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What most elusive set you ever bough.


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Like the title says, this thread is dedicated for sets that you guys had difficulty finding during bionicle G1 and G2.

 

I remember Turaga Matau was quite troublesome to find when the series first started. Took me at least 3 stores over the course of a whole month to track down. :mahiki:

 

What are your stories. Remember to keep things civilized and keep things here to only bionicle sets. (The summer fire chima sets of 2013, and hero factory belong in their respective forums.)

Edited by necross hordika

 

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Interesting. It's not so much that I had trouble finding a lot of Bionicle products, its just that I couldn't afford them at the time. Plus, as years went on and I was better connected, it made it much simpler to order and get the sets I was after. Even the SDCC mask I bought off ebay was an easy find, if not a cheap one.

 

I do remember back in the day I had lots of trouble finding Kopaka Mata, since the few stores that we visited regularly never seemed to have him in stock, and he was the last Toa I needed. (And I was too young to shop around on my own or make an online / catalogue purchase.) I guess I also had some trouble finished my original Kanohi collection... only got maybe 20 when the mask packs were out in stores, and then a decade later I started buying them off BrickLink, and it still took a year or so to find them all. More recently, I had been planning to pick up Umarak the Destroyer when I found him in store... but I never saw him on any shelves, and ended up ordering him online. Tahu Uniter was another difficult one... by the time I went searching for him, he was sold out online, and I eventually found him at a ToysRUs (but not the first one I visited either.)

 

And there's a slight chance I may be a bit obsessive about this toy line...

 

:music:

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I had a crazy story in 2007 with the Toa Terrian Crawler playset.

 

I would check every week to see if they had it in stock but they never did until one week, they had a single box in stock, but some other lucky kid took it and bought it right in front of me.

 

I wasn't particularly happy and I never got the set in the end.

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I had a crazy story in 2007 with the Toa Terrian Crawler playset.

 

I would check every week to see if they had it in stock but they never did until one week, they had a single box in stock, but some other lucky kid took it and bought it right in front of me.

 

I wasn't particularly happy and I never got the set in the end.

That's definitely too bad, but this is what happens with big sets, either they are shelfwarmers (sitting forever selling poorly) or in irregular supply

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Probably McToran Kongu. He was the only one I couldn't grab when they were available, so I ended up buying him for $15 when I discovered Bricklink for the first time in 2004 or 2005.

 

I missed out on most of the original Rahi sets too, so the Tarakava and Nui-Jaga sets eluded me for a long time. I finally found them for sale in a rinky-dink educational toy store in early 2004, apparently untouched for years. It was a pretty amazing find.

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Back in 2001 I didn't end up getting Tahu until after I'd gotten the other 5 Toa.  I'd started with Lewa and then went for Gali and Kopaka to make Wairuha, but after that the next few times I looked in some stores their stocks were low and I only found, like, a single Onua or Pohatu.  Pretty sure a similar thing happened with Tahnok, because I remember wanting to emulate the scene from the comics where they were climbing up a cliff by melting handholds into it but not having one.

 

Not particularly "elusive" but at 8 or 9 I wasn't particularly able or versed in the ways of finding products.  Nowadays the aftermarket has made it fairly easy to find things.

 

I did end up getting a foam Onua claw from BrickLink once though, and I don't remember seeing anything else about it elsewhere.

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Finding Mask Maker vs. Skull Grinder

was a tough one to find.

Every time I go to a store or online its was sold out.

(This is one reason I thought G2 was doing pretty good.)

Then one day I saw it on Wal-Mart.com under men's clothing.

I was looking up t-shirts and there it was.

I was confused but happy.

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I remember Nidhiki was the set which the search for frustrated me for a while. It was back near the end of '04, I'd just got around to deciding I wanted him, and he didn't seem to be anywhere. I remember getting my parents to drive me to quite a few local towns with toy shops, and he just wasn't in any of them, even if they had other Bionicle sets. As a thirteen-year-old who had only recently decided to try and be a completionist collector, I recall that being an incredibly frustrating experience; eventually I just gave up the search and bought him off Lego Shop At Home instead.

