Aanchir

My favorite is the Mask of Water. The Unity Mask of Jungle is also pretty awesome.

Glow-in-the-dark

Still in sets! In this year's sets, the Batman BrickHead and Fenrir in The Ultimate Battle for Asgard have glow-in-the-dark eyes, Battle of Atlantis has glow-in-the-dark studs as what I guess is meant to be some type of bioluminescent sea life, and The Witch Hut has a glow-in-the-dark piece of glowstone in a treasure chest.

 

There are some pictures around the net. Understandably, most people seem to assume they're bootlegs, but the menus actually use some glatorian assets that never saw the light of day before, let alone would have been easily accessible to bootleggers. Considering the publisher on the case is named as Universal, combined with the very limited distribution, I'd wager these are just extremely budget products that Universal patched together partly using a cache of assets leftover from The Legend Reborn.

 

Yeah. I think the explanation given was that, since Universal still holds the licennse for Bionicle on DVD, they figured they might as well make use of it one last time. It really is quite an illustration of how irrelevant Bionicle has become. Remember the hype for Mask of Light's release? I was told it was massive, and basically unprecedented for a Lego product. Now there's not even enough money in the budget to give a DVD a proper back cover.

 

I feel like this says about as much about the waning relevance of DVDs as about the waning relevance of Bionicle. Some Netflix shows don't even seem to get DVDs. Like, Voltron: Legendary Defender is in its fourth season and still has an active toyline, yet I don't think it's had any DVD releases. The way people enjoy home entertainment is increasingly shifting away from physical media and towards digital downloads and streaming.

 

Even as a die-hard Ninjago fan, I've basically stopped buying Ninjago seasons on DVD, since the first five seasons are available in high definition via Netflix and it's probably only a matter of time before the two most recent seasons and the "Day of the Departed" special get added as well.

LEGO has definitely moved towards having more moral ambiguity in a lot of their most story-driven themes like Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Elves. In these themes, there have been plenty of instances of enemies becoming allies and so forth, not to mention instances of ghosts, snakes, and robots who are good guys or regular humans who are bad guys. Also Elves, like Power Miners before it, goes out of its way to show that the goblins are not evil so much as silly and mischievous, at least outside the corrupting influence of the Goblin King's magic (the Goblin King himself being a fairly attractive elf, much like the protagonists).

 

That said, I can understand why in themes that are lighter on story (like most Space, Pirates, and Castle themes) LEGO might be more inclined to separate its good guys and bad guys according to appearance. Even in a story-driven theme, you often can't count on kids already knowing the story when they buy the sets, and they'll want to have a strong sense of who's on each side and what they're fighting over. In a less story-driven theme there's even fewer opportunities to make it clear that a character with the same creepy or monstrous design characteristics as the bad guys is actually on the side of the good guys. If LEGO ever made a Space theme with a Star Trek level of storytelling, then I would be more confident in their ability to work more morally ambiguous characters and more complex messages into that theme.

I wish we could have a hopeful Space theme. LEGO built a fun and colorful universe akin to Star Trek. It's almost weird looking back on how LEGO has changed from "Just Imagine. . ." to making most of their big themes action/conflict oriented. I suppose that's mostly a product the society and climate LEGO is marketing to, though that could also be assuming a higher focus on American markets.

To some extent, LEGO Space was action/conflict oriented from the very beginning. LEGO wasn't allowed to be open about it for a long time, but the designers weren't naive about how kids would play with the sets. As Jens Nygaard Knudsen (the lead designer of the Classic Space sets and inventor of the minifigure) explained in an interview back in 2009: "We were not allowed to make weapons, and the aerials and other elements that pointed forwards on the spaceships looked too aggressive. Instead we added a lot of radar dishes and sensor probes, but to us they were really guns!"

 

The LEGO Group's upper management was in those years still staunchly conservative about what type of content they considered kid-appropriate — Godtfred Kirk Christiansen even threatened to fire designer Niels Milan Pedersen for having the audacity to stick a rudimentary minifigure skeleton in a Castle set prototype as a joke! Luckily, by the time he dared to try again and design the minifigure skeleton we know today, those attitudes had softened, and Neils is still working at LEGO designing new molds to this day.

