Bfahome

Masks.  While they played a role in G1, G2 really pulled through with the variety and consistency of masks. There were only what, two masks that weren't released in more than one color?

Now if someone can write a Complete Guide to Figuring Out Your Squid Launcher, I'd be set.

step 1: actually fire it correctly you scrub

there is no step 2

Jokes aside, while the Cordak Blasters looked cool and had a neat idea and design, I think their big problem comes from just how unwieldy they are.  They look massive on anything smaller than a titan, they're heavy, and firing them is a bit of a chore, especially when attached to a figure.  There's also the fact that they need a sharp jab to even have a chance of firing them while most other launchers don't, which can be bothersome if they're attached to a set.

Most launchers had their own sets of problems, but for Cordak Blasters I think the issue is that it's so big and that it's just too reliant on a "perfect shot"—good barrel seal, forceful push, low friction, etc.—to be consistently effective.

No.

G1 gave us fresh, new Toa designs every new arc (or even year, when you count 2004, 2005, and 2006) until after 2006. People want new designs, not recolored, rehashed ones. G2 gave us, essentially, glorified Hero Factory with added gear functions, which weren't fast paced and a lot of the time limited posability or prevented it's own use by interfering with armor plating (such as 2015 Tahu's shoulder armor).

The "fresh, new Toa designs" didn't come about until BIONICLE's fourth year.  Every Toa set in the first three years used the same build on the same torso and the only new thing they ever got was two new pieces of armor and a new leg mold.

Vahki were pretty much Rahkshi 2.0.

Bohrok Va were pretty much Turaga 2.0.

Bohrok Kal were literally Bohrok 2.0.

Even within the old trend of pumping out new molds at an unnecessary rate BIONICLE had hardly been a stranger to design reuse.

Also, I don't get what you're saying about posability taking a hit?  Tahu can move his arms fine, and the inclusion of friction in the gear function actually makes it possible to pose your sets, unlike the sets with the old floppy functions.  Seriously, try putting 2001 Tahu in a cool action pose without modifying it.  Even disregarding the fact that the hips look ridiculous, you aren't going to get his sword to stay out in front of him.  The Toa Nuva sort of alleviated this with their swappable gear-lock thing, but that was immediately abandoned.

Do any of you have ideas on how we can bring back bionicle?

don't

G2 ended because Lego didn't give BIONICLE a real chance from the offset. They again reused a ton of old pieces with only a few new ones, they didn't promote it very well, and they didn't try to expand the media and get it relevant to children again. They went for some cheap online cartoons instead of the CGI stuff we got in 2016 from the beginning. They had more faith this year with some of the new pieces and JtO, but it was too late and it wasn't enough.The only gave JtO for episodes to expand the story and the sets didn't look any better despite some of the new pieces.

"From the offset"?  "The offset" was LEGO dedicating their entire presence at NYCC to promote the BIONICLE reboot.  Everything you call lazy or careless was an attempt at bringing BIONICLE into the modern market.  The "cheap online cartoons" were designed with clarity and brevity for the generation with smartphones and other small screens, never mind that "cheap online cartoons" are some of the things the old BIONICLE fans look back on most fondly.  The part reuse is because CCBS is LEGO's constraction system now, and because they aren't about to go back to the massive bloat that caused them financial hardship in the first place, never mind that BIONICLE started as a TECHNIC sub-theme and the sets took several parts from previous themes like the Slizers.

You may think that LEGO should've seen BIONICLE's initial success and taken that as a sign that they need to sink a bunch of resources into a media franchise with lots of new parts that set it apart from everything else.  The reason they don't do that, though, is because last time they tried it the theme was named "Galidor" and it went badly for everyone involved.

I'd say the fact that they're the biggest toy company in the world and have no chance of toppling their empire by putting money into an IP that isn't making as much money as they'd hope is a pretty good indicator how Lego feels. If they love the line and didn't care about the money they'd keep making the sets for the fans because the love of the line was stronger than the income. But it clearly wasn't.

As romantic as the idea of LEGO selflessly continuing BIONICLE without a good financial return may sound, that's not how any of it works.

… and it would also mean that LEGO didn't "love" G1 either, because that got cancelled due to declining sales.

Lego, on the other hand, has dozens of themes that, while surely expensive, make their money back enough that Lego is certainly in the position where they can take risks without bankrupting themselves.

