Toa Turing

I'm slowly building up my collection of 2001-2003 sets. I always wanted them as a kid because I got started with Bionicle around 2006 so the 01-03 sets were always somewhat of a holy grail. It's also a more obtainable collection than all of G1. It's a pretty small collection right now, I'd say maybe 10% complete, and that's not counting mask/krana/kraata collections, which I don't think I'll even get into. I haven't bought any new sets in a long time (a couple years now that I think about it, wow), but I'll probably look for another batch when I figure out how I want to display them, my current collection is just in a box right now.

I left most of mine at my parents' house when I moved out, and I'll still occasionally play with them for old times' sake when I visit, especially when younger cousins are around. I brought all my sets from 2001-2003 along with me though, that's the era that I decided I'm going to try to collect and display.

I have mixed feeling about the Matoran/Turaga/Toa, their designs are pretty cool (especially the Toa), but their heads look pretty weird.

I love the Rahi though, especially the Nui-Rama and Tarakava. Their builds are clever and detailed, and do a great job of staying true to the original despite being much smaller.

And of course,  props for Pepper! Just need Turaga Infomaniac to go with him.

Nice job! As others have said, I like the knightly look. I like how well it blends in, he clearly looks like a knight and clearly looks like a Bionicle figure, but neither looks out of place or clashes with the other.

I was about to say it looks like a trick of the light, but then I looked at a higher resolution image (I just googled the book title to find one), and now I'm not sure. It could be that that rendering was made before the sets were finalized, and there was a last minute change to the leg pieces. Maybe for aesthetic reasons, or manufacturing reasons?

I played Junkbot quite a bit as a kid and replayed it recently, so this was a fun listen. The most interesting parts to me were how the game's aesthetic was inspired by the NYC game dev scene, and how much the team payed attention to the experience of manipulating the bricks to make it feel "real". Looking back at the game you can really see how good of a job they did with that, the "sticky" effect of the bricks combine with the sound effects capture the feeling of building with LEGO even better than something like LDD.

If anyone's looking for the download link, it's hosted by the BioMediaProject here: http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/LEGO/gms/download/ClubGames/. I was able to download, unzip, and play it without any special steps (no need to install Flash separately) on my Windows 10 machine, but no promises.

Nice job! These work really well, and I like how unobtrusive they are when they're not in use.

Also, I didn't even notice the custom arms until I saw a comment about them. Those are really slick, did you make them?

I agree, Metru Nui really could've used a game like that. I never really felt as much of a connection to Metru Nui as I did to Mata Nui. Part of that might have been just that I preferred the idyllic island setting or the clear elemental themes, but I can't help but think part of it is due to it not being explorable in game format.

On a related note, I've always thought the later years could've used story year animations like the ones from 2001-2003. I didn't get into Bionicle until 2006, and those animations were my first introduction to the story. They were really well made, and a nice way to get caught up in a time before I was able to find and read all the books and comics.

My favorite is the Zamor sphere launcher for a couple reasons. It's got some sentimental value because it was on the first set I bought for myself (Piraka Reidak), it's got one of the strongest launching actions, and to top it off it's the most customizable; you can build onto the launching stem to create a custom trigger, or you can build onto the top to create an arbitarily large ammo magazine. Honorable mentions go to the Tohunga arm and Rhotuka spinners for their novelty, and the Thornax launcher for being effective and unobtrusive.

Worst would have to be either the squid launcher because it doesn't really work, or the '08 Makuta chest launcher because it kinda just drops the projectile (you could say Lego really DROPPED THE BALL on that one! Ha.). Dishonorable mentions: the Midak Ghost Launcher is just generally underwhelming, and I'm conflicted on the Cordak blaster because it looks cool, but it's pretty bulky and can be unreliable.

I got Nuju Hordika as a birthday present before I was into Bionicle. I got into it after playing MNOLG2 and watching the 2001-2003 story synopsis videos, and the first set I bought was Piraka Reidak.

I prefer Matoran, I think it sounds better, and I'm more used to it.

As a side note, I never made the connection that Matoran is derived from Mata Nui, that's interesting.

MOCing for sure. I think it's partly because it feels more fulfilling to create something on my own than to follow instructions. Of course, getting new sets is exciting, but I find that most of the excitement is the anticipation of the new set, seeing the finished product, and knowing that when I'm ready to take it apart I'll have all those new pieces for MOCing, rather than from the building process itself.

I'm kind of a sucker for combo models that are just absurdly large. In 2004 we had Ultimate Dume, and in 2006 we had Vezon + Kardas, both of which were combinations of (almost) all the titan sets from that year, and they were pretty majestic. So I agree with you (Lenny7092), a giant sea monster made of all the 2007 titan sets would be pretty awesome. I'd also love to see a combo of the 3 big 2008 vehicle sets.

I think someone here put up scans of the 2001 Tohunga micro-comic a while back, so that may have been the last media I read. Either that or rewatching Mask of Light, which I did with my brother recently.

1. All great masks in Metru colors
2. All great masks in Turaga colors
3. All noble masks in Matoran/Tohunga colors

Number 3 was a close call between noble or great masks in Matoran/Tohunga colors. I ultimately chose noble because assuming you're talking about the 6 tohunga from 2001, going with noble would produce the most original masks, whereas we already have 5 of the great masks in those colors, and all the blue ones would be the same color as the ones that already exist.

