Why Did Lego End Bionicle? :s

[Siriol]

Bionicle was such a great theme, tons of people loved it , and Lego was making alot of money from it. Why would they end such a great theme? |@(| \_/rn@

[Gatanui]

Very simple: BIONICLE was getting old (not wanting to sound this negatively), the story proved to be too complex for the targetted age, and because of that, sales were decreasing. The story also hindered LEGO as there were a lot of things that the story could not allow, mostly because every year had to be related to the previous one(s), so you couldn´t just suddenly or easily switch to an entirely new plot and location all of a sudden. For those reasons, they decided to create a new line that is more flexible and where every year is independent from each other, so the possibilities are literally endless. I guess LEGO also wanted to expand on the buildable action figures and wanted to try something new instead of eventually letting BIONICLE die and the constraction branch with it.~Gata.

[Space: Ocean of Awe]

Oh dear...I think Gatanui has summed it up pretty well. I wonder what it would have been like if Lego ended Bionicle in 2003. Or kept the story really simple. We wouldn't have had all these fan sites, but they would easily attract more fans, because they aren't afraid of this big story that they know nothing about. But I'm glad of the way Bionicle was, and wish it didn't end, but maybe one day it will return, with a story set way in the future or past, so older fans can connect it to the old story, but new people would easily be lured in...=)

[fishers64]

Fear of declining sales among young people, which is Lego's main target audience. Most of the hardcore Bionicle fans were teenagers that had invested years in the story, and the story had grown up to fit with them, making it unrelatable and hard to follow for a younger audience.

[Siriol]

I hate to admit it, but all of you are probably right.It's hard to imagine, though. |@(|_/rn@

[Makuta Matata]

Oh dear...I think Gatanui has summed it up pretty well. I wonder what it would have been like if Lego ended Bionicle in 2003. Or kept the story really simple. We wouldn't have had all these fan sites, but they would easily attract more fans, because they aren't afraid of this big story that they know nothing about. But I'm glad of the way Bionicle was, and wish it didn't end, but maybe one day it will return, with a story set way in the future or past, so older fans can connect it to the old story, but new people would easily be lured in...=)

Or maybe a new story that is similar to the old one, with allusions to the old one...

[Aanchir]

Basically Gatanui summed it up, although I'd like to point out that it wasn't just BIONICLE's nine-year lifespan that made it so it couldn't continue. After all, non-story themes have no set-in-stone lifespan-- just look at LEGO Technic or LEGO Racers.The issue was that the story kept expanding on older story as it went on. Each year built on the other. So, for instance, a new fan in 2010 wouldn't be able to appreciate the characters nearly as much as if they had been following the story since 2001. And unfortunately, the story and characters were one of the theme's biggest selling points, and the things that made the theme unique compared to previous and later action figure themes. Once the story was hurting the theme rather than keeping it alive, there was really no reason not to introduce a very similar action figure theme with less story-related baggage.Part of what we see in Hero Factory is an attempt to avoid this sort of backstory-fatigue. You really don't have to know anything that happened in 2010 story to understand Ordeal of Fire or Savage Planet. In fact, the status quo stays about the same at the beginning and end of each year-- each year begins with the heroes being assigned a new mission with no connection to previous missions, and ends with the villains defeated and the mission a complete success.On one hand, this makes the Hero Factory story really simple, really repetitive, and not very deep. It's what one TV show analysis website calls a "monster-of-the-week" storyline, except that in this case it is more "monster-of-the-six-month-interval". On the other hand, this means a new fan jumping in at any point can understand the story about as well as a person who jumped in around a year previously.The older fan will know more non-essential details about each character's background, but any fan can understand why the good guys are fighting the bad guys no matter how long they've been into HF. Since most fans aren't going to be interested beyond a certain age range anyway, this makes it so the fanbase replenishes itself a lot more quickly than BIONICLE's could, even if there are fewer older fans who break from the norm and continue following the theme into adulthood.Hero Factory naturally has problems of its own, just as BIONICLE did, but TLG clearly put forth an effort to avoid the same pitfalls that had caused BIONICLE to end. There's no guarantee it will last as long as BIONICLE, but if it ends it will likely be for its own unique reasons, ones that TLG couldn't have anticipated. And in that case the new theme that replaces it will probably be like Hero Factory, but making additional changes to hopefully prevent a similar cancellation.For a more official perspective (albeit in Danish) feel free to check out this article.

[Siriol]

Well, that makes sense. But is it possible that Lego just wanted to have a bionicle for ages 4/7/10?

