I think if they weren't put in the same wave as sets as good as the Toa Metru they would really shine, but it's tough to stand out over the Toa Metru and even the Matoran of Metru Nui for me
@@MrCmon113 Considering they're mass-produced police robots in lore, I think that being a team of clone sets makes sense for and even benefits the Vahki.
The Vahki may seem basic at first glance, but they actually bring a lot to the table! Most canister sets over Bionicle's run either had to choose between gear functionality or a launcher mechanism, but the Vakhi do both! Not only that, but a transformation too? These guys are a triple threat and that's what I think makes them so cool and versatile.
Any of these unopened canisters, do they still have that "new Bionicle" smell? That was honestly one of my favorite parts of getting new Bionicle sets as a kid. Kinda like cracking open a new book.
About the "new bionicle smell", some sets have small holes in the canistes so they don't have problems with the pressure. Rakshi canisters doesn't seem to have these so if you want to experience that I suggest you buy one of them.
The Vahki are so affordable because they were in most parts containers from that era. I have 7 Vahki, 3 of the Red, 3 of the Green, and 1 Blue, all from either a parts container or a combo pack. One fun thing you can do with the Vahki since they're so affordable is to get two of each colour, keep 6 Vahkis separate and then make the combiner models for the next set and have all 8 Vahki models on display. Or if you want, you can get 3 of the same one and build a single combiner for a consistent colour scheme, they all have the same parts so it works with every Vahki. The Vahki are surprisingly very versatile and just like the Bohrok, collecting a bunch of them is super rewarding.
I think a more stripped down, skeletal design can work if you're trying to communicate that a character/species is even MORE robotic than usual, lacking even the most rudimentary bits of sinew and organs that Toa, Matoran etc typcially have, but we've seen it done before with Bohrok and Rahkshi, both of which were completely robotic mech suits (with slug brain pilots) but had pretty elegant designs. The Vahki are just... utilitarian. Which I guess works in context, but it doesn't make an exciting toy. The heads have quite a bit of presence, though. Very alien.
You have me convinced on how stripping down the design does in fact communicate a model being even more robotic. I do agree though that it works for the lore more than it does as a toy
Got the blue Vahki for my birthday. I remember waking up on a school day and my parents gifting me this Bionicle. I believe I built it in record time before having to leave for school. Man I was so excited throughout the whole day I could not wait to come back and play with it!
To elaborate, to promote the release of Bionicle 2, LEGO released variant sets of the vahki that included a mask of time and disk of time. It advertised them being included on the front of the box
Always had a soft spot for the Vahki; I think it might be because of how the official animations made them seem incredibly creepy and threatening - more like secret police or special forces soldiers than generic bad guys.
Love'em or hate'em, gotta praise the Vahki for the hip piece. The most versatile Bionicle pieces additions yet, and potentially through the rest of the series.
In Hungary, vahki came out before the toa metru and there was a significant delay in between. As a result, the armor pieces were an improvement for the toa. Even the TV ads were introducing vahki first as a threat, and then the answer came in the form of the new toa team.
I have always loved these lil' disc-shooting, sword-slicing transformers! Not only are they super adorable, but the Vahki Torso and Waists are the two greatest things to grace Aqua Magna.
@@AllOutBrick yeah, I remember it came with the mask of time, and I was able to build a ton of weird sets with it. In a perfect world Lego would still sell those with some older bioncle parts for those who want them.
these videos inspired me to have a look at my old bionicles again. made a mosquito sort of rahi, which is probably the first proper titan set-like custom bionicle ive made. i never was good at building custom ones as a child
I'm constantly on ebay looking for cool new condition bionicle stuff. These guys are all over the place and nobody buys them XD they're REALLY cheap compared to pretty much every other bionicle set lol
I quite enjoy these guys for play, you can just throw one to three at a toa or two and have a good time. One thing I'll say for the next video (or the one after that) is that you can get Nidhiki into a spider mode like the vahki by flipping his head and arms around and then bending over his body. The arms are a bit janky to get right but it ends up looking quite cool
Green one was my first ever Bionicle set, got it while on vacation visiting family. As soon as we got home my dad went out and got me the other 5, except he got me a duplicate of the green one rather than red, because he looked at the lid color. Thus began the tradition of me never getting all 6 in a series.
it was cool to see in Bionicle 2 Legends of Metrui Nui, the behind the scenes, the construction of the toys: injection moulding and how they had to inspect the vahki tools quality carefully
"The vahki themselves weren't terrible, up until makuta..." The vahki : the police of a dystopian society, possessing tools able to mentally manipulate the matoran and even to read their smallest rebellious thoughts to intervene immediately at their first appearance, not hesitant to use violence, installing a society of terror on the inhabitants of metru nui "weren't terrible"
Something that irks me about the Vahki lore is that apparently there were 5000 of them which implies their distribution across Metru Nui would've been very uneven.
I’ve been binging all of these reviews since I found your channel I love them so much. I gotta ask will you be reviewing everything up to G2? (including the brick built play sets)
When I was a kid I would open up the Vahki boxes by trying to squeeze the box so the lid pops off. Once I squeezed too hard, and the lid literally flew across my room like a crossbow bolt.
I agree! They were amazing! The only thing I wished would've happened differently was to see more colour in them when in the 2nd movie. They were all identical (or that's how I remember, at least).
