Hau1

Very eerie and excellent colours and shaping.

Lhikan and Kikinalo. There are standalone cannister Toa I **might** take over Lhikan in a nostalgia/favourite character matchup (Tahu, basically), but the Metru are the best over all Toa: scale, poseability, and masks, and Lhikan is The Red One and The Gold One and The Mentor. So he'd be in contention if he were a cannister set. But he's also got a full-blown Rahi making him a titan set? My favourite, hands-down.

I can't decide if "collecting" is the right word or the wrong word for my relationship with Bionicle sets/parts. On the one hand, I harbour zero ambitions of getting everything: every set, every mask, every etc. The only sets that I really have ambitions of pursuing are the ones I sold off in my dark age--and there's not THAT many of them left. On the other hand... the best kind of used LEGO to luck into these days for me is Bionicle, and I can't go shopping on a Bricklink site without checking out at least two categories of part on every site: "Bionicle" and "Bionicle: Kanohi." So my "collection" is still something I enjoy finding and acquiring and adding to.

Pretty much my actual top three Toa! (For sets/figures anyway--characters is another matter. But we wouldn't have had 5 Tahus in a character head-to-head.)

Getting strong Gadunka vibes (big teeth and dark blue on a fish will do that).

It's a combination of belonging to one of the first two Series of Collectible Minifigures--from before they figured out what the demand would really be and they were nearly impossible to find--mixed with the fact that it was probably the most Army Building Desireable of the first two waves: people didn't just want one or two, they wanted ten or twenty or a hundred. Mixed low availability with high demand and you get... high prices.

I've never had the income and interest at the same time to truly collect: the first few years of Bionicle, when I had high school money and full interest in the sets was probably closest (and I never did get many of the larger sets), but I've definitely noticed a slowing of interest in new sets in the past few years, and it has been quite liberating. Not that there's been a loss of interest in LEGO, but the space I have for it is fairly well filled and I have ample parts for what I do, so it's been mostly a case of looking for used LEGO and filling in holes on Bricklink. The used LEGO thing scratches my LEGO itch better for a couple reasons. First, it's generally cheaper. Second, it skews a lot closer to my childhood, which is where my locus of interests are (although LEGO's nostalgia-driven sets of late: Black Falcons, Barracuda Bay, etc.--are trying to distract me here. Third, and the real draw, is that it's kind of like a lottery: you never know what you've got and there's the thrill of the hunt. Looking at the ever-cranking-up parade of multi-hundred-dollar sets LEGO is releasing, it is EXHAUSTING to think of trying to chase all that, or even some of it.

I realise that working for LEGO undoubtedly means one can't disclose anything about what one is working on, but there is part of me that just likes knowing that LEGO is hiring a Bionicle/Constraction builder as a set designer. Even if you only ever get to work on Classic boxes of bricks without instructions, it's still got to be a great day in your life and this is a worthy celebration.

To make a sports analogy: "can [MEDIOCRE TEAM X] beat [SUPERSTAR TEAM Y]?" Yes. That's why they play the game. In other words, I dislike the video-gamifying idea that you can assign a rank/stat/power level to different characters, and a question like this verges on that: we're not talking about "could a Matoran defeat the GSR?" but about whether one warrior creature could beat a similarly-sized second warrior creature. Even if you can determine that Creature A is stronger/faster/more powerful than Creature B, that doesn't mean that Creature A would always win. If it did, there'd be no underdogs winning, no upsets.

I'm also not really into the canonisation contests. I've tried to keep an open mind about not judging other people's fun, but I just can't get into it. @Master Inikais right that the time since Gen1 ended matters, and I would add that it's not just that mental pictures have ossified, but it's also that the contest isn't a PART of Gen1, but something being tacked on by a subset of fans with the authorisation of one of the creators years later. And "ossified" is the word I think is most important. As long as Gen1 was running, things could still be added in or new vistas opened up, and even things that had already occurred could be retconned away. Now there's no real chance of either new vistas or retconning: it's just trying to paint in more and more detail into the crevices. At the risk of bringing up a fandom that is not exactly everyone's favourite, it's trying to "Pottermore" Bionicle. I say this too, as someone ever-ready to dig up more wastepaper basket notes on Middle-earth, so it's not that I don't like new content. But there's a difference between new content by the creator(s) and canonised fan-art. At my gut, Bionicle is LEGO to me: a physical toy. The only real way to expand the canon in my mind is for LEGO to develop more sets. Everything else is alt-canon, fanon. Not that fan-canon is bad! But I'd like the contests a whole lot more if it were "here's a character LEGO never made: go nuts and show us your version!" than "here's a character LEGO never made--make your own and we'll find one to arbitrarily elevate as Real." Which is less fun, at least for me, sounds potentially divisive, since it's easy to have two awesome builds with differing takes, and still isn't "a new set from LEGO."

