Merry Christmas

Nathan Proudlove's family wishes us all a merry Christmas, and, yes, his son is wearing Spider-Man jammies.

And the winner is ...

A few days ago the winners were announced in the Eurobricks Batman contest, and Skrytsson won both categories with his Dark Knight and Croc's sewer entries.

Batman before and after

GV357 made great versions of Batman's origin and mourning.

In brightest day ...

V&A Steamworks has an ongoing Cabinet of Curiosities project, where he invites other AFOLs to contribute small MOCs to a group display. NorbyZero made this great version of the Green Lantern's power ring.

Cyclops

Mike Napolitan, who is normally known for his great virtual customs, found a 3-D printing service that allowed him to produce Cyclops' visor.

Sets spotted

Yesterday I stopped by my local Toys R Us (in Cherry Hill, NJ, near Philadelphia) and saw that they have some of the DC sets (specifically they had the Catwoman set, the Superman/WonderWoman/LexLuthor set, and the Batman and Joker Hero Factory sets). Sets have also been found at Toys R Us stores in Georgia and California, so this seems a pretty general thing in the US. I'm not sure yet how widely spread they are in other countries. They've also now appeared on LEGO.com (including the just-announced Joker's Funhouse, but not including the first set that was revealed, the Batcave). Just in time to buy that special Christmas gift for your favorite blogger. ;)

6862 Superman vs Power Armor Lex

It looks like one of the fine folks over at FBTB got ahold of set 6862. I'm still waiting to hear what stores this is showing up in. Anyway, check out their extensive pictures. I so want this set.
-Edit- Okay, when I posted this last night Ace had just got the pictures up on the FBTB Flickr stream, but now he's posted an extensive (and very positive) review. He also responded to me that he found this at a Toys R Us store in California. I'll swing buy a TRU here in New Jersey sometime in the next few days and will report on if these are more widely available.

Holy awesome set, Batman

Here's a huge surprise (at least to me - maybe this rumor has been out there already?) - LEGO has another Batman set up their sleeves, and it's coming out in just a few days: 6857 - Dynamic Duo Funhouse Escape. For me at least the image is not currently showing up on the lego.com link, but LEGO Toy Story News had sharp eyes and grabbed a copy. At US$40, this seems like an amazing deal, with figs you would have to spend quite a bit to get otherwise. I'd say that this and the Superman set are my two "must get" sets from the initial run. I take back my previous complaint about LEGO simply repeating old Batman set designs.



Here's the official description:

Help Batman™ save Robin from the villainous trio!
Rescue Robin from 3 notorious villains in a funhouse with trap-doors and moving floors in this suspenseful scene with 5 new minifigures!
Price $39.99
Help Batman™ save Robin from the villainous trio!
"The Riddler™, The Joker and his sidekick Harley Quinn are holding Robin hostage at their evil funhouse! As our hero Batman™ jumps off his cool Batcycle, can he avoid the trap door, big hammer and moving floor and rescue his crime-fighting partner? Includes 5 minifigures: Batman™, Robin, The Joker ™, The Riddler ™ and Harley Quinn.
* Includes 5 minifigures: Batman, Robin, The Joker, The Riddler and Harley Quinn
* Features Batcycle and funhouse
* Funhouse features wagon rails, crane, hammer, opening trap door and moving floor
* Lift the crane!
* Move the floor!
* Includes comic book!
* Funhouse measures over 8” (21 cm) tall and 11” (29cm) wide
* Batcycle measures over 4” (10 cm) long

Wheels of Justice

During my near-month-hiatus from blogging, I totally missed the Wheels of Justice contest over at FBTB, that challenged people to build cars for the Green Lantern and Batman. Entries are now closed, and it doesn't look like voting has started, but two of my favorites include Cole Blaq's Emerald Thunder and SPARKART's Electric BATWInG Batmobile.

And Lois is in trouble ... again

Okayaraman made a great Superman vs Braniac battle. I particularly love how he did the classic Daily Planet icon.

Batman

Great parts usage in Carson Hart's Batman logo

More pictures

I'm sorry for my three week hiatus from blogging. I hope that in the meantime people have been reading Brick Heroes, as Will has been very consistently adding to his blog. One thing that Will found was that high resolution images of the upcoming sets have been posted on the French version of Amazon, though they do not seem to be currently on the US version. Click the images to see full-size versions:

DC Superheroes sets revealed!

