Some blocks that are mega

A certain ObstinateBaton8 didn't really believe me when I first told him that the new Halo Megabloks sets have come out.  There's some pretty neat stuff, including human vehicles that are reverse engineered from alien tech and a whole bunch of new figure and weapon sculpts.  While wandering around Target this evening, I found a bunch of the new sets.  It was quite surprising because Target never seems to want to put new stock out.  There must be a reset coming up, because GI Joes appear to have been completely removed.  No pegs for them at all.  Which of course continues the curse of never being able to find the later assortments from a movie line.  Naturally those are usually the assortments that have the best figures, in this case, Data Viper, Night Viper (a personal favorite), Ultimate Duke, Flint, and Cobra Commander, and a new Crimson Guard.  Figures that would happen.  Word was that we'd see the new assortments now to promote the DVD, but it looks like only TRU may be getting them.

Anyway, I'm ranting and getting a bit off topic.  Halo!  While the McFarlane line seems to have disappeared completely (they weren't even at SDCC), Megabloks continues their line.  Some new vehicles found tonight, new Pelican Gunship, Hornet vs. Vampire set, Last Man Standing (halo 3 zombie mode) which had a number of glow in the dark figures including a Recon Spartan, green energy swords, and a blue Security Spartan, the 3 Armory/EVA Booster sets, the UNSC Attack VTOL, and all four Cyclops mecha.  The Pelican and Hornet both have lights and sounds.  The soundbox seems to be located at the cockpit, which looked very detailed and the nose guns on both craft lit up.  The Pelican has completely new figures including Sarah Palmer (not named though, it refers to her as a generic Scout Spartan, much as they did with the Noble Team figures), the FOTUS armor, which was only available if you preordered Halo 4, and some other type as well.  This set also included a completely new Battle Wagon Class Promethan Knight construct.  That figure had a bunch of clear orange spikes on his back and unlike the other Promethean Knights, this one had its mask opened exposing the skull of the person embedded inside it.  Pretty cool.  The Hornet set had a bunch of new armors for the Spartans and completely new figures for the Covenant figures included as well.  The Covenant in that set were a Storm Elite, an Elite Zealot (mold isn't entirely new, but the colors were), and there was a new Storm Grunt included as well.  The only other set with a completely new figure that they had was the Attack VTOL which includes a Halo 4 styled Jackal with a new style beam rifle.  Haven't seen it yet, but there's a Treadbike with a brand new Spartan design from Halo 4 as well as two new Armory sets, one with a Watcher and it's beam shield and there's some new Collector's Set multipacks.  Apparently there's also a new Gauss Warthog with lights and sounds and a Promethean Knight and there's some kind of siege truck with a railgun that can unfold a bunch of supports to become a stationary turret.  Haven't seen either of those yet either.

So, what did I get?

Why, I grabbed the Arctic Cyclops!  I'll admit, I have a thing for environment specific stuff, especially snow themed sets.  This one really appealed to me.  Partly because it's Arctic themed, and partly because this one and the Black-Ops one both include weapons that the Cyclops never used in the games.  The Black-Ops one gets dual shoulder mounted gatling guns while this one gets an arm mounted flame thrower!  I love it!  You can also kind of see my desert one in the background, but that one's boring since its only weapon is the game accurate pile driver.

I also picked up one of the Armory sets that's can be combined into the EVA Booster Frame.  These are kind of neat.  There's three sets, 2 human, 1 Forerunner.  Whereas the traditional Armory sets include a bunch of nicely painted weapons and a fairly basic looking figure, these sets include only two unpainted weapons (though mostly all new sculpts) with well painted figures.  Unlike the regular Armory sets, they also serve a double purpose.  While they make good looking scenery, once you get all three, you can combine them into a funky little one-man space fighter thing.  I have no pics, but it totally looks like it belongs in a top-down shooter video game.  The one I picked up is the Forerunner Terminal, which includes an Alpha Crawler.  Of the 3 sets, the Alpha Crawler is the only completely new figure.  The other sets have either a Halo 4 style Marine medic, whose mold has been used a few times now or a teal Halo 3 style EVA Spartan, who has been seen numerous times now.  The set includes two totally new weapons as well, the Suppressor and the Scattershot.

 Halo 4 Chief models the new Scattershot

And the Suppressor.  One nice thing about the Suppressor is that it has a hand grip on the bottom.  He's actually somewhat gripping that two-handed, which is hard to do with these figures.  The Suppressor is a bit on the large side, but I can forgive it.  Both weapons have a funky little peg on their left side, but aren't visible in these pics.  They're a little too short to plug into the figure's back.  What they're for, is that you can mount these weapons onto the right arm of a Promethean Knight.  Pretty neat.

Here's a blurry picture of the terminal itself.  It doesn't look like much of anything other than some tech-y scatter scenery.  I do like the clear orange on it though.  It reminds me of the old Ice Planet Lego sets.  There are some clear pieces utilized on the terminal to give it the impression that the parts are floating, which is a neat little touch and fairly true to the game.  Those clips on the sides of the terminal are for mounting the included weapons.

Here's the figure that came in the set, the Alpha Crawler.  These guys act as squad leaders in Crawler packs.  They're generally going to be the ones you'll want to take down first, but, once you actually spot him, then you're probably already getting swarmed by the little bastards.  He's nearly the size of a regular Spartan figure, so he's actually pretty decently sized.  I think the base body has been used once so far in the Cauldron Clash playset, but that was a standard Crawler and I believe this one has a new back piece, which has the clear orange spikes and a new head, which also has clear orange in it.  With those new parts, that technically makes this a brand new figure.  The figure actually has a fair number of little minute paint apps detailing the light glowing underneath the armor.  Oddly enough, the back plate with the spikes can actually fit onto a regular figure.

I wouldn't mind getting the other two sets, but that's going to have to wait for a while.

Oh yeah, apparently continuing Target's multiplayer themed exclusives, like the Last Man Standing set, there will be some vehicles.  In this case, there'll be a blue UNSC Rocket Warthog with a Halo Reach styled Aerial Assault Spartan and a Reach styled Mk. Vb Spartan, both in blue and silver.  There'll also be a set with a Banshee.  It looks like it's blue in the pics, but it's hard to tell.  It's either blue or a blueish purple.  Either way, it comes with a blue Elite Pilot and a blue Elite Ultra from Reach as well.  Not terribly exciting sets, but hopefully there'll be more and they'll be easier to find than the previous multiplayer arctic Wharthog (though that was just the previous arctic Warthog repackaged).