I’ve spent about half an hour now staring at every visible detail of the presumed MASK OF LIGHT villains from the LEGO® Fan Day pics. Here are my thoughts and observations.

First of all, after all the complaints about how the BOHROK are nearly identical, and further complaints about how the BOHROK-KAL are even more of the same, I must say that I’m growing very concerned with the fact that the next wave of baddies is only slightly more different than the BOHROK were. The only parts that are different between the six sets are the weapon tips and the spines on the back. Everything else appears to be identical, not counting the coloration. With the initial release, the TOA had a similar base, but there was a very significant amount of difference between the final constructions. The RAHI were quite varied, and even the TURAGA had some slightly different designs. In the 2002 line, the only truly unique designs were the BOXOR, EXO-TOA, and TOA NUVA.

The next thing of note is that yes, the knees are articulated. However, it should be pointed out that the articulation relies on a part that’s been around for over three years. If you look very closely in the images, you can see that there are TOA hip-joints attached to the back of the thighs, and the knee-balls snap into those. On a similar note, each of these creatures comes with no less than ten hip-joints, all in the primary elemental colors. This is probably going to be one of the biggest selling points for MOC-builders (at least as big as the new leg pieces, if not more), since some of those colors are very hard to find affordably, and this is the first time that brown hip-joints will ever be sold at all. For those pieces alone, I wouldn’t mind having two each of the brown and white ones, and about four of the red ones right now. Of course, the downside to this is that all of the new leg, arm, and torso pieces are only shown in the same dark-grey for each one, and the head, back, and feet are the only new pieces that come in a variety of colors. If the leg pieces get produced in a variety of other colors, I expect they’ll see a boost in MOC-builder interest.

Next up is the attack feature. From what I can see, it appears that if you rotate the pin sticking out of the back, it will cause the upper torso to pivot side to side. This would allow for an attack with a two-handed weapon without requiring sloppy fits on any of the ball joints. This would appear to be a good thing, as they are all wielding two-handed weapons. The downside to this is that the resultant appearance leans a bit towards the stick-figure shape. Based on the shapes seen, part of that might involve the ability to fold up somewhat like the Battle Droids from the Star Wars prequels.

Finally, the large colored humps on the backs seem to be attached in the very back with a #3 plus-rod, but the holes on the colored sections are round. This suggests that the colored humps can flip open somewhat like the BOHROK faceplates.

UPDATE: MoD reader Someguy wrote in to point out that in the photo of the brown creature, you can see inside the MASK of the green creature, and the eyes are nothing like anyone expected them to be. It appears that they are actually just a simple trans-neon orange hip-joint. The upside to this is that the heads should be as posable as the BOHROK VA heads are.