I just wonder if this whole contingent of "tourists" whose perception of _Bionicle_ was just "That One LEGO Theme Starring this Red Robot and His Five, Other Rainbow-Colored Friends Who Weren't Built out of LEGO Bricks" kind of doomed both _Hero Factory_ and _Bionicle G2?_ Looking back at _Hero Factory,_ I feel like The LEGO Group tried to so hard to recapture the success of _Bionicle,_ but never realized that what made the first year of _Bionicle_ so special was how the sets communicated this world and ecosystem. _Bionicle_ launched in 2001 with the Toa - the medium-sized "hero" sets that were the face of the franchise, the Tohunga/Matoran - the small "villager" sets distributed by McDonalds to help spread word of _Bionicle_ and give something for the Toa to protect, the Turaga - sets for small budgets that were supposed to be the "Sensei Wu"-like characters for the Toa and Matoran to report to, and Rahi - expensive "animal" sets that provide an enemy for the Toa to fight. No matter what set a customer buys, they always added value to each other, and they helped build a world and ecosystem in one's bedroom playground. (Plus, there was the added play pattern of playing out battles, where the one whose masks doesn't fall off is declared the winner, so there's that, as you said in your analysis on the Battle Play Pattern.) Now, look at _Hero Factory._ Throughout the whole franchise's lifespan, the only sets were those that depicted Heroes and Villains, even starting off with the format of "Simple and Cheap Hero Sets" and "Complex and Expensive Villain Sets." There simply weren't any sets that helped depict the grander world of Makuhero, with no sets that depicted civilians for the Heroes to protect, or even the common non-frontline Heroes of Hero Factory like Big Joe. (The closest we even got to sets that even tried to worldbuild were the Quatros Animals from _Savage Planet,_ but even then, the entirety of that arc and wave of sets took place on a planet disconnected from Makuhero City.) It just makes me wonder, how many people misconstructed the world and story of _Hero Factory_ to be like Michael Bay's _Transformers_ Movies, where the story is that these alien robots have dragged their war to the planet Earth, especially when the figures tower over standard LEGO Minifigures? In fact, the first two commercials for the first wave of _Hero Factory_ sets literally involved live-action humans witnessing a _Hero Factory_ Villain terrorizing the place, then calling in the Heroes to take them out! And like you said, that same mentality of "The Red One" sadly applied to _Bionicle G2_ and alienated everyone involved. The LEGO Group focused too much on that "fast-paced action battle" side of _Bionicle,_ that they forgot to include aspects that help slow the pacing down, and allow the audience to breathe after a major battle, like sitting down in a village and talking to other people. And I feel as if the lack of a character like Takua, who represented the kid fans in the audience, the ones who make up their own, recorded chronicles of the Toa, is a major factor in the death of _Bionicle G2._ I also just wonder if there are still some executives within The LEGO Group who were never comfortable with _Bionicle_ and the franchise's high concepts in the first place, and that there are executive mandates to stop creators like Christian Faber from recapturing those highs, perhaps in fear that they'd "anger the good Christian parents who buy our sets, and that if they see their child playing with these bionicles and play out stories of that fake god Mata Nui, they'll stop buying our sets in protest." (And I distinctly remember having recently discovered that Christian Faber really wanted to do more with _Hero Factory,_ like having a deeper story that wasn't some superhero parody, and how it was supposed to be a stealth sequel to a _Bionicle_ Reboot.) There was this moment in the documentary titled _NINJAGO - Ten Years of Spinjitzu_ that kind of describes what I'm talking about. At the nineteen-minute, fifty-one-second mark of the documentary, Kevin Hageman recalls a moment from the development of _Ninjago,_ where someone from The LEGO Group that wasn't Tommy Andreasen had dismissed Dan and Kevin Hageman's ambitions for a grander story for _Ninjago,_ telling them that they didn't need to write a grand, connected story because they were simply selling toys to kids. But the Hageman Brothers rebelled against those executive orders, and put the passion they'd put in a live-action film into a 44-Minute Ninja Flick, and it's kind of the reason why _Ninjago_ is still successful to this day. [Tommy Andreasen] And they brought in this sensibility, that we were very fortunate to have them, where this isn't a "Dumb TV Show for Kids," no, this is a "High-End, Hollywood, Blockbuster Movie." That's what they brought into it. That's how they approached it. At the end of the day, as someone born in the year of the Toa Metru, I was simply too late to get into _Bionicle._ And I am glad to have found JettKuso's _Bionicle_ Retrospective videos, and have finally realized the appeal of _Bionicle._ (And I am getting into building _Bionicle_ MOCS in BrickLink Studio.)
Adding to that "Bay-verse _Transformers_ Misconstruction" of _Hero Factory,_ I also remember seeing and laughing at this piece of concept art for _Hero Factory_ that was a fictional newspaper article from "The Makuhero Star" reporting that the Heroes have thwarted Von Nebula's invasion of Earth, even gaining "special Earth citizenship" from the British Prime Minister! If that, plus that one plan of a live-action CGI hybrid movie for _Hero Factory_ produced by Universal Pictures doesn't give you any clue as to what franchise The LEGO Group was trying to imitate, then I don't know what else to say.
