Alexander123

Your doing pretty good! Maybe you should do the Hero Factory movies before you do Journey to One so that it can be in chronological order?

These were pretty funny. Maybe after youve finished Bionicle maybe you could do the Hero Factory movies or that weird Galidor show they made?

Unfortunately for you I have gained the powers of Morbius and proceed to morb the mask into my possession.

My mask.

You then realize that you are inside the Great Spirit Robot, but my consciousness is whats controlling everything.

My Mask (and Universe!)

Suddenly you realize you are in a surreal and trippy freudian dreamscape and discover that you are actually me.

My mask.

On 9/14/2022 at 11:42 PM, Xboxtravis said:

I think an alternative argument could be made that oversaturation and a bigger competition field are the reasons for there being a lack of "great toy lines" of late.

In the 80's, when the entire of kid's television could be focused on "Saturday Morning Cartoons" a series such as TMNT, Transformers, the GI Joe relaunch, He-Man, MLP, etc. could have an entire captive audience. Toy companies had a vested interest in funding animated cartoons, and even characters that didn't originate in toys were heavily influenced by a push to market their action figures (see Marvel's Secret Wars comic line up which was a tie-in with the action figure line of the same name).

Then by the 90's a demographic shift occurred. Partially political interests saw toys to TV series as unfair marketing towards children and made a push for greater educational content on children's television in the USA. Disney and Warner Brothers both entered the children's animated TV market in the late 80's and capitalized on it in the 90's, with stuff like the Disney Afternoon, Batman The Animated Series, Animaniacs, etc. More and more of TV was focused on original characters, or old IP that was given a fresh take; and less on toy marketing. Not to mention cable/satellite TV networks such as Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network were dividing and expanding the children's TV market elsewhere without the same restrictions as their broadcast counterparts. By the mid-00's, Saturday Morning Cartoons were practically dead on most broadcast "free" TV networks, and all the remaining children's TV was edutainment on PBS or cable-locked series on the premium channels.

Bionicle came at the tail end of all of that, and it shows. Bionicle had to do multimedia marketing to even make waves, it had to have movies, comics, internet games, skateboard events, promotional mask giveaways, fan forums, etc. to even mimic a fraction of what Transformers or He-Man could do with just a TV series and comic line in the 80's. Bionicle worked hard to get into the public eye, and even then it sort of feels like at best its popularity is overshadowed by what those 80's toys could accomplish with their captive audience. By the time Bionicle had its own TV series with the G2 reboot, it was a drop in the bucket on Netflix and lost in the ocean of competitor series across multiple platforms (even a small fry compared to Lego's own Ninjago series at that point). That is without factoring how YouTube toy series such as Ryan's World has completely changed the way children are exposed to new toys, and how exposure from a child star "influencer" can be more valuable now than a high budget story. 

Its hard work to become a "Great Toy Line" now with how the competition has grown, and while I think we will see plenty of familiar names like Transformers or TMNT for years into the future, and Lego will probably continue to rely on Ninjago for the time being; it will be rare to see any completely original in-house toy IP such as Bionicle reach those same heights again. The toy lines that will remain big will probably come from mass media IP, think of like Star Wars or Harry Potter; or even to a lesser extent the tie in toys for Minecraft or Fortnite; because the IP creator be it a video game, TV series or movie franchise will foot the costs of exposing it to the public; then bring on toy makers as third party licensees. 

This is pretty much what I was thinking. It will definitely take a lot of work for a new in house IP to succeed in todays climate.

I still have all of mine. They are proudly on display as well.

On 8/30/2022 at 6:49 AM, Raph said:

Don't mind it. Do not take it personally. Not all of the fans are like that. I once had a post about quality of joint sockets of 2007-2009 that tey are worse than those of 2001-2005. Some people were like you said, called me hater, or like that, but some were civil, and we had normal conversation. Generally, almost every time i ask something here, people are answering normaly, and explaining some stuff i dont know.

Yeah, I would say most of the toxic people on here have left the site, there arent too many active users anymore. But if you want to liven up the place that would be great!

I do remember a story on the front page here a few years ago about how the Chinese police had raided one of the largest lego bootleggers and arrested the heads of the operation in an attempt to enforce copyright laws.

Also dont reply to the bot topics. The scammers will just see that their bot got feedback which will prompt them to send more bots.

I just wan to know if they are still making those Star Soldiers bootlegs still? They started making them c.2003, made them until g1 was canceled then made Hero Factory bootlegs under the Star Soldier name before moving onto g2. 

I call upon the power of Tren Krom to help me claim the mask.

My mask.

Though this is kind of a thread necromancy I do agree that Rocka sidelined Evo and Nex. After 2.0 they never really showed up that much.

Set wise I always thought Bitil looked the coolest.

On 8/3/2022 at 7:28 PM, Axelford said:

Yikes, now I see why Lenny is not active here anymore...

You know Im kind of glad I took a hiatus for a few months, it seems like Lenny might have finally lost it. Its really sad honestly, addiction can take many forms I guess.

4 hours ago, Nato G said:

I feel like that question is very much a matter of opinion.

But within Lego itself, Ninjago was made in Bionicle's mould in a lot of ways, and it's still going strong today. 

3 hours ago, Axelford said:

For many, Ninjago was and is a great line. Within Lego there has been many lines that were popular in their own right and stuff like Monkie Kid seems to be going strong.

Let alone other toy brands, we're all out of touch man! From memory there's mystery toys (LOL Dolls?) etc. which have been pretty popular and evergreen stuff like transformers is chipping along. 

So, upon thinking about it, Bionicle is not the last long running Lego range- Ninjago now takes that crown (or heck city/town if we're being nitpicky), nor the last robot action figure line- Transformers takes that crown, but maybe in terms of hype marketing and multi-media approach, it may be rare to see again when many consolidate effort into a digital product or an isolated physical product.

To counter the Ninjago argument. Ninjago very much owes much of its success to being a lego theme, so it would very much fall into the broader category of the "Lego Franchise". There were people who exclusively collected Bionicle and never got into System sets, if you collect Ninjago there is a good chance that you collect non Ninjago System sets.

I think that the last new theme lego really put a bunch of marketing and hype for was Chima, I even remember seeing Chima ads in movie theatres! After Chima flopped after that first year I think Lego has been scared to really hype up a new theme since and has chose to have Ninjago be its main money maker.

Since the late 70s toy lines have been able to become massive franchises and their own IPs. Stuff like Transformers, GI Joe, He Man, My Little Pony, and 90s anime card games. All of these toy lines had massive multimedia marketing, something Bionicle copied to its success. 

Since Bionicle ended I dont think I have seen a toy line utilize marketing to such a great extent, or become as big a Bionicle did. Licensed IPs seem to be the big sellers for toy lines nowadays. Does anyone else agree with me or have other thoughts about this? 

I remember this. Never got it because I was still salty over Bionicle getting cancelled, but in hindsight it was really cool. Too bad it was short lived, had a really good concept.