Aanchir

On 4/28/2020 at 1:07 AM, Sir Keksalot said:

It also wasn't a blatant dystopia. It was a scenic, natural environment, with sweeping vistas and lots of moments of tranquility. The sharks weren't an oppressive thought police that would throw you in the gulag if you were a minute late to work.

I have no idea how you got any real emotional impact from that episode. Zane being a robot became a plot point, but I never got the sense that it had nearly the impact it should have had. This is the kinda thing that gives a man an existential crisis. It should have made Zane question whether he even counted as a person. Imagine if we got to see Zane angry. Like, really angry. Legitimately hurt after a serious personal crisis. But no, he's all peachy by the episode's end. He needed AT LEAST a season to work through this thing, but his arc skipped over the part where he actually needs to grow as a person.

Nah. Zane knew he was the same person he always was, and so did all his friends. And in the meantime, he gained a clearer understanding of his own origins, which had been established as a lingering concern of his in previous books and TV episodes.

Perhaps it would be different if this were a storyline that had gone to great lengths to establish that Zane or his friends had some weird prejudice against robots, but it hadn't. So the initial shock of learning he was built rather than born was understandably far outweighed by the subsequent discovery that he had a father who had always loved him and believed in his potential for greatness.

For argument's sake: should Takanuva have spent weeks stewing in anger at everyone who called him "weird" or "different" after he learned he was an Av-Matoran, not a Ta-Matoran? Should Harry Potter have plunged into a lengthy existential crisis about learning he and his parents were wizards? Should Clark Kent have lashed out at his adoptive parents once he learned he wasn't their biological child? I can't really see much reason that any of those stories would be improved by that sort of contrived, soap-opera-style vendetta… I mean, the season three love triangle was bad enough, and that at least had more of a point than "I know who I am and I'm mad about it".

The core message of that episode, in a nutshell, was that your origins do NOT define who you are, how much value you have, or what sort of treatment you deserve from the people around you. Honestly, I'm dumbfounded that you think that ending it with a bleaker or more cynical message than that would be any sort of improvement.

On 4/28/2020 at 1:07 AM, Sir Keksalot said:

My entire argument is merely that Bionicle sucks less, if only in different chunks of its story. Bionicle's shortcomings can be chalked up to some incompetence in spite of genuine effort. Ninjago is just lazy and uninspired. And how exactly are Ninjago's "strong points" at all stronger than Bionicle's?

Gotta say, it's kind of awkward when the contention you've been so adamant not to accept any other perspectives on has degraded to "my generation's terrible kids' series should never be likened to the subsequent generation's terrible kids' series"… especially when you started off saying that the former was "actually good". Oh wait…

On 4/28/2020 at 1:07 AM, Sir Keksalot said:

That was mostly meant as a sarcastic reply which grossly oversimplifies the matter. I said it that way because I thought it was moderately comical.

You thought THAT was moderately comical? A cheap putdown of the very brand the subforum you're in is focused on? Not really making a strong case for your critical tastes, there… not that you were off to a good start with your choice of username.

You keep on insisting Ninjago is "lazy and uninspired", all while acting like the burden of proof is on other people who HAVE continued to enjoy the series to prove that it isn't. Let me put this to you as simply as I can: I do not care if you think Ninjago is trash. It's frustrating that you've turned a topic about something I enjoy into a soap box to rail against it, just as it's obnoxious when Bricksetters derail the comments of Bionicle-related articles to rant how much Bionicle sucks. But the storylines and characters in both themes have impacted me and others in powerful, positive, and lasting ways. Random people who trash-talk others' interests for fun never will.

21 hours ago, Sir Keksalot said:

One thing that I tried to make clear early on was that I'm well aware that Bionicle's story is...well, kind of a mess. However, one important point I've been making is that you can tell there was an attempt, and the story was mostly just marred by Greg being a lousy writer/worldbuilder. It's evident that he had a lot of fun with the job he was given and just went to town putting in what he thought was cool, whereas Ninjago has failed to convince me that the writers actually like the IP in that way. Case in point: they're clearly out of ideas, as shown by the video game motif, which should have gone to an entirely new theme.

It's a little embarrassing when your go-to evidence that the Ninjago creators are "out of ideas" is that they used a new idea you think they shouldn't have. All that shows is that they have a more open-minded and imaginative idea of the theme's scope than you do.

Furthermore, the theme's creators like Tommy Andreasen, the Hageman brothers, Bragi Schut, etc. have made it extremely clear on Twitter, in interviews, and in their convention appearances just how much they enjoy coming up with wild new adventures for the ninja. Tommy in particular has shared quite a bit of fan art and fan fiction of the series which he's created purely for fun, rather than as part of his work on the series! For that matter, he's been every bit as enthusiastic about interacting with Ninjago fans as Greg was with Bionicle fans. He and Bragi routinely encourage fans to share various forms of creative work inspired by the series and weigh in with their perspectives about the story and characters.

Needless to say, this all still reeks of sour grapes on your part. You entered this discussion with a shallow and indignant retort that Ninjago can't be "the next Bionicle" because "Bionicle was actually good." Since then, your attempt to justify that argument has devolved into flimsy assumptions about whether the Ninjago creators actually enjoy or care about their work. Surely you realize that trying to make claims about what Ninjago's writers think or feel about their own work, when you haven't even demonstrated that you know any of them by name, reads as nothing more than psychological projection?

And that's not even getting into the arbitrary double standards you've employed in this thread. You give Bionicle credit for "fostering" the growth of other story-driven themes like Knights' Kingdom II, Exo-Force, and Atlantis… but blame Ninjago for "stifling" the growth of story-driven themes like Legends of Chima, Elves, Nexo Knights, or Hidden Side. Most of these themes lasted about the same amount of time, and the examples from Ninjago's lifetime generally had more sets and a larger media profile than their earlier counterparts. But it doesn't suit your narrative to acknowledge that the themes have not shown any meaningful difference in their impact on the themes around them, does it?

