Aanchir

Well, I'm not privy to all the logic that goes behind the PAB/DBM parts palette selections, but there are a couple possibilities I can think of. One is, as you mentioned, them running out of pearl dark gray knight helmets. This would not be especially likely, since there are still pearl dark gray knight helmets in sets. But it's possible that the ones they had before were in the old Pearl Dark Gray (148 Dark Grey Metallic) rather than the new Pearl Dark Gray (316 Titanium Metallic). The difference is slight, and the chances are very unlikely (since the new color was introduced in the first wave of Kingdoms sets and there were no Pearl Dark Gray knight helmets before that wave). But that could explain them running out, if that did indeed happen. Note that a similar thing happened with the Exo-Force robot arms in the Mini Figures category-- while the older Dark Grey Metallic ones haven't been removed, they are listed as "Not Available", while the newer Titanium Metallic ones are listed right above for the same price. The opposite is also a possibility. Perhaps they had a surplus of Light Bluish Gray (194 Medium Stone Grey) helmets, and so they put them in place of the Pearl Dark Gray ones in the parts palette hoping to get rid of excess stock.

"Fair" isn't a part of the equation at all. Extra pieces were never included as a gift to fans, and were removed when the added cost was no longer necessary for quality control reasons. If TLG added extra pieces now, they'd have to be a legitimate part of the set's inventory, not "extras". And frankly, if TLG is raising the prices because production and distribution costs are increasing (which is very much a possibility, even if we don't have any reason to expect or believe it), then extra pieces wouldn't be covered by the price increase. Rather, they'd necessitate an additional price increase on top of the one already being applied. The only thing here we know for certain to be unfair is that Europe is getting a price increase, when a similar price increase for the United States is not expected. I recognize that this is a problem, but I recognize some of the reasons behind it. And it's not anything different from the price discrepancies Europe and the United States already have in sets (in fact, I believe it's less than some), so there's no reason I should cry over this particular discrepancy when the problem is larger and more wide-reaching than that. But really, claiming a price increase with no improvement on the actual product is "unfair" is like complaining that fluctuating oil prices are "unfair". No, they're not nice, but it's a reality of capitalism that there are various factors that can change production cost without any change in what's actually being produced. The only thing unfair about it is that these production cost increases are felt differently by consumers in different parts of the world.

Hmmm... I wonder if that's related to the reason many of the earliest Hero Recon Team orders were delivered late. Since the horse, the tommy gun, and the various Hero Factory parts were new with this year's April PAB/DBM update, it's possible there was just a general lack of organization in updating to the new parts selection for both services.

Not me. People in my family keep getting excited about it or the upcoming Harry Potter movie, and I keep having to remind them that the next movie we have to catch in theaters is the fourth Pirates movie, which has already been in theaters for a while. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing Cars 2, since I always love Pixar films, but I have a feeling that like the first Cars movie, it may be one I don't end up seeing until it ends up on DVD. I do hope that I can see it before it leaves theaters, of course, because it'd be nice to have some perspective on who some of the characters from the LEGO sets are. I've read about some of them online and they all seem to have very interesting personalities. While most of the commercials for this movie that I've seen seem to present it as a comedic kids' cartoon, I have high hopes for it-- I just don't know if I can get my act together in time to catch it while it's still in theaters. And yes, I know I've got quite a while.

I think the problem with using transparent red Barraki eyes on Raw-Jaw's fingers is that it'll look like he has colored nail polish or something. Those globe pieces would indeed look good in 315 Silver Metallic. Just to clarify, are those always polycarbonate? I know they appear in White in this year's Skull Truck set from the Ninjago theme, but I know even certain non-transparent parts (such as cheese wedges) are often polycarbonate rather than ABS for structural reasons.

