Furry Frenemies
Recently I got ahold of a first for my collection- some Lego Chima sets! It may seem odd to start off a Bionicle blog with an entirely different line, but I plan to cover sets from all over the world of Constraction, and I felt this would be a fun place to start. Mini-review under the cut:
I'd like to start off by clarifying that, like Hero Factory, I never owned any Chima sets in my late adolescence, when these sets came out. I don't have any nostalgia for Chima, so any posts about them will be my candid opinions.
With that being said, these sets rule! They look great individually, and even better in a group. CCBS had a bit of an awkward start, which I will absolutely be exploring as I go into Hero Factory, but the Chima ultrabuilds are the real deal. They look good from just about every angle. The exposed bones behind the legs (a problem that haunted CCBS from beginning to end) are rather unsightly, but I appreciate the extra back armor.
Cragger got especially good treatment, wirh extra neck bones to give him a longer torso, with an extra torso plate for coverage no less! I love how the plates are angled such that they invoke spines when viewed from the side. It's a very unconventional way to take advantage of the shape of the torso part, and really makes him stand out!
Of course, one of the most important strengths of the models is the variability of their parts. They are lego sets, after all. Not a fan of Cragger's staff? Break it apart and you've got a cutlass and a spear, no extra parts needed. I'm surprised these parts don't make it into more MOCs, they're pretty good looking.
The printed parts aren't half bad either. It would have been easy to just make a handful of "Good guy" chestplates and a handful of "Bad guy" chestplates given how similar they look, so I appreciate the extra effort to give every single figures chestplate some personality, a detail that would be dropped for the later wave's gimmick.
The build under the armor isn't anything unusual. Laval and Worriz use the same generic anthropomorphic build any Hero Factory fan would be all-too familiar with, but it's plenty serviceable. The biggest weakness of the sets IMO is the head pieces, which are a bit of a mixed bag. Laval's head in particular looks atrocious from behind, frankly. Props to Cragger's articulated jaw, though! Our two shield-bearers can use the slots on their backs as storage, which is great to have! I'm big on built-in holsters.
All in all, Cragger, Worriz, and Laval have been a great first taste of Chima! It's kind of a shame the way their parts look a bit more kiddie-toyish compared to the prototypes, but beyond that, these sets really excelled at what Hero Factory's 2.0 wave was trying to accomplish. It's a great example of what the designers were capable of with a few years of experience and a bigger budget.
Having watched a couple episodes of the Chima show (which was very much not for me), it's almost hard to believe these are the same guys playing hide-and-seek and whining about doing chores.
Tune in next time for my first impressions of Eris, Razar, and Gorzan!