LEGO Gimmicks Done Right 

I feel like nexo knights gimmick of splitting off smaller vehicles is really underrated and is one of the reasons it's my favourite theme

This is the most underrated LEGO RU-vid channel - I’m certain of that. 👏

I had an X-Pod or two, and while I don't remember the set itself, the fact that it came with an interesting large piece that fit well with System made the tops into well-used pieces of my collection. In general that's the beauty of Creator-associated sets. They were often anywhere from medium to tiny sets that usually didn't obey any particular scale, and by not being a particular flashy franchise or theme you were much more encouraged to take them apart and try your own builds.

I love the general design language of this generation of Lego. It feels very warm to me. It's hard to describe and maybe one day I can actually put it into worlds but this will always be what Lego should look like to me.

As a kid I used the pods to make the "velocipod" vehicle from the incredibles. This was many many years before an actual incredibles lego set existed. Made the first level from the PS2 game

The thumbnail alone brought back memories I thought were long forgotten, I don't entirely remember what the set was, but I still have pieces of its container, the lower dish of the orange pod

I'm liking because of a single mention of Gogo's Crazy Bons

These pods lives on in some of the Friends DJ pods and Vidiyo boxes.

4:17 fun fact, they did make specialized belt loops with a carabiner on the end to attach X-Pods with velcro onto a belt. Source: I own one. Bricklink should also have them in Gear.

I remember those! I think I had all four of them, and I remember keeping the parts in their respective containers to keep as little limited-part building challenges. Honestly, as an adult, that sounds more appealing than ever, given just how involved it seems to go to my sorted parts bins and build something. Excellent video!

I Have to Blame a slug (not really) but to appreciate your dedication, even though you are considered a tiny channel, so welcome to the crew.

I remember X-Pods because the 2006 wave all had a suggested configuration on each of their boxes that resembled the ship from Galidor, which was a line that I loved when I was younger and I thought that it was really neat that they were "referencing" that line even though the designers were probably just making a build that used the pod in some way.

I had a few of the second wave of x-pods that came out in 2006, and I remember having a lot of fun making new builds with all the pieces.

5:24 thanks for reminding me of those

I love love loveeeee how you always go back to Lego nostalgia 🤗

Oh god, the memories rushing back... The lit and base of the X-Pods can be combined, which happened to be the first saucer section of the first enterprise I ever built (just using the blue and yellow X-Pods), sparking my live long _compulsive obsession_ of using _every_ round, flat lego piece possible as the basis for a NCC-1701 AND pushing me down the Star Trek pipeline, by making me look up the proportions of that god damn beautiful ship. X-Pods, YOU did this to me! Just because it was so frikkin obvious what to build with it, I have to endure life as an obsessive Trekkie and Lego freak. Thanks a lot! (other issues might also be at fault tho)

I used those covers as shields for my bionicles lol good times.

Finally another human being has talked about the X-Pod. The purple, green, and red ones (not clear, but various transparent colors) were some of the first sets I ever got.

I remember always wanting those X-Pods as a kid. I might look through ebay just for the nostalgia

I remember having the Yellow pod and i went around all my pieces and kept adding more and more pieces to the pod and making the vehicle bigger and cooler! It certainly did unlock and capture my creativity! I had no idea those were belt loops!! :o

I had all of these! You could make so many things with these, and the combiner models were great. Back when Lego sets were actually affordable for kids...

I remember having an Xpod as a kid

a million years ago they did a set of hockey players, with a simple mechanism to shoot a puck. My mum still has our complete set at home

I had some of the second generation of these, I still have the containers! I used to use them to store paper clips and stuff on my desk as a little organizer system.

I was a big fan of x pods as a kid. I managed to collect all of the first 2 generations of them, skipping the third generation, maybe because it felt redundant, or maybe because of a lack of compatability with the x pod playoffs game (idk if that was the case). The 2nd generation actually came out in 2005, and included the dragon pod, aqua pod, monster pod, and arachno pod. That's one year before the 2006 "reboot" of the original 2004 line, which had all the same pod themes minus swapping the dino pod for the wild pod. I think the 2nd gen of pods did a great job upping the ante. At that age those themes felt cooler and the builds were just a bit more detailed. Some of their abilities in the playoffs game were pretty powerful too. Monster pod had a passive "scare" ability that could disable enemy units on the board, and if you "deconstructed" those units to their lowest level, you could prevent your opponent from rebuilding their most powerful units. Arachno pod had a web ability but you had to choose between that and an attack. However, they had much better board coverage with their much better movement, being able to jump over obstacles. Web might have been 2 range too, icr. I had one board I got free in the Lego magazine and I printed out a few more from lego's website. I don't know if any of mine are custom but you could build a custom board if you wanted (so if your friend only has the auto pod, he wouldn't want to play on a board that has a barrier going across it lol). It was a fun little game! Good rabbit hole to explore.

