Quisoves Pugnat

Besides, it's not like kid's stories can't feature Hell. They just won't go into the gory detail of, say, Dante or Bosch. But I digress. "Underworld" has a number of meanings, including "great big subterranean cavern," which is probably the intended usage here.

Arguing? On the internet? The horror! But in all seriousness, I suspect that the lack of accord is down to the lack of things to discuss. We got the summer info nice and early, and consequently, there's been a lull in excitement.

I believe it was stated at the big ComicCon premier that LEGO's initial scheme for Gen2 lasts three years. If the line is deemed sufficiently profitable, it will of course continue past that point. But in lieu of the requisite financial data, we can't count on getting anything past 2017.

Oops. It doesn't come up for me. It just says "Posted Image". It seems that Imgur is down, or at least unaccesible stateside. Oh, those. I'd forgotten those existed. Sorry about that. :PStill, they're promotional, so they have a purpose. You could argue that they're too expensive for LEGO to be worth the hype of giving them away, and you might be right, but they're not pointless. They're obviously intended to bring LEGO more money. That is interesting, though my point remains. Hero Factory and BIONICLE are niche themes, unlike Ninjago and Friends, and so it seems reasonable that LEGO thought that BIONICLE wouldn't benefit from the same sort of promotion, by virtue of Hero Factory not doing so. The alternative is that LEGO is deliberately underplaying Gen2, which speaks to a failure on Hero Factory's part, more than anything. Which it could well be, for all I know. The fact remains that Gen1 was a huge success, which provides a considerable incentive for LEGO to try to repeat it. Just because one attempt fails does not mean that LEGO will suddenly go "Well, I guess BIONICLE is worthless." They might well say that. But it's hardly the only possibility. They might decide that Gen2 was mishandled, and try again with a different approach. EDIT: I did a bit of research, using Google and Wikipedia (for the respective densities of ABS and 14K gold,) Bricklink (for mask-weights) and this site. It would seem that the total combined value of 2015's golden masks is no more than $11,000 USD. That takes a mere 275 consumers, each one buying a single Toa, Protector, and Skull Villain, for LEGO to recoup the costs of the golden masks. EDIT2: Imgur is back up. Anyhow, I don't see why anyone is reading so much into what Mesonak said. It looks like he was merely saying that BIONICLE might follow the precedent of Ninjago, Exo-Force, etc. in having a single wave in its final year. I don't see what's so alarming about that.

You didn't, but surely the fact that you've never seen any BIONICLE-promotion in magazines does? LEGO doesn't want any of its themes to fail. If it saw magazines as a worthwhile means of advertisement for BIONICLE, then you think it would have used them. Ergo, it stands to reason that something convinced LEGO that magazine ads weren't beneficial to BIONICLE. The golden masks are hardly useless. In addition to adding aesthetic variety to the sets, they're a play feature. Kids can have the Toa fight the Skull Spiders/Creatures to claim them. Yes, they're not strictly necessary, but they're hardly a shocking extravagance. They're just more pieces for LEGO to mould. As for the graphic novel, that's a promotional item. It earns LEGO guaranteed money from people that like BIONICLE, and serves as promotion, potentially creating new fans. Not to mention that BIONICLE is hardly the exception. Ninjago, Friends, Elves, and Superheroes all have graphic novels, and Elves has chapterbooks. Gen1 had chapterbooks regularly, from 2003 to 2008, and had comics for its entire run. Gen1 was cancelled after nine years, and reputedly saved LEGO from bankruptcy. That's hardly going to mark BIONICLE as a doomed theme. If Gen2 is a failure, then the powers-that-be will say to themselves "How did Gen1 succeed where Gen2 failed?" They could go a number of places, from there. Popularity does not an oracle make. He may have good reason to think that 2017 will bring only a single wave of BIONICLE, but just telling me "Mesonak suspects it" is pointless. Could you point me to where he speculates this?

But we've seen nothing that indicates that it's bombed, have we? There may be reason to think that it hasn't lived up to LEGO's expectations, as I argued earlier, but that's not the same thing as utter failure. Surely this suggests that the magazine promotions were of little benefit to Hero Factory? What do you mean by "useless stuff"? Nothing springs readily to mind. I believe that the 14 karat masks were given away 2001, and thus planned before BIONICLE had proved itself worthy of having any promotion. Hmmmm? Perhaps this is technically true, in the sense of "60% targeted towards adults, 40% towards children," but Netflix is hardly an adults-only affair. It's got a specially-tailored children's section, and a plethora of choices for youngsters. A quick perusal of the Netflix website (in America, anyhow,) suggests that children are hardly a consumer-blind-spot. Even assuming that Gen2 has flopped, that's still a shaky assumption. If, as you say, poor marketing choices have put the lid on this iteration of BIONICLE, then it follows that a subsequent reboot would not necessarily be tainted by its immediate predecessor. Without the franchise fatigue/antipathy of the sort of line that flops in spite of its promotion, the only delay needed would be that of planning the next version.

Is this from VK? Just popping up and claiming knowledge of the line's future, sans evidence, only makes you look a troll. Granted, I don't recall you behaving trollishly in the past, but then I didn't think that about MonkeyChud either, so I'm not necessarily the best of judge of these things.

The voice-acting and writing turned me off, so I only watched snippets of it, but darn it, now you're making me want to go back to it! =P Seeing as Ekimu seems to be the hero set for this summer, I doubt he'll turn out to be evil (or an evil duplicate,) but it wouldn't exactly contradict the Legend. All we know about Ekimu, prior to his slumber, is that he made better masks than Makuta, and didn't want his brother wielding the Mask of Ultimate Power. He wants to stop Makuta, but that's hardly evidence of his moral rectitude. It's not like fighting against Hitler made Stalin a saint.

