JINZONINGEN73

Ahahaha, those cycles with the cheesy bluescreen behind them bring back memories lol! Mind you, those memories are all bad, but...

I knew Spiderman was "hot" at the time, but using him as a line of sets was confounding. Spiderman's about a guy (minifig) who fights strange enemies (minifig) in city locations (just... buildings...). Must've been some strange licensing package deal, like the one you theorized with Spongebob and Avatar. Now, if you want a license with worldwide appeal and vehicles... Transformers. And why not? If Hasbro has Star Wars and Transformers, why not Lego too? It'd be a great way for Lego to introduce smaller robot faces into our mechs. Lego finally delivered on "fingers", now we need a way to have cool, Transformer-like faces that aren't just 1-piece bricks like the dead Built To Rule line had.

Sets incorporating (almost exclusively) blacklight reactive trans bricks ...with a free fluorescent blacklight, of course.

And a threesome, no less.

This topic pinned at the top of this very forum should answer your question. http://eurobricks.hosting.ipsyn.com/eurofo...?showtopic=6437 Closing...

Both my interest in Bionicle and the meager "wallet" that follows me around started to drift away once it was clear the cool, clever, minimalistic yet interesting flash movies of 2001 were never coming back. And when the ...awful ...movies popped up, it was the beginning of the end. Look, I KNOW that the target audience is brats in diapers, okay? But christ, why work so hard to alienate the initial fans as well? It's like if Star Wars came out in 1977, but then instead of being followed up with The Empire Strikes Back, you instead get megablocking Teletubbies with lightsabers. Is it really a crime to appeal to old AND new fans? Is it really so hard to aim a product at children, while having subtle and or humorous nods to the adults? Bah, whatever. They dropped the ball as far as having Bionicle be a license with a long-term cult status and instead broke all the chains of credibility to keep it reeeeeeeeal stupid for the kiddies. So. I miss the sets, flash movies, mask packs and gears of 2001. (I DON'T miss the terrible Rahi set designs, though they were glorious parts packs). So... ...do I think Bionicle blows now? No. Oh, they DID suck, and badly. But now, I like them. I think that as parts packs, every set in the 2008 wave is pretty good. You can't use the "canisters" like you could in 2001, thanks to some GENIUS deciding that not adding Lego connection points onto them could possibly increase play value or the desire to buy more canisters. But inside, they ain't too bad. The "matoran" are as large as the old 2001 Toa were. They may be simplistic in design, but you get a trans head along with an ok action figure. And thankfully, these "smaller" sets look solid, not wretchedly incomplete-looking as they have been over the years. The Toa are decent sets, lots of good parts here and there, though Lego's time, money and other resources were wasted on the cannons they came with. The bad guys are all pretty much the same deal as the rest. So, a line of figures not good enough to amass long-tern fans, but well enough to turn a profit. But these Mistika figures... yeesh. They are only good as parts packs. Truly, they're megablocks-ugly, nonsensical in thruster placements / character design, and their vehicles are atrocious... just columns of Technic parts slapped together into a rectangle. BUT that's good, for it cannot be forgotten that these ARE parts packs. Which would you rather have? Some Gadunka type mostrosity that looks so <insert that tiresome argument> that it may have been designed by a 5 year old with a couple Inika parts, or a big, boring pile of poo that is in fact made up of USEFUL Technic elements? Right. Fugliness aside, the good parts pack. Blah bah blah long story short... Bionicle's story sucks. The characters suck. The set designs mostly suck. But the sets themselves are good for parts to mocs having nothing to do with Bionicle. Never forget that we're playing with LEGO. LEGO is all about imagination and creativity. ...Mind you, that is NOT what Bionicle is about now. Yet just like Z'Nap, Galidor, Clickits and every other unpopular medium that have come into the sights of the long-term Lego fan circles... Bionicle too cannot be denied as being just more parts for MOCS. They are, at the end of the day, ALL parts packs. Despite a certain few Lego representatives out there on websites trying to say Bionicle is not about mocing as much as it is about character and story, they're wrong. Things like that, executed as POORLY as they have been, will only keep people coming back so long. And failing that, a set better be DAMN fine in the parts selection area. Luckily, and just barely, Bionicle's current and upcoming sets squeak by into that zone. They don't pass enough in story or character for me to say "Oh my god, I have to buy every guy in the line!". But more than in recent years I see a few sets that catch my eye simultaneously as being worthy of purchase on the basis of their parts inventory. It's not much, but it's a step in the right direction. Admittedly though, I have zero faith in Lego's current ability to make something "cool" that could attract a cult status for years to come, so it might be best if Bionicle died so a superior line can reformat the mecha / bio-organic part of Lego's food pyramid. I mean hell, I've already mourned Bionicle's passing, so it's not like I'd go to it's funeral a second time. Why, that'd just be redundant lol.

