What went right and wrong in Hero Factory?

[Lenny7092]

Hi, guys! Anyone in here still thinking about Hero Factory? Well, people aren’t posting topics in this forum for months. I don’t know why, but I think it has something to do with the constraction category having disappeared, as in Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War in this year is making it disappear. Sad to look at it that way.

Speaking of constraction, the declining happened when 2010 began. It started when Bionicle G1 ended in early 2010. Then, Hero Factory happened in late 2010 to replace Bionicle until 2014 before Bionicle G2 happened in 2015. Even so, constraction kept on declining and then it’s ultimately gone in 2019 for some reason.

Hero Factory demonstrated this decline the most.

I can come up with some things that tell how Hero Factory has something to do with constraction declining.

1. The sets are weird in some ways.

2. Prices being unreasonable.

3. The story being weirdly told.

4. Poorly promoted.

5. How the media is handled weirdly.

 

That’s for constraction sets in 2010 in general. It’s because of budget, I would say. For Hero Factory’s case, here’s how these factors apply there:

1. The 2010 Hero sets have stiff limbs. In 2009, the medium-sized Bionicle sets have bendable limbs. Lego should’ve moved on with that, but I see that the Hero sets are like the small Bionicle G1 sets while the medium-sized Villain sets are like the medium Bionicle G1 sets. The Villain sets in 2010 have weird arms. Some of them don’t have hands. Plus, Rotor’s and Vapor’s helmets don’t have eye holes. Certain 2.0 Heroes, Stormer, Furno, Nex, and Evo, don’t have hands on where they are carrying their shields. Same to Stormer 1.0, Bulk 1.0, Stringer 1.0, Stormer 3.0, Stringer 3.0, Rocka 3.0, Rocka XL, Breakout Evo, Breakout Rocka, Breakout Nex, and Brain Attack Furno. Plus, some of these heroes have uneven arms. When the early 2011 storyline happened, Bulk and Stringer never got their 2.0 sets. When the late 2011 storyline happened, Surge, Breez, and Evo never got their 3.0 sets. Strangely, also, in Brain Attack and Invasion From Below storylines, Stringer and Nex never got their BA or IFB looks, and neither did they have their Brain monster counterparts. There is a lot of lime green as well, like how Bionicle’s 2008 storyline has that. However, we got some purple pieces in 2011 that we never seen from constraction for a long time since Bionicle’s 2001 storyline (10 years). The Ordeal of Fire Hero helmets look weird. In Invasion From Below, we got play-set-like sets that mainly consist of mechs and giant monsters with tiny versions of the Heroes. I found that kind of unexpected, but kind of cool, even though I hate that there is a lot of stickers. Annoying little things. I’m not much of a playset person and more of an action figure person, to be honest, anyway. There aren’t much combiner models in 2010 until 2011. Lucas Valor looks kind of lacking and wears a chest plate for a helmet, which is weird. That combiner is the only one in 2010. The 2011 ones are only from the Heroes and look a bit weird. The 2012-2014 ones look weird.

2. I would say that the prices are a bit too expensive. Even Bionicle 2015-2016 has this issue, but maybe worse.

3. As for the story, it is mainly about Heroes fighting villains and monsters in various places in space at first, at least in the 2010 at first. It’s like one of those Saturday morning TV shows. However, things got different when they encounter various threats that threaten to harm them. They fought Von Nebula and his gang, the Fire Villains, Witch Doctor and his animal slaves, Black Phantom and the escapes villains, the Brains and their slaves, and the Jumpers. Along the way, there are six heroes at first. Three of them are veterans while the rest are rookies. In 2011, three more rookies showed up. Weird thing is that some of them don’t show up in certain storylines, unlike the Toa teams from Bionicle. There is an unknown rookie in 2012, who is a combo model of Furno, Surge, and Evo, who doesn’t have character development, so why put him here? The villains are just like video game enemies to be defeated after a short time. They hardly come back to be threats again. Silly thing is that the Heroes fought Rotor as the first villain, but he’s big while some others are smaller. They should have started with at least X-Plode before fighting a big villain like Rotor just to make things more challenging. There are a lot of unresolved things here and there. The Fire Villains were never cured, there’s a swarm of Brains in the Hero Factory, there is the creator of the Brains being there, Von Nebula, Voltix and Core Hunter are out there somewhere not captured, there’s a Jumper cocoon in the Heroes’ Drop Ship. The story kept on jumping from one place to another without finishing what it started. Plus, there isn’t much character development in some things here and there.

4. As for how the things are promoted, well, most sets are promoted, as the only under-promoted sets are X-Plode, Corroder, Thunder, Rotor, Bulk vs. Vapor (this set is exclusive), Nitroblast, Jetbug, Raw-Jaw, Waspix, Fangz, Scorpio, Thornraxx, XT4, Core Hunter, Nex, Stringer, Breez, and Bulk. The advertisements, TV show, online games, and online videos aren’t doing well with those things, not like how Bionicle G1 does.

5. For how the media is handled, well, the story is primarily told through a “TV show”. Bionicle G1 used various forms of media to tell its story (well, I think mainly books and comics), But HF is using the TV show as the primary way of telling the story. I find that effective, but it’s more like a bunch of specials that rarely happen rather than an actual TV show, like how Ninjago has 10-13 22-minute episodes per season and each season tells a storyline. There are only eleven of these episodes. The first nine are good in many ways, like character development and comedy, the tenth episode is kind of meh, and the eleventh episode is the worst. While the first ten episodes were released in Nicktoons and then Nickelodeon, are made by the same animation company who made Bionicle: The Legend Reborn in 2009, and the characters in there are voiced by popular people that we know very well (I see that some of them look quite expensive for a TV show). The eleventh episode, however, is very different from the others, as it was exclusive in an online game called Invasion From Below, is made by a different company who made online videos for Bionicle G1, and the characters in there are voiced by people that we don’t know. That is atrociously weird because of the IFB episode, I say. Why can’t the IFB episode be like the others? Seriously? Plus, there are a lot of animation problems, and some make the characters don’t match their sets greatly. The 2011 sets have five fingers per hand while the 2011 episodes are where there are four fingers per hand. Plus, the IFB episode is where there are four fingers per hand for some reason. However, I do like that the characters in the IFB episodes have organic-looking mouths and eyes. Anyway, the episodes are missing a few sets, which are Vapor, Breakout Bulk, Breakout Nex, Breakout Breez, Core Hunter, XT4, and Thornraxx. There are a lot of lazily reused animation models. The comics are kind of good, but becoming more not accurate later on. The character development needs to be worked on a lot, too.

 

So, yeah. A lot of stuff in HF are unequal. HF got some good charm, but it never got the same magic as Bionicle. Too bad that it ended, too. Lego should really need to promote and advertise the constraction themes, including HF, much better lately. This decade is the Dark age/Great Depression for the constraction category. Poor HF.

Anyway, what do you think, guys? Please reply, because this forum is like a desolate desert with abandoned relics.

[The Master of Energy]

HF was weird, but I liked it anyway.

[Toa of Ice - 1987]

The main issue is they had inconsistencies, lackluster villain sets and Invasion From Below was a terrible experiment for Battle Mechs, it did not look ok how the hero's were getting even more humanoid eyes under the removeable helmets in the episode.

Lack of Villain Factory not being used just really kiled it, IFB should have come after Villain Factory