For a blog that was originally called “Legomancer” (and still retains the url) I haven’t talked about actual Lego in a long time. Truth be told, it’s been a while since I treated myself to some Lego.
I was waiting until after Christmas, when big sets usually go on deep clearance, to pick up some goodies, but my search was fruitless. Either the places clearancing toys didn’t have Lego sets or the Legos were at full price. So no big sets for me!
Last night, though, we went to Target, and I picked up a couple of smaller sets. I picked up one of the new Star Wars sets, the V-Wing Fighter, and I also got a smaller Exo-Force set, the Exo-Force Sentry.
This second one is particularly cool. The Exo-Force sets are an attempt by Lego to cash in on the manga/anime craze. Since they can’t do sets of pretty men in romantic situations or schoolgirls being violated by tentacled monsters, they went with giant robots. Crazed looking pilots with insane, colorful hair pilot giant robots to fight other giant robots piloted by…well, smaller robots. I’m not sure why robots build robots to fight robots, but there’s a lot of things I don’t know. That’s just how it is. The set I got features one of these robot minifigs, and it alone is worth the price of admission.
I was a little wary of these sets because they share something in common with the Viking sets which are relatively new: a lot of Bionicle/Technic style pieces in the mix. I’m not a big fan of Bionicles, and have found that these overly mechanical pieces don’t play well with “regular” Legos. But they’re slowly working their way into even the Star Wars sets, so I just need to get used to them. Fortunately, I didn’t see any of these pieces that were too unfriendly. There were no Viking sets at Target, otherwise I would have picked up a small one of those as well, as I really like the Viking minifigs.
The other big Lego news is their newest license:
It’s the goddamn Batman! (Click on that image to see more previews of these sets.) That alone is pretty exciting, but what I find especially interesting is that Batman has done what few others have: brought guns to the Lego world.
For a long time, Lego has had a policy against real-world guns in its set. Even the Star Wars sets use goofy backwards megaphones as laser guns. Most realistic firearms we’ve had until now were rifles and revolvers from Wild West sets. But check out what Batman’s up against:
Here, the Joker models what seems to be a Lego tommy gun. I don’t know if it only fires a flag that says “Bang!” or not. Killer Croc, on the other hand, seems to have some kind of automatic pistol. Lego’s done gone dark and gritty!
With all these cool Lego offerings, it looks like it’s time for that second mortgage!