Out of all those, I can't think of a particular mask I would be most excited for, but the colors I would be most interested in would be the great masks in orange, lime green, and tan, and the noble masks in yellow, teal, orange-brown (Hewkii brown, idk), and purple.

On 8/17/2020 at 6:13 PM, Sir Kohran said:

Regarding that concept art, how do the people get to their homes? I can't see any way down from the land at the top, and going up from the water at the bottom against the waterfalls would be almost impossible.

That's why it's concept art, right? My guess would be either that there's stairs combing from the top that are off the edge of the picture, or that there's tunnels going from the surface to the top row of homes.

The waterfalls themselves are the bigger logistical problem. I think they're awesome don't get me wrong, and they're kinda the defining feature of the concept, but can you imagine living in a hut by the base of one of those waterfalls? The noise would be unimaginable, the front half of your house is probably perpetually flooded, and one wrong step coming out your door and the waterfall will slam you into the ground before whisking you into the ocean several stories below. Good think Ga-Matoran are good swimmers!

Nice quiz! I'll be honest, I didn't follow the Hero Factory story the whole way through, and basically haven't touched it since it ended, but I still managed to get a few right: I got 6 out of 16, with 5192 points. Some of those were lucky guesses, but:

Maybe I'll have to find some of the comics for old time's sake.

It's a bit hard for me to fairly judge how LEGO changed from 2010-2020 because I grew up a lot during that time, going from a kid for whom BIONICLE/LEGO made up a large part of my life, to an adult who still circles back to them from time to time. I'll try to give an analysis as best I can.

As far as I'm aware, nothing has even come close to BIONICLE G1 as far as story is concerned. I won't say that difinitively since I never got into any of the other themes (though I watched a lot of the Hero Factory and Ninjago shows), but it certainly seems that BIONICLE's story success was unique. That's not to say there's not still very skilled writers at LEGO, it's just that there was sort of a perfect storm for BIONICLE, probably some combination of story, leadership, internal culture at the time, etc, which hasn't been replicated since then.

So if story is in decline, what you have left is what LEGO was founded on: building blocks. How did the sets themselves change from 2010-2020? This one's hard to say. I didn't do a full survey of every available set, but I looked at a few examples, and the results are mixed. Constraction is lackin'. City seems to have stayed roughly the same, though I much prefer the 2011 police station to the 2020 one. Technic has gotten worse in my opinion. In 2010 it was a unique theme featuring primarily construction vehicles with interesting functions, taking full advantage of Technic's gears, pneumatics and levers. Now, with the exception of a few sets, it's mostly racecars and licensed vehicle remakes that are expensive and probably could have been made with system parts. On the other hand, licensed themes seem to be doing well. I never had much interest in Star Wars, but those sets still seem to be good. The new Harry Potter sets are very good; they're more sophisticated, realistic, and technically interesting than the old ones (which I was a huge fan of back in the day, I've been interested in Harry Potter longer than BIONICLE, though BIONICLE won my heart in the end), but they don't fall into the trap that LEGO sometimes falls into of using too many bulky, custom, single-use bricks.

Overall, I'd have a hard time saying the 2010s were a period of decline for LEGO. Other than BIONCILE ending (all good things must come to an end), there seems to have been more of a difference between 2000 and 2010 than between 2010 and 2020. Of the things that have changed, some are for the better and some are for the worse. I've always been more of a MOCer anyway, so as long as they keep supplying their high quality bricks to the world I'll be happy.

I've never seen that concept art before, that's really cool. (though I'd imagine it'd be pretty loud with all those waterfalls rushing over your house )

I'd have to say my favorite place would be Mata Nui. I'm sure nostalgia has a lot to do with it, but also the rich variety of biomes to explore, from the extreme cold to the extreme heat and everywhere in between. I suppose if I had to choose a Koro I would choose Ga-Koro, it's got the most unique architecture and the best climate IMO, and I've got the most nostalgia for it since it was the starting point of MNOG2, which was my first exposure to Bionicle.

As TuragaNuva mentioned, Bricklink is a great place to start. I've been building up my 2001-2003 era collection from there, and you can build up full sets by buying the pieces individually, and it generally comes out to a few bucks each. They even have a tool that parts out the sets for you and automatically finds the best stores to buy them from. It's still a bit of work compared to just buying the full sets, but you'll generally come out ahead price wise.

I think me and Nuparu are both nerdy enough to get along. I'd also like to hang out with the whole chronicler's company. I think they'd be a really interesting bunch.

These are all really nice. The Reidak one really caught my eye though. How did you get the glowing eyes and shiny gold parts? Is it edited in any way or is it all in the lighting?

This sounds really interesting. I think it may finally be the answer to wanting more of what Bionicle had to offer, while keeping things fresh. Best of luck to the team, I really hope this takes off!

My favorite Toa build was the inika build. It got old after a few years, but it's a good build nonetheless. My favorite matoran was the voyatoran #1, since it's the most unique build and pretty posable. I went with the Bohrok Va for the other small set, since I don't really care for the rest.

I love it. Yes it's more modern than than the early stages of Bionicle, but that's good, it means you're making use of the latest technology to tell the story, just like Bionicle did in 2001. The important thing is, this did just what you hoped it would, at least for me. It captured the spirit of Bionicle in a way that G2 never did, and left me eager for more.