Dude those pods bring back crazy memories

These little guys are awesome, thanks for the share

I used to have these, now they are in a storage box in the attic.

I loved these little guys! The pods were so well designed, even years a after losing most pieces and all but one of the pods, I could entertain myself by latching and unlatching the top and bottom pieces, it was so smooth and had such a satisfying click into place. Made for good shields for Bionicle Mocs too, a gimmick is at its best when it doesn’t only work with the thing it was sold with

OMG I LOVED THESE SO MUCH AS A KID

The X-Pods board game edition more or less locked me in as a LEGO fan for the rest of my life. I remember spending hours trying to make nifty combinations of the 5 sets to create a giant robot, it was little me’s biggest accomplishment early on.

I used to have that green robot! :D I took him with me everywhere.

There was also instruction cards for the second wave for that play off game. Remember printing them put years ago and making little cards that matched the included ones. Really miss that era of Lego, it's true that they still do the 3 in 1 which is great and all, but idk... there was something kinda magical about a little portable fidget toy with lego inside that could be built 1000 different ways, and had its own storage case to carry it around to boot.

My god, I haven't thought about Lego X-Pods in almost 20 years. I swear I've still got one or two of mine kicking around somewhere.

X-pods were great because for the time, along with matorans, were cheap enough to get them with a kid's allowance.

Popping toys and fidget spinners into NINJAGO was a perfect transition hehehehe

Thanks for making it. I always loved these guys!

I feel like that the concept of the X-Pods being able to _mix_ with other X-Pod sets also might’ve paved the way for the Lego Mixels series of Lego sets, where in that series of sets, you could *mix* different Mixels with each other, whether it’ll be a mix of two Mixels from the same tribe, two, or three different Mixels from different tribes, or three from the same tribe to make a max. These mixes could also make a “murp,” which are failed mixes that don’t go well. Even they come in small pouches for each individual Mixel, some including Nixels that could form different body segments of the King Nixel, or other props, such as snacks, or even a Cubit. (In which the Mixels use to mix, or max in the Lego Mixel tv series that aired a long time ago.)

I remember owning the red X pod in particular. It reminded me of the Cannister lids for the Toa Metru in Bionicle, which formed the Matoran pods that were an integral part of that year's storyline. I wss more prone to keep those plastic containers than I am to keep regular LEGO cardboard boxes.

This is great! Very RR Sluggerish in the best way possible!

I remember those. I had the 4416 white Robo Pod with clear blue for the main body.

I use these pods to hold screws whenever I'm taking apart something (typically an electronic of some sort), and then i don't have to worry about losing the screws before i meed to reinstall them

Loved the hell out of these

I have the robo pod and I still love it! I had no idea what it was for the longest time.

3:56 since I was a kid there has always been a gray lid of some sort lingering around my house, I just realize it's that exact one from this minute and I also recognize the pieces shown on the right corner

The xpods refired neurons in my brain that i thought didnt exist anymore. Holy nostalgia.

good lord those x-pods gave me a wave of nostalgia, I'm pretty sure I owned the yellow and green one... gods now I want to find that or buy a new set

I used to have the dino pod as a kid, I might get the auto pod just because of the cool storage option

X-Pods!!!!! Some of my earliest Lego memories

To this day, X-Pods still are the one and only sets I still truly like. They had a board game, they had a theme and just enough parts to really make numerous things based on it, they were portable and easy to put away like tiny toyboxes, and just generally were the ones I Thought were the best. I wish they'd do a re-release, but I'm happy that as an adult, I was able to go back and buy them all and keep my own small collection. My only beef was that the boomerang joints basically were super weak and would eventually bust. Same with the hinge joints. If it weren't for that? I'd just call them perfect.