Hmmm... a good idea, but unfortunately one I can't get behind. I say this because if the real story that takes off after the 3.0 arc turns out to be really impressive and inspiring, I'd quickly lose motivation for this project. Why rewrite what hasn't happened yet, after all? In general, I'd be more happy to see and comment on a story that, rather than trying to rewrite the future of Hero Factory, instead tries to expand the previous story to incorporate more character development and thus add more continuity to the whole thing. I haven't yet seen the Ordeal of Fire episode, and from what I can tell it has some decent character development for Surge. But I feel like given his bio info on the website, he should have had far more character development in the first wave. And Breez's character has hardly changed at all from the very beginning. I think the compression of the story into four TV episodes in the first wave and one in the second was largely to blame for this, and thus a prose treatment of the story could possibly have built on this considerably.

Sometimes it's easier to translate names by using cognates in a more familiar language than by looking for similar words in a foreign language. In this case, "Troglodíbulas" would be derived from cognates of the English word "Troglodyte", meaning a caveman or monster, and some cognate of the Latin "mandibula", meaning jaw. The word "troglodyte" is often associated with primates-- "Pan troglodytes" is even the species name of the common chimpanzee. IMO, more clarification is never a bad thing. You won't believe how many times I've had to rebuild a disassembled System set using parts from my collection and had to consult Bricklink to learn the correct length of a Technic axle that didn't have a 1:1 image or length marked in the instructions. Just because a part is easily identifiable from a set's contents does not mean in the future it will be easily identifiable from parts in other sets! Just a minor gripe about nomenclature. If you're using Bricklink's nomenclature, it's Flat Silver. In TLG's nomenclature, it's 315 Silver Metallic (or just Silver Metallic). Any other mixture of terms can cause confusion. That's awesome news about the hand shells! I can't wait until MOCs using these new parts in creative ways start to show up! I personally prefer these to the flame pieces, as they make it obvious what they're trying to be. The flame pieces had a texture that made them seem solid and ornamental, but their applications in sets made it clear they were supposed to resemble actual flames. In BIONICLE there was a similar sort of ambiguity in most fo the fire-themed tools, but since the fire characters could generate flames from their tools whether or not they had a physical "blade", this wasn't so bothersome-- you could just imagine it either way. Not so for the fire pieces on the Fire Villains, which seem awkward and pointless as mere ornamentation, but which are too angular to really resemble flames. The fact that they tended to emerge from the outside rather than the inside of the engine pieces made them all the more awkward. Sorry for the off-topic rant, but I just wanted to express one of the reasons I'm so much happier with these spike pieces as details. Another reason to like them is that it looks like they would fit more snugly as armor details on most shell pieces. In this respect, they're a lot more like the "fuel cap" pieces from the Fire Villains or from Stormer 3.0, another piece I liked a great deal more than the flames. Good point. I'm not sure how I feel about this, either. Its unusual geometry limits its use even further beyond the limited connection points. But at the same time it's a lovely part design and it works well in the sets that use it. Since no set has it in any huge quantity I can't picture these ending up being a huge burden to people who have sets containing this piece I like these too. While they don't serve the same identifying function as the stickers in many 1.0 villains, this makes sense for these sets since they are species rather than individuals, and wild rather than part of HF civilization. They are also a lot more versatile than the printed parts from either previous wave of villains. I guess Fire Lord's cracked lava texture was pretty cool, but at the same time it didn't seem to fit the mechanical aesthetic of most HF sets and MOCs the same way these do. And the weird lightning logos of the other Fire Villains felt like an awkward halfway point between meaningful character identification and meaningless patterns. At least these patterns know what look they're going for. I kind of like this new style of head piece and kind of don't. On one hand, I'm glad to be done with Glatorian heads. On the other hand, these helmets can't be used for very diverse head styles, although using this attachment method probably makes them work far better as armor or other details on a Hero Factory MOC than plus-rods did for the Fire Villains. There's also the problem Witch Doctor has, wherein his face looks hollow from all angles. While the skull look is cool, I'd like it if you couldn't just look into one eye socket and see all the way through the other eye socket. Great build pictures! I love Raw-Jaw's design, although I have to admit that gap in his chest is a bit bothersome. I wonder if one of the fire villains' fuel cap pieces or one of Raw-Jaw's own spike pieces could have helped close up that gap a bit. I'm glad he uses that "tail bone", but at the same time I don't like his tail. It feels odd to have such a bulky tail on a set based on an elephant (thin tails) or gorilla (no tails). It's also a bit odd how it's two bones long, with a bulging little shell on the end. Could you take some pictures of his correctly-built jaw in a couple positions? That's one of the things I wanted to see a review for, since I can't really judge for myself how it looks in real life or on LDD without the set's head piece at my disposal. This is one thing that bothers me about the summer wave in general, not Raw-Jaw in particular (I think he looks great in red, and having pieces in the same color as ones we had in previous sets just makes my collection of Hero Factory sets a lot more versatile for building). Frankly, we have a lot of warm colors and very few cool colors in the summer wave-- after all, Breez and Surge were not included, so all we have are Nex's green (28 Dark Green), Scorpio's lime (119 Bright Yellowish Green), and Stormer's blue (23 Bright Blue), plus the hero name badges (48 Transparent Green). At the same time, it does feel nice with Bulk no longer being the only metallic-colored Hero, but I'd have really liked it if more of the villain sets had tried to compensate for the lack of cool colors among the Heroes. I'm really happy with Raw-Jaw's parts selection, part of the reason I'm keen on getting him first out of the "villain" sets for the summer wave. Frankly, Waspix doesn't have too many useful colors for Hero Factory building. The yellow torso (24 Bright Yellow) is a good addition to Evo's yellow parts, but the wing shells (44 Transparent Yellow) don't match up with any other parts from the second or third waves of Hero Factory. I hope to maybe use them in a Blacktron MOC, though. Fangz's colors are useful, but rather boring. And you bring up a good point about the Shadow Matoran feet. If TLG is going to switch to a new, superior ball cup style, I'd rather if they stopped reusing the older ones. Waspix's feet could easily have used other pieces, such as the foot pieces used in Gorast and Bitil which lack an integrated ball cup, or the Ben 10 foot pieces (although with their sideways-mounted ball cups these may have limited posability). One thing I like about Raw-Jaw's articulation is the lack of elbows with a fixed angle. While I don't think this would be a necessity for all sets, frankly it really helps increase the range of poses here, and I consider the elbows of Rocka XL and Witch Doctor shamefully restrictive in design compared to Fire Lord, whose elbows helped compensate for his dreadful shoulder posability. Great review overall! I've been looking forward to a review of Raw-Jaw, and this just makes me more enthusiastic to get him! I'm still looking forward to the BZPower review, since Darth Vader's a great photographer and I'm imagining he might take some photos from different (and possibly less appealing) angles than the ones you chose. But still, your photos and review were very informative and made this set a lot easier to visualize.

