Aanchir

You're immediately jumping to the worst case scenario. You've heard nothing that even hints at Chinese-made figs, non-detachable minifigure parts, etc. In fact, some of that stuff would be nearly impossible to tell from a picture anyway, so there's no need to worry about such things until the sets are out. Also, "Friends" reminded me less of the TV show and more of the computer game which was apparently tied to the Scala theme. Fabuland figs didn't keep the scale, though. They're considerably taller than minifigures, with longer arms and legs and much larger heads. From what's been described, the figs in this upcoming theme may be as close to the classic minifigure as Fabuland figs were, if not more. And furthermore, all I'm hearing from you in this paragraph is a lot of subjectivity, nothing with any facts behind it. Jack Stone lasted three years, which is not at all a "flop", and furthermore the style of minifigure lasted a full year longer in the 4-Juniors theme. The Jack Stone theme ended not because that style of figure was a complete flop, but rather because the character-driven sets in that theme just weren't as effective as the same figures without character-specific ties to that theme. If we assume that any theme that didn't last at least four years was a "flop", Fantasy-Era Castle, classic Ninja, and Power Miners were all "flops" as well. Jack Stone minifigures were just as compatible with regular LEGO as Fabuland minifigures. The only difference is that AFOLs currently like Fabuland and dislike Jack Stone, which is meaningless to how successful either theme was during its lifespan (since AFOLs are about as far from the target audience of these themes as you could get). Meanwhile, every description we've heard of this new girls' theme so far has made it seem far more like Fabuland than Jack Stone, using characters with oversized heads at a scale not much taller than the average minifigure. And again, I have to bring up Belville, which people ignorantly continue pushing under the rug despite it having had the most evidence for success out of any girls' theme. It lasted for fifteen years of sets. That's more than BIONICLE, more than classic Pirates, far more than Exo-Force, more than Alpha Team, and more than Space Police III. For four years it was being released alongside a minifigure-based girls' theme, Paradisa. Paradisa was cancelled, Belville was not. However, since Belville was eventually discontinued like most themes, it makes a lot of AFOLs happy to pretend it was not successful, indulging in a fantasy they've probably entertained since the theme began. I agree completely. However, this is unrelated to the point that Tragic Banjo was even making. His argument was that by making figures in a different scale than regular minifigures, TLG was making it hard for girls to transition into regular minifigure-based themes. My argument was that it would be just as easy to transition between these themes as it would have been to transition between any two themes that are incompatible in scale. Some girls may want to make this transition, and others will not. But the reality is that most children appreciate LEGO primarily as a building toy regardless of scale, and if they enjoy building then many will not hesitate to move to other themes where their bricks, completely regardless of the size of the minifigures, are compatible. I'd like to make a correction: this was not a time when terrible decisions led TLG to the brink of bankruptcy, but rather a time when terrible decisions failed to stop TLG from reaching the brink of bankruptcy. Most decisions TLG made within this time period were not huge monetary investments compared to the ones that ended up saving the company, and TLG hadn't changed many of their business practices at all. The biggest business decisions they've made which I know of have all been to undo the damage that they had already sustained. I'm just calling Belville a success based on what's available. Other people, on the other hand, are ignoring the analysis to indulge in their own delusions that Belville was a failure of a theme. Space Police did outlive BIONICLE, and you're right that that doesn't mean one theme was more profitable. But here's the thing: BIONICLE was profitable enough to last ten years. Space Police III was profitable enough to last two years. The only reason the four-year overlap is at all relevant is because it ties the market together. It means the two themes had to be popular with a similar pool of children to survive. A comparison of themes that don't overlap at all based on how long they lasted is less valid because they were probably trying to appeal to two completely different generations of kids who were likely to have completely different interests-- so saying that TLG should bring back Classic Space because it was more successful than Space Police III wouldn't make sense at all. As for your alternative explanation, my point isn't that Belville was an overwhelming success. But even in your scenario, featuring as it does caricatures of well-meaning executives who made several good decisions within that same time period, you seem to be assuming that given two unsuccessful girls' themes, these executives would have seen more potential in the weaker-selling of the two themes and cancelled its more successful (and without a doubt, cheaper-to-produce) counterpart. There may have been bad decisions in the late 90s, but assuming that Belville was not more successful than Paradisa at the time of Paradisa's cancellation would seem to require decision-making intended to run the company into the ground. I'm not trying to rush to assumptions (although the dolls being more like dolls is because of the scale you continue to denigrate, and would not have been possible without it). In the very least, I do at least some research before making a post, whereas you seem to believe there aren't male figures in Belville. Based on a quick Bricklink search, there were 31 male Belville figures (17%) and 148 female Belville figures (83%), plus 30 babies/fairies who probably tilt the ratio a bit further towards female. Male figures in Belville were around pretty consistently from the theme's beginning to its end, too. The genders were more balanced in Paradisa, but there was still a majority of female figs over male-- 31 female figs (61%) and 16 male figs (31%). The numbers in that case don't add up to 100% because there are four figs that are too gender-ambiguous for me to really include. Certainly, the ratio of male to female could have affected sales, but on the other hand, keep in mind that the easiest solution in that case would be to make new sets with a more uneven ratio, not to cancel the Paradisa theme in general. Success can be measured in a number of ways, but if you're going to suggest that Belville was not the most successful girls' theme by far, I'd like to know what was, and what evidence you have that's stronger than a fifteen-year lifespan. I loved Paradisa, but I'm not going to claim it was a success compared to Belville when I have no evidence to support this (even though it was still moderately successful to last as long as it did).

