Aanchir

Have you ever even built a G2 Bionicle set? Many of them used loads of Technic, particularly the Elemental Creatures (which were the closest thing to what this topic is suggesting). Certainly they had a lot more Technic building than the 2009 Matoran, Stars, or Agori, and arguably more than the 2004 Matoran. Plus, LEGO already showed with Hero Factory sets like 40116 and 40117 that polybag-sized CCBS sets are possible, even if they fall short of the 50 pieces that evil_jaga_genius suggests. So how much Technic the sets use is sort of a moot point. The only problem I see with collectible villagers is that the builds could get repetitive. With Rahi, you could have a wide variety of different builds to represent the fauna. Unique masks could also be worked into those builds as well, sort of like the old Rahi. You could perhaps have some packs with villagers and some packs with Rahi, and sell them in assortments kind of like the Friends animal packs or Mixels. Give each one a recolored mask as a unifying selling point and you could get a pretty neat series going. I don't think randomizing them would be good or practical, though. For instance, it'd mean each set would need its own separate instruction manual, unlike the G1 collectible packs or the collectible minifigures. And unlike mask packs, Nexo Power packs, or minifigures which all have more or less the same play features, a randomly-packed impulse Bionicle set would not have much room on the packaging to show off all the varied play potential the series has to offer. Overall, I quite like the idea of impulse-priced characters and creatures, and it's something I've definitely contemplated before. I don't know how much potential it'd really have sales-wise, though. The lack of creatures and collectibles is definitely something people complained about with G2, but that was also a frequent complaint in the latter half of G1 (when on average, there were generally FEWER masks and non-humanoid creatures per year than in G2). I think in both cases, LEGO probably had their reasons for not releasing such sets. For every complaint we hear from our fellow fans, LEGO has access to a wealth of market research and sales data that might tell a very different story.

To this day I have some nagging suspicions that Greg might not have ever had any issues with writing romance into Bionicle, but only claimed there was none so he wouldn't be expected to answer shipping-related questions from fans. Even in 2006 it was not hard to read certain characters' relationships (like Balta and Dalu) with romantic undertones, though it was subtle enough that you could just as easily read them as platonic best friends. That is what Greg often claimed in his answers, and it's possible that he believed it. But even if that's what he or the story team believed, it's obviously not true. There are plenty of powerful love stories out there (especially kids' stories) that don't involve marriage or childbirth. That excuse also raises the question of why marriage as a concept couldn't exist in Matoran Universe culture, particularly when they went ahead and made a glaring exception for Roodaka and Sidorak's politically-motivated marriage in 2005. Is it really so hard to imagine two people with a deep connection deciding to live together for a reason besides raising children? A person needn't have any reproductive instincts or inclinations to understand the pain of loneliness or the comfort of togetherness. Anyway, I don't think anybody ever expected Bionicle to become all about romance — at most, it might've had a few romantic subplots here and there. If the movie Wall-E, about two robots with no reproductive capabilities, could have romance as a central theme, surely a story about an elaborate civilization of biomechanical aliens could have at least had a few minor characters in actual romantic relationships.

Lloyd's power seems to be an unusual case, since his powers and Garmadon's are not the same. Tommy Andreasen has said on Twitter that he considers Wu and Garmadon's powers Creation and Destruction, respectively, and doesn't consider them elemental in nature. On another note, I prefer the term "hereditary" over "genetic" to describe how powers are passed down, since "genetic" implies that the passing down is somehow biological, and it would hard to reconcile that with how Lloyd's green energy was replaced by Morro's wind powers when he was possessed. Biologically, he was still Lloyd and not Morro, which seems to confirm that the passing down of powers, however it happens, is tied to a person's spirit, not their body.

Advertising their products as "off-brand Lego" is certainly something they shouldn't be doing. LEGO is a trademark, so advertising something that isn't part of the LEGO brand in those terms would infringe on that trademark. Whether the products themselves are illegal depends on whether the stuff they carry is brands like Kre-O and Mega Bloks that mostly only copy basic bricks (for which any patents or other protections are long expired) and otherwise stick mostly to original set, part, and figure designs, or actual knock-off brands like Lepin and Decool that copy entire set designs, minifigures, and even recent, specialized part designs.

