Forecast: Partstorms

Mr. Pony and I were texting each other giddily regarding the new Indiana Jones Lego sets out there, and naturally the discussion fell upon the parts per set ratio. We are both of the school of many smaller parts versus a few larger molded parts. I personally feel that the large molded parts for the most part get in the way of the philosophy of Lego. I think Mr. Pony probably agrees here.
But upon ruminating about this, I came upon a question; "what if the molded parts are smaller, and really cool?" Sure they take the place of five or six individual parts, but what if they fit not only within my design scheme, but aesthetic principles?
Case in point: The new Indiana Jones Lego set I bought yesterday has a basically two-piece motorcycle chassis. I haven't really set aside the time to experiment with it, and will probably have to do that before making any sort of final judgement about the usefulness of the parts, but the parts themselves look hella cool. There's also these single mold skull reliefs for the Mayan Temple set I noticed while looking at the box at Toys-R-Us. Pretty much unusable for much other than a skull relief sculpture, but hey! That's a freaking skull relief sculpture we're talking about!
Discuss!
and now, some pics.
The first pic here is from the recent Exo-Force line, which utilizes the anime stylization to capture the 10-14 demographic quite effectively. I sample this pic because it is a veritable partstorm, and I think despite the tired bugrobot concept has promise. (note the swords being used as rotor blades. interesting) The other two pics are clearly reference to my post.