Agreed. The reason there's so much "glue junk" left behind is because the glue is a high quality that binds well to bricks. And removing such "glue junk" is no difficulty at all-- there are several products that exist specifically for such a purpose. All I can really add to this discussion is that TLG has at least three types of stickers. There are white stickers, which as far as I know are paper-based, probably with some type of plastic coating on top that gives them their "shine" (and makes them water-resistant). They're not much different than your average mass-produced sticker like a kid might get at a doctor's office or on a paper their teacher at school has graded. There are chrome-colored stickers, which are the same paper-based material but I guess with some type of chrome-colored treatment in the plastic coating. And there are transparent stickers, which are purely plastic-based. The three have different sorts of applications in sets. Beyond that, I don't know any specifics.

The prices are ridiculous to you. To TLG, they're strategic. Expecting TLG to lower prices overall is like asking oil companies to lower prices overall-- unless production costs go down, it's not likely to happen. The friendliest thing TLG could do for the consumer would be to give sets away free. Naturally, this would be suicidal for any business. So why do people so quickly assume TLG has raised their prices arbitrarily, and can lower them arbitrarily as well? The current prices are a balance between how much people are willing to pay and how little TLG can afford to charge. TLG does professional market research to determine both factors, and it always bothers me when armchair economists seem confident they know what's best for the company when the company's own experts do not. Sorry for the rant. Anyway, I've always been extremely skeptical that online resellers are the primary buyers of the collectible minifigures. I've never even been in a LEGO store since the collectible minifigures debuted, but I've seen them in several stores without any signs of excessive scalping. While I'm sure scalpers do influence the sales of the minifigures, the reason that scalpers continue to practice this business model is because the demand of the figs is already high enough to explain the minifigures' success. Scalpers are just strategic middlemen channeling the demand that regular buyers have for the figs to begin with. As for AFOLs being a huge influence on sales, I'm again skeptical. For every AFOL, there are probably ten or more KFOLs who like the collectible minifigures just as much. The only difference between these two audiences is that the AFOLs are often more selective and almost always self-financed. While the average AFOL probably buys more collectible minifigures than the average KFOL, there still remain far more KFOLs than AFOLs with a similar level of interest. I think this is something many AFOLs take for granted.

I spent yesterday and part of this morning digging in the online building instructions for Hero Factory sets, getting images for HS01. I figured I'd share these here, because contrary to what someone recently mentioned about the instructions being low-quality, these images all turned out very nice. Nex 2.0 versus Drilldozer Breez 2.0 versus Nitroblast Furno 2.0 versus Jetbug Stormer 2.0 and Evo 2.0 versus Fire Lord Furno 3.0 versus Waspix Bulk 3.0 versus Raw-Jaw Nex 3.0 versus Fangz Stormer 3.0 versus Scorpio Rocka XL versus Witch Doctor Savage Planet Promo Let's give a hand to our friends at ADVANCE who are probably responsible for all this awesome instruction booklet art! Hope you guys enjoy!

A glance at a Zadakh's instructions backs up your claim. I guess 2004 was a big year for promotional images. Personally, though, I kind of prefer these sets' big two-page spreads with large images of different sets to that year's more catalog-like images. The variety is also nice-- you don't get the same images in each instruction booklet. Also, on a related note, commenting on the instruction art inspired me to look at the online instructions for these sets and see what cool images I could retrieve for HS01. As I mentioned, in the first wave these "versus" images were all on LEGOshop.com under "more views" for both the heroes and villains. In the second wave they were available only for the villains, and in this most recent wave they're not available for either (besides the really big sets like Scorpio, Rocka XL, and Witch Doctor). Thankfully, I was able to pull high-quality versions of these versus images from the second- and third-wave instruction booklets. I'm posting those images in the main Hero Factory topic for everyone to see. Ooh, that sounds like a challenge! I'll see whether you're correct by trying to fashion up a sturdier-looking alternative on LDD. I agree it would be difficult, but I'll do my best. Still, I'd have much preferred if there were cavities in the helmet to let light in. It also bothered me with Fire Lord, and in his case you'd have thought Drilldozer's eye holes in the back would be sufficient. With some better planning, both of these sets could have been improved in that regard Oh, no! I think you misunderstand me. I don't mind double-sided heads/helmets at all! Even Jetbug's/Nitroblast's doesn't bother me. What I had issue with in the case of the Spikit was the fact that there was a clearly humanoid head underneath the helmet, with a non-matching eye color outside. Even though it's obvious that the helmet on the Spikit is meant to be part of the head, and that the Glatorian head was only chosen for its proportions (if it were still in production, the rubberized y-joint seen in the 2004-2007 titan sets would have worked just as well), it still was bothersome if the Spikit was looked at from an angle at which the Glatorian head was visible, like a direct side view. It wasn't a big problem, but needless to say I feel the solution these beasts use is superior in some respects Well, this bothers me in terms of the line itself (as I've mentioned before, we have almost all warm colors in this wave besides Stormer, Nex, and Scorpio), it doesn't really faze me when it comes to the individual sets. As long as the sets are in colors where the end result looks cool, then the set will be pretty much the same to me in value. Well, if Witch Doctor has anything going for him, it's that he's intimidating. If the only true villain were a set like Fire Lord, then it might seem like the Heroes had a significant advantage, but seeing as the villain is an enormous magical skull-beast, I think he's got a fighting chance.

Technically, a set that's exclusive to certain retailers in the US or UK isn't necessarily a store-exclusive worldwide. I can recall encountering the BIONICLE set 8935 Nocturn, a WalMart exclusive here in the US, at an independent toy store in Italy, lacking any sort of "Special Edition" designation on the box. Of course, 2007 isn't as recent as it feels, so it could be that TLG is doing things differently nowadays and trying to make store exclusives exclusive to a specific retailer in each country they sell them in. But I'd say that once the set begins to show up elsewhere in the world, it might be a good idea to check local retailers that carry Ninjago sets just in case it's marketed as a regular non-exclusive set in the Netherlands.

