Between my first 36 packs, I’ve managed to get about 3/4ths of the set of 96. Not too bad considering it takes an absolute minimum of 32 packs to complete the set, and I think I had almost twice the minimum number of KANOHI packs before I got this far. Like Mark, I’ve never pulled two KRANA of the same color from any single pack, though I do remember getting at least one pack with two KRANA of the same shape. I have a feeling that getting three KRANA per pack will make it a lot less expensive to collect a full set, even though there are 24 more KRANA than there were KANOHI.

But enough about the KRANA. I suspect that a number of people will care about these packs only for the fact that they contain gold and silver KANOHI. With my first twelve packs, I didn’t find any AKAKU, and only one silver MIRU, but I did get at least two of everything else. Ironically, I wanted a second silver MIRU to put on WAIRUHA. Someone famous once said that there are only two tragedies in life: Not getting what you want…and getting it. Between the 24 packs that I picked up today, I got nine silver MIRU. I also got enough of every other KANOHI that I now have three complete sets. Between the 24 packs, I also had three with both MIRU, two with both KAUKAU, and one each with both PAKARI or both AKAKU. With the first 12 packs, that means I’ve pulled at least one pack with a matched gold/silver pair of each shape. At this point, I’ve got a full set of twelve in my KANOHI display, I’ve upgraded all six TOA to gold KANOHI, I’ve upgraded AKAMAI to a gold HAU and WAIRUHA to a silver MIRU, I’ve got a complete set in case I ever decide to try painting them for a more mirrorlike finish, and I’ve got another gold HAU for a special project which will be revealed later. Oh, and I’ve also got a box full of 16 gold KANOHI and 23 silver KANOHI that I have no further use for, beyond possibly trading. Have I mentioned how disgusted I am by the prices these things fetch on eBay? Hopefully when the KRANA packs are a bit more common people will stop letting themselves get ripped off.

Regardless, I think it’s great that LEGO® has released the metallic KANOHI, since so many people wanted to see them produced. Like a lot of people I still would have preferred them to have bright mirrorlike finishes. Someone whose name I can’t remember pointed out that they might get scuffed up during shipping, but I just realized that we’ve been seeing coins, crowns, breastplates, swords, tailpipes, and lightsaber hilts that have been vac-metallized and shipped without any noticable scuffing. I could easily have given up one KANOHI per package in exchange for the vac-metallizing treatment on the remaining one, and since the only other contents of the box would be rubber, there wouldn’t have been any concern for scuffing. It also means that by the time you complete your KRANA set, you’d have a significantly smaller pile of extra KANOHI.

As for the KANOHI themselves, I remember hearing some crazy story that the copper HUNA that was released through TRU was made out of a lighter color of plastic than the one released through the European LEGOLAND® parks. Based on what I’ve seen in my KRANA packs, that is completely untrue. I’ve gotten gold KANOHI with a wide variety of translucency, and some, especially amongst the PAKARI, even have a reddish tint to them. The type of plastic used to produce the metallic KANOHI appears to have a suspended pigment instead of a dye pigment, which means that in any given run, the amount of pigment that ends up in each piece can fluctuate quite a bit, and even within a single piece you will get dark bands and patches.