The Dream

[Master Inika]

I have not seen any topics about this phenomenon yet, even though I think it is mentioned quite frequently on other online BIONICLE spaces.

Who else here has experienced The Dream? If you have had it, you probably know what I mean, but on the off chance you do not, I am referring to dreaming of finding BIONICLE sets on store shelves again.

I've noticed many different variations, some people dreaming of old sets being rereleased and other dreaming of brand new sets. As for me, I have found that my BIONICLE-in-stores dreams are usually of classic sets being rereleased with new, somewhat minimalist-looking packaging. In one of the few I concretely remember, they were rereleases of the Bohrok Va, only with white backgrounds similar to the 2006 Matoran.

I will also mention that my dreams usually take place in department store landscapes resembling Walmart, Target, or Toys R Us (naturally, where I actually bought BIONICLE sets when they were being sold). Usually in my dreams, the layout of these stores is not something I am familiar with, as if I have an idea of where things should be but the store has been remodeled recently. (I am always annoyed when this happens to me IRL.) Usually, The Dream begins with me looking around the store for something else like food or other regular groceries and being stunned to come across rows of BIONICLE sets.

Usually, as with the Walmart/Target department store landscape, the store is white and fairly clean, though I did have one Dream that took place in something more like an outdoor Middle Eastern bazaar (that one was surreal).

I wish I kept track of when/how frequently I have had The Dream. I do keep a dream journal, but for some reason I have never written down my "The Dream" BIONICLE dreams. I suppose I can't usually describe specific ones that concretely, beyond "I dreamed I saw BIONICLE in the store again." It is only with the benefit of a few years of hindsight that I can identify these trends, at least the ones unique to me.

In the past few years, I have gathered up quite a few empty BIONICLE canisters for sale. For anyone similar existential and nostalgic for the old days, I recommend it if your budget/space allows. Setting them all up in a row really does recreate something of that happy feeling (and it is even better if you can fill the canisters up with loose parts for the sound and feel of a canister full of fresh parts).

So, I suppose I am asking for others' experiences with The Dream and general post-BIONICLE malaise as well. Honestly, I would love to have The Dream again, but it has been a few months. I wish I could lucid dream, but I never developed the discipline.

[masterchirox580]

I remember having it a few times, years ago. Typically when it happens I am at a local supermarket that I sometimes went to in order to buy the things. Typically mine are of old sets being re-released. The only twist though is that every time it happened I was then shocked to find that the sets are in fact bootlegs. Very good bootlegs. I would see the images and then the clearly bootlegged logos. I always left disappointed. Not entirely sure what this was supposed to signify but it certainly was always a weird twist.

[Inspirations2Creations]

I only remember having The Dream once so far, about a year ago. In it I was at a Toys R Us looking for a set to buy. There was a lot of glatorian sets, (which makes sense since that's when I really got into buying bionicle), as well as big system built bionicle heads and masks, kind of like the star wars and marvel helmet series. I remember seeing sets of Vakama's and Gelu's masks specifically. Around the next line of shelves, which were strangely mostly empty, were smaller sets that looked similar to the Voya Nui matoran. They were all in what looked like clear transformer type boxes and looking closer were made of some very weird 3rd party pieces. Could have been a line of bionicles meshed with transformer characters I guess.

[confused piraka]

I had it 2 days ago. I was in my house and for some reason people were selling bionicle sets. there was a few brutakas and an half of axonn. that was probably the 80th time I have had the dream

[Nescent]

I've had it dozens of times. In fact, it was happening so frequently, that I managed to use it a couple times to trigger lucid dreams. I'd see Bionicle on the shelves, think "wait a second...this dream again!" and become aware that I was dreaming.

Mine are exactly like you describe, just shopping in my dream and finding loads of old Bionicle sets on the shelves, usually on clearance. I remember seeing all the Toa Mata for a couple bucks each, the Bohrok, Rahkshi, etc., etc. I truly believe that going to the store and looking at the Bionicle sets there was one of the most intoxicating things of my life. Boy do I miss that!

[Drakua Toa of Rahi]

Used to have a good number of these kinds of dreams, though more recently the sets tended to have the appearance of bootleg copies or wholly unique sets with a new backstory. The stores were usually pretty oddly shaped, and sometimes the odd Halo Mega Bloks would get mixed in, but a number of times I'd go to open and build the sets and the pieces would just disappear in my hands as though fading from existence or just falling to the ground, forcing me to scramble to pick them up and stuff them back into the box.