Well, there are a couple problems with this. TLG already has plenty of what would seem like non-gender-specific toys. And in general, girls don't want to buy them. If they did TLG would have no reason to even try making a separate girls' theme-- as it is, though, both parents and girls themselves overlook even the least gender-specific sets. Frankly, a lot of people come in here talking about how girl-specific themes are a bad idea that discriminates against girls. But what they fail to realize is considering how girls don't buy most LEGO sets, this essentially means that those sets are unintentionally "boy-specific". TLG has two options to counter this imbalance: they can either create niche products for girls, which is a low-risk decision, or they can change their already successful "boys' themes" to make them less gender-specific-- a considerably higher risk considering that that means potentially alienating some of their best buyers. The assumption that girls' LEGO products are only valid as a gateway to other products is a really awful one. For one thing, it assumes that girls should like the average LEGO products like fire engines, pirate ships, and spaceships, and that they shouldn't like more stereotypically "girly" things like dollhouses and riding stables. And while you can say all you like about the effect of girls' toys on society, but the fact remains that these are things that girls often like, not just because they're pressured into buying them but because these are the toys they legitimately enjoy. Think of it this way: train sets are stereotypically a boys' toy. Does this mean LEGO trains should only exist as a "gateway" to less gender-specific themes like Castle, City, and Harry Potter? You might argue that trains are different, because both boys and girls can enjoy them, and only girls can enjoy dollhouses. But in fact this is untrue-- trains are the same as dollhouses because both girls and boys can enjoy them, but they appeal primarily to one gender over the other. Your assumption that different scaling makes sets incompatible is laughable. All LEGO is compatible. If different scales are such a big problem, then Duplo and Technic should both be discontinued for being incompatible with regular minifigure-based LEGO themes. And Fabuland should be reviled for creating a group of fans who never went on to become regular LEGO fans. Only wait! It didn't. People who are fans of one of these themes regularly become fans of other themes. As a child, I was primarily a fan of Duplo. I moved from that to regular LEGO System without the least bit of hassle. As I got older I began collecting Technic not instead of, but alongside, System sets. And then I moved from Technic to BIONICLE, and most recently from BIONICLE to Hero Factory. Not one of these transitions made my parts incompatible with other sets (besides arguably the Duplo-System transition, since I never mixed parts from those two themes), nor was it difficult to move into sets with a larger or smaller scale than I was used to. The only "incentive" I needed was my own curiosity. Furthermore, you call the different scaling of girls' themes a bad thing without considering basic history. Paradisa was a minifigure-based girls' theme running from 1992-1997-- a total of six years of sets. Belville was a doll-based theme running from 1994-2008-- a total of 15 years of sets. Between 1994 and 1997, both themes were running simultaneously. Belville existed after 1997 because it was successful where Paradisa was not. Your misguided notion that doll-based themes are a bad business decision is one a lot of AFOLs share, but there's no evidence for it and a lot against it. Frankly, there already exist plenty of minifigure-based themes that girls are perfectly free to buy. However, Paradisa and Belville demonstrated that even when a minifigure-based theme exists that's custom-tailored to the interests of female buyers, girls still prefer a doll-based theme. And TLG, by releasing sets that buyers simply don't want, would be doing both itself and its audience a disservice. Personally, I think that as a toy company it's not TLG's responsibility to create social change. There are a lot more influential toy companies that would be working counter to that purpose anyway. But at the same time, something that has to be acknowledged is that if TLG continues releasing sets that girls tend to ignore, they're not helping girls grow up without gender stereotypes, or creating equality, or any of those things. All they're doing is perpetuating their reputation as a boys' toy and their feebleness at getting girls older than five years old to even care. Now here's my own perspective on this revelation, if it turns out to be true. I may very easily ignore this theme when it comes out if the minifigures are terribly incompatible with regular LEGO ones. At the same time, my little brother was a fan of Jack Stone sets in the early 2000s, and I didn't make fun of the sets at all. Instead, I was a bit of a fan myself. They were not minifigure scale, but they were LEGO and Technic-based sets that still encouraged creative building and role-play, just for a younger audience. If I jumped on the hate-train for this theme like a lot of AFOLs are so ready to, then I'd be a hypocrite, because I'd be imposing my own values on LEGO sets clearly not aimed at 20-year-old men like myself. Even the most obstinate AFOL isn't likely to complain about Duplo sets being "too <insert that tiresome argument>", so complaining about girls' sets being "too girly" is just as illogical. TLG has put a lot of time and effort into market research trying to find what sells, so the best thing we can do is hope that their time and effort pays off rather than trying to claim that our own armchair psychology explains girls better than actual research by a company that has actual money at stake if the theme is not successful. At the same time, it's way too early to pretend we know anything for certain about these sets. Our first information about the Ninjago theme, from someone who had seen pictures of the sets himself, led us to expect ninjas in improbable colors like purple and orange, when in fact the final theme's ninjas were all in colors that had been seen in sets over ten years previously. I don't doubt the information itself in this case, but drawing conclusions about whether it's good or bad involves making a lot of huge and often baseless assumptions based on a couple sentences (most of which apply just as much to fan-favorite theme Fabuland as they do to this new girls' theme, by the way).

Well, ToyFair said they're still just $2.99 in the US, and LegoGalactus's Toys 'R' Us link agrees (surprisingly, since the in-store price for anything LEGO at Toys 'R' Us tends to be significantly above MSRP), so there's no point getting yourself worked up over something you haven't yet verified for yourself.

