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Are the Mctoran Worthy Sets? Which is the Best Looking?


Banana Gunz

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So I hear a lot of great things about the mctoran and how nostalgic they are, but are they really solid sets (for what they are)? Does their quality match up with their size?

 

One day in the future when I can I'd like to buy one (or all, but first probably just one) of the mctoran, and I'd like to know which one you think looks the coolest. At the moment I'm leaning towards Onepu because I love purple and the Pakari but I'd like to hear some of your wisdom!

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They were good for what they were: EXTREMELY low-priced sets that could be given away as McDonalds Happy Meal toys. The material and molding quality was on par with regular retail LEGO sets, even though their part designs were more specialized than most BIONICLE parts.

 

The disk-flinging right arm was effective, at a considerably smaller size than the Throwbot/Slizer arm which had previously been used for the same type of disk. Its asymmetry made its uses more limited than the left arm, though. They were a great opportunity to get masks in unusual colors, though Onepu shared his with one of the Nui-Jaga.

 

Their articulation was inherently very limited, something the $4 Matoran sets from 2003 were seemingly designed to correct. And with just eight pieces each, there definitely wasn't any room for real variety in their builds. Still, these were obvious limitations of the way they were released. It's quite justifiable for people to be nostalgic for them, especially since it's been a long time since LEGO fast-food promotional toys have included actual LEGO parts.

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They're adorable. They're not worth it if you're looking for good MOCing parts, but they're just so cute.
 
I'm biased towards Kongu because teal, but Onepu was good color-wise, especially if you don't have the Nui-Jaga.

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Nostalgia-wise: Yes!

Look-wise: As Sumiki said, they are adorable, but they're pretty limited as well. They're just display pieces really.

Set-wise:

Parts: The only really useful part in a McToran is their masks, Kongu and Maku even have exclusive masks you won't find elsewhere. The rest of them can only be used really, really creatively. I've seen MOCists like Chro use the torsos and legs, but the heads and arms are pretty near useless unless you have a desire to recreate things from MNOLG.

Playability: The posablility is very limited. You can push turn their feet or push them around to make them punch, or you can pull back their arms and punch or fling disks. After a few years though, I've been finding my McToran arms broken and even more useless.

 

So it really depends on what you're looking for. If you find a good deal and want the pieces or nostalgia, then go ahead. They're probably not worth more than $7 or so though.

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I wouldn't say that they were the best sets in Bionicle's history, but they were great small sets none the less. I actually think that they are better than the 04 Matoran, but that is just my opinion.

 

My favorites would be Jaller and Naparu. (I know he came with the Boxor set, but he still has the same body design, so I would think that he would count in this. :) )

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Of course they were great, they were free with any Happy Meal purchase, their design was simplistic but it conveyed a message of how colorful and simple 2001 was for BIONICLE, they went perfectly with the Toa Mata, the Turaga and the Rahi, so overall yes they were great sets, if you can find them cheap (under $10) now then yes get them.

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Theyre totes adorbz.

I have to say I was a big fan of Kongu cuz teal, and Macku, since she had a noble mask in primary coloring. :-3

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They are worthy sets, otherwise I guess they would not have even been released. For free sets, heck yes and you got them with your meal from McDonald's. They were arguably the last good toys McDonald's ever offered. They had limited posability but their cute form made up for that and besides, they included rare masks! They could also sling those discs really far, I haven't seen any other disc shooting sets do better. They even shoot better than those cheap 2004 disc launchers. In a way, you could look at these sets as "glorified mask stands" for mask display or just have fun playing with them as the villagers they are.

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I had a lot of fun collecting them (an excuse to have McDonalds too :P ). That being said the best things about them for me were the characters behind them - at the time they were characters I knew and loved from the online games, but didn't have sets of - so getting them was a big deal at the time for me. Furthermore, their small size made it easy to re-enact some of the larger Matoran events (like the battle of Kini-Nui). That being said - the sets are nothing particularly special - I think most if not all of the pieces have shown up in other sets as have most if not all of the characters. I'd say they're cool to have - but nothing to stress over. Particularly for me in terms of the characters and story - the Matoran aren't in that form anymore and it wasn't their original form either, so the purist in me would rather collect the "current" or "original" story Matoran. That's one way of looking at it anyway if you get what I mean. :P

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If you can get them at a really cheap price, they are fantastic. Have to echo Sumiki again in that they are definitely adorable.

