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Bionicle: the 1980s toy line


Alexander123

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The 80s, a time that dominates much of American pop culture. In an alternate reality Lego releases the 2001 Bionicle sets in the year 1984. Can our beloved Bionicle succeed, will it get an animated tv show like every other 80s toy line, and will it get a large fan following and have a terrible movie made about it c2010 by Michael Bay? Well let me hear your ideas!

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Well, the story would be exponentially worse, and surely more episodic; but, with luck, the franchise might garner enough of a following to get an actually decent revitalization once the original fans are grown up. This alternate Bionicle would either be totally forgotten (like most of those cartoons), get a bad reboot and not much else attention (G.I. Joe), get a good reboot but then get axed and possible get a bad reboot after that (Thundercats, which deserves an F in the chat), or luck out like Transformers and get a few good series, even if there are some, uh...mistakes along the way...

Regardless, I don't think Bionicle could have been made in the '80s. There's no way all the convoluted lore and mysterious worldbuilding could have been approved for a cartoon that--let's be real here--no business or staff member would really bother putting in the effort G1 received. The 2000s were just the right time for something like Bionicle to crop up, and Lego honestly missed the bus where TV shows are concerned because that decade was the heyday of action cartoons. But who knows? If Faber succeeds in convincing Lego to bring it back, the recent rise in popularity of such programs on streaming services could make for a better shot.

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9 hours ago, Sir Kohran said:

...and there wasn't that much internet around in the 80s.

There would be no online animations or games...the story serials would have to be posted on a BBS...which would be read by a select very few people...who would mostly be adults...uh...yeah, if we just take real-world BIONICLE and subtract only the Mata Nui Online Game, maybe, just maybe, we would get the Bohrok, because they were already in pre-production. But I don’t think the franchise would have made it to summer 2002.

As for the 80s (which I was around for exactly none of, so this is just an informed opinion), if it had any promise whatsoever, there would have been a Saturday morning cartoon that may have technically better animation (in terms of motion) than the Flash webisodes, but would have nowhere near the same level of set-accurate detail. As others have pointed out, the attention spans of children were underestimated back then, so it would likely have an episodic structure with a loose goal (awaken Mata Nui) at the end, which may or may not happen due to cancellation and an oversaturated TV cartoon market. Not to mention that some the voices would probably be hammy, overacted and hard to take seriously (which is admittedly a problem for me in the movies anyway). Comics, which often had story arcs regardless of target audience, might still be episodic due to the fact it’s a licensed property and not Spider-Man or some other comic-original franchise. And, even if it were successful, it would be rebooted every couple of years for the rest of eternity, so we’d be sick of it (oh, hello, MLP and Transformers, I didn’t see you there).

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I have to agree, it wouldn't bode well for it. BIONICLE is just quintessentially 2000's in terms of storytelling, medium, fan engagement, everything. It couldn't have been made any other time period.

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/20/2020 at 12:50 PM, Master Inika said:

I have to agree, it wouldn't bode well for it. BIONICLE is just quintessentially 2000's in terms of storytelling, medium, fan engagement, everything. It couldn't have been made any other time period.

I super-agree. Bionicle would look ugly if it happened in the 1980s or the 1990s. I mean, there would be ugly statue-like figures and puppets in media. Ugh. Boy. That’s why the 00’s is best suited for Bionicle, even if the 2010s was a horrible decade for Bionicle.

I like Lego, Bionicle, and Hero Factory!:)

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