Yep, once you scan a power it's yours to use permanently. You can also upgrade powers by scanning them multiple times (though you have to wait in between scans of the same power). LEGO Nexo Knights designer Samuel Johnson found the Rocketship power on a store display at a supermarket in Denmark: https://twitter.com/spider_sam_lego/status/693852257100681216 https://twitter.com/spider_sam_lego/status/693853333048672256

I feel like the Diner might be one of the most likely projects this time around. It's not too obscure, nor too ambitious, nor too similar to something LEGO has released before. Some part substitutions would certainly be necessary, since it uses some retired door and window pieces, but all in all it's a pretty nice concept that I think could translate well into a retail set.

Fair enough. Still, even if they aren't thinking of it as a replacement, it wouldn't surprise me if the LEGO Life app is where some of the resources freed up by retiring the message boards might be relocated. After all, it has a similar purpose as "a safe place for kids to talk about LEGO".

It's probably a matter of "not enough kids were using them to justify the cost of maintaining them". Don't see why you feel the need to ascribe it to some sort of character fault when the reality is that kids aren't drawn to forums like they once were, and there are plenty of forums out there that can better meet the needs of teens and adults than anything LEGO could hope to come up with. It's sort of like how LEGO changed Rebrick from a wannabe social network to a contest site, because all its social network elements were being more effectively performed by other sites like Flickr that didn't have the extra burden of protecting the LEGO Group from liability. Or how My LEGO Network was cancelled due to not really appealing to kids as it was intended to. The difference is that for a long time, the LEGO Message Boards DID perform a useful function. It just couldn't keep up with the changing needs of its target audience and the changing landscape of sites and services better equipped to meet those needs. There's nothing lazy or greedy about realizing that the world has changed and kids' needs (and the best ways to meet those needs) aren't the same as they were ten or fifteen years ago. As for what will replace the Message Boards, it seems like the likeliest candidate is the LEGO Life app, which LEGO has already rolled out in some countries. It has a lot of emphasis on sharing your creations, commenting on other people's creations, and commenting directly on official LEGO content like videos — all things that were quite difficult on the LMBs due to its restrictions on links and uploads, but are pretty basic expectations for other types of online LEGO communities like forums and Facebook groups. It also seems to have more general sorts of discussion spaces for specific LEGO themes, much like the LEGO Message Boards did.

This is neat, but I wish they were using USB-C for everything instead of a proprietary connector. The choice to use proprietary connectors may be to avoid liability for anything going wrong as a result of a kid connecting their LEGO products with non-LEGO products. Sort of like how Bionicle launchers were carefully designed so kids couldn't use them to fire sharp or dangerous objects like nails. While for adults it would be cool to open up those kinds of possibilities, a kids' toy has to put a bigger emphasis on safety.

Slight correction: that was Universal, not Warner Bros. But you're right that it's a good example of how LEGO ultimately has the final say about which of their properties they license out to movie producers. A movie studio can be all geared up to impose their vision on another company's IP and still get vetoed before the project ever gets off the ground. Another thing I should bring up is that it's debatable whether a movie studio would be any more prepared to do right by Bionicle than the LEGO Group is on their own. I believe we've heard from Greg Farshtey and other sources that multiple movie producers had approached LEGO to create Bionicle movies during the early days of G1, and most were turned down because they didn't understand or respect the brand (for instance, pitching movies with human kids as the heroes and the Toa as supporting characters or sidekicks). As Takametru007 mentioned above, the Bionicle concept doesn't exactly align with the kind of formula that many movie producers tend to favor. Hollywood is rife with failed movie adaptations of already successful properties (like The Last Airbender, Dragon Ball: Evolution, and Super Mario Bros.). A property that can't maintain lasting popularity on its own starts out with an even greater disadvantage, because its owners will have a harder time convincing film executives that the core aspects of the property already resonate with viewers. It's tantamount to an invitation for Hollywood to impose their idea of what works and what doesn't on the franchise.

