Aanchir
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Everything posted by Aanchir
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The terms Phantoka and Mistika meant "spirits of the air" and "spirits of the mist", and you're right, neither of them was officially bestowed upon the Toa Nuva and Makuta from that year in the actual story. From an out-of-universe perspective, they performed the simple function of helping buyers distinguish between the sky characters that came out in the first half of the year and the swamp characters that came out in the second half. The same way the term "Glatorian Legends" was never actually used in the story, but helped differentiate between the summer and winter Glatorian sets.
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Keep in mind that pictures can be misleading (especially on a computer, since different computers and browsers can sometimes show colors differently). To me, on my screen, the Jay in the pictures seemed like regular Bright Blue. MAYBE slightly different, but definitely not enough of a difference to say for sure that it's a different color. Anyway, Takuna on BZPower pointed out to me that the Ninja hood has been available on LEGO Digital Designer in Flame Yellowish Orange since the last update. A bit of a clue that none of us picked up on until after the fact, I suppose. That happens sometimes on LDD, and I wonder whether any other new 2015 parts might be hiding there. It's sometimes hard to say because especially with older parts, LDD often includes a lot of colors that never those parts never had in sets and might only have been produced as test molds, if they were produced at all.
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What? No he didn't. This year's Jay minifigure is Bright Blue, same as it's always been. Unless you bought a knock-off Jay minifigure or your Jay minifigure was incredibly defective (or the lighting in one of the houses you live in distorts your perception of color), I can't fathom why it would seem like the Dark Azur uniforms from Alien Conquest. The new Jay minifigure for next year MIGHT be Dark Azur. The picture could lean either way, and there are no other blue parts in the picture to compare it with. But until we see some compelling evidence that his color has changed, I think it's safest to assume that it hasn't.
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That's... exactly what I was saying. In Europe, 2hy 2004 and 1hy 2005 represented a lengthy gap between the Toa Metru release in 1hy 2004 and the Toa Hordika release in 2hy 2005. Sorry if my phrasing was confusing.
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Just checked, and yes, you are correct. But the annual report goes on to say that "The slowdown affected LEGO Company’s product range across the board." Also, failing to satisfy demand for the holiday season could very well have played a part in that slowdown as far as the BIONICLE theme was concerned. Are you sure he wasn't saying that there wouldn't have been a 2004 for the company, not just the BIONICLE range? Because if BIONICLE sales had not been so strong in 2003 (for instance, if you cut out the Rahkshi, which might easily have been one of its most successful series that year), then that might very well have been the case. Besides that, it's hard to blame that on the Matoran and Rahkshi sets being released simultaneously after a previous wave of villains. Seems to me like the Bohrok-Kal sets would be to blame. Note that the LEGO Group also did two consecutive waves of villains in the second half of 2005 (Visorak) and the first half of 2006 (Piraka and Matoran). Seems to me like a strange thing for them to do if doing that same thing that had previously been the known cause of a 20% drop in sales. And yes, I know that in Europe the Visorak and Toa Hordika sets' release dates were switched, but all that does is shift the gap in Toa sets to be one year earlier (2hy 2004- 1hy 2005).
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It might be that it's not actually green but White Glow, and the green color is a Photoshop effect to show that it glows. If it is an actual green color, then there's no question about it — it's Spring Yellowish Green, a fairly recent and rarely-used color.
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The Skull Spiders' bodies are slightly wider than the Toa foot. I probably have feet big enough and the strength to crush a spider whose body was slightly wider than my shoe, but if I saw one I wouldn't put any part of my body anywhere near that thing. Maybe I might if I was wearing a full, 100% sealed suit of armor or a hazmat suit of some kind, but seeing as this is a universe where EVERYBODY wears armor, I don't think that would even slow down most things in that universe that want to hurt you. Plus, you can't ignore the possibility of bigger, badder creatures already controlled by the Skull Spiders subduing you so the spiders themselves can do their work. It's not like the infected Kanohi or Krana had to knock Lewa out and jump on his face on their own volition. But with infected Rahi and swarms of Bohrok at their command... well, then things aren't looking so good for Ol' Greeny.
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Technically, the main story was never meant to be Matoran-focused. Originally, the 2001 BIONICLE story media would have been balanced between the comics and PC game, which focused on the Toa, and the Game Boy Advance game and Mata Nui Online Game, which focused on the Matoran. When the PC game got cancelled, suddenly more than half of the 2001 story media was focused on the Matoran. So the shift to focusing on the Toa was not really a sign of a change in strategy. It was bringing the story media back in line with the focus the LEGO Group intended it to have in the first place. If there was any turning point where the story media started to reduce its emphasis on the Matoran, it would be either 2003 (when the book series was introduced) or 2004 (when the online animations became less story-driven, and the movie and online games shifted their focus entirely onto the adventures of the Toa Metru). Notably, these two story years also featured the first instances of Matoran literally becoming Toa. What? No, that's not true at all. Sales in 2003 were outstanding, at least compared to all other LEGO themes. Here's a quote from Brick by Brick: "In 2003—the year the rest of LEGO came crashing down—Bionicle's soaring sales accounted for approximatedly 25 percent of the company's total revenue and more than 100 percent of its proft (as the rest of the company was tumbling to a net loss), making it a financial anchor in turbulent times." (p155) If there was ANY reason that BIONICLE underperformed in 2003, it's that "LEGO had failed to deliver sufficient quantities of its two best-selling Bionicle products in the run-up to Christmas. At a time when LEGO had suffered the worst loss in its history, it had created robust demand for Bionicle and then couldn't fulfill it." (p106) The rumors around that time that LEGO was going to cancel BIONICLE were completely false, and refuting those rumors is actually the reason Greg Farshtey joined BZPower and began acting more or less as a liaison to the fan community in the first place. All things considered, BIONICLE was the one thing that stopped the LEGO Group from going bankrupt in 2003. The idea that it was a failure in any way, shape, or form is ludicrous.
