Aanchir

2006 2009 Gresh (The picture when clicked on is tiny, but when viewing in-post it's big, dunno what's up with that.) Yeup. Piece quality went down, complexity seemingly went south (though there were still some unique techniques used), and all around they just kinda became boring in retrospect. I don't know if that comparison really supports your point… Gresh's torso is more complex than any of the Toa Inika's, and the rest of the build is about equal. The Glatorian had their faults but in general I'd consider them much more interesting sets than the Toa Inika, and I say that as somebody who felt the Inika were pretty good for their time. Overall, I'm not sure whether Bionicle's G1's demise can be attributed to specific missteps. It did incredibly well for its time, and a LEGO theme as cutting-edge as it was bound to slip up from time to time. Its decline was gradual, not precipitous, and to imply it "went wrong" at some specific point is to imply that early on it had a formula for success that could have carried it LONGER than ten years were it not for some particular change in strategy. To me that seems pretty unlikely. LEGO Ninjago seems to be doing better in its seventh year than Bionicle was by the same point in its lifespan, and may surpass Bionicle's lifespan and overall success in the long run, but Ninjago not only started from a much stronger place than Bionicle did and came about at a much better time for its parent company, it also had much more precedent to guide it. Even so it has had its share of missteps, so it should be clear that success or longevity for a LEGO theme does not depend on a total lack of strategic errors.

Wow! Just… wow! I was already excited for this set especially after we got those three teasers, but somehow it still manages to exceed my expectations! First of all, the price per piece is astounding — 1969 parts (a cheeky reference in and of itself) for just $120, or around 6 cents per piece, is way better than I could have anticipated. The overall build seems to be a big improvement on the original project, with a rounder fuselage, more detailed brick-work, and what appear to be individual printed pieces instead of STAMPs (Stickers Across Multiple Pieces). The stages of the rocket seem to split apart quite effectively, with the Command Module, Service Module, and Lunar Module all represented very effectively. The three astronaut microfigures are nicely printed and about as appropriately scaled to the rocket as a person could hope. The height of around 39 inches also makes this (if I'm not mistaken) the tallest LEGO set ever! {EDIT: Actually, no, the Eiffel Tower is still taller.} Definitely going on my wish list!

Looks amazing! Although it's a bit smaller, I feel like in many respects it's a big improvement on Grand Carousel from 2009. The floor and the top "marquee" are a lot less gappy, the animal carriages are more varied and detailed, and even the mechanism seems smoother and more reliable than the old one, which I hear had a tendency to come apart. At $200 it's also a pretty great value for the piece count. Although Power Functions must be bought separately, adding around $14.50 to the cost, that's still comes to a lot less than the Grand Carousel which was $250 when it came out eight years ago (the equivalent of around $287 today). Overall it's a great new addition to the Creator Expert range, and one that will go well with the previous Ferris Wheel and Fairground Mixer. Not an immediate must-buy for me but definitely one to save up for!

Social media in general presents a challenge for this site's growth, but I don't see Reddit specifically as any more of a threat than other social media hubs like Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, or YouTube. The Bionicle community today is pretty decentralized compared to in 2006 or so when it was concentrated on big forums like BZPower, so I don't foresee any one site replacing BZP.

Could you make some sort of generic multicolored grid and apply it to the arms to get a feel for where the edges of the arm decals line up?

I don't know what the chances are of Bionicle characters appearing in The LEGO Movie sequels or spin-offs, but I do think it's more likely than it appearing in the original LEGO Movie. The first movie was still setting up the idea of a world made entirely of LEGO, and also was taking great care to make the non-LEGO "relics" stand out from everything else, so the creators might have been hesitant to incorporate much LEGO stuff that might not be immediately recognizable as LEGO. But now that the world and its style are established I think it could more easily incorporate less traditional sorts of LEGO figures like Bionicle characters, Friends mini-dolls, "bigfigs", etc. Even if there are Bionicle character cameos, I wouldn't particularly expect them to reference actual Bionicle lore beyond maybe name-dropping a character or two. Even your Moana example is a bit borderline, since a person who isn't familiar with Bionicle G1's original setting of Mata Nui probably wouldn't get the joke unless it were spelled out for them a little more clearly. But in the very least, I would expect to see more Bionicle-related easter eggs like were present in The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie.

