Hero Factory 2011

[Bundalings]

If you can break one by putting it on and off a ball, I'll give you a Drop Ship

Both of my Fire Lord's hands have cracked from simple use. May I have that Drop Ship? XP

[Jetrax99]

Both of my Fire Lord's hands have cracked from simple use. May I have that Drop Ship? XP

O.O Did they really break? If so I'm surprised. Have fun w/ your new Drop Ship

(I still need to finish my 1.0 collection )

Edited January 23, 2011 by Jetrax99

[Brickthing]

Both of my Fire Lord's hands have cracked from simple use. May I have that Drop Ship? XP

What did your simple use include? Do you have any pictures of where they broke?

[Bundalings]

Simple use included taking them off and snapping them back on a few times. Can't get a picture, but it's just a little crack on the outer rim of the socket. Both of them have crack on both sides of the sockets, in the exact same places. It's not really a big deal, they work fine, for now.

[Front]

Simple use included taking them off and snapping them back on a few times. Can't get a picture, but it's just a little crack on the outer rim of the socket. Both of them have crack on both sides of the sockets, in the exact same places. It's not really a big deal, they work fine, for now.

If it's in the middle of the round hole, right at one extreme of the hand, this is a possible failure, that was always possible with all versions of ball cups (you are never gonna make me call them sockets). But I haven't seen this on any test parts during development.

The normal failure of older types of ball cups, is a crack placed somewhat at an angle on one side of the cup. The problem with this failure is that it makes the ball cup useless, having no friction anymore.

The failure which Bundalings have seen, are more related to production variance during filling of the mould. This failure, although very unfortunate, does not reduce the function of the ball cup to the same extent, that the crack on one side does.

I do have an extra Drop Ship, so maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.

It is possible to take a photo of hand with failure ? You could just mail (pm) me, asking for email address, or upload it somewhere.

Still, I would mail (contact form) Consumer Service, asking for replacements.

Damn silver materials

Front aka Erland

Edited January 23, 2011 by Front

[Kenta]

I wonder if we would possibly get a purple, mata green, brown, or pink colored hero/villian set for a store exclusive

[InfiniToa]

I wonder if we would possibly get a purple, mata green, brown, or pink colored hero/villian set for a store exclusive

i doubt it but i certainly wish it were true.

[Aethersprite]

I don't live in the US - is it possible for me to order replacement parts, then?

[Front]

I don't live in the US - is it possible for me to order replacement parts, then?

In theory you should be able to order, even if you lived on the moon, as long as you have a postal address.

Go to LEGO.COM and fill in the form.

[Bfahome]

In theory you should be able to order, even if you lived on the moon, as long as you have a postal address.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

Also, preliminarily, I think Wasp[ix][whatever] and Nex are the two sets I'll be targeting first. Though I hope WaspTwix's hands are all the same color.

(Hey Front can I maybe get some word on that maybe?)

But I greatly look forward to combining both Nexs' (Nexes'? Nexus'?) parts on one hero.

[Jouster]

Check this out: http://herofactory.lego.com/en-US/news/readmore/default.aspx?id=253050

Hooray for new(?) info!

[Front]

Check this out: http://herofactory.lego.com/en-US/news/readmore/default.aspx?id=253050

Hooray for new(?) info!

Isn't it more a less a description of what can be seen in the video starting with Firelord and "In 2011" .....

But yes, it might be new on the website.

[InfiniToa]

Check this out: http://herofactory.lego.com/en-US/news/readmore/default.aspx?id=253050

Hooray for new(?) info!

Hmm.. new info.

[CabooseBM]

Well, I didn't know Surge was the one left behind. Unexpected.

(And hopefully he's less annoying when he comes back.)

[Makuta Plasmix]

I just wanted to note that the new building system really does open much more MOCING potential. I just go Jetbug and gave him a tail, and it holds together much better than it would had I used bionicle parts.

[Kenta]

Does it cost more money to make pink/purple parts? We barely get any of those colors in ALL of lego sets...especially pink.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Kenta

[Ceroknight]

Does it cost more money to make pink/purple parts? We barely get any of those colors in ALL of lego sets...especially pink.

this is probably not the reason, but purple is the most expensive colour in the world, royal purple anyways

[CabooseBM]

Does it cost more money to make pink/purple parts? We barely get any of those colors in ALL of lego sets...especially pink.

Nah, it's just generally not the best idea to put "girl's colors" in your boys toys line, or at least, corporations think so.

Kinda the same reason we only get like one girl character a year.

[Leugi]

Nah, it's just generally not the best idea to put "girl's colors" in your boys toys line, or at least, corporations think so.

Kinda the same reason we only get like one girl character a year.

But purple ain't exactly the girliest color we have... It is, in fact, an amazing color for making something look rather powerful... I mean, Electro (From the Throwbots) looked great and not to any extent girly... And I'm sure purple would look amazing on certain HF villains too...

That's why Evo having purple parts was something amazing to me, it was a "Don't worry, these buildable action figures will get purple sometimes"

Edited January 25, 2011 by Leugi

[Aanchir]

But purple ain't exactly the girliest color we have... It is, in fact, an amazing color for making something look rather powerful... I mean, Electro (From the Throwbots) looked great and not to any extent girly... And I'm sure purple would look amazing on certain HF villains too...

That's why Evo having purple parts was something amazing to me, it was a "Don't worry, these buildable action figures will get purple sometimes"

For that matter, the purple color currently in production, Medium Lilac, is even less girly-looking than the purple color used for Electro (at least in my opinion).