 

Back on the subject of LEGO Space, the original white and red classic spacemen were originally envisioned as rival factions analogous to American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, although as other colors were introduced this idea was more or less abandoned. The Blacktron sets in 1987, on the other hand, were expressly designed as a "bad guy" faction to oppose the Futuron "good guys". And of course, by the time Pirates rolled around in 1989, LEGO was fully prepared to depict bad guy vs. good guy conflicts in sets, even to the point of arming them with everything from swords to guns to actual firing cannons. Personally, I feel like the modern LEGO approach of being honest and accepting about kids' natural affinity for good guy vs. bad guy play and storytelling is a big step up from outwardly condemning it while still obliquely designing sets with that type of play in mind.

Good review. It still amazes me how great Nexo Knights is at making its castles feel livable in one way or another. It shouldn't be so amazing, but frankly LEGO Castle or Kingdoms sets in the past have focused almost myopically on battle scenarios and action play. At most, inside the castle, you might get a throne room, treasury, and armory, but rarely any place for characters to eat or sleep or do much of anything besides preparing for the next battle.

 

In a theme like Elves that plays up the dollhouse aspects of its castles, it's maybe not so surprising to see more focus on castles as a place people call home, but if a theme as full of over-the-top action as Nexo Knights can include things like beds or a dining table, traditional castle sets really have no excuse.

 

Structurally, this castle is really fun and exciting. I love the idea of the central tower becoming a spaceship (something people speculated about since we first saw a non-brick-built image of Knighton Castle on last year's box art). When pics of this set first emerged, I did have some misgivings of it using the existing half-octagon tower battlement piece, rather than brick-building the battlements on its towers like the Fortrex did. But it doesn't look bad, and makes up for this slight reduction in detail in other parts of the build like the neon battlements that line the walls. The angular design language of Nexo Knights is also on full display, including a pattern on the main gate that somewhat resembles the shape of a Nexo Power.

 

As characters go, I really like the idea of Merlok gaining some mobility with a robot body, and it really conveys the robot wizard look quite well. I was not really at any point expecting to see Hamletta in a set, and it's especially nice that they went so far to recolor and reprint the pig element instead of just using a generic pig. Getting King Halbert in his blue regalia is another nice surprise. After getting Queen Halbert's peacetime outfit and King Halbert's battle outfit last year, it's nice that this year's sets have given each of them their other clothing option. More squirebots are also always fun!

 

The monsters in this set are not bad. In general I feel like we've been seeing stronger monster designs in the summer wave than in the first half of the year. They're really exploring the breadth of possibility of Monstrux being able to turn anything made of stone (columns, walls, bricks, statues, and even entire towers) into a monster servant! The Stone Stompers don't interest me as much as last year's lava monsters, but I like that this set at least has the versions of them with headgear, cracked lightning details, and/or armor instead of the ones that just look like pale, naked statues.

 

I do think this set could've stood to have more female characters besides Hamletta and the female statue. It wouldn't have been hard to put Macy in this set instead of (or in addition to) one of the other knights. And it's a bit of a bummer that the only set this year to actually include Ava, Jestro's Headquarters, has her as a damsel in distress.

 

Overall, I haven't been as drawn to this year's Nexo Knights sets as to Ninjago or Elves, but this set is still definitely on my wish list and I'm hoping to pick it up on clearance.

 

One nitpick about the review… I understand that you didn't want to use the stickers, but it would have been nice if you'd at least shared a photo of the sticker sheet so people can get a better sense of what kind of details would have been added if you had applied them. If they really affected your enjoyment of the set enough for you to list them as a con, then why not mention them earlier in the review instead of just as an afterthought? I haven't had any time to watch the full video, but skipping around a bit I'm not sure if you showed or mentioned them much there either.

Bionicle and Ninjago are the only long term running themes I know of.

(correct me if I'm wrong.)

Well, besides those there's City, Friends, Creator, Technic, Architecture, etc… but of those, Friends is the only one that's particularly story-driven. And then there are some other themes that aren't a constant presence, but that are frequently re-imagined (sometimes in story-driven forms, sometimes less so), such as Castle, Pirates, and Space. But overall, the tendency is for most new themes (even a lot of licensed ones!) to be more of a "flash in the pan" with a one to three year lifespan.

