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No Bionicle in 2017 confirmed

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Sorry to all the fans of this theme. There are piles of the last wave on 50% off clearance in several stores near me, so it makes sense to me. At least there is a chance to stock up on parts affordably for fans who will keep MOCing.

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They promised to old funs that they would do much, that they will continue BIONICLE's glory on last year Comic-Con.And that's it. The big problem of this cancelling is LEOGs problem. In the 2015 there was a photo of information list and there was sais that BIONICLE sets are for children at the age of 9-12. I know, that on the boxes you can see another ages, but that is like a "mask" to hide original idea. So, they pressed on the story team much, look - protectors didn't have even names without books. There was one feature in G1. The story kept me buying all bohroks during two years. 12 (!) similar as clones models! And I collected all of them. Why? Because of a plot, personal identity of every bohrok and theit powers. The story and the atmosphere - the disigners and the "father" of BIONIICLE - Christian Faber worked so much and hard. In my language there is an interesting phrase - They worked with soul. That means they worked for the idea, trying to do all their best, making story and the universe more complicated and interesting. And now look at the beasts models, compare them with Toa-Uniters. Do you really suppose that designers did their best? How brilliant are Toa Uniters and Umarak the Hunter! And how these creatu Next, everybody knows that Lego tried to do the polt as simple as possible. Finally we got very common plot.

Raider Windham was shocked then he understood that Protectors don't even have hames. He and JtO animaters were only interested people (and funs), and that... TLG - not.

Look at journey to one. You can really see - animators really did their best - they show a lot of details, trying to tell us about Toa characters, thay never forget about background... The final was terrible. Like BIGBOSS came and ordered to make this series final. There supposed to be more...Next, the plot. LEGO was crared that children wouldn't understand it.BUT! children even at the age of 9-12 DO understand Remember yourself in your childhood - you didn't had problems with BIONICLE I suppose. They tried to get more money, they stopped people creavity and they lost a lot. That is not a BIONICLE problem. That is a TLG problem.Or there is somebody who hate BIONICLE and did everything to ruin these sets. Their policy was poor. They tried to listen to focus groups of children (too young children, I suppose - All people, who COULD got interested are older and so they lost the bigger part of their auditory and so they could do the plot more interesting) and advertize only ONE toa. But they could easily advertise less popilar Toa, make it "a sweet candy" to make bigger sales. But they didn't. They were lasy even trying to collect money. And that is really heartbrokening. Yes, they did a lot. Yes, they made my dream of returning BIONICLE true. But they didn't work on 100%, only at 20-30% they could do. Look at Makuta prototypes. I would like to say thank you for these two (1,5 actually, not even 2) years that I had some wishes about the story. But I will never say Thank you for what they finally had done.

Do you know that some times ago only BIONICLE saved LEGO from Bankruptcy?

the hole industry is now alive because of BIONICLE. And they couldn't even worked 100%.

They could! Look at Ninjago, look at TV series - they are interesting, they can teach children something good and new, characters are interestimg, there is a lot of place even for drama ant Polttwists! And what stopped them from doing something similar with BIONICLE?!

I cannot say I'm surprized. For the 1 world toy company it is a great failure. I suppose, it is the biggest LEGO failure for 21 century. Still, there were no sets or stories that could be enchanting but were destroyed. Gen 2 was so poorly handled especially compared to Gen 1. It felt really soulless, only created to try and get some money from old nostalgic fools like me. I only got 5 sets and don't have much interest in any more. If Bionicle gen 2 did anything it made me realize how special gen 1 was. It was just boring.

I would like to say "thank you" for these two (1,5 actually, not even 2) years that I had some wishes about the story, Raider, thank you too for all you did trying to make the Okoto world more complex and interesting, thank you, animators for all your work. But I will never say Thank you for what they finally had done. I will never say thank you for your pressure on really creative people who really could do everything to return BIONICLE its' glore again!

Now I feel completey at a loss. Thank you, TLG.

You could even sell polybags with a MoAP with DVD but you will not. Thank you for this spitting in my and all BIONICLE funs faces from the money mountain.

Edited by Illarion

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Something that makes me wonder is just how badly did Bionicle flop so that the LEGO Company decided to cut it off early instead of letting it run its 3 year course. I mean, Chima flopped pretty badly as well and it managed to last its 3 years before its plugged got pulled. So what's the difference? Especially seeing as BIONICLE was almost always sold out at my local LEGO store and they said it was pretty popular there when I asked them. :wacko:

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Something that makes me wonder is just how badly did Bionicle flop so that the LEGO Company decided to cut it off early instead of letting it run its 3 year course. I mean, Chima flopped pretty badly as well and it managed to last its 3 years before its plugged got pulled. So what's the difference? Especially seeing as BIONICLE was almost always sold out at my local LEGO store and they said it was pretty popular there when I asked them. :wacko:

Could be more of a behind the scenes problem than a sales.

