I should probably make it clear that I do not intend to start ranting about 2006 in general. I intend not to make the slightest comment about the storyline or to particularly critiscise the sets.

So what on earth do I plan to talk about?

Well the answer is two-fold. Firstly, there are the Piraka torsos. Secondly, the Inika torsos.

When I first saw them, I was quite excited by the idea. They took Bionicle in a whole new direction - one that easily allowed poseability. It opened up numerous doorways and was a good step forward. Unfortunately, the set designers appear to have become complacant and refuse to budge from their current position.

I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing just how much the torso pieces are cropping up. This screams 'dull' to me in a thousand different ways. Up until that point, almost every canister set had tried to be different. Noteable exceptions are the Nuva and the Kal, and the Kal certainly proved to be a huge mistake. The situation now is also slightly different, as it is not a line that's being cloned but an individual set. The Mahri and the New Nuva do, for the most part, copy previous styles to such an extent that, weapons and masks aside, you could practically build them yourself. Obviously pieces might not exist in those particular colours, but between an old piece in a new colour and a completely new piece I'd say the latter is much more interesting. Now I'm not saying every set should have completely new pieces for everything either. A certain amount of copying from previous sets is inevitable, not least to address the clone issue. But really, does that mean no new pieces can be released?

This year there has been precious little that is genuinely new. Not a single new arm or leg piece was made, and next year appears to be following here, and only one set introduced a single new body piece - Kongu Mahri. Unfortunately his proportions and colour scheme were so atrocious (there's only so many metru green and bley sets I can stand) it almost negated this fact entirely.

As much as I like humanoid sets, some originality in their construction wouldn't go amiss. I cannot bear building exactly the same set over and over and over again with every purchase, and steadfastly refuse to buy any canister set unless there's something worth buying it for. Infact, this goes for all sets, hence my only purchase this year being Maxilos (maybe I should consider Mantax - only Barraki with an interesting non-stick design).

Next year's evil Phantoka sets show promise. I'd need to look more closely, but they appear to have something new in terms of body design. Definitely need to check up on that.

I strongly suspect I've missed my own point somewhere along the line, but ah well. The odd rant's always fun, and my opportunities for them are so few!