 

At that point, I wasn't the experienced ebay / amazon shopper that I am today, or I would have bought him off one of them without all the hassle xD

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I can't really thing of one specific one that was hard to find. Lesovikk maybe? He was the only one of the 07 titans I never saw in stores. I know the set had a recall because of missing parts, so maybe the stores in my area just never restocked them afterwards? Or maybe they just never had them to begin with. Guess I'll never know. Though I still have yet to get the set so I'm not sure it really counts.

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My acquisition of 4 sealed Rahaga and a Fikou polybag this year, whom were missing from my collection, is the only one I have that would count. Someone posted all six Rahaga, the Fikou and a Visorak (Vohtarak I believe) in sealed condition on an auction website some time ago. I hit the auctions for the four Rahaga I was missing (Pouks, Kualus, Gaaki, Bomonga) and the Fikou. The price was dirt cheap, under 1000 Ft (our local currency) since the guy probably didn't know the worth of discontinued sealed sets. So, a bidding war ensued among the others while I sat patiently, waiting to snipe in the last 10-5 seconds. I won Pouks and Kulaus, but someone else sniped the other three sets. 

 

Now, the site does not have any kind of messaging system, and the seller was the only person I could contact. As such, I asked him to relay a message to whoever won those three to get into contact with me so we can work out a deal. I had little faith that it would work, because obviously someone sniping sealed Bionicle sets has to be a collector like me, right?

 

Luckily, the person contacted me, and I proposed either a trade for much larger used Bionicle sets I own duplicates of (I specifically offered 2004 titans) or to buy them from them. At first the person seemed open, but then I got a reply that was even more dreadful than a straight rejection.

 

Turns out the buyer was a non-collector parent of kids who aren't even fans of Bionicle, she just wanted to get the kids some cheap Easter presents. To my offer of trading larger sets, she said "there is no point in giving them bigger toys, because they destroy everything anyway" and that the Rahaga and Fikou "won't last a month either".

 

Until now I was just eager to get sets for my collection, but now the stakes were high. I had to save these guys from the little monsters. This is Bionicle history we're talking about, sets that remained sealed since 2003 and 2005. I'm not going to let that be destroyed.

 

So after an enthusiastic e-mail detailing the worth of these sealed sets in this condition, we finally settled. I ended up paying a whole lot more for these than I did for the ones I won on the auction, but it was very, very worth it.

 

Not only were they elusive sets that I acquired, but I saved them too!

 

:kakama: 

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My acquisition of 4 sealed Rahaga and a Fikou polybag this year, whom were missing from my collection, is the only one I have that would count. Someone posted all six Rahaga, the Fikou and a Visorak (Vohtarak I believe) in sealed condition on an auction website some time ago. I hit the auctions for the four Rahaga I was missing (Pouks, Kualus, Gaaki, Bomonga) and the Fikou. The price was dirt cheap, under 1000 Ft (our local currency) since the guy probably didn't know the worth of discontinued sealed sets. So, a bidding war ensued among the others while I sat patiently, waiting to snipe in the last 10-5 seconds. I won Pouks and Kulaus, but someone else sniped the other three sets. 

 

Now, the site does not have any kind of messaging system, and the seller was the only person I could contact. As such, I asked him to relay a message to whoever won those three to get into contact with me so we can work out a deal. I had little faith that it would work, because obviously someone sniping sealed Bionicle sets has to be a collector like me, right?

 

Luckily, the person contacted me, and I proposed either a trade for much larger used Bionicle sets I own duplicates of (I specifically offered 2004 titans) or to buy them from them. At first the person seemed open, but then I got a reply that was even more dreadful than a straight rejection.

 

Turns out the buyer was a non-collector parent of kids who aren't even fans of Bionicle, she just wanted to get the kids some cheap Easter presents. To my offer of trading larger sets, she said "there is no point in giving them bigger toys, because they destroy everything anyway" and that the Rahaga and Fikou "won't last a month either".