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I wonder if this is actually a marketing strategy to make us think Bionicle is ending so we buy everything in bulk and clearance, then are all like "lol fooled you makin' bank" and unveil G3?

Or maybe I watch too much anime.

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I would add that Lego is in a different place now during G2 than it was during G1. During G2 Lego didn't have the amount of licensed themes that could steal sales of their in-house themes. I would venture to say that Lego collectors of the time of G1 were more aligned to buy in-house themes, as the only real license competition would have been Star Wars which was still somewhat new at that time.

Now during G2, there is so much competition that it's hard to introduce a completely new in-house theme. Even Nexu Knights is not a full-blown success, despite being a Systems theme and having three "with purchase" promos being offered this year alone.

I see the struggle of G2 as being a struggle to bring in new fans because when people who don't know what Bionicle is are weighing buying a Bonicle set and, say, a Spider-Man set, I think the latter will win.

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So asia region don't get the last wave huh. That explains why i haven't seen any until now. And i wanted UtD too. Oh well. I am indeed sad to see it end, as bionicle was what pulled me out from my dark age. But at the same time, i'm also grateful that lego has given us two more years for bionicle. Albeit short, i do love all the g2 sets that i have. Thank you lego, whatever new constraction theme you come up witg next year, i'm ready to welcome it with a smile.

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Something that makes me wonder is just how badly did Bionicle flop so that the LEGO Company decided to cut it off early instead of letting it run its 3 year course. I mean, Chima flopped pretty badly as well and it managed to last its 3 years before its plugged got pulled. So what's the difference? Especially seeing as BIONICLE was almost always sold out at my local LEGO store and they said it was pretty popular there when I asked them. :wacko:

I've never seen any real evidence that Chima flopped badly. A lot of the sets got heavily clearanced in the United States, but the fact that they kept releasing so many sets year after year suggests that in Europe it was successful for them. It's also worth noting that Chima could manage to get a lot smaller. So for instance, the 2014 constraction sets were only released in Europe due to low North American sales, and the last wave of Speedorz in 2014 was cancelled outright, which allowed it to remain profitable for another year. But Bionicle G2 was never as big a theme to begin with, so they didn't have so many stages they could go through to lower its profile.

Generally, Chima's one of those themes that a lot of AFOLs like to assume was never even marginally successful, but then, there are still to this day a lot of AFOLs who have a hard time believing Ninjago or Bionicle G1 were ever successful.

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The comment I posted yesterday was written out of emotion, by now i had the time to gather my thoughts.

The single thing that grieves me the most is how bad this second cancellation hurts BIONICLE's reputation. Until 2014 BIONICLE was known as LEGO's most succesful IP of all times, their longest running theme every (amongst those with a story), the franchise that saved LEGO. A saga that ended after ten years with an entire wave devoted to celebrate it (I know the Stars are controversial, but they weren't even supposed to exist: that speaks volumes about BIONICLE's former importance).

From yesterday onwards, BIONICLE will be remembered as the line that couldn't even manage to reach its planned end. How many times did that happen in LEGO's history? Not many, not when such a huge name was in play.

The marketing has been ridicolous, and at last some people here found the right words to express this. I'm not saying LEGO didn't spend money on BIONICLE G2, that would be objectively wrong: LEGO spent it to promote it mostly amongst american AFOLs, making a ginormous mistake. I'm sick tired of people repeating like a broken record of the NYCC panel, solid gold masks, designer videos etc. That was all stuff directed to an extremely small minority of AFOLs, and as we all know AFOLs don't like that much BIONICLE, not even after 15 years since its first launch. The target audience are 8-12 boys: do you think a french or german kid would care about a panel at an event taking place thousands of miles away from his home? It's like LEGO thought "of well last time BIONICLE sold well in the USA, let's spend our small budget to promote it there forgetting about Europe". The books arriving only in France at the end of this year, the absence of commercials and events are all clear examples that Europe was forgotten as much as in G1.

In order to make you understand how bad BIONICLE G2 was promoted, I'll offer you a glaring example. Topolino (Mickey Mouse) is Italy's most read magazine for kids, and it's published every seven days. Each time a new wave of Hero Factory came out, for at least four weeks the back of the cover showed an advertisement for it. They did so until IfB.

Do you know how many times BIONICLE appeared in Topolino since January 2015? Zero (0). That is never.

