REVIEW: 8572 Tahu Nuva

[-R8-]

Surfing through treacherous lava falls and protecting the citizens of the Bionicle universe...this is Toa Tahu Nuva, Spirit of Fire!

Name: 8572 Tahu Nuva

Theme: Bionicle

Year: 2002

Pieces: 36

Minifigures: 0

Price: USD 7.99, GBP 4.99

Further References: Brickset.com, BrickLink.com, Peeron.com, flickr, Biosector01 Wiki (storyline information)

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Simply put, I love these canisters. Cleverly designed for both storage and playability purposes, and are much less bulkier than many of the canisters that were put out towards the end of Bionicle. The canister artwork still evokes nostalgic sentiments, this being a set from Bionicle's second year. My only criticism is that Tahu's pose is actually impossible - specifically, the angle that the head is facing. I will elaborate more on this later.

The canister top is really cool too. Provided that you have enough head pieces and masks to go along with them, you can mount them on the top itself. It has slots, which are just Technic axle openings, for a total of six masks.

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We get a better sample of the Bionicle CGI artwork on the instruction booklet from the canister. But again, as cool as the pose may be, it is impossible in real life to recreate. This time, it's not only the head that can't be positioned like that, but the arms and legs don't bent either.

The back of the instruction booklet has some sort of a montage of all the collectable Toa Nuva masks, and a link to Bionicle.com. Man, those years were golden.

The instructions have a cool background, which emulates the texture of the energized protodermis the original Toa were submerged in to become the Toa Nuva.

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Tahu consists of a mixture of Technic and Bionicle pieces, like many of his counterparts. Many of these, we had seen before in Tahu's past incarnation, but a number of these pieces were also completely new, such as the leg, armor, weapon, and mask pieces.

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These armor pieces are my personal favorite in the wide array of Bionicle elements. I found their relatively simple design to be sufficient and easy to use in a MOC, and they looked great on the Toa Nuva. Tahu's fireswords are super neat too, and needless to say, act as a playability function for the set. Finally, I cannot ignore his awesome mask, which has a very warrior-like impression.

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The build, like with most Bionicle canister sets, is incredibly simple. The hardest part is getting the gears to align with each other so that the arms are oriented correctly, but other than that it is a mere walk in the park.

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Immediately, Tahu imposes a powerful and fiery aura, which is natural for his character. His mask design, armor, and fireswords work well in conjunction to deliver that impression.

In comparison to the rest of his body, Tahu's fireswords appear to be quite significant in size. But not only do they serve as dual weapons, but...

They also come together on his feet to form a lava 'surfboard.' Unfortunately, it's difficult to make an impressive pose with him while like this. Due to the fact that his head is attached to the body via an axle as opposed to a ball joint like later Bionicle sets, his head is limited to facing only in four different directions. Furthermore, while the mold and shape of the arm and legs might imply that they are able to move, they cannot. In my opinion, it's part of the novelty that the older sets have, but on the contrary it is somewhat of a disappointment that the lack of articulation could also potentially limit the amount of playability.

Tahu, but without his weapons. Obviously he looks less impressive, and people suddenly begin to question why he doesn't have fingers.

Here are all of the Tahus released throughout the lifetime of Bionicle. Going from left to right, we have 8534 Tahu (2001), 8572 Tahu Nuva (2002), 8689 Toa Tahu (2008), and 7116 Tahu (2010). The 2001 and 2002 Tahus are my favorite, although that is likely because I am definitely biased towards the old Bionicle sets. But even so, I appreciate the boldness in colors and the relative simplicity in design, as well as the incorporation of Technic in the older sets.

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The Toa Nuva are my favorite Toa line, and I really like all of the six sets in it. Tahu especially is a neat set, having such a great color scheme and character design. It was nice to see this character reappear many times in the storyline and as sets, even though I am not too fond with his latter incarnations. But despite that, Tahu is indeed one of the iconic characters of Bionicle, and great enough to have four sets dedicated to him over a decade-long lifespan of Bionicle.

[ZO6]

Yay, classic Bionicle! Thanks for doing this review, R8!

I remember thinking the Bionicle stuff was so unique when it first came out. I picked up all of the sets and went to every event that I could. Thought I personally never thought anything ever topped the original 6 Toa, the Nuva were still fantastic. I happened to be at Legoland California around the week that these guys came out, and Tahu Nuva was the first of them I bought.

Ah, how this review brings back memories...

[Ceroknight]

This sure brings back memories

Thank you for the review!

The first Tahu was my first LEGO set ever. And it is still one of my favourites along with this one

[K-Nut]

Thank you for this nice review. I'm still a proud owner of this great set. I never liked the Toa Mata so when Toa Nuva came out I like them because they were more substantial. Thank you for bringing back great memories.