This pattern occurs throughout your posts. Positive things happen BECAUSE of Bionicle's presumed "goodness" and IN SPITE of Ninjago's presumed "badness". Bad things happen BECAUSE of Ninjago's presumed "badness" and IN SPITE of Bionicle's presumed "goodness". You frame every strength of Bionicle and weakness of Ninjago as "the norm", and every weakness of Bionicle and strength of Ninjago as "exceptions". Unless you can put forth an argument for how Ninjago and Bionicle differ that isn't just a painfully obvious attempt to universalize your own subjective preferences, I'm not sure there's any value to engaging with your petty grievances any further.

Aw, yeesh. I hadn't set foot in the forums in a while, and it's frustrating that the nastiness in this topic is one of the first things I came across when checking back in this evening.Suffice to say, as an avid fan of Ninjago since 2011, I disagree greatly with @Sir Keksalot's description of the series as "garbage", that it "puts the sets before the story in every way".

Now, it's true that Ninjago has had its fair share of weaknesses over the years: inconsistencies in characterization, painfully normative portrayals of gender roles, a glut of action and fantasy storytelling cliches, characters getting sucked into counterproductive feuds or rivalries, a confusing backstory that often seems to get more complicated as the series gets on, adaptations that fall far short of the core story, characters/vehicles/props that serve little to no narrative purpose except promoting a new toy, etc.

But criticizing those sorts of flaws in a topic like this one seems to imply a vastly misguided belief that those faults were somehow LESS present in Bionicle, when in fact Bionicle is itself frequently criticized for all those same weaknesses! Obviously, how much either series is brought down by these weaknesses is highly subjective. To some people, Bionicle might suffer worse from them than Ninjago. To others, Ninjago might be far weaker overall. Some people (like me) manage to find both series highly enjoyable in spite of their flaws — but many people might likewise see BOTH series as childish rubbish!

And all of those perspectives are legitimate — there's no rule that you have to feel the same way about two series no matter HOW much they have in common. But it's important to realize that Ninjago is beloved not only by kids, but also by many teens and adults. That popularity is no fluke, and goes well beyond even the audience of fans who are interested primarily in the toyline and only secondarily in the TV series.

It's not uncommon to find comments online from parents and other caregivers praising it for its story and characters, even if their attitudes towards kids' entertainment more broadly tend to be rather critical (see here , here, and here for just a few examples). By comparison, as good a job as Bionicle did convincing kids like us that it wasn't just a glorified toy commercial aimed at a less-than-discerning kid audience, I feel like nearly every review of Bionicle media between 2001 and 2010 that wasn't on a dedicated Bionicle fansite tended to disparage it as largely mediocre and borderline incomprehensible to anybody who wasn't a preteen mega-fan (this example is pretty typical of a lot of Bionicle reviews by non-fans, and as critical as it is, it's far from the most negative I've seen).

Already, I've seen a number of kids who began enjoying Ninjago as kids or teens go on to maintain that passion into adulthood, just as many people from my own generation did with our passion for Bionicle. And I've encountered quite a few Ninjago fans among the amazing community of fan artists on social media who weren't previously LEGO fans at all, and didn't even start taking notice of the Ninjago toyline until after the story and characters had captured their hearts and imaginations. After all, one thing Bionicle and Ninjago DEFINITELY have in common is that it's much less expensive to begin experiencing them via the storyline than via the toys!

Anyway, I also disagree with some comments that try to define Ninjago strictly as a comedy. It has a lot of humor, certainly, but the same is true for a LOT of kids' action cartoons, up to and including highly acclaimed ones like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Batman: The Animated Series, or She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. The amount of humor present in Ninjago isn't the slightest bit out of the ordinary in that context.

Bionicle itself had its share of humor in a lot of its various media incarnations, like the Mata Nui Online Game, the movies, and to an extent, even the comics and chapter books (though many of Greg's later attempts at humor were in the form of cringy one-liners or out of place pop culture references that fell flat even at the time). Any time that Bionicle DID feel particularly humorless, it tended to be a weakness, not a strength.

It was fun, but I think it had a decent run and had stopped following it closely by the very end. Plus, even from the start I wasn't anticipating that it would last more than three years. Generally themes like that aren't expected or even intended to continue on and on, year after year the way that Bionicle, Ninjago, Friends, and City have — that kind of decision is only made after they've demonstrated some really extraordinary levels of popularity.

I also think that while it's a bummer that there was no new TV season to tell the story of Nexo Knights' final wave and conclusion, the story presented in the sets and app make for a very good "final battle", with Monstrox himself taking digital form just as Merlok did and attempting to turn the very technology that always gave the Nexo Knights their edge back against them. I don't know whether there's any new story arcs they could have introduced after that which wouldn't feel tacked-on or otherwise underwhelming compared to such poetically high stakes.

And anyhow, if LEGO kept all their themes running as long as they remained successful in any capacity, they wouldn't have nearly enough production capacity left over to introduce entirely new themes like Hidden Side.

I will say that I have much more bittersweet feelings about LEGO Elves ending. Certainly it had a satisfying conclusion in its own right, with the forces of light vanquishing the shadows that threatened Elvendale, but at the same time I had a much closer connection to those characters and that world than I did with the Nexo Knights, and I felt like the sets always found new ways to excite me. The Elves story also varied much more from year to year than that of Nexo Knights, which always focused pretty intently on the war between the heroes of Knighton and the forces of Monstrox, so I feel like it could have continued in new directions without that same sense of detachment that comes with having to redefine the entire premise after three years defined by conflict against one very specific adversary.

