Aanchir

I totally agree on this. It also bothered me in Space Police III and the collectible minifigures.

I just read something in the LEGO.com press release... "Buildable characters will include Batman, The Joker and Green Lantern." Since this is mentioned separately from the minifigure characters, I'm afraid that these will be characters similar to the Construct-A-Buzz. Here's hoping they look at least OK, or if not at least have enough cool pieces to make them desirable.

The most reliable way I've found of making custom building instructions is actually surprisingly lo-tech: once your model is fully built, take it apart piece-by-piece, taking photographs each time you remove a piece or group of pieces. Then reverse the order of the images, adding arrows if you think it's necessary. The instructions will look sloppy, but in the end they should reliably show what you have to do to rebuild the model. An example of building instructions I've made with this technique can be seen here or here. If you want to make sure the building instructions are usable by others, test by giving them to a friend or family member and making note of any time they get confused, so that you can then take additional or better photos to clear up that confusion.

Well, I'm impressed. Although I am a bit concerned about what sort of content these sets could have. There are a couple distinctive locations, but very few DC heroes have the same "gadgets and vehicles" focus as Batman does. Some of the sets in the Batman theme featured downright-improbable vehicles for the characters (such as Mr. Freeze's little buggy), and I hope that same sort of fate doesn't await other DC heroes and villains. I'm obviously not expecting nearly as bad as some of the treatment superheroes have gotten in Mega Bloks sets, but I'd like to see vehicles and such that make sense for the characters, if any at all.

I think the dark guy with the glowing lines is just the same as the yellow and gray gorilla guy near the bridge, but with a recolor. Kinda like the yellow Raw-Jaws on Witch Doctor's box art. If not, he's at least a variation on the same idea, and definitely seems to have inspired Raw-Jaw's posture. Similarly, the white beast in the cave seems like it could have inspired Fangz.

How are minifigs a "natural choice" for construction sets? They only seem that way because they're traditional. Plenty of construction-based themes such as Technic and Creator regularly include sets at non-minifigure scale. Technic even had its own figures for over a decade. Also, when you discuss "alternate minifigures", you neglect to mention Fabuland, which lasted ten years at a scale other than minifigure scale. The only difference with Fabuland is that at that time, minifigures were not a long-standing tradition of the company-- they were still fairly new when Fabuland made its debut. You also have a strong tendency to use the word "failure" in a way I disagree with, but I won't bother trying to argue that again. The only thing I was trying to demonstrate in the comment you quoted was that it's a rather shallow generalization to assume that regular minifigures are, for no special reason, the ideal figure design and scale for all themes. I'm sorry if BIONICLE was a bad example.

LEGO Customer Service used to be extremely generous with free stuff. In the 90s, I had a huge number of minifigure keychains that were given as freebies after customer service calls. Sadly, keeping these on my backpack all throughout grade school has pretty much destroyed most of them, but it was a real symbol of a company caring about customer satisfaction. So no, freebies from customer service are not a sign of desperation. That's just how LEGO does business. If you don't want free stuff, then just turn it down. But there's no reason to be sour about a company working harder than necessary to make you happy.

That's highly subjective. Personally, I think that today's sets are much higher in quality than some of the sets from 1998. And one of the main reasons is because that stuff contained way bigger pieces than today's sets. The idea of "juniorization"-- using big pieces when small pieces will do-- is frowned upon by many AFOLs, and 1998's sets on the whole were soaking in it. The Insectoids theme had various parts I'd consider <insert that tiresome argument>, such as those near-impossible-to-use insect wings, the giant quarter-circle windscreens, and that unforgettably-annoying "Light and Sound" stinger brick. Aquanauts shared a number of <insert that tiresome argument> bits with Insectoids, some of which have never been seen outside that year's sets. Adventurers, while a creative idea for a theme and much-beloved by AFOLs, isn't much more complex than today's City sets, with a lot of big pieces and temples that feel like wireframes (admittedly, this is a touch of realism in this type of theme). And I won't even try and compare Scala and Znap to today's offerings, and in fact had far more "<insert that tiresome argument>" parts than most of today's Pharaoh's Quest sets. The Ninja theme was OK, but still used massive doors, slopes, wall panels, and mountain bricks, not to mention massive base bricks. 1998 was the year of Town Jr, a period when huge building bricks and windows, ugly printed grilles and headlights on vehicles, chunky chassis bricks, and misshapen vehicles were the norm. Res Q was more advanced and streamlined, but not especially realistic for a Town theme. X-Treme Team pushed the limits of reality even further. I want everyone to take this post with a grain of salt. These are all just things that one could criticize about sets from 1998. Personally, I loved most of these themes while they were current, and today can admire many aspects of their design. At the same time, many of the things people criticize about today's sets were far more evident in sets from 1998. While nostalgia might be present for fans like me who were children at the time of these themes, for others sets from 1998 are an enduring symbol of a company in the height of desperation, struggling desperately to modernize and, in the opinion of some fans, losing touch with the values of complexity and creativity that had been important to the brand. I am not an AFOL who takes the idea of "juniorization" all that seriously. Bulky parts have their uses, after all-- I'd hate to go back to 4-wide as the standard for street vehicles and jet aircraft. But with others, 1998's sets have an awful reputation, and I can at least agree with them that we've made many huge advances in set design since then.

