Hm, meant to do this at the beginning of December... Well, I haven't been on the computer much for the past two weeks, and I guess today might be the best day to post this anyway: a summary of ideas introduced in 2007's sets, and why they either succeeded or failed.

Might as well start with the biggest.

~ Non-clone sets. This succeeded generally to perfection with the Barraki, but only partly worked on the Mahri. With the Barraki, each one had his own unique "body" mold (that is, not a weapon or face), which served to tie the rest of his pieces together into a distinct shape. Ehlek, for example, had his spine pieces, which worked with the shape of his body to tie mostly old pieces in old colors into a single shape... rather than looking a bunch of old pieces thrown together. The Mahri did not all have this. Jaller and Kongu had their chest armor, which worked just as well as the Barraki's new molds, but the others were more iffy. Nuparu had his spike armor, which would have done the trick if the rest of his limbs hadn't been see-through and his mask the only silver part of his body. Hewkii, too, had his shoulder spikes, but the rest of him was so mish-mashed that the result was a confusing bunch of pieces and colors. Hahli's wings and Matoro's shoulder pads did the trick for them, but not quite to the extent of the Barraki. (But since they were the Inika transformed, much of their bodies still being Inika pieces worked swell.)

~ Visors. Needs little explanation, and still going strong in 2008. Going straight along with these are the Mahri's masks – masks that can be modified by adding more pieces to them. This is good so long as the mask looks good even without anything attached to it.

~ Upper-half masks. Well, mask, with Hewkii's Garai. Interesting idea, and it worked pretty well on Hewkii, since the (in my opinion) unsightly mouth of the Metru head was still covered up.

~ Multi-piece shoulders. Only Kongu had this – a chest region where the body-to-shoulder attachment was actually built from multiple pieces, not just an Inika or Piraka torso (or Vahki hips). The idea was great, but because it resulted in such atrocious proportions as Kongu had it, it looked much worse than a standard chest.

~ Rahi familiars. (A familiar is an animal companion spirit, for those who don't know.) Meaning, of course, Jaller's crab. She looked good, did not mean Jaller had to be forced together from fewer pieces (I think he's one of the best-designed Mahri, really), and boosted his piece count as well. I would absolutely love to see a full set of Toa with familiars.

~ Winged canister set. Hahli looked awesome. Antroz follows in much the same vein, but with less flexibility; Chirox and Vamprah's wings are their arms, while Kopaka's are limited to up-down rotation. Hahli's are pretty much the best in terms of posing.

~ Shoulder pads. Looked great on Kalmah, Matoro, and Lesovikk, and it wouldn't hurt to have a few more pieces that could be used as such...

~ Shortened Metru eyepiece. Great piece, but I've always hated that air tank thing on Kongu's head... That blemish aside, now all we need is the eyepiece in more colors. And some Metru heads and Hordika necks in more colors wouldn't hurt anyone, while we're at it.

~ Waist articulation. Maxilos made good use of it – it looks stunning on him, finally allowing a set to be posed to realistically shift his weight. I can't truly say on Pridak, since I don't have him, but I imagine it works better on such a set as Maxilos, whose body is stabilized by his pistons, while Pridak and other canister sets might be a bit too top-heavy.

~ Full shoulder movement. Maxilos. Love that part of him. Might be difficult to make for a canister set, but more titans with such would be truly wonderful.

~ Nocturn. He's so awesome he gets a category all to himself. Two great things about his color scheme: one, suddenly releasing a large number of pieces in a color previously only used as a secondary color (all that lime); two, adding more pieces in a color blend introduced earlier (the Takadox-blue head and spines).

~ $15 Titan. Would be nice to see more of them – we now have Mutran & Vican for such, but they pale in comparison to Nocturn. I've thought for a while that Hydraxon, Lesovikk, and Toa Ignika would all be better as $15 sets, given their about-150 piece counts...

~ Lime? Just because it was remarkably prevalent this year – Ehlek, Nocturn, Hahli, Lesovikk, and Karzahni all had it with fair prominence, so I was just thinking that it might be interesting if another bright secondary color got the spotlight at some point... (Going along with Nocturn, the titan in a secondary color.)

~ One-piece blasters. Not so good. Certainly the Cordak and Midak would require pre-assembledness, given how they work (or my understanding of how the latter works, since I don't have one), but in the case of the former I'd rather have something that I can build myself and that fires every time. (Zamor anyone?) Also, every single Cordak blaster being red clashed and stood out horribly on a lot of its wielders – Midak is far superior by being both black and, as far as I can tell, guaranteed to fire.

That's all I can think of at the moment – if you can think of more ideas introduced in 2007, do mention them. Most of these worked pretty well, and some are being continued in 2008 – most noticably the non-clone sets, but through different means than either Barraki or Mahri had them. One thing we that would be really good, methinks, is a multi-piece chest that doesn't result in hugely disproportionare shoulders.

And I've got to go. I got the Exo-Force Arachnoid Stalker and Tanma today (no Karzahni) – the former is an excellent set in every respect; Tanma will be getting a full review from me... And with that said, happy New Year to all!

~ ToM