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What's so great about the Toa Mata?


Irrie

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First of all, I'd like to state that I'm not posting this just to make you guys angry. I'm trying to ask an actual question. 

 

So, why do people like the Toa Mata so much? I don't have a problem with them storywise, but they aren't really good sets. They don't have elbows, nor do they have knees or a movable neck. The gear function of them sometimes makes their limbs really loose, and their masks are not very firmly positioned on their faces, when compared to the Metru head mold. In reality, they're less poseable than the Bionicle Stars since they have fixed necks. 

If that's the case, why are they such a big deal? It may just be because I'm an ignorant guy who joined the fanbase in '07, and I am thus lacking the nostalgia to appreciate them, but if there's something else I would like to know. 

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They were the first Toa, and they set people's expectations for all Toa going forward. Nobody would expect the Toa Mata to live up to the expectations set by later Toa sets; however, anyone would expect later Toa sets to live up to or surpass the expectations set by the Toa Mata.

 

The Toa Mata definitely also had some advantages of their own that set them apart from a lot of later Toa. They were cheap, they had very bright colors, and their mask designs were simple and iconic.

 

If they were to be released as sets today, then obviously they wouldn't measure up to people's expectations. After all, Hero Factory has offered sets with roughly the same price as the Toa Mata (after adjusting for inflation) but with greater articulation, fewer specialized parts, and more complex tools and equipment.

 

But the Toa Mata were still great sets for their time, with much more lifelike and relatable designs than the Slizer and Roborider sets that preceded them, dynamic action features, and exciting mask designs. They were the foundation that the rest of the BIONICLE theme was built on, so they deserve some admiration even if later sets surpassed them in many respects.

Edited by Aanchir
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One word: nostalgia.

 

Even with all the pros that Aanchir has listed, it's nostalgia that makes people like them the most. Look at the new HF sets and some of them have really cool designs, parts, colors and all of that, but they're not iconic and don't have that nostalgic feel or mystery connected to them. When people look at the toa mata, they connect, because they have all of that jazz.

 

This is not to say nostalgia is the only thing that makes them good, but it's the main thing people notice/think about when they see them.

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Whilst there's undeniably some nostalgia in the Mata's reputation, I still think many aspects about them are objectively strong. Their bold colour schemes, simple but recognisable equipment and mask designs are at least as good as most canister sets that followed.

 

 

 

They don't have elbows, nor do they have knees or a movable neck.

 

Nor did the Slizers before them, or the Bohrok after them. Those features just didn't exist in constraction's early years; it's not a fault of the Toa Mata in particular.

 

 

 

their masks are not very firmly positioned on their faces, when compared to the Metru head mold

 

This derived from the role masks played at the beginning of Bionicle. The Toa's first task was to collect an array of masks scattered across the island, and battles often involved masks being dislodged and disabling their wearer. So masks were coming and going from characters' faces, and the ease with which they could be removed from sets was meant to reflect this.

 

The role of masks in the following years shifted away from the many to just one, that played an important or even crucial role in a certain part of the storyline. These were the Avohkii in 2003 (specifically within the movie), the Vahi in the Metru Nui flashback, and the Ignika in the 'Ignition' section that began in 2006. Whilst most characters still had their own masks to use, they weren't losing them or gaining others often (if at all), and the much firmer attachment of later masks to faces in sets reflects this.

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This derived from the role masks played at the beginning of Bionicle. The Toa's first task was to collect an array of masks scattered across the island, and battles often involved masks being dislodged and disabling their wearer. So masks were coming and going from characters' faces, and the ease with which they could be removed from sets was meant to reflect this.

Not just that. Even just in terms of the sets, there was a heavy emphasis on competitive play towards the beginning. This was especially evident in the Rahi, which specifically came in pairs and were designed to be able to fight each other much like the LEGO Technic Competition/Cyber-Slam theme that came before them. But likewise the Toa's swinging-arm functions were designed so they would be able to knock the masks off of other sets, and the masks were designed so they could be knocked off easily by the other sets' functions.

 

This competitive play continued to a lesser extent in 2002 (Cahdok and Gahdok had removable sections in their chests that could be grabbed and removed to disable their action features, the Bohrok's eyes could be struck to eject their Krana, and of course the Toa Nuva had similar mask and gear functions to the Toa Mata), but for the most part they were gone by 2003, so it was no problem to give sturdier masks for Makuta, Takanuva, and all other Toa going forward. What had been a benefit to competitive action play was a disadvantage in character-driven role-play, in which you didn't want the masks coming off unless the story you were telling called for them to be removed, something you could just as easily do by hand.