Well, keep in mind that people probably won't have the same animosity towards these sets as they do towards the new theme because these, rather than being a separate system from the mainstream figures, were at the same scale (since minifigures hadn't even appeared in 1978). As for "lots of building", I'm sure plenty of folks would disagree. Looking at the instructions for 232 on Brickfactory.info, there's a lot that LEGO fans today would call "<insert that tiresome argument>". The build is almost completely dependent on 1x3x5 and 1x6x5 panels, not to mention the massive windows and doors! At the same time, of course, if these sets used basic bricks for their walls I'd think they were awful, since that means the picture frames, mirrors, etc. would have to be STAMPs (Stickers Across Multiple Pieces). The main difference between those sets and Belville sets, besides the figures being brickbuilt, is one I think all AFOLs can appreciate: solid walls. Even if they rely on so-called "<insert that tiresome argument>" pieces, they're unquestionably better than Belville's overuse of lattices for buildings of all types. The new theme may have a lot of open walls to allow for play, just like today's City sets, but hopefully it won't have ridiculous latticed walls like Belville so often did, which have no play potential and detract from the realism in large-scale buildings. Other than the solid walls, these sets stand out as a sort of "proto-Belville" or even "proto-Scala", with a similar scale and even some similar parts like giant sinks and cabinets. From what we've heard, this theme might be at a much smaller scale, so unfortunately I doubt it will be able to achieve the same level of detail with heavily-<insert that tiresome argument> parts. But thankfully accessories and furniture sound like they'll be at a very reasonable scale. It would be wonderful if the theme also maintained this heavy focus on building, with numerous alternate models, although I have doubts since this is a trait that many older sets tended to have and newer sets tend to lack. Besides, the Creator theme already fills that niche, and I'm sure girls inclined towards that sort of building may be more likely to buy the Creator houses than more role-play-intensive sets. Something I was thinking about last night... since we know the theme will use some collectible minifigure parts like the cream pie, I considered while fiddling with my minifigures whether the "science lab" set we've heard about might have the flask from the Crazy Scientist minifigure in a wider variety of colors. If it does, then this theme might have as much potential for great minifigure accessories that some Belville sets had.

Possibly to an extent-- after all, some of the hair pieces have complicated printing. But something to keep in mind is that all themes introduce new parts-- the main difference with licensed themes is that fewer of their new parts can be used outside the theme in which they are introduced.

Other themes? What about BIONICLE? It was a very successful theme with boys, despite its "minifigure"-based sets only lasting for three years. So what does that say about the Power Miners theme? There were no girls in that theme at all! While we can all acknowledge that the theme works with some female stereotypes, I don't think we should assume that there need to be boys for the theme to be complete. It seems clear to me that the girls in the theme are present so girls playing with the theme have characters they can identify with. Male figures aren't entirely necessary for that purpose, even though they'd be great as side characters in addition to the theme's five female protagonists. Hopefully TLG will introduce some male characters at some point, if only so that kids can role-play a wider variety of social situations. One thing we can definitely agree on. Even if I have high hopes for this theme, I've still got a hankering for some images so I can come up with my own complete list of pros and cons. Also, it's curious that there's a horse, and yet the minifigures' legs allegedly can't move separately. Is there any way for the girls to ride the horse? Granted, LEGO minifigures don't need separately-moving legs to ride a horse, but if there's going to be a new horse for this theme I'd hope for at least a bit more realism (and in some form other than a figure that's perpetually bow-legged). I also hope the horse has some posability of its own. The Belville one was one solid piece, and even the System one is woefully limited in its poses.

