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During the run of both generations of Bionicle, whenever a new wave of sets were released, they all had some kind of unifying theme. Either they were clone sets, or shared some kind of overarching design motif, parts and themes. The Bohrok were all, well, Bohrok, the Toa Mahri all had tubes and Cordak Blasters, and all the beasts and Umarak the Destroyer had those large jaw pieces (Ekimu is kind of an odd-one-out here). We all have our opinions on all the existing waves of Bionicle. Love some, dislike others, and so on. However, if you were given the opportunity to design a single wave of Bionicle sets, including the sets themselves and the story around them, what would it be like? Which gen would they be in? What unifying themes, motifs or gimmicks would they use? I always had this idea that, had G1 omitted the shift to Bara Magna and 2008 would end on a positive note with the success of the Toa Nuva's mission, the story could shift to an entirely new team of rookie Toa, down on the southern isles, dealing with a smaller scale problem - a group of dark hunters traipsing around their homes. Since the Southern Isles were a lot less organised and smaller than other areas, each Toa could be from a different island among a small archipelago, and this would be highlighted in their marketing/ character bios. One of the unifying character gimmicks would be a launcher piece that shot nets, similar to the new piece used by City sets this year, in order to "catch" the Dark Hunters. Gear functions would make a return. To signal a shift from the main storyline, none of the six Toa would be of the primary elements that comprised teams before. This wave of sets would have Plasma, Gravity, Psionics, Iron, Plantlife and Sonics. Masks would be two-toned, and would provide set forms of masks previously mentioned in-universe but never seen. In keeping with realism, I'd limit new parts to weapons, masks, the launcher piece, a small number of armor elements, and the required structural elements to incorporate the return of gear functions, similar to the 2015 gearbox piece. Due to the shift of the typical color palette, a large part of the budget would be consumed by recolors. While yet another wave of humanoid Toa characters isn't hugely deviant or original in light of the theme, the sets would seek to be more varied than in the past by not all using the same framework (like the inika build) but would strive for different body shapes, sizes and overall construction, similar to what G2 attempted. Small sets for this wave would be, surprise surprise, a group of Matoran for the Toa. The Matoran sets would draw from the same pool of new elements as the Toa except for their Masks, but would differentiate themselves from the Av-Matoran by focusing on more, smaller parts rather than fewer, bigger parts. They too wouldn't share a body shape, as seen with the Voyatoran and G2 protectors/creatures. Packaged with each Matoran would be an additional mask-like element that can be fitted over the existing masks of the Toa. Think of the windshield element for the Mahri/Phantoka masks, but the other way around - on the outside. In-story, these would 'power up' the masks. The wave would feature two titan sets, both enemies for the Toa (presumably the canister wave of dark hunters would be the next wave, but this thread is about just one wave). One would be a true titan character, while the other would be a small character riding an animal. They would incorporate play features linked to the net-shooters of the Toa. The large titan character would have a unique mask with a unique power up, with which it would be packaged by default. Box-art and promotional images would have a unifying tropical island motif. All previous waves/years set on such islands still didn't focus exclusively on the island element (looking at Tahu Mata or Kopaka Mata's canister wouldn't tell you it's an island). So, this wave would up-play the tropical island thing with a more reserved touch of elemental identity on the images. I'm interested to hear the ideas of other BZP members regarding their "dream" wave of sets. Be as detailed or as vague/concise as you wish.
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A poll for Boidoh.