I think I only had one or two of the clear pods, but I had the entire set of the pods with the translucent colored pods. I loved these things! My favorite was the purple pod, because at the time I had hardly any purple Lego parts. In fact, I think purple might have just been a rare color in general at the time.

This video highlights what big company's do to everything and i loved lego as a kid your so right mate

LOVED the video and I LOVED the X-POD LOVE!!! They were such fun in my childhood with my brother.

Xpods did well enough to even get a second wave. for a total of 8 I believe. wave 2 was bugs, monsters, dinos, and ocean themes if memory serves.

Man I love xpods, I distinctly tried my hardest to buy these after getting back into lego. Did not know there were more colors then the red, yellow, blue and green. I might try to find these as well. This also explains why I like creator sets as well. Awesome video, thanks for making it and have a nice day ^^

those ninjago balls look like the bionicle zamor spheres from the piraka/inika line

I have a fond memory of the XPods. I got all 4 orginal ones from an Argos that was late open on the december of a year they came out, after just leaving a pantomime I can't remember much of that now, but i wish i still kept the parts all together

I had one of those racing or racer sets where the box could be opened and became part of the road. That was cool!

I played that game. I have to go back and see if it was as great as I remember, but none the less the pods were awesome

came for the slug, stayed for the pods. If i recall i had the green one, the yellow, and maybe the black one somehow. I think i used the 'pod' pieces at one point as an observation tower. might actually see if I can get the black pod and do that but properly this time on a much more proffessional build...

I had the green and yellow pods. they were fun

I knew I didn't keep up with Ninjago but a TTRPG was not where I expected the series to go.

so much demographic overlap. this channel feels like home. red pod was by far my fav. one line i enjoyed many gimmicks is harry potter. moving stairs, that heatsensitive card from the first hogwarts, double side printed heads!, lenticular cards as integrated backdrops(i think cardbord was used before in other themes but im not sure, studio hat those paper backdrops), turning most of the sets from a line into one giant building, a series of brickbuild books, graveyards as the main setfocus and probably some more even if some werent that novel. harry potter is also just a castle theme btw

Man I remember those pods, I had one that was lime green in color and I believe it came with a small dinosaur. I think I tried turning the pod itself into a ufo.

I wish lego just made a classic theme using old molds and prints.

I remember menl and my friends running an axel through the empty X-pods and then rolling them at high speed against eachother along the corridors at school during lunchbreak - excellent fun

Thank you algorithm

I thought that I never saw them, but then I checked all sets, and find out that 4416 was made as generic enemy for lego universe. It's corrupted security robot that you can destroy and rebuild into turret to kill nearby darklings. Cool stuff for 2010 mmo. And spinners wasn't main thing for a long time actually. There was cool ninjago game in 2011, then they ruined it in 2012, then nothing for few years, tyen there was flyers, crashing wheels, and non functional new spinners that looked like from show. Also, spinners card game in 2011 wasn't bad. I mean, you could use card to raise yourself up so opponent need to raise their minifig's hand that will slow their spinning down, or steal opponent's spinner on what they used shield, or you could use shuriken card like actual shuriken, and if you're knock down opponents minifig with it(I tried it, it's hard), then you'll actually win. Also there is card to use 2 weapons at once, or card to combine any piece(not particularly your weapon) to create wunderwaffe for 1 round. With creativity and obvious things, like, you can't use two weapons if your skeleton doesn't have second hand that you previously removed to not sacrifice weapon.

Wish X-pods stuck around a bit longer

congrats on 1k subs :)

I wanted that green X-pod so bad as a kid after seeing it in the Lego Magazine. I would go to the Walmart in may area any chance i could with my mom to look for it, but those sets were NEVER on the shelf and sadly had to let it go. I recall a similar build set that included with robots that looked similar to the green X-pod one but I sadly missed out on that set as well.

I remember a container that was on the thumbnail from I don’t remember when.

I love the X-pods. I unfortunately only got one, it was the 2nd gen Purple Monster Pod one. I still use it to this day for keeping D&D minis in

I had, and loved the Green one, i remember i made that robot yo have 4 arms and a little bigger

I got an box of these on eBay that has a black pod that was a copy of green. It even came with a game you play with them.

2:20 around the release of The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017), there were official LEGO Ninjago fidget spinners from LEGOLand, as cataloged on Bricklink.