My guess is that it may have just been part of a series of sketches to demonstrate the different sort of settings and themes that could be used for hero and villain sets of different waves, back when Hero Factory was just in its infancy. I could be wrong, though.

LDD has a pretty wide selection of decorations. They are missing a lot of older decorations, but that's inevitable since they have not been around as long as LDraw and are catering to average kids as well as AFOLs. Also, I believe LDraw has a system by which fans can contribute decorations and brick renders, whereas LDD is proprietary and does not have this asset. Both programs have advantages and disadvantages. Of course, the reason you may be having trouble could depend on what mode of LDD you are using. In DesignByMe mode, there is a 1x1 brick with an eye pattern similar to the one you need, only it has a "sparkle" in the pupil. This can be found in the basic bricks category. In LEGO Universe mode and LDD Extended mode, the exact eye pattern you're looking for is available when you use the decoration tool on a 1x1 brick, although it only works when you use the decoration tool on the correct side of the brick. This means you may have to rotate the brick to get it to work in this model. It's easy to overlook, but it should help you here (although for other models there almost certainly will be decorations that are completely unavailable).

It's always been a problem with colors, because frankly LEGO only started making their color list public very recently. So lots of different sites (Peeron, Bricklink, etc.) have different names for the colors, which often fail to match up with the official ones. I cringe every time I hear a person refer to Medium Nougat (the new color introduced in Prince of Persia) as just "nougat", failing to realize that there's an entirely unrelated color (Bricklink's Flesh) that already has that name. I've heard both definitions of "Dark Age". I don't seem to think there's a problem with that, though, because usually you can tell from context whether a person's referring to LEGO's "dark ages" or their own personal "dark age". That's just my opinion, though, and I understand there's good intentions behind being stricter with one's own terminology (the same way TLG is so insistent on using LEGO as an adjective only, all caps, and never plural).

Well, TLG has to pay royalties for licensed sets. So, for instance, while they would get around 100% of the profits for a LEGO Atlantis set, they'd get a smaller percentage of the profits for a LEGO Star Wars set, with the rest going to Lucasfilms. For the sets to remain profitable, TLG has to raise prices accordingly. Occasionally it might have something to do with rare pieces, but I think the cost of royalties has a much bigger impact on prices than any production-related costs. Also, certain licenses cost more than others. Star Wars sets tend to have hugely inflated prices, whereas the SpongeBob Squarepants sets have typically had prices closer to those of non-licensed sets.

I want to add that despite having a high overall price, I think the upcoming Robie House has possibly the most honest price for an architecture set so far. In my personal opinion, the earliest sets' prices were highway robbery, although I can see reasons why the price might be as high as it is. The Robie House, on the other hand, is $200 for 2,276 pieces, meaning less than 9 cents per piece. Naturally, I realize I'm falling into an old trap by putting any stock in price-per-piece, considering that BIONICLE and Hero Factory, some of my favorite themes, consistently demonstrate how this is not always a valid measure of a set's value. At the same time, the price-per-piece for the Robie House still feels a lot more honest than the price of previous architecture sets. This may just be because when the price is so high to begin with, the additional costs that are probably responsible for the higher price of previous architecture sets just have a much smaller impact on the overall price. Anyway, being a child of the 90s, I agree that prices today aren't much worse than they were then. With that said, I try to avoid putting too much stock in price-per-piece. Keep in mind that 1998 was a time when a lot of themes used parts AFOLs would consider "<insert that tiresome argument>", and larger pieces generally mean a higher price-per-piece. Of course, since AFOLs tend to value these <insert that tiresome argument> parts less than brickbuilt solutions, this still means that while maybe not getting more weight in parts for the same price these days, a lot of people will readily acknowledge that we are getting more value in parts.

Hmmm, I'm impressed how many people seem to have positive opinions of the set after seeing the new pics. I wonder how many people's opinions actually changed, and how many people just didn't share their opinions until the better pics emerged? I'm sure it's a mix of both, since the prelim pics got taken down before everyone could see them, but at the same time didn't show the interior of the cabin (something a lot of people seem to have favorable opinions of). I agree I'd have liked figs of some other Black Pearl crew members, and it is a real shame we didn't get more in this set. At the same time, I think it has to be remembered that characters like Cotton, Anamaria, etc. are very minor and wouldn't have really been a strong selling point for the set. Since some "bad guys" have to be included anyway, and none of the bad guys previously released had too many scenes aboard the Pearl (besides Barbossa, I guess, but he didn't have any fight scenes aboard the Pearl when he was a "bad guy"), I reckon the design team figured the new minifigure budget for this set would be best spent on some of the Dutchman's crew. I certainly don't mind, and don't feel that it in any way lowers our chances of getting a Flying Dutchman set later on down the line-- if TLG's designers think there's a market for one and think they can manage its intricate design, I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a D2C set.

