Sir Kohran

Contrary to the first post, the time period would decide it for me. If Bionicle returned with the rich and intriguing style of the first few years on Mata Nui, I'd be all for it. But if it was with the silly names, flat and inaccessible storytelling and overwhelming complexity of the later years, I wouldn't be even slightly interested.I know any return would probably be the latter, so for that I'd have to say no.

Fantastic model and interesting colour scheme, I'd love to see it in some kind of diorama or background.My only change would be to make the head slightly less chunky and more streamlined.

Exactly who is hating on Greg or anyone else once involved in Bionicle?

When the entire Bionicle story and universe consisted of a Flash game and a few comics.

Ultimately it results from the construction aspect of Bionicle effectively vanishing from sets after 2004 or so to make way for action features and poseability, because Lego thought kids were no longer interested in the creative building aspect that featured prominently in the early years. So complex builds and combiners faded away from both the sets and story.One only needs to look at the set reviews for evidence of this change.Boxor, 2002: 'Let me say right off the bat that I found this model to be one of the most fun to assemble of any I've had in recent memory [...] it's still so intriguing to see how all of the steps come together in the end to create the synchronized movement that it doesn't matter. It's just plain fun to build.'Umbra, 2006: 'The build itself was pretty straightforward, what with nearly every piece being available in past sets. The set is so simple, it’s almost impossible to make a mistake'Ackar, 2009: 'The building is mundane. If you have built an Inika or any of the canister-level sets since 2006, you do not require the assistance of Ackar's instruction booklet. Limbs plug together and snap onto the torso: that is all.'

True, but apart from perhaps the shield, none of the System pieces featured prominently in the sets. The pieces that did - the Toa/Matoran bodies, limbs and weapons - were made specifically for Bionicle. Creating and launching Bionicle must have been quite a gamble, considering the cost of designing all those new pieces alongside the cost of the MNOLG, Ghost clips, comics and advertising. Lego must have had very high hopes for it.

I mean that Lego apparently expected kids to go from something aimed at older kids to something aimed at younger ones, hoping the ageing process of interests would effectively reverse itself. Like expecting teenagers to move from Scream back to Pokemon (an exaggerated example, but hopefully it gets my point across). There's no way it would realistically happen.On the matter of T/AFOLS, they're an exception to the general trend. The vast majority of kids build with Lego, but only a miniscule minority of adults continue to. Lego, as a global company, wouldn't factor such a small group into their plans (though to their credit, they have frequently interacted with and consulted the AFOL community). Okay, but given that the reasons that I listed for why it didn't work are all pretty obvious (even for a non-professional), I'm still curious as to how it was expected to work. Where? The only System part I can think of is the Koli ball that came with Pohatu.

How was this supposed to occur?Given Bionicle's more complex builds, extensive storyline, dark/mysterious tone, and reliance on multimedia (which took more effort to access ten years ago), I'd assume it was aimed at a slightly older age group, one which had begun to move on from the sunny and smiley imagery of System, and was unlikely to return (unless as T/AFOLs). Also, Bionicle was originally branded as Technic, which has always seemed to be the reserve of older fans, and never incorporated any System parts (before anyone mentions the playsets, they weren't until five years in). Some people I've casually spoken to about Bionicle in the past were surprised to learn it was actually a Lego product at all, being as totally removed from the standard Lego lines as it was.So how could the kids who'd spent their earliest years with System and were maturing into Bionicle be expected to subsequently 'grow down' to System?

The Piraka Stronghold in 2006. The last Bionicle set I ever bought.

For me that was sorta the problem, there were too many characters and some only got very little screen time making their existence pointless. I'm not saying I hated the complexity of the story (some bits were actually interesting like admittedly Roodaka's backstory) but I hated the times where it got too convoluted and got too complex for my tastes. For instance the whole bit with Tuyet being dead then not being dead only she was in an alternate dimension and her double from another alternate dimension was really in her place. That can almost be considered a continuity snarl. I'm not saying I don't like complex stories (far from it) but at times I felt Bionicle at times got too complicated.My issue with the complexity was that the 'expanded' story content (various factions, alternate universe, etc.) was virtually all confined to the books, and most of it was entirely unrelated to the sets. And yet, if you wanted to know the 'core' story relating to the sets, you had to read the books because the books were the only medium available with which to do so. This in turn meant tackling all the expanded story, which (I suspect) turned a lot of casual fans away from Bionicle.I think what happened was a collision between Lego's desire for a simple and marketable story, and Farshtey's desire for a vast and intricate comic-book-universe story.

It might also be worth noting that Onua received very little characterisation outside those books. He got just two short lines in the entire MNOLG, and his confrontation with Krana'd Lewa was his only 'starring' scene in the 2001-2 comics.

The books should never have existed.

The Piraka heads. Grotesque. Does being ugly matter when they're meant to be covered by a mask?The only fault I see with them is that they don't have coloured eyes, which was the result of having been designed for the McDonald's promotion which limited the number of parts they could have.