My argument is not about LGO being lazy just that stronger marketing could of been used and different more kid centered advertising.

Facebook and Netflix are more targeted to our older demographic than a younger one.

I personally love G2 I feel like it had a great story that was just getting started.

You sort of have a point with Facebook, but loads of kids use Netflix. Bionicle: The Journey to One is just one of many kid-targeted exclusive series they've developed, and they also stream lots of kid-targeted TV shows originally developed for TV. According to this article, 71% of kids ages 6 to 8 and 76% of kids ages 9 to 12 use Netflix.

I don't really think any of these things was meant to replace Bionicle G2, to be honest. Keep in mind that Bionicle G2's ending was somewhat abrupt (the decision was made when The Journey to One was already in development), whereas most of these themes you mention are either already ongoing themes or themes that have been in the works for years. LEGO didn't just suddenly realize that they wanted to create new content for these other themes.

 

Also, I don't see how ending Bionicle and focusing on other themes instead in any way implies LEGO has their priorities wrong. You keep mentioning in topic after topic about "the downfall of themes" as if it's a bad thing for themes to end, but outside of extraordinary circumstances, most themes are only supposed to last a little while before they end. It's not like themes that only last a few waves are a recent phenomenon. You can't keep treating every theme that doesn't last 5+ years or get a fully developed and carefully resolved story as if it's some kind of failure, because long-running themes with fully developed stories have never been the norm.

We actually have two pieces of quantitative evidence that Ninjago may be more popular than Bionicle was. For one thing, Ninjago's sales in 2011 were stronger than ANY previous theme's first-year sales — including Bionicle's. Furthermore, according to Google Trends, monthly search interest over the past three years has been as high or higher than search interest for Bionicle was at any point past January 2004 — search interest last month specifically was more than twice as high as Bionicle's has been as long as Google's been tracking this kind of data.

 

That doesn't, of course, mean Ninjago is an inherently more appealing theme. There are a lot of non-theme-specific factors that have changed since Bionicle G1's heyday… more kids use the internet on a regular basis, LEGO is a much bigger company with a presence in many more countries, etc. But I think you're selling Ninjago's popularity short. Regardless of the reasons, there's little doubt that it's reaching more kids and families than Bionicle generally has.

 

And regardless of the LEGO Ninjago Movie not meeting expectations, there's still no reason to think that waiting 20 years for the kids who love a franchise to grow up would be a better strategy than just making a movie while the franchise is still popular. If nothing else, the presence of a movie NOW will get it enough exposure that it'll have a better chance of LASTING twenty years. The original Transformers animated movie in 1986 was not commercially successful in terms of its box office returns, but it was still an iconic piece of Transformers media that helped further popularize the brand. The fact that it existed and stuck in people's memory helped keep the brand going to a point where the much more commercially successful live-action Transformers movies even got a chance to happen.

 

The LEGO Ninjago Movie has been substantially more successful, netting about 70% more box office revenue than its budget. By LEGO Movie standards that's not a huge profit, but it's not a loss by any stretch of the imagination. It is very likely that the LEGO Ninjago Movie will help boost the popularity of the Ninjago sets and TV series going forward, which I have no doubt is a big part of why LEGO chose to make it in the first place.

Nothing says "this movie failed" like trying to make it a direct-to-DVD release. This was a really bad move on Lego's part. They could have at least waited another 20 or so years for the kids who are into ninjago to grow up and become nostalgic for it.

What is that supposed to mean? It's coming out on DVD about three months after it came out in theaters. That's not really anything unusual — the same thing happened with Zootopia and Trolls, both of which were commercially successful. I'm not pretending that The LEGO Ninjago Movie was a huge box office success like those, but how on earth does it getting released on DVD much like any other animated movie have anything to do with its poor box office performance? You also don't seem to understand the meaning of the phrase "direct to DVD".

 

Also, waiting 20 years for adults to be nostalgic for a brand that's already wildly popular with kids right now is a pretty dumb strategy. You didn't see Pokémon, Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Harry Potter, or Bionicle waiting twenty years to release their first movies. Haven't you ever heard the phrase "strike while the iron's hot"?