[Alyska]

In summary, the reasons for Bionicle's end:

• [*]Lego did not bother with maintaining Bionicle.com in the later years. Less story content was available for free.[*]Too much reliance on books, which require money to access. Book covers were too toylike and uninviting (some nice original artwork may have helped).[*]Never had a TV show to help communicate the story. (Once again, story less accessible).[*]Promotional materials, such as the "Save the band" campaign and the Bionicle Heroes game, deviated too much from the canon, causing confusion about the story. To a lesser extent, this also applies to some elements of the movies.[*]Picked the wrong studio to make TLR.[*]No mention of Bioniclestory.com on the main site, or on the toy packaging. (seriously, how are kids supposed to find it?)[*]No theatrical film. The deal with Tinseltown Toons meant that no other studioes could produce Bionicle DVDs for the term of the contract. Lego recieved a pitch for a big-screen Bionicle film, but had to turn it down for this reason.

Now, the longer version:I see the issue as not so much the complex nature of the story, but rather the accessibility of the story. When Bionicle was in its prime, from 2001 to 2003, most of the main story content was available online. Then came Mask Of Light, which sold well because of the interest in Bionicle built up by the website.After 2003, however, the story became much more reliant on the books, and there was less available online. Now, not that there's anything wrong with books; it's just that they require the kids to spend money in order to access them (Unless the public libraries have them, which in my experience, generally don't.) Now, kids generally won't spend that money unless they are already somewhat committed to the story, and parents, when choosing reading material for their child, would probably spend their money on something more sophisticated-looking than a paperback book with a picture of a plastic toy on the front. (I'm not criticising the quality of the books here at all, I'm just sayin', people judge books by their covers.)If you look at most of the story-driven toy franchises for children over the last ten years, all of the most successful ones (Beyblade, Transformers, My Little Pony, etc) have had a TV show or theatrical movie to promote them. Hero Factory certainly has the right idea there, but I actually think Bionicle's story would have been better suited to a show than HF.Ah, there are so many things I would like to see done differently. I really don't like the fact that the complex story on its own is always blamed for Bionicle's end. It's not about the story, it's about the execution. Kids aren't too dumb for the story, but they are lazy. If you want them to like your story, you have to make it easy for them to access.

[Dark_Stranger]

The deal with Tinseltown Toons meant that no other studioes could produce Bionicle DVDs for the term of the contract. Lego recieved a pitch for a big-screen Bionicle film, but had to turn it down for this reason.

*spits out carbonated beverage* WHAT?I'd be interested in knowing where you heard that; I had no idea.As for Bionile's end, I would probably just end up repeating arious parts of what Gatanui, Aanchir and Alyska said: a complex story that took a bit of digging to fully uncover, and thus had the potential to severely intimidate new fans."That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die."

[Alyska]

^ Got it from Greg himself.If you look through the old forum archives, you should find it in the "Bionicle in Theatres" topic.

[Guest TahuOmega]

It was going to end sooner or later, things come and go just like that.It ended sort of in a rush though.

[GSR]

After 2003, however, the story became much more reliant on the books, and there was less available online. Now, not that there's anything wrong with books; it's just that they require the kids to spend money in order to access them (Unless the public libraries have them, which in my experience, generally don't.) Now, kids generally won't spend that money unless they are already somewhat committed to the story, and parents, when choosing reading material for their child, would probably spend their money on something more sophisticated-looking than a paperback book with a picture of a plastic toy on the front. (I'm not criticising the quality of the books here at all, I'm just sayin', people judge books by their covers.)If you look at most of the story-driven toy franchises for children over the last ten years, all of the most successful ones (Beyblade, Transformers, My Little Pony, etc) have had a TV show or theatrical movie to promote them. Hero Factory certainly has the right idea there, but I actually think Bionicle's story would have been better suited to a show than HF.

I think this rather hits the nail on the head. Later years of Bionicle had plenty of story to them - too much to pack in to just the comics or online serials, and films were rare enough that they had to be comparatively self-contained. Thus a medium that offered greater freedom, such as books or TV, had to be adopted. Lego opted for books, most likely for cost and practicality. But the issue with packing much of the story into the books is that they simply could not reach a very large audience - a TV show is easy to distribute over large areas, a book is not. Further, the nature of tie-in books generally prohibit people with little to no experience with the brand involved from trying them out, even if they're kids. A TV show would have still had the issue of significant continuity to take care of, but a kid who sees a cool-looking show channel-flipping is most likely going to stop and give it a look, whereas a kid buying books - well, most kids don't buy their own books, frankly, and even if they did, they're more likely to stick to something they know than grab a random book with, as you put it, a plastic toy on the cover. And this goes double for their parents.The end result is that the line couldn't really sustain such a heavy story, yet couldn't maintain narrative sense without it. Thus the move to the much more accessible Hero Factory. Edited December 11, 2011 by GSR

[Siriol]

_{Ok,thanks for helping me out!}

[Aanchir]

Well, that makes sense. But is it possible that Lego just wanted to have a bionicle for ages 4/7/10?

