Wrinkledlion X

Dude, I bet it was Greg. Greg has a sick flow. 

Ah, this is great. I really love the Toa-as-demigods approach they had early on, and the way that there was something a little frightening about them even though they were heroes. That vaguely spooky vibe came across in the CD-ROMs, which were really what drew me in at first. 

Also

Matau can fly??

It's an earth tone, makes sense. I kind of like that there's overlap considering they're related elements. Like how some Ko-Matoran have shades of blue. 

I enjoyed reading this. More posts like this, please, I don't want BZPower to get stale. 

Sorry to crash the party, folks, but this is pretty clearly not the original text of the site. I'm not sure why anyone ever began to think that this was a reliable source, but apparently some people did.

 

See, this is what the site had for Pohatu's excerpt.

 

"Pohatu, Toa of Stone, and his people live in the foothills of Mount Ihu, where the great stones are carved as symbols of the Tohunga's faith in the Toa."

 

For the record, this is Pohatu's actual page text.

 

"Pohatu is a stone spirit. He is immensely strong and can literally move mountains. Pohatu can cause massive rocks to explode like bombs, or roll with great precision towards any attacker. His huge feet contain great power, destroying even the toughest rocks with a single kick!

 

Pohatu is liked by all the Toa for his kind nature and for his rock-solid dependability. He's slow, but friendly and dependable. He's not good at snap decisions, but when he makes a decision to do something, he sticks with it until the end--and you DON'T get in his way! Whenever there is trouble, Pohatu will always be there behind you, an immovable force that few enemies can dislodge. His only fear is water: he cannot swim, and he sinks like a stone.

 

Pohatu inhabits the foothills of Mount Ihu, moving slowly but sure-footedly among the rocks and boulders at the base of the great mountain."

 

 

This is pretty wild, do you have the rest of the character descriptions? I'd love to give them a read in 2017.

I think I remember this site. Connecting it to Chris Chan after all these years is both disturbing and beautiful. 

This sounds super interesting. I'd love to see some scans if you can remember.

 

 

 

 

But the next question is, what of 2019? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I mean, we should probably get 2018 out of the way first. :v

Most likely will be the MoUP, or maybe a beast mask.

I kind of think that by 2018 it might be time to start moving on to other LEGO themes, like Ninjago. Certainly there's no shortage of possibilities there, and the Breez spinny already offers precedent for using, say, a minifigure head.

 

I know I joked about the Star Wars heads right above, but BZP should at least stick to constraction if it can't stick to Bionicle, so long as there is a current constraction theme to draw on. I'd still prefer going through the vast library of unused Bionicle masks, even if they aren't "current", but if we're venturing into other themes at leasts let's stick to constraction.

 

 

Is there an infected Hau yet? That's a pretty iconic one from the early days.

I love how that bio also implies the Toa were on Mata Nui in the distant past. I wonder what they could've been thinking with that.

I remember them alluding to that a few times on the old website, and Greg having to deconfirm it a few years later. They also made some references to the Toa being different ages—Lewa youngest, I think Onua or Tahu the oldest. (Makes sense given the running theme of Onua rescuing Lewa in the early story.) 

I always missed the idea that the Toa had been on the island before, in some mythic prehistory. Felt very magical. I guess 2008 touched on some similar ideas when they showed the Toa's preexistence in Karda Nui. 

Yeah dude. You know where to find me 

Interesting how the paper problematizes the positive fan-community image described by AD and basically says "we'll have to wait and see if the Bionicle fandom falls in line with the culture brought down to them by Lego, or if they go off and make their own thing." I totally agree that the canon-obsession we kind of ended up with is pertinent to that. But then there's also the sub-communities that spun Bionicle off into wildly different things, even if those seem to have lost the test of time. Everyone was super into Dark709's comics back in the day, but like, what did they actually have to do with the 'official' Bionicle? not a ton.

Yeah, that is interesting. Little cargo cults, sort of.

The whole line of thought that AD expresses about not wanting to absorb kids too deep into the fantasy makes me wonder if that was part of the reasoning behind making G2 way simpler. Most companies would welcome an obsessive fanbase, but perhaps the corporate culture at Lego is genuinely interested in nurturing kids in a healthy direction. As much as I loved and was obsessed with Bionicle, spending all that time on a computer during my adolescence probably wasn't healthy for me.