I think it's a little early to say anything is "inevitable" when it comes to the LEGO cinematic universe. For starters, while it seems unlikely at this stage, it's still possible that the LEGO Batman Movie and LEGO Ninjago movie might perform poorly, putting a damper on subsequent spin-offs. This is especially true since with more and more movies being released each year, the box office has become intensely competitive. Even heavily hyped and critically acclaimed movies can struggle to bring in huge amounts of money as movie tickets continue to increase in price and there are so many movies for viewers to choose from at any given time. Also, it's hard to say whether memes and nostalgia are big enough factors that Warner Bros. would want to give a Bionicle movie a go. When the Ninjago movie was greenlit, it was a theme that had been mind-blowingly successful within just the past few years (perhaps even more successful than Bionicle had been at its peak). Likewise, Batman is one of the best-selling, most iconic, and most familiar superhero characters out there among fans of all ages, and has been that way for many decades. Chances are that neither of these movies was seen as a tremendous gamble. Bionicle, on the other hand, has struggled to maintain any sort of lasting relevance among kids, its popularity as a meme among young adults seems to hinge partly on its borderline obscurity, and many older adults (i.e. the sort who are likely to be parents) never liked or understood it in the first place. Overall, I feel as though these factors might speak much louder to Hollywood bigwigs than story strength or meme potential. There's also no reason to assume themes with pre-existing stories are inherently better suited to be translated into future LEGO movies than other popular and iconic themes. One of the LEGO movies currently in development, The Billion Brick Race, doesn't even seem to tie in with any one specific theme. Classic themes with less established storylines like Space or Pirates might be viable in their own right, since they could give the writers more free rein to create an original story within a specific well-established genre, and perhaps even include familiar characters like Benny and Metalbeard from The LEGO Movie for that extra dose of star power. So, is a Bionicle cinematic movie possible? Yeah, sure. Anything can happen. But inevitable? I don't think so.

I haven't made much effort to report on other LEGOLAND partnerships or events unless they involve some kind of new LEGO-related material. In this case I felt a music video of the Ninjago theme song featuring Ninjago costumed characters and Ninjago-themed park attractions was sufficiently LEGO-related to be newsworthy. If the Coca-Cola partnership involved, say, a Coca-Cola branded set or minifigure being introduced in the gift shops, I might have considered it newsworthy, but otherwise it's not really connected to the "LEGO" side of the park's identity. Likewise, we have basically ignored covers of songs like "Everything is Awesome" unless they touch on the songs' LEGO roots. And of course, the BZPower news team only reports on news as we become aware of it. So if you ever do come across news that you think is both noteworthy and LEGO-related, by all means, send it in!

According to the BrickLink price guides, the Toa Mata tend to sell for more (new and used alike).

Disney being in charge of a new Bionicle story wouldn't necessarily be a disastrous thing. They've been doing pretty well with Marvel and Star Wars lately, not to mention their own animated properties. However, I've seen nothing to suggest this rumor (originally posted here) has even the slightest credibility. The cryptic letter and number sequences being presented as "evidence" could mean just about anything, and certainly don't seem to indicate anything as major as LEGO selling one of their trademarks. If such a thing were to happen, this is not the manner in which it would be disclosed. Also, viewing the page source for the Bionicle.com homepage, I see no indication of any of the letter and number combinations that the person alludes to, which (along with the assertion that "many people have discovered" this when they were seemingly the first person to bring it up) raises the possibility that it's a deliberate hoax by the person who created that topic.

…You mean the year before last! New Year, remember?

