Dorek

This is totally where Hero Factory could have benefited from the Chima approach; individual combiners, using one set as the base and one as a supplement. Granted, that's more or less what the combiners actually are this wave, but it's so one-sided towards the Heroes (as opposed to being one-sided towards the villains in 2012), and not always particularly interesting. Regardless, I'm still excited for Dragon Bolt. And forum-goers are fickle at best, so that's why you see shifting opinions.

It's mostly the polite way of saying "I think this set is crap, but here is a redeeming feature so you don't think I hate for no reason". Also Aquagon's facemask is amazing no judgments.

I think he looks fantastic. I'm stoked to pick him up, whenever I get the chance.

Well, yes, that's part of the point; they make the packaging cheaper so they don't have to make the toy more expensive. And personally, the fact that they went out of their way to make these bags resealable is something we should all be thanking them for. Without it, these bags could easily have been a massive waste of space, but instead offer some usefulness. Sure, I miss the BIONICLE canisters, but having just had to pack them all up, they... were enormous space hogs.

Usually we see end of May, but it's happened before. Excited regardless. Jet Rocka and Dragon Bolt are still my must buys, but Surge is growing on me.

Honestly, if you think about it, BIONICLE was pretty ahead of the curve with the whole transmedia effort. These days, companies and brands really struggle with branching out into separate forms of media; for every BIONICLE, or Pokemon, or even Grumpy Sparrows, there's a "The Last Airbender", or Mortal Kombat, or something. Edit: Really, EB? That's up there on the list of bizarre forum filters.

Comixology sells the graphic novels digitally, so it's a pretty good place to start. I've been meaning to check them out too, if only to find some textless images from recent comics =P. The books themselves are not anywhere digitally, as far as I know; for plot summaries and such, there's obviously BS01, but not the actual novels; try a library?

I think you can easily break any plotline down to bare elements and make it sound simplistic. The Avengers was a group of primary colored good guys fighting against monsters and aliens, to line up with your analogy. While I, personally, didn't find BIONICLE hard to follow, that's because I was actively following it, and all the peripheral info; I still work on BS01 (we're doing new templates now! Exciting!), but the less actively attuned to it I am, the more convoluted I find it. I had the same problem with LOST, and even (more recently) Fringe; the story made sense on a day to day basis, and even in an overarching sense, but looking back on it, there were a number of twists and turns that would have made it hard to understand if I wasn't watching the show sequentially and from the beginning.

Does anybody actually know what's in that "Furno gift set"? I see it all the time on the TRU page and have no idea what it's about.

Maybe it was designed for him, but kept in storage because clearly nobody wants Rocka to have nice things? Anyhow, yeah, it could have been someone else (or better to have included someone else in the first wave), but it's still a pretty sweet jetpack, and you can realistically fit in most Heroes... although then they'd definitely fall over, without six friction joints in their legs =P

Ah, the rose-tinted glasses of the BIONICLE love affair. Not saying I didn't adore the Exo-Toa, but Jet Rocka is just as integrated; it's just not a full-body suit, which is what people (think that they) want. It's far more integrated than the 2008-9 vehicles, for instance.

Jet Rocka gets no love? He and Dragon Bolt are my top two, everything else is basically a "if I have the money" scenario. Textbooks are expensive :<

The prototype digitigrade legs on the ultrabuild Laval, essentially.

Meh, I find Breakout Evo to be more in line with previous incarnations; this is the first melee weapon he's had, and the underwater theme is somewhat random, as opposed to the hilarious juxtaposition of Furno. BA Evo definitely has a rocking design, but it doesn't entirely gel with the character. That's silly. Good is subjective, as with most things. Obviously your opinion on the writing is that it is bad; that's a fine opinion to have, and one I am not inclined to disagree with, necessarily. I too think the writing could be cranked up a bit, but then again, I am not who they are writing for. I don't enjoy Dora the Explorer, but the kindergartners that my sister teaches freaking love the stuff. Does that mean the writers of Dora are cranking out "bad" things? Of course not. It's just not as enjoyable to us because we think differently than they do. That isn't to say there CAN'T be writing that appeals to both sides; my sister also had her kids watch The Aristocats, which is a hilarious movie, and is accessible to everyone on some level. There's a niche for everything, and to pigeonhole something that is so incredibly subjective just defeats the real point.

I don't think you can really top Stormer XL, but Surge looks to be in fine form. Evo looks good too, but I liked the essence of the breakout set better.

Hah. But yeah, hits the nail on the head. "Good" writing is entirely subjective; I could hand an eight year old kid Tolstoy and he'd hate me with every fiber of his being for giving him the worst birthday gift ever, but that doesn't mean War and Peace is anything near "bad" writing. Your audience, both intended and actual, plays a huge deal in the appreciation of something. Also, nice pics. I'm still stoked for Jet Rocka.

The only problem there is the assumption that being a cartoon automatically means the target audience is children. There are multiple types of cartoons, but the most successful ones know their audience; there's a reason things like Young Justice, while being awesome, don't last as long as they should. They have trouble walking the balance of being mature, but still relatable to children (or the other way around, which is where you get things like Family Guy and American Dad and the nonsense coming out of Adult Swim these days). I don't think the HF episodes are being particularly condescending, just very broad in humor because they're only dealing with so much of an expected audience.

Well, we don't even know if there is a "next episode", and SM4 does mention a Brain Attack that didn't actually occur in the books, so. Is there a passage in SM4 that explicitly rules out that possibility?

Didn't think the brain removing him would kill him, just that he purposefully exited the spaceship with Kirch's body (they tried to have Stringer jump off a building, so why not?) Also, is SM4 actually after SM3, or after the episode? SM4 apparently mentions a second brain attack, so E10 could occur in the interim.

I don't think discussing MoC's is really "on topic" =P. Isn't that why we have the CCBS topic? Also, for anybody who read Secret Mission 3... did Kirch actually die, or just the brain controlling him? I don't have the books for reference, and somebody brought that up.

Haha, why not, y'know? Makes you wonder what the heck a dragon is doing on Makuhero planet in the first place besides just... chillin'.

Ignoring the fact that it's set on Earth, and this dragon is from Makuhero planet =P. Still, though, headcanon has led to greater things before... I was being sarcastic =P. I absolutely agree that, given their relatively elemental names, their color schemes should match (Surge being the exception, but even then, they did a pretty good job of reflecting his namesake). That said... bulk is literally defined as "magnitude in three dimensions", so for all the complaining that his name doesn't apply... yeah, it doesn't. In terms of actual set proportions, it never has, even though the story tries to portray him as such.

Yeah, let's make him blue, like blue fire.

Well, and the books feature humanoid characters being controlled by brains and nobody being any the wiser, so there's at least some consistency in that; maybe the creatures on Makuhero planet (there's no better name for that, so...) are techno-organic, or something.

Because they aren't expecting that many viewers in the first place; it's not a series, it's just a bunch of one-off episodes (I think the original four actually were on Nick), so they shunt it to the channel where it doesn't interrupt anything else.