Reddish Gold Takanuva Armor Confirmed to Exist

[Illuminatus]

Hello, everyone.

I believe I may have finally (and unexpectedly) made sense of an image that used to fascinate me when I was younger:

This is the key visual for Takanuva as featured in Rahkshi instructions. It is notably different from the final box art as can be verified by comparing the figure's feet and staff, as well as other small details, meaning that this was either a different model or at the very least the same model but shot at a different moment.

Anyone with a physical Rahkshi instruction manual on hand can verify that the color of the mask and armor appear distinctly different from flat dark gold on this visual.

If not for the existence of the reddish gold Avohkii (often erroneously called pearl gold) I might've assumed this was a printing issue but as it stands this seems like very solid proof that reddish gold was considered and tested as Takanuva's official armor color in place of flat dark gold. What lends additional credence to this hypothesis is that prior to Takanuva there weren't any gold-armored BIONICLE sets at all, meaning LEGO definitely would've experimented with a variety of gold-like colors.

So in a nutshell, this means that Toa Nuva chest and shoulder armor pieces exist in reddish gold and a hypothetical reddish gold Takanuva is fully assemblable.

Cheers.

[Lukas Exemplar]

Some LEGO instruction manuals have been spotty in the past and present when it comes to the color of pieces. Also, the image could be color-graded to look like that. Or it could be a CGI model rather than a photo - just a really well-made one, which had a slightly different color for whatever reason. But you're right, it is good evidence.

[Nato G]

6 hours ago, Illuminatus said:

So in a nutshell, this means that Toa Nuva chest and shoulder armor pieces exist in reddish gold and a hypothetical reddish gold Takanuva is fully assemblable.

You had me until here, but this conclusion is a real stretch. 

From what I can find online, less than ten of the Reddish Gold Avohkii's exist. If a single Nuva chest or shoulder piece had shown up anywhere in the world in the past twenty years in Reddish Gold as well, then you might have something to base your statement on, but as far as I can tell that isn't the case. 

A single digital render that has clearly been enhanced and edited isn't enough to make this conclusion. 

Further, I had a look on Bricklink, and while Reddish Gold had previously been used for rubber pieces like Krana and Kraata, its first appearance in solid pieces was in a single part in a single Duplo set in 2003. It was then used for a handful of parts in the 2004 Knights Kingdom line, before seeing more widespread used in Knights Kingdom and other lines in 2005. Based on that, a Reddish Gold Takanuva in 2003 seems unlikely, as it doesn't line up with the way Lego was producing and using the colour at the time.

[Illuminatus]

12 hours ago, Nato G said:

You had me until here, but this conclusion is a real stretch.

Let me clarify my conclusion just in case it could be misinterpreted. By "exist" I mean it is incredibly likely to me that they were produced in that color for pre-production purposes, not that a single piece like that ever made it to shelves. The reddish gold Avohkii similarly never made it to shelves. And by "assemblable" I mean a reddish gold Takanuva figure could hypothetically be put together in the same way that a Sand Tarakava could hypothetically be put together if you can retrieve both a prototype yellow Ruru and a dark gray Onua claw. That's all.

13 hours ago, Nato G said:

From what I can find online, less than ten of the Reddish Gold Avohkii's exist. If a single Nuva chest or shoulder piece had shown up anywhere in the world in the past twenty years in Reddish Gold as well, then you might have something to base your statement on, but as far as I can tell that isn't the case.

Assuming you understand my actual conclusion, the vast majority of prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces (in wildly unexpected colors at that) have only surfaced in the past couple of years, some of them well after BIONICLE's 20-year mark; additionally, recent research into LEGO piece inventory (building on the list Aanchir assembled back in 2012) reveals the overwhelming majority of these pieces haven't surfaced at all.

13 hours ago, Nato G said:

A single digital render that has clearly been enhanced and edited isn't enough to make this conclusion. 

I'm obviously not going by the digital render alone and I believe I made that pretty clear. Again, assuming you understand my conclusion that these pieces were produced internally and not that they were ever released.

If I were saying "Hey, this picture exists so the pieces must exist," that would obviously be insufficient. If I were saying "Hey, the mask exists so the armor must exist too," that would also obviously be insufficient.

