I went to the London Toy Fair today specifically to visit the LEGO stand. The event is the first on the international toy fair calendar and as usual LEGO has one of the biggest stands there. Also, as usual, it is shrouded in secrecy and admission is by invitation only which is unlike most of the other stands there. Because of this photography is not permitted, so you'll have to wait for pictures from the New York toy fair in February to see anything new.
However, I can tell you something about what was on display, and perhaps as importantly, what wasn't.
A lot of space was devoted to HERO FACTORY, and as well as the six good guys we have pictures of, the baddies were on display as well. To the untrained eye the range looks pretty much the same as Bionicle: certainly some of the pieces in the sets are Bionicle pieces but there are also a lot of new pieces. To me, they didn't look quite as good 'in the flesh' as I was expecting because the images we have seen of them make them look slightly metallic but in reality they are just normal plastic.
The City Trains look absolutely fantastic and a return to old-school train sets made from real pieces instead of large ill-fitting ones.
The three summer Atlantis sets look interesting: there's another creature, a lobster I think, an underwater base and the 'portal of Atlantis'. The pictures shown elsewhere of these are only a small part of them.
The Toy Story 3 sets were shrouded in even more secrecy than the rest of the exhibits: their shelf had a hinged lid and only the very priveleged were allowed to see them. I caught a glimpse and I liked what I saw...
It looks like being a great year for Technic with four sets due in August including a motorised excavator with 4 motors and 4 linear actuators, and a mobile crane.
The summer Star Wars sets looked to be a bit of a mixed bunch with Emperor Palpatine's shuttle looking a bit of a mess in a hotch-potch of colours. However the minfigs are incredible: General Grievious has a new body, Cad Bane has a teriffic hat, and Bossk a nice head :-)
The five Prince of Persia sets, to be released in April, all looked pretty good although the animals and some other parts were stil prototypes so it was difficult to tell how cool they are going to be.
I was pleased to see that most of the Harry Potter sets were on display and as I speculated The Burrows is indeed a very cool set. Ginny Weasley has a new hairpiece which is fabulous and makes her just like she does in the films. In fact there were a lot of new minifigs: somewhere around 20-25, including Dobby with a flesh head. However I am disappointed to report that Hogwarts Express does NOT use the new train wheels and looks just as bad as the last one which really is a shame.
So, what wasn't on display: Bionicle, no surprise there, but also Kingdoms, the new Castle subtheme. This suggests that they will be sold only through LEGOshop.com and the brand stores.
Last but certainly not least, the collectable minifigs were on display: both series one and two. They are just so awesome and series two has just as many very cool figs as series one. Nearly every one features something unique be it a printed torso or an accessory which hasn't been available before and (I'm told) won't be used elsewhere. I learned some other facts about them: They will cost £1.99 in the UK. The yellow outer box will contain 60 minifigs. Some will be rarer than others. They won't be available in newsagents like WHS but from normal stockists. Series one will be out around May and series two in September-ish, so that gives us a reasonable time to collect them all. You can't really tell what's in the bag by feeling them as they are quite stiff. And, as the title of this article suggests, the cheerleader has a nice pair of pom-poms :-)
Feel free to ask any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer them.
