Bionicle Guru

My nostalgia for BIONICLE is a core component of my general nostalgia for my teenage years. The years of 2001 through 2003 and 2006 through 2009 are prime examples of time periods of great change and notable events in my life, many of which I look back on fondly in the midst of my busy, professional adult life. I am just so lucky that in those years, TLG produced so many cool BIONICLE sets to accompany the story of my life. I still cherish those mask collections and canister sets I've collected, and like many have already noted, building them again is a sure-fire way to invoke the flood of memories in my mind.

Listening to it over the years, the sound of it does suggest some pattern that conforms to actual words. Perhaps they are just some random sentence spoken by one of the engineers and modulated to sound deep and un-English. Repeated enough, and it sounds like a chant. My sister studied sound recording engineering, and it is likely such a tactic was used. So it likely means nothing of significance in BIONICLE, but that shouldn't stop us from imagining it could.

It's belated now, but I hope you had a good one! Maybe one day you will grace this site with one of your wondrous BIONICLE set reviews again.

 

The Hypno Cruiser is still my second-favorite time machine (after Doc Brown's DeLorean) in all of fiction. I didn't get it as a kid, but in college, I nabbed two MISB editions of it. I built it and can confirm that fascination and appreciation is still valid.

 

Back on topic, I thought the strangest sets had to come from the Galidor. Those figures of the red monster with many appendage (Ooyni?) were weird regardless of whether Lego produced it or not. Conceptually, I find the "Elves" theme rather strange as a whole. I know in mythology, elves take on different forms, but I never associated them as pastel, princess-friendly flamboyant fairies. I suppose the strong sales of the "Friends" theme ("I'll be there for youuuuuuu!!!") kind of pushed Elves into being another girl-targeted concept, but the end result was still a bit off-putting to me. Oh well.

Elves was definitely conceptualized as a girls' theme... nothing "pushed it into" being a girl-targeted concept.

 

Well, I don't work for Lego and am not privy to their plans in the Futura division, so yeah, I made an assumption. I made that statement because I vaguely remember reading rumors (before "Friends" was announced) that a Castle-like subtheme was in the pipeline that would focus on elves (like the dwarves and orcs from the late 2000s). There was even that Lego Elf warrior from one of the collectible minifigure line-ups, so that added fuel to the Medieval Elf subtheme. Therefore, I found it strange to turn out to be a girl-targeted theme years later.

The Hypno Cruiser is still my second-favorite time machine (after Doc Brown's DeLorean) in all of fiction. I didn't get it as a kid, but in college, I nabbed two MISB editions of it. I built it and can confirm that fascination and appreciation is still valid.

Back on topic, I thought the strangest sets had to come from the Galidor. Those figures of the red monster with many appendage (Ooyni?) were weird regardless of whether Lego produced it or not. Conceptually, I find the "Elves" theme rather strange as a whole. I know in mythology, elves take on different forms, but I never associated them as pastel, princess-friendly flamboyant fairies. I suppose the strong sales of the "Friends" theme ("I'll be there for youuuuuuu!!!") kind of pushed Elves into being another girl-targeted concept, but the end result was still a bit off-putting to me. Oh well.

Baron Von Barron has been dead the whole time. Sam Sinister was just an identity thief.

Spoiler?

Keyser Soze

That battle between Onua and Lewa-Wearing-An-Infected-Miru was really epic. It was the first time we really saw the a Toa vs. Toa fight, and Templar Studios really made it look cool by having it take place in the dark of a Nui Rama hive. The sparks flying from Lewa's axe hitting Onua's claws, briefly lighting up the room each time they made titanic contact, to the end result of Onua switching to his noble mask of telekinesis in order to knock Lewa's mask off his face, was just exhilirating to watch.

The next year's Lewa vs. Onua fight in the comic "Into the Nest" was cool, too, but still just an echo of how awesome that animation turned out.

I do like his weapons and the new heads.  But the rest,                              .  Yeah, Lego can do better than that.

I know they can.

Man, we've come a long ways since the days of excessive emoticon use were extremely frowned upon. I'm almost expecting a burnmad blast in a topic one of these days.