 

 

Thanks for sharing. I'm tickled to read the words 'Bionicle' and 'de Certeau' together in the same context.

Haha, you're welcome. I've been searching all over for Bionicle thinkpieces and so far this is about the only one I can find: https://medium.com/@pankopop/subversive-toyetics-polly-pocket-and-transformers-will-help-us-question-authority-and-smash-a281cf963df7 I want more scholarly writing on MUH BONKLES 

Hey everybody! Hope I grabbed your attention with that title. 

I was browsing some scholarly articles with the keywords "Bionicle" and "Religion" when I stumbled upon something very interesting from around 2002. Check it out—it's an anthropological article detailing the Bionicle fan community: https://studylib.net/doc/8052841/clash-of-communities

The first part concerns cultural appropriation of the Maori language, but things get interesting when the author interviews an unnamed member of the Bionicle creative team, referred to as AD. He describes how the Bionicle fan community shares "a common cultural base [in] these Bionicle things," with a common set of symbols and shared myths, and goes on to discuss ways of potentially increasing the fan community's level of social organization: 

 

The designer discusses the possibility of introducing referenda into Bionicle in which the users vote on the distribution of resources on the Island and their proper use. He envisions using Bionicle as a instrument to  teach  children  democratic  practices.  This  could, in  turn, be  incorporated  into  an educational  system  based  on  the  Bionicle  story  but  extending  far  beyond  it.  This  scenario  is particularly interesting when bearing in mind that the Bionicle users are generally children from the age of 7 to 14 – an age in which children learn democratic practices, for instance, in school. In this perspective, Bionicle may have a significant empowering potential for children, which may, in turn, foster  and  facilitate  future participation in social or political contexts. A relationship may thus be created between private commercial networks and civic networks. 

The designer also discusses the possible ways this could go wrong:

 

AD: ”Maybe it could get all religious and a bit scary,  you  know.  What  if  you  (the user) think it is much more fun in that world than the real world. This could constitute a problem for LEGO, which actually wants what is best for your child...It would be problematic if you only wanted to be there. Then again, how do you find the balance? Things develop. What do we want to bring this to? You could ask the question: How engaging should this be? How much time should people spend on it?”

 

AD: ”...it would be a project which is started via Bionicle. However, the point it not to go down and buy LEGO-bricks –basically. It it about teaching you a lot of things. Giving you a model of thinking about...but then again, is it because you want to influence the kids and make advertisement. It is... it becomes a moral  question  of whether  we  really  want  this.  What  if  it  suddenly  gets  so  far  and  becomes  so  popular that you actually have power, you end up with this monster which is out of control.”

 

(Author’s translation of interview in Danish with the Bionicle designer)  

I'm absolutely floored that this was a topic of discussion at some point among the Bionicle creative team.

I suppose it makes sense, considering what the early years of the line were like—most toylines don't come with a complex set of constructed myths, with a language and a fictional culture based on shared values (ie: unity, duty, destiny). It seems the creative team was at one point thinking of their creation as a genuine, secular mythology.

And us fans on BZP definitely ran with it! The degree of obsessiveness that Bionicle attracted (and still attracts) has always been pretty wild; the existence of BS01 and the obsession over determining a True Canon™ was, after all, kinda religious in a weird way, right? I certainly felt that way about it at the time. I suppose this is where all that came from. 

Anyway, enough rambling. What do you think? Do you wish you'd gone to a school that teaches moral lessons through Bionicle? Would we all sit around in a sand pit and listen to an old man in a mask recite mythic stories to us? You decide! 

(♫ Buy all our playsets and toys!! ♫)

I think it's fair for people to be disappointed that so much great work went into a line that ultimately didn't utilize it very thoroughly. No one's complaining about the artists' work, after all—everyone here is extremely into it! I'm an artist in the entertainment industry myself, so I know how frustrating it is to do lots of development work and never see it in the final product. If I heard some fans were upset that my ideas didn't make it in, I'd feel proud that they liked my work enough to wish they'd gotten more.

It is exhausting to hear people complain, but part of having a devoted fanbase is having fans who are invested enough to get sad when they see how great something could have been. The day fans stop complaining about Bionicle is the day they stop caring, so I hope everyone on BZP keeps complaining for a long time yet.