Moreover, a lot of the stuff I enjoyed about Nexo Knights was similar to what I still enjoy about Ninjago, whereas Elves had many much different forms of appeal that this year only the LEGO Movie 2 sets and story come close to delivering. I'm hoping that there's some adequate "spiritual successor" to LEGO Elves in the works for 2020 and beyond.

I know that some people (kids, parents, and AFOLs alike) have legitimate reasons to want to glue certain creations, but what exactly does this product offer that an ordinary water-soluble glue like Elmer's school glue would not?

Omg why is LEGO setting everything on fire? The dock, the bbq and the burger joint! LEGO are you okay?

Truth be told, I think it's a neat way for LEGO to market buildings and structures to kids that might not be as exciting to the LEGO City target audience as fire trucks and police cars. Same with some of the buildings or scenery used as crime scenes or crook hideouts in the past several years of police sets and civilian boats appearing in recent Coast Guard sets.

I remember that with other toy brands of the 2000s with a similar emphasis on action-packed real world careers like Jack Stone or Rescue Heroes, it was a frequent frustration that most toys only featured heroic characters, and not more "everyday" characters for them to "protect and serve". With the ubiquitous and near-constant presence of police, fire, and construction categories in LEGO City since 2005, and the shift among many of the less constant subthemes to other types of adventure/exploration scenarios, it's nice that LEGO has found a way to make other types of scenery needed to flesh out a city setting readily available in spite of that.

Weren't the G1 alarm clocks made by a different manufacturer? It's hard to keep track of who LEGO licenses things out to.

ClicTime's website for their LEGO branded watches and clocks refers to them as the LEGO licensee for 18 years, so it's safe to say that they were in charge of producing the LEGO branded alarm clocks and watches at that time — though it's possible that at that time, LEGO's tendency to try and manage so many aspects of their brand extensions like video games and LEGOLAND parks in-house might have meant they were kept under a tighter leash.

I've always wanted one of those bigfig alarm clocks. They look fun (until I get fed up with them waking me up, that is!).

Wonder what some G2 clocks would look like. We did have some in G1, but just like those were in a common format for LEGO clocks back then, these are the format now, and they're a very minifig-centric one at that, so it'd have been interesting to see them stretch the format for CCBS.

I suspect that any Bionicle G2 branded alarm clocks might have been in the shape of Bionicle masks and/or heads, which are probably the only element of either generation of Bionicle that's as iconic and standardized as bricks, minifigures, or mini-dolls are in System themes.

Anyway, these and clocks and watches are as cool as ever, but not much about them stands out to me as unusually groundbreaking. Of those shown, I could possibly see myself getting the Unikitty watch. Otherwise, though, none are really calling my name.

I still kind of regret not getting the Nya watch from the LEGO Ninjago Hands of Time series, and hope that she is featured in future ClicTime products, since that version of Nya remains one of my favorite minifigure designs of all time, and Nya herself remains my favorite Ninjago character from Season 5 onward. But i'm sure that if another watch never gets released that appeals to me as much, I will still be able to find that one at a reasonable price online, or just continue my current habit of not wearing a watch.

Ninjago's probably not going anywhere in the immediate future, since it's Lego's cash cow; but it can't have too much more time if Bionicle is any indication of how things go. Only time will tell how much longer it lasts.

Since Bionicle has been one of the only other real story-driven IPs to last as long or longer than Ninjago has, we can't necessarily assume that its rise and fall will become a trend for similar themes.

Ninjago's already had a much different development history in a lot of respects:

• launching with a TV special that paved the way for a multi-season TV series

   

• having the most successful first-year sales of any new theme to date (at least as of that time), but seemingly never becoming the LEGO Group's single best-selling product line of the year (as Bionicle had been every year from 2002 to 2005)

   

• getting a third season and a new wave of sets on relatively short notice after what were intended to be its final wave and TV series finale

   

• being adapted into a cinematic movie with an alternate continuity in its seventh year

   

• ranking among the five best-selling themes well into its eighth year

   

• and of course, having much different pricing and marketing strategies to begin with, more comparable to other System play themes than an action figure theme like Bionicle that tended towards much lower price points focusing on individual characters.

Frankly, I would not have been at all surprised if Ninjago had ended for good in its third year as intended, similar to the lifespan of previous themes like Knights' Kingdom II and Exo-Force or later themes like Legends of Chima and Nexo Knights. If it was able to defy that precedent that was typical of themes that typically entailed much more similar characters, scale, builds, and price points, then I'm not sure that it makes sense to assume it's simply shifted to behaving like Bionicle, a much more different theme, rather than charting its own new course that can't be neatly predicted according to how themes of the past have stood the test of time.

That's not to say that Ninjago is an unstoppable force and cornerstone of the LEGO portfolio to the same extent as, say, LEGO City (which is in its 16th year under that brand name, which was itself something of a rebrand/reboot of previous product lines like Town and World City). What I am saying is that the challenges that Ninjago might face going forward might very easily be challenges that no other theme has previously needed to overcome.

For example, I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some point, even in the near future, LEGO replaces the LEGO Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu TV series with a sequel series, in sort of the same way that there have been separate cartoon series in the Ben 10, Transformers, Pokémon, and Dragon Ball franchises with the same continuity. This can both help create an easier starting point for new viewers, and an opportunity for the creators to re-imagine the show's visual style without it being as jarring as an abrupt mid-series change (I'm not just talking character redesigns or costume changes like Ninjago has had several times in the past, but rather bigger changes to the overall design language like the color palette, shading/lineart style, or switching between more realistic and more stylized body proportions).

Managing to both retain the show's existing appeal and create new appeal to draw in new themes could be a considerable challenge that LEGO hasn't really had to deal with in any similar theme. Bionicle never kept the same visual style of its comics and animated media or series titles and numbering for its books and comics the same for as long as the Ninjago TV series has, so by the time it was as old as Ninjago is now, older fans were already used to those sorts of changes.