I'm not particularly drawn to trooper-style buildable figures with monochrome color schemes and full armor and helmets. It is interesting though that this one is priced at just $20 rather than $25 like Rey or the Elite Praetorian Guard. His piece count is higher than either of those so I guess the lack of a textile element is the determining factor there — something similar happened with the Obi-Wan figure in the first wave, who was priced at $25 despite having more or less the same piece count as the $20 sets from the same wave.

 

It's a shame the life support system isn't more attractive. It's really one of the most unique aspects of this figure, but you're right that from any angle but the front it looks clunky.

It's a nifty concept for a fanfic, though as a hypothetical reboot I think it's far enough from the core Bionicle concept that at that point it might be better to just turn it into a totally new IP. Trying to make it function as a Bionicle reboot feels kind of like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole (or a round pin in a cross-shaped hole, as it were).

For Lego Dimensions, well, Lego seems to have focused on some video games, which are Lego Worlds, the remaster of Lego City Undercover, The Lego Ninjago Movie video game, and Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, which might explain how Lego Dimensions got less and less packs and then ended. Again, all of this may be Lego’s prioritizing.

In some of those cases I think it might have been the other way around. For example, if LEGO Dimensions had been doing well enough to garner more attention, then The LEGO Ninjago Movie almost certainly would have been turned into a story pack like the LEGO Batman Movie one. The fact that it got a full game instead suggests to me that by that point Tt Games had already made the decision to start winding LEGO Dimensions down.

 

Also, I wouldn't read too much into Chima getting "mixed reception from LEGO fans". Pretty much ANYTHING new gets mixed reception from LEGO fans. To this day, there are loads of AFOLs who despise super-popular themes like Technic, Star Wars, Bionicle, Friends, and Ninjago, just because they feel different from the traditional themes like Town, Castle, Space, and Pirates that they grew up with. For that matter, I've encountered numerous AFOLs who can't stand Technic, despite it being even older than Pirates, because it feels too detached from basic stud-based LEGO building. I doubt there will ever be a new theme that isn't hated by some segment of the AFOL community. But that's OK, because most of the bigger themes aren't aimed at AFOLs in the first place.

 

The only series of LEGO sets that seems to be almost universally beloved by AFOLs seems to be the modular buildings. And even then, they often bicker about the merits of the individual sets, or try to insist that the ones they don't like aren't "real" modular buildings.

Interesting question! Overlord is definitely high up on my list, whether in terms of appearance or having an intimidating personality and powers. But I think judging by appearance alone he might be surpassed by the Vermillion Warriors, especially General Machia. I'm not scared of snakes in real life, but a bunch of writhing snakes animated into the shape of a ferocious armored warrior is pretty scary to look at!

 

And that's taking into account only minifigure characters. If we expand the list to non-minifigure characters then I think the Morro Dragon is a contender on account of its sheer size, ferocity, and eerie, ghostly design.

Well, I brought that up again because this decade, including this year, is getting sadder and sadder as the Lego things aren't doing so well. Lego Dimensions became a new one of them, and Nexo Knights may most likely be next. You see, I brought those depressing things up because things keep getting negative-to-mixed reviews, didn't live up to fans' expectations while they look ver cool and promising, the sets and media aren't equal to each other in many ways while they are too little promoted or not promoted at all, and Lego has trouble with priorities. Plus, these things have potential to have a lot more than what they have and a lot of interesting things, like stories expanding and TV shows to promote them, but these expectations never became true, and their potential is never used much. Plus, some of them have stories which are left unresolved in many ways. True, some of them did more than what they needed to do, like Power Miners and Atlantis, but ending them without using their potential to make them better or do other expected things is not a good idea. This is very upsetting and depressing when you look at them.

The problem is that your metric for "not doing so well" seems skewed. Like, Nexo Knights has already been successful. Chances are it's not going to become an evergreen hit like Ninjago did, but there's no reason to think it should, or that that's the benchmark for success. And you're really treating themes like Power Miners and Atlantis as if they were failures just because they could have done more or done things better? I hate to break it to you, but even if a toy line continues for years and years, there will never stop being more things it could have done or ways it could have done things better. If you expect perfect satisfaction, treat anything that disappoints you in any way as a failure, and outright ignore how many successes there have been in the meantime, then of course you're going to see failure everywhere you look.