(That said, let's remember that this is all just a toyline and we should be appreciative that any thought is being put into it at all)

 

They honestly needed big beasts, or Rahi, and also Mask packs. They wanted to make the masks known for being important but there could have been more masks

Considering that those are three categories of sets that proved to be less successful even during G1, I have to question whether they would've made much of a difference for G2. G2's direction, for better or for worse, was shaped in large part by what had been proven to work (or proven not to work) in the past.

 

Beasts/Rahi might be more of a niche than the bipedal figures, but I don't think they were unsuccessful—if they were unsuccessful, they wouldn't have continued to release animal figures all the way to the end of G1.

I think Rock Raiders could fit in pretty easily—the rock monsters are basically just big Vatuka. There's probably some energized protodermis flowing around inside that planet. 

 

 

 

 

Well

Unity, Dutiy, Destiny

Are core concepts in Bionicle to change them would be to change the very core of Bionicle.

The story, plot, characters, motives, setting can all be different but these three words must always be carried thorough.

No, they do not.

Explain.

Do you no longer want the original virtures, because I like the idea of each Toa having there own set of values. But I think when they meet they realised there different set of virtures are all based off of the original three.

 

Kinda giving us a "we are more alike than we are different" moral to the story.

 

The three virtues weren't even introduced until three years into the original line. I always thought they were a little awkward, personally, and didn't make all that much sense. 

Bingo. The magic trick was the happy (and maybe impossible to recreate?) medium between the comics/MNOLG/the mini-CDs that told a deep, but small enough story that 1) you could more or less keep track of by memory and 2) created a fantastic world with a lot of gaps you could fill yourself. Tremendous way to leverage fan-based creative freedom to build a brand.

Yes! I think people forget that 2001 was completely LOADED with gaps, and it was actually a stronger story for it. We only ever saw the Toa collect a handful of masks, which left the majority of their adventures up to the imaginations of the kids. The continuity lockout in the latter half of G1 wasn't just because of how much backstory there was, but because the story shifted to an extremely linear plot with each year taking lasting only a week or so in-story. Such a baffling decision! From 2001 to 2003/4, much of the story happened offscreen and we only saw isolated glimpses of it through the media. 

Now, for G3...I wonder if they end up doing what Star Wars (twice), Transformers, etc. have all ended up doing: Wait until the original fans have kids, reboot for the modern day--whatever that looks like. G2 was awfully soon, in that sense. Old fans are only now starting to graduate and have disposable income/time to become AFOLs. I've been able to share Bionicle with my wife (with great success), but I think they can afford to wait and drop a better nostalgia bomb in another 5-10 years.

Not sure if this would work. Star Wars can do this because it's a heavily-advertised movie franchise, whereas the majority of adults are pretty unaware of what's going on in the toy industry. Lego would have to work extremely hard to bring Bionicle into the public consciousness if it wanted to use this approach. It would probably take a heavily-promoted theatrical film. 

 

 

"This is only the end of the sets, not the end of BIONICLE"

 

So does this mean they're just gonna focus on the story now?

 

There was a story???

 

 

I don't think the specific premise matters all that much, but the media surrounding it needs to be way more engaging than that of G2.

This isn't something I say just out of Genwunner nostalgia, but they need to really analyze what made 2001 successful, instead of just aping it aesthetically the way they did in 2015. Keep the storyline simple enough, but make the setting into a world that kids really want to inhabit—populate it with engaging characters and memorable locations. Kids don't want to be bogged down by 2007-style complexity, but they're not gonna care about the toys if you release them with no accompanying personality, or even a name! Invest heavily in promoting the line through regular comics, webisodes, maybe a few TV specials or games. Make sure the media is VERY easily accessible instead of behind a paywall on Netflix. 

With that out of the way, you can go nuts with the story in whatever direction you like. Maybe a soft reboot that doesn't ever clarify whether it's the same world or not—this time it could take place over a whole continent instead of an island, and you can have your six Toa living freely in the wilderness, semi-wild until a new threat emerges to the Agori/Matoran/Okotos/whatever. I'd rather they do something a bit original rather than jump straight into a less interesting version of Mata Nui.

"This is only the end of the sets, not the end of BIONICLE"

 

So does this mean they're just gonna focus on the story now?

There was a story???

I think the whole argument in here about "effort" is missing the point. I'm sure the artists working on G2 (set designers, concept artists, marketers, etc) each approached their assignments with passion and effort. None of their work that went into G2 is bad, in and of itself. It's a professionally-run toyline. That said, the overall direction of G2 didn't make immersiveness much of a priority, whereas immersiveness was one of the biggest sells of the original line. 