 

Until now I was just eager to get sets for my collection, but now the stakes were high. I had to save these guys from the little monsters. This is Bionicle history we're talking about, sets that remained sealed since 2003 and 2005. I'm not going to let that be destroyed.

 

So after an enthusiastic e-mail detailing the worth of these sealed sets in this condition, we finally settled. I ended up paying a whole lot more for these than I did for the ones I won on the auction, but it was very, very worth it.

 

Not only were they elusive sets that I acquired, but I saved them too!

 

Thank goodness you saved them!

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It wasn't necessarily hard for me to obtain Hydraxon in '07, but it was very difficult to get one that actually satisfied me.

 

I bought him once in '07, but returned him because the Cordak blaster didn't work. By that time I owned all of the other 07 sets and (probably just by luck) all of the Cordak Blasters worked very well for me. So I thought it was defective and returned it.

 

Fast forward to Christmas where I received a second Hydraxon and the same problem existed with the Cordak blaster. It bothered me that no other set I had with that blaster had a problem shooting to the extent that his did; 1 or 2 of the rounds wouldn't fire on most of the toa which was ok with me, but to have only 1 out of 6 actually fire consistently on both Hydraxon blasters was upsetting to say the least...

 

I still don't own any Hydraxon set and he remains the only 2007 set I don't own

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It wasn't necessarily hard for me to obtain Hydraxon in '07, but it was very difficult to get one that actually satisfied me.

 

I bought him once in '07, but returned him because the Cordak blaster didn't work. By that time I owned all of the other 07 sets and (probably just by luck) all of the Cordak Blasters worked very well for me. So I thought it was defective and returned it.

 

Fast forward to Christmas where I received a second Hydraxon and the same problem existed with the Cordak blaster. It bothered me that no other set I had with that blaster had a problem shooting to the extent that his did; 1 or 2 of the rounds wouldn't fire on most of the toa which was ok with me, but to have only 1 out of 6 actually fire consistently on both Hydraxon blasters was upsetting to say the least...

 

I still don't own any Hydraxon set and he remains the only 2007 set I don't own

 

That is a common problem with the Cordak Blasters. It is not the blaster's fault it is the individual rockets. Guess you just had some awful luck.

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It wasn't necessarily hard for me to obtain Hydraxon in '07, but it was very difficult to get one that actually satisfied me.

 

I bought him once in '07, but returned him because the Cordak blaster didn't work. By that time I owned all of the other 07 sets and (probably just by luck) all of the Cordak Blasters worked very well for me. So I thought it was defective and returned it.

 

Fast forward to Christmas where I received a second Hydraxon and the same problem existed with the Cordak blaster. It bothered me that no other set I had with that blaster had a problem shooting to the extent that his did; 1 or 2 of the rounds wouldn't fire on most of the toa which was ok with me, but to have only 1 out of 6 actually fire consistently on both Hydraxon blasters was upsetting to say the least...

 

I still don't own any Hydraxon set and he remains the only 2007 set I don't own

I think the cordak blaster is just a waste on him, he looks fine without it if you ask me. He has plenty of other weapons.

 

The matoro hooks are supposed to be used as Exploding Boomerangs, he has his wrist blade thing, and the mahri blades are back mounted spears that he can fire. So effectively he has 3 weapons.

Edited by necross hordika
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Tracking down a good, complete listing for the Muaka and Kane-Ra was tough, but I finally got it after ages of looking. Getting a complete, affordable Exo-Toa set has also been troublesome for me. I ordered one off of eBay once and had to return it because some parts were missing.

There was also the yellow Jetrax T6, which wasn't necessarily elusive, but it was a pretty dank limited edition set.

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Currently United Tahu is quite elusive.

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Currently United Tahu is quite elusive.

You can get him on Amazon but your going to spend $80 something dollars on him.

 

 

What 80 dollars, for a set thats more like 15-20 dollars worth?

