TwistLaw

Mmmh while they sure had hints to their affiliation they never were that explicit in their appearance until at least the Barraki. Those were the first sets which made me think, as a kid, "zOMG that's the bad guy!!". The aforementioned Brutaka did something that no other set did before: he had gold in its colour scheme, a shade that until then was associated exclusively with good guys and has been since. Him having pointy shapes isn't an indication either, since Hydraxon from 2007 was pretty pointy himself. All of this may be excused since Brutaka wasn't actually a bad guy, but in 2006 he was sold as such. Roodaka may be the least compelling example, but as you said the year she was released wasn't exactly the clearest as far as recognizing good guys from bad guys is concerned. And fangs and pointy weapons aren't a great indication either, Lewa Nuva just called. But all in all I agree with you, "incorporating traits stereotypically associated with evil into the villainous sets' looks" is something I'm ok with myself. Until, of course, it's not a trait used to excuse poor design choices (if I had a penny for every time the gappy and colorwise dull Skellies were excused because they were monsters....)

This is sooooo boring. G2 villains are ok, some of them are GREAT (Umarak the Hunter), but they make it far too easy to spot the bad guy. Brutaka, Roodaka, the Inika, the Vahki... G1 had some good examples of bad/good guys that didn't look like that at first sight. Even the Bohrok didn't have a particularly "evil" look, at least not as stereotypical as Kulta or Lava Beast. The "that's blatantly a bad guy" look arrived only pretty late, in 2007, with the oversemplification of green eyes=good guys VS red eyes= bad guys (poor Matau...). While that may be a wise market choice, it makes characters flatter. And whenever I try to MOC a bad guy "in disguise", the only alternatives existing to the skull masks are Umarak's and the Toa's, along with the Protector mask. That's another limitation of G2, in my opinion.

I keep on forgetting that this time around we didn't get comics but graphic novels, my bad. You know I was talking about them, just like you know that on the internet the word "objective" has no meaning and thousands at the same time. In this particular case I just thought that the visual style wasn't faitfhul to the toys neither a well executed compromise like in the animations were.

You made me like those horrible feet, that should speak volumes about how much I like this MOC. Bravo, as usual.

That awesome artwork from Tomycase (one of my favourite artists, btw) is the scientific evidence that G1 is objectively superior to G2 in at least one aspect: style of the comics. I'll never be tired of saying that they did an awful job in that departement, something I fail to understand especially since last year we got animations in a very nice style that could be recycled without problems.

That comment section gave me a skin disease. Seriously, how can people be still butthurt about BIONICLE's existence in the year 2016 (twenty-sixteen)? How can't they be tired of saying the same things over and over again ("BIONICLE is not LEGO/is ugly" etc.)? I'm astonished.

You never disappoint me, Lowan. I-I mean, as far as constraction figures are concerned. By the way traps would make awesome hats, funny nobody put that in practice already.

I come from the year 2018 and CCBS has two themes: Nexo Nights and Star Wars. In all seriousness, this is the most realistic scenario. They need to sell, and they need to play it safe. Further proof LEGO is seriously thinking about CCBS Nexo Knights.

One thing I love about 2016 are traps. They're so cute :3 LEGO did an amazing job in portraying their looks and their function. Traps are ambiguous, they can be both something that harms both something that protects and 2016 sets showed it off pretty well. And in general traps have a unique charm, thanks to their appearance that hides a crucial mechanism (as opposed to the Beasts' jaws, that can't even close...). In short I can say without hesitation that I love traps.

I read a summary of the book on 4chan and... MY GOD IT'S AWESOME. That's really the kind of stuff G2 needed to prove itself worth of discussion. This one and Revenge of the Skull Spiders are awesome pieces of writing that really get you into the mood of Okoto and its whole new world. Too bad that's the last book, would have been really interesting to explore other side stories like these.

