Toa Zaz

 

And I really doubt we'll be getting "more episodes" in the summer to somehow justify the pathetically meager episode count for this half of the year and validate the assurance that there would be a lot of them. Given the drop from thirteen sets to four, with two sets purportedly canceled due to budgetary reductions and in my opinion an extreme drop in quality from the winter to summer wave, Lego seems to have concentrated the majority of its effort in the first half of the year and I expect if anything a smaller output in the summer.

All the stuff about sets getting cut is entirely baseless, actually. It's just speculation, and not entirely logical speculation at that. 5 sets may not be a lot, but between the two waves there's 18, which is honestly a lot of sets. (compare to how many there were for HF the past couple of years). The winter wave was certainly superior, but just because the summer wave is smaller doesn't necessarily mean it was due to specific budget cuts. Summer waves for any Lego theme are almost universally always smaller.

 

And about the story...Lego themes (Bionicle included) as a general rule have the set up in the first half of the year, with the majority of the story or plot (if that) coming in the second half of the year. For a lot of years in Bionicle that was actually when the plot really got going (primarily thinking of 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009...even 2008, actually.) whether we'll be seeing more than in the winter I'm not sure, but I'm sure we won't be seeing any less. Especially since we're getting books, that at least should push the output of the summer half well beyond that of the winter.

 

Yeah, but back then we typically got more set output as well as a movie, game etc in the summer as well, rather than fewer sets like we do now. Lego's behavior suggests that that trend is gone. It made sense that they'd hype the winter wave more anyway (Bionicle's initial return = critical point, bringing back generation 1 Toa to bring back old fans, etc, so I doubt that anyone who was disappointed by the lack of media in what was likely Bionicle 2.0's peak are going to find improvement in the meager summer wave full of new and utterly generic characters.

I am faintly hopeful for the books, but considering the simplification of the story thus far (which I don't entirely mind) if they're going to be as juniorized, poorly written, and perfunctory as the online content this year, I'll pass.

I wholeheartedly agree with this post. The woefully insubstantial and perfunctory nature of these shorts makes any semblance of complex, engaging, or interesting story impossible. This lack of content is even worse than the once-yearly 20-minute Hero Factory episodes which constituted the entirety of the story then. It's not like the new animation is expensive anyway, so there's no excuse; a multitude of Bionicle fan projects on BZPower and elsewhere are far more impressive. I agree, I really enjoy these episodes and like pretty much everything about them (which I can't say for Hero Factory), but there's really just not enough. That Lego is unwilling to invest more than this abysmal and pathetic output is a disheartening indication that they don't care about Bionicle and constraction. The shift of budgetary focus from Bionicle to the Star Wars figures (which I am somewhat cautiously excited for but I would much, much prefer better new Bionicles) further shows that Bionicle is low priority. The first wave of sets were overall fantastic (I don't think I've expressed this enough on the forums; I bought the new Tahu and Onua and they're the best things I built in years, better than most generation 1 Bionicle sets even), but this media output is just lacking.

And I really doubt we'll be getting "more episodes" in the summer to somehow justify the pathetically meager episode count for this half of the year and validate the assurance that there would be a lot of them. Given the drop from thirteen sets to four, with two sets purportedly canceled due to budgetary reductions and in my opinion an extreme drop in quality from the winter to summer wave, Lego seems to have concentrated the majority of its effort in the first half of the year and I expect if anything a smaller output in the summer.

Congrats, Greg!