City is in its thirteenth year, and while it's not nearly as story-driven as these other examples, I'd still consider it an IP on account of its webisodes, video game, and picture books. Fabuland, a preschool theme from the 80s with its own picture books and animated series on videocassette, ran continuously from 1979–1989, rivaling Bionicle in its longevity. Friends is slightly ahead of Hero Factory (it's in its sixth year) and shows no signs of stopping. Hero Factory's four-and-a-half year run is still nothing to sneeze at, though. And I wouldn't try to ascribe Hero Factory's shorter lifespan than Bionicle to any sort of fatal flaw. Oh, thank you. Why do you think HF didn't last as long? I'd be inclined to say poor marketing and story execution squandered its potential. I think it's hard to really know for sure how much of that potential could have been realized in the first place. Hero Factory was a highly experimental theme, particularly towards the beginning. A lot of the initiatives tied to it were user engagement strategies that LEGO had never tried before, several of which didn't end up panning out like they intended. In the theme's first year, it had the call center and the Hero Factory FM podcast, but since both of these things were discontinued after one year it's likely that they weren't generating the kind of engagement (calls/downloads) that LEGO had hoped for. In its second year, the Hero Recon Team service was introduced as a spin-off of the then-ongoing Design byME service. This was the sort of thing that sounds like a dream come true on paper — a service to design and order your own buildable action figures! Just imagine how psyched Bionicle fans would have been if such a service had existed during Bionicle G1. And based on some concept art we've seen as well as the "We Build Heroes" tagline, the idea of selling custom-designed sets might very well have been a major tent-pole for the theme's overall strategy. But unfortunately neither Hero Recon Team nor Design byME as a whole ended up viable in the long term. Packing sets individually on-demand just wasn't cost effective, and confusing elements of the co-creation process discouraged users of the design platform from taking the next step and making actual purchases. LEGO also had a temporary in-store promotion along with Hero Recon Team's launch, putting constraction parts on Pick-A-Brick walls for individual purchase. But generally, average Pick-A-Brick buyers did not understand what to do with the parts, so didn't buy them. As such that experiment was a bust. The same eventually happened for constraction parts on the online Pick-A-Brick service. Again, this is something that to constraction fans seemed like a great opportunity. But any promise it might have had was lost on the wider LEGO community, which generally favors parts with more obvious functions like windows, flowers, and basic bricks. Just look at the general tameness of the parts AFOL communities selected as "fan favorites" in a poll towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It's generally extremely basic stuff, with maybe a handful of plants. And many buyers outside of online LEGO fan communities tend to be just as conservative in their preferences if not more so. These experimental aspects of the theme's original market strategy weren't things that would have necessarily been more successful if they were handled better. The obstacles that did them in were more logistical than anything else, the sorts of obstacles that the best story or TV series in the world couldn't be expected to overcome (after all, it's not like LEGO has made any attempt to re-apply these strategies to their more successful themes like Friends or Ninjago). That said, I can't fault LEGO for using Hero Factory as a testing ground for these strategic initiatives. A brand that doesn't innovate tends to stagnate, and you can't innovate without taking these kinds of measured risks.

City is in its thirteenth year, and while it's not nearly as story-driven as these other examples, I'd still consider it an IP on account of its webisodes, video game, and picture books. Fabuland, a preschool theme from the 80s with its own picture books and animated series on videocassette, ran continuously from 1979–1989, rivaling Bionicle in its longevity. Friends is slightly ahead of Hero Factory (it's in its sixth year) and shows no signs of stopping. Hero Factory's four-and-a-half year run is still nothing to sneeze at, though. And I wouldn't try to ascribe Hero Factory's shorter lifespan than Bionicle to any sort of fatal flaw.

LEGO already had a set with Deadpool in the Super Heroes theme's first year! Mind you, that was before he was widely known for being the title character of an R-rated movie, so putting Deadpool in another set could be more complicated today. Regardless of the character's more kid-friendly appearances, the movie's now what the general public associates with him, and so putting him in a set could be bad PR.

It wouldn't at all surprise me if LEGO were to do another minifigure-scale one that did have folding wings. The lack of folding wings on the previous set wasn't due to any sort of technical limitations based on the scale; it was just that the stage of development LEGO based the set on didn't have folding wings, and by the time LEGO learned that the movie makers had added folding wings, it was too late to change the LEGO version. These sorts of late-stage changes by movie makers are also why the Jyn Erso buildable figure is identified as "Sergeant Jyn Erso", why Heihei in the Moana's Ocean Voyage set has angry eyes instead of the dopey expression he had in the final movie, etc.