But who says there's demand for it? Specifically, demand for the original style of track? Frankly, there's no reason anyone who wasn't a fan in the 90s would even know much about the old tracks, much less want them back. The older tracks scarcely resemble a typical monorail track, and so there's no huge reason why they'd be the ideal form a new monorail set would use. It'd be cool if TLG made new monorail sets, but of course there are other factors. For starters, monorails really aren't very prominent forms of transportation. Personally, I had never heard of monorails until I first saw the LEGO monorail track. Also, monorails may no longer have the same applications in Space sets since they are no longer considered such an ideal, futuristic style of transportation. Since Space sets were some of their primary uses in LEGO, without that they could have limited uses-- and thus be a riskier investment than more familiar transportation styles like trains and buses. LEGO monorail track has a wide fan-following in the AFOL community, but frankly I am not convinced that there is a broad enough appeal to make it successful. And even if there were, the idea that this is justification for bringing back the old-style monorail track is pretty silly.

Sounds like Bandit, one of the Rock Raiders, but with the wrong color trousers. Is this correct? As far as lists of all minifigures made, one of the most complete ones is the Bricklink Reference Catalog. The best thing about this database is that it cross-references its part, minifigure, and set databases, meaning you can find a part and then view all the sets or minifigures who included that part. In this case, it might not have helped so much-- a search for "headband" doesn't bring up Bandit's head print, and a search for "overalls" doesn't bring up his torso print-- but at the same time, it could still be useful to you in the future.