I'm probably not going to be following this story at this rate. I kind of lost my patience for combining separate themes' stories in huge and improbable ways a long time ago. In 2001 I entertained the notion that the Matoran had created the Throwbots/Slizers as substitutes while waiting for the Toa to arrive, but obviously this is the sort of idea that doesn't age well-- after all, you basically have to disregard any BIONICLE story information after 2003 and almost all of the Slizer story information for such an idea to work out, and at that point the story had better be pretty darn good or you've just ruined two far superior stories just to allow for an inferior story that doesn't add anything special to either theme. While an occasional "X meets Y" story bringing two themes together can be fun, changing both stories dramatically to reconcile them with one another generally does nothing but eliminates anything unique about either story. This is just my opinion, of course, but in the end I have much more fun with stories that try to expand a theme with new and original content than ones that compromise two stories with one another when both make more sense and are far more meaningful on their own.

Alright, I'm seeing a lot of discussion of this so I have to ask: what instruction booklets are people referring to that had these "multiple pages"? I just pulled out Tahu Nuva's instructions, those being the oldest ones within arms reach right now, and the only ad pages are a one-page image of the six Toa Nuva (the same image featured in this wallpaper) in the front and a one-page Kanohi Nuva chart on the back. Walking over to a nearby shelf and pulling out my twin brother's Pohatu building instructions, there still aren't any ads that seem to match what people are describing. There's a picture of a Toa Canister on a beach on the first page, a picture of the six Great Kanohi demonstrating how they attach to the canister lid on the last page, and the inventory of the three sets needed to make Akamai on the first page of Akamai's building instructions. Perhaps you're thinking of the building instructions for Rahi, since those are boxed sets like Hero Factory villains? Nui-Rama, the only one remotely similar in price and piece count to this year's villain sets, has nothing in the second instruction booklet but a page in the middle showing the action features for the set, a page in the back showing a photo of the Nui Kopen completed, and the very back of the instruction booklet showing nothing more than what you'd see in most catalogs. The first instruction booklet (which is not on LEGO.com) has the same action feature image in the back and nothing but a Kanohi chart on the back cover. On a side note, the Rahi instruction booklets on LEGO.com are apparently the really good kind that use vector graphics rather than just straight scans, meaning they look good at any zoom! Hooray! Even the mini-catalogs included in 2001 sets (separate from the instruction booklets) didn't have any multi-page art like you're describing-- just a two-page spread with the main box art of the six Toa, some Toa Canister graphics, and two masks. The Bohrok instructions do have some art in them-- Tahnok's instructions have two pages of tiny Bohrok vs. Toa images. The box sets from that year (all far larger than this year's villains) had similar art if I remember correctly. Are these what you're referring to? If so, then it's clear where the discrepancy is between those sets and these. Those images existed to demonstrate the story, not to advertise particular sets-- essentially, the modern-day equivalent would be if TLG put the full comic from the back of each box onto one of the pages of the instruction booklets. I for one prefer the big character artwork we get in the instruction booklets now-- especially since for the past two waves of sets, unlike the first Hero Factory wave, the pictures of the heroes in their "battle-ready" poses from the backs of the boxes are not available on Shop at Home or anywhere on LEGO.com. It's a real loss in my opinion, so having this art in the instruction booklets is a small mercy. Wow, Fangz's (that sounds so weird) printed shells look very nice! They're pretty hard to see in most pictures, so I'm glad they're every bit as artful as the ones in the other bad guy sets. His helmet is cool, although it's a bit odd that it's the only Titanium Metallic (post-2010 Pearl Dark Grey) part in this set. I agree it could be useful. I'm kind of puzzled that his front paws are the co-injected kind. You'd think it would be more practical to use plain black ones like Jetbug or Von Nebula, since it looks kind of awkward for his front paws to have metallic-colored claws and his back paws to have flat black ones. I guess they felt the metallic claws made the set look more menacing, though-- and admittedly dual-colored claws would have looked weird on Von Nebula or Jetbug. I agree that it was a shame TLG had to bring back the Shadow Matoran claws just as soon as they'd finally done away with the Glatorian head. They look OK in this set, since they match the aesthetic of the Piraka claws, but I'd still have preferred some different alternative in both this set and Waspix. Fangz reminds me a lot of Spinax in both his posture, his lack of obvious real-world analogue, and his story role as a wolflike/houndlike predator. I don't think the transparent shells have any meaningful story explanation. After all, Jetbug's probably were emanating with power or whatever, seeing as he's one of the Fire Villains, but at the same time there's no story reason why he has them and the other Fire Villains do not. Likewise, I think the only reason Fangz has these transparent shells and the other beasts don't is that Fangz needs them most to add excitement to an otherwise boring color scheme. Plus, the fact that his color scheme is otherwise boring means that he can manage an additional color, which might not have been the case for Raw Jaw, Scorpio, and Waspix (all of which already have fairly vibrant color schemes and might have looked chaotic with an additional color). I'm not all too happy with Fangz's build, just because he doesn't seem remotely as sturdy as Raw-Jaw or even Waspix. His back is just a frame with a few shells scattered somewhat haphazardly along it, and that's what it ends up looking like. Changing the color of the bone on his back from red to black could have been helpful, but there would still have been many ugly gaps in the back. The worst part in my opinion is that not all of his shells are aligned the same way. If they had been, it might have improved his look from the side and top significantly. At first it was very vague to me whether the Quaza spikes were in fact Transparent Red or Transparent Fluorescent Reddish Orange at the tip. In this review, it's obvious that they're Transparent Red, since they don't match Fangz's armor shells, but in other reviews they seemed a lot more glowy than regular transparent red would be expected to look. I guess it's just a reminder how much impact the material of a piece can have on the perceived color, especially if the actual color is a transparent one. Transparent Red was a dull and lifeless color when used in polycarbonate for Toa Metru Matau-- but when used in polypropylene for Vahki Vorzakh, it was very vibrant indeed, just as it is here on the Quaza spikes. While we're discussing the spears, let's take the time to laugh at how according to LEGOshop.com, they are an action feature-- because there, despite the lack of any action feature, the blurb encourages you to "Fire jaw-mounted spears at Heroes!" Alas, while I know a lot of people think the Thornax/Zamor combo is becoming tedious, at least it gave LEGOshop.com a meaningful function to advertise for the sets. While I do love the use of fluorescent colors to catch the light where eye pieces otherwise could not, Fangz's eyes look terribly dim in your photos. Is this just a quality of the photos, or is it really so hard to even see the color of the eyes from these particular angles? Personally, I like these headpieces and how they are constructed-- it makes more sense than the use of Glatorian heads for the Spikit in 2009-- but at the same time, if TLG isn't designing the actual faces so that the eyes are consistently visible and attractive from a number of angles, then IMO we still haven't quite reached a satisfying solution for the heads of villain sets (especially in the case of Witch Doctor, whose eyes are hollow regardless of angle). I personally don't mind colors being reused at this stage of the game. It makes it easier to amass a usable collection of parts in the new building system, rather than having a bunch of colors in small quantities. At the same time, this may be in part because I have not bought more than two of the Fire Villains, and so haven't yet become "swamped" with parts in these colors. While all the Transparent Fluorescent Reddish-Orange (Trans-Neon Orange) parts are nice, I hope that at some point we get some parts in the new system using Transparent Fluorescent Green (Trans-Neon Green) or Transparent Fluorescent Blue (Trans-Medium Blue), the other two fluorescent colors still on today's color palette. Other transparent colors, like the Transparent Green of the 3.0 heroes or the Transparent Yellow of Waspix's wings, are also more than welcome for variety's sake. Incidentally, there are at least two other fluorescent colors that have been discontinued-- Transparent Fluorescent Red, the color used for Tahu's eyes which most people conflate with Transparent Medium Reddish-Violet (Trans-Dark Pink), and Transparent Fluorescent Yellow, the color used for Gali's eyes. While it's easy to see why these two colors were discontinued, seeing as they were near-identical to other transparent colors, it's a shame that the result of this was the use of BIONICLE eye colors that were either undesirable (many of the non-fluorescent Toa Metru and Bohrok eye colors) or repetitive (the orange and green eyes, often used to color-code sets by good/evil affiliation, that people complained about to the bitter end). Anyway, great review! I'm not a big fan of Fangz compared to his similarly-priced counterparts Raw-Jaw and Waspix, but he's certainly a creative design! While I'd like to get back to humanoid villains soon enough, I hope we still see more non-humanoid, mid-size villain sets like these three in the future!