For most of Bionicle's lifetime it was also more or less the only theme of its kind — in fact, there were questions within the design and marketing teams about whether the Hero Factory storyline intended as the Bionicle storyline's successor should still be branded as Bionicle (like how Power Rangers/Super Sentai series that don't share the same universe or continuity are still considered part of the same franchise) due to having a similar building system and similar set and character design principles, or as its own separate thing. They eventually decided on the latter.

Ninjago, on the other hand, has always been one of many minifigure-based play themes with similar design languages, building styles, and play features. As such, it's doubtful there will be a scenario where the bigger category it belongs to is perceived as needing a total refresh/rebranding, or that its production costs in terms of new molds and recolors will be both irreducible and unsustainable — but there's a much greater possibility of another in-house theme launched within Ninjago's own lifetime could surpass its popularity among its own target audience, thereby displacing it.

This is probably not something LEGO would bring about by design (they'd rather make new themes that can coexist with already popular ones than ones that already devoted LEGO fans will be forced to choose between), and so far other themes like Legends of Chima and Nexo Knights have neither surpassed Ninjago's sheer popularity nor rendered it redundant. But it's not a possibility Bionicle's designers ever had to be particularly concerned about as long as it remained the only in-house IP theme defined by its particular marketing/merchandising strategy, play patterns, and building system.

Long story short, though, Bionicle was not doing nearly as well this far into its lifetime — not so much as mentioned in the LEGO Group's 2008–2010 annual reports, nor listed among top-selling themes beyond the 2005 annual report in which it was "still the LEGO Group's biggest selling theme. However, sales did not live up to expectations in 2005". Seeing as the 2018 annual report still cites Ninjago as one of the five best-selling themes, just as it was in the 2015 and 2016 annual reports around when the theme was first described as evergreen, I don't think it's in any danger of disappearing in the short term any more than other reliable best-selling themes like LEGO Friends, LEGO City, or LEGO Star Wars. If it ends at any point, it will almost certainly be after some more noticeable decline in popularity and sales.

 

I meant the set itself was junior-ized, not the dino-mold, which is the only real appeal to that particular set. It only has a few simplistic builds that remind me of the Juniors set. (Yes, I get there's a interesting turntable ride, but that's still not exactly a complex design.) Meanwhile, the Dilophosaurus has an interesting gift shop / dino mouth design and unconventional vehicle, the jeep/trailer in the Baryonyx set are suitably detailed, and the Dino Mech looks like a nice hefty build. So three of the sets look like they had some design work done, and then the other one looks like they threw in a couple of simple builds around a re-released Triceratops (which everyone, like me, wants.) That's the issue I have with that particular set, not the Triceratops design.

 

IDK, the supplemental builds are small but I think they're pretty complex in their own right:

• The spinning eggs ride has some atypical SNOT builds for the egg-shaped seats and uses Technic and the new gear plates together in a way we've never seen in sets before, to create a function we've likewise never seen in sets before. The fences are nothing too elaborate but likewise use parts in some unconventional ways, and certainly ways we don't see in Juniors sets, to allow the right side of the fence to be torn down in a very realistic looking way
• The quad bike, despite being one of the smallest builds in the set, is way more elaborate than many LEGO Friends or City quad bikes, let alone a Juniors one. Ordinarily you see those types of vehicles use parts like this and this from old LEGO Racers sets, not a combination of parts like 2x4 double inverse slopes, 1x2 curved slopes, and 1x2 and 1x4 plates.
• Really, the only part uses that I might typically expect to see in a Juniors set is the basic vertical stacking of the 2x2x3 bricks and slopes in the front gate and the 2x4x4 half-cylinders in the egg ride's support columns… but I don't feel like there'd be any benefit to using smaller parts for either of those thing. And it's not uncommon even to see parts like those used similarly in highly advanced builds like the Death Star (with 11 of the 2x2x3 bricks), Haunted House (with 49 of the 2x2x3 slopes), and Taj Mahal (with 32 of the 2x4x4 quarter cylinders).

Bummer that the Triceratops set looks very juniorized; it's been a while since we got a quadruped herbivore dino. The vehicle builds in the other sets are quite creative, as well as that dino-mech. (Didn't read at first that these would be based off a Lego TV show, thought that the next movie was really jumping the shark by introducing dino-mechs.) Still a bit on the pricy side, but this feels more like a legit Lego dinosaur theme compared to the previous Jurassic World waves, IMO.

 

The Triceratops appears to be the same as the one from the Dino theme in 2012, just with different colors and printing. I don't really see how it's any more "juniorized" (as in, using big and specialized pieces instead of smaller and more versatile ones) than most of the other molded LEGO dinos, particularly those from 2005 onward.

These look okay, thought they were good until I took a lil peep at the prices.

Yeah, even without a license, big molded dinos like this pretty much invariably drive up the price per piece of a set beyond what you'd typically expect. Believe it or not, the non-licensed Dino theme from 2012 had sets with higher prices per piece than any of the Jurassic World sets to date: 14.7 cents for an average set, with a maximum of a whopping 18.4 cents per piece for 5885!

I suspect the only way LEGO could release minifig-scale dino sets at a more reasonable price per piece and still make money on them would be with more heavily brick-built dinosaurs, like the dragons, dinosaurs, and other big creatures in LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Elves, and LEGO Creator 3-in-1.

Anyway, I don't care at all for the Jurassic World brand or theme, but it's fun to see designs in this theme get a little more wacky and imaginative. I'm sure many AFOLs who have been experience mech fatigue are groaning at the T-Rex mech, but it seems to be a pretty creative and cool-looking build in its own right. It's also amusing to see more stuff focusing on amusement park type kiosks and attractions.