I'm afraid you're going to feel even more sad when I tell you this, but this PAB selection has been on the website since April, while the Shadow ARF promotion was in May. So you really did miss your chance on that one. More colors of horses would be kind of cool, but I have my doubts whether that would happen. I'm pretty sure PAB is packaged by hand just like DesignByMe, in the same facilities. And boths services have the same parts selection. The bigger the parts selection, the more difficult it is to pack orders. So if they do expand the parts selection, I would expect newer parts to have a considerably different use functionally than just a different color of horse.

Personally, I haven't complained because the U.S. hasn't seen any evidence of a price increase. The card for this series at the New York Toy Fair said that the MSRP is still $2.99 here in the States. Out of curiosity, though, where are you getting the info on the price increase? I see mention of it in the first post, but I can't find any mention of the exact price in euros. If you're getting this from a specific retailer's website or something, it's possible that it's the retailer fleecing you and not TLG. On the other hand, there's always another possibility, that being that TLG has been undercharging us for the past couple series. Keep in mind that sometimes, production and distribution costs for a product will increase without any change in what's being produced. In these cases, sometimes TLG will often not increase the price, because they're worried about an increased price driving off buyers. But this tends to result in a more dramatic price increase further on down the road to ensure continued profitability. This was the explanation for the increase in price for BIONICLE canister sets between 2007 and 2008, when the price jumped from $9.99 for the Toa Mahri to $12.99 for the Phantoka. While the contents of the sets were similar, the price jump was over 25% of the previous price. There were complaints, but not too many-- perhaps because many fans were too busy complaining about a brown character being changed to a brighter orange color, or for that matter about past characters changing significantly in appearance at all. It was generally accepted that BIONICLE fans had gotten an extremely good deal on sets for the past couple years, and so TLG's explanation was not treated with too much skepticism. It helps that with BIONICLE parts, just as with these minifigure parts, price per piece is largely irrelevant since the pieces will be more costly than typical System pieces to begin with. On a side note, it always bugs me when people complain about sets having fewer extra parts than they should (or about sets having less useful extra parts). People need to understand that extra parts are almost never included just because buyers like having extras in their collections (there are a few exceptions, like with older Star Wars mini models having special pieces that work towards building a bonus model, but these are just that-- exceptions). Rather, extra parts are a quality control measure to reduce the likelihood of missing parts in finished sets. This is because including extras makes it harder for a set that's missing certain tiny pieces to make it past the weight check. The lack of extra parts in Series 3 and later isn't evidence that TLG is trying to fleece us, but rather that they have obviously increased the precision of their weight checks on sets, and thus minifigure sets no longer need the extra pieces.

My mom finished reading it yesterday. She clearly enjoyed it a lot, and she's trying to get my dad to read it, without much success. He's the bigger FOL between the two of them but not the bigger book-reader.

Lovely design! The sleekness and level of detail is beautiful! I love five-wide vehicles, but it's hard to build one using the conventions of today's sets-- in part because there is no suitable replacement for that wonderful four-wide windscreen you used on this MOC with current hinge styles. Also, obviously, five-wide cars often tend to need a complex interior structure to work effectively. Out of curiosity, how sturdy is this model? This is a wonderful MOC that really demonstrates how much detail can be packed into a car that still looks a moderate size on LEGO roads. It's far more advanced than the vehicles in today's City sets or yesterday's. I applaud you for this wonderful design!

Very nice! A few changes I would recommend: The hands would look good in black, I think. White gloves don't really give me the right impression. If you could get one of the burglar's sacks from this year's Police sets, that'd be a great addition. You could even stick a couple 1x2 tiles in representing wrapped gifts! Great work here! I'm sure you can create a great MOC or vignette to go with him by the time the holidays roll around!

