LEGO by Traveller's Tales

Er... yeah.  Over a week since my last update, and still none of the promised regional summaries.

The good news is, I actually brought my list of regions to summarize today with me.  The bad news is... I've got a really busy day ahead of me, and whether or not I can break away from stuff that needs doing to post them is iffy.

So, I'll make a quicker update on an off-topic thought.  This Easter, we got LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 for my kids.  They were big fans of the earlier game... and in fact, big fans of the LEGO games by Traveller's Tales overall, starting with the original LEGO Star Wars.  Of the series, the only one that we're missing so far is Pirates of the Caribbean, and that's only because the kids have (surprisingly) shown little interest in that one.  Given its relatively cheap price now that it's a bit older (you can get it on Amazon easily for less than $20... including S&H), I may end up picking it up for them anyway, just because it amuses me to have the full set... plus, I'm sure the kids would play it.

I admit I've been a little out of the loop, though, and I didn't realize a few things.  First, that there's a LEGO Batman 2 coming out in about six weeks, which includes an expanded DC Universe cast of characters.  And although I knew that there was a LEGO Lord of the Rings line coming out later, I didn't realize that there was a LEGO Marvel Universe coming out, probably to piggy-back off of the predicted success of the Avengers movie.

Now here I have no idea, but are there going to be Traveller's Tales LEGO Lord of the Rings and Avengers games?  If so, I can easily see the latter being my kids' favorite of the TT LEGO games since the Star Wars titles.  And the former may well be the first that I buy for myself...

LEGO Police Station

I've noticed from looking at my stats, that curiously most of the hits to my blog are probably not for the content on my blog, per se.  In fact, I think most of them come from Google image searches.  One of the most popular posts on my blog to date has been this retrospective of LEGO police stations, which I picked because it was one of the most consistent themes since before the debut of the minifigure even--since the mid-70s at least, there was pretty much always been a LEGO police station set of some kind or another available for sale.

In fact, there is now a newer version of the police station than the one I posted in that post--the newest then had a 2008 vintage.  The 2011 police station, in fact, is one that we just got.  My youngest son just turned 8, and that was what he wanted more than anything.

So, although big LEGO sets are pricier than we normally would like to pick up, especially considering that there were some other things we needed to get for him this year, we got the brand-new LEGO police station for him.  Grandma also got him the LEGO police truck; a kind of mobile command base (which is what I think its predecessor was literally called, if I remember correctly.)  I supervised him building the truck last night--the station sits still unopened in the box; a bit intimidating of a project for a kid that young, yet also one that he can't wait to have built.

Anyway, I'm adding the images as a kind of "add-on" to my other post.  This new set isn't quite as "homey" as the last one.  There aren't flowers and trees.  It's a bit more of a business-like operation.  It's got two garage doors, two cars/trucks, a bicycle, and a three story office building of sorts.  Above the garage is the holding cell.  Curiously, there's a helipad on top of the tower... but no copter.  Several of the past sets, if you look at the retrospective, have copters, but this does not.  Of course, there is a police helicopter set... sold separately.  The boys have been saving up some money for a little while now, unsure exactly what to buy with it; I imagine once this is built, my younger son will definately clamor for the police helicopter to move t othe top of the list.

Spyrius

It occurs to me that given my rather fickle nature, I will probably not continue the series of posts about LEGO bad guys in the Space theme after all. So, I'll post some Spyrius themed "unofficial" sets that I've got on my hard drive (so I can erase them) and move on. The actual Spyrius sets seemed to converge on two design ideas; wheeled vaguely anthropomorphic robots, and flying saucers. Anyway... here goes. For whatever reason, most Spyrius fan-designs seem to be very small little fliers.

5973 Hyperspeed Pursuit

I recently got the new Space Police set 5973 Hyperspeed Pursuit. I'm always a little disappointed when you get a largish set, but instead of a large vehicle, you get two medium sized ones, but I was willing to in this case because both vehicles looked excellent, the minifigures that came with it looked excellent, and the set looked... well, all-around excellent. In that regard, it doesn't disappoint. Both vehicles are about the same size as the main police vehicle in 5971 Gold Heist, which I reviewed earlier. But I like the vehicles of this set substantially better.

