Aanchir

Great review. I love Stringer 3.0, and think they really did justice to his color scheme by using Flame Yellowish Orange as his core and face color rather than Bright Orange. I'm a bit curious whether the unique powers of the Heroes will ever return. Currently, it's clear that the story writers and TV episode animators don't want to let go of them, as they use the same effect for Stringer's... claw blasts?... as they did for his sonic weapon before, and in fact made Furno's fire elemental theme a lot more evident with his 2.0 weapon than they had with his Dual Fire Shooter. At the same time, I really liked how the sets had futuristic sci-fi weapons and yet kept a very visible elemental theme with most of them. The real question is whether they could pull the same thing off in a future wave without it feeling overused. The back is very hollow-looking indeed, and I'd like to see that fixed in a future wave, even though it's probably not an urgent priority for the set designers. The back view of a figure isn't likely to show up prominently on packaging, and so won't really help move the set off store shelves, but an interview about the first wave of Hero Factory sets mentioned how kids are more satisfied with a set that has a more solidly-armored back, so it's a real oddity that the designers failed to maintain that in the new building system. Even if it means increasing the price of a Hero set I'm sure some kids and adult fans alike would really appreciate the addition of back armor. I'm not a huge fan of the new claws used on Stringer. They work for this set, but while they have the least stylistic specialization of the new parts they also have the most specialized function-- they have only one attachment point, and so can't be used for much besides claws and otherwise-claw-shaped details on models. Since System already has so many useful claw pieces available, I don't think non-Hero Factory fans would be too fond of these parts appearing in other themes.

I think you're underestimating a company's ability to go back on their word if the circumstances change. If monorails were suddenly to become really popular in real life for whatever reason, then a monorail set would be possible again. But here I'm probably sounding like the silly BIONICLE fans who assume that once Hero Factory's been around for a while BIONICLE will be fresh and new again, so LEGO can start it back up. In both situations, we'd be relying on unforeseeable circumstances, and phrasing the necessary circumstances so they sound more probable than they really are.

Love the spine. It's not flexible, by any chance, is it? I've always hoped to make a model around this size with a flexible spine, but the best piece I can think of using is the palm tree piece, and I don't have enough of them in the same color and the style with a axle hole in the bottom to make anything very good. I love the skeletal structure and simple color scheme, although I think it would be much better without the old dark grey. The lower arms and hands also seem awfully boring compared to the torso and legs-- while their small, thin proportions may be integral to the model's look, I think it would be nice if you could somehow work some greebles or other details onto them to make them less plain. I'm also not too fond of the crash helmets as knees and hands, or the domes on the sides of the legs. All the other white parts have a slightly blocky appearance, which makes the spherical appearance of these parts seem out-of-place. How are this model's balance and flexibility? Most of the pictures you have taken of it are in awfully rigid poses. Balancing it in a more complicated walking or running pose looks like it could be tricky given the small size of the feet. This picture is by far my favorite angle for this model. The back looks wonderfully mechanical, something that's not as visible from the bulkier front view. My second-favorite angle is this one, where the spine and chest core form a "Y" shape surrounded by interesting gray details. If it's possible, I'd love to see a picture taken upwards from in front of the model. I'm sure it would look very intimidating!

It's just the same combination model (I hate the term "combiner") as right here, as advertised in the Furno 2.0 and Evo 2.0 sets. I'm not sure why you think that making this set worldwide would bring such models back into the mainstream-- fyi, the first canister set combi model to be released as a boxed set of its own was Irnakk in 2006, just before canister set combi models disappeared from instruction booklets altogether. Of course, I've always been cynical about complaints that combi models "disappeared" at any point, since as I see it they got considerably better once TLG was no longer obligated to have one for every set. I'd take a Pit War Tortoise or Zyglak over a Bohrok Kaita any day. Thankfully, even though we've gone full-circle and now have a combi model for every canister set once again, they're not totally horrendous (and are in fact a considerable improvement over the monstrosity that was Lucas Valor). At the same time, there's now even less justification for "missing" combi models when they're now just as available as they ever were.

The easiest, most reliable method for finding parts on LDD is to download Superkalle's LDD Manager and use the Part Finder. LDD Manager compares Bricklink and official LEGO part names and numbers to help you find the ones you need. The search box in the parts tray is also a useful tool. Searching by part number will find you a lot of the parts you need, but at the same time (as you've seen) there are places where the Bricklink number and LDD number will not match. The main instances of this that I've found are multi-part bricks like the steering wheel or minifigure torso, parts for which Bricklink has three-digit part numbers or placeholder part numbers (usually small parts like certain minifigure accessories where no part number is legible on the piece itself), and parts where there is not a one-to-one relationship between Bricklink and LEGO numbers (for example, the LDD part 60897 corresponds to both 4085d and recent uses of 4085b in sets).

