Where was the "factory" in Hero Factory?

[Logan McOwen]

No, this isn't a question about geography.

I loved Hero Factory, and still do. One thing I really liked about it was the rather open-ended premise. While it was story driven with the Alpha Team and their missions, the concept of there being a literal factory producing hundreds of Heroes akin to those in the Alpha Team, and that said other Heroes were each in their own teams going on their own missions against their own villains, meant practically any original character you came up with was as good as canon. This mix of a basic premise for creative play and a storyline for more linear play was really interesting, and certainly inspired myself and many others to create their own adventures within the Hero Factory universe.

That said, I think Lego really did themselves rotten by not actively pursuing this dichotomy more than they did. While we got Hero Recon Team in 2011 and the ability to play as custom heroes in the Brain Attack game, the potential creativity of the Hero Factory franchise was never really fully explored. When I first heard about Hero Factory in 2010, I was assuming that it would a more Creator-esque approach to constraction, and actually found myself quite excited about it. While I wasn't disappointed, I was still expecting a much bigger focus on creative play, rather than character-based story.

I think this dichotomy could've been better followed if Hero Factory had both canon-oriented sets, portraying the year's main protagonists and antagonists, alongside more creative sets. For example, there could've been a "Build a Hero" series of sets, with a box for each season featuring enough parts to build up to two or more unique Heroes, with each instalment in the series containing new pieces introduced during its season in special colours. Alternatively, even more open-ended sets like the Bionicle 500 piece tub from 2005 could've been done, featuring tons of duplicates of both new and old pieces for truly custom building.

What do you guys think? Do you think Hero Factory could've used a bit more "factory"?

[TheDesuComplex]

I DEFINITELY think so. After years of not bothering to MoC in any sort of official way, Hero Factory's premise gave me the impetus to try and create my own Heroes- from playing around with that browser game in 2010 to, when CCBS rolled around, making an entire team of heroes. Hero Factory did have that potential, and I wonder if it was after feedback from the community (aka all the people complaining about the story) that they decided to instead focus on the Alpha team entirely and get that linear story across.

[DraikNova]

Hell yes, and it wasn't even the heroes so much as the fact that there were so many settings in its universe to work with that inspired me and I still found it to be great fun building custom heroes, A build-a-hero kit with pieces to customize your characters more is something I wanted since 2011.

[MrHerofan]

A build a hero series would have been really cool, but one thing I wanted from hero factory was more new heroes. After Rocka appeared during Savage Planet we never really got new characters on the main team. I would have loved if in each series there were a few heroes from other teams that came in as back up for Alpha Team. Maybe not as sets, but would be able to have been made from pre existing pieces. Kind of like the Shadow Spawn and Makuta from JtO

Edited August 11, 2016 by MrHerofan

[Master_Data]

Oh yes! I was never a fan, but the line as a whole really could've benefited from Build-A-Hero/Villain tub. I think they shied away from it due to the utter failure that was Hero Recon.

[csi304]

Hero Factory was my favorite line ever, but the later lines (Brain Attack, and Invasion from Below) didn't really appeal to me..

Everything from the begin to break out was great, especially the Hero Recon (too bad it flopped).

I absolutely love the idea of build a hero/villain considering Hero Factory has some really unique and interesting parts.