In the early to mid naughts there were a LOT of different metallic colors, including several that were used in Bionicle. For instance, the back plates, feet, and faceplates of the original six Rahkshi each used a metallic version of the corresponding Toa Mata color: Metallic Black for Vorahk, Metallic White for Kurahk, Metallic Bright Red for Turahk, Metallic Bright Blue for Guurahk, Metallic Dark Green (classic green) for Lerahk, and Metallic Earth Orange (classic brown) for Panrahk. Hardly any other sets used these six colors. The Krana-Kal and Kraata also used a bunch of different metallic colors like Reddish Gold (sort of like the current Warm Gold color but with less yellow and more orange), Lemon Metallic (a sort of olive or yellowish-green color), Metallic Sand Blue (a grayish blue color), and Metallic Light Grey (a VERY light silver). A lot of these colors were retired between 2004 and 2006 as LEGO tried to simplify their color palette, which had previously been expanding out of control. Variations on gold, silver, copper, and gunmetal have been the most enduring metallic colors. "Gunmetal" is a nickname for colors like Metallic Dark Grey and Titanium Metallic that look like a very dark silver. The Makuta set from 2003, the Toa Inika Hewkii set from 2006, and the Takanuva set from 2008 all used "gunmetal" (Metallic Dark Grey) parts extensively for their armor. A lot of weapon and armor pieces from Hero Factory and G2 Bionicle are also "gunmetal", though there are not a lot of sets that use it as a main color. That would be pretty awesome!

I second this to a great extent. Why didn't they show... any of this? Why no pictures at all of the villages except the snippets of box art? Why no sketches for Rahi? Why no alternate mask designs for the Protectors or villagers? They obviously had the material, why did they handicap themselves so badly by not bringing it out? This is the kind of stuff that would've gotten me much more interested in Gen2! And all we saw of it were some wallpapers, some 90-second cartoons, and a few Netflix episodes. *siiiiiiigh* We got to see the fire village quite clearly in the video "The Legend", being besieged by skull spiders. And the illustrations that were used for the box art of the villages were also used prominently on last year's version of the website. So it's not as though the boxes were the only place we saw the villages. For comparison's sake, the Mata Nui Online Game was literally the only thing in 2001 that prominently showed the villages of Mata Nui, and it happened to be one of the only aspects of 2001 Bionicle that G2 lacked any direct analogue to. With that in mind we're lucky to have even seen as much of the villages as we did — pretty much all the most important events of the story were set outside of them. I don't know what you mean about Rahi, because most of the creatures shown concepts for Okoto's Elemental Creatures, which played a big and prominent role in both the sets and the story, or for villains like the Skull Creatures and Elemental Beasts. When LEGO was developing these concepts there's little doubt they knew that only one creature from each element and a handful of villains would actually end up becoming sets. The purpose of creating more than that was having more to choose from. And presumably, they didn't show different Protector mask designs because the sets didn't have the budget for more mask designs. Consequently, alternate mask designs in the story would've felt inauthentic to the sets. Concepts don't have to worry about that kind of restriction, but final products and media do. Have you even seen all of Christian Faber's unused concepts for G1 Bionicle? Unused locations, unused plants and animals, unused villages (and more), unused temples, and LOTS of unused villagers. Ultimately, these had to be rejected in favor of options that made more sense for the directions the media and products ended up taking. It's totally normal for just about any entertainment franchise to have way more concepts than ever make it into the final product. Part of the purpose of concept art like this is to create different options to choose between when deciding what direction to take, so there can be far more options tested than the story actually needs or has room for. That's not a handicap — rather, it's the whole reason concept art is created. It's creating a vast pool of ideas and choosing to use whichever ones make the most sense for what is needed at that time. What is unusual in this situation is LEGO being willing to share all those concepts, used and unused alike, with fans after the fact — and for that I think we should be very grateful.

Mindstorms would make a lot of sense. To date, most new versions of Mindstorms have come around every three or four years on average (RCX in 1999, RCX 2.0 in 2001, NXT in 2006, NXT 2.0 in 2009, and EV3 in 2013). So by that argument we should be due for a new one somewhat soon. Were they ever not cost prohibitive? The Robotics Invention System cost $200 when it came out, and the RCX brick itself cost $110 (today, that's the equivalent of $295 and $162, respectively). That's less than the cost of the EV3 set and EV3 brick ($350 and $190, respectively), but it's certainly not small potatoes.

