Clone sets

[Zeb]

 

 

 

No, I'm aware of that, but wishful thinking is wishful thinking! If anything, I think 2009 would have been a good year to introduce new torsos from the set designers' side.

It might not have been worth it since that was basically the last year.

 

it wasn't planned to be, though - the decision to end Bionicle in 2010 was made mid-2009. Archon is right, 2009 would definitely have been a good opportunity to bring out some new build types.

 

 

I believe Greg said the decision to end BIONICLE was made around september 2008.

 

Also, little fun fact:

 

If you look at the standard HF torso bone-thing, it says copyright 2009. Which means it was invented & copyrighted back in 2009. I guess they introduced HF with the old system so the transition to the new system would be smoother. You know, if Bionicle hadn't been slowly getting less & less sales, I wonder if they would have introduced the new system with the Glatorian. I wonder how people would have reacted to the new system if it hadn't been introduced with HF, but with Bionicle itself.

[Iblis]

 

If you look at the standard HF torso bone-thing, it says copyright 2009. Which means it was invented & copyrighted back in 2009. I guess they introduced HF with the old system so the transition to the new system would be smoother. You know, if Bionicle hadn't been slowly getting less & less sales, I wonder if they would have introduced the new system with the Glatorian. I wonder how people would have reacted to the new system if it hadn't been introduced with HF, but with Bionicle itself.

 

Generally speaking I really didn't like 2009 or 2010 set wise. I didn't own any of them either. For that reason.

I disliked Hero Factories designs as well. Looking at the some of them now though:

 

7145 Von Nebula: Kind of cool but I dislike the 'hump' & shoulder/arm spikes. I feel he needs a bit more colour (or shades of grey).

 

Is there a 7146 set?

 

7147 XPlode: I don't really like the head, & I dislike the pieces with spikes except the weapon. Otherwise it's 'fine'.

 

7148 Meltdown: Dislike the canisters, the head seems like it could be great but something doesn't seem right. Generally good except for the giant golden "hands"...

 

7156 Corroder: get rid of the launcher, now it is great. The head is nice (it wouldn't have worked if it were a Bionicle IMO).

 

7157 Thunder: It's right 'hand' seems to big and bulky and the clamps don't look nice because of it. Just as the other sets, the body feels a bit to short & needs to be longer (height wise), the blade looks awkward there to me.

 

Skipping 7158 Furno Bike, 7160 Drop Ship (They wouldn't have worked for Bionicle for me, the vehicle designs, so it's unfair to say anything else.)

 

7162 Rotor: The head needs eyes, I personally dislike the right arms jet/gas-gun, ^{(I think the rotors look awkward but eh)}, but generally he's good, but like all of these he doesn't feel like a Bionicle to me.

 

7164 Preston Stormer: the leg armour looks ...disco, the spinning-cutter looks odd there, otherwise the white seems off somehow? Maybe just too much for me? ^{The head is pretty meh.}

 

7165 Natalie Breez: legs have the same issue, I don't like these sort of giant armour bodies (which are useless for building onto), very nice otherwise. ^{Although the feet are to pointy for my liking...} If these things were changed and the head made into a "'01-'08" style-like mask I could happily call it a Bionicle if it were marketed as such.

 

7167 William Furno: weapon is too wide, same issue with body & legs & feet. Arms look too skiny compared to teh body & legs.

 

7168 Dunkan Bulk: feet/legs/body (to clarify, each time I say body I jsut mean that giant piece we see from the front), oversized weapon, looking at this one makes me think that the legs just need to have the armour being tight to the 'skeleton' & they would be fine. The solution wouldn't be to overcrowd the arms, the legs are to bottom heavy.

 

7169 Mark Surge: body-armour & leg-armour to fat, if different (thinner/smaller) leg armour was used would allow a bit of grey to show through from underneath and make it looks less like a plain blue blog that the head-body-legs-feet are. Would be fine as its own thing otherwise.

 

7170 Jimi Stringer: over-sized weapin, & same issues with body/leg-armour, feet. Otherwise it would have been fine.

 

& 7179 Dunkan Bulk and Vapour was the last thing I saw when looking here with 2010 next to it.

 

I don't know what the deal is with: 7149, 7150, 7151,  7152, 7153, 7154, 7155, 7158, 7161, 7163, 7166, 7170, 7171, 7172, 7173, 7174, 7175, 7176, 7177, & 7178. Whether they have yet to be added to that wiki or don't exist are are form another year (...mislabeled?)

 

Generally, my issue with the Rookies is their Body-plate, disco-pants leg-armour, very pointy-feet, over-sized (wide) weapons, & with a few of them the colouration was one big blob in the foreground for huge sections of their body. I also don't like the 'Superhero' Hero Factory Symbol they ahve on the front of them, but I don't think that is a huge objective issue.

 

The Toa Mata where mostly two colours, & I feel that even with their one massive body piece the colour was a lot easy on the eyes, the use of a secondary colour was balanced and consistent across the set. The Toa Nuva also had this but with another colour thrown in which made a bit more diversity across a given set, although of the Toa Nuva Gali & Kopaka benefit from this the least... _{if at all.}

 

To a huge degree the Hero Factory sets just don't feel like Bionicle - which is good, and the 2009 sets really felt that way as well, the 2008 Matoran also had a central body piece I hated - same issue as the 2004 Matoran; but at least those pieces had some connection points that could be made use of. Some of those Hero Factory Sets had a good interesting torso/body made from different parts; not great but they are interesting. The Rookies though. They are as disgusting as the Agori, managing to be worse than the Av-Matoran & Metru Nui Matoran.