Yep. 49 Transparent Fluorescent Green (Bricklink's Trans-Neon Green). Any digital representation of it tends to look almost identical to Transparent Yellow. I'm a bit unsure whether they'd look good in real life, and considered recommending a change to 43 Transparent Blue (Trans-Dark Blue), which was used in Classic Space at a time Transparent Fluorescent Green hadn't even been introduced, but since the builder specifically chose Transparent Fluorescent Green for a part that they can't have meant to use Transparent Yellow for, I think we can assume it was a deliberate color choice and so not really my business to tamper with.

Now, the trick to making a set like that is that believe it or not, Star Wars sets don't just sell like hotcakes whatever's in them. If they did, there'd be no reason for TLG to release new Millennium Falcons, X-Wing Starfighters, etc. every few years. The more iconic the vehicles, settings, and minifigures in a set, the more likely it is to sell. Now, a set just depicting a monorail alongside more familiar Coruscant settings would be cool, but to incorporate any of the really cool ones it'd have to be huge, which would detract from the possibility of including monorail track in addition to the more distinctive settings. I'm curious what goes into the design process for a setting-based Star Wars set. Obviously this year's Echo Base didn't meet too many fans' expectations. And most people I've spoken to dislike the Death Star set (which I personally love for the number of scenes it included). In contrast, I think the Cloud City set (which also depicted a variety of scenes) was much more popular, although it's hard for me to say considering that I wasn't actively a part of any online LEGO communities when that was current, so some of the love I've seen for it may just be nostalgia. In any event, a monorail set adds that tricky consideration-- most of the setting-based Star Wars sets have been based on extremely familiar scenes, which may be part of the reason almost all Clone Wars sets have been vehicle-based instead. Another thing to wonder about is who monorail sets appeal to. Perhaps part of the reason the ones in the Space theme were unsuccessful is that Space themes' audience doesn't hugely intersect with the people who would love monorails the most-- as I reckon, a group that would be very close to the LEGO Trains audience. Then again, since the Airport Shuttle was apparently also unsuccessful, releasing a monorail as a City set would also have an uncertain outcome. I think City is probably the most likely to be successful, though-- there haven't been many Star Wars or Space sets with any sort of electronics in them in many years, whereas City frequently incorporates Power Functions in its train sets.

According to DV in this post, no, it cannot. But I imagine it could still work great as an armor piece, possibly on the shoulders. Or actually, hmmm... I wonder if it would fit well on a foot piece. That would look either silly or fearsome-- hard to say since I don't have the set!

Hi. I may be a bit slow realizing this, so sorry if it's old news, but I was looking at the website where the Savage Planet DVD cover was found, and I couldn't help but notice that it has a running time of 88 minutes. Do we know how many episodes there will be for this wave, or whether the Savage Planet episode will have a longer running time than the previous episodes? 88 minutes is the same as the running time for "Rise of the Rookies", so even if the Ordeal of Fire episode is included (which I hope it is, seeing as I missed its original broadcast), we've still got at least an hour and a half for the third wave when you include commercial breaks. Of course, it's possible this site has the running time wrong for whatever reason, but since all their other info seems to be specific to this DVD and not copied from RotR, I think it's probably legit.

The color of those arches is actually 308 Dark Brown, which Bricklink calls Dark Brown. When you say Brown it sounds like you're talking about 217 Brown (BL's Dark Flesh) or 25 Earth Orange (BL's Brown). And that mallet piece, 4522, actually was designed to act as a mallet, not an axe. It's similar in size to an actual axe piece, though (3835). The turkey drumstick may very easily just be meant to represent a turkey drumstick, even though it's placed strangely. On one hand, food items help make the place look like a harmless civilian shop when the weapons rack is concealed, but on the other hand hanging a turkey drumstick from a wall to conceal a hidden weapons rack is just asking for people to become suspicious! Anyway, great review! This isn't a set I'm terribly excited about, but it's well-designed and I like the creative use of parts (for example, the use of those fence pieces on the roof). The way the roof attaches (Technic pins plus clip-and-bar hinges for the "peak") is also nice. The map tile is very unique, but not nearly as detailed or interesting in design as the map tiles from certain other themes like the original Adventurers theme. A shame to hear that the building is so fragile. Tell me, is it only this fragile while building it, or is it likely to crumble even when playing with the completed set? While Technic beams like the one shown can be hard to attach, usually they add support to a model once they've been added, so I'm hoping that's the case here.