 

And I'd say bringing back a previously-cancelled theme so soon after it ended would count as one of those "risks", especially with the amount of promotion they focused on it.  But how long would you expect them to keep up the risk before deciding against continuing?

Well all this might be true, but G2 was still cancelled after two years. That's the facts, so clearly they didn't try or care hard enough.

Firefly was a good show that the people behind it cared for a lot.  It didn't even get a full season before it was cancelled.

Market don't care how much you love what you made.  It'll live and die on what people are into at the moment, along with a host other things.

When people tell you that they've seen the great efforts the designers sunk into the products they put out and you just respond with "can't be, got cancelled" then it shows that you don't understand how many factors go into determining what's successful.

The Bionicle website and MNOG launched 2000. Also, they didn't try

end of 2000 to early 2010 is 11 full years

late 2014 to end of 2016 is "barely two years"

got it 

there was no need to try 

But they did anyway.

(Also, I did the math, not sure how 2010-2001 gets you 11 years.)

it is no secret that compared to G1, they really didn't try

People have been saying as much since the start of G2, and I can't tell if it's out of genuine ignorance of the effort that's been put into making the reboot into a worthy BIONICLE story or if they are so resistant to the idea that their interests might have shifted over the years that they have to project blame on the designers for why they don't like it as much.

 

 

they handled the franchise with such a lack of effort and passion.

How is it that people still think this?  How is it that people ever thought this?

Well, I should think that the cancellation is sheer proof that you are utterly wrong. But what do I know

Not much, I guess.  You may pour your entire heart and soul into something but if the market doesn't take it up you won't be able to afford to continue it.

they handled the franchise with such a lack of effort and passion.

How is it that people still think this?  How is it that people ever thought this?

why

Oh well, RIP BIONICLE again.  Hopefully the Star Wars sets can carry the constraction torch and the whole sub theme hasn't faded into obscurity.

Yeah, Mindstorms has a big educational component that themes like BIONICLE don't.  I had a class in middle school where one of the units involved building certain kinds of things with first-gen Mindstorms and scrap pieces, but BIONICLE never really had any educational role to speak of.

Grumble grumble something about "lazy" being the laziest criticism you can give grumble.

There was a big competition held across BIONICLE's social media platforms where people had to build a cool mask.  It was the prize.

They're still Premier-only, but it's BZP's anniversary so everyone's Premier for a week.

What ccbs and bionicle needs is to use certain colours for sets and not use anything else in those sets' colour schemes.

If you want to build stuff it's way better to get 5 sets of black and gray skeleton pieces than one set of black, one set of orange, one set of light blue, one set of trans-lime, and one set of light gray.

Also, the number of recolors LEGO can sustain at any one time is limited, so if you want all the neutral bone pieces colored on a set-by-set basis then you'd probably have to get rid of at least half of the other recolors.

I'm slowly going mad trying to figure out how the JtO model's staff is constructed. Well done designers. Well done.

I think I got the function figured out:

There are two sets of gears through the green and trans-orange pieces, but the angle here doesn't quite capture that.

Kind of funny to see Corvin in there.  Like, "hey I met that guy before".

Anyway, huh, might as well try to build something.  Even if I don't enter it it's an excuse to flex the building muscles.

Definitely entered these ones.

(to say nothing of possible additional episodes to show you reaching 100% completion)

Haha, no.  That'd at least like double the series length.  And I don't really feel like running through the whole game again just to grab some clips of the previously-off-limits areas.

As for what other games you could play, I believe I had already mentioned this some time ago, but I'll just say it again here as a reminder. I'm not sure what other Lego games you have available, but my personal choice for what you could try next would be the Lego Movie Videogame, mostly because it's (currently) the only Lego game that came out after Bionicle Heroes that I've actually played and am very familiar with. (I had purchased a bunch of other Lego games on Steam not too long ago, but I need to get a few things out of the way and taken care of before I can even bother trying any of them.) What do you think of this suggestion?

Probably won't do that game, as it's one of the ones that was played for Twitch Tuesday and then uploaded to YouTube, so I feel like it'd be a bit redundant.

I do have a couple of LEGO Harry Potter games, though, so I might be able to do those if they play well enough.

I don't care as long as there's something cool inside.