I don't think anybody is. But that was unfair, there is no denying. I don't think a failing toy line may be saved by a fanfiction. And I'm speaking in general. As far as BIONICLE is concerned, if we didn't see much work from the fans maybe the source material itself could be blamed a little. If it were more engaging, deep and original the (currently small) fanbase BIONICLE has on the internet may have been a little more active and maybe it could have even expanded. I supported BIONICLE by purchasing nearly all of the sets, some of them in multiple copies, and buying magazines and books. In my humble opinion that's the best I could do, more than writing a fanfiction in my poor english, more than drawing an artwork with my 2nd grade skills. I see where you're coming from, and I somehow agree with you, but you shouldn't put such a heavy boulder on such a small community. This is no 2004.

This. How are we supposed to take these contests seriously after that time? By the way, as I said many times, saying the line is failing also because of AFOLs is hogwash. How many people do regularly browse this forum? Fifty, at best? It's nothing compared to the market BIONICLE is aimed at. Whatever we say, it's not gonna influence a relevant amount of people. The "exciting world-building and lore added by Windham" is so massive that a page or two are enough to comment it. After that, not much else remains to be talked about. No games, no movies, not even comics anymore. JtO is the only hot topic we're having since a long time, and it's rightfully at the center of long discussions whenever something new about it pops out. The fans, at least here in Eurobricks, can't do much. And it's up to the people in control of the community to keep it alive. TTV, BZP and EB are all doing an acceptable job as far as I'm concerned.

Welcome Romaniabro, sadly next year is almost guaranteed to be the last one.

One thing is ending within your planned expire date, another one is ending as the biggest failure in LEGO's constraction departement since the century began. (please, don't mention that thing that begins with G- and ends with -alidor) That's pretty cool and contradicts the notion that action figures are on the decline in the US, at least up to recent years. So yeah, a little more faith in BIONICLE wouldn't have hurt.

It's over, everybody go home. But it must be said that the european shops don't show any "retiring soon" label.

Italy is a secondary market for LEGO (we don't even have a single LEGO store in the whole country). Constraction, having itself a narrower market share when compared to brick-based themes, is substantially nonexistent in Italy. Yet, both of your theories may be true. BIONICLE may end in 2017 and Italy may not receive anymore issues of the magazine, a magazine that may very well still be distributed in more profitable areas like Germany and UK. By the way I read the comics contained in the magazine: just as I thought, the artstyle STINKS. And there's literally nothing else amongst those pages, except a couple of your run-of-the-mill games like "draw a line from point A to point B". In short, I personally verified that the magazine is mostly a ploy to sell the comics. Nothing wrong with that, as I already said, plus the polybags are welcome additions.

Sorry for double post, but I bring bad news: the next issue of the BIONICLE magazine is gonna be the last, at least in Italy. It says "in october discover the LAST special issue of the BIONICLE magazine". Well, it was something. Ridiculously overpriced, but still something. ninja'd

Nope. I think this will have some sort of influence on its secondary market value.

The magazine came out today in Italy. Yay! (it doesn't allow me to resize the image, pls help me)

The magazine is released in Europe, and we didn't get the novel nor the books. That's another problem I've ALWAYS had with LEGO and how they handled BIONICLE's story material, but that's fuel for another rant. Maybe, since the novel didn't sell well in the USA, they decided to sell it to the europeans using another stratagem. A sort of trade off: you get the novel in a single shot, and you get the novel paying ten times its price but with cheap gadgets included in every issue. As I said, it's a win-win condition. I just checked and the hardcover of "Gathering of the Toa" costs 7.99$. Since the magazine will be sold at 5.99$, and it's confirmed to have at least two issues, LEGO did the math.

Not exactly. The comic material already exists, they paid for it to be made and they published it without getting a relevant revenue. What do they do, then? They split the material they already own in various issues of a magazine sold in the area it may be the most profitable, that is Europe of course. A magazine which contains very little work outside the comics itself (and that's a fact, on TTV it was examined carefully and the articles were substancially copypasted from the website). So we get a BIONICLE magazine, LEGO makes a little more money with stuff that didn't really pay itself and everybody's happy.

I recently read something interesting on the internet... The existence of a BIONICLE magazine in Europe may actually be one of the many signs the line is not doing well. The graphic novel may have sold so bad they needed a way to make it profitable, and that way we got the magazine. A magazine that, by the way, is enjoying a limited distribution as noted on a TTV thread.

