Dark_Avenger

Not sure if this has been brought up, but it looks like LEGO dropped the chess set price to $200 US. http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=852293 Anyone know if this is some special/limited s@h thing, or if it's permanent?

As does Nuparu Mahri, if memory serves.

There is no doubt a nostalgic audience, but for LEGO it would be like running for president and only campaigning in Rhode Island. As we've heard, the designers did try finding a middle ground - appealing to the kiddies while giving some nods to the old-timers - but that's not what their biggest target market preferred. I guess now some of you can aim your hate away from Greg and the set designers and toward those clever little focus groups instead. :-)

Transformers and GI Joe are much older than Bionicle, so even though they both have a large market with kids to this day, they keep a sizeable market in the older audience that grew up with these toys. Bionicle doesn't have this luxary - even though there is an audience of people who got into it back in 2001 (many of us here fit this profile), it's way too small to try appealing too. Unfortunately for us, the most prominent buyer range for Bionicle are young boys who, apparently, would probably rather have LEGO not even produce the action figures any more and just sell canisters full of big projectile weapons.

Makes sense if the summer storyline allegedly takes place in a swamp.

Spoiler (highlight): Their mutation is that they no longer have bodies and are left only as heads and spines (kind of like sea serpants). After they nearly kill the Mahri, it is implied that Axonn has killed them (referenced, not shown).

The comic would have been one of the best if they didn't compress so much into so few pages these days (not only are they shorter than they used to be, but they pack about twice as much story throughout the year). The book version of this should be excellent, though.

I want to get one of the sets of Batman magnets for some duplicates of minifig parts, only I've never bought a magnet set before. To anyone who has, how much of a magnet fig is detachable (limbs/head/hats), or how much is glued (like keychains)?

They're all the same mask. Story's reasoning is that because life itself can take numerous forms, so can the Mask of Life (which is a sentient object). Personally I prefer the version with the horns that was seen in the online game and Bionicle Heroes.

Thing is that each of those would have to be run through numerous legal checks to make sure it doesn't mean anything in another language, so as to avoid another situation like that with the Maori.

My only hope is that Pohatu will be brown, but I'm not so sure they'll just give up yellow after only two years.

Only problem with that is that Pohatu will likely become yellow. Terrible flaw in what could be an awesome rerelease.

So a member of the first Toa team is... identical to the Inika. That makes sense.

I don't see how being a good replacement to a critical failure of a set makes this a good one on its own. This guy's supposed to be from the first Toa team - LEGO had a golden opportunity to make another variation of a Toa build. What we got is a Kongu Mahri v1.1, crappy vehicle included. One merit I see to his set is that the silver Pridak blade is at least something new to give Kongu in place of his double chain-guns. And I suppose the Hahli mask in green as well. Even so, every other 'special edition' Toa set did something differently than the others released that year. Takanuva, Lhikan, and Iruini were gold plated with new masks and new weapons (actually different molds!), and their vehicles/mounts didn't suck, either. I won't pretend that their builds were totally unique from their respective years' Toa teams (Nuva and Metru), but they looked like Toa that actually came from different teams. One look at this guy and I thought, "Why is Kongu riding a bunch of swords with a chaingun?" And really, that's all the "vehicle" is to me: a bunch of poorly-connected swords with a chaingun (an instant hit this year!) mounted on top. This guy has next to nothing to distinguish him as being from a different team - not even a new mask! He looks like just another Toa Mahri, which have enough problems of their own as is. I was hoping I'd be able to defend this set for myself like many others, but sadly, LEGO gave this set little to redeem itself. Don't get me wrong - I'm by no means an instant nay-sayer on the new Bionicle lines. I've hung out and read a lot of the arguments of Vader and Ravensdorn, and while I see where they're coming from, I tend to disagree. I've followed Bionicle since 2001, and I'm still happy with the way things are going. I'm a fan of the Barraki, I love this year's titans (Karzahni included), and I think even the Mahri have some benefits to them (new masks and weapons are always a plus for me). The only real disappointments I consistently have are in the system sets, which have looked terrible since 2005 and haven't taken many turns for the better. Lesovikk, unfortunately, is a massive let-down that I had to speak out against. I'm still waiting to see whatever the poster found "sweet" about this image.

So where's the picture he called "sweet"?

The good thing about the Final Battle is that, truck aside, the set doesn't look too Megabloks-ish and might work moderately well with LEGO figs. That, and it looks simply enough to replicate with LEGO bricks anyways (except those plastic orange barriers would be nice to have). Only problem is that we're missing out on a wealth of great minifig opportunities; Sandman, Harry, Venom, Symbiote Spidey... >_<

Greg writes the books and the comics, which encompass most of the detail of the story. The decision to make Gadunka a guardian is a plot point that the whole story team would have decided, Greg didn't just come up with it on a whim. Honestly, just because there's a lot of anti-Greg sentiment around doesn't mean you have to fish for reasons to demean him.

The Hordika were all about a noble hero existing in the body of a vicious monster.

What program/method did you use to get clean music excerpts from the movies? I recognize some credits music, but if I remember right some of the tracks used to have dialogue and SFX over them. I always loved the Nathan Furst scores to the films and would jump at the chance to get a full soundtrack or a way to pull them myself.

As unreliable as Wikipedia is that's all info confirmed by GregF. Best bet is that the Mahri are a transformation of the Inika but it's not for sure, it's just known that there will be heroes called Toa Mahri. Jovan's team is thousands of years in the past.

It's on the ocean above-ground. Same one around Mata and Voya Nui. And if it's set on Earth that automatically means Greg made that story decision on his own and effectively killed Bionicle? I wouldn't like the theory to come true, but if anyone set that premise it would have been Bob Thompson, the old head of the story team, before he left Bionicle. Don't blame Greg. Blame the story team.

If Greg didn't fight for them the Toa Nuva wouldn't have been seen in the 2006 story at all. You blame him for 'killing' Bionicle when he's simply one of a team of people that create the story. In retrospect he's doing what he can to preserve things that are more than a year old from the story. With the organic creatures, it's not "some are bio, some aren't, whatever they feel like making them," it's that everything in the Matoran's world (which is supposed to be underground - Mata Nui the island was the only place to turn to escape Metru Nui, Voya Nui used to be underground until the cataclysm). What IS organic are sea birds (like in the original Onua building himself animation) and some plantlife on Mata Nui - the surface, mind you, which isn't where the Matoran were meant to inhabit. Pridak has blood (yes, it's been confirmed to be blood) because the location next year is underwater in the above-ground world, meaning there would be organic fish like we know them for Pridak to feed on and get the blood from. And Greg also said this explanation is "a hint and a half" for the big picture, which I think is that the above-ground world is our planet and that the Matoran are supposed to be underground.

I think the "fourth villain" is just the symbiote, unless Sony still has a character to reveal.

I think the silver "chain" looks more like an energy tube/cord or something. When you got big guns in a LEGO set, they usually go with the thinking that lasers and future-ish weapons are less violent that bullets and "realistic" guns.

Maybe the builder thought the Penguin belongs in a jail more than in an asylum. I always thought that he tended to be portrayed as a criminal mastermind who was just greedy, not insane like the other villains. (Tim Burton's version seemed to deliver a more tragic and pitiable character.) I'm not so sure about the blocky, stacked feel of the building as a whole, but the way the cells are personalized are amazing! A few little oddities here and there (namely why they would give Poison Ivy a shelf of potions), but the atmosphere is just right for each baddie.