The new Naboo Starfighter set is good, I'll admit that, but at the same time it's almost identical to the last one which had a pretty great Vulture Droid as a bonus. Anyway, as for this set-- in general, I love it. I don't hugely prefer PT to OT, but I feel the prequels fit well into continuity and since they occurred right in the midst of my childhood I have a great deal of nostalgia for them. I happened to have the Mos Espa Podrace set when I was a kid (this was back when I could afford to collect LEGO Star Wars sets), and I really loved MOCing podracers. I had the movies, video games like Star Wars Episode I Racer for the N64, and several Star Wars cross-section books at my disposal for reference when MOCing, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. When this set was first revealed, I actually had to second-guess my decision to avoid collecting any more Star Wars sets, even more than I had to with other beautiful set designs like the last Luke's Landspeeder set. After all, this year has most of the sets I'd need to update my collection of Star Wars Episode I sets from my childhood with new, superior designs and more expressive minifigures. I love all of the Episode I minifigures this year, and the ones in this set are no exception. Watto and Sebulba no longer feel like emotionless statues-- rather, they've got just enough detail and posability to look all right next to regular human minifigures. Anakin and Obi-Wan both wonderfully represent the actors from Episode I in the stylized way necessary for minifigures. Wald isn't hugely necessary to the set, but he's a nice addition. The podracers themselves are also amazing. Sebulba's Podracer in the original set was the best representation I could imagine, but here it's been clearly trumped by this detail-packed design. In the early days of LEGO Star Wars, we couldn't have anticipated this level of greebling in a non-UCS set, but here such building techniques are prolific. The small details mesh wonderfully with the larger, more specialized Power Miners wheels at the back of the engines. Anakin's podracer is also amazing, although I wish the dome shapes from the front of the engines could have been kept somehow (even with the air intake-- maybe a printed R2-D2 dome could have allowed this), and the pod itself doesn't have the same sleek swooshiness as the actual thing had in the movie. I suppose for that we'd have to wait for TLG to release suitable parts in other sets-- otherwise, it would require specialized parts for this set, which would be no good at all. Now that the sets are out, I'm afraid to say they still won't be enough to get me back into the Star Wars theme. Frankly, I don't have the shelf space or the finances for a substantial collection, especially now that I'm collecting the Hero Factory theme. But at the same time, I'll keep watching the LEGO Star Wars theme with much interest. Don't expect me to comment often in this subforum, as I often simply don't have the know-how to make meaningful comments. But I'm certainly very happy with TLG's designers for this set, and it shows me that yes, there are still Star Wars designs that can be improved without feeling like tiresome remakes. Thanks so much for the review!