...but that's not what I was trying to say, at all. Like I wrote many times in the Story and Sets discussions, LEGO is handling the constraction area in a way that for sure has its reason to be, but that I don't like. This strategy creates consequences that really don't surprise me, at least as far as the success of the constraction themes is concerned. And speaking about the Story Discussion, I read with great interest your words about the general decline of the action figure market in the United States, but I don't think you should focus on it too much when explaining the reasons BIONICLE G2 didn't succeed. BIONICLE is not a traditional action figure theme but rather a buildable action figure theme (there are not many on the market indeed, and LBX don't really count as "action" figures), and pretending it's on the same boat as a Spider Man or Transformer figure sounds a little bit misleading, if I may say. BIONICLE has always had a different approach than anything else on the market, wheter the story or the marketing itself you get the idea. Saying "nothing is perfect in this world" when talking about the story of this second generation is as vague as the story itself. If we compare the early years of G1 and G2 (and not the "convulted" story later years seem to be plagued with) something's pretty clear: while the island of Mata Nui was a mythical place full of mystery presented with an almost tolkienesque vibe, Okoto is substancially "TNMT take a trip to Polynesia". Nothing wrong with that, Ninja Turtles are awesome, but we're talking about biomechanical robots here, and LEGO already has its own version of TMNT. Kids have a choice they didn't have even eight years ago when buying LEGO sets, and BIONICLE didn't do much this time around to distinguish himself. By the way, higher piece counts mean higher prices. Tahu in 2001 and 2002 cost 9.59$, counting inflation, while in 2015 and 2016 it costs 19.99$. Considering the market buildable action figures are designed for, it is a detail not to be ignored. More dynamic colour schemes and a more modular building system are cool stuff for me and you, but how many times did people in this forum (and even outside of it) complain about Uniter Tahu's colour scheme? About Umarak the Hunter's lower legs? About Master Onua's colours? And this modularity is actually noticeable in bigger sets, and guess what, BIONICLE sets that cost 15$+ were pretty modular since 2002 (Boxor, anyone?). Because everytime anybody on Eurobricks says "I prefer the older sets" the CCBS defence squad shows up and meticulously reminds us of all the advantages CCBS brought to human civilitation. Every. Time. It's only natural people want to avoid that by saying in the first place they're blinded by nostalgia.

Except we already know that three will be the total number of books we'll be getting for G2... Books don't say much after all and the interesting bits are discussed in a couple of pages at the story thread. G2 had great sets but mediocre story because that's the policy of today's LEGO. I'm not okay with it but who am I to discuss the decisions of a multi billionaire company? By the way I'm sick tired of people talking sheet about G1's sets because "you must be blinded by nostalgia to like them more than today's sets". That's ridiculous and has a subtle fascist smell. From a playing prospective sets from 2004 onwards offer something not much different from today, and that's not even a proper comparison since posability is not everything. The Mata are great sets, still today, and I don't think they have much to be jealous of toys costing up to three times their original price. "Fun" can't be quantified objectively, no matter how hard people here try to do it. And I think you can have as much fun from a Toa Metru as much as from a Toa Master. It's pretty worrisome to see users admitting they're "blinded by nostalgia" because they prefer older sets or the Miramax movies, just for fear of being demolished by "objective opinions". My god, I finally said it.

The G2 Toa never lose in the sense that they face mostly ridicously weak enemies, and the rare times they battle villains worth of their names they just can't do it on their own. Most of the mistakes G2 made have already been listed, but I feel the need to emphasise the fact that they're caused mostly by LEGO itself, who treated BIONICLE like a low tier theme. HF being mediocre at best is not an excuse for this: BIONICLE had a strong legacy worth of LEGO's time and money. What we got was just saddening,at least the way the theme was treated. At this point I'm just waiting for the guy that says "stop with this doom and gloom, you're making me disaffected to the theme :((". G2 failed, that's becoming harder and harder to deny, and all because constraction as a whole is a relic of the past that LEGO is not interested in making powerful again. Mind you,tthe licensed CCBS sets are great for making the system profitable, not recognised nor worth of being compared to brick based themes.