Thanks! That it is interesting. Did he say anything about the stature and status of constraction as a whole?

Interesting. I suppose that could disqualify Gen2, though by the same token, it would also seem to disqualify Elves (unless I'm missing something.) Has Elves been officially described as a big bang theme? Fair enough. Sorry about that.

The first one is a one-off, though, which makes it less relevant in the grand scheme of things. The second, well, that rather depends on how well it's done. Surely that makes BIONICLE, with its animations and its novels and its graphic novels, a big bang property as well? Indeed. But surely a success in constraction, which hasn't had multiple, concurrent, original themes since 2000, is similarly worth noting? Obviously, constraction has never struggled the way that girl-oriented themes have, but Friends debuted four years ago. At this point, the mini-doll system seems to me to be every bit as ingrained, if not more so, than constraction was in 2003. This may be so, but where's your proof? The report doesn't mention this as a criteria.

True, and Constaction is still a niche, but I don't quite buy that BIONICLE wouldn't merit a mention, were it a hit. Gen1's profitability is certainly the reason for the theme's revival. There's a reason LEGO didn't follow up Hero Factory with another original theme. Surely if BIONICLE was successful enough to merit a relaunch, success on the part of its current iteration would merit a mention in the 2015 report? Heck, it states that "the new fantasy theme LEGO Elves is off to a good start" despite that not being one of the top 5. That said, I'm not suggesting that Gen2 has been a failure, simply that it seems to have been less successful than LEGO hoped. EDIT: I found this in the 2010 report, for what it's worth: LEGO certainly didn't think so. Yes, BIONICLE could have made a spectacular turnaround, but that doesn't seem to have been likely. I get the impression that franchise fatigue was setting in, a probable result of the theme's longevity.

Dagnabit! It's not enough for you to build gobsmacking models from the Toa-scale and upwards. No, you have to do it in miniature as well! =P In all seriousness, that's a fantastic, and fantastically innovative, model! The aesthetics are great, the PoU fits it like a glove, and, on top of that, it's got a function! I sincerely hope you wind up as a designer for LEGO.

Are we? I seem to recall the general reaction to 2015's Toa here being "These are some of the best BIONICLEs ever!" So while the memory cheats, we're by no means incapable of loving Gen2's sets more than than Gen1's. Heck, a fair amount of the criticism of 2016's sets, it seems to me, has been along the lines of "this is everything that went wrong with Gen1!"

That was supposed to be a reference to the opening scene of Mask of Light. =P

As if Tahu didn't have enough gold already. =P The dialogue, alas, is following the tradition of The Mask of Light, not Mata Nui Online Game. =P Still, it's cool to see more of this art style!

Without further evidence, what you're saying is pure conjecture, surely?

Non-existent? This year, it's got a Netflix-series. Last year, it had the animations. Not to mention the various TV spots and the books and the graphic novels. That's far from non-existent. Besides, how much advertising did Ninjago get in its first two years? More than BIONICLE, yes, but how much more? I honestly don't remember it getting that much. It wasn't until LEGO decided to bring it back that I keyed into what a big deal it was. Speaking of which, what was up with that? Did Ninjago's popularity surge unexpectedly in its second year? It seems odd, nowadays, that LEGO could so underestimate the popularity of one of its lines.

But wasn't the reason BIONICLE was cancelled when it was, as opposed to a few years down the line, that LEGO wanted it to be viable for a reboot? I'm under the impression that it was always a matter of "when," not "if." That said, yes, I'd imagine LEGO wanted to test the waters with Gen2. I don't doubt that BIONICLE has the potential to be as huge as Ninjago, what with LEGO's current popularity, but Metru Nui wasn't built in a day. If nothing else, there has always been something of a Constraction Ghetto, what with the system being spun off of a spin-off of the main System. This is perfectly natural, but it does mean that any original constraction line has to work extra-hard to succeed.

You know, I'm getting rather annoyed with all this presumptuous, implicit dissing of the designers' work-ethics. Do folks really think that, faced with a line that's at its end, they simply shrug and think Meh, why bother? That would be terribly unprofessional. You might dislike some of the sets they design, but with no insights into their lives, you've no reason to attribute that to a failure of character on their parts. Besides, what about one-off themes like Monster Fighters or Galaxy Squad? Those are quite common. Are you saying that the designers don't give a tinker's cuss about doing those well? EDIT: In fact, if we could glean insights into Gen2's success from the 2016 sets (and, given how far in advance LEGO prepares these things, I don't think we can,) then surely shoddy sets would be indicative of a rushed design-period, the sort of thing that might occur if LEGO were trying to meet an overwhelming demand for the series?

Ah. That makes more sense. Still, speaking as someone who's enjoyed both building BIONICLEs and looking at them, for years, methinks that this is a rather subjective issue. I do agree that it's far from perfect. CCBS makes building creatures (of a certain size, at least) significantly faster.

Surely prognosticating BIONICLE's future on the basis of sets designed over a year ago is rather silly? 2017 is the earliest the line's reception will impact the sets, I should think. That's hardly fair. You might not like its personality, but to suggest that it's simply unpleasant residue (if I take your comparison rightly) is to ignore the raw effort that's gone into fleshing BIONICLE out.

Ekimu is a bit generic, but after some of the worse innovations of the Uniters, I'm not going to complain. But yeesh, that posing. Someone's asleep on the job.

I believe it's the other way around. They were definitely Throwbots here in the States.