Nope. The recommended age range for Hero Factory sets is pretty much no different than the recommended age range for BIONICLE.Also, while the accessibility of the BIONICLE story is a big reason for its downfall, this wouldn't really have been a problem if the story were less complex. I know there are a lot of actual BIONICLE fans who had no patience for keeping up with the heavy backstory, even if they knew about it. Even if the story were made extremely accessible, there would be no guarantee that most fans would have the amount of dedication needed to learn the details they needed to appreciate it. So complexity was an issue; we just don't know how big of one. The only thing we know for sure is that for whatever reason BIONICLE's backstory was an obstacle for new fans of the franchise.This also raises a question: Could BIONICLE be brought back if the story were made more accessible? Alyska, I know you're a big fan of the possibility of a complete reboot, and I think that if made more accessible this could probably work very well (even if it would probably upset lots of fans of "the old BIONICLE"). On the other hand, if BIONICLE were merely continued from some point after where it left off, then I think the lack of accessibility it had during its first nine-year run would still be a hindrance, even if the new story were made more accessible.As I often mention, a big reason BIONICLE couldn't recover from the situation where new fans were becoming fewer and fewer is that TLG couldn't afford to continue promoting old story if it wasn't helping to sell new sets. So a theme that is made accessible from the get-go probably has more potential life in it than a theme that starts out relatively inaccessible and then tries to make itself more accessible later on.On that note, Ninjago has a similar depth of backstory to BIONICLE's early years, and it seems to be just about as successful as BIONICLE was if not more. Hopefully you're correct that the accessibility aspect of BIONICLE's story was the primary reason it did not have a longer lifespan, because I'm a big fan of Ninjago and want to see it remain successful. Edited December 11, 2011 by Aanchir: Rachira of Time

[Gatanui]

The deal with Tinseltown Toons meant that no other studioes could produce Bionicle DVDs for the term of the contract. Lego recieved a pitch for a big-screen Bionicle film, but had to turn it down for this reason.

*spits out carbonated beverage* WHAT?I'd be interested in knowing where you heard that; I had no idea.As for Bionile's end, I would probably just end up repeating arious parts of what Gatanui, Aanchir and Alyska said: a complex story that took a bit of digging to fully uncover, and thus had the potential to severely intimidate new fans."That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die."

To clarify, the offer for making a big-screen movie about BIONICLE was made in its early days and turned down because the studios offering it wanted to have kids in the BIONICLE world, which LEGO fortunately refused. As far as I know, there was no offer for a big-screen movie in 2009. ;)You are right about the website, though. I liked it a lot and the story section became more deep and thorough in 2009, but at the same time, BIONICLEstory.com stopped being advertised at the same time (probably to support the re-boot so kids wouldn´t get confused with all the material from previous years which were largely irrelevant for 2009). There was still much more story content back then than in 2005 and 2006 (the worst BIONICLE websites ever) where the only story content was the Quest for the Mask of Light animations in 2005 (which were not the main story) and in 2006 the comics. Even the animations in 2006 strongly differed from the canon story. I missed the Wall of History in 2003 with the awesome Flash animations (although the Vahki animations, being from 2004, are still truly magnificent). Then again, the story wasn´t as complex then, so it was easier to tell the story through animations and games (canon games, something more I missed later).~Gata. Edited December 11, 2011 by Gatanui

[Alyska]

Apparently, there were several movie pitches over the years. The first one was rejected because the story wasn't fully written (and thus, we would have gotten a "Boneheads of Voodoo Island" movie), another was turned down because it involved human characters ending up in the Bionicle universe, and the third was because of the contract.

