Bionicle 2015 Discussion

[InfurnallDragon]

my guess is maybe a spider came in contact with the moUP and mutated and took control of the others. I'm interested to hear what the story behind the spiders is.

And about the toa weaknesses, how hilarious would it be if one of them was aracnaphobia.

"Kopaka is noble and reserved. Upholding his own strict moral code he strives to be perfect, but is deathly afraid of spiders!"

I actually have a bit of a theory related to this:

The reason that LEGO does not make action figure spiders with 8 legs, but does make 4 or 6 legged ones could be to avoid scaring kids who are afraid of spiders. The appearances of the LOSS, Visorak, and Skull Spiders don't really scream spider without their names or context.

Ive found out in different fanbases that arachnophobia is apparently quite common. There have been requests in some videogames like Terraria for mods that replace the spiders with things that simply dont look like spiders (even if they still do all the things spiders do), just to alleviate that fear a bit.

It is a lot easier to deal with something that vaguely resembles a phobia than the phobia itself.

So a kid who is genuinely repulsed by real spiders would not be too uncomfortable with the appearance of visorak (which I initially thought were more like ants).

Edited October 15, 2014 by InfurnallDragon

[Agent Fusion]

The Skull Spiders are part mask, so why doesn't LOSS look like a mask? It does.

How many spikes are on the MoUP?

Six.

How many legs does LOSS have?

Six.

What colours are on the MoUP?

Black and red.

What colours are on LOSS?

Black and red.

LOSS is a mutated MoUP

Edited October 15, 2014 by Agent Fusion

[Mutant Orc]

Well that makes some sense, although its rather annoying.

Why bother with spiders at all if you're going to remove one of their most defining features? If they choose spiders as they are perceived as more sinister than any insect...why make them less scary and undo that reasoning by giving them 6 legs and changing so much that they are barely spider any more? You may as well make them ants in the first place.

And surely the fact that LOSS is blobby rather than split into accurate body segments, is missing hair and has a cartoony face means its not that similar anyways. But 6 legs instead of 8 just makes the inaccuracies rather ridiculous and tips the balance from acceptable differences to questionable differences. It seems slightly strange.

Considering other Lego sets feature accurate spiders such as Shelob and the ones in the Mirkwood Spiders set. Also the spider mold itself is spidery.

Maybe LEGO should have a theme with nice, friendly spiders in it one day to try and show that they are actually not at all bad*- actually most peoples need to give spiders a break to try and ease the phobia. I'm sure there are other things that could be made 'scary' instead for a change....

(*Maybe stick Spiders on the good guys side in Chima, or stick in nice spiders with the Elves theme. Galaxy Squad would have been rather funny (and rather stupid) if it had spiders fighting the insects..!)

Anyways, I'm beginning to ramble now...

Edited October 15, 2014 by Mutant Orc

[InfurnallDragon]

The Skull Spiders are part mask, so why doesn't LOSS look like a mask?

How many spikes are on the MoUP?

Six.

How many legs does LOSS have?

Six.

What colours are on the MoUP?

Black and red.

What colours are on LOSS?

Black and red.

LOSS is a mutated MoUP

Wait... he has 6 legs... and two colors... 6/2 is 3...

HALF BIONICLE 3 CONFIRMED

Ill agree that there has to be some sort of connection though.

Well that makes some sense, although its rather annoying.

Why bother with spiders at all if you're going to remove one of their most defining features? If they choose spiders as they are perceived as more sinister than any insect...why make them less scary and undo that reasoning by giving them 6 legs?

Surely the fact that LOSS is blobby rather than split into accurate body segments, is missing hair and has a cartoony face means that its not that similar anyways. But 6 legs instead of 8 just makes the inaccuracies rather ridiculous and tips the balance from acceptable differences to questionable differences. It seems slightly strange.

And Shelob was a rather accurate spider. And so are the ones in the Mirkwood Spiders set.

It could be said that the movie merchandise is this way because it isn't a story owned by LEGO.

But what I was saying was just speculation that made sense to me. It makes sense that LEGO could use artistic license (another explanation for the legs) in order to make their own IPs more accessible. In normal system LEGO the spider pieces (the one solitary piece) still look silly and unreal.

Edited October 15, 2014 by InfurnallDragon

[The Kumquat Alchemist]

Well that makes some sense, although its rather annoying.

Why bother with spiders at all if you're going to remove one of their most defining features? If they choose spiders as they are perceived as more sinister than any insect...why make them less scary and undo that reasoning by giving them 6 legs?