And I'm sure many people will appreciate more variety in dinos, even though they're still hampered by the way the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World movies since the first one have overwhelmingly failed to keep up to date with current science of what real dinosaurs looked like, and the way that's likewise stifled the average person's expectations of how dinosaurs should look in media.

 

I agree with you, Lenny7092. Ninjago is going to end soon. I can feel it. We must enjoy it while we still are able to. The first story-based themes I enjoyed were Legends of Chima and Bionicle, and when they ended, Ninjago gave me something to turn to. I will miss it dearly.

Yeah, and I felt that Ninjago is the next Bionicle. Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights, and Bionicle 2015-2016 seemed to try to live up Ninjago’s standards, but they are cut short because Lego didn’t let them continue on for some reason (I think Lego is just focusing on other successful stuff, but that broke our hearts a lot). Thus, those themes’ efforts were never enough because Lego didn’t care for them longer. Ninjago is also the only original Lego franchise that I follow the most since Bionicle ended (Hero Factory didn’t do a good job much, and Nexo Knights is like a mix of Legends of Chima, Ninjago, and Hero Factory while that theme didn’t do well much, either).

 

One of the big reasons LEGO has for cutting their themes short (even sooner than might sometimes seem necessary) is to free up resources for newer stuff. A lot of business in the toy industry is driven by a sense of novelty, and while LEGO has expanded their production capacity over the years, they still usually don't have too much wiggle room in terms of how many sets they can produce in any given year.

Also, retiring a theme before its reputation as a strong seller wears too thin makes it easier for LEGO to promote NEW themes to retailers and media partners as a spiritual successor to older ones and have that increase rather than decrease those partners' confidence in the new brand.

But overall, I don't get any sense that Ninjago is on the verge of concluding altogether. There are several plans in store for Ninjago as 2019 goes on:

• We've been promised around 6 hours of animated content in 2019. Of that content, the four episodes of Season 10 will make up only about hour and a half, and the Legacy shorts make up slightly more than 20 minutes. That leaves around 4 hours of content unaccounted for — enough length even for a typical a ten-episode season in the second half of the year.
• At least one new character, Antonia, has been announced who will be making her on-screen appearane in the second half of the year.
• LEGOLAND Japan is preparing to open their own Ninjago World area comparable to the ones that have already opened at the LEGOLAND parks in Billund, Windsor, California, Florida, Germany, Malaysia.
• 12 new sets have been revealed at Nuremberg Toy Fair, with German prices ranging from €8.99 to €129.99, although many details about their names and contents are still unconfirmed. From what has been revealed, they do NOT appear to be connected to Season 10. And in any case, that's far from the kind of modest final wave we've seen for themes such as Bionicle, Legends of Chima, or Nexo Knights.
• If Ninjago WERE going to end this year… why not end it with Season 10 and the show's 100th episode instead of a whole additional story arc beyond that?

I have a bad feeling that this may be Ninjago's final season... May as well enjoy it while we can.

It's already confirmed that there's more Ninjago sets and animated content coming in the second half of 2019, which for the most part don't seem closely related to Season 10 or the Legacy sets from the first half of the year.

Of course, it's not clear whether the animated content would be in the form of a new season, a TV movie, or something else entirely. But overall, I've seen nothing to suggest that Ninjago is on the verge of concluding.

 

 

 

In keeping with this line of thought, the toys should come with codes that unlock unique advantages for the players, and maybe even have some type of AR component, like scanning a figure with your phone to unlock the character in the game.

It’s kind of sad that every toy nowadays has to connect to a mobile phone in some way in order to sell. Why can’t a toy just be a toy?

 

It's strange of you to say that, considering Bionicle pioneered a lot of that sort of digital integration (albeit in a much more low-tech way) with stuff like the mask codes in 2001, mini-CDs packaged with sets from 2001 to 2003, and the Kanoka Club/B.I.O. codes from 2004 onward. You can draw a pretty clear line of progression from those sorts of codes (along with similar printed codes in Exo-Force and Hero Factory sets) to stuff like the Ultra Agents theme's "App Bricks" and the Nexo Knights theme's scannable Nexo Powers.

 

Ultimately, the main reason stuff has shifted from computer integration to mobile device integration is that a lot of families these days have more access to mobile devices, and also it makes it easier to take advantage of newer technological innovations like camera-based or touch-based scanning rather than inputting codes manually using a keyboard. If smartphones and tablets had been as widespread during Bionicle G1 as they are now, I guarantee you a lot of Bionicle's digital media and the ways of integrating it with the actual products would have been optimized for mobile devices.

 

That’s not really the point. I’m saying that the main motivation for buying the toy has become the digital reward rather than the toy itself. A good example of this would be amiibo and Skylanders.

 

And I can almost guarantee you that nobody was buying Bohrok-Kal for just the mini CDs or Vahki for just the Kanoka Club codes.

 

Edit: There’s also that fact that G1’s multimedia integration was largely groundbreaking for a toy line. G2? Not so much.

 

Amiibo and Skylanders are rather different than mainstream toys in that they're basically sold as video game accessories/peripherals. In fact, when LEGO Dimensions was a thing, most stores sold them in the video game department rather than the toy department. Even today they are pretty much outliers compared to most toys, where any digital integration gimmicks are marketed as a bonus rather than as the toy's primary function.

And naturally, G2 didn't do anything nearly that groundbreaking as far as digital or multimedia integration goes. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything?

Ballom speaks the truth. Unfortunately, it makes very little business sense to relaunch a line which only just got revived in the last few years, and got cancelled due to disappointing sales numbers.

A couple things to note. First of all, "just got revived in the last few years" may be true now, but in, say, 2021? By then it will have been a good five years since Bionicle G2's cancellation.