I'm not sure what you mean. Many of these concepts led directly to the sets and animations we got. But of course, these are just concepts, so a certain amount of changes are inevitable just to make them viable as building toys. Every part has to be sturdy enough for play, thin enough to cool properly after being molded, and versatile enough that it can be used for more than one set (aside from some character-specific masks). The figures as a whole have to meet specific price points and building levels to maximize their audience — a $40 Lewa set aimed at ages 10–14 could definitely look cool, but chances are a lot fewer people would buy it than a $15 version aimed at ages 7–14. Of course, people said this same sort of thing any time we saw prototypes of G1 sets, even ones that were clearly unrefined and not viable as finished toys. Like this concept art, they were designed to convey a certain look, not to be practical as playable building toys. Making them practical is how final set designs with fewer extraneous flourishes come about. It's not "wasted potential". It's the only way any of their potential can be effectively realized.

While I definitely love some of Bionicle G1's other heroes like the Toa Metru and the Toa Inika, they aren't anywhere near as iconic as the Toa Mata. I don't know that new versions of these less iconic teams could be expected to carry the weight of a new continuity without at least having some versions of the original Toa as supporting characters. But realistically I'd expect a new continuity that included those characters to have it the other way around, like G1 did, with the original Toa as its primary characters and these other teams as supporting characters who might one day step into the spotlight. Jaller and his team do have a slight advantage over Vakama and his team due to their original Matoran masks being the same classic masks worn by the original Toa. The Hau in particular is a profoundly iconic part of Bionicle, used as symbolism even in years that it did not otherwise appear in the sets and story. Giving re-imagined Toa Inika new masks inspired by those ones would establish a clear connecting line back to the theme's roots. But I'm not convinced they'd be the right heroes to start a new generation off with. Totally new heroes would not be an outrageous prospect, but having them inspired by the theme's original heroes is such an easy and effective way to signal a respect for the theme's roots that it's hard to come up with any compelling reason not to.

Epic! There's so much to love in this book. Some highlights for me were seeing the Toa's signature moves illustrated on page 90 (they were previously named on the 2015 teaser site, but other than obvious ones like "Frost Sphere" it wasn't always clear what powers they corresponded to), seeing the work that went into developing the cartoon style of the webisodes, and seeing all the different elemental creature concepts that were explored before settling on the ones that became sets. The Skull Creature illustrations on pages 59 to 63 are also gorgeous. Okoto was a rich and detailed world even in the glimpses we saw of it before this — the stunning environments of the webisodes and The Journey to One, the concept art on the LEGO Bionicle Facebook page, and of course the diverse and colorful backdrops of the actual sets' packaging. Seeing all the concept work here is a reminder of how much effort went into creating that. It also shows how much thought went into some of the other brilliant new concepts that set G2 apart from G1, like the Toa's animal companions and fearsome new enemies. If I have one disappointment with this art book, it's with the things it doesn't include. One that stands out to me at the moment is that there's not really any pics of the concept work that went into developing the Protectors and people of Okoto, other than pics of how their designs were translated to the style of the webisodes and The Journey to One. Overall, though, this book definitely makes me thankful for these past two years of Bionicle. It also makes me want to try my hand at some more Bionicle G2 fan art (which I dabbled in last year but haven't really done this year). I'm definitely going to miss this series.