Well, while my brother got his classic Space sets from Lego, my parents, as usual, got me some poopy clones. I tried out "Tente"... their bricks were very hard, sharp-edged and HIGHLY prone to breaking into sharper pieces. Worse, their antenna elements were ALSO sharp, especially when the fragile limbs of the antenna broke off. Everything about them was designed to draw blood on me. Tried some knockoff glow in the dark bricks around 1998. Plastic was too mushy, colors too inconsistent from one brick to the next. Tried Megablocks around 2000, found their quality prone to instant breakage along with inconsistent dimensions to identical parts. Needless to say, I finally went to buying some Lego of my own and, well...

... ... ...Oooooooh, Naruto must be doing good in US. No wonder ORANGE Pohatu keeps going out of stock at my Walmart. I bet Gali's got a sharingan.

The color scheme of the minifigs remind me of the dress in the first Star Trek movie.

A beautiful creation... how much would that be as an official set? Into the hundreds, maybe 2 or 3? And yeah, Capt. Harlock's Arcadia springs to mind. I rather like the embellishments they did beyond Leiji Matsumoto's design. I can honestly say it looks "better".

You're asking for trouble. Ouija boards are... untrustworthy. When you make contact with one, YES, you might be getting something that knows things only very specific people (or just yourself) should technically know about. But you can' trust what you're being told as far as them saying who they are. You ESPECIALLY can't trust them if they give commands to be followed. You have no idea what goes on where that thing is communicating from. They can have unexpected knowledge, but more often than not, you're NOT contacting whoever you think you are, just something that's hitting up your own mind or even the party you think you're talking to. A bit abstract to understand, I know. So think of it like this: A ouija board is like a not like a phone. You can try to dial someone specific, pick it up and the person on the other line MIGHT be your aunt. Or, it might be your aunt and then, unknown to you, a burglar who's good at impressions steps in. It's more accurate to say you're dialing a public phone in the middle of a busy city... anyone and anything can pick it up and pretend to be who you were looking for. No matter what you THINK you're doing on a ouija board, you're not. Then there's the second problem. If you're opening up, let's call it, a portal... you have to close it back up after you're done. So not only do you run a risk of being compromised while you've opened it, but also after you've stopped using it too, having likely left the door open. Sometimes they close themselves. Granted, maybe NOTHING will happen to you, but it doesn't mean it won't affect someone else in the world. An open door is an open door.

Lol. I missed this topic the first time around. Despite being ancient, I can't help but wonder what those poor Bionicle pieces who lost their lives were. (Those things're expensive y'know...)

Yellow, just as he should be. The only one who they really changed was turning the chick blue.

The thing I find weird is that whenever I make a name for a new mecha moc, I Google it first to see if ANY hits come up. No real reason, just for the fun of it. Months later though, those names start becoming screen names and websites. Maybe one of these days I'll go back and research where all those names grew to, and if there's any connection between me and those sites.

Indeed. Also, I mean, why oh why didn't they just take a clue from bootleggers and build the chicks a simple, boob-like, modified Nuva armor? http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2006269 Greg will say, "OH, but you saw how the kids on BZ received the LAST female Titan we did!" ...but really, THOSE boobs were giant and silly, with holes in the center perfect for slapping on pink or red 1x1 discs. This armor on the bootleg is just... obvious. Common sense. Then there's the executive pinhead argument of "Well, boys seeing girl figures in their boy toy lines make them think it's less manly"... ...yeah, like with Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers and a million other toy lines of extreme popularity? What YEAR is this kind of thinking from?!?

But this might be a topic Lego would be interested in, as it has an actual poll. What kind of fan would I be to not do everything I could to finally have a DECENT set made from the best scene in one of my top 10 favorite movies ever made? I still haven't seen a good HOTH playset for sale, be it the 80's, 90's or 2000's. Isn't it high time this pivotal scene gets done some justice already? (Summary: Request DENIED. ) :-D

Oh look, it's the OTHER 2008 Bionicle sets... the bootleg ones. :-D Didn't get a good pic of the Keetongu ripoff, but he's on the packaging. http://flickr.com/photos/11579617@N02/2290...in/photostream/ http://flickr.com/photos/11579617@N02/2291...in/photostream/