Second, everyone from LEGO I've heard from about Bionicle G2's cancellation asserts that it wasn't related to poor sales. If anything it seems to have had more to do with its marketing costs, particularly considering that it coincided with a lot of internal changes that came about as the LEGO Group's previous 10 years of consistent sales growth came to an end. Many LEGO Friends, LEGO Ninjago, and LEGO Nexo Knights books and book series started being cancelled, released in fewer numbers, or released in more limited markets around the same time as the Bionicle ones.

Overall, I think LEGO wouldn't be opposed to bringing Bionicle back when and if the time seems right for it.

 

In keeping with this line of thought, the toys should come with codes that unlock unique advantages for the players, and maybe even have some type of AR component, like scanning a figure with your phone to unlock the character in the game.

It’s kind of sad that every toy nowadays has to connect to a mobile phone in some way in order to sell. Why can’t a toy just be a toy?

 

It's strange of you to say that, considering Bionicle pioneered a lot of that sort of digital integration (albeit in a much more low-tech way) with stuff like the mask codes in 2001, mini-CDs packaged with sets from 2001 to 2003, and the Kanoka Club/B.I.O. codes from 2004 onward. You can draw a pretty clear line of progression from those sorts of codes (along with similar printed codes in Exo-Force and Hero Factory sets) to stuff like the Ultra Agents theme's "App Bricks" and the Nexo Knights theme's scannable Nexo Powers.

Ultimately, the main reason stuff has shifted from computer integration to mobile device integration is that a lot of families these days have more access to mobile devices, and also it makes it easier to take advantage of newer technological innovations like camera-based or touch-based scanning rather than inputting codes manually using a keyboard. If smartphones and tablets had been as widespread during Bionicle G1 as they are now, I guarantee you a lot of Bionicle's digital media and the ways of integrating it with the actual products would have been optimized for mobile devices.

@Tobbison: Enjoy shelling out for Amazon Prime though. Yikes.

 

Forgive the sarcasm, what I mean is that Prime will likely not be worth it unless you shop on Amazon a ton. Alternatively if you consider it worth it for the streaming. Just so you know!

In my case what made it worthwhile is that as a college student I can get a Prime Student account, which offers a 6 month free trial and is subsequently $50 per year (half the price of a normal Amazon Prime membership). Also, since I don't drive it saves me the trouble of taking the college shuttle out when I want/need to go shopping.

Lately, most of my LEGO shopping has been via Amazon — Brickset has a useful Discounts on Amazon.com page that tells you what sets are marked down and by how much. 20 to 30 percent discounts are pretty frequent and definitely help take some of the bite out of LEGO prices.

Even as streaming alone goes, Amazon Prime's $100-per-year price tag winds up considerably cheaper than Netflix, which costs about $11 a month ($132 a year). But admittedly fewer of Amazon Prime's original shows/movies have piqued my interest like Netflix originals such as Stranger Things, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Voltron: Legendary Defender, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Little Witch Academia, Aggretsuko, Trollhunters, 3Below, The Dragon Prince, Hilda, LEGO Bionicle: The Journey to One, and LEGO Elves: Secrets of Elvendale. Huh… I've watched more of those than I realized.

If I have any misgivings about Amazon Prime, it's less about the cost to me and more about Amazon's unscrupulous tendencies that make me feel a little ashamed of helping to line Jeff Bezos's pockets.

The most comprehensive option I know of is Amazon Prime Video. If you have an Amazon Prime account, Amazon Prime Video is included for free and allows unlimited, on-demand streaming of seasons 1 through 9, including the pilot episodes ("Way of the Ninja" and "King of Shadows") and the "Day of the Departed" Halloween special.

Honestly, i don't take advantage of Amazon Prime Video nearly as often as I should, considering that I've had an Amazon Prime account for a year or two at this point.

Here's some I found back in the day when I was researching this stuff:

• Vākamā (with accent marks) is Fijian for "to burn"
• Orkahm's original name Orkan (from MNOGII) means hurricane or whirlwind in a whole bunch of languages (Croatian, Danish, German, Norwegian, Polish, Slovak, etc).
• Pekka in Finnish is used as a male given name equivalent which is a cognate of the English name "Peter", which of course ultimately comes from the Greek petros (stone/rock), same as Piatra's Romanian origin.
• Gar's name in 2007 makes me wonder whether other 2007 Matoran names might be from types of fish — a "Sarda" connection to "sardine" is pretty easy to make, but I haven't found anything else to support this on a wider level.
• Kaj is a Danish given name ultimately derived from the Latin "Caius/Gaius", which is in turn from "Gaia" (earth)

In general I think a lot of the weirder definitions probably are not puns but rather an indication that whoever was coming up with the names for these characters was not really paying attention to contextual meanings and just looking for words or given names that had some meaning related to their elements.

I have a spreadsheet from a long time ago with a lot of definitions I found for not only characters and Rahi, but also place names and other stuff from the Bionicle lexicon ("Ignalu" is a fun one, being a compound of Latin "Ignis", fire, and Hawaiian "nalu", surf). I didn't document sources well or verify whether the definitions I found on baby name sites were genuine… after all, the fact that seemingly compatible definitions appeared on such sites seemed like a "good enough" indication that whatever source LEGO pulled the names from might have just as easily associated those languages and definitions with those words, whether correctly or incorrectly.

Anyway, here's a link, do with it what you will: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XQyvQV-ke1roImxn9dcE8ZFy30Y6LlDwXG1HwW1F5e8/edit?usp=sharing

Generally I prefer hands that look more like hands, particularly the CCBS fists or more custom-built hands.

A case can be made for the greater versatility of Y-joints, but frankly I think that would only matter if the newer hand pieces were entirely taking the place of Y-joints rather than just taking their place in certain contexts.