Anyways, an important thing to appreciate about my favorite Toa that I did not fully become cognizant of until much later in my BIONICLE fandom: he is the audience's stand-in for the introduction to the world of BIONICLE. Takua was not a fully-revealed character in the early stages of the Mata Nui Online Game (the game, played from the silent, first-person perspective, kind of made you feel like just some random entity who came into the world, but was still recognized as part of it), so BIONICLE Comic #1: The Coming of the Toa was the first opportunity for many to actually get in the head of someone like us who was viewing Mata Nui for the first time. Kopaka's personality is appropriate for us; guarded, inquisitive, but carrying some small measure of anticipation for greatness. It is what several of us felt upon immersing ourselves into the BIONICLE mythos and toyline.

Over the course of the theme's life, Kopaka stopped being the main lens through which we viewed BIONICLE, but his importance was not forgotten. Greg Farshety, who considered Kopaka his favorite Toa, would often return to Kopaka's perspective in the BIONICLE books, continuing to remind us of that first entry into the world of Mata Nui.

I still like Kopaka the most, but I didn't really appreciate that role of his until BIONICLE was over. A part of me wished "Journey's End" concluded with an Epilogue from Kopaka's perspective, perhaps even a reaffirmation that the scattered parts of the worlds had been made whole, made complete. And that the darkness cannot stand before a world united.

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ATH/Mira/img_0737.jpg <-- My Kanohi Nuva collection was a complete windfall gained from an eBay seller. The "missing" masks are currently equipped on my Toa Nuva

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ATH/Mira/updated_2001_great_kanohi_may_2011.jpg <-- My Great Kanohi collection. The picture is out of date. It is complete now, and I need to get another photo with that long-hunted black Kakama!

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ATH/Mira/complete_noble_kanohi.jpg <--My Noble Kanohi collection. Also was obtained complete from eBay.

I have a decent-sized Kanoka collection, a wide array of Krana, and some cans full of Kraata. Nowhere near complete for any of those, though. I do have some nostalgic gems like the orange Vahi and trans-neon green Miru (TNGM). I am still looking to obtain a full set of those European misprint masks and the copper mask of victory. Then, I might finally consider my BIONICLE mask collection complete.

I personally like to go through the CGI images included in the old instruction manuals for sets as my story refresher. In captionless images, they hit on the important beats (The Toas' arrival, the discovery of the Exo-Toa, the Bohrok Kal robberies, etc.) while still exuding that old, often-discussed BIONICLE aura of mystery. As time passes and we grow older and forget more of the fine details, images like these will continue to evoke the glories of BIONICLE long past and suggest a mythic story that will only grow in appreciation as the decades roll on.

That one Inika ad from 2006 with the voiceover regarding what it truly meant to be a hero...at the time, I was caught up in how epic it sounded and looked. Now I can look back and appreciate the slight subversiveness of the commercial. It successfully sold you the "toy" ("You may have your light-up sword, your multi-shot Zamor launcher...") while simultaneously telling you all that stuff wasn't important. It is what you do with it that makes you a hero.

From a "Lego is an altruistic company" perspective, you can see a message for creative, free-form play over pre-packaged, gimmicky diversion. A bold statement for any company, if you want to read that deeply into it.

Hoto Bug in the house, lighting up your Onu-koronan caves.

Darude - Sandstorm

_{...oops, wrong meme....}

I've been using it, and I have found a few chapters here and there. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have anything past the first page a specific comedy, so I can only get bits and pieces. I've been collecting what I do find into word documents, so hopefully others can contribute and we can eventually finish them completely.

 

Comedies I've started collecting:

 

Bornicle

My Life with the Bionicles

Quest for the Great Comedy Masks of Power

 

 

Now, I haven't been a member of the site forever (although looking back, it seems like it) so there are probably a bunch of gold mines that I don't know about. Let me know and I'll do what I can to start saving them.

Hey pal, I know some time has passed since these posts, but how far along did you get with saving BORNICLE? I regretfully never imagined all of that being deleted back in 2003, so very very little has survived in my possession. I remember reading comments from fans at the time who had been collecting and saving the story on their own computers, but I have no idea if they are still active.

Clearly, I am the author of BORNICLE, so that explains my interest in this (in case that wasn't patently obvious).