Surely the fact that LOSS is blobby rather than split into accurate body segments, is missing hair and has a cartoony face means that its not that similar anyways. But 6 legs instead of 8 just makes the inaccuracies rather ridiculous and tips the balance from acceptable differences to questionable differences. It seems slightly strange.

I've always assumed that LEGO's tendency to make <8-legged "spiders" is to keep part counts down, make posing and display easier, and make the build less tedious for young children. Apart, they are not very good justifications, but together I can imagine that they would discourage the designers from making more anatomically correct "spider" builds, for constraction figures at least.

Edited October 15, 2014 by The Kumquat Alchemist

[Lord-Vorahk]

Hoping the MoUP will be the main villain, and Makuta might even be redeemable.

As for the fears? A fear of the dark is a good thing in Bionicle. After all...

"Shadows are everywhere, and where they are, so am I."

[Aanchir]

The Skull Spiders are part mask, so why doesn't LOSS look like a mask?

Well, the Lord of Skull Spiders sort of vaguely looks like a mask, in that it has the two transparent shells on its back that could be "eyes". But I don't know if that was deliberate.

Anyway... one thing to keep in mind is that we don't know if Lord of Skull Spiders is a unique entity or if there's more than one of them. Its product description describes it in the singular, but the same is true of the descriptions for many BIONICLE and Hero Factory creatures like Frost Beast or Vorox that are known to depict a generic member of an entire species. If there is more than one Lord of Skull Spiders, then that basically rules out the possibility of it being a transformed version of the Mask of Ultimate Power itself, because we know there's only one of said mask.

[Agent Fusion]

Anyway... one thing to keep in mind is that we don't know if Lord of Skull Spiders is a unique entity or if there's more than one of them. Its product description describes it in the singular, but the same is true of the descriptions for many BIONICLE and Hero Factory creatures like Frost Beast or Vorox that are known to depict a generic member of an entire species. If there is more than one Lord of Skull Spiders, then that basically rules out the possibility of it being a transformed version of the Mask of Ultimate Power itself, because we know there's only one of said mask.

Well, with a title like that, I would expect it to be a single being.

[Mutant Orc]

It could be said that the movie merchandise is this way because it isn't a story owned by LEGO.

But what I was saying was just speculation that made sense to me. It makes sense that LEGO could use artistic license (another explanation for the legs) in order to make their own IPs more accessible. In normal system LEGO the spider pieces (the one solitary piece) still look silly and unreal.

Good point.

I've always assumed that LEGO's tendency to make <8-legged "spiders" is to keep part counts down, make posing and display easier, and make the build less tedious for young children. Apart, they are not very good justifications, but together I can imagine that they would discourage the designers from making more anatomically correct "spider" builds, for constraction figures at least.

Although this is more likely. There are a fair amount of 'scary' things in Lego, I don't suppose spiders are that bad in comparison to some. Anyways...

Edited October 15, 2014 by Mutant Orc

[InfurnallDragon]

The character bios on BIONICLE.com are still poorly formatted.

This:

Primary Color: White Element: Ice Favorite environment: Glaciers and tundra Masks: Mask of Ice and Golden Mask of Ice Powers: Freezing touch and resistance to cold. Primary weapon: Frost Shield that can split to become powerful Avalanche Skis. Secondary weapon: Ice Spear. Signature moves: Ice Lance & Frost Sphere Key traits: Reserved, righteous and steady,

Would be better as:

• Element: Ice
  
• Favored Environment: Glaciers and tundra
  
• Masks: a Mask of Ice an The Golden Mask of Ice
  
• Powers: Freezing touch and resistance to cold
  

Et cetera.

Just realized that this Bio explains that weird shielding bubble a little. I am now expecting the attack combo Spiderman has in every Activision game that lets him form a shield with his webbing, then shatter and expel it in a blast to damage nearby enemies- but with ice and not webbing.

Edited October 15, 2014 by InfurnallDragon

[Mutant Orc]

Well, with a title like that, I would expect it to be a single being.

They could each lord over a separate place and army. One Spider Lord for each region of the island, and then the chief villain/MoUP as the ruler of them all.

Or it could be the one. I don't think the name really is that helpful for deciding either way.

The MoUP could have split itself into separate pieces, and the pieces could have morphed themselves into spiders (multiple LoSS) with some degree of control over other spiders as they have some of the mask's controlling abilities. But probably not.

