Distorted

look at that, there's no delete button for blog entries that you only uploaded to see if your blog still works guess this one is staying up oopsa doopsa

Nice part usage with the Piraka feet. I wonder if adding Toa Metru thigh armour to the liftarms might make them look a little better?

This rule made sense in BZP's heyday, but now that the forum is generally much quieter, I'd have thought that any activity would be welcomed regardless of topic revivals. At the very least, why not increase the day limits so topics can have more time before they're declared dead?

It's under 'Pneumatic'.

I think it's also worth noting that Bionicle's early marketing was really a product of its time. Back in 2001, going to a website to learn more about the lore was a relatively novel experience. Streaming 3D computer-generated animations of the toys on the internet - in glorious 144p - was a relatively novel experience. Playing a whole interactive and episodic point-and-click adventure in your browser was a relatively novel experience. (Not to mention, the idea of a big-budget Lego theme and even the actual toy concept of a Lego action figure you can build was fairly new itself...) In the era of Youtube, social media, fan wikis, affordable CG animation, an oversaturated digital marketing landscape, and a Lego brand that's releasing all kinds of posable action figure sets, managing multiple big-budget themes and even doing whole animated TV series and movies now; none of these things are special any more. It's easy to say Lego didn't do enough marketing in 2015 - and they probably didn't - but Bionicle 2015's marketing team had a much bigger uphill battle. They couldn't just repeat the same tricks and expect to recapture the same lightning in a bottle.

Junkbot, baybee! Honestly, there were a *ton* of good Flash and Shockwave games on the Lego website: MNOG (which sadly never worked very well on my dial-up connection; I had to wait until the 2006 re-release to make any real progress in it) Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident Mindstorms Robohunter 2: Spy City (don't think I ever made it past the first level cuz I was bad at stealth, and again my internet speed was garbage) Those isometric-ish Drome Duel racing games Supersonic RC (the looping music is baked into my skull) Lego Studios Backlot I also really liked the instructions pages that were exclusive to Lego.com. Nowadays I can see them for the cheap-and-easy content that they were, but back then it really did feel like being part of this little secret club.

If they weren't interested in 2015, I doubt they'd be interested now...

Probably the biggest news is that the long-lost PC game Legend of Mata Nui is now available to play.

These are super cute. I'm intrigued to see more MNOG-accurate versions, but these are still great; the belly buttons are a nice touch!

We all posted some cringe when we were seventeen, dog. FWIW, I don't remember having any bad impressions of you and your posts back in the day. And I was judgemental as all heck back then, so you must have been doing something right.

- Built for New Elementary's Bionicle 20th Anniversary Festival (part 2 of 4): https://www.newelementary.com/2021/11/47299-lego-50914-bionicle-57557-part-61807-.html Thanks to Huw for the pics! (Not an Iron Man thing, despite appearances...) -

- Built for New Elementary's Bionicle 20th Anniversary Festival. Thanks to Huw from Brickset for the pics! -

It's Mask of Light, but all the Matoran on Mata Nui are on their own quests to find the seventh Toa before anyone else like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Takua accidentally rides Pewku into a lake of lava and they both slowly become lava bones while Jaller waves from the bankside.

I'll be honest. I read the title and thought 'oh, here we go again; another Bionicle fan overanalysing their favourite franchise'. I wasn't expecting a post with actual effort put into the calculations and a really funny conclusion. Nice work!

If you think any part of Umbra is going to make sense, you're gonna have a bad time. He's an ancient guardian with roller skates.

- See the full MOC on Flickr -

Thanks for sharing these. I love seeing set prototypes; they're like a glimpse into an alternate universe sometimes! I imagine you'd rather keep your sources secret, but I have to ask; how did you get hold of these? How does one go about hunting down Lego prototypes?

If you need any similar art, I'd recommend seeking out the various style guide files on Biomedia Project. They have a bunch of cool PSD files where you can see the various layers of promo art and disable any layers you don't need (such as logos).

Pretty sure it isn't gunmetal. To me it looks like a regular silver Inika leg that's become miscoloured in the sun.

This part: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=48253&name=Bionicle Weapon Chronicler's Staff&category=[Bionicle]#T=C Before its inclusion in later sets after 2003, it used to be a rare promotional part and was offered as a prize in classic BBC contests back in the day.