It's too easy to be hyper-apologetic. Some might say being hyper-critical is the easier path, but when people polish up something that kinda' blows, it sounds like alot of effort goes into it. I think that not enough people bother to think, "Ok... what various, specific criteria must be met before this or that could be considered really lame"? Those of you looking at some of us crazy for not liking the majority of these... do you have lines drawn in your head that you feel shouldn't have been crossed but have? Is there more than one? Do you know when you personally decide that there's been too many lines crossed on something? If you don't, then think about it. That kind of mindset is good all over life, not just when talking about a wave of plastic toys. These new Toa hit quite a few, saved only by better part counts and new pieces. I think that's an acceptable loss, as it's all about the parts. But to say the sets are anything but what they are when looking at the intended model... I get personally confounded. Agreed. He's the ONLY one I want of the good guys on the toy shelves, for real. Good call on them making him orange. No matter HOW much one wants nostalgia, you cannot fault Lego when I was there snagging mega-multiples of brown Pohatu and Bohrok for $3 in the clearance bins. And since Lego (somehow?!?) said it's "impossible" for them to make trans-brown, it's nice seeing a nod back to old Pohatu's trans-neon orange mask. If his new armor had been anything but orange or brown, it would've been a bummer. (And MAN does that neon orange just jump off the shelf and into your cart or what?)

I wonder what the above Jedi Temple would look like after the penny-pinchers in the accounting department got done cutting it down to fit budget? Exactly. *n*

I just can't even begin to think of anything but a UCS, minifig-filled, trans-clear and trans-blue coated, multiple scened, fully trans Obi Wan's ghost, Taun Taun'ed, Wampa'ed, Bacta Tank'ed, Snowtrooper'ed, cave in ceiling'ed, hangar bay door closing... HOTH BASE. The only Star Wars movie that really brought out real emotion in me aside from the first, and yet the one with the CRAPPIEST renditions in plastic of one of the franchise's most important and dramatic scenes... ...the rebels getting their megablocks handed to them by giant, lumbering machines of death while freezing their butts off, initiating extreme survival tactics, talking to dead people, fighting hulking monsters, and ending up having to ditch on the whole place they worked so hard to maintain. I ask you... when was the last time, in Lego or from Kenner / Hasbro, did you EVER see Hoth done justice as a playset? But hey, if you guys are happy with a few ships blowing up over a big metal planet or some of those other revolutionary ideas, knock yourselves out. While I remain painfully conscious.

You know he is correct on this part. -ZotS Wait a minute... I thought "there was no market for nostalgia". X-O Annoying thing here is, some pinhead in their home office is going to look at the online response to the sets and go, "Oh well, we TRIED to throw the "nostalgia" guys a bone and it looks like we were right that there was no point to it!" No, no, WRONG. They just messed it ALL the hell up from start to finish! As for equating Transformers to Bionicle... ...The REASON people want 9,974,872 different versions of alot of those characters is NOT merely because those franchises managed to stay alive 20 years. It's because Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee, Soundwave, Starscream, etc etc were in front of our faces FOR A FEW YEARS STRAIGHT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. You had a good long time to get to know what they did on their Friday nights and who they liked back in Cyber-Kindergarten. It wasn't until a few years after the launch that those faces were getting killed / being removed from the ongoing story. (At which point, the franchise collapsed!) Some of you are confusing "age of franchise" with "connection to characters". What character do Bionicle characters have? Who's going to be screaming for a Tahu Nuva t-shirt 20 years from now so they can look "retro"? Who's going to be thinking back to the "good old days" of Bionicle when they had weapons no more complex than the cheap, gimmicky stuff one buys at a dollar store or finds in a bag of Under-3 party favors?!? The 2001 masks had "character". The clever and independent little Tohunga seen in the 2001 flash movies had character. The mostly silent yet dedicated protector Toa of those same mini-clips had character. The stuff now is just... gimmick. Expected. Cookie-cutter. Cliche'. Boob bait for bubbas. :-/ Of course, ignore my nostalgia and look directly at the parts. For that's what ALL Lego is about. It's all about the parts, man.

No, you're right. There are quite a good few pieces to moc with. But it's not the bodies, it's the accent pieces. And those can be cheaply acquired on Brickshelf sometimes. To say it best: The facts still remain, they're illogically goofy in body design, they don't look like who they should, their ships are phallic symbols of slapped-on silliness, their air bladder weapons are childishly goofy in appearance, and the "skeletons" to each figure need to quit glutting our parts bins with their moc-unfriendliness. And... they'll probably do well in sales anyways to newbies. :-P

Sounds like my story, except with Bionicle. And AMEN to that last line. Most "boy" toy lines are insanely clueless in this area. If they had any brains, they'd realize that one half of a line can be marketed in the boy's aisle while the other half, in different packaging, could be marketed in the girl's aisle. Imagine GI Joe or Transformers figures of different sexes, but in different aisles, the packaging being nearly identical save for minor indicative alterations. Nothing comes to mind where this strategy's been used in any way as described... but I have a HARD time thinking it's not feasible. Having Robotech action figures in the male aisles with poofy-haired, Barbie-sized Robotech dolls in the female aisles don't count lol. NEITHER DO CLICKITS or BUTT-UGLY BELLVILLE FIGURES.