[fishers64]

QUOTE Hi Alyska,The last info I got is that I am allowed to dialogue with BZPers who I "know" to be over 13, and I "know" you are, so I am trying to respond to your movie questions.There have been two aspects to the whole BIONICLE in theaters thing that I know of. The first bunch of offers that we got I know got deep-sixed because they were insisting on adding real kids, and because the studio(s) would have wanted control of the story, as opposed to LEGO controlling it. And we weren't interested in that.I know there was also another overture (from which studio I forget) and I did dialogue with those guys. But they lost interest at the time because we already had a DVD deal with Tinseltown Toons -- which would mean they couldn't put out a DVD of their theatrical movie, so the deal made no sense for them. There may well have been other contacts beside this, but these are the ones I know of.Couple other points:1) The odds are I would not be writing the movie. Outside of doing the story for the 2009 film, I have never gotten the chance to be involved, and even that one I didn't do the actual script for. Movie studios prefer to use people they have worked with before who have screen credits, which I do not have.2) LEGO's financial picture never has and most likely never would have an impact on whether movies get done or not, simply because we do not finance the films. The studios do. We are not in the movie business, we license them out same as we do the video games.3) I really know nothing about LEGO's position as far as selling rights to franchises go. But I can speak to a company I worked for in the past, which had franchises that 1) were nowhere near as successful as BIONICLE and 2) were dead, dead, dead. And they wanted an arm and a leg to sell anything they had, because they figured if someone wanted to buy it, it must be valuable. (There would be no real need to buy the rights to the entire line anyway -- if you just want to get a movie made, then you license the movie rights and pay LEGO a royalty, same way Tinseltown Toons did. But you would probably have to be able to show that you have some knowledge/experience at making films and a reasonable chance of getting a major studio to distribute it.)4) The reason no theatrical movie was made when BIONICLE first came out is that it was an unproven commodity. BIONICLE was created in 2000 and came out in 2001. To have a theatrical movie out in, say, 2002, work would have had to have started in 2000, before the concept was even finished (and you would have wound up with a "Boneheads of Voodoo Island" movie). And no one knew if BIONICLE would sell or not. By the time they knew, it was 2002, and we had the DVD deal for the 2003 movie. Thing with toys or that sort of thing is they can be a fad -- if something is hot its first year, doesn't mean by the time the movie comes out it is off the shelves completely. That is why Scholastic is only interested in lines expected to run at least three years, so they don't wind up putting out a lot of books when there are no toys to support sales.GregThere is GregF's words on the subject, sent to Alyska in the final days of the archive. There was a request for a movie deal in 2009. (Sorry, Gata)I have had an idea to put all the web animations, games, movies, comics, story serials in one place to make this backstory problem easier to solve - but have been derailed by other projects. The first thing I would do, if I were to bring Bionicle back, would be to place all the backstory material online, including the DVD movies and the books. All of it.

[Aanchir]

QUOTE Hi Alyska,The last info I got is that I am allowed to dialogue with BZPers who I "know" to be over 13, and I "know" you are, so I am trying to respond to your movie questions.There have been two aspects to the whole BIONICLE in theaters thing that I know of. The first bunch of offers that we got I know got deep-sixed because they were insisting on adding real kids, and because the studio(s) would have wanted control of the story, as opposed to LEGO controlling it. And we weren't interested in that.I know there was also another overture (from which studio I forget) and I did dialogue with those guys. But they lost interest at the time because we already had a DVD deal with Tinseltown Toons -- which would mean they couldn't put out a DVD of their theatrical movie, so the deal made no sense for them. There may well have been other contacts beside this, but these are the ones I know of.Couple other points:1) The odds are I would not be writing the movie. Outside of doing the story for the 2009 film, I have never gotten the chance to be involved, and even that one I didn't do the actual script for. Movie studios prefer to use people they have worked with before who have screen credits, which I do not have.2) LEGO's financial picture never has and most likely never would have an impact on whether movies get done or not, simply because we do not finance the films. The studios do. We are not in the movie business, we license them out same as we do the video games.3) I really know nothing about LEGO's position as far as selling rights to franchises go. But I can speak to a company I worked for in the past, which had franchises that 1) were nowhere near as successful as BIONICLE and 2) were dead, dead, dead. And they wanted an arm and a leg to sell anything they had, because they figured if someone wanted to buy it, it must be valuable. (There would be no real need to buy the rights to the entire line anyway -- if you just want to get a movie made, then you license the movie rights and pay LEGO a royalty, same way Tinseltown Toons did. But you would probably have to be able to show that you have some knowledge/experience at making films and a reasonable chance of getting a major studio to distribute it.)4) The reason no theatrical movie was made when BIONICLE first came out is that it was an unproven commodity. BIONICLE was created in 2000 and came out in 2001. To have a theatrical movie out in, say, 2002, work would have had to have started in 2000, before the concept was even finished (and you would have wound up with a "Boneheads of Voodoo Island" movie). And no one knew if BIONICLE would sell or not. By the time they knew, it was 2002, and we had the DVD deal for the 2003 movie. Thing with toys or that sort of thing is they can be a fad -- if something is hot its first year, doesn't mean by the time the movie comes out it is off the shelves completely. That is why Scholastic is only interested in lines expected to run at least three years, so they don't wind up putting out a lot of books when there are no toys to support sales.GregThere is GregF's words on the subject, sent to Alyska in the final days of the archive. There was a request for a movie deal in 2009. (Sorry, Gata)I have had an idea to put all the web animations, games, movies, comics, story serials in one place to make this backstory problem easier to solve - but have been derailed by other projects. The first thing I would do, if I were to bring Bionicle back, would be to place all the backstory material online, including the DVD movies and the books. All of it.