Let me inform you in case of disappointment that the spears will be rubber, not ABS. They have a separate part number than the ABS spears (32373 rather than 4497). The rubber spears are new in this year's Hero Factory sets, and exist in 23 Bright Blue and 315 Silver Metallic. ABS spears are only available in Black from PAB. You may already know this, and it's a bit late to change your decision if you for some reason dislike the rubber spears, but I figured it'd be best to let you know this sooner rather than later. The rubber spears are good quality, and color-wise they'll match other LEGO parts just fine, but the texture and flexibility will be different than regular minifigure spears.

It's the regular horse. I think "head directed upwards" might refer to how it's aligned after first being assembled. Regardless, the neck should bend normally.

That is a good point. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened with LEGO Pirates. At the same time, though, new Belville sets stopped coming out after 2008, and last we heard the new girls' theme isn't coming out until next year. Four years is a long time to go without any sets for that market just to prevent the themes from stealing each others' sales. And it's far longer than the gap between Pirates sets (Pirates had no sets for regular stores in 2010, but then Pirates of the Caribbean came out just two years later)

Out of curiosity, are we ever going to get Part 2 of this review? I'd like to see an in-depth review of the actual product. Also, the reviews index really needs to be updated. I could have found this review a lot sooner if it had been on there.

I kind of like the head being consistent. Although I wouldn't have minded a new head piece for the villains, as opposed to the shell pieces they all use. While it works OK for some of them, they haven't been able to use it effectively for all the villains, and it doesn't make me too optimistic for future villains.

So what would have made them look new, in your opinion? A new torso every wave? Entirely new armor pieces each wave? Frankly, these were some of the things I disliked about BIONICLE, and I was glad to see that this wave is moving in a different direction, re-using older parts in different arrangements to create unique character designs. Making the sets bulkier every wave would necessitate making them more expensive every wave. That should be obvious to anyone. Instead, TLG is being more conservative with its designs, keeping the size of the canister sets about the same between the last wave and this one. And yet the 3.0 canister sets still have unique designs distinct from their 2.0 counterparts. That's more than satisfactory in my book.

Frankly, the BIONICLE story was confusing to a newbie. The Hero Factory story is basically "robot heroes fight robot villains", and thus a lot easier for new fans to jump into. As a person who frequently struggled to explain the BIONICLE story to parents, friends, and others who were not familiar with it, I have a profound respect for TLG's decision to start a simpler story that didn't depend so heavily on prior knowledge. A lot of people hope TLG brings it back one day, ignoring that if they did it would be in a vastly different form of story than it was originally. The BIONICLE story would not have been the same if it were not for its heavy backstory, creative species, and broad cast of characters. And since these are some of the reasons BIONICLE could not keep going as long as was originally hoped, I have strong doubts TLG would go back to that model of storytelling. BIONICLE, if it came back, would basically be returning in name only, since any backstory would have to be largely irrelevant to the current sets. TLG tried several times to "reboot" the BIONICLE story-- most notably in 2009, when the story shifted to an entirely different cast of characters in an entirely different location. But it wasn't enough to keep the theme alive, and it wouldn't be enough if BIONICLE came back next year, either.