Yeah, the comic seems to completely improvise his helmet. In the video his helmet accessory is basically a fusion of two helmet accessories, with Surge 2.0's mouthpiece and Breez 2.0's visor. I'm very impressed with this, for a couple of reasons: since Surge and Breez don't have prominent roles in this story arc, there's less of a chance that Rocka will get confused with either character than if they had used, for example, Furno's helmet Also, the fact that they bothered to give Rocka a unique helmet accessory is impressive compared to characters like Thresher that just reuse already-rendered parts with no customization, or characters like Bulk and Stringer 2.0 who were simply rendered without any kind of helmet accessory. There are also some differences that you may or may not want to change in the build. The Rocka 2.0 in the video has no cladding on his right arm, gold cladding rather than black on his upper legs, Interestingly, both of these things are also true of the Rocka 3.0 pictured here. I imagine some of these differences between the products and the renders in the TV episode may be a result of the TV episode using prototype models for reference-- something that also occurred with all the BIONICLE movies. It's up to you whether you'd like to make these changes in your model. The last difference is that in the video Rocka uses gold hands rather than black ones. Since this change was not made to the 3.0 version linked above, chances are this was a deliberate change to make Rocka 2.0 more consistent with the design of the other heroes. They are also the four-fingered 1.0 hands rather than the five-fingered 2.0 hands, but since the older style of hands is not available on LDD and the newer style is never used in the TV episodes (even on characters who have five-fingered hands as sets), the color is all that really needs to be changed.

Yeah, I just had UD listed because I was copying and pasting the list from an Excel spreadsheet that I made before verifying that his instruction sheet was available. Anyway, it's a real shame that Kongu's doesn't work. The first instruction booklet which I discovered to be available despite being missing from the portal were the LEGO Master Builder Academy Kit 1 instructions, and after finding Ultimate Dume's single instruction sheet I guess I got a bit too hopeful. I think this instructions database was only started in 2002 if not later, and so it's no surprise that it's incomplete when it comes to 2001 sets, but at the same time it would have been nice to have readily-available backup copies of those particular sets' instructions, especially since my hard-copy instruction booklets from 2001-2003 are in various stages of disrepair.

I remember when this video was discovered a while back. What it actually turned out to be if I remember correctly was a "demo animation" made by a company, Blur, which was proposing to do the animation for BIONICLE: Mask of Light. They didn't end up getting the job, but it was still a cool animation.

It says "Special Edition" on it, which almost always designates a special edition set. I haven't seen an exclusive set with store-specific packaging in years. I'm pretty sure it's still a TRU exclusive even if it's not marked as such on the box. Anyway, I'm not a LEGO trains fan, but if I were to buy this set I think the piece that would most excite me would be these in Dark Stone Grey (BL's Dark Bluish Gray). Look on the yellow car carrying the rail maintenance vehicle. In terms of building techniques, I like the roof of the boxcar (simple, but effective), the way the wheels drop down on the rail maintenance vehicle (may have been done before, but I just think those little vehicles are so cool to watch in real life), and the design of the tipper car. The tipper car would be better if the walls rose up one module higher, but there's no way that could be done with the pieces that exist currently. Apologies if my terminology is bad, bad, bad. There's a reason I don't participate often in this subforum: I have absolutely no expertise when it comes to trains, LEGO or otherwise.

Looks like a 4-wide space, so it could possibly be done with 1x1 plates in SNOT: One red, two clears, one red, two clears, one red, two clears, one red. It could turn out to be something simpler, though.

I don't need the instructions specifically for building the sets, but I'd just like to see if there are copies of them on LEGO.com.

Well, what I'm after are actual scans of instruction booklets that are not on LEGO.com's building instructions portal. The Kardas instructions are already available, and since Botar's building instructions are just a part of Axonn and Brutaka's building instructions they're not going to be found separately.