The police vehicle is the first one I built. It's got a very attractive and athletic design; it looks fast and aggressive both. I was particularly impressed with the thrusters. I remember back in the very early days of LEGO Space when all you needed was an L-girder to change your stud direction and a rocket exhaust cone, and that was sufficient to be a thruster for LEGO spaceships. These thrusters now are much beefier; much more complex and attractive designs. In fact, they're very complex and attractive designs; much more complex than I'd ever seen an official LEGO design do.

I also really like the prison pod. This is now the third prison pod design (since it's the third Space Police line-up) and I like this one the best. It's made of two half-cylindrical blue trans elements, and has a fun little "push tab" that causes it to pop open, and attaches snugly to the rear of the vehicle between the two thrusters and wings. In fact, the police ship looks a little funny without it attached, although that's not unusual for Space Police vehicles of any line and their prison pods.

There are, however, two nitpicky quibbles I'd make about the police vehicle. First; the cockpit doesn't open. You have to just pull the cockpit piece off to get the policeman in and out. Would adding a hinge element have been that difficult? That was a bit of a surprising decision. The second one is that once completed, the vehicle is surprisingly flat. There's very little to it from a profile angle. It's very sturdy though; especially compared to the rickety feeling Gold Heist police cruiser.

As much as I liked the police cruiser, the criminal flier was even funner, though. It's got this combination hot rod and pirate theme going, with skull motifs, a big intake valve, racing stripes, and scattered bullet holes along the fuselage. It's got a small "pick-up" like bed in the back, with a box for stolen gold, and it shoots padded missiles from the front end. The vaguely "box-like X" shape to the vehicle makes it look sleek and predatory, as does the toothy rack along the top. It's also very sturdy, but it's also a bit flat in profile, and it also has a non-opening cockpit, so you have to take it apart a tiny bit to get the minifigure in and out.

The minifigures are also quite fun. The policeman is just another space policemen, nothing too extraordinary (although I do have to say that I really like the dark gray suits that they wear.) He's got airtanks this time, which is perhaps a little odd, since he doesn't have a fully enclosed helmet. The aliens are really cool, though... not as unusual as the four-armed alien from Gold Heist, but very evocative nonetheless. Their bodies are black, and in fact have a black leather "space biker jacket" look to them. They have pure white faces, three eyes, and a helmet/mask that makes them look like little Cthulhus.

I'm still excited about Space Police 3, and would like to pick up a few more sets, including the medium sized beefy ground vehicle 5979 Max Security Transport, and the large spaceship 5974 Galactic Enforcer. There's also a limited edition 5980 Squidman's Pitstop that serves as an alien base of sorts with a few nifty little vehicles, and 5972 Space Truck Getaway has been growing on me as well. If I get those, I might as well round out the collection, since the only sets left are the very small (and therefore cheap) 5969 Squidman Escape, with a single mini-flier, and 5970 Freeze Ray Frenzy with two very small fliers.

Blacktron II

The next set of LEGO villains were actually just Blacktron again; although they'd been revised and reskinned. Now they looked less sinister, and frankly much less villainous, which of course made them also more boring. To attempt to counter that, they came with a few nifty design cues; the globular cockpit was always a great idea, for example. For whatever reason, the line had a lot of sets in it, but many of them were very, very small. Most likely, a good number of them were originally sold in those little bags.

Anyway, let's get to it. The 1462 Galactic Scout was a great example of a generic tiny ship, while the 6812 Grid Trekker was a tiny land vehicle, most notable for having at least given the little Blacktron astronaut a jetpack to fly around with.

Slightly larger, yet still small, spaceships included 1479 2-Pilot Craft, 1887 Scout Patrol Ship, and 6832 Super Nova II. 6851, the Tri-Wheeled Tyrax was also a tiny little land vehicle.
Blacktron II also revisted some Blacktron I themes, like 6878 Sub Orbital Guardian, which was another walker type vehicle, and 6933, the Spectral Starguider, which was not unlike the Battrax vehicle. The 6887 Allied Avenger and 6981 Aerial Intruder are medium sized spaceships that feature the globe cockpit. Like Blacktron I, there is no really large spaceship.
In fact, the spaceship that came with 6988 Alpha Centauri Outpost was nearly as big as the Aerial Intruder on it's own, and the base was very similar to the Message Intercept Base from Blacktron I.
While not a set per se, there used to be a value pack where you could get three sets together, and they had instructions on how to build a vehicle using parts from all three sets. This 4741 Super Vehicle was a nifty gimmick, but not a very cool design in its own right. The elongated globe cockpit is perhaps its most memorable feature.