I loved the X Pods as a kid, I really want to find some soon online!

I quite like the Ninjago spinners game (especially the 2012 version) every now and then I get another pack (always with the cards included) so I can one day have the complete set

I used to have a bunch of those pods. I thought they could be used for something cool but I didn't have a use for them so I sold them... I've never had so much interest in an item.

Check out the RoboRiders combination models. They use the large canister lids as shields and wheels. Really cool and reminds me of the pods.

I used to have those XPods too, except the red one was trans-neon orange instead of clear.

The green robo pod is very similar to the robo Platoon robots

I had the entirety of the first two waves of X-Pods, minus the board game exclusive Black Robo Pod. Even though I was a Bionicle kid, I still remember the decline of creativity you mentioned. Combo and alt builds were a big part of Bionicle’s history, even having a role in the original 2001 story arc. Every line had a good number of combos and alts, even if they didn’t appear in the story. But during 2006, these combos and alts dramatically decreased (likely due to the large rubber pieces used by the 12 canister sets of that year, which are hard to build around). After that, the number of combos and alts was on a steady decline until the end, which only had one cobbled together monstrosity that didn’t make any sense. I think that 2006 era was when the company stopped making a building system and started making model kits that could be played with. And that’s honestly a detriment to the company.

This is channel ROCKS! 🤟

When Lego made gachapon.

BOY you better take back what you said about the Bionicle Zamor Sphere pieces.

Nice Video Mister Boggle Rocket. I had the Blue and Yellow X-Pod Things. It was just cool. No Trademarks like Star Wars or Disney. Just Fun with Lego Parts.

Such a great video I could look away! I wish your channel growth and engagement. All the best buddy. 🙏🏽☺️

Great video! I had only heard of X-Pods fairly recently, but never knew they were this cool! Did you know that the top and bottom parts of the white pod appeared in the Star Wars set 7666 Hoth Rebel Base, as part of a laser turret? In fact, their inclusion in that set was how I learned of X-Pods' existence in the first place!

I never understood why they went away from the original spinner from Ninjago, like the original worked really well, at most they could've just replaced the bottom price with a specialized price to stop from grinding the Lego pieces down

Cool vid! I think it would have been great if you covered more gimmicks, like lego 7690 that had that cool air system, lego racers with the pull-back motors (compared to the heavily specialized new motorcycles of the stuntz or however that series is called), lego 60243 (the one w magnets). Great channel btw

lego ninjago 2011 and 2012 spinners were sooo much better than the pods

there was a second wave??? ah the fomo 😭

I think you got the exact issue but the wrong point. Or maybe the other way around. Where the problem is less that the gimmick is "one-note" but that the builds are. The X-Pods and all the sets with alternate builds shown off were intended to be taken apart and rebuilt in any way that your imagination led. 3-in-1 is still fewer alternate builds than would even be found in a Star Wars set, and there's no suggestion of even attempting to reuse parts or gimmicks in different ways with newer sets. This has been a growing issue in Lego for years and is almost exemplified in them expanding so largely into adult-oriented display pieces, but permeates even into the small $10 sets. A part of this issue is the part count - With increased detail using smaller pieces, the part count has increased tenfold, so set designers and children are less inclined to rebuild and reimagine the sets, as it would take much more time to de- and reconstruct the toys. For example, the Wild Pod has only 44 parts, while Kai's Dragon Power Spinjitsu Flip has 67 (according to Bricklink), which is half again as many. There also is the issue of the much increased number of sets being produced each year. Bricklink lists only 454 sets released in 2004, while 2023 had 791(!) which again is time spent by set designers creating more and newer sets for themes and waves, time that previously likely was dedicated to designing those alternate builds to help spark buyers' imaginations. Why spend time rebuilding one set when you can be making another one to produce? Sorta made my own mini-essay in the comments, sorry!

I got every one of those pods and made them into medabots lol

I had the monster pod

Lego World Builder was awesome

I think xpod's would sell today as a part of the creator 3 in 1 set both as individual sets and maybe as they are so "small and afordable" as a complet gift set asuming they were done right of course.

New subscriber here! ✨ This video popped up in my recommendations and I'm surprised to see it's from a fellow small LEGO RU-vidr! ❤ TIL about these X-pods, I can't believe I never heard of them before!

I wanted the green one for the robot but i was a kid and couldn't really afford it.