Sir Kohran

I doubt he decanonised it himself; it was probably the story team's decision. And Matau has a line about him and Nokama going for a ride together in the movie which Greg didn't write, so it wasn't all him. Greg and/or the story team might also have realised that without concepts like marriage and childbirth, romantic plotlines couldn't really go anywhere.

Wouldn't it need to be declared as such? I don't recall that it was.

Only Lego can because it belongs to them, not us. I think that's because Bionicle's most popular phase happened somewhat before the quite advanced technology and internet needed to make the sort of things you mention was around, whereas the Pony phenomenon has happened right in the middle of it. Also, interest in most Lego themes other than maybe Star Wars is perhaps a little too mild.

By that time (2006) I think romance had already been decanonised. And even if it hadn't, Greg didn't write very much about that kind of thing.

What about what I said about the story becoming much harder to follow?

It went right in giving us a rich and intriguing world to explore and fairly easy and enjoyable means to do that through (mainly the MNOLG and movies), and the sense that there was a lot more to this world than we knew at the beginning was also helpful in getting people interested at a deeper level. I also liked the fact that it was a relatively original and serious story, not short, shallow and full of cheesy content as most Lego stories until then had been.

The Island of Doom book clears most of this up with the reintroduction of Turaga Dume sending the Toa Nuva on another perilous journey, peppered with some refreshing subversive elements, but I can certainly understand your gripes here. It's more a problem with the comics, than anything. I think it's more a problem with a story that became increasingly unfollowable as it became confined to the books, which I don't think were the best format to rely on as they were only available for a limited period before they were replaced by the next bunch, leaving fans in the lurch if they didn't keep up, and they weren't available outside North America which left fans everywhere else automatically in the lurch. They did try to switch from the books to the serials in the last years, but I think it was a little too late by then. Yes, I think Farshtey worked best when only handling parts of the story by handling only some media. When doing it all by himself, I don't think he could carry a whole franchise, which sort of ties into what I said above.

Starting a whole load of epics then never finishing any of them.

If you were replying to me, I wasn't saying 200 posts a day was terrible in itself, I just used it to show that activity could and did drop even when the board was active and not simply because it went offline for a while.

Obviously the downtime exactly didn't help, but it was only for some months, the front page was there throughout and it was promised that the forums would return so I think most people stuck around for that. It was only by 2013 that activity had really dropped - I recall someone on the staff saying the forums were getting an average of about 200 posts a day by then, compared to about 600 in 2011.

If I had a mask that could make you run super fast, or super strong, I'd wear it all the time. So no wonder the Toa Mata did too. I can't think of a reason why they'd ever not wear them.

Whilst not exactly in the millions, some official depictions of the city showed far more Matoran than the mere thousand that canonically lived there. I'm thinking mostly of the LOMN Coliseum scene here.

It's difficult to say whether BZP can last for a long time to come. On the one hand, it's pretty resilient. I mean, following the first Bionicle's end, the community survived the forums' complete absence for six months in 2011. But then, that was a huge community that'd been built up over the whole previous decade - that was ten years of Bionicle being active and mostly successful. This time round, the end of Bionicle hasn't come after such a long and solid buildup of members. It's come after a brief return that didn't catch many people's interest. The site's gained some new members, of course, but it's still not where it was at the end of the last decade. And I think we all know the site can't survive on discussion of other themes - Chima, Ninjago and even Hero Factory just didn't trigger enough activity to reverse the decreasing activity seen here between the first and second Bionicle. Basically, the site's in a weaker state now than it was in last time. Will the site survive? We just have to wait and see. I think there'll always be a core group of members (mostly on the staff) that'll remain active due to the personal connections that have formed, and interest in Bionicle (if only of the nostalgic sort) will never disappear completely. But - other than a full return of Bionicle happening - I don't see overall activity doing anything other than decreasing from this year on.