Also, I don't think the number of older Bionicle weapons that are less compatible with the new fists is a really strong case against them, since if the sets they originated with had more realistic hands to begin with, their weapons would have been designed accordingly. Also, many cases like that entail using the weapons in awkward configurations like how the Piraka and Toa Inika held their Zamor Sphere launchers or how Mistika Toa Tahu carried his Nynrah Ghost Blaster, which basically kills any chance of them being believable as hands.

And what's more, there's something fundamentally weird about the idea that characters with claws have discernable fingers with implied articulation, and most characters without them don't have anything of the sort.

Needless to say, for certain robot/monster/creature builds (e.g. Thornraxx, Toxic Reapa, or XT4), or characters with MegaMan style gadgets that would envelop or replace the entire hand/forearm anyhow (e.g. Breakout series Evo or Nex), who intentionally aren't meant to have hands or fingers with any kind of dexterity? Y-joints or even shells are perfectly fine. Same for humanoid characters who are meant to have some type of non-hand-shaped prosthesis like a pirate hook.

 

 

Heteronormativity my friend?    Now there's a generic nebulous pejorative word I wouldn't have heard save in today's curious political climate.    When I was younger we boys played with Legos that helped us feel like strong men - certain City service roles, Pirates, Knights, robots...  we had no interest in playing strong feminine roles because we weren't feminine. I can buy getting the sets for MOC elements, but why should I want to trade in my masculine interests any more than my sisters would trade their feminine interests?

No

 

Just no

 

Stop

 

 

For reals though. Is "today's curious political climate" code for  "LGBT people existing much like they always have, except with a somewhat better chance of not having to keep that part of themselves secret for their own survival"?

It's absurd to think that you would be any less of a man or I would be any less of a woman by enjoying and telling stories about characters of a different gender, with cool characteristics that ANYBODY (whether boys, girls, men, women, or none-of-the-above) can enjoy. Plus, there's nothing inherently masculine or feminine about robots, knights, mechanics, etc.

Nobody's saying all men and women ought to like the exact same things, just that there's no reason everyone's interests ought to be strictly segregated according to gender. If you really want people to embrace their differences, isn't that best served by giving everyone complete freedom to pick and choose what parts of the human experience appeal most to THEM? Why limit that based on certain interests being randomly stigmatized as "for girls" or "for boys" (even if in a different place and time, those same interests might have been associated with a different gender, or not associated with any particular gender at all)?

I also have to wonder… do you have these same sort of bizarre hangups about the various women (including me and many of the MOCists and artists I admire most) who enjoy more traditionally boy-targeted brands like Bionicle, Ninjago, or Transformers? Or is there something about "girl stuff" that you find uniquely demeaning?

As far as dark ages... Legos are not bad. But all things in moderation. For some an adult Lego habit can be ok, but for many it could be an unhelpful drain on cash and time, not to mention coming off as immature. (I mean my male acquaintances, in your 20s and 30s, spending cash on Elves sets for themselves?!?)

If you think there's something wrong with folks like my brother and a bunch of my friends/fellow MOCists enjoying one of the best new LEGO themes of the past five years, you're the one who comes off as immature, my dude. Heteronormativity is boring! And even besides that, some of the Elves sets like 41179 and 41194 are aimed at an even more advanced building level than most Bionicle sets, while Elves sets in general tend to be more advanced than a lot of the themes like City and Castle that the wider AFOL community tends to think of as respectable adult interests.

Don't know if this forum's topic revival rule is still active (the LEGO Discussion rules and guidelines post seemingly hasn't been updated since we got a new forum leader who's actually a decent human being), but anyway I found this topic in a random search and thought I'd throw in one of my recent favorites: Heavy Metal and Jet Jack from LEGO Ninjago Season 9!
 

Use of CCBS for minifgure-scaled mechs, as xccj suggests above, sounds appealing to me. I did dearly like the Invasion From Below sets, even if it was HF's sendoff with a whimper. The sense of scale was well-done, IMHO, and played off my love for Pacific Rim quite handily. 

The main reason I have doubts about LEGO returning to builds like that is that presently, LEGO has had a lot of success in themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and Super Heroes with similar sized but much more detailed minifigure-scale mechs using more standard System parts.

Even though System-based mechs and creatures at any scale usually don't have as much articulation as constraction sets (to the frustration of many AFOLs), they seem to be pretty popular with the same six to fourteen target age group that constraction themes generally target. So I can't see LEGO bringing CCBS back on a wider scale specifically for a theme that would have such similar subject matter to many of their existing themes, but with less crossover appeal for people whose main prior experience and existing collections consist of other System-based themes.

Something I thought about when the CCBS system was first introduced with Hero Factory; it's a cool innovative system, but it got old quick. The first two waves of Heroes were essentially Bohrok clones; the same designs with slightly different armor pieces and different colors.

Doesn't this describe most types of constraction set, though? Like, aside from the Toa Hordika, all of the main Toa builds we saw in G1 (Mata, Metru, and Inika) were used at least twice, just with varying armor shapes, armor colors, limb length, and equipment/weapons. Among the Toa at least, there were at most one or two per team that varied on more of a structural level, namely Pohatu and Onua in 2001 and 2002, Kongu and Matoro in 2007, and Pohatu in 2008. That's right, just five individual Toa out of 50+ Toa over eight years who varied in a meaningful way from their team's generalized skeletal structure… mostly by way of ridiculously wide shoulders and/or attaching the neck to the front of the torso instead of the top to create a "hunchback" look.

If anything, I think the CCBS was a considerable step up in that most armor shapes were not nearly as specialized for use on one particular section of a standard formula build. For the most part, building a Metru or Inika style Toa meant picking between a handful of part options in mutually exclusive categories like upper limb armor design, upper limb length, lower limb armor design/length (single-piece lower limbs meant you didn't even get to make separate choices for those), chest armor design, and foot design.