Thanks for that quote. It's very informative.One problem with any plans to put BIONICLE stuff online deals with some of the stuff you quoted. LEGO doesn't own the rights to put the movies online because those movie rights were licensed out to other companies. Unless TLG bought the movie rights from Universal or Disney (which absorbed Miramax Films), then they wouldn't be able to provide that content online for free. The same applies to the books, which are owned by Scholastic, even though I imagine buying the book rights would be easier than buying the movie rights.

[fishers64]

Still, I think it would be worth it if TLG wishes to bring Bionicle back. I really doubt either of those companies is making a boatload of money off either thing, and if you are a multinational company with major influence, you might be able to swing a reasonable deal. This would vastly increase Bionicle's accessibility, and then the franchise can be rebooted using a more accessible format.

[Alyska]

Thanks for that quote. It's very informative.One problem with any plans to put BIONICLE stuff online deals with some of the stuff you quoted. LEGO doesn't own the rights to put the movies online because those movie rights were licensed out to other companies. Unless TLG bought the movie rights from Universal or Disney (which absorbed Miramax Films), then they wouldn't be able to provide that content online for free. The same applies to the books, which are owned by Scholastic, even though I imagine buying the book rights would be easier than buying the movie rights.

I don't necessarily think they should have put the books or movies up online, but I do think that they should have been creating more online-exclusive content in the first place. They did a fantastic job with the online content in the first few years- why on earth did they stop? It's like they just got bored and couldn't be bothered any more after it stopped being "new".Worse still, they seem to be doing the exact same thing with Hero Factory. They don't have the comics up, and they've stopped producing those fantastic podcasts... It's like they're repeating all their old mistakes. These things require upkeep, Lego! Edited December 12, 2011 by Alyska

[GSR]

Still, I think it would be worth it if TLG wishes to bring Bionicle back. I really doubt either of those companies is making a boatload of money off either thing, and if you are a multinational company with major influence, you might be able to swing a reasonable deal. This would vastly increase Bionicle's accessibility, and then the franchise can be rebooted using a more accessible format.

It's a nice thought, but I'm not convinced LEGO getting the rights to put all the films and books up to free would do much to alleviate the problem. You give a kid access to all this media at once, and odds are they're either going to quit on the spot or read one or two and decide there's too much. Sure, you'll get kids who'll eat up everything available, but I suspect that would be the exception, not the norm. If LEGO wanted to bring the franchise back and wanted to maintain continuity, my guess is they would have some new synopsis material created and made available on their website.

[Toa of Nerds]

The ironic thing is that the books were the main reason I became a big fan of Bionicle in 2004-05. Consequently, those were my two favorite story years. However, I do see the problem with putting such a large amount of story in a non-free package. I may have bought every single one (or had my parents by every single one ), but most kids probably couldn't swing it. And while my public library had a reasonably good collection of the books (my library is awesome), it was missing a few.Personally, I think that mountain of backstory was the main reason for Bionicle's end. While I agree somewhat with what Alyska said about accessibility, I think that the main reason was simply the amount of backstory. Kids felt like they had to read tons of stuff to get into Bionicle, so they didn't bother. While that wasn't true, it was the impression that was given off by the 20+ novels, 4 movies, dozens of comics, numerous serials, multiple guidebooks (I count at least 5 on my shelf right now), and the flat-out massive wiki on Biosector01. Is it really worth it to read all this stuff to get into Bionicle? Many kids answered no, and went off to play with their transformers.-don't touch my pocket protector

[Alyska]

Hmm... maybe they just need to organise the story content better? They made some effort to do this by dividing the books into three or four different series, but even then, it was still tricky. They seemed to take the philosophy of "take everything from last year off the site so kids don't get confused", rather than archiving it in an accessible way. Ironically, I think taking previous years' content offline actually made it more confusing, as the current storyline each year was presented with very little context, at least as far as the main site is concerned. Kids would need to rely on external sources, such as BS01, to get the full picture without buying a lot of books.