As before, here's a handful of home made Blacktron 2 constructions. The really massive spaceship is... well, it's really massive. And really cool. I still have no idea how he got that curved surface. The small flying saucer is a "reskin" it's actually a Spyrius design remade in Blacktron II colors. We'll get to Spyrius next, as they're the next major bad guy syndicate to come on the scene when Blacktron II were finally phased out.

Blacktron I

You may think that my blog has been converted into a LEGO® blog, but that's not true. I'm just termporarily really excited about them. Again. All of my hobbies tend to come and go in waves. LEGO is one that comes up less frequently than some (gaming being pretty much "always on" in comparison) but when it hits, it hits pretty hard. There's something about constructing your own world in tangible form via these standardized building bricks that just really appeals to the creative side of me. Plus, I like making the standardized models too, as an excercise in (easy) model-making.

Anyway, I'm going to do a small series of posts as a tribute to the various "bad guys" of LEGO Space, posting catalog images of all the sets in their lines, and then a handful of creations I find online that are really nifty. This means, of course, that I have to start with Blacktron. Blacktron are, as near as I can tell, the original bad guys of the entire Legoland universe, and they're still one of the most sinister and appealing in appearance. LEGO hasn't really topped them yet, which is a shame, although they've had some notable other successes too.

The first set I'm showing, 1875, is a bit of an anomaly, as it doesn't really highlight the classic Blacktron color scheme, and is perhaps a transitional set between Blacktron I and Blacktron II.

Anyway, Blacktron was also always noted for its interesting ground vehicles. The Alienator was a walker, no doubt inspired by the walkers that George Lucas had shown us just a few years earlier in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The Battrax, on the other hand, was an ATV tank-like vehicle, with big, beefy wheels.

There wasn't really an extremely large space ship set; the Invader was nice, but rather smallish, and the larger Renegade was also at best only medium sized. The Renegade was also very notable for it's assymetric design.

The final official set was the Message Intercept Base, again with a title that hints at their nefarious goings-on.

Now, below are a few of the images I've found via Google Image Search of home-made LEGO creations of a Blacktron I theme. All of these are really cool, but I especially want to point out the final one, because it's a remake of another vehicle from another official set, redone in Blacktron I colors. The "prototype" of that set is actually in the new Space Police III line, where it's a criminal or pirate ship being chased by a police vehicle. Also, the third one down is very similar to a Blacktron II set... but you'll see that later when I get to Blacktron II.

LEGO evolution

Because I'm still temporarily jazzed about LEGOs and because the internet encourages this kind of junk, I've spent some time looking over LEGO sets over the years.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of the Town theme; y'know, the various sets that approximate stuff you'd see if you looked out of your window while driving around where you live. Real stuff that you see every day. I always liked the exotic and the futuristic. Made me a natural for the Space theme. But, because of its longevity and because of the consistency of source material which it emulates, it's a great example of what I hope to show.

Below are images scanned from catalogs, including the newer online catalog images, so the more recent are better quality pictures. But ignore the picture quality and pay attention to the detail of the sets themselves. I've included the year in which the set was first published. All of these are police stations; a standby of the LEGO Town theme; there's been a steady stream of police stations in print since at least 1972; long before the minifigure even came out.

Check out the evolution of these police sets! It's apparent to me that the LEGO designers have really improved over the years. Also, the addition of more specialized parts gives them the ability to better model real life. Also a focus on less stylized and more realistic size and form has been apparent over time as well.

However, before I spend too much time talking about the post-minifig sets, here's some interesting historical perspective; the earlier sets that preceded the advent of the minifigure. This first set, from 1972, is (as near as I can tell) the first LEGO police station ever released. I've included the 1973 catalog scan rather than the 1972, because it's slightly more zippy, and it's titled Police Heliport.

As merely an item of personal interest, the very first LEGO set that I believe we ever owned in my family was this little bugger from 1975: again; a police van. It has some early LEGO guys that were almost but not quite minifigures. Actually, they still had a long way to go.