Yes they need to format stuff a bit better. It's surprising how much harder it is to read paragraphs of bitesize info in comparison to just having the bitesized info separate from each other.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Mutant Orc

[Agent Fusion]

They could each lord over a separate place and army. One Spider Lord for each region of the island, and then the chief villain/MoUP as the ruler of them all.

That's a good point.

[Aanchir]

If anyone's interested, The Brothers Brick has high-res images on their Flickr, including both the Toa and Protectors. Kind of odd that no sites seem to have gotten an out-of-package image of Lord of Skull Spiders.

[Dorek]

Since Makuta wears the Mask Of Control, I kind of figure that's what's causing the animals to be all mean.

[Kalhiki]

If anyone's interested, The Brothers Brick has high-res images on their Flickr, including both the Toa and Protectors. Kind of odd that no sites seem to have gotten an out-of-package image of Lord of Skull Spiders.

Man. The trans parts on the Stone characters still look super yellow...

[Shakar]

And Stone Protector's weapon is described as creating a sand storm IIRC. Which does fit tr. yellow..man this is really weird.

[InfurnallDragon]

We've been fooled again! *sob*

We will never see transparent yellow!

Why must they torment us so!?

Edited October 15, 2014 by InfurnallDragon

[Aanchir]

Man. The trans parts on the Stone characters still look super yellow...

Transparent Fluorescent Green often looks really yellow in renders. Just look at it on LDD, for example, or in the thumbnails from the LEGO Customer Service site. For that reason I almost find the Protector of Stone's color quite apparent in these pictures. When you compare a Tr. Yellow part with a Tr. Fluore. Green part, the latter is closer to the look of the Protector of Stone's beams and ammo (though his mask doesn't quite match, so maybe it IS Tr. Yellow).

Official set images they often take care to correct this so the greenish color is more apparent. Not always, though — just look at the official images for 4527 or 44025.

[InfurnallDragon]

Official set images they often take care to correct this so the greenish color is more apparent. Not always, though — just look at the official images for 4527 or 44025.

Reminds me of Onua Mistika's eyes. That was when the first rumors of Tr. Yellow pieces began along with the idea of Tr. Yellow for the matoran of light.

In my analysis of the new Onua, I thought new he would have yellow eyes like Mistika's packaging suggested, but his eyestalk will most likely be fluorescent green too.

We can always just squint really hard and pretend they are yellow.

Edited October 15, 2014 by InfurnallDragon

[Nekchir]

I apologize for beating a dead horse here, but do some stores already have the sets in storage around this time? The reason I'm asking is because I decided to browse around BioTube and I remembered the first (YouTube) Stars' review (Link:

); which was posted on November 15. Albeit, this was five/four years ago and doesn't necessarily apply to today. But it seems that we could expect some random person to spot these beauties in a radom store around November--possibly Early November.

[Chro]

I don't think they'd be out this early - maybe soon(ish) though. I recall Front (or someone from NYCC) saying that they'll need to rework the mask mold slightly, and I don't imagine they'd've shipped out a large quantity of sets so early if there was an issue like that still unfixed.

[Timeline15]

My god, it's remarkable how long ago 2010 feels. I keep thinking of it like yesterday and then realising it was almost five years ago. Seeing that old biotuber again was quite a wake up call.

2 months before the supposed release date doesn't seem likely though. That would have them on the shelves at the same time as the last HF sets. I don't see lego doing that.

Not that it affects me, as I'm probably not getting them till march. Not having an income source of my own leaves me rather reliant on birthdays for these things.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Timeline15

[Quisoves Pugnat]

The first time I saw the Stars was in my local Toys R Us, on either 19 or 20 November. They were, however, an unusually early release (due no doubt to the size of the wave and the sets therein,) and I can think of few other constraction sets to materialize so soon. The only other ones that come mind are the Rahaga, who showed up at the same store in November of 2004. Normally, I have to wait for early to mid (usually the latter, if memory serves me correctly) December to see the newest constraction sets.

[coolcab1]

Has anyone thought of this, at the end of this year's story they either awaken Ekimu or find a whole bunch of masks and the villagers ditch their masks and get new ones, like a fire villager gets a powerless golden mask of fire and a water villager gets a mask of water.

Edited October 15, 2014 by coolcab1

[Timeline15]

One downside I just thought of about the masks being elemental (beyond the obvious):

Kopaka now has a giant scope over one eye for absolutely no reason XD.

It doesn't have x-ray power's any more, and has nothing to do with ice. No wonder he's clumsy now, no depth perception.