I liked Jack Stone figures. Anyway, to keep this on topic, I'm so far not convinced that the theme has lost its principal sales potential by not using minifigures. Something to keep in mind is that yes, some girls are perfectly happy with City sets that use regular minifigures. But this theme is largely targeted at girls whom LEGO's existing product lines don't appeal to, and so looking at it from the perspective of how well it fits your LEGO collection doesn't really take into account the purpose of the theme. It would be like criticizing Duplo or Hero Factory because they don't have regular minifigures. Both are offshoots of the LEGO system that aren't meant to serve quite the same purpose: Duplo sets are for preschoolers and toddlers, while Hero Factory sets are buildable action figures. In Duplo's case, there's hardly any compatibility with regular LEGO, and nobody bats an eye. The only difference between Duplo and this girls' theme is that rather than targeting an audience that can't play with regular LEGO, it's targeting girls who, for whatever reason, simply choose not to. I'm personally hoping this theme proves successful, but like Hero Factory its success doesn't ride upon compatibility between its minifigures and those in classic themes.

$80 doesn't sound that bad... to be honest, I expected a similar or higher price. The set has 645 parts, many of them large and some unique to that set, as well as four minifigures and a spinner. It's just over twice the MSRP of Earth Dragon Defense for more than twice the parts and minifigures. It's no miracle in terms of price, but who was expecting one for the second-biggest set of the theme?

Hi, everyone. I have a project that I'd like any classic BIONICLE fans and collectors to possibly see about helping with. I'm a big user of LEGO.com's Customer Service site for building instructions, but as we all probably know it's not by any means a complete resource. However, something I discovered recently is that there are a lot more building instructions available on this site than it's letting on. For example, using the seven-digit number 4255648, I discovered the special instruction sheet for attaching the bonus Mask of Shadows in set 10202 Ultimate Dume. What I'd like help with is finding as many of these building instructions as possible-- for now, specifically BIONICLE ones. When I've found all I can, I plan on providing the links to Brickset. The Brickset database already includes links to all the instructions listed on the building instructions portal at LEGO.com, but it lacks these "hidden" instructions. Here is the (small) list of sets that the building instructions portal doesn't list complete instructions for: 1388 Huki 1389 Onepu 1390 Maku 1391 Jala 1392 Kongu 1393 Matoro 8537 Nui-Rama (Book 1) 10202 Ultimate Dume Now what I need is for anyone who has any of these sets to find the print-copy instructions and provide the seven-digit number that should (hopefully) be printed somewhere on them. I hope it's not too big a favor to ask. I happen to own all of these sets, but the instruction booklets are all missing currently and probably in awful condition, so I'm hoping someone better-organized than me could provide me this information. Also, if you know any other sets that are missing their online instructions, feel free to share! For instance, I don't think the set 10201 Takutanuva has any building instructions separate from Makuta's and Takanuva's, but I could be wrong.

I'm not entirely sure of older release patterns. For finding images of older catalogs, Brickfactory and Peeron have scans that you could refer to. But these databases are imperfect and are missing many catalogs. Good luck on your collection! It would be a real treat if you could find a way of sharing these catalogs with other AFOLs if you meet your goal-- personally, I find old catalogs an irreplaceable resource when looking for story details on old themes or comparing the names for sets in different countries.

BIONICLE in general was a much more serious theme. Hero Factory is just an episodic adventure story, while BIONICLE aimed to be a grand epic with a huge expanded universe. In other words, TLG's in-house answer to Star Wars. I do agree, though, that I'm not too happy with the TV episodes in terms of voice acting. I much prefer the voice talent at ADVANCE used in Hero Factory FM and various online animations. Zib's voice in particular has a lot more character in Hero Factory FM than it does in Rise of the Rookies. As far as I know, yeah, the company doing the animation for the Hero Factory episodes and BIONICLE 4 (Threshold Animation Studios) is indeed a smaller-budget option than the company responsible for the first three BIONICLE movies. And so this could explain any problems with the fight scenes, which did lack the careful choreography seen in the first three BIONICLE movies. With that said, I really enjoyed some of the stuff produced by this company, including the TLR and the Clutch Powers movie, and a lot of the other production crew for these were the same. I'll refrain from listing specific reasons I like these movies so that this topic doesn't descend into "reminding Aanchir why he has terrible taste in movies, books, and creative works in general". I think the problem with Von Nebula wasn't how they dealt with him, but how they failed to deal with him. His "backstory" involves him acting like a jerk and not being shown to receive even the slightest consequence for it. It did help Stormer's backstory make a bit more sense, as it gave Stormer something to irrationally take responsibility for, which in his case is a part of his character. But in Von Nebula's case this utterly failed to explain any thirst for revenge he might have. I suppose the time constraints of the single-episode time slot could be blamed in part, but at the same time the episodes in general could have been better organized to offer more gradual revelations of Stormer and Von Ness's story, rather than just being a card to pull occasionally to build mystery and explain Stormer's character faults. Telling next to nothing about that backstory in the first three episodes and then just playing the whole thing as a flashback in the last episode when it seems least relevant didn't really give the series a solid foundation. With that said, other parts of the miniseries, particularly Furno's character development, were great. I think part of the problem with the miniseries may have been too much time and attention spent on Furno and not enough spent characterizing the other heroes and villains. This is one of the reasons the Clutch Powers movie stands out from TLR or the Hero Factory episodes-- it's a team-based story that manages to give each team member the screen time and character development they deserve. And it makes it abundantly clear that age is not a factor, as it's plainly a much "kiddier" story than TLG's other recent animated endeavours-- and yet it manages to be the best of the bunch. It's a shame there won't be another Clutch Powers movie as far as I'm aware, although there is apparently a "4-D" mini-movie in LEGOLAND parks that's fairly good.

