Aanchir

This is super awesome. Have you considered putting it on LEGO Ideas? I'm sure there would be a considerable audience for it.

Great review Scott!

 

I have a little feedback, though? You can obviously take it or leave it.

 

I enjoy that you spent time to detail the new parts, and the colours used in those parts (though all the documentation on what TLG calls a colour vs what BL calls it made the first few paragraphs difficult to read). I liked the play feature discussions, but I felt the review fell very short when discussing the building process, the mechanisms, the actual play factor involved. Like, I know it can move the wheels, and I know it has missiles, but those things are on the box. How does it feel? Any interesting techniques? Do you find the design aesthetically pleasing, and why? I know some of that is more subjective than objective, but those are the main reasons I read a review versus just looking at pictures.

 

I do plan on getting this one eventually (maybe the next AFOL shopping day, even), and the details on the parts included seal that for me. Those system plates with the technic pins? Yep. Need those!

Thanks for the feedback! I mostly tried to model the review after other reviews on The New Elementary, which don't go into a whole lot of detail about the building and play experience unless it helps to showcase the uses of the new parts. New elements tend to be the blog's emphasis as a whole (hence its name), so that took up the majority of the review. Some of my older reviews for The Ninjago Wiki went into considerably more detail about the building process and the play experience.

 

I'll keep this in mind for future reviews, though! I have another one already in the works that goes into more detail about the play experience already, but I'll see if I can go into even more detail without the review becoming too long or bloated (you probably already know that keeping things concise is a particular challenge for me ).

 

I'm glad you liked the review!

Anaesthesia that doesn't knock you out but just numbs the part of you they're working on is called local anaesthesia. I think that's what I got when I had my wisdom teeth removed. My mouth was numb for quite a while and I felt no pain during the operations. I'd opt for that if you're at all worried.

Yeah, it's pretty lame. Though it's no wonder why it was popular when we first heard it. After all, it makes a big show of being super edgy... something it has in common so many BIONICLE fan characters' backstories. Seriously, I pretty much never see a bio for a MOC that emphasizes the character's cheerfulness, optimism, team spirit, sense of humor or can-do attitude — it's always about how jaded or corrupted or ruthless they are.

 

Even as somebody who loved BIONICLE from the beginning, I am somewhat disillusioned not only with the series' pretensions, but with the pretensions of many parts of the fanbase. BIONICLE has always had its darker moments and themes, but it was also always a fun and colorful adventure story, and there are a lot of people who seem to either forget or ignore that side of it.

And you didn't get video? I'm disappointed.

Those are amazing! A couple months ago I tried to draw some Legends of Chima characters (inspired in part by amazing art I saw on deviantART like this beautiful drawing of Cragger), but I never got very far. Your drawing of Spinlyn is everything I wish mine could have been!

 

You should definitely draw more Legends of Chima characters! You have a real talent for it!

The legality of selling them is questionable, but unless you started a large-scale operation I doubt the LEGO Group would try to litigate against you. At worst, you'd get a cease-and-desist letter and would have to stop making them, but I don't think the LEGO Group would bother asking for the money you made on previous ones. They're too big a company to care about that kind of thing.

 

I wish the LEGO Group would sell either official buttons like this, or partner with a site like WeLoveFine so fans could submit their own designs. I feel the same way about LEGO clothing in adult sizes. As it is, AFOLs who want LEGO clothing and accessories usually have to get unlicensed products from sites like Etsy, TeeFury, RedBubble, etc. This means that not only does the LEGO Group miss out on what could be some considerable revenue, but they also have no creative control over how AFOLs promote their brand... it should be no surprise that some unlicensed LEGO shirts feature content that the LEGO Group would probably disapprove of.

 

I would love to have some Ninjago buttons to wear on my clothes or backpack. This would be especially cool if you have some of the Ninjago instruction booklets that feature super-cool illustration.

 

Examples:

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/4645949.pdf#58 (2011 key visual)

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6020854.pdf#76 (summer 2011 character illustrations)

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6024913.pdf#29 (summer 2012 key visual)

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6024913.pdf#32 (summer 2012 character illustrations)

 

If you have the option of printing images to use for buttons, here is some specific high-quality character art I would especially love to have as buttons!

 

Lloyd ZX

NRG Kai and NRG Zane

NRG Cole and NRG Jay

 

Just having those five characters as buttons would be AMAZING!