The second actual police station previews the minifigure stations: it has a bunch of pre-minifig LEGO guys, and is the direct ancestor of the first "true" minifigure police station in 1979. The vintage for this set was 1976.
The first minifigure police station was from 1979. It was a decent set for its time. It utilizes a number of regular LEGO basic bricks (as was custom for the time) and few specialized parts, but was still an order of magnitude less crude than the 1976 effort. Heck; few specialized parts had yet been invented; the inventory of specialized pieces would skyrocket over the next few decades. If anything, the late 90s and 2000s seems to have been the era of proliferation of specialized parts.
In 1983, the Police Headquarters was replaced with the Police Station. This isn't really a change in crudity (or lack thereof) compared to 1983, except that the color scheme was slightly more coherent, the car at least had a top (although it still looks little like a real car) and some things changed just to mix things up and add variety. In 1986, the Police Station was replaced with the Police Command Base, which seems to be an improvement. A few Space theme pieces were incorporated into the design (notably the radar dish) and it included for the first time an "open" design with big windows with "glass" pieces. This is a preview of future designs to come. This set, unless I'm missing something in my survey (which is entirely possible) was in production for a long time; it wasn't replaced until 1993. I think this really encapsulates the theme better than prior efforts, in which police stations were little more than houses in black and white that had a car, a motorcycle and a helicopter parked on the roof. This one really felt like a police station.

1993's Central Precinct HQ took a lot of design cues from the older Police Command Base. Featuring again modern architecture, open windows, an actual helipad, and some other notable improvements over the first sets, this was an attractive police station. It also had a major improvement in the vehicle design; the helicopter doesn't look like a tiny little cobbled together design that doesn't even have any room for, say, an engine; it looks like a real helicopter. Kinda. The regular police car (still tiny and roofless) is also joined by not only a motorcycle, but also a 4x4 off road vehicle, so the police can get to those difficult to reach rock-climbing criminals or something. By 1996 the catalog scans lack the titles of the sets, so I can't tell you what this next one is called, but it's an interesting innovation (from now on, I'll just call them all Police Stations.) Similar to 1993's station, this one also has a little pier and a boat attached. The two vehicles are replaced with a single van-like vehicle... so you can now get your SWAT team out there or something, but you're better off not trying to pull over anyone driving very fast. That's what the two motorcycles are for. Interestingly enough, the catalog scan indicates that prisoners can attempt to escape through a hatch at the police boathouse. But they may not want to, since the set also comes with a shark, no doubt hanging around waiting to gobble up any prisoners who make the attempt. By 2003---the next year a police station came out, if I'm correct, catalog images had been vastly improved, no doubt due to the ability of the catalog layout artists to use Photoshop to add backgrounds and other cool things to the set. This police station comes from the World City subtheme; a shortlived attempt to combine European and North American design cues with a slightly futuristic bent. Check out the curved glass on this set, the new and improved prisoner outfit (nobody wears black and white stripes anymore; we're all about orange jumpsuits for prisoners), new colors and shapes and all kinds of specialty pieces, and that futuristic police car. I also like the obvious camera mounted on the station wall. I'm not sure if the City theme replaced the old LEGO Town theme, or if City is in fact a long-lived subtheme within Town (most LEGO websites treat it as such) but when City came out with a police station in 2005, it was happenin'. It's got a dog, a complex lock-up cell, vastly improved vehicle and architectural design, spotlights, and a raised platform to make the station itself much more interesting. This is a busy set, and there's a lot going on. Compare this in particular to the original 1970s sets and look how much the concept has evolved! But this isn't the final word on LEGO police stations; one more recent set came out in 2008 that I'll cover next...

The final police set is, in a way, a harking back to some original design ideas, just modernized. It's not quite as busy, it's not trying to do too much... it feels a little cozier and less ACTION-PACKED! ALL THE TIME! It's even got flowers and shrubs. But... it's a lot improved, too. The cars are pretty slick and realistic (considering), the gate entrances are a nice realistic touch, and the building has a lot going on: the side balcony, the little office, the holding cells, the lookout tower and radar; in fact, this seems almost half a prison instead of just a police station. Anyway, that concludes my tour of the police station history in LEGO, and hopefully makes my broader point more apparent; that the same concept, when it's held forth over time, has been greatly improved upon and is much better done these days then when they started. That's not necessarily surprising, but... it's nice to know that it's true nonetheless.

Blacktron City

Here's some video of a gigantic Blacktron city, taken from a LEGO convention a couple of years ago. Pretty impressive stuff. Adding the Men in Black theme by Danny Elfman was also brilliant.