Hero Factory definitely had its fair share of weaknesses, but then, so did Bionicle. While I don't want to ignore Hero Factory's faults, I do think that the amount of hate directed at Hero Factory right out of the gate was unfortunate, and I agree that most of that was due to it taking Bionicle's place and yet not being an exact copy of Bionicle. It's hard to imagine there being nearly so much hate directed at it if the two themes had coexisted and neither was perceived as a threat or obstacle to the other. Sure, Hero Factory had a considerably different tone and storytelling strategy than Bionicle, but the same could be said of other themes like Throwbots/Slizer, Roboriders, Knights' Kingdom II, and Exo-Force which (from what I've seen) were never the target of nearly as much vitriol from Bionicle fans.

Interesting MOCs! Although I think the original boat from the set is more visually interesting due to having more varied colors and textures. It also looks like you have the sail backwards; the concave end is supposed to face towards the back of the boat.Your Te Ka MOC is very nice! I wish the head could be a little more gaunt, but overall the scene is really dynamic and easily recognizable. I hope there are more Moana sets in the future. We're still getting Frozen sets, after all, and the quality of those has gone up (as best evidenced by comparing 41062 with 41148). So it'd be nice if the same thing happens with Moana sets.

Awesome! Looks like a major improvement on the 2003 version. I don't collect the Star Wars UCS sets anymore, really, but I can tell the designers did an amazing job here.

It's part of the video game genre generally referred to as "sandbox games". Sort of like Minecraft or LittleBigPlanet. It lets you explore an interactive LEGO world and reshape it to your liking using various tools. The gameplay is more creative-based than story– or skills-based. I haven't played it myself, since as far as I know they still don't have a Mac version, but it seems like they've added a lot to it since the early access version was first unveiled.

Sometimes a little, but not in the sense that I feel bad about my own enjoyment of it so much as that I wouldn't always be eager to recommend it to people who aren't already fans. I've learned to put up with a lot of Bionicle's weaknesses, but if I were trying to get friends into a fandom I enjoy, there are various series (including other LEGO series) that I'd be quicker to recommmend. Regardless, any sort of shame there is based on its inconsistent quality, not its target age. I don't really feel like playing with toys is any harder to justify than any other hobby. It makes me happy, it helps me relate to other people, and it even feeds into my career goal of becoming a toy designer.

It seems to me that this might have been a deliberate decision? It gives kids buying collectible packs both a small, somewhat easy goal and a larger, more difficult goal to shoot for. Having more milestones to feel accomplished about between your first pack and a complete collection seems like a good strategy to keep people collecting. This also ignores that Krana, non-silver Kanohi Nuva, and Krana-Kal were all available in other sets, and in the case of Krana those were sets it made sense to buy multiples of if you were so inclined. What the gold and silver masks lacked in rarity they made up in exclusivity to the packs that contained them. And of course, all of these collectibles are still LEGO pieces — their collectability isn't the limit of their value. Plenty of MOCists have found ways to take advantage of having multiples of the same mask. Getting duplicates isn't in any way meant to feel punitive. I'm not saying that collectible packs never felt like a cash grab — the Kraata in particular were fairly limited in their usefulness, story relevance, and play value, but took a stupid number of packs to get a full set, and had few milestones short of a full collection to swing for. But I wouldn't call these uneven distributions disingenuous.

I honestly like the idea of the Glatorian and Great Beings not having any meaningful biological separation. In fact, I wouldn't even mind if they were super-smart Agori instead. Honestly I feel like it's kind of obnoxious how often in Bionicle character traits align more with race/species than with culture, and kind of gets uncomfortably close to the early to mid 20th century idea of "scientific racism" which was used to justify all kinds of real-world atrocities. I would've liked to see this idea deconstructed more often within Bionicle — I'd have loved to meet a compassionate Vortixx, a peaceful Skakdi, etc. Granted, there were occasional characters who did break the mold in one way or another, like Tamaru. The idea that ordinary people brought up in an isolated community of super-scientists might rise to great intellectual heights is not quite as offensive as the idea of race-based personality traits on its surface, although even that could do with some deconstruction to reinforce that such a society would still have plenty of flaws of its own.

BrickLink also has a plush toy category. As Duplo rabbits go, this one was offered for a fairly low price at LEGOLAND Billund two years ago (and also as a free gift with Duplo purchases of a certain size). I picked up a couple at the time as gifts for friends and family; I wish I'd picked up more! I felt the quality was nice and they were very soft.