Apparently, it has been released via promotional code-- specifically, through some countries' LEGO Club newsletters. This bugs me, because so far it seems as though Germany has now gotten at least three HeroPad codes that haven't been released in the US. In the meantime, I really need to renew my subscription to LEGO Club Magazine so that if codes start showing up there I won't miss out on them. What interests me most, of course, is that some of the hero designs seen here appear in more than one picture. So I wonder if any of them ended up becoming the heroes who actually ended up in sets, and if so which heroes inspired which sets. The colors seem largely random, and the animal characteristics we're familiar with seem mostly absent from the designs, so this could be very early concept art before the idea of animal heroes was agreed upon.

Interesting. I also see that Mark Hamill is mentioned as a voice actor. I wonder if he'll be voicing Witch Doctor. I think this is a good place to add that I really am not too happy with recent LEGO DVD releases. The first two BIONICLE movies were what I really considered ideal, containing plenty of bonus content. Web of Shadows was a bit less interesting, with no interviews or other bonus content that really gave you a good look at stuff outside the movie itself. And the more recent DVDs (BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn, The Adventures of Clutch Powers, and Hero Factory: Rise of the Rookies) all are completely devoid of bonus content besides the extra shorts. I understand that direct-to-DVD movies don't generally have a huge budget, but as MoL and LoMN demonstrated, they don't have to feel like bargain-bin rubbish.

Very good point. My little brother started off with Jack Stone sets and transitioned to minifigure sets, but rarely mixed the two categories except occasionally building System models using Jack Stone parts. So from a role-play perspective the incompatibility could be a problem. From a building perspective, we still can't be sure what to expect. Will the pieces be the extremely large sort used in Jack Stone or Belville, or will they be the more versatile (but of course still too <insert that tiresome argument> for some people who prefer simpler bricks) used so often in today's City sets? I don't by any means expect the level of building seen in D2C sets like the modular buildings, but I am hoping that the parts will be usable for MOCs without basing the whole MOC around the parts. Of course, we're not totally sure about the scale of the figures-- last I read, they're only maybe one or two plates taller than minifigures, although conflicting info may have surfaced since then without me noticing. The AFOL community obviously won't latch onto the theme the same way that they latch onto any minifigure theme, but at the same time there is a considerable BIONICLE fan presence in the AFOL community these days, so I doubt the theme will be as thoroughly rejected as Belville was before it. The fact that the figures is customizable is interesting, because this hasn't really applied to any figures (ignoring Galidor and other action figure themes for the moment) other than the classic minifigure in the past couple decades. True, you can take Fabuland, Technic, and Belville figures apart and switch parts around, but it was never encouraged, and the figures always came in the sets pre-assembled. So there's really nothing to tell us how the LEGO fan community will react to non-compatible minifigures which are equally customizable, but only with parts from that particular theme. Out of curiosity, what's the deal with outfits? If there are five lead characters but around 23 sets, I'm hoping that the characters don't have the same outfits in every set. Are there any cloth-based outfits like in the Belville or Scala themes, or is everything plastic-based? These sorts of things could be interesting factors in whether the theme is of interest to AFOLs. If the figures are close enough to minifigure scale, then a "miniskirt" for this theme's figures could possibly act as a full skirt for a minifigure, depending on how it attaches. Since some MOCists already customize their minifigures beyond what's traditional, occasionally adding longer legs or making custom legs using existing bricks, they might not be opposed to using this theme's figure parts as long as they're physically compatible with classic minifigures in some way.

Emphasis mine. Is being outside of minifig scale the only thing that makes Belville unique? In that case, there were several themes "just like Belville" that existed at the same time: for example, Scala, Technic, Jack Stone, and Galidor. As it is, TLG obviously has reason to believe that girls will prefer sets with these figures to sets with standard minifigures. Since no pictures of the sets have even surfaced online, how can we have any evidence to the contrary? Lots of people are just assuming that all LEGO customers would be happiest with standard minifigure sets, ignoring the relative success of themes like Fabuland, BIONICLE, and Belville that lack standard minifigures entirely.