Teridax is an awful name. It literally sounds like 'terribad' with a bonko suffix tacked on. I'll never know why Greg didn't just come up with a different name for the Makuta species. Surely that would have made more sense than effectively renaming a character we've known as 'Makuta' for several years?

Tried my hand at a little digital art inspired by the style guide PSDs up on the BioMedia Project. I combined free texture photos, Lego parts rendered in Bricklink Studio and some other elements I painted in. Nothing was taken from the style guide files themselves. Hopefully this will be first in a little series!

I prefer Tohunga, but I prefer Lego respecting cultural boundaries more; so Matoran is fine!

Ok. Rant incoming... This might sound mean, but it's not intended as such. (It's also not a HP fanboy post; I can see why it's successful but I usually find myself bemused by it all...) ... I don't really know why you're surprised that Harry Potter - a literal billion-dollar franchise with a huge worldwide following, ten (and counting) theatrical movie releases, several tourist attractions and a whole heap of naff merchandise - is getting picked for a 20-year anniversary over Bionicle - a franchise which has a famously niche subculture within the already niche subculture of AFOLs. I also don't get why you're mad about Bionicle getting a little easter egg shoutout. You're mad because Lego isn't paying respects to the franchise, and to illustrate your point, you're giving us an example of Lego paying respects to the franchise...? If you're mad that Lego has seemingly forgotten about Bionicle, then guess what; they haven't. They gave it a shoutout in The Lego Movie, Takanuva almost made into TLM2, concept art and the whole Toa Mata team are on display in the Lego House, Bionicle easter eggs are still showing up in other sets - heck, while it wasn't what most of us G1 fans wanted, they even gave us a whole new reboot with new sets, worldbuilding, artwork, animations, games and a Netflix movie. Even today's Lego sets have Bionicle roots. Would we have so many different posable figure sets with towball-socket joints if Bionicle hadn't existed? I doubt it. Would Ninjago be the blockbuster theme that it is today without Lego learning the ropes with Bionicle? Probably not. Even the people involved in Bionicle haven't forgotten. TTV is running canon contests with Greg. We've had people like Bob Thompson, Christian Faber, Stuart Sayger, Pop Mhan etc. coming out of the woodwork to do interviews. I mean, Faber's even trying to get his weird vision for a potential whole new G3 off the ground. But Lego are a toy company. They exist to sell toys. They don't exist to pay tribute to every single one of their dozens of past themes. G1 ended over ten years ago. G1's popularity was waning long before that. And G2 didn't meet sales expectations; in fact, it met them so badly that the last line of sets wasn't even universally released everywhere. (Yet Lego still felt it was necessary to wrap up G2's story instead of leaving it on a cliffhanger...) Unfortunately, that makes it unlikely that we'll see another Bionicle set; even as a small tribute set. Not impossible, but not likely either. (I'd love a bonko GWP; but again, when you consider the whole consumer audience of GWPs, how many of them are actually interested in Bionicle?) But even if Lego had completely forgotten about Bionicle - again, they haven't - do we actually need a new set from them? The community is still building and posting their own creations online; not to mention fanart and other fan projects. Builders are still uploading bonko projects to Lego Ideas. We've had at least two attempts at a large scale 3D exploration game starring the Toa Mata, with the latest one currently in production and getting Lego's official blessing to continue development - how often does that happen with fan games that borrow existing IPs? The fan community tracked down and released the cancelled Quest of the Toa; the white whale of Bionicle fans for more than a decade. BZP and TTV are still up and running. Communities are still interacting on Facebook, Twitter, Discord etc. There's multiple wikis devoted to archiving the entire lore of the franchise. There's an entire site devoted to archiving the entire media franchise: games, artwork, animations, set instructions, even internal style guides that we were never meant to see. I find Faber's 'the legend is in your hands now' stuff a bit trite, but I guess it's mostly true. Bionicle is the thing we grew up with, it's the thing we still love, and no amount of disinterest (or perceived disinterest) from Lego can change that.

Kongu Mahri and Pohatu Phantoka are both good sets and aren't too wide/short at all. Matoro wasn't a particularly interesting character and his sacrifice didn't really have any sort of emotional impact on me. (Admittedly, I didn't really follow the books/comics/serials in 2006 and 2007; perhaps I'd have been a bit more invested in the character if I had.)