[Masked Builder]

These Bionicles really were cool. I had yet to be introduced to LEGO when these guys were out so I don't have any. But they really are cool models. (Even if they are simple.) And you did a good job reviewing him.

[Aanchir]

The Toa Nuva were indeed fun designs. As you mention, of course, playability was limited, but it was still somewhat expanded compared to the Toa Mata. I notice your review doesn't mention much at all regarding the sets' action features, particularly the trait that made the Toa Nuva sets unique compared to the Toa Mata before them. Their left arms could be attached by either a Technic axle and gear (allowing the back gear to swivel both arms) or by a Technic pin (allowing the back axle to only control the right arm, and allowing the extra gear to be attached to the back as a "locking" mechanism for the gear function). This was one of my personal favorite attributes of the Toa Nuva: while the original Toa only had dual-arm control for characters with two weapons, the Toa Nuva allowed you to choose between dual-arm control and single-arm control. Additionally, the locking function was great for action poses.

The review also doesn't mention the combination model, Akamai Nuva, which could be built from this set, Onua Nuva, and Pohatu Nuva. Naturally, I'm not totally certain you have the parts to create this model, but a picture of one of the instruction pages for the combination model would make the review feel more complete. While I appreciate the nostalgic look back at such a classic BIONICLE set (which sits on the shelf above my desk as we speak), these sorts of omissions would be considered glaring oversights in a review of a a modern set.

Anyway, here's the part where I ramble nostalgically about what I liked and disliked about the Toa Nuva. They were great sets in some ways and awkward sets in others. Their masks had stylish organic shapes, but in some cases the similarities to the previous versions of the masks were tenuous-- in my opinion, they better matched the Phantoka versions than the masks they were meant to replicate in some ways. The organic look was also largely inconsistent with any earlier or later masks, although their uniqueness as a special "class" of Kanohi and their magical origin made this somewhat permissible.

The Toa Nuva tools were more ornate than the Toa Mata tools, but this came at the expense of some of the functional attributes they had previously. Gone, for instance, were the tubes from Tahu's original firesword which seemingly fed the flames, as were the pistons that gave Gali's hooks and Onua's claws their wonderfully functional appearance. Only Kopaka's and Onua's tools kept the same mechanical look, and in their cases the pistons were just "greebling", not components that served a practical mechanical function. Of course, the dual functions of the Toa Nuva tools also made them extremely awesome from a play perspective.

Toa Nuva armor pieces, including the shoulder, chest, and leg armor, also lacked any sort of mechanical detailing, but this was largely permissible in that most just went on top of the Toa Mata's previous parts. In BIONICLE: Mask of Light, even the leg armor was just rendered as armor "shells" over regular Toa Mata legs, which foreshadowed the way leg pieces would be armored for years to come.

The Toa Nuva shared the tasteful (with Onua's exception) fluorescent eye colors of the Toa Mata. Tahu's eye color (Transparent Fluorescent Red) and Gali's eye color (Transparent Fluorescent Yellow) have since been discontinued, probably because they were almost indistinguishable from the more widely used Transparent Medium Reddish Violet (Bricklink's Trans-Dark Pink) and Transparent Yellow. Later BIONICLE series tended to reduce the eye colors to just Lewa's (Transparent Fluorescent Green), representing good characters, and Pohatu's (Transparent Fluorescent Reddish-Orange) representing evil characters. I actually liked this in many cases, although it was a shame that there were no longer as many options. 2009 brought back Transparent Fluorescent Blue, Kopaka's eye color, as an option for sets, and it's interesting to observe that Hero Factory has now returned to having unique eye colors for each character, as an integral part of those sets' color schemes. Apparently the good-and-evil color coding was really most relevant in years where the hero and villain sets shared extremely similar structures and parts, such as 2006, 2008, and 2010.

The Toa Nuva also had well-balanced and well-organized color schemes: a primary color for hands, feet, bodies, and masks, a secondary color for limbs, silver armor, and black hips and shoulders. The black hips and shoulders are in my opinion as critical a part of the color scheme as the Dark Stone Grey joints of the Toa Metru, and it's a shame that so many Toa Mata and Toa Nuva revamps ignore their importance to the color scheme. Even the 2010 Tahu set left out this color, leading to a horrendously-imbalanced color scheme of searingly bright colors.

Overall, I'm not very critical about many sets. I try my best to appreciate them for their design advantages without ignoring their flaws. And while oftentimes my many rants in favor of more modern set designs made it seem like I didn't have a nostalgic bone in my body, this applies as much for the Toa Nuva as for any other sets. Even today I can consider them good sets, even if we've come so far since then in terms of posability and versatile part design. I really appreciate this review.