 

I don't think the Roookie designs would have sold well because even if they were adapted to Bionicle they would have had the same issues as the 2009 Bionicle sets, & those didn't sell well either. The new brand was certainly to their benefit.

 

Hero Factory got better set wise, but to begin with I feel they took  the worst ideas from Bionicle - which is to say they followed Bionicle well, it's latter years set wise were very disappointing as far as the 'small' sets went.

 

Hero Factory did plenty of things well, but certainly not right of the bat.

 

Edit: & finally, the Rookies looked a lot more like "clone sets" than any others. But Hero Factories other sets certainly moved away form this, & more variety that lets designers come up with better ideas, I suspect forcing someone to design a few of the same thing & than change 3 things leads to them diversifying the worst set for whatever reason. The more freedom HF got with its sets the better they all seemed, all around.

Edited November 14, 2014 by Iblis

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

For things like Bohrok and Vahki that were supposed to be mass produced, it seemed odd to only have one of each kind, where in the story they're usually massed within their own types. But then again, it's not fun buying a bunch of the same set.

Yeah, it works in that sense but it doesn't make them any more thrilling to build.

 

-NotS

[randomreviewerbros]

Well some of the clone sets were good, because there was more than just color variety, but others weren't too fantastic, but i just went with yes

[Pomegranate]

I like clone sets when it makes sense for them to be clones and if they all look really nice despite having the same parts. The Bohrok were great and really pretty, and the Visorak had a little diversity in their parts so that was neat. I honestly don't really mind 'em. Sometimes I wish some waves were clone sets instead of all trying to be varied, cause sometimes it was kinda pathetic and horrid looking and the alternative would've at least looked cohesive. 

[Munty]

I wonder if they would have introduced the new system with the Glatorian. I wonder how people would have reacted to the new system if it hadn't been introduced with HF, but with Bionicle itself.

 

That's a very interesting question... Personally I never bought into HF as they replaced Bionicle and I'm an old-school fanboy I guess. I did recently come across Preston Stormer in a bulk buy I made though and he's actually kind of neat. They clearly have a more simplistic youth friendly vibe to them but I think the 2009-2010 Bionicle could have really benefited from the introduction of some of the new pieces they got. They wouldn't have looked like HF sets because they would still have Bionicle design methods at their core so it could have been really cool. Of course the early HF sets were barely comparable to Agori by 2010 and Von Nebula is essentially on a par with any other Bionicle Titan since about 2005 so whether it would have really benefitted the mainstay canister sized sets is hard to say...

[Toatapio Nuva]

I don't mind clone sets when they work to unify a certain group or are otherwise logical from the story's point. I prefer non-clones though.

[Latrodectus]

Depends. I love, love, love the Bohrok. They're ingeniously designed with their distinctive profile, ability to transform, striking gimmick, and opening heads. Their storyline role gives a purpose to their uniformity and they have the feel of an army. And despite their clonishness, they all have completely different color schemes and their various shields have unique shapes that fit their elements. The water one has fins, the fire one has flamethrowers, etc.

 

The Vahki is what happens when you mess up the Bohrok concept. They have overly similar color schemes with dark colors and grey. Their tools are all random silver technological tools. The Vahki body shape is a boring hunched humanoid, while the transformation looks like something you'd jokingly do with any other set. 

 

So I guess a clone set works when you have a really neat design and the sets have distinctive colors and weapons (where people's eyes are drawn). It doesn't work when you have an uninteresting build and the sets have similar colors and weapons.

[bioniclepluslotr]

Depends. I love, love, love the Bohrok. They're ingeniously designed with their distinctive profile, ability to transform, striking gimmick, and opening heads. Their storyline role gives a purpose to their uniformity and they have the feel of an army. And despite their clonishness, they all have completely different color schemes and their various shields have unique shapes that fit their elements. The water one has fins, the fire one has flamethrowers, etc.

 

The Vahki is what happens when you mess up the Bohrok concept. They have overly similar color schemes with dark colors and grey. Their tools are all random silver technological tools. The Vahki body shape is a boring hunched humanoid, while the transformation looks like something you'd jokingly do with any other set. 

 

So I guess a clone set works when you have a really neat design and the sets have distinctive colors and weapons (where people's eyes are drawn). It doesn't work when you have an uninteresting build and the sets have similar colors and weapons.

It baffles me that they would make 6 Bohrok Kal using the exact same build as the previous year with less piece variety (because they shared silver pieces).

[Makuta_of_Oz]

As a lore person, I like clone sets because of how each set in a group is similar but different. I don't see 6 (or 12 in the case of the Bohrok) completely identical toys in different packaging like some people seem to, I see 6 (or 12 in the case of the Bohrok) individual characters or specimens.

 

It's similar outside Bionicle too:

 

In Pokémon there are eight Eevee evolutions, who are similar but different. They could be considered "clone sets" by some. Same with Plusle and Minun, who are completely identical except for colour, symbol and slight variations in stats and movepools.

 

Then there are model trains. Some companies release multiple individual specimens of a single class of rollingstock, in many cases in the same liveries. They too count as "clone sets", but I don't see their manufacturers get ridiculed for making them either.

 

tl;dr I see each clone set as an individual character, not a set.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Makuta_of_Oz

[bioniclepluslotr]

One thing I noticed with Transformers is that when Hasbro decides to redeco a figure, most people get all upset and call them lazy and etc but then Lego puts out 6 clones and some people are happy about it. I think the Bohrok Kal could've been enhanced if they had additional parts to their Bohrok base, like wings, or specialized gear to match their elements.