Something I've pondered lately... There's an old article called The History of LEGO BIONICLE, which explains how Bionicle came to be, and what made it successful, which is described as:'Kids wanted a story behind those blocks, and to go with that story they wanted neat pieces that they could use to create their own play fantasies [...] Lego now knew that bricks with a story and focus worked [...] Lego got the idea of creating their own story. No longer would they have to rely on Lucasfilm or any other outside company to create stories for them. This story -- this saga -- was Bionicle.'I think there was a little more to the line's formula than that, however. What made Bionicle so successful wasn't simply that 'it had a story'. After all, lines of the late 90s such as Adventurers and Slizers/Throwbots featured similarly straightforward casts and plots, yet saw nothing like Bionicle's popularity.The difference with Bionicle was rather that it had an engaging story. The story of the six heroes in six environments on one island fighting one villain was largely told through an immersive and intriguing online game that was freely available to anyone from Alaska to Australia, provided they could access its site. It was a revolutionary approach that took advantage of the then latest technology, Flash gaming and widespread internet that kids could use. This wasn't something that was possible (or at least attempted) with those other story-featuring lines some years before.The problem, I think, was that Lego simply assumed that because this line with a story was a success, that story was only ever a good thing, and the more there was of it, the better.So, about six or seven years after the line's debut, its main storyline had ballooned to featuring dozens or hundreds of major and minor characters, various competing factions (Brotherhood of Makuta, Dark Hunters, League of Kingdoms), occurring across multiple locations and planets, and even an alternate universe. This huge web of plotlines was mostly confined to Greg Farshtey's books, which were only ever available at cost in North America. Online content moved away from the MNOLG towards trivialities like Free the Band and the Piraka Rap. The story ceased to be engaging and accessible, and this was reflected in Bionicle's sales - those of the books decreased, and with them went the sets, which faltered without a strong, accessible story to drive them. Unsurpisingly, the line was cancelled.Basically, what I'm suggesting is that Lego understood that Bionicle sold well with its story, but misunderstood why that was, and the direction the line subsequently went in ultimately led to its end.Perhaps the only point working against this is that many aspects of the complex plot were planned right from Bionicle's creation, which raises the question of whether Bionicle's fate as detailed above was inevitable, or whether the line could've survived had the more complex plot been conveyed better.Thoughts?

bones, simply out of interest...If memory still serves, in 2006 or so, when these stylistic/storyline decisions were being put into action, and debated/criticised on BZPower, you staunchly defended most of them in more topics and discussions than I'd like to try counting. Yet now, with Bionicle indefinitely cancelled (along with these decisions evidently having failed to benefit the line) you're saying above that a number of them were actually mistakes.Basically, you seem to have gone from a defender when the decisions were made, to a critic now that it's clear that they were not sufficient to keep Bionicle successful.I'm not accusing you of hypocrisy, just curious as to why your views have changed.

I'd like to see something in the style of 2001 - that being a relatively small cast and a simpler storyline in which the stakes are not quite so desperately high, occurring in a few well-explored, atmospheric locations, rather than whole planets and universes.A reboot would be the only conceivable way of doing this.

What I find interesting is that it isn't just inserted at some random point with no explanation - it's one of a number of diverse images.I might track down a copy of the comic just to see what the Toa cameo is in the context of. So there might be a small amount of catching up to do at your next meeting?

Thanks for uploading these. They remind me of simpler, happier times that are unlikely to return.From the first one:'Send your completed entry by May 25th, 1995'Is it too late to enter now?

Of the original Toa, bellicose Tahu, aloof Kopaka and kind Gali seemed to have had the most distinctive and lively personalities which captured people's imaginations most. Onua, Lewa and Pohatu's personalities were more tame (stoic, carefree, genial) and became a bit overlooked, so it's unsurprising that the movie played rather loosely with them. I'm not excusing it - I think they should've stuck closer to the original characterisations - just providing a possible explanation. Romance was initially part of the storyline, as evidenced by the Huki/Maku and Jala/Hahli stuff. But at some point it was decided that Bionicle characters were asexual, and the romantic element was dropped from the canon. Matau's line probably wasn't a 'discrepancy' when it was written.

If your objective is to learn the storyline, then the books serve that purpose very well. However, there are (in my opinion) too many of them, and Farshtey's lack of variation with characters and style may grate after a while.

That might just be due to most members not liking the new lines enough to discuss their shows and other such content. For all the site's coverage of other Lego themes, I think the majority of the members are still here for Bionicle.

I'm glad someone else remembers Te Mutunga. That story was fantastic.GaliGee's rich comedies deserve mention too. Not just because they were so well written, but also because they captured a certain warmth and heart from Bionicle's early years that later years seemed to lack.

Having researched it on a website I don't think I'm allowed to name, it is The Spectre #10, but the report is dated to November of that year, and it was apparently spotted several weeks earlier. This puts the comic's release date in at least October-ish. Its title is "The Return of Parallax!"I'd like to see the actual page in more detail. What are the other images? Below the Toa is some kind of whale creature, and above, a confrontation of two figures, but the two in the top left are too obscured. And why are they there in the first place?

Exactly. Playing MNOLG to reach the end as fast as possible is missing the point completely.

Both are correct. It's generally agreed (based on various information) that Bionicle's profits ceased to grow from around 2005 onwards, whilst the storyline had expanded to the point where very few Lego employees could fully understand and work with it. If memory serves, the Shadow Toa were originally intended to be the climactic opponents in the long-lost PC game, The Legend of Mata Nui. The final confrontation with Makuta was featured over in the MNOLG. How the Shadow Toa were originally meant to be defeated wasn't, isn't and never will be known, due to the PC game's cancellation.A year or so later, Hapka included them as the final challenge in her first book (in the same way as the PC game would've), with their defeat resulting from the Toa each facing the Shadow Toa most vulnerable to their element. At some point, Farshtey came up with a differing version in which the Toa absorbed their darker imitations into themselves.Ultimately, it's unclear and probably impossible to say which (if either) solution was the original, or if there was ever an original at all. It simply comes down to individual preference.Personally I think Hapka's version is somehow a little more in the practical spirit of 2001. Also, as has been pointed out, it's simple and self-explanatory, whereas Farshtey's raises a lot of questions for which the story wouldn't have time or opportunity to answer.