I adored the lore behind the Drome Racers. So cool. A new racing game would be really dope, especially because now it'd be easier to have customizable cars that affect stats and all that. As cool as the Drome Racers lore might have been, I don't know whether it was all that effective at actually making people buy the products. 2002 to 2004 was not a successful period for the LEGO Group, or for many LEGO themes besides Bionicle. That might also be part of why we haven't really had another globetrotting adventure theme like Orient Expedition — it's another theme that was cool in concept, but never successful.

I made a mistake in my post, since the Batman plush is on the online LEGO Shop for the US as well. But even so, the others are decidedly not. I hope it's something like one getting pushed ahead/the others being pushed back and not that only Batman is being released here.

At the beginning of this month LEGO released a lot of new products, but some that immediately stood out to me were plush toys of Kai, Nya, Batman, and Batgirl! They're pretty adorable IMO, and it's nice that the selection so far is gender balanced, though sadly they're still not available in the United States (Target has a "LEGO Batman Movie Block Knight Cuddle Pillow", but the quality doesn't seem as good). This got me thinking: what LEGO characters would you like to see as plush toys? For me, Kai and Nya sort of satisfy my desire for Ninjago characters, but I wouldn't mind seeing plush toys of the other four ninja, ideally in the same "Hands of Time" ninja suits. This would be very easy to do with the same sort of template as the Kai and Nya plushes. Plush Nexo Knights could also be really cute. I would love to see plush LEGO Elves characters — either of the elves themselves or some of the theme's magical creatures. Some that I think would look particularly nice as plush toys include Flamy the fox, Ms. Spry the squirrel, Jynx the cat, Elandra the dragon queen, Estari the dragon princess, or Ashwing the goblin king's dragon. Creatures like these couldn't use designs as uniform as minifigure or mini-doll characters could, though. Benny and Unikitty strike me as some LEGO Movie characters who would make the cutest plushies, but I imagine a lot of people (especially kids) would also love plushies of Emmet and Wyldstyle. Of Bionicle characters, Hewkii and Macku are some of the obvious choices as plush toys since they were already depicted that way in the Mata Nui Online Game II. I've also seen fans make custom plush Kraata, Sea Squids, and Shadow Leeches that were really cute. Bigger characters might have to be more heavily simplified than their minifigure counterparts, but even so I think the G2 Elemental Creatures could be quite fun and cuddly in plush form. Anybody else have any suggestions?

The bubble wrap's still around if you know where to find it!

well theres lego digital designer for that but it still wont feel like owning the fantasy colored thing in real life There's also paint. If you're willing to use a bootleg piece, I see no reason you shouldn't be willing to use a modified official piece. I don't think these "Earth Tutelary" bootlegs are anything new, even for the Breakout series — I believe I've seen pics of ones much like these in the past. Though it's bizarre that some of them spell "Tutelary" wrong, which almost makes them seem like bootlegs OF bootlegs. Since the picture you provided shows both the correct and incorrect spelling I'm willing to chalk it up to the same company having cruddy quality control, but who can say for sure? One random quirk I'm noticing is that the hands on Surge and Evo seem to be the Glatorian/Agori style but with a CCBS-style ball cup. Overall, though, there's nothing about these that would make me want to pick them up.

I've seen forums in much worse shape than BZPower. Have you been to Lugnet recently? It was once one of the central hubs of the online LEGO community. Currently, it's only had 29 posts in the past week and 28 of those were bot posts recording site statistics like this. Classic-Castle.com is also pretty inactive. I don't know if there's a page on BZPower that tells you how many posts it's had in a week, but looking at the "new content" page it's had posts in at least 29 different topics in just the past two days. I kind of doubt BZPower will ever be as big as it was in 2006 or so. Even if Bionicle came back and became a mega-hit, the Internet just isn't the same place it was back then. People who want to discuss things they love have far more ways and places to do it than they once did. But that's not to say the site or community is likely to give up the ghost anytime soon.

Interesting thought. You imagining like a Wampa or Rancor? Or just a largish humanoid like Chewbacca? It's true that single action figure characters have rarely been priced above Grievous's $35 price point, but then, the average Star Wars buildable figure is bigger than the average Bionicle or Hero Factory buildable figure… so maybe it could sustain higher price points than those for a "premium" figure as well.