Technically, plastics were still all from one source until the issue with Chinese manufacturing law requiring a certain percentage of domestic materials. Dyes, on the other hand, have been from various sources. You probably have the right idea in that the coloring of dye during production vs. the use of pre-colored granulate may have caused the discrepancy, although TLG also does sometimes change the formulation of their dyes and plastics to better fit safety and quality standards.

Well, he's not very well-known as a character, and rarely has huge relevance to the plot. We never got a Trevor minifigure, even if he's easier to make since you can just use a generic frog. Nor did we get a special Nagini minifigure, and Nagini has far more relevance than Fang. That black Belville dog really does look like it'd work well. While he's just a puppy in Belville, he could stand in for a large full-grown dog in System, just as the Belville "kitten" came to serve as a cat in regular System themes.

We know for certain Ninjago is continuing into 2012, because there's a TV series coming out towards the end of this year, and because we've seen a teaser for 2012 Ninjago in the back of the online instruction booklet for the Fire Temple. But in general, the stuff on this list is so highly speculative, I don't see any reason to bother at this point. Better to wait until more teasers have had time to emerge so we're at least working with a definitive partial list beyond the obvious themes like Technic, Star Wars, City, and Minifigures.

It wasn't a huge change like the change in the greys, as it's still got the same color ID (154). Of course, nowadays they've started calling it New Dark Red-- I'm not sure whether that means that the change in 2005 was a conscious change or whether they changed the color again to try and "correct" an unintentional one. Perhaps I ought to ask an ambassador to inquire about this-- I'm not aware of TLG ever completely changing the term they use to refer to a color in the past, so "New Dark Red" is really an anomaly I don't know how to explain.

This is awfully harsh. I actually am glad some people still appreciate BIONICLE. Some of my best friends online still frequently do BIONICLE-inspired artwork, and I consider it a failing of mine that I can't even draw inspiration from the BIONICLE story now that it's mostly finished. And no, this isn't coming from an adoring fan. This is coming from someone who, like you, doesn't have the patience for the story serials, and who doesn't particularly care about what has happened in them so far. I keep promising myself that I'll go back and read all of them one day, and then I never do. It's not because I'm all mopey about Greg killing off characters-- after all, the fact that a select few deaths like Matoro or Lhikan are huge, heartbreaking affairs doesn't mean every death that isn't is "cheapened" somehow-- nor is it because I think the story should be cancelled and forgotten when there are still people interested in it. I just can't work up the interest myself. What I dread most of all is that in fact my interest in the BIONICLE storyline so far has been shallow since the beginning. Since the Hero Factory story came out I have been extremely interested in the theme, and not because the Hero Factory story has huge mysteries that I'm waiting to see get revealed, but rather just because it's a fun good-versus-evil story with cool characters and plenty of room for imagination. Did BIONICLE have that same thing going for it ever? And if so, why doesn't it anymore? I try not to think about these things too deeply. The last thing I need is things I've lost keeping me up at night. And there are enough of those in my life as it is.

Building instructions at Service.LEGO.com are almost always a pretty low quality. It's probably that way to ensure that TLG can maintain the site's building instructions database, which is fairly complete for all sets prior to 2002, with many sets even before then. I find that the oldest instructions are more likely to be high-quality-- for example, the instructions for set 6093 Flying Ninja Fortress use vector graphics for the full instruction booklet, making them high-quality no matter how far you're zoomed in. The lower quality on more recent instruction booklets is probably both to reduce the cost of hosting so many instructions and to make the download of the instructions faster for people with older or slower computers. In general, we should probably be grateful that the instructions for the Hero Factory sets are the quality that they are. Many building instructions for larger System sets like the Modular Buildings have distorted colors-- for instance, Reddish Brown parts often appear darker than Black parts.

I have a lot of old and new colors in my collection, but these days I can only really be said to "collect" the new colors. I'm a child of the 90s, when brown and dark grey were possibly for the first time being used in great quantity in sets, so my collection of those colors increased quickly, and as a BIONICLE fan from 2001-2010 I couldn't help but observe the differences in the new colors. At the same time, today I only buy new sets, and any orders I make of older parts tend to be of the newest versions of any color when possible. So my collection of the newer colors far outweighs my collection of the older ones, despite having a good quantity of both. The reason I prefer to MOC with the new colors is that I have a greater variety of parts in the new colors to begin with (a pretty inevitable fact given that so many useful parts have been introduced since the switch in 2004). I transitioned most quickly into using the new greys, since I was mainly a BIONICLE fan at the time of the transition, and 192 Reddish Brown was not introduced in BIONICLE until 2006-- instead, brown BIONICLE sets used the comparatively ugly color 217 Brown (Dark Flesh). But in general, I prefer the cleaner, purer look of the new greys and brown to the older, muddier-looking colors. In general, I was not very resistant to the newer colors, even though I've never liked mixing the two in MOCs unless there's absolutely no alternative. This might be in part because a lot of new colors were being introduced even before 2004, and some of them seemed really useless even compared to colors they coexisted with. For instance, 105 Bright Yellowish Orange (Medium Orange) and 106 Bright Orange (Orange) were nearly identical, and I've never really had a use for my Bright Yellowish Orange parts from certain Harry Potter sets in 2001. And yet the colors coexisted! When Bright Yellowish Orange was discontinued in favor of 191 Flame Yellowish Orange (a less-talked-about transition in 2004 or 2005), it was a more than welcome change. There are certain discontinued colors I miss greatly-- for example, Bright Violet (Purple) and Bright Bluish Green (Dark Turquoise) have not yet gotten suitable replacements, even though some of this year's new colors help at least occupy the absence between red and blue, or between blue and green, in the current palette. I'm hoping that the new Dark Azur will expand to be a full-fledged replacement for Bright Bluish Green, even if it doesn't fit quite as snugly between the greens and blues, being a little closer to blue than I'm totally comfortable with. In general, though, the colors that were actively replaced in 2004-- 2 Grey (Light Gray), 25 Earth Orange (Brown), and 27 Dark Grey (Dark Gray)-- have no special place in my heart. Well, with the possible exception of Earth Orange, which was possibly the first color in the "earth" shade, that being the darkest shade on the basic color spectrum LEGO uses. Today's Earth Green and Earth Blue (Dark Green and Dark Blue on Bricklink) share this with their more classic counterpart. Even today I occasionally use Earth Orange and Earth Blue in LDD concepts as color-coded placeholders for black parts that I need to distinguish from one another for whatever reason.

