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What Did the Kal Replace?


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Just something that occurred to me the other day.

 

Given that LEGO, to the best of my knowledge, plans most of its products well over a year in advance, and given that a line of sets must be extremely popular to merit a further line of recolored versions, it follows that LEGO originally had something other than the Bohrok Kal in mind for the Spring 2003 canister wave.

 

So, do we have any knowledge of what was initially planned, or am I simply wrong in my assumptions?

Edited by Quisoves Potoo
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I want to guess they had something else planned, because it just seems strange that LEGO would reuse the exact same build as the previous year for 2003's villains. It's almost like they had something else planned, but those were scrapped last minute, forcing them to reuse an old build, at least untill summer.

Edited by ToaMarkSurge
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To my knowledge? Nothing. I haven't heard anything. Perhaps reaching out to Farshety or Faber would offer some more insight.

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Elemental Rahi in Gen2, anyone? A write-up for an initial video for a G2 plot

 

I really wish everyone would stop trying to play join the dots with Gen 1 and Gen 2 though,it seems there's a couple new threads everyday and often they're duplicates of already existing conversations! Or simply parallel them with a slightly new 'twist'! Gen 2 is NEW, it is NOT Gen 1 and it is NOT a continuation. Outside of the characters we already have I personally don't want to see ANY old characters return. I think it will cheapen the whole experience to those of us familiar with the original line...

 

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I haven't heard that the Kal were replacements for anything more interesting. As far as I can tell, it was just that the Bohrok story wasn't long enough to be stretched over the whole of 2002, but the Rahkshi/Mask of Light story wasn't long enough to start in late 2002 then last for all of 2003 because it only had one wave of canister sets. So they extended the Bohrok story into early 2003 with the Kal.

Edited by Sir Kohran
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Yeah, according to Greg LEGO planned out 2002, then the Rahkshi arc for summer 2003, and then were like, "hm, we have this super successful toyline that is literally at its peak and no new toys planned for the next release season. lol, guess we goofed there."

 

And so they quick made Bohrok Nuva, almost single-handedly killing BIONICLE with products people didn't want to buy.

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I haven't heard that the Kal were replacements for anything more interesting. As far as I can tell, it was just that the Bohrok story wasn't long enough to be stretched over the whole of 2002, but the Rahkshi/Mask of Light story wasn't long enough to start in late 2002 then last for all of 2003 because it only had one wave of canister sets. So they extended the Bohrok story into early 2003 with the Kal.

But surely the story was wrapped around the sets, not vice versa? I appreciate that LEGO wanted to concentrate its promotional efforts for 2003 on the latter half of the year, but it seems implausible that they had no plans whatsoever for Spring 2003 other than "Bohrok remix! Let's hope the originals are popular enough!"

 

 

Yeah, according to Greg LEGO planned out 2002, then the Rahkshi arc for summer 2003, and then were like, "hm, we have this super successful toyline that is literally at its peak and no new toys planned for the next release season. lol, guess we goofed there."

Do you have the actual quote? No offense to Greg, but he was on the story team, not product design. I just can't fathom that LEGO was that disorganized. Granted, this was the same period that gave us Jack Stone and Galidor, but that's job-loss material for someone.

And so they quick made Bohrok Nuva, almost single-handedly killing BIONICLE with products people didn't want to buy.

So they didn't sell well? Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that, seeing how popular the original Bohrok were (I know I was excited for the Kal.)

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Yeah, according to Greg LEGO planned out 2002, then the Rahkshi arc for summer 2003, and then were like, "hm, we have this super successful toyline that is literally at its peak and no new toys planned for the next release season. lol, guess we goofed there."

Do you have the actual quote? No offense to Greg, but he was on the story team, not product design. I just can't fathom that LEGO was that disorganized. Granted, this was the same period that gave us Jack Stone and Galidor, but that's job-loss material for someone.