The only thing I am not a fan of are these ham-fisted personality quirks. It's Lego, so I can "tone down" the construction of the Toa sets to make them look a little more to my personal liking, but I'd be basically creating my own head-canon with reference to their personalities. I get a whole "Saturday morning kid's cartoon" vibe from what the website is presenting. Maybe these are "prototype" personalities, much like how the original Toa had references to their differing ages and being "incarnations of elemental spirits" back on the original BIONICLE.com (us old fogies will recall those were quickly scrapped).

Well that was...different. No Ghost Animation this time around, but the tale is very intriguing to consider for us "old" BIONICLE fans. Everything is familiar, from the shape of the island (a low-resolution Mata Nui, crudely arranged) to the names of many of the characters (Makuta, Tahu, Kopaka), so it feels truly like I've stepped into one of those alternate universes BIONICLE was so fond of its twilight years.

It will be interesting to see how this "Legend" develops. It seems so much clearer than the original, but simpler at the same time. I'm not sure how I feel about all this. Hopefully, Lego releases more storyline media to elaborate like they did with the BIONICLE comics and MNOLG back before BIONICLE's official launch in the summer of 2001 (North America).

I dunno, sounds a little too close to Japanese. I guess the Maori-sounding words that dominated BIONICLE up until its final years have biased me, but it will be a little harder to reconcile statements like, "Tahu, Gali, and Pohatu searched the shores of Okoto for the Kanohi" (for example). One of these things is not like the others! 

I suppose time and more information from Lego will tell.

I logged in for the first time in years to say this:

 

"Sweet."

Holy Kanohi, now there is a username and avatar I haven't seen in a long, long time. Always good to welcome back another elder member from the "good old days"!

Word almost cannot encapsulate what I felt yesterday when I read the official news. I was on the road to another job, and I had stopped to eat lunch and get gas for my car. As I sat to eat, I checked my phone. Naturally, I had to go to BZPower. It was the right thing to do, to return to that site which was the bearer of so many great BIONICLE news articles, set reviews, and speculative editorials way back when I was 14 and BIONICLE was in its heyday, with many great years ahead of it.
 
Reading the article about Lego's reveal of BIONICLE's return was cathartic. So much has changed in my life since Journey's End. It was only a little over four years, but in that time I worked my first internship, graduated college, started my career, and am now on the cusp of completing an important promotion that will put me into the next stage of professional life. In that time, many works of fiction in various media caught my eye and my attention. Tron Legacy. The Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Assassin's Creed series of games. There was enough to fill my attention, both from work-related challenges and the diversions I enjoyed in those rare, precious moments I had with my family or on vacation.

But, buried deep within my childhood's heart of hearts, I never forgot BIONICLE. Toa figures collected dust in their canisters, and comic books sat sealed in plastic bags, but I never forgot the legend of six heroes with one destiny. Or of a universe that was more than what it appeared, with a villain formless, fearsome, and filled with an all-consuming desire to show that universe that it was Darkness, not Light, that held sway over the multitude of Creation.

In my darkest moments, it was things like BIONICLE that seemed to be part of another life, a dream of something wonderful and fun and intriguing in a mundane and unfeeling world. It was hard to imagine a time when BIONICLE could exist again. And so, I resigned myself to Fact of Life #9,461,880: BIONICLE is over, and it is not coming back. Move on with your life, and don't concern yourself with that toyline again.

And yet, here I am today. I am at work (during a surprising period of lull in activity). I am posting in the hallowed digital hallways that make up the BZPower forums. I am allowing the inner child to come forth to exclaim in exuberance that adult me was wrong; that Fact of Life #9,461,880 was NULL and VOID. BIONICLE is back! Let that statement ring from every Lego fansite! BIONICLE is back! Tell all your old friends who might have also forgotten their inner youth! BIONICLE is back! Dig out those old Toa canisters and show off your old sets with pride, for though they are the past, they are heralds as well of the future that is on its way. BIONICLE is back!

Whatever this Mask of Creation brings to the story, it is undeniable that it brings also the birth of a new era in our lives. It brings not only the return of some cool toys, but hopefully, also the return of our mighty community. United in fandom, bound by a duty to follow and appreciate the story and its facets...join with me, young and old, optimist and skeptic; join with me as we shout across cyberspace the words we've longed to say for many years:

BIONICLE is back!