[T.B.O.C]

Often - I think it's less a BIONICLE experience as much as it's a common dream format. Location you're relatively familiar with (store, in it's own dream form), buying something you like or desire, and something is weird with them. I had them during BIONICLE's release, and since. Often times nowadays it's that I'm finding bags of BIONICLE parts and I sort them out looking for individual parts or masks. I always think it's funny that I remember what I'm looking for still. I guess it is my brain, so the information is there...

[KyDv404]

I'd argue perhaps I'm barely too young/out of touch to have The Dream. I remember when Bionicle was on shelves, but I was a stubborn kid who just saw it as the weird part of Lego, so I never looked at it as a kid, thus I have no nostalgia for the sight of seeing the toys on shelves. On top of that, while I'd look at legos as a kid, I never bought any, no matter how much I loved Ninjago or anything else, so most of my nostalgia for lego tends to be related to video games and TV...

...which leads to this thing that happened a while back when I was considering doing the full deep dive on Bionicle:

So...offshoot variant of the dream? I guess??? Idk someone in the Twitter replies told me this was the cruelest version of the dream they ever heard lol so I guess it counts in some capacity???

[Gloomyfates]

I've had The Dream multiple times, and it always follows the same formula:

-At one of the stores I visited as a child which stocked Bionicle at the time
-There in the modern day and decide to look at Lego for whatever reason and they have the old sets again, usually in a new box, much to my delight.
-Never actually get to open said sets, most of it is deciding which I want and continuing my normal adult shopping.

Never had the dream about any other nostalgic franchises, only Bionicle. What's interesting is I got really lucky and found all the old 2001 Toa, Turaga, and Matoran at a local antique store, and you think that would stop The Dream from happening since it came true? Nope, now the dream just consists of other sets such as Takanuva or Makuta instead of the old Toa. It's a very weird and unique phenomenon, considering that people of all ages and level of interest seem to have The Dream.

 

 

[Liopleurodon]

I've had The Dream pretty frequently! However, after Bionicle was discontinued in 2010, most of these dreams involved me getting excited to see Bionicle sets on shelves again, only for me to realize that they were bootleg Bionicle sets. Oddly, I have never bought a bootleg Bionicle set and have no interest in doing so.

[Aiden]

I had a dream where I found select masks in the Lego Store, packaged like the SDCC g2 masks and hung on racks like old minifigure battle packs. The only ones I remember is a trans neon green mask of life (the more detailed one) and a black g2 hau. There was also a trans blue shadow leech with pearl gold fins, and a solid navy leech in a little bin of parts.

[That Matoran with a Vahi]

Now that you mention it, I guess I have, although I didn't realise it was such a widespread thing. I'd second T.B.O.C about it not being limited to Bionicle though, at least for me; as far as dreams go, it's not uncommon for me over the past several years to have dreams of finding something relating to one of my interests or another - as often as not something that has never actually been made - and intending to buy it... only to always, without fail, wake up before I can make the purchase!

I think the first time I recall it happening, some years ago now, I'd found a market stall selling nothing but a whole bunch of unopened first-wave Phantom Menace Lego sets for what must have been a very low price and I was set on buying myself the Gungan Sub. The first time such a dream involved Bionicle, to my memory, wasn't actually sets but was a couple of new comics that featured the classic Toa and the Bohrok-Kal ending up in the world of G2 and the Toa fighting their updated selves; it stood out to me enough that I described it in a status update on my profile at the time.

But yeah, every now and then, it'll be Bionicle sets. I don't recall any specific experiences beyond that, other than that they've all been different; but there are a few frequent commonalities:

• Often taking place in a decent sized dedicated toy shop, like the Entertainer in one of the nearby towns where back in the day I bought a few sets after they'd otherwise retired on different occasions IRL. Not always, though; once or twice it's been unrelated shops that had no business stocking toys at all but still had a whole aisle full of Bionicle! Reasons for being there are generally unstated and I'm just there for no discenrable reason, but sometimes I'm either lost, taking a shortcut through the shop or, on one occasion, was just trying to avoid some chaos going on in the street outside.
• Nearly always rereleases of old sets in new packaging, usually still canisters but with very different graphics. Or at least, in the dream I register them as rereleases of familiar designs, even if hindsight after I've woken up tells me that I'd never seen those models before! Sometimes the graphics are more reminiscent of G2 style box-art, even though I never bought any of those myself; I saw them on shelves IRL a few times but was in my dark age and otherwise missed the reboot entirly.
• The amount varies but often there's, like, a couple of shelves full of several different ones and I'm invariably indecisive over which one(s) to actually buy. (That part's definitely very true to my childhood experience...!)
• They usually feel like they relate back to 2003 in some way... which makes sense because while I'd liked Bionicle a lot in 2001 and still followed it in 2002, '03 was the year I went full-on as a fan and that possibly left the biggest impact on me due to being the first movie year (and also the first year that we, in the UK, got all the comics). Bohrok-Kal, or variants of them, are definitely some of the most common sets to reappear. One time I think there were some new Matoran in the same vein as the 2003 Matoran.
• When I do recognise the sets, even in the dream I'll often tell myself that I don't need to buy any of them because I already have the original versions (although in reality I've sold many of the original versions so that doesn't actually apply). I always invariably end up making the decision to buy one / some anyway, but never quite getting past trying to decide which before I wake up.