Not true, TLG loves SNOT. The problem, though, is that while it doesn't seem like an advanced technique, it doesn't come naturally to a great number of builders. The first instinct of inexperienced builders is usually to start a model from the bottom and stack bricks on top until it's finished, and heavy use of SNOT techniques makes the process more confusing for many beginning builders. Additionally, oftentimes in the AFOL community SNOT techniques are used to create large surfaces without studs. TLG does not like doing this because they're proud of their studs-- they're one of the things that make LEGO models so distinctive. Thus there is rarely a concerted effort to create studless surfaces in official models the way there often is in advanced MOCs. This is one reason I'm impressed with the boast in the instruction manual for the first MBA kit that the rocket (the second model) ends up almost entirely without exposed studs-- even if it's obviously a huge exaggeration, it's still something TLG rarely brags about in terms of model design, and shows that they do in fact appreciate some of the same design principles as AFOLs even if they avoid them in most sets. On a side note, I just compared my own instruction manual, and it has the same MBA code as the online one. So I would guess that the code is not unique to each manual, but rather is the same for every MBA starter kit. This is interesting as it contradicts the MBA site's claim that you register by entering your "unique MBA code", and makes it so that theoretically anyone can activate a membership by entering this code.

There's a number of factors. For instance, with a lot of MOCs I feel like I can't give any authoritative or meaningful feedback while being impartial about people's building styles. A lot of my own MOCs have similar design considerations to sets, and I try to avoid illegal connections. at the same time, it feels petty to say "This is great, but it would have been better if it didn't use illegal connections" or "this is great, but it ought to be simplified structurally". Basically, I'm so used to judging my own MOCs according to set design terms, I don't have much authority judging a MOC with vastly different design considerations. At the same time, I don't want to just ignore anything partial to my own style, leaving behind only fawning praise for a MOC that is good, but not outstanding. The time I'm most likely to critique something without hesitation about subjectivity is when I'm commenting on a contest entry for a contest I'm also entering. In this case, I can compare and contrast the thought processes that went into their design with the thought processes that went into my own. Any place there's a discrepancy, I am usually happy to share whether I think their process or mine led to a more effective MOC. Another thing is that I often don't have the patience for a good, solid critique. As you can probably tell already from this post, I tend to ramble, so critiquing a MOC takes a lot out of me. I often put a critique off until later, and then never get back to it. This applies especially with any MOC that has too much detail to take in at one time. I tend to avoid critiquing any MOCs based on themes in which I have little experience or authority. It would be extremely embarrassing if I were to review a train MOC and say "I think it would look good if you changed this..." only to be told that it's an integral part of that train model and would be inaccurate any other way. Subforums I tend to avoid for this reason include the Train Tech, Pirates, Star Wars, and Historic Themes subforums. I do comment in Historic Themes and Star Wars, but mostly on reviews or discussion of current sets. I also make occasional comments in the Pirates subforum, but nowhere near as many as I make in Town, Action Themes, Action Figures, or Other Themes. So overall, it's always a good idea to assume that if you don't see any feedback on a MOC from me, it's because of my own shortcomings, not those of your MOC. If you do get feedback from me, it's a measure of my own confidence and not necessarily a sign that your MOC is superior to those in other threads or subforums.

The problem with this theory is that 1) the Black Pearl's price, piece count, set number, and name have been known since February-- long before any of the other PotC sets were available. None of these things even could have been influenced significantly by the sales for the theme. The minifigures might have changed since then, since we hadn't seen any pictures, but it seems unlikely since including important enemy characters like Davy Jones would have been a strategic decision from the get-go. Including minifigures like Pintel and Ragetti would have required removing other Black Pearl crew members, not Flying Dutchman crew members, since there have to be at least two factions on board for role-play purposes, and making them fairly equal is ideal. The idea that the Flying Dutchman crew members were thrown in because there won't be a Flying Dutchman or any other future sets is just jumping to conclusions-- while these minifigures would have made the most sense on such a set, that doesn't mean that they have to be exclusive to it, any more than Blackbeard was exclusive to the QAR. If anything, I think the fact that the Black Pearl is an average-sized set actually increases the likelihood of of a Flying Dutchman set later on down the line. Let's face the facts-- out of the important ships in PotC, the Black Pearl is possibly the least impressive in appearance. This is probably in part because it debuted in the first movie, and thus had no big reputation to live up to, and in later films it was a ship for the good guys-- the bad guys had to have larger and more intimidating vessels. Since the Black Pearl is an average-sized LEGO pirate ship, that leaves room for a bigger and more impressive Flying Dutchman-- possibly a D2C set in January, much like this year's Diagon Alley for the Harry Potter theme. And now, some of the most important minifigures for such a set have already been produced, making it a less costly venture. And finally, there is no reason for LEGO to "not try" on a set they're actually trying to sell. Even a last-ditch effort will generally have the same design effort put into it, if not the same design budget. There's no reason TLG would knowingly put a large, undesirable set on store shelves, especially if the theme were unpopular. Cutler Beckett would readily acknowledge that using sloppy designs when sales on good designs are suffering is not good business. Even perceived "low points" in LEGO set design had a lot of effort put into their designs-- the only difference is that the effort was going towards things other than complexity, aesthetics, or whatever else AFOLs considered deficient in those sets. If TLG had evidence that intricate, advanced pirate ship designs didn't sell, then perhaps they'd make a simpler, less accurate design for the Black Pearl. But that's not giving up, that's just redirecting your effort towards a different purpose. And returning to my first point, I don't think that to be a likely scenario anyway considering how much we knew about the Black Pearl at the New York ToyFair, before any of the sets had hit store shelves.

