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What Lego thing do you think replaced Bionicle G2?


Lenny7092

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Hi, guys!:) I know that Bionicle G2 ended last year, there is no replacement theme with an original story by Lego like Hero Factory, and you guys are talking about how did that happen. Well, we don’t know how, but I can tell you a theory: Since Lego said that it was their business decision to cancel G2, I would think that Lego is focusing other Lego things in 2017, so they had to get Bionicle and another theme called Mixels out of the way. Thus, these Lego things look like that they replaced Bionicle. The things are:

1. Star Wars theme - There’s constraction, and there’s a big wave of sets every year. Plus, there’s this new non-canon TV show called Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. Man, I know that there are new SW movies coming out, but the TV show isn’t necessary much in my opinion.

2. Nexo Knights - a big theme for 2-3 years so far, and it replaced Legends of Chima. However, not everything in there is equal, and the TV show is getting less and less views. I believe it’s gonna end in 2018.

3. Ninjago - I respect the theme. There’s a lot of stuff in there, but the TV show is getting less and less views when Season 7 happened for some reason and the movie got mixed reviews for some reason.

4. The Lego Batman Movie - A lot of stuff.

5. BrickHeads - Those new silly-looking and non-flexible Lego counterparts of Funko Vinyl toys. They may have licensed stuff, but I kind of look at them as the replacement of Bionicle and Mixels because they are figures.

 

Man, this year, 2017, is big with these guys. Lego sure have trouble with priorities, which led to the downfall of many Lego themes in this decade, including Bionicle. What Lego thing do you think replaced Bionicle this year?

Edited by Lenny7092

I like Lego, Bionicle, and Hero Factory!:)

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I hope G2 is replaced by a Lego original space theme, Galaxy Squad was 4 years ago now :(

I love the space themes because they give lots of original Alien designs so that Stop-motion films I make can be License-free.

 

Also, I notice you keep asking why Ninjago season 7 got less fews, I want to throw my biased hat in the ring:

The reason I didn't like season 7 is because the villains had boring designs

The vermillion were very boring in my opinion; snakes (again!) no cool new molds like the serpentine heads or Ghost tails and some of them were given personalities when they really didn't need them.

 

one more thing; Why can't they kill Wu already, the amount of times he's "sacrificed" himself or seemingly been kiled is atrocious! give the man a satisfying ending!.

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My Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClo2J14RKmVtcnoJTv7g6PA , Bionicle films coming soon!

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I don't really think any of these things was meant to replace Bionicle G2, to be honest. Keep in mind that Bionicle G2's ending was somewhat abrupt (the decision was made when The Journey to One was already in development), whereas most of these themes you mention are either already ongoing themes or themes that have been in the works for years. LEGO didn't just suddenly realize that they wanted to create new content for these other themes.

 

Also, I don't see how ending Bionicle and focusing on other themes instead in any way implies LEGO has their priorities wrong. You keep mentioning in topic after topic about "the downfall of themes" as if it's a bad thing for themes to end, but outside of extraordinary circumstances, most themes are only supposed to last a little while before they end. It's not like themes that only last a few waves are a recent phenomenon. You can't keep treating every theme that doesn't last 5+ years or get a fully developed and carefully resolved story as if it's some kind of failure, because long-running themes with fully developed stories have never been the norm.

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Bionicle and Ninjago are the only long term running themes I know of.

(correct me if I'm wrong.)

 

Also I made a theory that Lego maybe redrawing Bionicle if they weren't making a new line within a year or two. So it looks like in my theory a soft G2 reboot may be possible.

Hey I got a Flickr because I like making LEGO stuff.

https://www.flickr.com/people/toatimelord/
 

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Bionicle and Ninjago are the only long term running themes I know of.

(correct me if I'm wrong.)

Well, besides those there's City, Friends, Creator, Technic, Architecture, etc… but of those, Friends is the only one that's particularly story-driven. And then there are some other themes that aren't a constant presence, but that are frequently re-imagined (sometimes in story-driven forms, sometimes less so), such as Castle, Pirates, and Space. But overall, the tendency is for most new themes (even a lot of licensed ones!) to be more of a "flash in the pan" with a one to three year lifespan.