I thought it was pretty good from the photos, but I'm building it on LDD now to get a sense of what it looks like from various angles. In the very least, I think it deserves some points for creativity. That torso build is interesting if nothing else.

i can't tell if you're joking or if people actually are arbitrarily making certain minifigures ridiculously expensive

Price-fixing? I figure it's because of supply and demand, as Octodad posted. Maybe some price-fixing goes on at the convention vendors, but on Bricklink there are better chances of something going down because of more quantity available, otherwise everyone would have a specific fig at the same price.

 

-CF

I... I can't believe there was any question about whether I was joking.

You couldn't be more wrong. The reason some minifigures are so expensive is entirely because of the magical dust of the price-fixing fairies.

oh lol yeah, I realised it came in other sets too, it would just be super convenient if the saber-tooth walker had a spare so that I wouldn't have to get some other set just for one piece

 

but hey thanks Octo, I kind of figured it would have a spare since the HF minifigs come with an extra hero core, but that was too much of an assumption for me to actually buy the set. Although honestly, I'm debating whether I should just get the pieces I want from bricklink instead of buying the entire thing. It may be slightly less convenient than going to the closest store, but it would certainly save a lot of money.

I just built 70144 Laval's Fire Lion and it has TWO spares (since the two figs that use them are in different bags, and each bag includes a spare). Granted, it's a more expensive set, but it's got some pretty delicious parts and a fabulous function.

 

 

4/10 for almost assembling my gundam properly

I did assemble your gundam properly, nerd. I was not the only one who moved it and handled it, though. It fell apart a lot. If you used legal connections....

 

 

Out of curiousity, does shoving pins into the bottom of a brick like you did count as a legal connection?

 

Technically, no. But while it might damage the pins in the long term, it's a lot sturdier than some connections you see in MOCs.

 

I don't avoid illegal connections like the plague in my own MOCs (the way Kit Martello's side shells are wedged between her chest plate and back plate is pretty dubious), I often try to avoid them. Illegal connections can be creatively liberating, but usually with enough time and effort you can come up with an elegant legal alternative.

Awesome! I've never owned a store display case myself, and I probably wouldn't want one unless it featured some particularly awesome effects since my house is cluttered enough as it is. My favorite store display cases I've seen are:

• The Rockoh and Axalara display cases, because they included actual, awesome names for some of those sets' moving weapons (Rockslide Cannons on Rockoh and Tri-Cyclone Stingers on Axalara). Sadly I never found out if there was a Jetrax display case like those ones — if it had some sort of ice-themed weapon I'd have been over the moon!
• The holographic display case for Rocka 3.0 and Witch Doctor from LEGO Hero Factory. Just watch the video, you'll be blown away! I wish more constraction sets (or for that matter, more sets in general) had awesome display cases like this, but I'm sure they're more expensive than most of the store displays you see at toy stores and department stores!

It could perhaps be explained as Makuta referring to Mata Nui's more serious injuries from after the Great Cataclysm, the ones that the 2006–2007 story arc was meant to save him from. But there's no telling how much of that was even thought up back in 2003. It was known that the Great Spirit was in a coma beneath the island, and that the Matoran's original homeland was inside his body, but who knows whether the fact that he was slowly dying had been thought up yet?

 

I agree that it was a cool line. Mask of Light was generally a really awesome movie in my opinion. I know a lot of people think it's sort of generic and childish, but I feel like it did a good job making Makuta into a fearsome and manipulative villain (and redeeming him a bit for me in the process). Plus, its focus on showing the adventure through the eyes of the Matoran rather than just the Toa was something I started to miss in many later story arcs.

Cool beans. I posted my own Brickfair haul on Flickr. Here's what I got from vendors and yard sales, and here's what I got from the parts draft. I still need to blog about Brickfair. Maybe I'll have an entry up later today.

Nawwwwwww... it never even looked like a moustache to me in set-form.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt this way.

 

I actually have a Toa Inika Hahli drawing that I've been meaning to finish for many years and never gotten around to. Maybe I should revisit that...

Where do you live? When's your birthday? Do you have any siblings? Where are you from? What are your parents' names? How old are you? What type of computer do you have? What's the colour of your carpet in your bedroom? Are these questions too personal?

I have a feeling you already know the answer to all of these questions.

But if you know, couldn't they know? 

Not if, hypothetically, the new image were just a clearer version of the same image that had been circulating all month. Even if it weren't, four days would not be a lot of time to draw and/or render a part from different angles that had only ever been seen by the public from a single angle prior to Comic-Con.

 

There's a point at which skepticism stops being rational, and you have to assume superhuman skill, talent, and precognition on the part of a random internet troll in order to consider the possibility of a hoax realistic.