Okay, to tell the truth, leaked images have been on the web for a bit now, but I held off on posting those here since they were clearly marked as confidential. Some of the 2012 City sets are already available, and Warren Elsmore picked up set 4440 at an official LEGO store by Washington DC (I don't know if he meant the Tysons Corner store or the Potomac Mills store). That set is exciting enough, as it has some really interesting new elements, but the relevance to this blog is that the instructions include images advertising the January release of the DC minifig sets. So, with no further delay, let's take a look. 6858 Batman vs. Catwoman and 6863 Batman vs. the Joker at $12 and $30 (US, according to the previously released information on Barnes and Noble). The first is pretty much a rehash of set 7779 from the original Batman theme. It's a cheap way to get the Batman and Catwoman figs, but other than that there's nothing special here. 6863, again, pretty much reprises the older set 7782. There's a better Joker fig, to be sure, but otherwise I'm disappointed that they didn't really improve on the Batwing design.



6862 Superman vs. Lex Luthor at $20. Now THIS is by far the most exciting thing in the line (assuming you already have some of the Batman sets from the previous line). You get three key new figs, including Wonder Woman (I was wondering where she was going to fit in) at a pretty cheap price. Lex Luthor's mecha seems pretty okay, though I'm sure any AFOL worth the bricks could easily improve on the design. I know that this is supposed to be Lex's warsuit, but my kids have been watching Megamind lately, so I just keep thinking of that big mech.



6864 Batman vs. Two Face at $50. Again, pretty much a rehash of 7781, just $20 more expensive. I'll want to see a better picture, but it looks as if the Batmobile is even a pretty similar design, which is fairly lazy of LEGO given how many different versions of the world's coolest car we've seen from different Batman comics, movies and TV shows.



6860 the Batcave at $70. I've previously looked at this. While we had a Batcave, at least this new one is not a complete copy in the way that the Catwoman, Joker and Two-Face sets are. This is more compact (and cheaper), with a couple of different play elements, and different villains (though this raises the question of the absence of the Penguin in this initial run of sets).



So, that's the first run of minifig sets. I have to say I'm underwhelmed. I know, most kids don't already have the full run of sets from 2006, but couldn't LEGO have reimagined them at least a little bit? Yes, I recognize that if you're going to commit to having a Batman-heavy line, you then pretty much have to have many of the same villains and you're pretty much required to have a Batmobile, Batwing and Batcave. That said, though, we've seen so many different iterations of these in different Batman media outlets that they could have come up with very different looking sets, or even mixed up the villains. E.g. why not have Batman chasing the Joker in the car set and Two Face in the plane set, or whatever? As noted above, the most exciting set for me (again, going on the assumption that you already have at least a couple of the Batman sets from before) is the Superman/Luthor/Wonder Woman set, as this has three completely new characters, and the mecha is at least a fun idea. BTW, no Green Lantern? I assume that he's not just a ComicCon giveaway and we'll see him in the next run of sets. I also assume that the next run of sets will again be Batman-centric, as in one of the early articles mentioned that LEGO would release sets in conjunction with the next Batman movie, so at least we'll probably get a different version of the Batmobile. Oh, here's a close-up shot of the mecha in the overall view of the page from the 4440 instructions. So, what do you guys think of the new line?

Hulk smash!

Spencer D made this very imposing Hulk.

4851, The origins

Okay, I do want to get the old Spider-Man and Batman lines reviewed before January, so I'd better get these out sooner rather than later. In 2003, LEGO discarded the idea of making Spider-Man a subtheme of Studios and made it into a stand-alone theme. The real bonus here was that this meant no more useless director minifigs, or camera elements, or other distractions from Spidey. In 2003 we got three sets, still based on the 2002 Spider-Man movie.

First up for us is set 4851, The origins. Now THIS is the set they should have started with in the previous year. With six figs you get all the key players--Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Mary Jane, and Norm Osborne/Green Goblin--and the extra fig, the scientist, actually has kind of a nice generically useful torso. There were also some nice little add on pieces, like the 2x2 tile with a DNA pattern and another 2x2 tile with a computer screen. The turntable action to transform Norman into the Goblin was a nice play feature. The only annoyance here for me was that they had tricked me into buying the much less useful Spider-Man action studio the previous year, when if I had waited for this set I would have had my Spidey fig and so much more. There was a STAMP (sticker across multiple pieces), but it was just over some basic bricks, so no great loss there. Oh, I forgot to note, they updated the Green Goblin mask from the previous year's iteration, making it look much nicer:

2002: 2003:

Buy it at BrickLink. See the inventory on Peeron and the instructions on Lego.com.

Joker makes a withdrawal

2 Much Caffeine presents Joker makes a withdrawal: "All units, all units... Robbery in progress at Gotham City Bank... Officers down at scene..."
BTW, this is an entry for the Eurobricks LEGO Batman Contest. More on that in a future post.

Happy Halloween

I'm guessing that meisjedog is the parent of the kid in this costume.

Heroes

Ultimate Marvin produced what could easily be a great promotional poster for the upcoming DC sets.

Thunder god

POLIP isn't waiting for next year to get a version of Thor.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I'd love to see Sofo's Watchmen busts produced in real ABS.