How can you even think to sell a KIDS' TOY if you don't promote it on something that almost ever italian kid reads every week?

If BIONICLE did really have a small budget (as it should be pretty clear by now), they should have spent it in such a way that could allow KIDS to know about the existence of the line. Not whiny adults on the internet.

And speaking of adults, I think that the extremely small community of BIONICLE fans that still exists on the internet tried as much as it could to remind us that BIONICLE should have stayed in the past. Arguments, denial, blindness... thank goodness the majority of people, here and elsewhere, allowed BIONICLE to have small places on the web where it could be discussed with dignity. But whenever I think that somebody once told meBIONICLE was failing because fans weren't writing more fanfictions of it... my god. Let alone all the worried fans that have been labeled during the last few months as "doomsayers in search of a short term popularity". Sickening.

As for myself, my career as a LEGO customer is officially over. I was interested only in constraction, I'm not really a brick guy, and since it has officially become a way to expand System themes, the almost guaranteed absence of CCBS-exclusive themes until the '20s leaves me very little to look forward.

Edited by TwistLaw

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Oh, and by the way I'm pretty sure that LEGO will never say "sorry kids, we made a mistake". BIONICLE will be the only culprit for them, thus disappearing for a very long time, if not for ever.

I really don't think LEGO is humble enough to admit a false step, for sure they'll never say sorry to the fans. Why should they?

But the end of BIONICLE should worry us for another reason. LEGO is becoming more and more relying on other franchises in order to make money, franchises that have rich and strong stories. Star Wars, Marvel, DC, you name it... all the money they made out of these themes thaught nothing to LEGO, at least as long as we look at BIONICLE G2's story. A story that was kept as simple (and uninteresting) for the general public as possible. They were so insecure they didn't even want to give names to the Protectors. And, in general, it's not healty for LEGO to rely so much on other people's properties. They do have their own strong IPs, but they're making less money than the licensed ones do when combined.

We liked it because it was a good story by itself and we're fans of BIONICLE, but a kid who knows every Pokémon name and wears all day long a Batman t-shirt, why should he care about robots doing generic things without a backstory? G2 masks didn't even receive a proper name. Yuks.

That's what I mean when I say LEGO didn't believe in its own franchise. They sold BIONICLE G2 with a debatable (to say the least) marketing campaign hoping older fans could lead the way.

The only problem is that there aren't even anymore that many older fans out there.

Edited by TwistLaw

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Let alone all the worried fans that have been labeled during the last few months as "doomsayers in search of a short term popularity". Sickening.

I don't think anybody ever actually talked about attention seeking (if so, it was a poor choice of words, or maybe even a translation error!) but my stance on that is that people always have to put their (figurative) money where their mouth is. Were the people constantly going "the sky is falling!" actively doing anything productive in terms of engagement with the line otherwise?

If people want to use violent hyperboles, like being "stabbed in the back", or "slapped in the face", then they should probably take a look at why they feel so hurt, and whether or not that fervor translated across the span of the line. I'm not saying that means exclusively fanfiction, or art, or whatever, but keep in mind that, nowadays, these are the kinds of metrics that TLG uses. If sales aren't going to show enough enthusiasm for a brand (and it appears they weren't), then how else can people communicate their passion?

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If sales aren't going to show enough enthusiasm for a brand (and it appears they weren't), then how else can people communicate their passion?

Well I spent 500$ on BIONICLE G2, I think I communicated my "passion" pretty well. You should have a rough idea at how pissed off I am right now knowing I won't be able to have a complete collection of G2 sets, especially since we were showed the Mask of Ultimate Power without even having the possibility to get it as a polybag. For me, this is disrespectful towards the fans, towards the people that regardless of bad marketing choices spent money and time for LEGO and its products.

And my english may be poor, but I don't need a translator to understand when someone taunts me or people with ideas similar to mine. But I'd like to stop right here as far as this last point is concerned.

Edited by TwistLaw

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But the end of BIONICLE should worry us for another reason. LEGO is becoming more and more relying on other franchises in order to make money, franchises that have rich and strong stories. Star Wars, Marvel, DC, you name it... all the money they made out of these themes thaught nothing to LEGO, at least as long as we look at BIONICLE G2's story. A story that was kept as simple (and uninteresting) for the general public as possible. They were so insecure they didn't even want to give names to the Protectors. And, in general, it's not healty for LEGO to rely so much on other people's properties. They do have their own strong IPs, but they're making less money than the licensed ones do when combined.