A Mata/Nuva style Toa often had even fewer options to really change up the body shapes and proportions: for each limb, choose between five single-piece limb designs, only three of which are reversible. Then, choose if the Y-joints for the hips and shoulders are attached by the cross axle hole at the top and the cross axle hole at the sides (remember, only the latter allows shoulder armor). Then, choose whether the torso is right side up or upside down (about two ways to attach the neck for the former and one for the latter. And finally, decide whether to add additional torso armor. Congratulations! You have a Toa.

CCBS, on the other hand, let designers choose limb length, armor style, and armor orientation for each part of the body individually, and even add a second layer of armor on some parts of the build. For the most part, no armor part was limited to being used in specific places on a standard skeleton — frankly, the restrictions on variety in those first two waves of heroes probably had less to do with the building system than with them reverting to Mata/Nuva-level price points, with the Phantoka/Mistika/Glatorian-level price points in those waves reserved for the villains. As such, the Breakout wave's greater variety can largely be chalked up to the decision, largely unprecedented at that time, to break both the heroes and villains up between two or three different price points (as well as a $1 price hike on the smallest of those sizes).

That said, both CCBS and pre-CCBS parts were far more versatile in MOCs than they could ever be in sets, since there are bigger limits on how many parts can be in production at any one time than how many parts an individual can have in their collection after years of collecting. Not to mention bigger limits on what level of complexity the target age range can handle, or how much you can fit within a fixed price point.

Personally, I think the inherent limits on how many of the creative liberties of either CCBS or pre-CCBS builds would look natural on human or animal characters with skin and muscles rather than robot characters with just armor and bones, was arguably a bigger nail in the coffin of the Star Wars buildable figures than the unsurprising decision to depict actors with bodies of similar sizes and shapes using parts of similar sizes and shapes. The lack of alternate model instructions (online or otherwise) was one of the most striking differences to me with Star Wars buildable figures than the Chima or Super Heroes ones that came before, but it's not hard to understand why that was the case. Realistically, if a future action figure building system were engineered with human characters in mind, it would probably have to focus more on making outfits and proportions more customizable rather than Bionicle or Hero Factory style customization, which in any building system tends to be better suited to robot and alien characters.

As far as price goes: pretty much every constraction building system to date (including the more System-based Knights' Kingdom II buildable figures) has tended towards larger and more complex parts than typical System sets, and consequently has had a higher price per piece — usually, around 20 cents per piece, whereas System sets are often more around 8 to 12 cents per piece. As such, I'm not sure how effectively costs could be pulled down EXCEPT by either using fewer pieces, or by using more standard System parts shared with other themes, the way a lot of dragon, creature, and mecha sets from themes like Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Elves have been constructed.

Zidonaro's GUNPLA-esque suggestion is interesting, but I'm not sure how well it would translate to LEGO, since from my understanding GUNPLA kits usually involve three or so sprues of parts (each coming off of a single mold) specific to one model. This is a very different production and packing process from LEGO, in which the usual tendency is for parts to be shared between models but come from separate molds depending on their shape, even when they are in the same color. The number of sets and parts in LEGO's portfolio in any given year might rule out devote so many molds to individual sets, and of course it goes without saying that AFOLs would hate that level of specialization, but that's not to say it couldn't be explored for a more limited range of products like we saw with the Star Wars buildable figures.

I am aware that a lot of older GUNPLA models were extremely technical to construct, often needing the use of glue and a hobby knife, but I hear newer ones are usually easier snap-together builds sort of like a typical construction toy. That said, I wonder what kind of quality control costs and concerns might be associated with molding so many pieces on one sprue and ensuring all meet the LEGO Group's usual precision tolerances and standards for clutch power. In any case, that's probably something only somebody involved with the production process at either LEGO or Bandai would really be able to answer, since usually companies aren't very open about how many customer service complaints they get about molding issues, let alone how many improperly molded parts are detected and removed from the production line before they get packaged and shipped to customers.

My feeling tends to be pretty similar… presently, it feels like buildable System characters and creatures tend to both be more efficient/economical (in terms of not needing as many specialized, theme-specific parts) and have greater crossover appeal with the expanding audience of other System-based themes.

There are certainly some types of subjects/interests that System builds have not shown the same suitability for, like more organic-looking humanoid dolls and action figures, but a lot of people felt like more Technic/CCBS-based constraction sets were never able to achieve that adequately either.

If LEGO wanted to invest in more doll-like theme, for instance (and right now I'm not sure they would — the doll market isn't exactly booming), it's doubtful that the rugged, armor-plated, somewhat mechanical look of most Technic-based constraction themes and the emphasis on customizing their body and armor shapes rather than their clothing would be that well suited to those types of creations.

So for right now I don't think Technic-based constraction really is a priority for LEGO, nor do I think it necessarily should be.

I turned 18 in March 2009, so the final LEGO themes of my childhood would've been the things I was collecting in the first few months of that year, which as far as I can remember would have been Bionicle, Power Miners, and Agents. I didn't have a "dark age" of any sort. Perhaps Bionicle helped carry me through that, since besides collecting Bionicle throughout G1, a lot of my purchasing decisions in my teen years were focused on themes that I first became interested in due to having parts that looked useful for Bionicle MOCs (like Knights' Kingdom II, Vikings, and Exo-Force).

After Bionicle, I continued focusing mostly on colorful action/adventure themes with 7-and-up builds, though I took a very brief hiatus from constraction themes until the CCBS launched in 2011 and pulled me right back in. So even with Bionicle over, my collecting habits didn't really change much.

Right now the main themes I focus on are the LEGO Movie and spin-off themes, Ninjago, and Elves.