Pohaturon

Don't let the door bump you on the rear, mate.

Do tin-foil Kanohi exist?

Thanks, mate!

In terms of build, Toa Poraru is mostly a color-swapped Emperor clone with some minor changes, but this is deliberate since they're the same character, technically. Their torso may seem the most variant, but the structure is actually 100% the same, however instead of Armor Poraru just uses fabric to cover it up. One "non-canon" difference is that Poraru is one unit shorter - The Mata head limits posability when using a 3-length axle, but the neck looks comically long with a 4-length, however with the Emperor, I could use the cape to compensate. In Poraru's case, there is no cape and he'd look really stupid with a longer neck. However, "story-wise", Poraru and the Emprero are the same height. Backstory: Toa Poraru was once a completely ordinary and uninteresting Toa of Stone. He had some misgivings about the Toa code and sometimes was vocal about this, but other than this, he was a by-the-book Toa doing his duty. He and his Toa team protected their small village somewhere in a minor island of the Southern Isles. His life was entirely unremarkable until a few centuries before Teridax's uprising, a Makuta went mad on the Northern Continent (presumably due to a poorly conducted experiment) and went into a crazed rampage. The Brotherhood wanted to contain him, but were unsuccessful, and fearing a controversy, instead "lured" the Makuta southward. Poraru's team heard in advance of what was coming their way, and planned to intercept the enraged Makuta in a region far from their village. They succeeded in this endeavor, and together the six of them even managed to defeat the Makuta, however it was in a complete blood-rage and wouldn't give up. Poraru's suggestion to "put the Makuta out of its misery" was repeatedly rejected by the leader of the team citing the Toa Code. However, their attempts to contain the bestial creature failed, and after escaping, it headed straight for their village. By the time the Toa arrived, the village was in ruins and the Matoran massacred. This was the last straw for Poraru - the Toa Code which in the past had merely inconvenienced him, was now directly responsible for the death of those he swore to protect. Desiring vengeance, he set off to kill the Makuta, and was joined by two other Toa from his team who shared his views, while the other three remained and effectively exiled them. They tracked down the Makuta, and since they now fought to kill, their change in strategy caught him off-guard, allowing them to injure him severely. Alas, once again, their prey got away. In retaliation for the injury, it swing back to the ruins and ambushed the three Toa who refused to hunt him down. Blaming themselves for the death of their brothers, Poraru and the other two Toa swore to finally end the rampage of this crazed Makuta. On their third confrontation, thanks to the injury, they finally killed him - however only Poraru survived the conflict. Having lost any purpose in life, he began wandering about the Southern Isles. At one point, in a seedy inn, he overheard a boastful merchant from Stelt bragging about finding a source of Energized Protodermis which wasn't under the control of either the Brotherhood of Makuta nor the Hand of Arthaka. He "persuaded" the merchant to reveal the location of the font, and travelled there immediately. He knew that anyone coming into contact with energized protodermis is either killed, or, provided they yet have an unfulfilled destiny, changed. If he dies, so be it, but if this would give him a new purpose, all the better. Upon arriving to the cave, he was surprised to see that the merchant did not mislead him, and plunged into the pool. When he emerged, he saw his reflection on nearby crystal formations - he hadn't changed much, but the color of his armor was now black and silver. In his mind floated, ever present, two words - "Emperor" and "Unity". He was compelled to return to the site of his former village. On this journey, he began making some realizations. His control over Stone was gone, replaced by telepathic, telekinetic and teleconductive abilities. Then, he realized he can revert to his old form at will, and then his control over Stone returns at the expense of his new abilities. In dream, he realized his new purpose in life was to achieve absolute Unity across the known world. For this, he'd need followers. During his journeys, he sought out disenfranchised warriors, exiled Toa, former Dark Hunters and any other beings who would follow him. They returned to his old home and founded the United Southern Empire. Planning his expansion, a single problem constantly returned - Metru Nui. He hadn't the military force to conquer it, and it would never join the Empire willingly so long as it was governed by a Turaga and overseen by a Makuta. If he'd push northward gradually, annexing and conquering smaller lands and working his way up, they'd make note of the threat and send an army of Toa against him. However, he had one advantage - everyone who knew he once broke the Toa code was dead. As far as Metru Nui was concerned, Poraru was still Toa Poraru. And thus the plan was born - he alone would venture north, while his lieutenants would continue the conquest of the south. He, as Poraru, would infiltrate the Toa order, while as the Emperor would gain the support of other factions, so that unwittingly all players in the north would further the imperial cause. His plan was upended by Teridax's uprising against the Great Spirit, and during his Reign of Shadows, the Emperor fought alongside the Toa Resistance against Teridax's forces, all the while ensuring the secret of Poraru and he being one and the same didn't get out. When Teridax fell and Spherus Magna was united, the Emperor led his people to a new home, from which they would endeavor to unite this new world. Flickr Album: click here. As always, comments and criticism is welcome!

The coma imposed on the Matoran wasn't a function of the pods, nor was it regular "sleep". It was induced by Makuta's powers, and in order to dispel it, the Toa Metru had to use up all of their Toa power, thus diminishing into Turaga.