But when both an eerily reddish-looking gold set of armor (the only such gold armor that can be seen on any BIONICLE render at all; feel free to prove me wrong) appears on a demonstrably early iteration of a set's box art and a reddish gold mask has physically surfaced from that very set (the only solid reddish gold BIONICLE piece we've ever seen too), it becomes a much bigger stretch to assume these two things are coincidental, especially knowing what we know about how LEGO develops and tests sets.

13 hours ago, Nato G said:

Further, I had a look on Bricklink, and while Reddish Gold had previously been used for rubber pieces like Krana and Kraata, its first appearance in solid pieces was in a single part in a single Duplo set in 2003. It was then used for a handful of parts in the 2004 Knights Kingdom line, before seeing more widespread used in Knights Kingdom and other lines in 2005. Based on that, a Reddish Gold Takanuva in 2003 seems unlikely, as it doesn't line up with the way Lego was producing and using the colour at the time.

Here I am once again getting the distinct feeling you think I'm saying a reddish gold Takanuva was released; I am categorically not saying that, lol. I am saying it is very likely to me that reddish gold was considered as the color for Takanuva's armor and was hence produced in extremely limited quantities, of which we've only ever seen the mask (ask yourself why they would only produce the mask too, btw, if the armor doesn't really exist). This falls absolutely in line with what you just described precisely because reddish gold was used so sparingly.

Overall, "Instruction colors are always janky" and "We haven't seen it, so doubt it" are valid arguments in general, but are the much less compelling arguments in this particular case given everything else I lined out.

Let me know your thoughts.

PS: I think it's important to re-highlight that this is an entirely different render of Takanuva, not a differently colored render of the official visual, in case anyone assumed I was going by colors alone.

[Nato G]

10 hours ago, Illuminatus said:

Let me clarify my conclusion just in case it could be misinterpreted. By "exist" I mean it is incredibly likely to me that they were produced in that color for pre-production purposes, not that a single piece like that ever made it to shelves.

This still feels like a massive stretch. Your whole argument is "some reddish gold masks exist" and "this one image has a funny colour". To conclude that all of the parts for Takanuva exist in reddish gold somewhere based solely on those two pieces of information just doesn't make sense to me. Iruini and Lhikan are also sets that come in flat dark gold, but promotional images of them feature colours that look very similar to this Takanuva picture you've posted. 

11 hours ago, Illuminatus said:

The vast majority of prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces (in wildly unexpected colors at that) have only surfaced in the past couple of years, some of them well after BIONICLE's 20-year mark; additionally, recent research into LEGO piece inventory (building on the list Aanchir assembled back in 2012) reveals the overwhelming majority of these pieces haven't surfaced at all.

Again, based on what I can find online, there appear to be only a very small number of those reddish gold Avohkii's floating around. Black6 here on BZPower received eight of them in a massive bag of prototype parts he got back in 2009, and I've seen a few other people online claiming to have them as well (though they may have gotten them from B6 through contests or giveaways, I haven't done a deep enough dive on what he did with them).

If, as you claim, there are shoulders and chestplates to go with those masks, then there's at least 24 of these reddish gold pieces that have somehow never seen the light of day, anywhere in the world, despite the diligence of the Bionicle community to track down rare parts and prototypes. Given that B6 got eight of the masks in his haul, one would expect he would have wound up with at least one of the other pieces as well, if they existed. 

10 hours ago, Illuminatus said:

(ask yourself why they would only produce the mask too, btw, if the armor doesn't really exist).

Because parts, especially masks, were frequently prototyped in odd colours. 

[confused piraka]

that mountain of protos is amazing!

[Illuminatus]

I've edited out the entirety of this comment to hopefully head in a better direction. As is customary with impromptu BZP debates, it will be a long one!

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

This still feels like a massive stretch.

I'm gonna be honest, this is not a great way to set the tone for any constructive conversation. I get that I'm the one making the claim and thus the burden of proof is on me; I also get that my initial conclusion can be construed as sensationalist and definitive with comparatively insufficient proof. But if we want to get to the bottom of this, the conversation needs to read more like we're refining, reconsidering and discarding arguments if necessary, and less like we're reiterating and insisting. Insisting never made anyone change their mind.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

Your whole argument is "some reddish gold masks exist" and "this one image has a funny colour".