These don't always hold true; one that I vaguely remember saw me find a whole box of loose parts including many classic 2001 Kanohi (possibly in colours they didn't get produced in IRL) in the stockroom of a charity shop; but though I grabbed the whole box, I - as always - woke up before I could pay for them.

(Which makes me wonder: has anyone actually been able to buy the sets when they find them in a dream, or do everyone else's end before they can do that too?)

More recently, though, my Bionicle-based dreams haven't been around this context at all. Another common dream format for me is finding myself playing / actually in a random video game, - most commonly Star Wars Droidworks, which I played a ton as a kid, or Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, but it can vary - and over the past maybe year or so I can recall at least two of those that were Bionicle-themed. One was a platformer loosely based around the style and context of Mask of Light, but a much, much more polished game than Bionicle: The Game was... I remember finding myself stuck on a level where I was playing MoL-style Tahu Nuva and he had been trapped down in the lava caves and was trying to get back up to Ta-Koro before it was attacked; another was kinda MNOG-2ey, involving running all over the island of Mata Nui, but it had 3D graphics, had more standard action game controls than MNOG's point and click, and I could switch between control of a variety of different Matoran all over the island, and they had various different tasks to undertake that kind of all related to one another. It may have been related to the previous dream game, in fact, because I'm sure I remember talking to MOL-style Jaller who may have been about to set out looking for Tahu who was missing? Hm.

Edited April 2 by That Matoran with a Vahi

[Lenny7092]

I rarely had dreams where I notice Bionicle coming back, but some new sets on the shelves look like foreign knock-offs that you see from Amazon.

[Tahu3.0]

It honestly seems that the "DREAM" is much more common than what people think. Personally, I've also had the dream similarly to the author of the thread. Dreams of seeing "sets" in Toys R Us where I would've bought them back in the day. I say "sets" in quotations because the weird thing is that they're all Mocs, not knock-offs just very random Mocs. Although, I did notice a pattern of them using a bunch of '06 pieces instead of older or newer ones. 

But I will say, I definitely like the idea of collecting canisters to make a sort of "pseudo store shelf".  
 

[confused piraka]

On 3/31/2024 at 4:19 PM, Aiden said:

black g2 hau

that exists you know

[Aiden]

5 hours ago, confused piraka said:

that exists you know

I know there’s a prototype one in brown, haven’t seen a black one before though. 

[confused piraka]

4 minutes ago, Aiden said:

I know there’s a prototype one in brown, haven’t seen a black one before though. 

remember that topic I made about the makuta contest?

[Aiden]

2 hours ago, confused piraka said:

remember that topic I made about the makuta contest?

I don’t, you’d have to jog my memory. I tried to find said topic as well and wasn’t able to find anything.

[confused piraka]

On 4/5/2024 at 8:09 PM, Aiden said:

I don’t, you’d have to jog my memory. I tried to find said topic as well and wasn’t able to find anything.

well this might be just painted but.... (59 second mark, look at the middle makuta)

 

Edited April 10 by confused piraka

[Tahu3.0]

2 hours ago, confused piraka said:

well this might be just painted but.... (59 second mark, look at the middle makuta)

 

 

SHADOW TAHU IS REAL!

In the LEGO archives. If he's still there...

[Aiden]

On 4/9/2024 at 10:22 PM, confused piraka said:

well this might be just painted but.... (59 second mark, look at the middle makuta)

 

 

Huh, I never noticed that while watching the video. To my knowledge nobody has really ever seen the masks shown in this video in person, so we don’t know if the hau would be painted or not. I was going to say we don’t know if the masks of ultimate power are painted either, but it doesn’t really matter as much since they’re unique molds.

Edited April 11 by Aiden

[confused piraka]

11 hours ago, Aiden said:

To my knowledge nobody has really ever seen the masks shown in this video

agent pohatron, reporting for duty.