[Siriol]

The ironic thing is that the books were the main reason I became a big fan of Bionicle in 2004-05. Consequently, those were my two favorite story years. However, I do see the problem with putting such a large amount of story in a non-free package. I may have bought every single one (or had my parents by every single one ), but most kids probably couldn't swing it. And while my public library had a reasonably good collection of the books (my library is awesome), it was missing a few.Personally, I think that mountain of backstory was the main reason for Bionicle's end. While I agree somewhat with what Alyska said about accessibility, I think that the main reason was simply the amount of backstory. Kids felt like they had to read tons of stuff to get into Bionicle, so they didn't bother. While that wasn't true, it was the impression that was given off by the 20+ novels, 4 movies, dozens of comics, numerous serials, multiple guidebooks (I count at least 5 on my shelf right now), and the flat-out massive wiki on Biosector01. Is it really worth it to read all this stuff to get into Bionicle? Many kids answered no, and went off to play with their transformers.-don't touch my pocket protector

So you're saying that the story was to ...added on to continue.

[Toa of Nerds]

Hmm... maybe they just need to organise the story content better? They made some effort to do this by dividing the books into three or four different series, but even then, it was still tricky. They seemed to take the philosophy of "take everything from last year off the site so kids don't get confused", rather than archiving it in an accessible way. Ironically, I think taking previous years' content offline actually made it more confusing, as the current storyline each year was presented with very little context, at least as far as the main site is concerned. Kids would need to rely on external sources, such as BS01, to get the full picture without buying a lot of books.

Dviding the books into series just shows how complicated the story became in later years. Probably what they needed was some sort of 3-5 minute flash video for each year that explained what happened in that year. Then you could go back and re-fresh your memory on the story. Then anybody good get up to date with the story by just watching 30 minutes worth of entertaining videos, instead of having to spend hours reading through mountains of text. They could have still kept backstory and stuff for older fans, but the face of the story should not have been the mountain of written material; it should have been those videos.-don't touch my pocket protector

[fishers64]

Hmm... maybe they just need to organise the story content better? They made some effort to do this by dividing the books into three or four different series, but even then, it was still tricky. They seemed to take the philosophy of "take everything from last year off the site so kids don't get confused", rather than archiving it in an accessible way. Ironically, I think taking previous years' content offline actually made it more confusing, as the current storyline each year was presented with very little context, at least as far as the main site is concerned. Kids would need to rely on external sources, such as BS01, to get the full picture without buying a lot of books.

Dviding the books into series just shows how complicated the story became in later years. Probably what they needed was some sort of 3-5 minute flash video for each year that explained what happened in that year. Then you could go back and re-fresh your memory on the story. Then anybody good get up to date with the story by just watching 30 minutes worth of entertaining videos, instead of having to spend hours reading through mountains of text. They could have still kept backstory and stuff for older fans, but the face of the story should not have been the mountain of written material; it should have been those videos.-don't touch my pocket protector

They actually tried to do that with the "Bionicle 4-minute retrospective" in 2008, and it didn't work. Although that might have been too little, too late, and it was on Bionicle.com, which only the Bionicle nerds of the time went to.

[Toa of Nerds]

Hmm... maybe they just need to organise the story content better? They made some effort to do this by dividing the books into three or four different series, but even then, it was still tricky. They seemed to take the philosophy of "take everything from last year off the site so kids don't get confused", rather than archiving it in an accessible way. Ironically, I think taking previous years' content offline actually made it more confusing, as the current storyline each year was presented with very little context, at least as far as the main site is concerned. Kids would need to rely on external sources, such as BS01, to get the full picture without buying a lot of books.

Dviding the books into series just shows how complicated the story became in later years. Probably what they needed was some sort of 3-5 minute flash video for each year that explained what happened in that year. Then you could go back and re-fresh your memory on the story. Then anybody good get up to date with the story by just watching 30 minutes worth of entertaining videos, instead of having to spend hours reading through mountains of text. They could have still kept backstory and stuff for older fans, but the face of the story should not have been the mountain of written material; it should have been those videos.-don't touch my pocket protector

They actually tried to do that with the "Bionicle 4-minute retrospective" in 2008, and it didn't work. Although that might have been too little, too late, and it was on Bionicle.com, which only the Bionicle nerds of the time went to.