Blacktron was always my favorite subtheme. Not only was it the first subtheme from the greater Space theme, but it also happened to be one that was a bit more sinister, a bit darker and edgier; these were the first LEGO "bad guys" that I know of. Nobody knew exactly what made them bad, but the fact that the paramilitaristic Space Police line-up had to lock these guys away in those little prison pods, plus their dark, pure black suits, and their nearly black trimmed with yellow like some kind of dark hornet color scheme for their vehicles made them attractive all around. In general, LEGO Space fans tend to be quite fond of the original LEGO space villains.

I'm not sure what all the marching Classic Space minifigs are up to. Are they attacking Blacktron? Are they Blacktron agents getting ready to infiltrate the rest of LEGO Space? Or is Blacktron on friendly terms with them in this scenario, and has invited them to come by via parade? I have no idea.

As an old timey Space fan, I'm also quite jazzed about the Galaxy Commander in variant color schemes at about 1:07 on the video. There's an original Galaxy Commander, but there's also one in Ice Planet colors, one in M:Tron colors, and one in Space Police I colors. All four are excellent.

The only thing that's actually somewhat disappointing it seeing row after row of the same vehicles parked. That's realistic, after a fashion... but somewhat boring.

Space Police III: Gold Heist

I got to check out the set 5971 "Gold Heist" which is the smallish medium sized set of the new Space Police III line-up, retailing for 19.99 U$D. As you can see from the image, it looks great. One thing that I'll say about the newer Space lines (and I suspect this is the influence of having done years and years of Star Wars sets); the design aesthetic has really improved. For comparison, I built my 6897 "Rebel Hunter" and 6984 "Galactic Mediator"; two space ships from the Space Police II line that I own, and they look really clunky and silly in comparison.

The other thing that became apparent shortly upon buying this; it's not a space ship. It looks like one at first glance, but these new Space Policemen don't wear oxygen tanks, or even a fully enclosed helmet, and the engines aren't rockets; they're VTOLs, very similar to the jet engines on some of the City theme airport sets, or other sets that feature jet engines, such as Agents or others. No, rather, this is the proverbial flying car; something equivalent to the speeders in which Anakin and Obiwan chased the bounty hunter in Attack of the Clones. Relative to earlier Space Police themes, this one also has a much more... well, much more "police-ish" look to it; the vehicle is white with black trim, has red and blue sirens, etc. This is kinda in line with the little flash movies that LEGO has put out on their homepage; for one of the sets, the Space Policeman is literally pulling over an alien for running a red light.

Anyway, that's the good. Here's the bad. Stickers. I know, I know; LEGO has fallen in love with stickers. I'm sure that it's cheaper for them than printing on the bricks, which they seem completely unwilling to do anymore. It sure does suck for the consumer though. I will not stop complaining about stickers. They bite. It's a pain to put them on, it's very difficult to get them straight and properly aligned, and they just don't even look nearly as good either. Also; this set lacks "swoopability." It looks like the kind of set that would be tons of fun to pick up and fly around through the air making "swooshing" sounds, but you actually can't do that very well. It's got too many moving parts. The canopy moves all over the place. The jet engines, front and rear, move all over the place. The safe that it's carrying in the arc in the back feels rickety. The little hot rod "space moped" that the alien is flying is tiny and kinda silly. (The alien himself is very cool, with a weird lizard like head and four arms. They did this by creating a very bizarrely cast "head" piece that is actually an additional torso section and head combined, and then has green "battle droid" or "skeleton" arms attached to this head piece. The rest of the body is regular minifig stuff.)

Still; those reservations aside, this is a promising ship, and the line itself is promising as well (for that matter, so was the Mars Mission line that relaunched LEGO Space a couple of years ago.) This bodes well for the future of my beloved Space theme, which I hope to see progress for some time to come.

Interestingly enough, the box refers to a LEGO Space video game for the Nintendo DS, which it says is "Now Available." Even though it's also rated "Rating Pending." Clearly the box art was approved some time ago, and the game has not managed to meet the schedule. Rumors are floating around the internet ever since this Space Police packaging started appearing promising what sounds like a fun video game... which isn't actually available after all. Including that it may be available for the Wii too.

I'm really curious to see this. I wonder if it'll revisit a lot of the other Space subthemes from past years, and even revisit classic favorite sets from the past? Here's hopin'. Since I've got boys who love most of the LEGO games to date (especially the ones done by Traveller's Tales and based on licensed properties; the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman games) if this game is even at all good, I can almost guarantee that we'll get it.