Not true — according to CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp in this article from last year, licensed products "contribute no more of our business than about a third." He says more or less the same thing in this interview, and also adds that this has been the status quo for over ten years, rather than being a recent phenomenon. In last year's annual result, only two of the five top-selling sets (Elsa's Sparking Ice Castle and the Millennium Falcon) and only one of the five top-selling themes (Star Wars) were licensed ones. What's more, if Bionicle wasn't selling in numbers great enough to justify its continued existence, then its cancellation shouldn't shift the balance in favor of licensed themes, particularly when in-house brands like City, Ninjago, Friends, and Elves continue to thrive.

It's only the constraction category where the in-house themes seem to be struggling more and more with each passing year, and even licensed themes don't appear to be a guaranteed hit in that category — after all, Super Heroes constraction sets only lasted one year compared to Legends of Chima's two. Whatever reasons there may be to worry about what Bionicle's cancellation means for the future of LEGO, licensed themes aren't one of them.

Edited by Aanchir

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Not true — according to CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp in this article from last year, licensed products "contribute no more of our business than about a third." He says more or less the same thing in this interview, and also adds that this has been the status quo for over ten years, rather than being a recent phenomenon. In last year's annual result, only two of the five top-selling sets (Elsa's Sparking Ice Castle and the Millennium Falcon) and only one of the five top-selling themes (Star Wars) were licensed ones. What's more, if Bionicle wasn't selling in numbers great enough to justify its continued existence, then its cancellation shouldn't shift the balance in favor of licensed themes, particularly when in-house brands like City, Ninjago, Friends, and Elves continue to thrive.

It's only the constraction category where the in-house themes seem to be struggling more and more with each passing year, and even licensed themes don't appear to be a guaranteed hit in that category — after all, Super Heroes constraction sets only lasted one year compared to Legends of Chima's two. Whatever reasons there may be to worry about what Bionicle's cancellation means for the future of LEGO, licensed themes aren't one of them.

I honestly feel the main reason with constraction is that it's too alienating from the regular Lego.

Can't be only one here that thinks a Exo-Force 2.0 seems like the only way forward, with actual minifigs and bit more emphasis on system than Invasion from Below.

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I hope these are the last words I need to add, I don't wanna monopolize the thread: as a BIONICLE fan I feel insulted by the way LEGO decided to end everything.

I just watched the last two episodes of Journey to One and they were just... cringeworthy and uninspired. The typical work of someone that has to do it, but really doesn't want to.

The situation is so ridiculous to the point they didn't even provide us with instructions for the Makuta model! My god. We're lucky that they'll send some pictures to Dorek, but I really feel insulted by this attitude.

You tease us with a mask you will never sell us, you show us models without even giving instructions. And conclude the story with two forgettable, uninspired, episodes.

BIONICLE G2 may be summarized with one word: a waste.

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BIONICLE G2 may be summarized with one word: a waste.

Had to, sorry. Too much negativity in here. :tongue:

Edited by BrickJagger

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You tease us with a mask you will never sell us, you show us models without even giving instructions. And conclude the story with two forgettable, uninspired, episodes.

BIONICLE G2 may be summarized with one word: a waste.

I've thoroughly enjoyed Bionicle G2, so it certainly wasn't wasted on me. It feels kind of unreasonable to act like cool things should never be shown to fans unless those fans are subsequently given the means to buy and/or build them. Complaints like that are the reason LEGO no longer puts inspiration models on most boxes — because they got too many calls from parents who felt that showing kids cool examples of what they could build with their own imaginations and then not going to the extra expense to make and release instructions was false advertising.

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The main difference is that you're able to build that inspiration models, while you can't make a new mask mold yourself (unless you happen to own a 3D printer, which still isn't the same as having an officially manufactured Lego piece).

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I've thoroughly enjoyed Bionicle G2, so it certainly wasn't wasted on me. It feels kind of unreasonable to act like cool things should never be shown to fans unless those fans are subsequently given the means to buy and/or build them. Complaints like that are the reason LEGO no longer puts inspiration models on most boxes — because they got too many calls from parents who felt that showing kids cool examples of what they could build with their own imaginations and then not going to the extra expense to make and release instructions was false advertising.

Well at least the kids who bought a set with inspiration models printed on the box had something to play with: a toy.

We'll never have Makuta. We'll never get the MoUP. At least give us instructions of the set we were all waiting for, the set we were promised two years ago.

Edited by TwistLaw

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Well at least the kids who bought a set with inspirational models printed on the box had something to play with: a toy.

We'll never have Makuta. We'll never get the MoUP. At least give us instructions of the set we were all waiting for, the set we were promised two years ago.

http://lego.brickinstructions.com/en/lego_instructions/set/70787/Tahu_-_Master_of_Fire

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