 

80 is more like paying for the kopaka + melum boxed set or G1 Titans in terms of hard to find vs value

Edited by necross hordika

 

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My most elusive sets would probably be either Toa Ignika, Levovikk, and Toa Iruini. Even though I got all three sets, I only saw each of them in stores once, and that was on the days I got them. (Each one on a different day, just to be clear.)

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for me it has to be vezon and fenrakk I spent the entire of 2006 searching for it but gave up when the barraki released. eventually I did get the set, three years later at a car boot sale. every time I went to a shop to buy it they said it was out of stock

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the turaga, by far. NOBODY seemed to have them in stock, until i got lucky and found one (1) nokama at wal-mart, and a while later found onewa nuju and whenua at k-mart

 

i still dont own vakama or matau lmao

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It'd have to be my lone Mctoran. I missed out on the McDonalds promotion (and really, the whole first three years of bionicle), so I never expected to actually own one. I nearly got my hands on an Onepu someone left at our church, but I can't recall what ever happened to him. Then, one year when I was a teenager, I bought a couple containers of mixed lego at a local yard sale. I dumped them out, and amidst the jumbled lego, megabloks, and other assorted garbage (yes, it was that kind of collection), I immediately noticed the Hewkii Mctoran relaxing in the center. He even had his disk!

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Oh my goodness yes, I didn't even think about the McToran. We didn't get that McDonald's promotion at all here in the UK; so, apart from Nuparu, they simply proved impossible to come by, until I eventually bought Kongu from someone in the Buy-Sell-Trade forum in late-'08.

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Aside from Hydraxon, I forgot to mention Toa Hagha Norik for being elusive. I do actually own Norik, but it was a while to get there.

 

I found Toa Iruni in Target one day in '05 by chance and had no idea what it was. I got it and I wanted to get Norik too. I looked in every store for what felt like eternity and I searched online everywhere for him and couldn't find him. Though both were "Special Edition," I could find Iruni in basically EVERY SINGLE STORE I LOOKED!! But never could I find Norik! 

 

By October '05 I had given up the search...

 

...and then I found a WalMart exclusive 2 pack containing both Toa Hagha. I didn't even think twice; I bought it (graciously with my mother's money) and used the 2nd Iruni for spare parts. But Norik is one of the coolest Toa Sets prior to the release of the Mahri designs.

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Lesovikk. I never saw it in stores in Australia, and out of desperation I bought one on eBay that arrived in cheap packaging and as a result had cracked joints.

 

And I still haven't replaced said joints yet.

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I've never really gone hunting for BIONICLE before. I remember that as a (younger) kid, my brothers and I had our heart set on getting the Mctoran (or the Ultimate Space Battle, but that is something else) there was a deal on ebay for all six for like 10 dollars (only an estimation, I don't didn't have much money so 10 seems to be within my childhood price range), but we missed it in the end.

 

One I've really been having trouble with was the G2 Makuta, it's like it doesn't even exist!

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I've never really gone hunting for BIONICLE before. I remember that as a (younger) kid, my brothers and I had our heart set on getting the Mctoran (or the Ultimate Space Battle, but that is something else) there was a deal on ebay for all six for like 10 dollars (only an estimation, I don't didn't have much money so 10 seems to be within my childhood price range), but we missed it in the end.

 

One I've really been having trouble with was the G2 Makuta, it's like it doesn't even exist!

G2 Makuta is a combiner model that uses alot G2 sets to build.

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Hardest set to get was some sealed Turaga. Hardest item to get as an unopened Power Pack (the music disc and chrome Hau).


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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

growing up, the Toys-R-Us we frequented had pretty much all of the sets i wanted, along with the occasional tub-of-technic-pieces

but with Gen 2 happening during my move to Montana... yeah, our local Walmart didn't have *any* of the 2016 sets after february, had to walk over to Target to grab a few. Still don't have all the ones i'd like, though admittedly i haven't looked for the rest online yet

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