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I hope G2 is replaced by a Lego original space theme, Galaxy Squad was 4 years ago now :(

I love the space themes because they give lots of original Alien designs so that Stop-motion films I make can be License-free.

 

Oh man, Galaxy Squad was FOUR years ago? That's just depressing. I don't know whether to be upset at LEGO for not making it or consumers for not showing interest. I like Star Wars but it never felt like an adequate replacement for Space. Star Wars isn't even Sci Fi, it's Sci Fa.

 

I wish we could have a hopeful Space theme. LEGO built a fun and colorful universe akin to Star Trek. It's almost weird looking back on how LEGO has changed from "Just Imagine. . ." to making most of their big themes action/conflict oriented. I suppose that's mostly a product the society and climate LEGO is marketing to, though that could also be assuming a higher focus on American markets.

 

I'm just forced to face the fact that my interests are niche and LEGO has no business catering to me. I have neither the money nor the sustained interest to engage myself in new LEGO themes so I generally just keep my eye open for things that are directly relevant to my interests, nostalgia, and character. I don't know if anyone else has been having this. Maybe it's just part of getting older.

 

I think it's important not to focus too much on LEGO and LEGO's decision in this instance. We should be thinking about what replaced Bionicle in the minds/interests of kids, the people who buy them. I went into a Toys R Us the other day first the first time in a year out of pure curiosity and found an entire section still filled with Bionicle sets more than a year since its cancellation. I can't make a definitive conclusion from that singular instance but I can assume that consumers aren't interested in them because of both the execution of G2 on multiple facets but also how other media and toys are competing for their attention. I don't think we pay much attention to just how much video games are a serious competitor for toy companies.

 

Anyway, TL;DR, Bring back Space, nothing else I said matters.

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I wish we could have a hopeful Space theme. LEGO built a fun and colorful universe akin to Star Trek. It's almost weird looking back on how LEGO has changed from "Just Imagine. . ." to making most of their big themes action/conflict oriented. I suppose that's mostly a product the society and climate LEGO is marketing to, though that could also be assuming a higher focus on American markets.

To some extent, LEGO Space was action/conflict oriented from the very beginning. LEGO wasn't allowed to be open about it for a long time, but the designers weren't naive about how kids would play with the sets. As Jens Nygaard Knudsen (the lead designer of the Classic Space sets and inventor of the minifigure) explained in an interview back in 2009: "We were not allowed to make weapons, and the aerials and other elements that pointed forwards on the spaceships looked too aggressive. Instead we added a lot of radar dishes and sensor probes, but to us they were really guns!"

 

The LEGO Group's upper management was in those years still staunchly conservative about what type of content they considered kid-appropriate — Godtfred Kirk Christiansen even threatened to fire designer Niels Milan Pedersen for having the audacity to stick a rudimentary minifigure skeleton in a Castle set prototype as a joke! Luckily, by the time he dared to try again and design the minifigure skeleton we know today, those attitudes had softened, and Neils is still working at LEGO designing new molds to this day.

 

Back on the subject of LEGO Space, the original white and red classic spacemen were originally envisioned as rival factions analogous to American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, although as other colors were introduced this idea was more or less abandoned. The Blacktron sets in 1987, on the other hand, were expressly designed as a "bad guy" faction to oppose the Futuron "good guys". And of course, by the time Pirates rolled around in 1989, LEGO was fully prepared to depict bad guy vs. good guy conflicts in sets, even to the point of arming them with everything from swords to guns to actual firing cannons. Personally, I feel like the modern LEGO approach of being honest and accepting about kids' natural affinity for good guy vs. bad guy play and storytelling is a big step up from outwardly condemning it while still obliquely designing sets with that type of play in mind.

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I wish we could have a hopeful Space theme. LEGO built a fun and colorful universe akin to Star Trek. It's almost weird looking back on how LEGO has changed from "Just Imagine. . ." to making most of their big themes action/conflict oriented. I suppose that's mostly a product the society and climate LEGO is marketing to, though that could also be assuming a higher focus on American markets.

To some extent, LEGO Space was action/conflict oriented from the very beginning. LEGO wasn't allowed to be open about it for a long time, but the designers weren't naive about how kids would play with the sets. As Jens Nygaard Knudsen (the lead designer of the Classic Space sets and inventor of the minifigure) explained in an interview back in 2009: "We were not allowed to make weapons, and the aerials and other elements that pointed forwards on the spaceships looked too aggressive. Instead we added a lot of radar dishes and sensor probes, but to us they were really guns!"