 

Take a step back and you'll realize that by the high standards you've imposed, there has never been a time in the LEGO Group's (or any large toy company's) history that wasn't rife with disappointment. It's hardly a "this decade" problem. Like, do you have any idea how many short-lived themes, unresolved storylines, cancelled or failed media endeavors, and actual unsuccessful products there were during Bionicle G1's heyday from 2001–2010, or even before that? The fact that LEGO is still around today and stronger than they've been at most points in their history should be enough to tell you that their successes outweigh their failures.

 

Beyond that, the nature of risk-taking is that there's never any guarantee that those risks will pan out. And sometimes, whether they do or not is entirely out of the LEGO Group's control. If they weren't prepared for that possibility than a lot of these riskier initiatives like LEGO Dimensions or LEGO Universe never would have existed in the first place.

Thok once dared him to see how many Zamor spheres he could fit in his mouth at once. His face was never the same after that.

 

Remember, kids, don’t be a Piraka! Say NO to peer pressure!

 

Hahaha when the community thinks about robot wives... Is this really what the bionicle fandom has come to? I get that it's just for fun but I doubt it considering all the want for more female bionicle characters. Why do you want more female robot characters when you're a male? I'll leave that up to your imagination. Goodbye BZP

Worth pointing out that many of the respondees to this topic (and the person who started the topic) AREN'T male...

 

Plus, what would be so weird about caring about characters who aren't the same gender as you? Any girl who's ever been into Bionicle has managed to live with over 80% of its characters being male (aside from girls who headcanon some of those characters as female). Surely, then, boys should be capable of enjoying a series where more than 20% of the characters are female? After all, 50% of people in our world are girls and women, and in general they're just as cool and interesting as anyone else.

Good review! I definitely plan to pick this one up. Her build is perhaps not as unique as last year's Rey figure, due to using a more conventional torso shell and a textile element that doesn't cover as much of the body, but I like that we finally get a female head without headgear, and that her arm shells now show her shoulders like her outfit does in the movie. The face is very good, although printed freckles might improve it.

 

I wish the textile element worked better here, and in your photos I also feel like it's not a great color match to the other Dark Stone Grey parts. I don't really mind the boots being longer than they are in the movie, though. I think it gets the idea across that they're boots. It's nice that she implements some System curves on the back of her shins, something the previous Rey figure notably lacked compared to other figures from the same wave.

 

I managed to pick up a Jyn Erso torso shell at BrickFair and while the jacket print in that set was sub-par, I love the mold's smooth shape and understated curves, and the print in this set works a lot better.

Good grief, how is it that Lego can't hold down an MMORPG for more than two years?!

Dimensions wasn't an MMORPG. It was a single-player console game with a multiplayer battle mode.

Hm, one of the few instances where the finalized models are actually better than the submitted idea, IMO. I was unsure about getting this one, but it looks like a worthwhile purchase. Now we'll have to see if they're have as bad of stocking issues as they did with the last female scientist set.

 

Personally, I feel like most Ideas sets improve on the original project. Minecraft took a really rudimentary concept and turned it into a decent display piece. Yellow Submarine smoothed out the curves, improved the accuracy of many parts like the railings, and added more detailed colors. The Ghostbusters Ecto-1 strengthened the build and added details like interior seating and white-wall tires. Even the much-maligned Back to the Future DeLorean set improved the proportions of the hood and cabin to make them less boxy (the Eurobricks review does some direct side-by-side comparisons that really highlight all the improvements).

 

I would be wary about this set's availability, just because so many of the science-related sets (Research Institute, Curiosity Rover, Saturn V, etc) have had some kind of availability issues, and this one coming out in early November so close to the Christmas shopping rush (as well as having a pretty low price point) might exacerbate that.

 

On another note, the project creator of Women of NASA left a nice little message on Twitter: https://twitter.com/20tauri/status/920615589554647040

I don't collect Star Wars for the most part, but I was really impressed with this set when it was announced. The Rathtar scene was one I didn't anticipate working so well in LEGO because it combines two things that can be really hard to realize in a playset — big tentacle monsters, and tight corridors. But not only does this set execute both those ideas exceptionally well, it also has great details like the identical series of switches (for that iconic "wrong fuse" moment) and the ability to connect multiples of the set together into a bigger modular layout. It also gives you a generous number of pieces for its price tag (especially for a Star Wars set). Location-based Star Wars sets in general can be a lot harder to create than a typical starfighter, and I think the designer succeeded admirably here.