Although I've fallen prey to the hype train, I do want to chime in and say that while all this is exciting, if it is returning, I will be kind of disappointed, in spite of being overall pretty happy about it.

 

I've been waiting for Hero Factory to end for about 3 years now, not because I dislike HF, (I like it a lot,) but because I agree, with you--I'd like to see Lego try a brand new constraction theme sometime.

 

I was very interested in seeing what new constraction things Lego was going to try next. If what they try next is going back to Bionicle, then, well, while I'll be happy about it, at the same time I'll be wishing for it to end relatively soon because I really do want to see Lego try something all-new.

Well, BIONICLE won't necessarily get in the way of something all new. If it's successful enough the LEGO Group might decide there's more demand for the constraction category in general and introduce something new alongside it.

Just speaking hypothetically, if a part like the new rapid-fire shooters in the 2015 set 75084 (which were not known about or even speculated about before this week) were to show up clearly in an alleged leaked image, from a number of different angles, would that make them more convincing? Not saying that has happened, of course.... but if it were to happen, that's the sort of thing that would be very, very hard to fabricate without some sort of uncanny prior knowledge of the LEGO Group's upcoming products.

We're all excited, but we should hold off on discussing the details of its return until we have them from a non-leaked source.

If it does return, people are going to be so upset cause it'll be different than what they had years ago and won't live up to expectations.

 

And then everybody will be sad, Bionicle will fail, and Lego will be bought out by the competition.  And then fans will remember that BRINGING BACK BIONICLE DID THIS!

 

 

Some people are going to be upset. That's a given. But there were disappointments with new BIONICLE sets that didn't live up to expectations before the theme even neared its conclusion, so I don't think it'll be anything the community hasn't been through before. Some people will leave the fandom for good out of frustration, some people will grumble but remain hopeful for the future, and some people will learn to appreciate the new BIONICLE even if it wasn't what they hoped for or expected. In the meantime, new fans will presumably arrive to pick up the slack, because there's not a snowball's chance in the Mangai Volcano that a BIONICLE revival will be successful if its success is dependent on older fans who probably would have grown out of BIONICLE by now anyway if it had continued non-stop.

 

One bit of information that I believe is OK to discuss here is that we know that work is being done on a new constraction theme for 2015 (due to current project listed on an Advance employee's resume, which has since been edited to simply say "a new LEGO theme" rather than giving any specifics). Whether that is a BIONICLE revival or a new concept entirely was not specified, but coupled with the other evidence, signs are pointing to the former.

Hang on one moment, are you saying you haven't seen The LEGO Movie? This is something that needs to be addressed!

Do you play chess?

 

Do you play cards?

The response to both is "no, but I used to". I still know how to play chess, even though I pretty much never play it anymore. I don't remember nearly as many card games as I did back in the day when I used to go to summer camp, but I could probably remember a lot of those games after getting a brief explanation. Generally, I prefer Uno to most ordinary card games.

Have you seen a 2x2 lego brick that answers to the name of Samantha?

 

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if it drove a motorcycle over 16 trucks?

Why? Where is she? What's she done this time?

 

About seventeen wood.

 

do you dream about farm animals

Do ponies count as farm animals?

 

My default question: Are you an outdoors-ey kind of guy? If so, what's your favorite outdoors location?

 

What are your favorite LEGO lines, and what do you like about them?

I'm not the most outdoors-y (and certainly not the most athletic), but I love being outdoors. I like to take walks around my neighborhood, at nearby parks, or on nearby trails. My family goes to family camp every year in West Virginia, and while I'm there I try to make time for swimming in the Greenbrier River and hiking in the woods.

 

At my first college, I took a field biology class and a black and white photography class. Both were great experiences that allowed me to visit some really amazing places, and just generally enjoy the beautiful natural scenery of southern Vermont.

 

My favorite LEGO lines tend to be story-driven adventure themes like BIONICLE, Ninjago, and The LEGO Movie. Atlantis, Power Miners, Space Police, Agents, and Exo-Force have also been among my favorites from the past decade.

 

As a kid, some of my favorite LEGO themes included Exploriens, Launch Command, Aquazone, and Adventurers (though I didn't collect much of that last theme besides the original desert wave). My pillow in my bedroom still has a pillowcase with 6339 on one side and 6195 on the other. In hindsight it's easy to see that the design quality and value for money in some of these sets was lacking compared to today's sets. 6195 was $90 for 508 pieces! Today, that'd be $138.70 — Yowza! Later I got into Technic themes like Speed Slammers, Throwbots, Cyber-Slam, and, eventually, BIONICLE.