Edited by Aanchir
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they had the best masks. and of cource nostalgia

Nostalgia is not a reason for something to be good.

 

 

But it is often why they are regarded as good. The reasons why they're good have been mentioned, but people usually just pay attention to the nostalgic feeling they get from the sets.

Edited by Banana Gunz
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As sets, I wouldn't say that the Toa Mata were the best sets ever.  But they did sooo many things right.  And given that they were the first sets out there, they really cemented the concept.  If other designs like the Rahkshi and Metru and Inika hadn't improved mobility with necks and legs and elbows, then Bionicle would not have continued for as long as it has.  So while nostalgia is a factor, you also have to give them fair credit for starting the ball rolling.  (I guess you could also give that credit to the Slizers, but the Toa Mata were more successful.)

 

What they had going for them: color.  Not just a good selection of bright colors, but colors that complimented each other.  Red and orange.  Blue and medium blue.  Green and lime.  And even then, there was still blacks and grays mixed in, mostly from the technic bits.  But it was two bright colors.  Too many sets after 03 would have one bright color (well, if you consider those dark Metru colors bright) and one dull color (black, gray).  It wasn't nearly the same amount of vibrancy that the Mata had.  Plus, non silver weapons.  And the weapons were fairly cool and varied, which helped give each Toa their character.

 

Then there's the masks.  Again, I'm sure nostalgia is a factor here, but I still love the 2001 masks above most of the others.  There's just something about the designs that is elegant or something.  Some future masks did manage to achieve the same kind of look, but too many of them were too outlandish to just plain ugly.  And other pieces were also well designed.  The foot element looked good and had decent stability, to the point where it was still being used (albeit slightly modified for the socket) in 2009.  I also liked the hand designs for Tahu, Pohatu, and Lewa, which utilized old molds to a good effect.  And the torso piece was a good design, with plenty of connection points and grooves angles that it really helped give the Toa their heroic robotic look.  That's not to say that the piece is entirely useful in MOCing; it's just as bad as the Inika and Piraka torsos for functionality.  But it makes a good torso (and it also not as thin as the mentioned Inika and Piraka torsos.)

 

And finally, there were the gear functions.  With the exception of the Bohrok, I think the Toa Mata's gear functions was the most useful and intuitive design.  You swing their arms and use them to knock off an opponent's mask, be that a Rahi or another Toa.  Heck, the single-element arm worked great for this, because an extra elbow would've messed up the swing.  And the function was cleverly integrated into the overall design, so it could serve as both a figure and a swinging action feature.  True, this meant it wasn't as posable as future sets were, but posability was only one part of it's duel purpose.

 

No, the Toa Mata didn't excel in every way and form over every other Bionicle set.  But their colors, great designs, and functionality still add up to make them, overall, some of my favorite Bionicle (and even Lego) sets ever.

 

[/end rant]  What, you asked.

 

:music:

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1) Nostalgia like everybody's saying, but don't write this off so quick. They were groundbreaking, and they (their set designers) deserve credit for that. It wouldn't make sense on this alone to say they're better than later sets, but they were better than Slizers/Throwbots, and pioneered the genre in that sense. That does make them great -- not necessarily better but still worthy of recognition.

 

2) Colored tools. Unfortunately most later sets lost this.

 

3) Gears. (Most target audience fans didn't like this, but obviously there will be many who do, esp. older fans.)

 

4) More personality to their designs.

 

5) Aside from the pioneering set design, also the pioneering story.

 

6) Along with that, the masks! That was new that year too, plus the masks are still the most widely recognized, and most seem to agree they had some of the best designs. Masks in later years weren't as consistently appealing for some reason, though they have their high points too.

 

 

 

Bad stuff:

 

1) Lack of posability, and this wasn't just a hindsight thing. I remember being disappointed on putting together Kopaka to discover his head wouldn't really pose the way the ads showed, the knees don't really bend, etc. Oddly it took them two years to really start fixing this, and not until 2006 did they "completely" fix it (except without waist artic.).

 

2) Da chunk.

 

3) Gears. (lol)

 

4) No hands! (Not really "fixed" until 2009, and even then, no flexible fingers. Many MOCs fix this.