Due to the interest of my wife, I returned to World of Warcraft after several years, and now we're playing it together. It's a huge blast from the past for me, and luckily she's enjoying it too so it seems this will be a long term shared adventure - though, having played in the past, I tend to rush a bit unfortunately. Nonetheless, it's great being back, especially in her company, to explore Azeroth once again.

do memes not fall under the category of things?

The world is blonde *gust of wind* my life has been a lie

Tahu Khan, fearsome leader of the Ta-Koro horde

The "/sets" in the title makes this hugely ambiguous, but I'll assume that isn't there and you're asking about the packaging itself. Since the small sets and the titans/playsets all came in regular boxes, I'm guessing this is supposed to be a "best and worst canister" thing. Now, something I loved about the canisters is that they were always functional beyond storing the set itself pre 2007, when the Barraki introduced purely decorative canisters. The Mahri were a brief venture back into functional canisters, but that was the last of that. I'm actually really torn on "best", because there are so many fantastic ones. The Suva lids of the Mata were awesome in displaying masks. The way the Bohrok canister was a 100% lore friendly Bohrok hive-pod made it really cool. Combining two Metru lids to form a Matoran sphere, albeit oddly colored, was genius. While many people criticised the Mahri canisters for not being reusable for storage, I never actually used canisters for that purpose anyway (sans the Bohrok), and them turning into a small turret/outpost/base/thing for the Mahri to attach their Cordaks to was great play value. But overall, I must say that the original Mata canisters win for being double purposed - they work as their canisters from the lore, and the lids work as Suvas. The worst canister title will have to go to one of the non-functional ones (I count the small indent on the Vahki lid to storing a single kanoka to be functional). The Barraki canister looks awesome, as does the Phantoka one, however from then on things went downhill. However, the Mistika and Glatorian Legends at least had unique or interesting designs, however the first wave of Glatorian had such utterly bland, uninteresting and boring canisters, that they have to be my pick for worst. I can't speak for the Stars, because I unfortunately don't own any.

We're all pining for that epic blockbuster Galidor trilogy

I loved the Kal, simply because I loved the Bohrok, and in my eyes more Bohrok can only be a good thing, even if they're just recolored clones. Hey, I wouldn't have minded Bohrok in even more color variations so long as they at least all have unique shield molds. Yellow Bohrok, Purple Bohrok, Teal Bohrok, Orange Bohrok, Gray Bohrok and Transparent-anything Bohrok would have been a neat third wave of Bohrok if you ask me.

I actually had Vakama Hordika and Carapar costumes in the past, though I might call the second one a cosplay instead due to the level of detail (what's the differentiating factor between the two?). The Vakama one was pretty poor, though I did toss it together in the span of a single afternoon. I used the large red Hau from the Battle of Metru Nui playset on my face (the indent for the rhotuka made that a pain), used the official foam flame-sword prop, dressed up in appropriate colors and made some armor from cardboard. Now Carapar was a whole different story, and apologies if I ramble. I made a proper helmet with an accurately shaped head out of cardboard and polystyrene, the latter of which I cut by extending a piece of metal wire over a table so that it is taunt and running current through it to heat it up. I made his large pincer (unfortunately not movable) and an honest-to-god freaking squidlauncher too, though it could not shoot the squid (inb4 jokes about that being accurate). Underneath I wore black pants and an almost color accurate dark orange long sleeve over which went various bits of armor fashioned out of card and poly. I tried to hide my hands with Y-joint shaped gauntlets with holes for the fingers and everything was painted to match the set. I has hugely proud of that particular getup. And honestly the Barraki seem like great choices for Halloween costumes. That said, I probably would go for a Panrahk or Antroz, the latter of which would also pass for a heavily stylized fantasy devil.

Initially, they all served specific roles just like the Matoran. Large, dangerous Rahi were positioned in locations to keep Matoran and others away, while other Rahi had various tasks which was effectively their natural behavior that in some way benefited the GSR. Later, following the inhabitants of the MU gaining a greater measure of sentience and self-control thanks to Velika, the Makuta started to experiment with creating new, interesting, useful or just plain dangerous Rahi.

A poll would suit this thread I believe. In any case, I must say I prefer the mask of Control overall. While the powers of it are not clearly defined, the design definitely wins and the things that could be considered its power-set (mutation, significant strength increase) also seem pretty cool.

Definitely Ancient. Not only is his design by far the coolest, he's also got the best storyline.

I'm gonna have to point out here that the characters were always intended to be partly mechanical, partly organic, and even the core story team considered the movie portrayal of the characters to be canon. The sets were never meant to be the definitive representation of them in canon. So overall, the movie versions of the characters were always intended as the official representations, and it wasn't up to Greg, or even the producers of the movies. I was going to say something along these lines. The actual sets themselves are at the bottom of the lore hierarchy when it comes to physical representations. For one thing, canonically everyone has fingers and are capable of producing facial expressions even through masks. Why on spherus magna would they put the sets at the botton? considering the only reason most people actually care about Bionicle is the sets... If you were a person, with no knowledge of bionicle and walked into a shop, which would you rather buy; Any set, or an action figure of one of the movie characters? The reason why sets are on the bottom is because you last question has no relevancy to sales. ~90% of the people who ever bought a Bionicle set care absolutely nothing for the story and lore. Re-phrase your question - if you were a person with knowledge of Bionicle lore, would you be satisfied knowing that the characters had odd lumps of plastic for hands with no fingers, had woefully limited ranges of motion and perpetually reused parts? Because that is what would happen if the sets were canon.