This is incredibly reductive and would've been a sufficient retort to my original post but definitely not to my follow-up comment; it also borders on a strawman argument with "some masks" and "this one image" subtly implying that the two are mostly unrelated and I'm just seeing absurd patterns where there are none. My claim really isn't all that absurd and my arguments are much more reasonable (and numerous) than this makes them out to be. For clarity's sake, I will be re-outlining both below in detail.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

To conclude that all of the parts for Takanuva exist in reddish gold somewhere based solely on those two pieces of information just doesn't make sense to me.

Honestly, just the one piece of information that a reddish gold Avohkii exists is enough to at least hypothesize that it must've served some purpose in the production process and that it likely was not produced in isolation, as very few prototype and pre-production Kanohi appear to have been produced without an intended set to go with. Either way, I am going by much more than those two pieces of information and will be thoroughly explaining what I mean below.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

Iruini and Lhikan are also sets that come in flat dark gold, but promotional images of them feature colours that look very similar to this Takanuva picture you've posted.

I'd be happy to see which particular images you mean, especially for Lhikan. All of the images of Lhikan that I've seen give off a distinctly spray-painted gold feeling (the go-to approach for gold pieces a few years prior to that and apparently still a utilized approach in terms of box art at the time of release), as do at least two images of Iruini. I will admit I have seen other images of Iruini that could be interpreted as reddish gold but I can't seem to find them currently. So feel free to follow up on that.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

Again, based on what I can find online, there appear to be only a very small number of those reddish gold Avohkii's floating around. Black6 here on BZPower received eight of them in a massive bag of prototype parts he got back in 2009, and I've seen a few other people online claiming to have them as well (though they may have gotten them from B6 through contests or giveaways, I haven't done a deep enough dive on what he did with them).

I fail to see how this disproves (and doesn't in fact prove) my quoted point that most prototype and pre-production pieces have fallen into obscurity. The fact that there are so few reddish gold Avohkii masks that we've seen is 100% in line with the fact that there were incredibly few of them to begin with, as there is very few of most prototype and pre-production pieces that have ever existed, let alone surfaced.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

If, as you claim, there are shoulders and chestplates to go with those masks, then there's at least 24 of these reddish gold pieces that have somehow never seen the light of day, anywhere in the world, despite the diligence of the Bionicle community to track down rare parts and prototypes.

I have several issues here. First off, the exact number of reddish gold Avohkii masks produced wouldn't necessarily have been equal to the number of test Takanuva sets produced (if they were in fact produced in 2003 for that purpose); they would've been produced in multiples of 4, 6 or 8 depending on molds. The same applies to shoulder and chest pieces. So if such pieces exist, they wouldn't need to be "at least 24" or really any specific number to match any other set of pieces; they would simply need to be enough to produce (roughly speaking) a few test sets for reviewing.

But this of course is used to lead up to—and give extra punch—to your main point that if these pieces existed (let alone that many of them) then they surely would've surfaced by now, right?

Well, no. Of course not.

You say these "have somehow never seen the light of day" as if that were bound to happen if these were real, which is quite simply not the case. The vast majority of prototype and pre-production LEGO pieces end up in recycling or, at best, a Danish kid's closet whose mom or dad used to work at LEGO. That's why so many pieces we've literally never seen before are only surfacing now and it's always a Scandinavian dude that retrieved them; not Binkmeister or Black Six who've already had their day.

Now I understand this puts me in a rather paradoxical position where I'm trying to simultaneously argue the existence of something and why we're likely to never see it in existence. At first glance it seems contradictory but I ask you to bear with me.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

Given that B6 got eight of the masks in his haul, one would expect he would have wound up with at least one of the other pieces as well, if they existed.

Given that he got several dark blue Matatu masks, one would also expect he would have would up with at least one dark red Miru. Or a dark green Rau. Or a prototype (!!!) white Hau. Or any one of all these Metru Nui Matoran masks we literally didn't know existed until DuckBricks visited Christian Faber two weeks ago.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Implying that what Black Six got in that lot is indicative of which prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces did or did not exist, let alone how they were matched and distributed, isn't simply a massive stretch; it's demonstrably false.