Technically, no. What about clay and soil, like what plants grow in? Mud, clay, soil, etc, vary greatly in structure and behavior from granite and limestone. You could say "but it's the same substance, just in different states of matter," but then you're looking at Ice and Water again. There's really no end to this cycle. Just offering my two cents on that before it clogs the topic with the exact same argument with no end in sight. One point that I've used in every other version of this topic over the years is "Go outside and start digging a hole. 'Earth' is the brown stuff your shovel separates fairly easily. 'Stone' is the really hard chunks that your shovel bounces off of." Just like Water and Ice, look at the way the element behaves in nature. That's how you know Stone and Earth are two very different things. That out of the way, carry on. Mud is a mixture of water and soil, and clay and soil are solids, so the comparison to that vs. Ice and Water isn't really accurate. We know that Earth encompasses more than just soil because Toa of Earth can cause seismic activity, which means moving around the rocky crust of their planet. That's not soil, that's stone; yet Toa of Earth can manipulate it. Real earthquakes are (usually) caused my moving around the rocky crust of the planet, but magical fantasy earthquakes could be created just as easily by moving around the soil. It's the same as how a Toa of Water could create a tsunami even though most real-life tsunamis are created by earthquakes and underwater landslides, or how Lightning has generally been treated as a separate power from Ice even though real lightning is created by friction between ice crystals in clouds. There are a LOT of fictional contexts where making elemental powers make any sort of sense requires turning off a lot of your modern scientific know-how and looking at them from the point of view of, say, a medieval scholar. In that sense, the defining aspect of an earthquake or tsunami or lightning isn't what causes it. It's that the ground beneath your feet is shaking, or a giant wave is coming towards you, or a bright, hot bolt of energy just appeared out of the sky. But if earthquakes are really such a big sticking point, couldn't you just take that power away from Toa of Earth and just keep their more overtly soil-related powers like tunneling and creating landslides and sinkholes?

You are right that the Explore links for the first half year story chapters seem to be broken. I hadn't tested those since those weren't what I was reporting on. However, all the links for the new chapters are there for me and work just fine. Maybe you need to clear your cache? Just so you know I'm not pulling your leg, here's a screenshot of what I'm seeing (zoomed out so you can see as many of the new links as possible): Bugs like this in LEGO.com updates have nothing to do with LEGO not caring. These kinds of bugs are common with site updates for just about all of LEGO's themes, even much bigger and higher-priority themes than Bionicle like City, Friends, and Ninjago. Even people who care deeply about what they're doing can make mistakes.

That's not true at all though? The toy industry in general has had some shake-ups, but LEGO sales continue to soar higher and higher, including sets and themes with "collect-them-all" aspects. The idea that kids today have no patience for collecting toys and only care about video games just doesn't hold water when you look at how LEGO in particular is thriving. There's nothing wrong with a storyline with four main characters. There's nothing wrong with a storyline with six main characters. I don't see why either would be inherently better than the other. LEGO Ninjago in particular started with four main characters with elemental powers, and now has six. That doesn't seem to have had any negative repercussions for its overall popularity. When you compare search interest for Ninjago vs. search interest for Bionicle over the past 13 years, Ninjago clearly comes out ahead, even though it's only existed for the last six years of that time. Bionicle G2 wasn't made for babies. It was made for kids ages 6 to 14. And believe it or not, it WAS popular with many kids in that age range. Over the past two years I've met quite a few younger Bionicle fans at LEGO fan conventions, some of whom were barely aware that there'd even been a previous generation of sets, characters, and stories, or only became aware of the previous generation through their interest in the current one. Obviously it wasn't remotely as popular as things like Ninjago or Star Wars or Pokémon, but those are all high bars to clear, and I'm not completely convinced that Bionicle G1 was ever as popular as those, either. Pulling this back on topic, I think Ninjago is another good example of how elements don't entirely need to make sense for kids to appreciate them in a story or toyline. Ninjago started out with just four elements: Fire, Ice, Earth, and Lightning. These are the four elements that were used to create the world of Ninjago. Since then (particularly in the "Tournament of Elements" story arc), the Ninjago TV series has added a whole bunch of other elements including Gravity, Smoke, Poison, Metal, Speed, Nature, Light, Shadow, Sound, Amber, Form, Mind, Energy/Green Energy, Wind, Water, and the nebulous "Golden Power". And rather than the less traditional elements being disliked for their weirdness or the ambiguity of where one power ends and the next begins, some of the wielders of these elements were very well received by fans (even if they were fairly minor characters in the grand scheme of things).

Bananas?