I once thought about making a Kopaka Master of Ice costume, so I might have to go with that. One nice thing about that is that if I managed it I could probably repurpose the shells as a template to use for costumes of other CCBS characters. It'd be a lot of work to make a costume I'm really satisfied with, though.

 

A Gali Master of Water costume could be just as cool if not cooler, since she's my favorite Bionicle G2 character and probably a bit closer to my proportions, but as a guy that would probably wind up confusing the many people who don't know Bionicle and already tend to assume any robot character without obvious breasts or a human-looking face is a man. And again, probably more work than I'm prepared to put in these days.

Good review! A feature you didn't mention about the portal is the two little black horns on either side. These are a place for the Goblin King Cronan to put the two amulets (Emily's and his own) that are needed to power the portal. Also, the ammo for the catapult is more of the same evil seeds you see inside. These seeds, when planted, are what grow into the bigger carnivorous plants like the snapping ones out front of this set. Speaking of that feature, I absolutely love it — the motion, the sound it makes, how compact it is! The carnivorous plants are in a lot of sets in a number of different forms, but this might be my favorite use of them.

 

Even though this castle is not as big as Ragana's, it's still really playable and really spooky. Like all the Elves buildings, it's carefully integrated with its environment… but in this case, said environment is dark and forboding. The trees which in other parts of Elvendale are a warm Reddish Brown are here a cold Dark Blue, with vicious red thorns instead of flowers or crystals. And the pink crystals emerging from the rocks glow an ominous red at their base. In the LEGO Elves story, it's explained that the Shimmering Woods were not such a grim place until Cronan stole crystals from the Guardian Tree to build his portal, making the entire forest sick and angry. The castle's greenish color suits Cronan both as a villain and as an earth elf. It also nicely mimics the color of his dragon, Ashwing, and of the Goblins' various buildings and machines. And the castle interior is lavish and decadent as well as livable — I especially love the portrait of Cronan and his mother Quartzine, as well as Cronan and Tufflin's matching beds!

 

The Elves first started really taking up arms in last year's sets with the catapult in the Shadow Castle set, but in this year's they've gone even further. Emily's longsword in this set exemplifies that. It's a shame that she doesn't wield this sword (or the crossbow from the Airship set) at any point during the Netflix series Secrets of Elvendale. Emily's mini-doll is a fantastic redesign, keeping her the sneakers and stripes that mark her as being from another world, but also giving her a shoulder-baring outfit that makes her seem a little more grown up. Sophie takes the same sneakers and stripes and applies them to a much younger-looking outfit. One almost gets the sense that she's wearing Emily's hand-me-downs, particularly since her sneakers are the same color Emily wore in the first year of sets! Speaking of Sophie, she also gets a different face print here than in her previous appearance — a little less gung-ho and more meek, as though she's happy to see Emily again but still a little bit shaken from her ordeal.

 

The Cronan mini-doll the same as in the Dragon set, but this time wearing his own magical amulet. It really completes his ostentatious outfit. Tufflin is a great new goblin design. When I first saw pictures of him from Toy Fair I thought he had an evil Mirror Spock style goatee around a closed-mouth frown, but it turns out that instead he's got a wide-mouthed scowl which still makes him a bit more fearsome than the average goblin. It's nice to see him actually carrying one of the Goblin King's shields, since previously we'd only seen them as ornamentation like they are on the parapets of this set. You didn't make much mention of the raven in this set outside the list of interesting parts, but it's actually a form of the Goblin King's Shadow Creature, a shapeshifting cosmic evil that plays a big role in Secrets of Elvendale. I'm hoping to try MOCing some of its other forms, though it's a shame I won't likely be able to match that awesome metallic blue printing.

Overall I've really enjoyed this set, and I hope that somebody makes an attempt to stock up on parts and rebuild it into the bigger castle seen in Secrets of Elvendale! I also look forward to seeing what uses you find for this set's parts in your own MOCs. Thanks so much for this review and I hope other BZPower members consider picking this set up!