Why Hero Factory should not be forgotten

[Lenny7092]

Hi, guys. Hero Factory is best known for keeping the constraction category alive for Bionicle, after Bionicle G1 got cancelled in 2010 and G2 happened in 2015. In my opinion, despite the theme having some flaws here and there, it’s a good theme. I forgive it, and I’m still a fan of it. Today’s fans are still talking about it. The CCBS is praised. Their YouTube videos and Reddit topics show that. So, Hero Factory shouldn’t be forgotten. Even all of its TV episodes are shown in YouTube (not the best quality, but yes). Even Christian Faber is not forgetting HF, and has been showing some HF concept art. 

I hope Mask of Destiny will consider boosting up the memory by finding the guys who worked on HF and ask them for the archived stuff. Most of HF’s material is preserved. Some are not in best quality, but yes. There are a few stuff that aren’t preserved, like that summer Brain Attack Hero trailer and some wallpapers.

[Master Inika]

IMO, Hero Factory just wasn't that good. It was tonally inconsistent and the TV specials got worse as they went on. I never got too many of the sets, but I think the Fire Villains and 2.0 Heroes were the best of them. Breakout had some good building techniques but I didn't care for the aesthetic as much.

[masterchirox580]

I mean I would say it's already been forgotten outside of this niche corner of the internet. I would even go as far as to say it was forgotten from its' inception as it was always an afterthought after Ninjago and Chima. I don't know if any numbers exist but I honestly believe a good chunk of people buying HF toys were those of us left over from Bionicle. From what I recall most actual kids at the time (defined as people below the age of 12) were more interested in Ninjago. Hero Factory certainly did last longer than most Lego themes but not enough to have a large fanbase today. Most people that have any interest in it today are mostly people interested in CCBS and don't seem to care for the very lackluster story and characters. That's what I seem to recall when I sold my collection of the stuff off. A lot of the costumers were people in it for the pieces. Admittedly these pieces were very good from a MOC perspective but other themes were also using them and Lego had wanted to simplify constraction since at least 2010 so I don't think it's right to credit Hero Factory specifically. The whole CCBS experiment has since ended and Lego no longer make anything resembling constraction in line with the original slizers theme. HF was just too bland and boring to make a significant dent in my memory. 

[Nato G]

16 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

Today’s fans are still talking about it. 

At the risk of sounding harsh: what fans? And where are they talking about it?

I just had a skim of the main Hero Factory-related sites, and the only active username I see on most of them is yours.

According to the changelog on HS01, you're the only person who's contributed to it in any way in months. The same is true of the Heropedia wiki. The Custom Hero Factory wiki has a little activity happening, but it all seems to be in relation to a single ongoing Youtube series. r/HeroFactory only has 369 members, weeks go by between posts, replies are in the single digits, and once again it looks like you're the most frequent poster by a vast margin. The only outlier is r/HeroFactoryLego, which has 3.4k members, and averages few posts a day, but that one seems to be used for general CCBS MOC-posting now rather than HF-specific discussion. 

I'm not saying that HF has no fans, or that it doesn't deserve to be remembered, but the general attitude of the wider community seems ambivalent at best. No one else seems to be anywhere near as fixated with the theme as you appear to be. Instead of sitting around making wistful posts hoping others will recover old content for you, why not create new content of your own, or engage with some of the existing fan content that's currently running? (Such as Master Inika's current HF story on this site). 

[masterchirox580]

1 hour ago, Nato G said:

At the risk of sounding harsh: what fans? And where are they talking about it?

I just had a skim of the main Hero Factory-related sites, and the only active username I see on most of them is yours.

According to the changelog on HS01, you're the only person who's contributed to it in any way in months. The same is true of the Heropedia wiki. The Custom Hero Factory wiki has a little activity happening, but it all seems to be in relation to a single ongoing Youtube series. r/HeroFactory only has 369 members, weeks go by between posts, replies are in the single digits, and once again it looks like you're the most frequent poster by a vast margin. The only outlier is r/HeroFactoryLego, which has 3.4k members, and averages few posts a day, but that one seems to be used for general CCBS MOC-posting now rather than HF-specific discussion. 

I'm not saying that HF has no fans, or that it doesn't deserve to be remembered, but the general attitude of the wider community seems ambivalent at best. No one else seems to be anywhere near as fixated with the theme as you appear to be. Instead of sitting around making wistful posts hoping others will recover old content for you, why not create new content of your own, or engage with some of the existing fan content that's currently running? (Such as Master Inika's current HF story on this site). 

That subreddit is quite interesting as it seems to be exactly what Lego had in mind for the theme. Lego intentionally simplified constraction because they felt Bionicle was too restrictive with its' complicated storyline and use of very specific pieces. Lego seemed to have gone through some kind of internal backlash to their early to mid 2000s days of distinctive characters with heavier focus on storylines. It was this exact marketing which pulled me in and from what I understand ninjago also follows this line (although its' story cannot hold a candle to Bionicle). This strategy seems to work whereas the HF strategy did not. Admittedly it would have been cool to see the world of Hero Factory fleshed out more as they could have had a cool universe with so many planets. Maybe there was a big intergalactic crime syndicate that caused the Hero Factory to form or something. Either way this caused a loss of interest in Lego on my end and to this day I have no interest in rekindling it.

[KyDv404]

idk I think with OP around there is no way we could possibly forget about it lol