This is absolutely colossal. This is a huge service done to the fandom around Bionicle, and ensures the survival of the lore in its most complete form. We cannot thank you enough for the work put into this.

I'm gonna have to point out here that the characters were always intended to be partly mechanical, partly organic, and even the core story team considered the movie portrayal of the characters to be canon. The sets were never meant to be the definitive representation of them in canon. So overall, the movie versions of the characters were always intended as the official representations, and it wasn't up to Greg, or even the producers of the movies. I was going to say something along these lines. The actual sets themselves are at the bottom of the lore hierarchy when it comes to physical representations. For one thing, canonically everyone has fingers and are capable of producing facial expressions even through masks.

Images on the internet almost never make me do anything more than maybe smile and blow air out of my nose loudly, but this freaking thing actually made me laugh out loud. Thanks for the good old memories.

I can't really recall any retcon which I think is good, but there are plenty which are utter nonsense. Lacking a good example, I'll provide two. The first one is the whole mess around Kanohi. First, they're special masks which grant users powers based on the shape of the mask. Then, the shape doesn't matter, and the mask doesn't even have any powers, but it just amplifies the innate power of the user. So what determines the powers? Why bother using different masks? What the blazes is happening, and what prompted Greg to even come up with something so pointless and needlessly complicated? Masks should just be magic masks! The other is what I feel to be the single worst retcon, and I refuse to accept it as canon. After 2008, Greg said Pohatu was always orange. Retroactively, brown Pohatu never existed. He was orange. He came out of his canister orange. Like... That's not how this works.

Woah, okay, this is spot on. Absolutely fantastic, I love to see movie-inspired builds, and I honestly can't think of any possible way to make it any more accurate at all! The small connection points on the side give it away as the Throwbot visor, methinks.

Pohatu Mata was packaged with one extra balljoint that is not used in building him, nor does it appear in the instructions, but is required for building the Fikou.

The system based playsets Lego added to the Bionicle lineup in 2005,06 and 07 are pretty divisive among fans as far as I've gathered, and many seem to outright dislike them. I have some gripes with them, but overall feel like they were pretty cool and a nice way to shake things up from pure constraction. I feel the larger playsets managed to get things right while the smaller ones were those which suffered more. The largest sets of each year were undoubtedly the best each time in my opinion, but not solely because of their size. The playsets were also the source of some exclusive recolors in 2005 and 2007. In spite of the static "minifigs", I think the 2005 playsets worked the best, and the ones in 2007 were possibly the least appealing due to the overly similar designs and oddly made minifigures, however the recolors were pretty fantastic. The way the parts selections of each year blended system with constraction was nice to see and made the sets good parts packs even if you personally weren't a fan of the concept. One particular gripe I had with 2006 is that every single playset had at least one, but usually multiple, Kanohi Rodes and the Olmak was also common. These masks were the masks of titan sets Axonn and Brutaka, and I felt that as titan masks, they should have retained some measure of "exclusivity" to make them feel, I don't know, worthy of titan sets, and having them seemingly littered throughout the playsets cheapened that effect. I'd say The Battle For Metru Nui was my favorite of them all, it had some great features and the Kahgarak's golden visorak shell was welcome - I also ended up using the large Hau mask-gate thing for a costume some years later. The playsets were an interesting experiment, and while many consider them failures, I don't think a three year run constitutes that much of a "failure", and I enjoyed them for what they were. If I were to suggest improvements to them, I'd say 2005 would have benefitted from poseable minifigs, and if the prototype Tower of Toa set was kept instead of the final version - Metru-build Keetongu FTW. In 2006, I would have included fewer Rodes and Olmaks and offered some exclusive recolors like in 05 and 07, and would have included one set in the Ignika chamber with a Vezon minifig and a mini-scale Fenrakk. In 2007, I would have preferred more structures and fewer vehicles, such as a brick-built depiction of Mahri Nui (the settlement, I mean) and the shrine for the Ignika as seen in the "Creeping in my soul" trailer. Thinking back though, I would have loved to see playsets from the 01-03 era on Mata Nui, as well as the non-ruined Metru Nui from 04. Mata Nui has some beautiful locations and landscapes which, granted, wouldn't be as evocative as in the MNOG games, but seeing a brick-built Ga-Koro, Kini Nui or Le-Koro is still something I yearn for (I know MOCs exist, but still). What are your thoughts on playsets? What did you like, and what would you improve on them?

Teal automatically > every other choice, to be honest, though a solid brown Krana would also have been neat. I do agree however that the dark grey neither really fits the Air motif, nor is it really an appealing or interesting choice of color.