However, I'm uncertain how likely it is to show up as a hero's main color. From what we've seen so far, the heroes tend to have bright, vibrant colors as their primary colors. Medium Lilac is a darker, bolder color, and so I'm unsure whether it would be used for heroes. Then again, there are rumors of a new girls' theme in 2012, so perhaps that might include the introduction of a brighter but still gender-neutral purple color?

In other news, just got back from a study abroad trip a few days ago, and one of the first things I checked was the LEGO website. The Hero Factory website's updates really impress me, and if I wasn't sold on the 2011 lineup before I certainly am now. I have personalized my HeroPad (I love parts of the LEGO site you can customize), downloaded a wallpaper of the new Preston Stormer (I had to crop it to fit my 1280x800 desktop, but it still looks awesome), and checked out lots of new pages including the Bios page and the Gadgets and Weapons page.

I love the Hero Factory story-- it's very serious, but parts of it are rather tongue-in-cheek, kind of like the Artemis Fowl novels. For instance, check out the last paragraph of the page for Surge's Ice Spear Blaster, the last sentence of Evo's bio, or the Speed-Build video starring thus far my favorite character, Zib.

If anyone's interested, the Building Instructions page now has the instructions for all three "Combi" models. Apparently a font was used that keeps the PDF from loading totally correctly, but the instructions are still completely legible. The first and second "combi" models are my favorites.

In other news, for those artists out there, the HeroPad features periodic "challenges" you can enter. The first is a speed-build game that's been mentioned before, but the second is a bit more interesting-- a challenge to design a Hero Factory weapon. It can be a drawing, sculpture, or MOC. I'm certainly going to try designing one. Doesn't seem to be a contest of any sort, just a challenge to enter for fun and collectible "merits".

[InfiniToa]

For that matter, the purple color currently in production, Medium Lilac, is even less girly-looking than the purple color used for Electro (at least in my opinion).

However, I'm uncertain how likely it is to show up as a hero's main color. From what we've seen so far, the heroes tend to have bright, vibrant colors as their primary colors. Medium Lilac is a darker, bolder color, and so I'm unsure whether it would be used for heroes. Then again, there are rumors of a new girls' theme in 2012, so perhaps that might include the introduction of a brighter but still gender-neutral purple color?

I haven't heard anything yet of this new girl's theme, but a new purple would kind of annoy me now that we have "Evo-purple", unless they keep both in production. I would be fine with multiple purples, I just don't want TLG to keep switching back and forth with colors like they have done in the past.

Edited January 25, 2011 by InfiniToa

[Aanchir]

I haven't heard anything yet of this new girl's theme, but a new purple would kind of annoy me now that we have "Evo-purple", unless they keep both in production. I would be fine with multiple purples, I just don't want TLG to keep switching back and forth with colors like they have done in the past.

LEGO's rarely up and "switched back and forth between colors", as far as I remember. In my lifetime most colors that have been replaced have had one replacement that's remained constant. For instance, Bright Yellowish Orange (the color of the Gukko's beak and a few bricks in some 2001 Harry Potter sets) was replaced with Flame Yellowish Orange (Keetorange). Likewise, there was the whole Grey/Bley fiasco in 2004, but once the transition was made there was no switching back. And the old brown color-- 25 Earth Orange-- was replaced with 193 Reddish Brown at around the same time (although BIONICLE sets and minifig skin colors used a separate color, 217 Brown, that coexisted with Reddish Brown parts until it was discontinued in 2006).

The closest I can think of to "switching back and forth" is with silver, which tended to be 131 Silver until 2006 when they replaced this color with the new 296 Cool Silver. Most people I know of thought Cool Silver seemed cheaper, and obviously LEGO agreed there was a quality issue because the very next year LEGO went back to using 131 Silver as the standard. As of summer 2010 LEGO has discontinued 131 Silver for good and introduced the generally better-quality 315 Silver Metallic in its place. This is the silver seen in the Hero Factory and Kingdoms themes, as well as in 2011 sets.

There were also several other silver colors-- for instance, Chrome Silver, 298 Cool Silver Drum Lacquered (BL's Metallic Silver, used notably for the Agents set Turbocar Chase), and Silver Flip/Flop (a silver color which to my knowledge was used only for the silver Kanohi in 2002 Kanohi/Krana packs). None of these, however, actually replaced or was replaced by whatever silver color was prevalent at the time-- they were just alternate varieties.

On a side note, there's one other color out currently that can arguably be considered purple-- Bright Reddish Violet, which Bricklink calls Magenta. It was notably used for the character Lotso in the Toy Story 3 sets. Anybody think that would be an OK color for a Hero Factory set, or is that out of the question?

[Bundalings]

Let it be noted that I was mistaken earlier and the new pieces are truely invincible.

[vexorian]

In theory you should be able to order, even if you lived on the moon, as long as you have a postal address.

Go to LEGO.COM and fill in the form.

This is going to be completely OT, but how about asking for replacements a long time after the release date? I guess that for practical purposes there should be a limit. For example, I am among the sad fans that got no Meca one legs in his Striking venom, but I opened the sealed box yesterday.

[Front]

This is going to be completely OT, but how about asking for replacements a long time after the release date? I guess that for practical purposes there should be a limit. For example, I am among the sad fans that got no Meca one legs in his Striking venom, but I opened the sealed box yesterday.

I don't know what criteria Consumer Service use, but I think the missing gold legs on that set was intentional, and only got "fixed" after consumers complained, "fixed" by making sure that sets produced later had the legs.

I suspect Consumer Service may have a hard time finding golden robot legs, they were not used in sets since then. If you feel you should have legs, I guess it can't hurt to ask them politely, telling that you just opened the set.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Front