And so they quick made Bohrok Nuva, almost single-handedly killing BIONICLE with products people didn't want to buy.

So they didn't sell well? Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that, seeing how popular the original Bohrok were (I know I was excited for the Kal.)

 

LEGO was ridiculously disorganized before Knudstorp came on in 2005. I couldn't point you specifically to where Greg mentioned this as it's somewhere in the recesses of years past, but he always seemed to be really opinionated about the Bohrok Kal so I would hope he knew what he was talking about. He's also the one that said they were the worst selling BIONICLE sets ever and nearly brought about its cancellation, so take that as you will.

 

It isn't entirely without precedent, RoboRiders were put on the market partly to pad the gap between Throwbots and BIONICLE as it struggled through its voodoo iterations.

Edited by Pereki
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believe victims. its actually not that hard, and youd look kind of bad if you were to, say, side with an abuser because theyre your friend

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I haven't heard that the Kal were replacements for anything more interesting. As far as I can tell, it was just that the Bohrok story wasn't long enough to be stretched over the whole of 2002, but the Rahkshi/Mask of Light story wasn't long enough to start in late 2002 then last for all of 2003 because it only had one wave of canister sets. So they extended the Bohrok story into early 2003 with the Kal.

But surely the story was wrapped around the sets, not vice versa? I appreciate that LEGO wanted to concentrate its promotional efforts for 2003 on the latter half of the year, but it seems implausible that they had no plans whatsoever for Spring 2003 other than "Bohrok remix! Let's hope the originals are popular enough!"

 

Well, as Pereki says they were a bit disorganised in this time and they hadn't done anything like Bionicle before.

 

Another factor was that the Mask of Light movie wasn't going to be released until the second half of 2003, and there was only one wave of canister sets to go with it (the Rahkshi), so that story couldn't be stretched over the whole of its year. Something had to bridge the early 2003 gap between the end of the Bohrok story and the start of the Rahkshi/Mask of Light one. This gap wasn't long enough to introduce a completely new threat, so they decided to extend the Bohrok story with the Kal to cover it.

 

 

 

So they didn't sell well? Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that, seeing how popular the original Bohrok were (I know I was excited for the Kal.)

 

Greg once said they "almost singlehandedly sank Bionicle" and that Rahkshi sales were the only thing that got Bionicle through 2003.

 

The Kal were let down by having identical bodies to the Bohrok, and the overused silver robbed them of a lot of visual appeal.

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Transparent colour parts (if they were possible back then) would have made the Kal much more visibly interesting. Keep the silver headplates and shields, but transparent limbs and feet could have spoken volumes about the Kal's elemental superiority

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:r: :e: :g: :i: :t: :n: :u: :i:

Elemental Rahi in Gen2, anyone? A write-up for an initial video for a G2 plot

 

I really wish everyone would stop trying to play join the dots with Gen 1 and Gen 2 though,it seems there's a couple new threads everyday and often they're duplicates of already existing conversations! Or simply parallel them with a slightly new 'twist'! Gen 2 is NEW, it is NOT Gen 1 and it is NOT a continuation. Outside of the characters we already have I personally don't want to see ANY old characters return. I think it will cheapen the whole experience to those of us familiar with the original line...

 

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I'm guessing they just added it in last minute (or as last minute in the loosest of terms). I feel like Mask of Light's theme line was a major focus of '03, but the set line-up only meant one-half of the year. To fill in that gap, they reintroduced the Bohrok sets as the elite "Bohrok Kal". Makes sense too - this was the only year with two waves to have the majority of sets to come out in the latter half (7 vs 18).

 

-NotS

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I know that the Bohrok-Kal were poorly received for being more of the same (I certainly didn't help their sales much, as I only ever got Pahrak-Kal), but I am not aware of there originally being something else. So, I don't think they "replaced" anything, they were just a filler story to cover the first six months of 2003 that weren't covered by the Mask of Light saga.

Edited by Cheesy Mac n Cheese

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