if his glowy power-ring-thingy is really useless-looking. Iron man is amazing, and the building system definitely suits him best-- he doesn't have to be as heavily stylized as the other heroes to look consistent with Hero Factory parts. My biggest disappointments are Hulk's inexplicable silver armor and the fact that his pants aren't purple, or even dark blue. The vivid blue just doesn't look good on the lime green figure, and his colors need to be toned down more like the minifigure's colors, I think. At the same time, these look preliminary. Hulk has no fingers, for example, something I can't imagine happening on the final set. Unfortunately, I think his puny lower legs may be here to stay. The buildable figures look like they'll be great for parts. Iron Man has some lovely new parts in red (21 Bright Red), which isn't a rare color but is always a useful one. He also has amazing gold parts (297 Warm Gold) I'm sure many Hero Factory fans will love. Green Lantern has abundant parts in what looks to be classic green (28 Dark Green), a color that few Hero Factory parts have appeared in. Batman does the same thing with blue (23 Bright Blue) parts, even if it's a more common color than classic green. Hulk has some amazing lime green (119 Bright Yellowish Green) parts, most of which look like they'd fit in just fine with Hero Factory sets. I can't wait to see what sorts of System set designs are planned for this theme! But it's a treat even to see such good pictures of the sets and figs we've seen this far in advance.

Well, TLG has tried very often to make transitional systems between Duplo and regular LEGO. The Jack Stone/4 Juniors theme was a good example. Before that, Fabuland served the same sort of purpose. Of course, all these themes tended less to concentrate on basic 2x2 and 2x4 bricks than to rely on larger, "<insert that tiresome argument>" pieces with specialized functions. Today, the closest thing to what you're asking about is the Bricks and More theme, and you're right, it does include a lot of small parts. But I suppose sets of basic bricks that don't have an assortment of large and small just haven't been shown to sell well. Keep in mind that it might be hard to transition from Duplo, which has a number of specialized pieces, into basic bricks, which would require a lot more imagination to work with at such an early age. So transitional sets may need to either include small detail parts like in today's Bricks and More sets, or include semi-specialized parts halfway between Duplo and System like the 4 Juniors sets. Ironically, I've seen Trio sets in stores, and their general structure of columns, panels, and blocks isn't all that much different from buildings in the Jack Stone theme. I'm curious why such a building system is being used today when it was so unsuccessful in TLG's previous attempts. Perhaps after next year's girls' theme, TLG should refocus their efforts on this transitional market, both male and female, which they may currently be failing to target.