G1 used worldbuilding to create hype around the toyline, even in the early years before things got convoluted. (People complain about the simple story of G2, but that's not really the problem with it—few things are simpler than the 2001 storyline, after all.) Even before G1 launched officially, Lego was promoting Bionicle-branded music, a language, games, in-depth maps, etc. The story also went pretty in-depth into the culture of its characters, including a pseudo-religious element that's pretty daring considering how much they were depending on the American market.

I've got nothing against G2, and I'm sad to see it go so early, but nothing about it indicates that it was being directed in the same immersive way that G1 was. The work that went into it was perfectly competent, but it was a conventional toyline, with a barebones story tacked on to stimulate kids' playing. 

 

As a kid I had this rather far-fetched Bionicle meta theory.

 

Basically, I thought Bionicles actually existed and have made contact with humanity, but were kept a secret.

 

I thought Bionicle was so very different from anything else Lego made ever before (as a kid I didn't know about robo-riders or slizers) that they couldn't have come up with it on their own. I thought an international committee contracted TGL to produce a product line based on the new aliens they have made contact with in order to establish plausible deniability.

 

Basically, if images or footage of "actual" Bionicles would ever be leaked, governments could just go like "Hey, those look like those plastic toys. This is probably just a prank by some fans". 

 

I swear, for years I genuinely believed this, and thought that Bionicles were among us in disguise, using Komaus and Matatus to hide their presence. 

 

I was a weird kid.

 

*I exhale a sigh of relief upon learning I'm not the only one.*

 

I thought something similar, only a long time ago, and there were BIONICLE fossils somewhere in South America or Africa.

 

Any chance you were influenced by this at a young age?

 

 

That's why I loved the ending of the ignition story arc. It took me ages to take interest in the barra magna stuff because the models looked so different (were they even still bionicle?), so I was convinced the story ended there for some time.

 

 

Did they really look that different...? Half of them were Inika builds. 

 

I'd say they did look a fair bit different. The previous two years featured a lot more subdued color schemes and an overall lack of actual elemental motifs. The Bara Magna sets were indeed somewhat of a breath of fresh air compared to that—most of the Agori and Glatorian had much more vibrant color schemes, and sets like Melum, Ackar, Strakk, Gelu, Kiina, and Stronius had more elemental motifs than we'd EVER really had before (since rather than being limited solely to weapons like most previous sets, many of the Glatorian's elemental stylings often extended to their masks and armor as well). Even some of the builds did have a bit more variation, with Strakk and Skrall using the Inika torso in a perpendicular orientation and Kiina having an exceptionally slender build (which in hindsight seems a little excessive but was at the time a nice change of pace from female Toa who shared the absurdly wide shoulders of the Inika/Piraka torsos).

 

I'm not saying they didn't look different than the previous few years, but I was responding more to the "were they even still bionicle?" comment. If anything, all the things you're describing made them more Bionicle than the last few years had been at that point. 

That's why I loved the ending of the ignition story arc. It took me ages to take interest in the barra magna stuff because the models looked so different (were they even still bionicle?), so I was convinced the story ended there for some time.

 

Did they really look that different...? Half of them were Inika builds. 

I'd keep the basic plot of 2010 the same—just, y'know, told better—except that at the end, I'd have the dead Mata Nui robot land on its back instead of face-down.

Right before it shuts down completely, its camouflage system activates for one last time. Rock and soil grows across its entire body, and a multitude of plants and lush environments envelop it with incredible speed. (Picture the Genesis device from Star Trek.) The island of Mata Nui now stands as a plateau, a thousand feet above the desert of Spherus Magna, its southern tip connected to a vast mountain range in the shape of the Great Spirit. The Matoran and Agori each look out across their new world, so similar and yet so different from what had come before. 

Then some character who we've followed from the start, maybe Vakama or Takanuva, says something really inspiring, and Mata Nui as a mask flies into space to do whatever sentient masks do. 

In the first Bionicle comic, Nuju says that the Matoran used to be "as pure and strong as the ice" until Makuta came.

I thought this meant that all Matoran used to be Toa until they were degraded over time by Makuta's evil influence. The fact that Kopaka just looked like a giant version of Matoro—same mask and all—seemed to support this. It was only a few years later that I realized there WAS a connection between the Toa and Matoran, but I had the direction backwards.