It sort of depends where you draw the line... I had a hardcore Bionicle Dark Age (2010-2020), but I never had a generalised LEGO Dark Age. In general, I'd draw the line when I made the decision to take all my sets apart and keep them apart, after a childhood of always reverting to keeping my sets built. Granted, over the last 15 years or so, I've been rebuilding more and more, so that most of my childhood sets are restored, but that was the big dividing line: 2004. It also matched up with the brown and grey colour changes, my first online activity as a fan, and I was in high school (and my college years were my Dimmest Ages). So... I guess I'd say that the Orient Expedition theme is the last one I remember getting sets from before that cut-off. Though it did straddle it and I picked up more during/after the Great Take-Apart. Honestly, the last big LEGO theme I got into as a kid was Bionicle itself, which probably crested for me around Mask of Light in late 2003.

Alas, no Bionicles for me for Christmas in about 12 years now, but I've now had 30 consecutive Christmases getting LEGO (1992-2021), partly off the luck of never having had a true dark age and partly off the luck of having in-laws who are Gift People and need suggestions for me. I almost can't imagine Christas without building something. My very first LEGO set was a Christmas present, and the biggest LEGO days of them all in my childhood were Christmases--and spending that Christmas cash in the days that followed.

If there were other members to Keetongu's species, I could see some variants looking something like this--it's very well done: solid in a way that Bionicle sets rarely were, but still having the "look."

It's all in how you phrase the question and define your terms: if you put the emphasis on "need," well, yes, of course it isn't needed. If you say "should LEGO do this?" it turns into pure opinion: the only thing LEGO should do is make toys out of plastic bricks in a profitable manner (arguably, I'd say LEGO has added a "do it ethically" clause to their self-mandate, which they're striving to add in, but that's a sidebar). But would I like them to go back to the Bionicle well? Yes, yes I would. (Full disclosure: I'm one of those "returning out of nostalgia" old fans and my boys will be just old enough to buy constraction figures for in about 3-5 years). I would like a System reboot or a constraction reboot or a books-and-websites-only niche expansion of the lore (gotta keep the trademark, right?). I'd enjoy a single Toa thrown into a series of Collectible Minifigs. I don't need it, though.

If it's the character I assume it is, then it's minor indeed. Like... "only in the Appendices, in the peripheral bits to create the illusion it was an ancient text"-peripheral. I approve! My own name is far more mundane: it was gifted me by my younger brothers as an Internet-safe pseudonym by which to refer to me (I was oldest brother, hence the 1, and a Tahu/Lhikan/Jaller fan, hence the Hau), but I liked it.

I am fascinated by and enjoying this, because Adventurers were pretty much my favourite LEGO characters--but with rather less lore than, say, Bionicles, there is a lot of room for totally different interpretations of the characters--to say nothing of the plots. I'm looking forward to more.

If the question here is merely "is Bionicle as big in the real world as a phenomenon as Star Wars," then, yeah... no contest. But is the world that LEGO created in Bionicle as ambitious and expansive as Star Wars? Well... maybe. Actually, yes, would be my answer, but there's room for debate: Bionicle and Star Wars have a similar timeline (i.e. multiple tens of thousands of years), across a galaxy. One could argue that Bionicle has a narrower scope, since it focuses only on the inhabitants of one world, diffused over the GSR and the fragments of Spherus Magna, but I would say that Bionicle does a better job than Star Wars' new canon at making it actually feel as a large as it's meant to: Artahka or the Southern Isles feel immensely far from Mata Nui--to say nothing of Bara Magna--and while it make sense that the characters might be connected (they're all in the same self-aware "organism"), the Bionicles avoid the "everyone knows everyone, there's about fifty people in the galaxy" feeling that Star Wars falls into. (Your Mileage May Vary on that front, but I find that to be an occasional problem with the old EU and a more besetting problem with the new one. Guess you could say I like Gen1 in both cases...)

As disappointing as the Stars wave was for sets, the concept of two Giant Robots duking it out with Mata Nui in one and Makuka in the other and the literal fate of the world being involved pretty epic. For nostalgia mixed with a genuinely weighty showdown, give me the pyrrhic victory of 2004 in LOMN.

