I have just learned for the first time today that the set designer for Tarix meant for his blades to be able to combine into a "shield," so the golden parts coming down of the backs of the blades are very slightly angled to allow them to overlap each other without making contact. How did this never make it into anything?
The reason is believed to be that, essentially, the weird blade pieces have 2 variations. One where the hand gaurd goes down on the left, and ones where it goes down on the right. BUT, somehow these both have the same ID number when molded. So as a result there was no way to determing if sets had two of the right ones, two of the left ones or, and the one that would make it impossible to turn into a shield, one left and one right.
I actually tested this with mine and i ended up with one that had bith varients. So the belief is because of this issue, they needed to change the set last moment, hence why his weapons are a bit shit compared to other glatorians.
I did read that, yeah. There were never supposed to be two variations, it was only supposed to be one mold so the parts would always be able to overlap without issue, but there was some miscommunication and mirrored versions were made too.
I'm just surprised that LEGO a) caught this as early as they seem to have done, given that they never advertised this intended feature anywhere, and b) instead of just fixing the mistake, they chose to leave it as is and just never acknowledge that the pieces were meant to be able to combine. What a series of weird choices.
Also, I got the impression that the shield was an alternate way for Tarix to use his weapons, but the weird short glaive style swords were still the default, but I could be wrong about that. The golden parts curving to the side to let each other pass is such a neat revelation to me, but I did always wonder why they came down in the back at all, and thus necessitated being put up on those axles to be held facing forward.