Well, really only Bionicle nerds were into the story in anyway. But something like that for each year would have been nice, especially if it was displayed prominently on the website. That way, anybody who wanted to would be able to get into the story. With Hero Factory, however, I get the feeling that they are going for basically no story, which is something that I absolutely cannot get behind. I think Lego needs to realize that they aren't selling action figures, they're selling characters. Do kids buy Spiderman action figures because of their features, or because they're of Spiderman. This connection between character and product is what really drew me to Bionicle in the early years, and the story actually drove most of my purchasing decisions.-don't touch my pocket protector

[Aanchir]

Hmm... maybe they just need to organise the story content better? They made some effort to do this by dividing the books into three or four different series, but even then, it was still tricky. They seemed to take the philosophy of "take everything from last year off the site so kids don't get confused", rather than archiving it in an accessible way. Ironically, I think taking previous years' content offline actually made it more confusing, as the current storyline each year was presented with very little context, at least as far as the main site is concerned. Kids would need to rely on external sources, such as BS01, to get the full picture without buying a lot of books.

Dviding the books into series just shows how complicated the story became in later years. Probably what they needed was some sort of 3-5 minute flash video for each year that explained what happened in that year. Then you could go back and re-fresh your memory on the story. Then anybody good get up to date with the story by just watching 30 minutes worth of entertaining videos, instead of having to spend hours reading through mountains of text. They could have still kept backstory and stuff for older fans, but the face of the story should not have been the mountain of written material; it should have been those videos.-don't touch my pocket protector

They actually tried to do that with the "Bionicle 4-minute retrospective" in 2008, and it didn't work. Although that might have been too little, too late, and it was on Bionicle.com, which only the Bionicle nerds of the time went to.

Well, really only Bionicle nerds were into the story in anyway. But something like that for each year would have been nice, especially if it was displayed prominently on the website. That way, anybody who wanted to would be able to get into the story. With Hero Factory, however, I get the feeling that they are going for basically no story, which is something that I absolutely cannot get behind. I think Lego needs to realize that they aren't selling action figures, they're selling characters. Do kids buy Spiderman action figures because of their features, or because they're of Spiderman. This connection between character and product is what really drew me to Bionicle in the early years, and the story actually drove most of my purchasing decisions.-don't touch my pocket protector

To be fair, the Hero Factory story does have relatively interesting characters. They're kind of generic, but then again so were the Toa Mata in some ways. The difference is that BIONICLE had mysterious and suspenseful adventures and plotlines, something HF for the most part lacks.For me, the best moments in the Hero Factory storyline is when a character does something that really reflects their personality. So I liked Rocka and Furno's feud in Savage Planet, as well as how Bulk was trying to do a lot of studying in order to redefine himself as "not just the big guy." I would have enjoyed the episode as a whole a lot better if the fight scenes, jokes, and banter weren't so mind-grating. It's those defining character moments that I really watch for, though, and those are also some of the story details I like best in the BIONICLE and Ninjago novels by Greg Farshtey. I guess that's part of why I don't mind the HF story despite its relative shallowness. Edited December 16, 2011 by Aanchir: Rachira of Time

[fishers64]

HF is a paradox. They are trying to do story (they learned from their 1998 lack of money) and not end up with Bionicle sized story. So far, it is kind of working, but not really pleasing hardcore Bionicle fans who want more story or standard Lego nerds who don't care about story, because the story is cheesy and a put-off.It's a fact that the major people who buy action figure sets are people who want story, or they are really little kids. Bionicle gave people story, and people bought the sets. Lego thinks that the "little kid" demographic is larger than the "want story" demographic, which is kind of funny given that most of the Lego sets that are sold are in developed countries where populations of young people aren't exactly increasing. Eventually TLG will have to adjust to this reality. People are buying HF sets. So it cannot be a 100% story driven connection for everyone. I think the appeal of customization with Hero Recon team and the new building system is helping. But the 3-5 minute video idea - is that essential hardware for a Bionicle return?

[GSR]

Well, keep in mind Lego also has Ninjago going at the moment, which appears to me to have a decent amount of story material to it. It could be that they're experimenting with different levels of story and cross-media promotion across their different lines to get a better idea of what works best.

[Zarohum]

In summary, the reasons for Bionicle's end:

• [*]Lego did not bother with maintaining Bionicle.com in the later years. Less story content was available for free.[*]Too much reliance on books, which require money to access. Book covers were too toylike and uninviting (some nice original artwork may have helped).[*]Never had a TV show to help communicate the story. (Once again, story less accessible).[*]Promotional materials, such as the "Save the band" campaign and the Bionicle Heroes game, deviated too much from the canon, causing confusion about the story. To a lesser extent, this also applies to some elements of the movies.[*]Picked the wrong studio to make TLR.[*]No mention of Bioniclestory.com on the main site, or on the toy packaging. (seriously, how are kids supposed to find it?)[*]No theatrical film. The deal with Tinseltown Toons meant that no other studioes could produce Bionicle DVDs for the term of the contract. Lego recieved a pitch for a big-screen Bionicle film, but had to turn it down for this reason.