Well, there's the obvious thing wrong with SNOT, which is how it's pronounced. A kid raised in a fairly conservative household might be chastised for talking about "snot techniques", and it would reflect badly on the company if it seemed they were encouraging inappropriate humor. The word "snot" is not too badly frowned upon in the United States (not enough to be censored, anyway), but at the same time some parents of young children often put forth an effort to raise their kids without much bodily-function humor of any kind. And then there's also the fact that SNOT is an AFOL term, and Master Builders may very well have been just calling it "sideways building" without any catchy acronym for years before the AFOL community was recognized. While LEGO has been around for a long time, AFOL communities are comparatively fairly recent, and their acronyms even more so. Well, frankly, if you're not interested in the manuals (which are the main things that are catered to "beginner builders"), and you're not too attached to the pieces in the first kit, the first kit and subscription package are not tied together. So you could very easily skip the first kit and just get the subscription for the next five kits, which have an amazing price per piece. I'm not sure how that might affect your ability to get the kits for Levels 3 and 4, of course-- it could be that to actually progress through the ranks you need to have the code from the first kit. It'd be nice if TLG made some of this clearer for the benefit of AFOLs who aren't as concerned with the actual program, just the sets.

The building instructions portal and replacement parts portal at service.LEGO.com have been updated with the new Hero Factory sets. It's probably not all that relevant to most people since the replacement parts portal lacks images for any of the new parts, and the building instructions have already been seen at the Hero Factory website (although those will probably be removed eventually, while service.LEGO.com's instructions are permanent), but it's still news. I'm also not sure if anyone's brought up the Hero Recon Spy Contest. Seems like a cool thing. I encourage anyone to take part; it'd be great if the winner were someone here at Eurobricks!

Just found something I feel I have to share. My dad recently ordered one of the MBA starter kits to see whether it's worth getting a subscription (and if we do get one, whether it's the sort of thing that would be worth getting more than one of-- I have two siblings I'm going to have to share the starter kit, after all). Anyway, I'm very impressed with the piece count and the manual, and the quality of the sorting tray isn't at all as cheap as I was led to believe from the reviews I read. It's certainly not like the crappy plastic insert material that I was expecting! But that's not what I wanted to share. After looking at the manual with my younger brother, I noticed the number "4646874" on the back, and on a whim decided to see if a copy of the manual was online. Sure enough, the manual to the starter kit is online! US fans can now see for themselves whether or not they think this style of package is worth the subscription, while non-US fans can decide for themselves if they're really missing out on anything. Certainly some of the building tips are geared towards younger kids, and the manual makes it clear from the beginning that it's aimed at kids rather than adults, but this applies to most LEGO products and that's no reason we adults have nothing to gain from it. In my opinion, the useful pieces at a great price is reason enough for the full subscription, but at the same time the well-designed models stand out among LEGO sets and the informative manuals are a high quality even for a LEGO publication. The starter kit admittedly has a poor price-per-piece and not much to offer besides its awesome parts in awesome colors. The building tips are obvious for a long-time builder and it doesn't really go into detail about the dimensions of headlight bricks (or "erling bricks") and how they vary from other SNOT pieces. But at the same time, the starter kit is needed to unlock the MBA web content (I imagine, anyway, unless the code in the online manual is in fact still valid), and I haven't yet even looked at that to see whether it has anything special to offer. I hope it has videos from real Master Builders, since those are always entertaining-- whether they're the adult-geared "Design" videos for the D2C sets or the more playful designer videos on the Ninjago and Power Miners websites. For now, here's the manual for anyone to judge for themselves. Hopefully this means the manuals for future kits will also be available online for fans to consult.

Would you really call them "rubber"? Rubber makes me think of the material used for the minifig spears in the last wave of Hero Factory-- very flexible, so much that you can bend them 180 degrees and they'll bounce right back to their original position. A similar material is used for Exo-Force hair and for the tips of the collectible minifigure spears from the Spartan Warrior and Tribal Chief. I was operating under the assumption that these were the same sort of material used for Atlantis tridents or most post-2004 BIONICLE masks-- slightly flexible, but if you bend it too far you'll stretch the plastic and ruin the piece. Was I incorrect, or am I just misunderstanding what you mean by "rubber"? On a side note, remember that in the case of rubber pieces, the material's not necessarily there for safety reasons so much as stability reasons. In reality, nobody expects a kid to stab themself with Dobby's ears or Exo-Force hair-- the reason parts like that are rubber is because rubber parts allow more thin sections and sharp details without the same risk of the part breaking. So, for instance, if the tip of the Spartan Warrior's spear were made of ABS plastic, the tip would likely snap off as easily as the tip of a toothpick. By making the part out of rubber, it is able to bend rather than break, and it bends right back into the correct position as soon as it's no longer under pressure.