Sets/2012

2012 was the third year of HERO FACTORY sets.

History

This set year has one set wave called "Breakout", and this wave is split into two smaller waves. One for the early half of the year, and the other for the late half. The set wave has eighteen regular sets. The backgrounds in the sets' front art take place in the Hero Factory's Villain Storage Unit's hallway. Nine of the sets are all nine members of the Alpha 1 Team, who are Preston Stormer, William Furno, Daniel Rocka, Jimi Stringer, Dunkan Bulk, Natalie Breez, Mark Surge, Julius Nex, and Nathan Evo, in their new forms, and the other nine are new villains, who are Black Phantom, Jawblade, Splitface, Toxic Reapa, Thornraxx, Speeda Demon, Voltix, Core Hunter, and XT4. Each of the Heroes is paired with one of the villains to fight and capture him using a set of Hero Cuffs, making nine pairs of sets, and since both characters share the same environment in their front set art, which the hallway is leading to. All but three of the sets in general come in foil packs, which replaces canisters and medium-sized set boxes. The other three are large box sets.

The early half of the year has five of the pairs of sets, making ten sets in total. Five of the sets are small, four are medium-sized, and the last one is a large Titan set representing Black Phantom. The small sets are Evo, Toxic Reapa, Jawblade, Surge, and Thornraxx. The medium-sized sets are Furno, Splitface, Breez, and Rocka. Evo fights against Toxic Reapa, Furno fights against Jawblade, Surge fights against Splitface, Breez fights against Thornraxx, and Rocka fights against Black Phantom. Breez and Thornraxx were released in early 2012 in Europe, Australia/New Zealand and Asia, but their release date was held back until summer 2012 in North America for an unknown reason.

The late half of the year has the last four pairs of sets, making eight sets in total. These sets have gold tops rather than silver tops, like the early 2012 sets (their prototype packaging had silver tops). Three of the late 2012 sets are small, three are medium-sized, and two are large sets. The small sets are Nex, XT4, and Stringer. The medium-sized sets are Bulk, Core Hunter, and Voltix. One of the large sets is a Titan set, which is Stormer XL. The other large set is a vehicle set, which depicts Speeda Demon, who is the size of a medium-sized set, and the Nitro Rocket Motorbike, which he is driving. This set is larger than the other two large sets, and is the largest of the sets in the wave. Nex fights XT4, Bulk fights Core Hunter, Stringer fights Voltix, and Stormer XL fights Speeda Demon. Unlike Rocka XL from the summer 2011 set wave, Stormer XL does not have its own normal Breakout counterpart for an unknown reason.

The year also has three promotional small sets, which come in plastic poly-bags, though one of them promoted the late 2011 set wave.

Featured Elements

This set year has newly designed variations of the Meteor Blaster, which are slightly shorter by not having the circular holes next to the axle holes. Like the Meteor Blasters, each of the guns is comprised of two pieces, which are spaced two studs apart and attached to the set by one or two axles. The gun is fired by squeezing the midsection.

Each Hero set has one of the variations of the Meteor Blaster called the Plasma Gun, where its top piece is bulky. Some of the Plasma Guns have additional parts, depending on the Hero set.

Five of the villain sets, Black Phantom, Splitface, Thornraxx, Voltix, and Core Hunter have different variations of the Meteor Blaster, as they have various additional parts. Core Hunter's Meteor Blaster, the Plasma Shooter, looks exactly like the Plasma Gun, but it has a red spike and a bandolier. The other villains' guns have two bottom parts being used to make them.

Each of the Heroes comes with a new set of Hero Cuffs, which look different from the ones in the Television Episodes in 2010 and 2011. The Cuffs are designed to cuff one of the villains. Each set of the Cuffs is made of five pieces. It is where two grabbing pieces are linked by three chain pieces from Bionicle 2001-2010/Generation 1. The Cuffs can be stored on their Hero user's armor by having their grabbing pieces' sides clip onto a black clipping piece on one of the Hero's armor pieces, like how the Barraki from Bionicle's 2007 set year can use their clipping pieces to attach their Sea Squid for storage. However, Bulk can clip his set of Cuffs onto his shoulders rather than having a clipping piece to store the Cuffs. Each of the Heroes can also use his or her hand to grab the Cuffs at one of their ends. The Cuffs work well on all of the villains, but Jawblade and Core Hunter have thick wrists, so it is hard to cuff them.

The small set Heroes and villains are shorter than the medium-sized ones. The small sets are at the size of most 2.0 and 3.0 Heroes from the 2011 set year, but not as tall as 2063 Stormer 2.0 or 2143 Rocka 3.0.

Each of the Heroes has his or her returned 1.0 helmet and head from the 2010 set year, while Evo, Rocka, and Nex got their own 1.0 heads and new 1.0-style helmets. The medium-sized set and large set villains also have 1.0 heads, like six of seven villains from the 2010 set year, and 2192 Drilldozer and 2235 Fire Lord from the early 2011 set wave. The small set villains have different head pieces, and all of them have red eyes in their own ways, like 7147 XPlode from the 2010 set year, and 2193 Jetbug and 2194 Nitroblast from the early 2011 set wave.

Each of the sets in general has a newly designed Hero Core that has a code called a "Hero Code" printed on the back, and the code could be entered to earn game points called "Hero Points" in an online game called Breakout in HeroFactory.com. Each of the Cores has its own amount of points, depending on the size of the set it comes from. Each of the small sets provides the player 200 points for the game. Each of the medium-sized sets provides 300 points. Each of the two following large sets, Black Phantom and Stormer XL, provides 500 points. The Speeda Demon set provides 900 points. All of the Cores are circular and white. The villain sets do not use their Cores in their construction, but it is possible to put the Cores on certain armor parts of these sets for storage.

Each of the non-XL Heroes has a new torso armor piece, which, unlike the 2.0 armor, does not need an under-armor torso piece to connect to the Heroes' torso piece. On both sides of the chest section of the piece where you insert a Hero Core have symmetrical printed pictures.

Each of the sets' instruction manual tells you that you can combine that set and its foe to form a non-canon combination model, which looks like a larger and different version of the villain, using building instructions from HeroFactory.com.

List of Sets

Small

Winter Small Sets

Summer Small Sets

Medium

Winter Medium Sets

Summer Medium Sets

Large

Winter Large Set

6203 Black Phantom

Summer Large Sets

Promotional

Winter Promotional Sets

Summer Promotional Set

5000194 "HERO Factory Weapon Pack"

Commercials

Winter Commercials

Summer Commercials

HERO FACTORY Sets of Mid-2012
Small	6221 Nex \| 6229 XT4 \| 6282 Stringer
Medium	6222 Core Hunter \| 6223 Bulk \| 6283 Voltix
Large	6230 Stormer XL \| 6231 Speeda Demon
see full list