 

The LEGO Group's upper management was in those years still staunchly conservative about what type of content they considered kid-appropriate — Godtfred Kirk Christiansen even threatened to fire designer Niels Milan Pedersen for having the audacity to stick a rudimentary minifigure skeleton in a Castle set prototype as a joke! Luckily, by the time he dared to try again and design the minifigure skeleton we know today, those attitudes had softened, and Neils is still working at LEGO designing new molds to this day.

 

Back on the subject of LEGO Space, the original white and red classic spacemen were originally envisioned as rival factions analogous to American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, although as other colors were introduced this idea was more or less abandoned. The Blacktron sets in 1987, on the other hand, were expressly designed as a "bad guy" faction to oppose the Futuron "good guys". And of course, by the time Pirates rolled around in 1989, LEGO was fully prepared to depict bad guy vs. good guy conflicts in sets, even to the point of arming them with everything from swords to guns to actual firing cannons. Personally, I feel like the modern LEGO approach of being honest and accepting about kids' natural affinity for good guy vs. bad guy play and storytelling is a big step up from outwardly condemning it while still obliquely designing sets with that type of play in mind.

 

 

Good points! I remember reading that issue years ago though I had completely forgotten about it. I didn't mean to sound like I purely condemn conflict-oriented sets; most of my favorite LEGO themes are all about conflict. But I guess where I make the distinction is I don't want more war-based themes. A lot of themes create a heavy distinction between the "heroes" and "villains," i.e. Mars Mission, Space Police I/II/III, Galaxy Squad, Insectoids, Alien Conquest, Exo-Force, Power Miners, Agents, etc. I love sci fi wars and narratives about wars but I like them best when the point is to condemn war and demonstrate a commonality between people's or make a point about the nature of people and right/wrong.

 

LEGO too often builds its themes around a scape-goat/common enemy that is the absolute cause of all conflict and must either be stopped or eliminated. I love Star Trek because it acknowledges "otherness" but chooses to defy it and make it familiar. The Klingons were the Federation's greatest enemy, but eventually they put everything aside to help them and have peace between people's, even if its uneasy.

 

I want a Space theme where there is a diverse number of antagonists but where each instance what they are isn't what makes them evil. In one set maybe a Federation outpost in under attack by a robot empire, whereas in another it's the Blacktron, or Spyrius, or Insectoids. There's conflict, but it's not a war of peoples, rather a war of situation. I'd love to see aliens and robots in classic space outfits since all we ever see is the "other" presented as evil in LEGO themes.

 

Maybe I'm silly for wanting moral ambiguity in LEGO sets, and if I am by all means call me out lol. I just feel that good versus evil is only serviceable when the point is that it defies itself. I feel like LEGO Space sets could be way more interesting that way. On top of that it would make individual sets more interesting and different from others since you'd be getting a different conflict, a different story. I'd be way more inclined to get a set if it included a conflict I didn't already own.

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LEGO has definitely moved towards having more moral ambiguity in a lot of their most story-driven themes like Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Elves. In these themes, there have been plenty of instances of enemies becoming allies and so forth, not to mention instances of ghosts, snakes, and robots who are good guys or regular humans who are bad guys. Also Elves, like Power Miners before it, goes out of its way to show that the goblins are not evil so much as silly and mischievous, at least outside the corrupting influence of the Goblin King's magic (the Goblin King himself being a fairly attractive elf, much like the protagonists).

 

That said, I can understand why in themes that are lighter on story (like most Space, Pirates, and Castle themes) LEGO might be more inclined to separate its good guys and bad guys according to appearance. Even in a story-driven theme, you often can't count on kids already knowing the story when they buy the sets, and they'll want to have a strong sense of who's on each side and what they're fighting over. In a less story-driven theme there's even fewer opportunities to make it clear that a character with the same creepy or monstrous design characteristics as the bad guys is actually on the side of the good guys. If LEGO ever made a Space theme with a Star Trek level of storytelling, then I would be more confident in their ability to work more morally ambiguous characters and more complex messages into that theme.

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