And at this point I could just as easily say that your whole argument amounts to "Black Six got this lot of masks in 2009 and it's a lot of masks so that must be all of them" but that would be the least respectful way of delivering the same point.

18 hours ago, Nato G said:

Because parts, especially masks, were frequently prototyped in odd colours.

I'm sorry, but this isn't an argument so much as it is a handwave. Again, I am aware that the burden of proof is on me but the implication here is that because what we've seen in terms of prototype and pre-production pieces so far appears random and without any particular purpose, then those same pieces must've been produced without purpose. That simply can't be the case.

In fact, the whole point of seeing never-before-seen pieces—not to mention the fun of it—is in hypothesizing what their purpose could have been (why else would I be writing a 5000-word reply if it wasn't fun).

So let me once again refine my initial claim so we both have a firm grasp of exactly what we're arguing for and against.

I find it incredibly likely that a full set of reddish gold armor for Takanuva has at some point been produced for internal use at LEGO; not that such a set was ever released publicly; not that the number of required shoulder and chest pieces in physical existence would be proportional to the number of Avohkii masks in existence; not that anyone outside of LEGO has ever seen or ever will see these pieces in person; not that these pieces will ever reach the secondary LEGO market in any way, shape or form. I'm arguing only that they were produced.

My main arguments for believing so are as follows:

1. The reddish gold Avohkii exists.
2. The reddish gold Avohkii would've been produced in 2003 and not later as evidenced by unreleased Colgate toothbrushes featuring it.
3. The reddish gold Avohkii uses a non-final mold as evidenced by notches on the back differing from officially released Avohkii masks. This means it was more likely than not produced prior to any mass production of Takanuva sets.
4. No solid reddish gold BIONICLE pieces have ever been released and reddish gold was generally an unpopular color at the time.
5. Takanuva was the first BIONICLE set to feature flat dark gold pieces of any kind; prior to that we'd only ever seen "BIONICLE Gold" and a wide variety of differing silvers. This means that by necessity LEGO would've arrived at that decision following at least some discussion and more than likely some experimentation with different shades of gold. Concluding that 2003 was a turning point for BIONICLE in terms of gold isn't even remotely a stretch.

All of this alone indicates that the reddish gold Avohkii would've more than likely been produced for the purposes of developing and reviewing a Takanuva set and not for any other purpose. An accompanying set of armor is hence extremely likely as it would've cost LEGO practically nothing and would've served an essential purpose in testing and reviewing.

It could of course be counter-argued that it could've been produced a) for the toothbrush alone, b) as an extra mask in place of the translucent Avohkii, c) for unknown reasons or d) for no particular reason. Which of these is the most compelling hypothesis in your opinion?

Now in addition to all of this comes the otherwise ignorable and useless image of the Takanuva set as featured in Rahkshi instructions. Here's what's up with that:

1. The aforementioned image of Takanuva is a photograph and not a digital render. Titan sets have always used photographs instead of renders.
2. The image shows Takanuva in a different pose from the one on his final box art as evidenced by his staff and other minute details. A reshoot can be necessary for all kinds of reasons but changes in the model stands out as the most substantial one.
3. The shade of the mask and armor on the image are visibly redder (may be attributed to many factors not least of which digital altering) and softer (may only be attributed to the quality of the plastic in my opinion) than the stark yellowish gold on Takanuva's final visual.

All of this, as stated before, lends additional credence to the hypothesis that a complete reddish gold set of armor was produced for Takanuva.

It is crucial to understand that not a single one of the arguments outlined above is sufficient on its own. But all of them put together and coupled with the fact that we have only seen a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces in existence adds up to a pretty solid hypothesis.

Some possible avenues for you to explore at this point could be those Lhikan and Iruini (or any other) visuals with a supposed reddish hue to them, making the case that this is much more common than I'm currently assuming and doesn't mean anything per se.

You could explore the presentation of gold in box art throughout BIONICLE's history in general.

Or you could freely hypothesize as to the reasons for the reddish gold Avohkii's existence, if not to potentially be the Kanohi Avohkii.

But I expect stellar counter-argumentation in the event that you disagree with any one point that I laid down.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Illuminatus