Now, the longer version:I see the issue as not so much the complex nature of the story, but rather the accessibility of the story. When Bionicle was in its prime, from 2001 to 2003, most of the main story content was available online. Then came Mask Of Light, which sold well because of the interest in Bionicle built up by the website.After 2003, however, the story became much more reliant on the books, and there was less available online. Now, not that there's anything wrong with books; it's just that they require the kids to spend money in order to access them (Unless the public libraries have them, which in my experience, generally don't.)

Mine had the adventures. :PYeah. I was having trouble following the story myself near the end. I almost always skipped the podcast stories, like into the Darkness, Sahmad's Tale, Riddle of the Great Beings, etc, and often missed a few minor details which I used to be on top of. Bionicle got too big for what it was meant to be.

[Makuta_of_Oz]

What Lego says in their automated reply is that Bionicle wasn't getting many new fans.

[Sumiki]

What Lego says in their automated reply is that Bionicle wasn't getting many new fans.

Doesn't that make a lot of sense, though, if you think about it? LEGO was not going to have representatives waste their time explaining something to kids that were mad about their favorite line getting killed the same thing, over and over again. Form letters are an effective way to communicate something like this.Not only that, but ten years of backstory would really be annoying to have to learn just to get fully into the storyline - and most young kids have attention spans about as long as a lobster's.

[Toa Zaz]

QUOTE Hi Alyska,The last info I got is that I am allowed to dialogue with BZPers who I "know" to be over 13, and I "know" you are, so I am trying to respond to your movie questions.There have been two aspects to the whole BIONICLE in theaters thing that I know of. The first bunch of offers that we got I know got deep-sixed because they were insisting on adding real kids, and because the studio(s) would have wanted control of the story, as opposed to LEGO controlling it. And we weren't interested in that.I know there was also another overture (from which studio I forget) and I did dialogue with those guys. But they lost interest at the time because we already had a DVD deal with Tinseltown Toons -- which would mean they couldn't put out a DVD of their theatrical movie, so the deal made no sense for them.There may well have been other contacts beside this, but these are the ones I know of.Couple other points:1) The odds are I would not be writing the movie. Outside of doing the story for the 2009 film, I have never gotten the chance to be involved, and even that one I didn't do the actual script for. Movie studios prefer to use people they have worked with before who have screen credits, which I do not have.2) LEGO's financial picture never has and most likely never would have an impact on whether movies get done or not, simply because we do not finance the films. The studios do. We are not in the movie business, we license them out same as we do the video games.3) I really know nothing about LEGO's position as far as selling rights to franchises go. But I can speak to a company I worked for in the past, which had franchises that 1) were nowhere near as successful as BIONICLE and 2) were dead, dead, dead. And they wanted an arm and a leg to sell anything they had, because they figured if someone wanted to buy it, it must be valuable. (There would be no real need to buy the rights to the entire line anyway -- if you just want to get a movie made, then you license the movie rights and pay LEGO a royalty, same way Tinseltown Toons did. But you would probably have to be able to show that you have some knowledge/experience at making films and a reasonable chance of getting a major studio to distribute it.)4) The reason no theatrical movie was made when BIONICLE first came out is that it was an unproven commodity. BIONICLE was created in 2000 and came out in 2001. To have a theatrical movie out in, say, 2002, work would have had to have started in 2000, before the concept was even finished (and you would have wound up with a "Boneheads of Voodoo Island" movie). And no one knew if BIONICLE would sell or not. By the time they knew, it was 2002, and we had the DVD deal for the 2003 movie.Thing with toys or that sort of thing is they can be a fad -- if something is hot its first year, doesn't mean by the time the movie comes out it is off the shelves completely. That is why Scholastic is only interested in lines expected to run at least three years, so they don't wind up putting out a lot of books when there are no toys to support sales.GregThere is GregF's words on the subject, sent to Alyska in the final days of the archive. There was a request for a movie deal in 2009. (Sorry, Gata)I have had an idea to put all the web animations, games, movies, comics, story serials in one place to make this backstory problem easier to solve - but have been derailed by other projects. The first thing I would do, if I were to bring Bionicle back, would be to place all the backstory material online, including the DVD movies and the books. All of it.

CANCELLED THEATRICAL BIONICLE MOVIE REQUEST WHAT THE MOTHER@#$%ING @#$%?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!!??!!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!!??!?! :OMG: ...shame it never got made, although, even though it might of been technically better, the story and stuff might've been worse and even more kid-oriented.