I'm getting Mata Nui. No question. Sure, he's yellow, but yellow is still awesome (it's the color of my favorite smiley: ), and that might be a prototype anyway and we might be blessed with an amazing, golden Mata Nui. Really, the design is brilliant (his design just plain looks cool), he's got cool weapons, cool mask, and cool colors (black and yellow in this color scheme fit together very well).

Other than that, the Silent Sentinel Gelu looks really cool (Mandalorian helmet! ). He takes all the icy awesomeness of Metus (read: snowflake shield), adds a cool Mandalorian helmet, and throws in some cool (pun) dark blue and white for moar epic-ness. Right behind the Great Spirit, Jell-O takes second place.

No comments on the others for now, but Ackar is awesome (yeah, yeah, IT'S A TRAP!, reused berix helmet is reused, but still cool), Vastus is kind of wierd (snake-man?), but he's got the best name EVAR and if we can see a decent, straight-on pic (B6, I'm lookin' at you) of him, I could make up my mind on his awesomeness.

Kiina's got a custom torso and a thin, feminine body, and I find it interesting that everyone who's begged for these things for years now hates her. And Stronius is a troll (yes, a troll), and deserves the respect level given to a troll, but there may be a bit of latent coolness in there.

The vehicles? I'm not even thinking about getting those, but not because I hate them. It's a combination of them being very expensive, me having very little extra money to spend on bionicle vehicles, and them being very big and bulky and all that.

Still, the two-headed Spikit is cool, the functions are great, and those riders all look pretty cool. Color schemes are a bit jumbled, though: I'd have prefered to see something more like Axalara, with some solid red and silver/grey in there, rather than yellow/orange/red/gray/black/silver/etc.etc.

So I did look through all 200 pics in Black Six's flickr, skimming over the not-bionicle ones, and I have to say that these summer sets are all really, really cool. Set designers, congratulations. You have not only made the Inika torso design look good, you've given us some great color schemes, amazing new weapons, awesome recolors, and cool new molds. These are the best I've seen in a long time.

Now go get us some innovation for 2010.