 

I will always have a soft spot for Kongu as the only one I got as a kid. The other five I only got.. 2 years ago? But hey, thanks to his teal he is pretty unique and cool even without nostalgia goggles.

 

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I think they are crazy nostalgic!

And they are freakin cute! Yeah! A Bionicle! Wadaya know?

My favourite has to be Kongu, his colours are awesome, and I like that he's the captain of the Le-Koro Gukko force.

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I love 'em, and am super excited when I find one for a good price.

Quality-wise, I consider them equal to other LEGO things. I love that (even for that year) they released actual LEGO sets at McD. Unlike some other Bioncle McD things... **cough piraka cough**

Nostalgia-wise, they're great for anything Mata Nui related, obviously, and make me think of MNOG.

Set-wise, they're great for what they are. They're great anyway. I would've bought them in stores if they sold them there.

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They were free with a Happy Meal. That justifies the piece point.

 

And even then... they were LEGO. The pieces are compatible and they introduced so many awesome colours in Bionicle that were unfortunately never used again.

 

But man, did I love the colour scheme of the Mctoran. Teal, purple, sand brown, bluish grey... aw yeah. That was hot.

 

Way more worthy as sets than the 2007/2008 happy meal stuff too.

 

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The Mctoran are like jelly beans or Volkswagen Beetles. There's just something so satisfying about seeing them in a dozen different colors.

 

Onepu and Kongu are probably the two best-looking Mctoran, with maybe Jala in runner-up. I'm also a big fan of Nupara and Hafu (who I admittedly think of as Taipu), if you can get a hold of them.

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It is definitely worth having at least one in your collection. They are adorable, nostalgic, simple, and brightened up your collection with their great colour schemes. I would definitely try get Kongu! That teal/lime combo was awesome!

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It's not so much a matter of quality as a built-LEGO set, but quality of style. They were the coolest-looking Matoran ever. It's mainly those arms. The feet too, though. The build had more "personality", if you will, than most later Matoran builds. (By personality I don't mean that they weren't clones, so I'm not talking about individual personality, I mean they seemed less like generic robot-lookalikes.)

 

But yes, there were no balljoints, and yes, that throwing hand messed up the look (even though it was the whole point of the awesome arm design lol), and yeah, the other hand was a crab-claw lol. They were still awesome. :P

 

Best probably has to be Onepu because purple, but they were all pretty cool.

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Thanks for all the responses! Onepu and Kongu seem the most popular. The only thing I'm not sure about is how strong the arms are; do they break easily or only if you wear it out with aggressive play? I won't be getting any right now but you've all convinced of them. Would've been cool though if they were released in more colors. It would've been amazing if they were sold like collectibles in vending machines that had different colored parts (but organized to work together) and you cool make all sorts of matoran. I'm kind of hoping Lego does something like that for the future as a sort of tribute to the past, but sadly I doubt it'll happen.

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Thanks for all the responses! Onepu and Kongu seem the most popular. The only thing I'm not sure about is how strong the arms are; do they break easily or only if you wear it out with aggressive play? I won't be getting any right now but you've all convinced of them. Would've been cool though if they were released in more colors. It would've been amazing if they were sold like collectibles in vending machines that had different colored parts (but organized to work together) and you cool make all sorts of matoran. I'm kind of hoping Lego does something like that for the future as a sort of tribute to the past, but sadly I doubt it'll happen.

I have never had a problem with the arms breaking, so I'm going to say only if you wear them out.

 

Randomized Matoran might have been cool, but it would probably have been a logistical nightmare. Interestingly, though, there IS a cluster of McToran parts in the LEGO Group's database (sadly, no longer viewable through their website) that never appeared in sets. These included...

Also included in this cluster were Turaga tools in unusual. It seems like they might have been meant to go with the Matoran parts, which is odd since the Matoran can't really hold them.