That bit about the stealth reboot of Bionicle flicked a switch in my brain. What if this was meant to be the far future of the Bionicle universe post-Magna rejoining and the heroes were designed based on the Matoran Universe’s resident heroes?! Think about it, the Toa and Matoran are artificial beings, and in the far future of course the Agori would manage to reverse engineer the nano- and biotech to recreate the Matoran and Toa! Matoran stand as the perfect starting blueprint for worker robots and the Toa as a force of heroes to protect from internal and external threats! Without the energized protodermis they likely couldn’t be given mask powers and the like but the extra strength and such along with advanced tool tech would more than compensate for the role normally! Yeah I can see how this could have been a soft reboot of the Bionicle franchise had LEGO execs not gotten in the way!
G2 frankly just doesn’t have cool villain sets aside from either Umarak form. It’s especially frustrating when herofactory had so many wildly different villains with different body types throughout its lifespan.
It's funny because out of all the G2 sets made, I only optes to get LoSS. The reason for this was because at the time the reviews talked about how heavily technic based he is. As someone who primarily enjoys the heavy technic based sets of the first 3 years, I always felt LoSS was a nod to Bionicle core roots in particular to the 01 Rahi. Unfortunately, as much as LoSS had a technic base and "functionality", it just lacked compared to the likes of the 01 Rahi and 02 Bahrag we had seen before. I think if LoSS was larger, possibly had a more combative function and maybe paired with Skull Scorpion as a duo it may have been more successful and better recieved. However, I am still sceptical because as much as many of us early bionicle fans love the heavy technic style sets we grew up with, a large contingent of Bionicle fans prefer "pose-ability" over function. Which for me detracts from the Bio Mechanical quirk early bionicle offered.
I've never been more disappointed in a bionicle when I handled the completed skull spider lord. The little mask dudes were so cool- but that set felt completely detached from everything they were stylistically going for. It could've been the villain of a generic lego fantasy franchise and I wouldn't have batted an eye. The poseability of that thing was also criminal and it broke me when the same design choice was used in the skull scorpion.
@@airworks7809 I'm very biased because I love skeleton monsters and I can't imagine it being done in a better way than G2. Even the Skull Scorpion gave us good pieces for ultimately being a mediocre set.
You also make a good point about the function over poseability. G2 was just functions that kind of got in the way of better and more diverse parts. Storm Beast isn't a set you need to get when you have the instructions, for instance, and Bruiser and LoSS and Scarox and the Uniter Beasts have more vibes of "With Real Kung-Fu Grip!" More than poseable action figures, I think.
I don’t really have a favorite character because it doesn’t seem fair to choose just one, but my favorite element is water. So when I get started on a new team of MOCS I always start with water.
My favourite G2 set... I've gotta go wide Onua. I like trans colours and I do love the proliferation of trans in year 2, especially trans purple, and I was considering Uniter Tahu or Onua because i like the builds of them more and the uniter piece is such a good piece, but wide Onua has such a nice silhouette, got four of those huge shoulderpad digger hammer pieces, big wide chest, and unlike the other soft silver plastic pieces of gen 2 those all still have all the axles on them. Uxar's wing doesn't, tahu's board sword doesn't, but those big fat onua pieces, yes they do. It's also the best ever hamner piece. On its own it's some kind of paw or shield or drill claw, you can easily make a hammer, you can use it as an armour shell using the connection points, you could probably make a clam, I think it has enough ground connection points that you could use it as a foot, you could certainly armour the top of a foot with it though. They scarcely did hamners or clubs anyways, but the last and only hammer or club piece even close to this versatility would be Nuju's crampon clubs. Heck, i think it's got about the same opportunities as Nuparu claws, it loses some from the size, but i think it gains a few too. I just have four, unfortunately, though.
agree, as I started with G1 I didn't knew much about the story had bad internet etc. but loved the designs, later as I saw G2 in stores Iwas so excited to see Bionicle back but had no interested in the story everything looked so cheap but had so much potential, in my headcanon G2 are just updated versions of the OG Toa Mata and some new Characters......only the Mask maker gave me some wannabe Takanuva vibes, same idea, weird execution
Well, yeah. I even approached G2 with the same approach as Hero Factory, these were just sets, the story isn't a thing, just get the cool pieces you want. I initially kind of vibed with Hero Factory's characters but i didn't feel like there was enough to support them. The first year was all character, but conversely, the sets-at least, the heroes, sucked- and then they flipped it, making decent sets and no characters. And if i don't care about the characters, all i have to do is get the sets i want, and when they don't have the diversity of pieces, i need to get them less and less, until it's just the badly priced homogeneous star wars sets.