To seriously answer this topic, yes, I still go through the news archives. Visiting BZP was as much a part of my early adolescent experience as BIONICLE itself, so I have fond memories of those days I got to use a DSL-capable computer to browse the Internet and found some exciting news item on Kanohi-Power or Bionicle Zone (and after the merger, of course). I am particularly fond of going back to old reviews written by Jon (Dimensioneer). He had a great style when it came to writing about sets, one that I wish was still the "gold standard" for set reviews on BZP today.

I'd love to see the forum archives as well, since I'm suddenly starting to miss all my old posts. Even the newbie ones.

 

All anybody needs to know about the "Golden Age of BZPower" is one simple, powerful message:

 

"brakelatabasaasta feed me "

 

That, and maybe the burnmad emoticon.

Ah yes. The truly glorious post by connor. Surely he has gone on to be a philosopher of great standing.

 

After seeing that topic, I decided I didn't want to be a Moderator, or Support Team member. Heck, I didn't even want to be a famous Comedy writer. I just wanted to be connor...except, not banned, ya know?

All anybody needs to know about the "Golden Age of BZPower" is one simple, powerful message:

"brakelatabasaasta feed me "

That, and maybe the burnmad emoticon.

I guess it's time to announce my return to this website as well. Hello again to the familiar faces, Lady Kopaka and Reya. Reya, I recall attempting to trade with you, but I was much more poorer back then, and couldn't make a fair deal with you. I looked up the old PM thread and realized I now have everything I was asking for. Haha.

But I digress. I have always been Bionicle Guru, back in the old days when there was a Bionicle Rex running this site, and will likely never change this name. I wrote two comedies, the first of which was a mildly juvenile tale named "Matoran Boot Camp", and my sophomore effort (which I am far more proud of) was "Bornicle" (BORing chroNICLE). I was also one of the participants in Greg Farshtey's "Master of BIONICLE" competition held here on BZPower in the summer of 2005 and one of the 50 winners in the BIONICLE Rahi Building Challenge hosted by the Lego Club Magazine back in the spring of 2004. After I wound down Bornicle, I haunted the Storyline and Theories forum like a bad ghost, so Adventurer might remember me. I had lots of theories about the Bohrok-Toa relationship, as well as the nature of the Matoran Universe. As far as BZPower is concerned, that's my entire resume right there, and I am still pretty much not more than an unknown, irate, sometimes drawn-out member. But I like this place, and I like BIONICLE, and that's why I keep coming back, over a decade since I first signed up.

Oh, and just so no one thinks I was making some big, proud statement with that previous paragraph, I also entered in one of BZP's art contests and lost horribly, and I started an epic a year ago that went nowhere and was ignored completely. Strikes and misses.

I won't lie; new BIONICLE sets would bring me back to this site more frequently, and therefore, these forums would see a return of my begrudged participation (Mods, I apologize in advance for my irreverence). I imagine others like myself from "the good ol' days" would return, too. Naturally, I foresee some clashing, though not necessarily between those who favor "Old BIONICLE" and those who only know "New BIONICLE". Rather, I predict more conflict along classic, generational lines.

I am 25, going on 26. BIONICLE has been around long enough that people born when BIONICLE was new (2001) are now thirteen. That's not much older than I was when I discovered BIONICLE (I got my first three Toa after I turned 12), but obviously, the theme skewed heavily to those younger than me and as well as those much older. I imagine this new iteration will do the same, but considering Lego's past strategies with Ninjago, Chima, and Hero Factory, they may focus heavily on appealing to the younger age group; the target age group.

So, we'll likely see an influx of pre-tweens who have always been on the internet, always had access to at least one or two hand-held wireless devices, and may also be completely oblivious BIONICLE was something that existed before 2015. Meanwhile, the old BIONICLE fans from 2010 and earlier are all at least teenagers now, with a great many more now out of college or employed full-time (like yours truly). We like different cartoons, movies, books, and TV shows, and were molded by different cultural cornerstones (i.e. attitudes towards BIONICLE in the USA were in part molded by a post-9/11 atmosphere).

Needless to say, and without going into detail regarding all things someone like me will disapprove of that kids nowadays love, there will be personality and cultural clashes. We old guard members and moderators would be remiss to not acknowledge this. There is more than BIONICLE fandom at stake. We must understand our demographics better in order to build a new, cohesive community that will truly evoke BZPower's ancient splendor.