Brickowski

"Milking" is often used in a derogatory manner. You're posting largely in expression or hyperbole which makes it kind of hard to actually discuss this with you. That being said, Technic pieces have been merged into regular System lines for many years and yet Technic is still clearly around. I'd say CCBS parts appearing in System sets just means designers are finding them useful outside of the original purpose and are taking advantage of that.

Hmm, I like those trans-orange wheels. I didn't know they were even available. I'm very slowly collecting RoboRiders because I don't enjoy them anywhere near as much as Throwbots or early Bionicle, but I might track down some trans-orange wheels. Really makes the look "pop."

You're welcome, you happened to ask for something from my favorite themes first, so I jumped at the chance to help. I took this picture of the first space plow, but the one on peeron is actually pretty good for its size. Don't own the other one.

I've been an on and off lurker here for some time now. I never managed to register before because my email setup did not like how the confirmation email was being sent. Eventually figured it out and now I can post! I've always been partial to space themes. Especially Spyrius, Unitron, and UFO. My dark ages started about the same time Lego's you-know-what period started. Even as a kid I didn't like it. (UFO gets a pass with me.) Throwbots and Bionicle kept me buying Lego products for a few extra years though. I do remember discovering Lego fansites on the internet later when I was 15 or so. Everyone was really into building two-seat space pods using two 8x8 radar dish pieces for the sides at the time. Anyway, I came out of my dark ages last year when I found my old tub of Lego and haven't looked back since. Hunted down a lot of sets I wanted as a kid now that I'm an adult with some meager disposable income (monorail! Bionicle titans! Anything on clearance!)

I could see CCBS working for RoboRider sets if you don't expect all of them to be motorcycles. Three and four wheeled vehicles seem much more plausible to me since CCBS lends itself well to bigger builds. Maybe do motorcycles in protector sized sets and trikes/quads in larger Master or Titan sizes. On a slightly related note, a few months ago I purchased a sealed The Boss roborider set off of eBay. Upon opening it, I discovered it only had 2 of the 3 rubber tires. Thats my luck, that one lego set has sat on some shelf for 15 years only for me to open it and its short an uncommon part Lego doesn't use anymore. I had to laugh at that.

Well it bothered me that all my Spyrius minfigs on display had messed up helmets, so I went ahead and got out a good one. I can't get it to photograph as well, but I suspect it might be a color thing thats over my head.

My Spyrius and Unitron shelves are currently in disarray since I decided to re-do them recently. About half of my minifigs for both themes are packed away, but I did find a relatively minty Unitron helmet handy. I'm guessing my best Spyrius figs are missing in action. I did get this okay picture of a Unitron helmet. I did notice that the gray printing is off on the helmet I grabbed. You can see where its supposed to fill up that hose design on the picture you supplied. I don't have a great photo setup, I mostly just use it for eBay pictures. Maybe this could at least get you started while someone with an actually good setup gets photos?

Ah okay, that makes sense. I followed Transformers on and off for several years (mostly during my dark age) and when Hasbro said they had plans for X number of years of this line, it usually meant they already had plans for a new line the immediate year after the current one ended. They started doing concurrent lines and and continuing some lines as store exclusives and such and things got muddled eventually, but my own personal context meant I read into the NYCC statement as meaning a hard deadline.

Bionicle is a toyline aimed at older children though. Lots of video game fans don't "out grow" video games when they hit 12 to 14 years old. I was at the older end of the target demographic when Bionicle started and lost all interest 2 years later just like I'm sure plenty of other kids did. If we take the information we have about Bionicle's yearly sales and apply it to the basic knowledge we have about toylines and Lego dark ages, we can theorize a couple things. One possible theory is that after 3 years, enough of the original target demographic had entered their own toy dark ages (temporary or permanently) and Bionicle just really sucked at pulling in new kids by year 4 and that trend continued for some time. (Too much story with complicated, weird names. No longer newest big brand on the toy shelf. More competition in the market.) I bet thats what Lego believes happened since the Gen 2 Bionicle has a planned expiration date of 3 years. Introduce the story and toyline, capitalize on it, and then scrap it. Maybe start over again if the market seems right.

Those are some minor changes that make big differences! I really like them. I might do a few of them for my own sets.

Something you might be forgetting with Bionicle is that it had a non-traditional (for the time) media push. Most toy lines outside of Lego tend to be largely supported by a TV show with things like websites, games, and comic books as smaller supporting media. One of Bionicle's biggest pushes was the Mata Nui Online Game backed up with comic books to sell toys. Bigger fans were already spending time on the internet to get their story fix, so its not a big stretch to assume that Bionicle fans would be a little more inclined to build online communities. Ninjago is a more traditional TV show used to push toys. There may be plenty of other supporting material, but its not funneling kids to the internet like Bionicle did. 2001 was still pretty early for the average kid to have large amounts of time on the internet too. It was new and exciting. Only the more tech savvy or children of tech savvy parents spent a lot of time online before then.

I was about to say something about how a pessimist could look at the first promo images at the Toa and assume they're made from single-digit amounts of pieces, but then I remembered the Throwbots/Slizers were pretty much the exact same level of complexity as the Toa Mata. This is definitely residual Jack Stone anger.

I think Blacktron I's colors are better than II's but a part of that is I feel like we ended up with too much trans-neon-green by the time the Space line wound down. If it existed in a vacuum where it was unique and we didn't have trans-neon green used extensively in M:Tron and UFO, it might have fared better in my mind.