I don't have either shark. However, LDD has both versions with separate Part ID numbers. Not a machine error by any chance, there are considerable differences between the two-- the old shark head points upward, while the newer one has a more realistic curved shape. And, as I mentioned, 2548 is completely solid while 87587 is hollow. Since it's assigned a new piece number we know that it is a new design, even if Bricklink hasn't yet recognized any difference. I don't have any recent sets with sharks in them, unfortunately, so I can't make any comparisons on my own to find when exactly the new head made its debut.

Hmmm... I may have been mistaken, or Bricklink may be mistaken. It's certainly not the classic shark, because the inside of the upper jaw is hollow and the nose is less pointed (For reference, I'm comparing it to the older version 2548 that appeared in Divers sets in 1997). Since the part number for the new upper jaw is 87587 rather than 2548, I know it was new some time in the past two years, and was assuming that since I hadn't seen any comparison pictures until this year that it debuted this year. But perhaps it debuted previously and nobody noticed it until this set. I wouldn't call those parts <insert that tiresome argument>. They might be used in a <insert that tiresome argument> way, but in general that part is no more <insert that tiresome argument> than its older counterpart that's been appearing in sets since 1980. Yeah... I'm really not happy with that. I seem to remember the one in Cabin Cruiser floating a lot better. My memory may be playing tricks on me, though. But since this boat mold is almost brand new I would have hoped for it to be better engineered than that.

I think the whole "Modular Build: Easy Start" thing probably is just meant as an incentive for younger kids to start buying the City theme. City sets on the whole aren't too much simpler than sets in other themes (besides having fewer Technic characteristics a lot of the time). But City is one of the themes most popular with younger kids, and thus likely many of those kids' first foray into System. It's easy to buy a LEGO set if you're already a fan, but perhaps it takes some extra convincing to assure parents that their kids are ready for LEGO. Some people older than me gape in astonishment that I'm so good at building sets according to the instructions, even if it seems so inherently simple to someone who's been building for a long time! Again, I think this is just one of those things to help beginning builders get used to building sets. It might seem simple to an experienced builder who has the "knack" for following pictorial instructions, but some kids have a lot of difficulty with that when they're just starting out. The shark actually has a new mold for his nose I believe, different than the classic shark nose. Not sure if it has appeared in any other sets, but I think it's currently exclusive to this set since it's new this year. Meanwhile, I think that in the case of this set juniorization and price-per-piece have to be largely ignored, primarily because of the boat structure itself. LEGO boats that actually float have always been <insert that tiresome argument>, and as much as people clamor for brick-built boats, floating one-piece molds aren't really replaceable if you want a boat set to have the one primary asset that most kids will expect of it. How well does it float for you? In another topic someone posted pictures of it, and it sits far lower in the water than I would like even if it doesn't have any other pieces built onto it. So this was a real disappointment for me, and if that just happens to be an isolated incident rather than an inherent flaw of this hull mold I'd be a lot more appreciative of this set. The plate in question is actually Dark Stone Grey. Medium Stone Grey is the official name for Light Bluish Gray. Hate to be so nitpicky, but Dark Orange is the color name you're probably looking for (whether you're using official TLG names or Bricklink names). The Bricklink color Earth Orange (LEGO's awkwardly-named Light Orange Brown) is lighter than this, and is the color used for Ron Weasley's hair in the first few years of Harry Potter sets, while the LEGO color Earth Orange is what most AFOLs call Brown or Old Brown. Both colors have been discontinued for several years. Anyway, thanks for the review! I really like this set as it feels a lot like a modernized version of 4011 Cabin Cruiser, as another reviewer also observed. My brother and I each had a Cabin Cruiser in our childhood, and so this set brings back good memories. At the same time, I don't expect to buy this set since I'm not too into LEGO City anymore these days.