A couple things I'd like to point out. First of all, not only are they stackable, but they can be hung on a wall (as seen here). That might possibly make storage less of a problem. Depends on what kind of space you have available. Also, I don't see why the large ones wouldn't be stackable on top of each other. As seen here, there are anti-studs on the bottom to allow stacking, and as seen in the back view I linked before, the little 1x3 supports seen on the bottom in some pics are not locked to the bottom (if they were, it would pretty much make the wall hanging impossible). As far as size is concerned, I'm personally quite satisfied. A lot of minifigure storage solutions I have seen are just four-wide, which doesn't really work for minifigures holding certain accessories. While some people like their minifigures without accessories in their hands, many figs like the collectible ones lose a lot of their character if you remove their accessories. There is extra space at the top and bottom that might disappoint some people, but I don't think it's all that considerable, especially considering the ability to hang the display cases on a wall.

Well, I'm glad to hear it's a big theme. That means it's probably a big deal for TLG, so it'll hopefully be treated with the same level of importance as Ninjago was this year. As for the figures, they sound interesting. I'm not sure how having less posability than regular minifigures will go over with girls, but I'm sure the greater interchangeability might be more popular with AFOLs, and I can see some AFOLs buying a few for unusual MOCs kind of like they currently do with Knights' Kingdom or Galidor pieces, and more rarely with Belville. The colors I'm hearing about seem to support my suspicions that the theme will make heavy use of the six new colors added to the color palette this year. Which is good, because so far they have been really sparsely used in mainstream themes and I'd hate for them to end up removed from the palette like so many other sparsely-used colors have been. One thing we haven't heard much about so far is the quality of the building experience, something which we likely will not know about until pics emerge. Belville, being at a considerably larger scale than LEGO, used a lot of parts AFOLs would consider "<insert that tiresome argument>", and this theme may be similar (even though given the similar scale of the sets to regular minifigure sets, the juniorization shouldn't be much different than in some of System sets' "low periods". And since those parts ended up being at least useable in more advanced MOCs, I'm sure people will find some uses for these parts. I look forward to pictures of these sets emerging!

Great review! I have to say I'm not a fan of Scorpio particularly because of the inconsistent leg designs, and after reading this review I'm even less of a fan due to so many gappy areas in the body and neck. Seeing all the way through a set doesn't usually bother me tremendously, but it does when the gaps are large enough that the structure feels more like a slightly-armored wireframe than a solid body with occasional holes. And just to reiterate, it's those middle legs that bother me most. Inconsistent length and inconsistent color scheme organization together ruin the near-perfect matching of the rear and front legs. It's a shame this set has so many great parts and such a disappointing design. It's the only set this wave to use a cool color (cool as in non-warm and non-neutral, not cool as in "awesome") as its primary color. And it includes numerous parts in that color—lime—which can't be gotten in any other set. I may end up buying him for the parts, but he's not as high a priority as sets with more appealing designs like Bulk 3.0 or Raw-Jaw.

Everybody's saying things like this... personally, I don't think that any plan like this allows for a good balance of "good guys" and "bad guys", even if you take into account the dubious morality of many of the characters. While I'd have loved figs of Pintel and Ragetti, having Davy Jones or Barbossa as the only "bad guy" on the ship would have made role-play with this set fairly boring. The Queen Anne's Revenge, of course, only has one "good guy" (Jack Sparrow, unless I'm still in the dark about some characters' affiliations-- haven't seen the new movie yet), but I think that gets a pass because that one good guy is, of course, Jack Sparrow. Anyway, I'm generally in favor of the fig selection of this set, even if it doesn't give us any Black Pearl crew members we didn't already have. Davy Jones and Maccus are both very well-designed. What color are Davy Jones's claw and peg-leg? Looks kinda like Medium Nougat (BL's Medium Dark Flesh), or maybe Dark Orange. Also, his claw is a new piece that seems to be an alternate hand piece rather than an accessory. I'm kinda bummed that he doesn't make use of the claw from this year's Atlantis sets, but this one suits him better. Bootstrap's headgear is new in Dark Red as well (I think it's Dark Red; could be Reddish Brown). As for the set itself, I'm still moderately impressed. It's not anything outstanding, but it's a respectable pirate ship set. I'm disappointed that the figurehead still looks like it's hovering, with nothing holding it in place behind it besides a single hinge. But I do love the deck of the ship and Jack's cabin. I wish there were pictures of the ship's stern-- probably nothing outstanding, but it'd be nice to see it from a different angle.