Well, most other media does show the Toa wearing them pretty much constantly. To answer the main question, it's probably just a slightly fancy way of introducing the character, like showing someone from behind then having them spin round. And yes, the masks' powers weren't really relevant to the feats the Toa pull off, other than the Pakari and perhaps the Miru.

Aren't Nidhiki and Krekka actually grabbed by the shadow hand and not killed by it? They do die soon after, but that's due to being absorbed by Makuta. And as the hand grabbed Lhikan's shield thing rather than him himself, I don't see how he even came into contact with it.

I once pronounced Lewa as 'Leh-wuh', but hearing 'Lee-wuh' in the first movie made me switch to that. Onewa was always 'Oh-noo-uh' with emphasis on the middle part. The similarity with Onua's name has always been a little annoying (I pronounce that name the same way, only emphasising the first part). Jaller has always been 'Jar-luh', and I doubt most others pronounce it any differently. 'Yar-luh' sounds like a non-European/American version, as in some Middle Eastern languages 'j' and 'y' are similar or interchangeable (Jacob becomes Yakob, for example).

For the new Bionicle to be cancelled less than two years in doesn't suggest a performance strong enough for it to get another chance anytime soon. Even after the long-running generally successful first run ended, it took whole years and a very different other line before the new Bionicle arrived. I only want another wave of Bionicle if it's good. The recent one had mostly good sets, but stumbled due to trying to tell an epic story without enough media to properly realise it. Another attempt must avoid that mistake and invest in stuff like the MNOLG or the TV shows many of Lego's other story lines have had.

Maybe when/if System sales aren't performing well? Surely it isn't coincidence that the original Bionicle was a huge hit when almost every other Lego line was faltering, and now the new one has faltered whilst System lines are selling very well. I wonder if - in the aftermath of The Lego Movie and in the midst of Ninjago and Elves, and the Star Wars, Jurassic World and superhero licenses - the new Bionicle just got a bit lost.

The switch to fingered hands in the movies was also part of the process of making the characters' appearances more human to make them more relatable and less robotic. Other changes were the introduction of mouths to most masks, masks generally becoming more face-like, and the removal of holes from the limbs. It took a surprisingly long time for hands to appear in actual sets, though.

2001. I admit some of it's just nostalgia, but there were a lot of things that were objectively strong - the bright colours of the sets, the rich supporting cast, the blend of tribal and techno music, the little hints and glimpses of a wider world, and (I think important above all else) the way we got to explore a place of wonder, mystery and terror to an extent that we never really did in the following years. How I wish later years of Bionicle, particularly those after 2004, had stayed a little closer to the way things were in 2001.

Aanchir, you state that Hero Factory got solid marketing, but despite that, the line's success declined, if fairly slowly, and that from this experience, Lego decided that lots of marketing isn't a good idea, and so launched the Bionicle reboot with very little...and now that line's declined to the point of being cancelled after less than two years. In light of this I ask - is the success of constraction bound to decline with and without marketing? Does constraction have much of a future if so?

Feels strange to be expressing regret about something that only started last year, but I do wish I'd kept up with the new line and enjoyed it whilst it lasted. It's just that with all those animations at the start and the villains going from skull spiders to skull slicers within months and the Mask of Creation and all the Vahi cameos...it all happened so quickly, perhaps too quickly.

The point is to entertain and please as many as possible of their overall customers, not just fairly small groups of fans like us on BZPower. Whilst it's nice when they do act in relation to such fan groups, at the end of the day they don't have to. I agree an explanation would be welcome, though I doubt it comes down to anything more than "the sets didn't sell well enough". I think that's just in keeping with the far less grand handling the recent Bionicle has had.

You could get hundreds or even thousands of signatures and I doubt Lego would care or maybe even notice.

Have Lego made it clear why the line was cancelled? The fact that it was cut short at almost the earliest point possible suggests that something went badly wrong rather than it just running its course, but do we know what that was?