 

5) Little to no indication of the bio side of the canon biomechanical nature of the characters. Of course, not a lot of later sets fixed this either. The Piraka and some of the Barraki came closest. The Inika had some features that were like that (besides the masks).

 

 

There's more to it but those are the things coming to mind now.

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For me, the Toa Mata had some of the coolest weapons out of the majority of Bionicle sets. They were simple, yet effective for the Mata's equipment. Tahu and Kopaka's swords, Lewa's Ax, Gali's hooks, Onua's claws, and Pohatu's feet were really cool weapons IMO, and they fit with their sets very well. 

 

Also, they arguably had some of the best Kanohi masks in Bionicle's entire run. All of them fit with their respective Toa, just like their weapons. 

 

and as others have stated, their gear functions were very cool too. I enjoyed turning the gears on their backs and having their arms or legs move because of it. 

 

Even though I keep my Mata sets in my closet now, I still consider them some of the best sets from my collection.

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Personally I really like their look, specifically their vibrant and consistent colour schemes, and how they look like a unified team while still having individuality, which I think some of the later sets lacked (Though, that did mean we got away from clone sets, so I think we can call it even there) .

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I like them for the silhouettes and simplicity of design. Now, I love articulation, and yes, the Mata lose points for lacking modern articulation trends but they make up for that in sheer brilliance of design, vibrancy, and silhouette. What the Mata have that others did not were a very streamlined, beautiful simplicity that shined, with popping colors. Easily accentuated by lovely Mask design. The original Kanohi were the finest masks ever to come from Bionicle. So, it's not really a discussion of articulation, that's another topic all together. This is about the general aesthetic. 

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I can't say much that hasn't been said already, but the color schemes and weapons are near-perfect.

 

Plus, the iconic mask designs can't be understated. They're simple but full of personality and each has an instantly recognizable silhouette. I can't remember any subsequent wave of masks that had such consistently good design—who really remembers the Great Ruru or Great Matatu with any fondness? From 2003 to 2008, there are actually very few memorable masks with any personality. I'd really only argue that a few (Avokhii, Kraakhan, Kualsi, Rode, Arthron and Faxon) came close to the quality of the 2001 masks. 

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Because they were more technic and resembled their predecessors the slizers. They were not that moveable I agree but also they made up for that with the gear box function in the shoulders. Also they wear all six great masks (hello?) Plus form into two more powerful warriors. Can't do that with inika or glatorians though.

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At the time they were the best Technic sets to utilize that construction in a figure. Look at Slizers/Throwbots. They were clunky until the Toa Mata were developed to give a build direction. And in the end it was the start of a whole update on the building system. The creation process of the parts evolved over time. I remember when everyone got excited when the Rahkshi came out because they had KNEES! It was crazy at the time. Now everything has knees, and parts have been improved.


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I didn't much like them, to be honest. My first sets were Toa Nuva Lewa and Tahu, but I did get one of the Toa Mata sets (Lewa) later on, and I still liked the Nuva better. I I always felt the designs got better over the years, rather than worse, which is what a lot of people seem to think. I like my tall, broad, fully pose-able 2008 Toa Nuva far better than their tiny, puny original Nuva sets. Even the gears that made their arms move and stuff really annoyed me, and I always went out of my way to rebuild my sets without them. I preferred being able to pose my figures the way I wanted to, instead of the gears slipping back into their original positions. Later year's sets were better because they were far bigger and more pose-able. 

 

So in answer to the original question: what's so great about the Toa Mata, I say (and I know a lot of nostalgia nazis are probably going to want to kill me for saying this, but) nothing

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I didn't much like them, to be honest. My first sets were Toa Nuva Lewa and Tahu, but I did get one of the Toa Mata sets (Lewa) later on, and I still liked the Nuva better. I I always felt the designs got better over the years, rather than worse, which is what a lot of people seem to think. I like my tall, broad, fully pose-able 2008 Toa Nuva far better than their tiny, puny original Nuva sets. Even the gears that made their arms move and stuff really annoyed me, and I always went out of my way to rebuild my sets without them. I preferred being able to pose my figures the way I wanted to, instead of the gears slipping back into their original positions. Later year's sets were better because they were far bigger and more pose-able. 

 

So in answer to the original question: what's so great about the Toa Mata, I say (and I know a lot of nostalgia nazis are probably going to want to kill me for saying this, but) nothing

 

If there was truly nothing great about the Toa Mata, I would think Bionicle would have come to a screeching halt by year one, don't you? Also, equating opinionated people to Nazis comes off as a little disrespectful to victims of the Holocaust.