And if reactions to those in the past have been any indicator, then this wave's story will be just as thoroughly-hated as any other. Personally, I don't feel that Witch Doctor's backstory feels repetitive. He's the first "mad professor" character in Hero Factory. And his motivations (jealousy and a lack of inhibition) don't seem at all as shallow as Von Nebula's desire for revenge on a person who really never did anything to him. Believe it or not, I was not at all happy with the Von's backstory, which seemed like a stock revenge plot save for its complete and utter failure to explain what the character wanted revenge for. He made his mistakes all on his own, and was never shown to suffer any consequences for them, so it felt really silly for him to have kept this grudge against Stormer. Maybe he was considered an outcast for abandoning his team leader, and felt if Stormer had gone with him it could have been chalked up to an impossible rescue. Maybe he had his Hero Core forcibly stripped from him for his failure to stay the course. Maybe after Stormer stopped him from leaving his body was badly mangled in a crash landing. Nothing in the story ever even hinted at what he felt so bitter about, so we'll probably never know his real motivations. That's not "potential", that's just bad storytelling (probably the fault of the time constraints of the TV episodes, and the first wave's obvious intent to focus more on the heroes' character development rather than the villains'). Fire Lord was a much better villain from what I can tell, and yet his motivations were also completely different from Witch Doctor's. Fire Lord was just a victim of his own addiction, and his only villainous trait was selfishness and a complete lack of interest in the rest of the world's well-being. At the end of Ordeal of Fire, from what I've heard, the Hero Factory is trying to help him recover. This would not be possible with Witch Doctor unless he has some epiphany during his defeat, since he clearly had villainous tendencies before he had any power of his own. Witch Doctor's motivations of jealousy are unlike any we've seen elsewhere, and his origins aren't unoriginal besides that he was a good guy who turned bad. Really, I don't mind that at all, as it reinforces that villains are made, not born. It took years before we saw the same depth of character backstory in BIONICLE-- before, we just saw bad guys doing bad things and were told that that's how it had always been. The mystery in BIONICLE was a good thing for that theme, which was designed to tell a sprawling story over several years. Hero Factory has to tell a new story every year, so the fact that it rushes through the backstory rather than dropping hints every three years or so has to be forgiven.

That's not necessarily the case. The collectible minifigures are meant to be unique, but having a job or role that also exists in another theme doesn't take away from a fig's uniqueness. The Race Car Driver with his uniform covered in branding was a far cry from most figs from the Racers theme in any year. The Mummy came out the very same year as the mummy-filled Pharaoh's Quest theme, but had a classic horror-movie appearance rather than the detailed, modern look of that theme's mummies. The Space Alien had a unique look, even though we had already gotten two years of space aliens in Space Police III and were about to see another year of them in Alien Conquest. And the Tribal Chief and Tribal Hunter couldn't possibly be confused with the awful, awful Indian figs from the Western theme the previous decade. All in all, whether or not an idea has been used in other themes has nothing to do with whether that could actually appear in a new series of minifigures. There are plenty of good reasons to dismiss this list as a fake without making false assumptions about the nature of the collectible minifigures.

Teeth were one of the first things added to certain minifigures after they stopped rigidly adhering to the rule of "two eyes and a smile, plus details". Wild West/Western faces like this were some of the first not to have a classic smile (besides some female minifigures with lipstick). Of course, being a part of a long-standing tradition in minifigures doesn't make a certain trait more justifiable in today's figs. After all, noses debuted on minifigures that very same year, and I'm very grateful we're rid of them. Personally, teeth on minifigures don't bother me as long as the minifigure face still has somewhat reasonable proportions. So, for instance, Spy-Clops and the Tribal Chief didn't bother me at all, but this, this, and this are completely out of the question. The last is a double-infraction for having eyes with whites, which is just as bad as minifigures with noses as far as I'm concerned (although I don't mind it on faces that use a completely different style like in Avatar: The Last Airbender or Exo-Force). So far, I haven't minded the facial decorations of any of the collectible minifigures, which manage to avoid the outrageous expressions and excessive detail inherent in themes like World Racers. Instead, we get beautifully understated faces like this and this which in my opinion are perhaps closer to the spirit of the minifigure than many older face designs-- particularly some of the excruciatingly bad faces from the Western theme.

Other parts that are unique to this set besides the name badge and helmet are the blue spines on his claw and 3M white shells, both new in those colors. This guy's pretty cool, but dang does he look short in the picture of him and Stormer 2.0 standing side-by-side. Anyway, great (and humorous!) review. This guy's not at the top of my list for the 3.0 heroes, but he's definitely up there. One change I would have made would be coloring the claw piece and torso shell the same color since it looks weird with the Titanium Metallic being used as accents on the weapon but as the core color of Stormer's torso. Thanks for the review!