Mixel Madness!!: Series 3 to the MAX

The month is coming to an end, and Mixel Madness is coming to a close, so there's nothing else to do but break the Mixels down and move on...

Wait a minute, that's not right. I did break them down, but I put them right back together... to the MAX!!

So if you're unfamiliar with the Mixel lore, combining three mixels from the same tribe creates a MAX; a giant mixel that has the powers of all three combined. Or they're just building toys, whatever. I've never seen the Mixel shorts so I'm not really sure what they're powers are supposed to be, but I do know about the combinations. Lego has the building instructions for all MAX mixels, as well as ideas on how to combine mixels from different tribes. 

Now you do have to go online for this, and I honestly think Lego dropped the ball here a little. They could have included the MAX instructions with the instructions for regular mixels. It's kinda lame that I have to get online to view/download the MAX instructions, but I suppose it isn't that big a deal. I do like that there is a good amount of unused pieces after the builds are complete. This allows you to change the build if you'd like.

Anyway, let's get on to the official builds and see how they stack up.

Wiztastics MAX

If you've been following my Mixels write-ups, you know that I wasn't too happy with the Wiztastics. I just didn't think there was a lot of playability there, especially when compared to the other sets. Now, the MAX makes up for this, but just barely.

There's a lot going on here, with the wings, the tail, the arms, and the mouth all being on either hinge or ball joints. The glaring problem with this figure is that almost all movement is hindered by another part of the build. Depending on how the wings are positioned, it can prevent the mouth from fully opening or hinder the tail movement. This MAX has four arms, the front two on hinges and the back two on ball joints. The front two work well, but the full range of motion of the back arms are completely hindered by their placement. The wings and front arms actually keep them from moving up and forward. 

I found the tail particularly frustrating. It's attached with one ball joint, and combined with it's wide construction, this hurts how much it can move. I didn't measure it, but it probably has about 130 degree range of motion up and down, and 90 degrees left to right. You can also see that the stinger is attached to the cone via a lightsaber blade. It looks fine, but the cone falls off almost every time it's repositioned. This can easily be fixed by pushing the blade in completely, but I'm reviewing this build as it is designed, and it fails in this regard.

Glorp Corp MAX

Just looking at this guy, my first thought went to Pey'j from Beyond Good and Evil (great game, btw, totally play it if you can). He kinda look like a pig standing upright.

This MAX has a lot going for it. The shoulders, elbows, hips, and ankles are all ball joints, and the mouth and tail are on hinges. It's a squat figure, but there's still a good amount of motion to be found. At least there would be if the "snot" wasn't in the way. Honestly, I see a theme here with the Series 3 MAX Mixels: restricted movement.

And just like the Wiztastic MAX, there's something here that just really hurts the build. The hand/arm piece falls off with almost every movement. And the worst thing is that there are more than enough extra pieces to correct this problem, Lego just decided to leave it be. At least with the Wiztastic MAX you could slightly modify the build to fix it. Here, there's no way to modify it with the pieces used in the build.

I know it seems like I'm hating on this figure, mostly because I really did not like the way the hands turned out, but overall the Glorp Corp MAX is a very middle of the road figure. Not great, but no terrible either. 

Spikels MAX

    

So by this point it's probably obvious that I'm nor caring much for these MAX Mixels, but thankfully the Spikels MAX is a great figure, and my favorite of the three hands down.

As you can see based on the figure's pose, there's a lot of movement here. And most importantly, it's unhindered movement.The shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, ankles, and tail are all ball joints. The mouth, and each finger and thumb are on hinges. Now this MAX is a bit top heavy, but there are enough ball joints on this figure to compensate. And the big feet certainly don't hurt. As a result of all this, there's a huge variety of poses to put this guy in. The figure is also very expressive since each finger moves independently. If you wanna have him giving a thumbs up, or shooting the bird, you can easily do it. There's just a lot going on here, and I can easily see him becoming everyone's favorite. 

The Verdict

Overall, this is the weakest set of MAX figures out of the three series that have been released. But the Spikels MAX may be the best individual figure out of the nine available. So if you had to choose on set, you absolutely can't go wrong with this build. There's a lot to play with here.

With this being said, there's still a lot that can be done with these Mixels. While I'm not one for building my own creations, but if that's what you're in the mood for, there are some great pieces here. And I'm sure you can modify these builds to work better. I can already see places where adjustments could be made, and who knows, I may build and post them sometime.

So keep all this in mind if you're on the fence about breaking down your mixels to construct the MAX figures.