I think the rules are fairly clear, but (speaking strictly as a n00b and a non-Mod) in Lenny's defence, this is kind of a different situation (and I apologise if this tangential post is too off-topic--I clearly think/hope not, but I don't have the institutional memory to know). Street art ("graffiti"), while is art is generally anonymous, for reasons that I think should be obvious. In the case of something explicitly anonymous, is it fair to apply the normal "only the creator may post" rule? For things that are corporate--like a larger-than-life Toa Nuva at Legoland, it's anonymous in the sense that a specific creator may not be identified, but because it fits into the neat category of official-from-TLG Bionicle, it has a place here. I also wonder if the days of "only the creator may post art" are somewhat conditioned by what the Internet was in the 2000s. Nowadays, when the overall online community of almost any fandom is diffused over multiple media, BZP is sort of insisting that something in counting as Bionicle Art may only be posted if the creator is a member. In 2005, that was probably extremely likely. 16 years later, there are Bionicle fans who are actively chiefly on Tumblr or Twitter or Instagram or Flickr or whatnot, but the only way their work can be shared with the fans on BZP is if something happens to get a news story and its attendant article. I'm not sure there's an ideal solution--I don't think it's false to say that BZP would LIKE to have all Bionicle content flow through the forum, and I think it's fair to want to preserve a clear distinction of ownership. Perhaps, like the Buy/Sell forum has a dedicated "Look at the eBay listing I found" thread, a dedicated "cool art I found elsewhere" thread--with a requirement for "I found it HERE and it was credited there are THIS USERNAME/PERSON'S" format.

If Tahu Mistika had looked this awesome, my Bionicle Dark Age might've been put off till after the end of Gen1! And I probably wouldn't sold him in the Dark Age cutdown. This is sick and definitely closer to what I imagine Tahu looking like then.

I **think**, without looking that the Exo-Toa gun was first used with the Throwbots line in 1998, so a couple years earlier, and a bit closer to Bionicle's prehistory. And for the Stud Lancher, while I dislike losing even 1x1 round plates, it is a point in their favour that you could go down to the LEGO Store and load up a lifetime of ammo for about 8 bucks.

The colours on these are sick. The lime and orange are classics, but these are beautiful, like a rendered remix--but real!

So, this topic is about a MOC, and it is one I have become fond of but... it's really just a standard Metru build. I present as my 810NICLE Day offering, Toa Metru Voriki. That is to say, the idea behind this character is not just that he's a Metru-build, but that he's one of the Toa Metru--the 7th Toa. In my return to Bionicle fandom from a decade of Dark Ages, I binged for a couple months on Bionicle lore and media and encountered for what I think is the first time, the concept of Voriki. Something about that fake leak, with its 2001-2002 era goodness struck my imagination, and I liked the idea of a rumoured 7th Toa. However, although I'm old enough you could say my crotchety attitudes of "Bionicle isn't good anymore" could be as old as the Toa redesign into the Toa Nuva, Takanuva is far too indelibly written into my mental Bionicle canon. How, then, to have a rumoured 7th Toa **and** Toa Takanuva--and not have them be the same? My answer is an untold (unwritten, un-outlined, un-daydreamed...) story of the Toa Metru leaving behind THEIR 7th Toa. Did they betray him? Did he betray them? For what dark reason was he left behind in Metru Nui? I don't know, but I like the idea of the Turaga speaking in hushed whispers on Mata Nui to each other: "Should we tell them"--that is, the Toa Mata--"of the 7th Toa?" They decide not. After all, these Turaga really do keep a lot of secrets. But then Takua does Takua, the Makuta is defeated, and the way to Metru Nui is opened, and just when the Turaga are thinking they can pass off these dark rumours of a 7th Toa as presaging Takanuva... Voriki is waiting as the way to Metru Nui is opened. So, yeah. Just a purple-highlighted Metru build. But I like it. The Mask of Scavenging was chosen for having design elements that kind of recalled the fake promo's lightning spikes, but it's a more "Metru" look. It could even be related in some way to the Mask of Scavenging: sucking in energy seems like a very useful Kanohi power for a Toa of Lightning, though it'd probably have to be tweaked slightly to not be quite so Evil™. The purple of the painted pieces isn't perfect, but it probably wouldn't bother me if I didn't have the Old Purple connectors on him too. The paint comes across (to me, anyway) as something of a "Metru Purple" or "Medium Purple." Ideally, the connectors would match, but those get a bit too much use for me to brave spraypainting them. I really like the Lightning Staff I gave Voriki, but I'm not sure if the vivid, classic yellow really works for a Toa Metru. His tool really should be silver and PROBABLY should be symmetrical/a pair. The yellow is much more "Toa Mata" in its vibe. I justify it to myself as Voriki having evolved his look just a little bit while he dwelt alone, left behind (well, probably not ENTIRELY alone--but who knows how he and Dume get along).

That thing is massive! At first glance, it looks like it's a similar scale to the current in-Ideas-voting Toa Head Statue, but this is WAY bigger. Which, given that it's the GSR, is appropriate.

My favourite part of this line (like the Looney Toons, Harry Potter, and DC before it) is that I'm not into it! The most dangerous Collectible Minifigs are the ones that hit like 2001 mask packs. These, I can appreciate for being good figs without finding myself dropping $40 for 3 figs I want, 2 I don't, and a couple random ones "just because."