A lot of unique characters design, obv some are designed to be more feral than others, a notion not present in the movie, over all still very manageable and colorful sets, bravo
Fun fact: Greg Farshtey's absolute least favorite characters to write about, considering the fact they're just mindless drones with one purpose and one purpose only. Also, as interesting as those canister lids are to match the eye colors, not such a bold idea. It would throw people off a bit of which Vahki is which, because you almost get two of the same color, like a light blue and a medium blue, even though these are truly for the white and blue Vahki respectively for example. Another idea, and a rather risky one, is I'd make the secondary color closely match with the eye color of each respective Vahki instead of just dull grey. Like the red Vahki has green eyes, so have the secondary color be Mata Green. this idea stems from police having bold contrasting colors to make them stand out. Red and blue particulairy. The Vahki could be the same deal. I'm alright with the Toa Metru and Metrutoran having grey, but I feel the Vahki could stand out from the crowd if they took more risks with the color scheme.
Their designs were always so cool, too bad i couldn't get them when i was a kid. Now i can always get them but i can imagine child me playing with one and havin so much fun
I always loved the Vahki. And the combo models were really cool as a kid. And I think the spider variant had some odd lore where each part was technically individually controlled or something.
They are just like Rahkshi with no palm movement, but with crawling mode. It's also frustrating that we've got so many weapons that can't be easily fit in the bionicle "hand" piece in proper way. Only in "i'm holding a huge sword between my fingers" way (like Matau) or even worse "i'm holding a giant sword between my fingers while also breaking my wrist" way (like Lhikan). All those cool pieces that require some ugly additional connectors...
This was really well shot and edited, with good lighting, nice transitions, and your audio recordings are really clean. But the musical interludes are waaaaay too loud. You either need to bring the music down or bring your speaking volume up because I don't want to be having to mess with the volume once I've started watching a video. Because other than that this was a really clean vid.
I'll have to take that into account for the future. The speaking volume could get boosted a few more db, but then it becomes tedious to bring down the spots that barely clip. Lowering the music will likely be the solution
Acctually the canisters are exact same as Rahkshi canisters, just different color and different lid but main part of the canister is exactly the same. And of course they are also upside down compared to Rahkshi.
One thing you didn't mention that I think is actually what carries this lineup up is their colour schemes, specifically the amount of accent colour they use. Although really its just the single piece that is really popping, it's nonetheless a rarity within the bionicle designs to have colour combos like those
Even if they didn't have elbows like the Toa Metru, these were still dynamically posable. I only had three of these, but only one of which I had the canister. All of the pieces for Nuurahk (Red) and Bordahk (Blue) were included in a parts "tub" (6638) from 2006, so I obtained them that way, while I obtained Rorzahk (Black) for my 8th birthday in '05. My favorite of these is still Vorzahk (Green), though I never owned him. However I did have a friend who between himself and his brother, had all of these, except the white one somehow. Interestingly, the Staffs of Presence on it and the Staffs of Suggestion on Zadakh (Brown) are exclusive to themselves. The latter of these has axles on both sides of the staff as well. The Staffs of Loyalty on Bordakh appear in nine other sets, which really helped when the axle on one of mine broke off, and I switched it out with one from another set which doesn't use the axle. The lower leg and hip pieces from these would make many other appearances in later sets, appearing the least often in white, Metru/earth green, Mata red and medium blue strangely. Additionally, I think the Metru-shade recolors of the "Voodoo arms" on all of them and the '03 Matoran torso pieces in Metru-red, Metru/earth blue and brown are exclusive to these sets. As for the combiners, I never tried making them since I was missing one set for the "Kranua" and two sets for the "Kraahu". The red/green/ black and blue/brown/white combinations would be used six more times after this in the following year. There are some who have also compared the Kraahu in shape and design to the "Acklay" from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, curiously.
Having the weapon pieces match the eye-color/translucency and having the disk launcher match the standard gray color they're using for their regular pieces would've made them look a bit more interesting.
Vahki are so great even though they are probably the least favourite and interesting wave of bionicle villains probably, just shows how great villains bionicle has to offer. Also those vahki combinations always looked to me like simpler versions of Nidhiki and Krekka :D
I have about 28 of these things after I put all my money into some ebay bids that got me 5 extra of each variant except the Vorzakh. it was always fun to actually do proper army build against the Toa Metru. a plus to their similarities is you could do the kaita builds with three of the same variant since none of them have unique pieces added into the build. The thing to keep in mind is that there's supposed to be tons of each variant - they're mass-production models that number in the hundreds, per lore. the canisters are their pods from the hives that would be in each Metru, though it's a shame they can't stack quite as well. still, I can admit they're a bit barebones compared to some army builders of the past.
One of the big reasons I think the vahki didn’t take off in the same way the bohrak, rahkshi, and later visorak did was due to how they were portrayed in the film. Sure, they were _there_ and obviously a threat, but compared to the more successful baddies of the other flicks, they came across more as generic cannon fodder that got overshadowed by other baddies.
Personally I think the vahki are overhated while there by no means the best canister sets many people give them way to much flack so nice to see a review of them that's a bit more positive
I got all the Vahki for 48 euros i think, very gud on my opinion, also after i got them I became splattered with the staffs they had like “the staff of presence”
They are so easy to amass in larger numbers, I did it accidentally by just buying Bionicle parts per kilograms. It's really great if you want to make nice Metru-nui scenes. I definitely agree that Vahki definitely need at least thigh thing that Toa had. And the twisting feature was in my opinion pretty much useless, if not borderline a hinderence. It always gets in the way of posing and doesn't really have a purpose. Also, wasn't the black/green/red Vahki the infamous one with leg connection that you can't dissemble later?
I'm looking at your model again and it seems you're fine. Although I'm sure there is a version of instructions for this model that shows connecting hip piece to rakshi torso by using 3 long axel from the side(instead of how you appear to have it by using 2 long axel from the front), making it stuck. I know because, well... I have this version of instructions. Back then slip-ups like those happened from time to time.