 

In any case, it's unclear just what these parts might have been intended for. Notably, the element ID numbers they are registered come far before the element ID numbers for the final masks of the McToran (bright yellow Hau, dark orange Kakama, sand blue Akaku, etc). So they were probably intended to be used instead of the McToran masks and color schemes we got, not in addition to them. Even so, there are enough mask, foot, arm, and torso colors listed for ten different McToran, whereas in the end we only actually got six (not counting Hafu from the 2001 Power Pack and Nuparu from the 2002 Boxor, who both reused torso colors from the other McToran). Also, several of the colors never actually ended up appearing in the BIONICLE theme in any capacity. Even the Matoran of the Mata Nui Online Game basically just reused colors from the Matoran, Toa, and Turaga sets, and Hahli from the Bohrok Online Animations was the first Matoran in any media to introduce a brand-new color for the BIONICLE theme (Earth Blue/Metru Blue).

 

Back then, of course, it was not unusual for parts only used in prototypes to be registered with element ID numbers in the LEGO Group's database. There were also some parts in the database that indicated that the prototype Toa and Turaga might been different than the final sets in their designs and color schemes (for instance, Turaga Whenua's Drillstaff appears in this database in Earth Orange long before it appears in Black, suggesting it might have been originally envisioned as Turaga Onewa's badge of office). Today, these kinds of entries are merely a curiosity — though one does have to wonder whether any of these preliminary parts might still exist somewhere in the LEGO Group's vaults in Billund, or in a BIONICLE designer's personal collection.

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It's not so much a matter of quality as a built-LEGO set, but quality of style. They were the coolest-looking Matoran ever. It's mainly those arms. The feet too, though. The build had more "personality", if you will, than most later Matoran builds. (By personality I don't mean that they weren't clones, so I'm not talking about individual personality, I mean they seemed less like generic robot-lookalikes.)

 

I think you've really hit the mark here about what made the original Matoran design so appealing. The later Matoran designs don't come anywhere near, something I blame particularly on the Bohrok pieces riddled throughout them.

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I had Huki and as my favorite matoran was Takua, I made the terrible mistake of paint Huki (and a spare pakari) in Takua's colo scheme and the result was terrible awful, sadly

 

But yeah they are worth it by nostalgia mostly, I think what make them special is the fact they were the protagonists of the webpage videos and games the first years.

Came for the sets, stayed for the story.

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The mctoran were what got me into Bionicle, when I got Jala from Mcdonalds. They were pretty good quality, and they were compatible with other Bionicle parts. However, they had there flaws: they couldn't hold anything other than the disks, and their heads behind the masks were quite ugly, and also had no eyes/brains like the Toa and Turaga. Luckily now its possible to attach the toa heads to them, using this part.

 

Also, I think Onepu was one of the coolest, as well as recognizable. Macku was probably my favorite though.

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@Aanchir

 

Huh, it's always real interesting to see what Lego might've been planning as they were making Bionicle. Sadly those parts will never be released...

 

And I get what you're saying about the vending machine idea. To organize body parts so that the arms/legs are the same colors as each other and for the general color scheme to be accurate/make sense would just be fantastically hard. *sigh* One can only dream...

 

@Refy L.S.

 

I get what you're saying about the heads. Looking at them, they seem kinda strange and peak from outside the mask too much. But with the budget Lego had for these Mctoran I can see why they wouldn't want to add complicated transparent brains to them. But I do think it's cool how you can attach the disks to the back of their heads; something I wish could be done with the other heads.

 

Would've been wonderful if they could also hold tools... darn.

 

@Vraiment

 

There really was something about the matoran in the MNOG. The way they were animated and how they looked so silly and fun just sold me on them. Perhaps mobility is a problem with them but they still look great.

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Wow I remember back when I first got into BIONICLE thanks to the Mctoran sets. XD I remeber opening the bag up and I was sooo curious on what this "toy" was and my first set was Huki/Hewkii. (Wow that was 13 years ago! O_O )

 

I really enjoyed them and even though it does have limitied abilities. They were at least cute to have and they were so tiny that I almost thought I have lost them. :o

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  • 3 years later...

For their price, they're alright. In general, they're more or less bricks with a weak throwing function. At least the Kardatoran could be posed to some degree.

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They should be added to your collection, and are good collectibles if you want to add to your Bionicle Universe. Also the best looking one in my humble opinion is Matoro.

 

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