 

I would take the original Toa Mata over the jokes we got in 2008 that tried to bear their names any day; they had far more personality to them.

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I didn't much like them, to be honest. My first sets were Toa Nuva Lewa and Tahu, but I did get one of the Toa Mata sets (Lewa) later on, and I still liked the Nuva better. I I always felt the designs got better over the years, rather than worse, which is what a lot of people seem to think. I like my tall, broad, fully pose-able 2008 Toa Nuva far better than their tiny, puny original Nuva sets. Even the gears that made their arms move and stuff really annoyed me, and I always went out of my way to rebuild my sets without them. I preferred being able to pose my figures the way I wanted to, instead of the gears slipping back into their original positions. Later year's sets were better because they were far bigger and more pose-able. 

 

So in answer to the original question: what's so great about the Toa Mata, I say (and I know a lot of nostalgia nazis are probably going to want to kill me for saying this, but) nothing

 

If there was truly nothing great about the Toa Mata, I would think Bionicle would have come to a screeching halt by year one, don't you? Also, equating opinionated people to Nazis comes off as a little disrespectful to victims of the Holocaust.

 

I would take the original Toa Mata over the jokes we got in 2008 that tried to bear their names any day; they had far more personality to them.

 

 Okay, using the word nazis might have been a little over the top, I'll admit, but I'm getting really tired of people hating on Bionicle's later years just because they apparently couldn't move on from the nostalgic early years. No offence, but it's been ten years since those years of nostalgia ended. Time to move on, methinks. 

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Succulent tasty nostalgia. :P

 

That aside aesthetically they had a really cool design, very colourful bodies (not just a grey type torso with coloured armour) and the functionality at the time was quite fun and provided  a lot of entertainment. The weapons were unique and added a lot of character to the characters through the sets alone, the Kanohi's Polynesian appearance added a sense of mystery to them and the packaging as well added to this and was quite cool, even compared to that of the Roboriders and Slizers. All in all I'd say for their time they did a lot of things right and those good aspects have only become stronger in my memory as time has gone on. :)

 

(I've not entirely forgotten about things such as trying to separate the head pieces. :P )

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This is just my opinion, but I think it was the Toa Mata's place in the story.

 

In the beginning years, the series was pretty light on story. Yes, we had the comics, the promotional materials, and the MNOLG to show us the Toa's struggle against the evil Makuta. But, that was it.
We had a huge sandbox in the island of Mata Nui, and the things that weren't explained yet. What was the rest of the world like? Where did the Toa come from? Just who was the evil Makuta? These mysteries allowed for endless imagination and speculation; I saw great stories written by fans, interesting theories made about other locations on what we now know as Aqua Magna, and numerous, fantastic MoCs. There was plenty of wiggle-room in the main story for our own fan-stories to be quasi-canon.

 

When the saga continued, the story kind of got more bolted down; there was still plenty of room for fan-created stories, but the mysterious and mystical things started getting explained away. The Great Spirit Mata Nui became a robot, the mythical Great Beings became mundane super scientists, et cetera, et cetera. But at the beginning, there was a lot of freedom to work with, no explanation was set in stone. Endless possibilities. And I think that's a big draw for a building toy like Bionicle.

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Solid build, striking designs and colors, fantastic gear action that I wish we saw more of, and the simple fact that they were what we older fans started out with.  ^_^

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It may be that the original 6 toa are kind of lame in SOME ways, but that's only if you look at them from the perspective of someone who's familiar mostly just with the more modern sets and characters.  If you step into the shoes of someone in 2001 who'd just came back from the store with a shopping bag full of new toys, you have no other Bionicles to compare them to.  They were flimsy, barely articulated, and quite delicate, but they were Bionicle, and they were the best.

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They set a standard, not for set design, but for the vision of the heroes in the story. Six heroes with six colours. And man, were those colours vibrant. Also, it was the last team of heroes to really have the technic design. It was a transition period, like 2010 Hero Factory before moving onto the new constraction system.

 

And man, the complaints are coming from a time when bendable limbs and pin-axle Kanohi were the new standard. Back then, this was revolutionary. Sure, they're not the most well-built sets as action figures perse, but they had mechanics which made them fit in line with the Technic label. And the designs still hold up today. They look awesome.

 

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