[ZORK64]

Great review -R8-!

Frankly, Tahu wasn't my most favourited Toa, in fact, he doesn't even made it into the Top 3 (which are Kopaka, Gali and Lewa), but on the other hand, I pretty much liked all six Toa - both in their Mata and Nuva forms.

The Toa Nuva were in general really awesome, although they looked less unique than their previous incarnations due to their dual weapons and the armour. But since the armour pieces were fantastic and I loved the whole idea of putting their weapons underneath their feet I won't complain about those things too much.

[prateek]

ZO6 pretty much sums this up pretty well. Yay classic Bionicle! I really loved the Nuvas, but my favourite line was the Rahkshi.

[Fred Daniel Yam]

I really liked this review and really loved the set as well. It was my first ever Bionicle set. I remember the days when you could buy masks separately.....

[Velika314]

I own this set and loved your review! It's disappointing that the HF canister-type sets don't have the gears or play features like these do.

[Toa Lahka]

The Toa Nuva also had well-balanced and well-organized color schemes: a primary color for hands, feet, bodies, and masks, a secondary color for limbs, silver armor, and black hips and shoulders. The black hips and shoulders are in my opinion as critical a part of the color scheme as the Dark Stone Grey joints of the Toa Metru, and it's a shame that so many Toa Mata and Toa Nuva revamps ignore their importance to the color scheme. Even the 2010 Tahu set left out this color, leading to a horrendously-imbalanced color scheme of searingly bright colors.

It seems that originally the Stars Tahu was going to have black blended in with his arms.

If I remember correctly, someone who worked on the parts said they were extremely prone to breaking, and couldn't be used.

[Aanchir]

I own this set and loved your review! It's disappointing that the HF canister-type sets don't have the gears or play features like these do.

Well, Hero Factory canister sets seem a lot "purer" to me in that they're not so Technic-intensive. From the beginning the majority of BIONICLE buyers were interested in the sets for their personality and role-play opportunities, not play features. Gradually BIONICLE dropped gear functions. Hero Factory has gone a step further by eliminating launcher functions in many sets, suggesting that at its core action figure themes are primarily popular for being buildable action figures, and not for gimmicky functions.

The Toa Mata and Toa Nuva action features were cool in a sense, because they had a "game" component to them. Like the 2001 and 2002 boxed sets, the Toa Mata and Toa Nuva could "fight" one another to remove their masks. But I think the change in 2003 to having masks that stayed more firmly attached demonstrates that buyers weren't all that interested in this feature, at least based on TLG's market research.

And to be honest, I spent a lot more time doing adventure-based role play with my BIONICLE sets than I spent playing the "knock each other's masks off" game. During this role-play, the functions (and the limited poses that came as a consequence) were a hindrance rather than an asset. I didn't really miss gear functions when they went away, even if today I sometimes have fun pulling out my old sets and watching them flail their arms about.

It seems that originally the Stars Tahu was going to have black blended in with his arms.

If I remember correctly, someone who worked on the parts said they were extremely prone to breaking, and couldn't be used.

Yeah, I know. I'm not sure how great blended parts would have looked anyway, but they would at least have given a stronger resemblance to the original Tahu and Tahu Nuva.

[ice dragon]

I just got a Tahu Nuva, and I must say it is one beautiful set. The aesthetics and colors work so much better than today's Hero Factory.

[Aanchir]

I just got a Tahu Nuva, and I must say it is one beautiful set. The aesthetics and colors work so much better than today's Hero Factory.

That's kind of odd, because for me the Toa Nuva have some of the closest color schemes to Hero Factory sets today: bright primary and secondary colors with plenty of black as a base color and metallic armor as accents. The main difference with the Toa Nuva, of course, is that the primary and secondary colors are very close together rather than having deliberate contrast, and so I suppose I can see how some people see a great difference between the two color scheme patterns.

[Vinyl Scratch]

The aesthetics and colors work so much better than today's Hero Factory.

Oh come on. Seriously?

I respect your opinion. But that is not all true, the Toa Nuva had 5 colors average - In this case Tahu Nuva has red, orange, black, silver and grey.

The 2.0 had black skeleton with a main colour and a secondary accent - with some metallic parts somewhere. For example, Evo is yellow with purple accents and three metallic pieces..

[ice dragon]

I was thinking about Firelord when I said that.

[Starparu]

I loved the review you did. It brings back fond memories of perhaps my favorite lego set ever. Considering how far Lego has gone with the Action figure theme from Bionicle, In my opinion Tahu Nuva stands as one of the best, despite his simplicity.

-Star