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New Toa teams would be cool, but I doubt I'd want that right away. I like to see actual character development, and I don't think sending the first year's heroes to the sidelines (which is what would likely happen if they weren't available in any form in next year's new sets) would not be very conducive to that. I think themes like Ninjago have done a good job keeping things interesting while sticking with more or less the same main characters each year. And the past three years of Hero Factory have demonstrated that LEGO is able to release new versions of a character while still keeping their appearance reasonably consistent, something they struggled with in the old days of BIONICLE. It's just the characters' sizes and complexity that worry me a bit. But maybe I'm overthinking this. This year's CHI Laval and CHI Cragger are slightly shorter and have slightly fewer pieces than last year's versions, but they don't feel like a downgrade by any stretch of the imagination — their new armor and "energized" color schemes take care of that problem. And the difference in height and piece count between the current Toa sets is already not enormous. So it's entirely possible that the LEGO Group could "upgrade" the current Toa without necessarily having to make them bigger or more complex. Some could even be made SMALLER and LESS complex while still feeling like they gained more than they lost. I guess even the original Toa Nuva bear credence to this. There were some big changes in their relative proportions and piece counts. Pohatu lost nine pieces and got slightly shorter, while Onua gained eleven pieces and got slightly taller, but it didn't feel like ANY of them were considerably downgraded or their identities were lost in the transformation. Also, fun fact I discovered when I was making comparisons: The new Toa appear to have roughly the same average height as the Toa Metru. Depending on how the heads are attached I might be off slightly. But assuming the ball snap on the head attaches directly to the ball on the top of the torso and doesn't have a 3M beam or friction joint in between, Tahu and Kopaka are roughly 26 modules tall, Gali and Lewa are roughly 25 modules tall, and Pohatu and Onua are roughly 24 modules tall. Among the Toa Metru, Nokama and Nuju were roughly 26 modules tall and the other four were roughly 24 modules tall. Also, the protectors are on average just slightly taller than the Matoran of Metru Nui (17.5 modules instead of 17 modules). It's impressive how similar the proportions of these sets are to the proportions of the 2004 sets, especially considering how much more diverse these new sets tend to be.
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I think it's definitely going to be interesting to see how future waves of BIONICLE might present the heroes. Their size and elaborate, character-specific designs might make upgrading them for future versions a lot harder than "let's slap some new/different armor and weapons on them" like the Toa Nuva or Brain Attack heroes did. It'd be kind of interesting if instead of giving them new masks in future versions, the designers did something special with the masks they have currently. Maybe giving each of them a two-color blend like the 2004 Matoran masks? They could even just leave the masks exactly the same like the designers did with many of the Hero Factory Breakout characters, but that would be strange if the new theme is going to have any kind of emphasis on mask collecting (which what we've heard seems to imply). A lot of people have commented on five sets being small for a summer wave, but that IS what would be pretty consistent with what non-constraction themes have often done for many years. The launch wave has a wide range of sets with a lower average price, while the summer wave has fewer sets with a higher average price. Just look at this year's sets for The LEGO Movie. The launch wave had 13 sets (not counting polybags or CMFs), while the summer wave had just three sets (Four, if you count the direct-to-consumer Metalbeard's Sea Cow). And the LEGO Movie was this year's "big bang" theme! A similar sort of pattern emerges when you consider previous "big bang" themes, provided you ignore sets with an unusual release pattern like Ninjago spinners, Legends of Chima Speedorz, or polybags from any theme. Big initial wave; smaller follow-up wave.
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Or its fans for that matter. Anyway, there is nothing we've seen that tells us the story won't have any depth or complexity. But complexity of storytelling doesn't mean it has to be hard to understand. It just means there's a lot to understand on many levels. Complexity in storytelling can come from things like your characters' motivations, their values, their relationships, their backgrounds, etcetera. Citizen Kane was a fairly deep and complex story but that wasn't because of how much weird fantasy jargon it invented (i.e. none).
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Have you considered that maybe getting to experience some of these story concepts that you missed out on originally could be a good thing? That you might still enjoy an island setting featuring the six original Toa even if you never had the chance to do so in the past? Frankly, the BIONICLE theme's early years were some of it's most successful, so it's only natural the LEGO Group thinks of them as some of the ones with the most widespread and timeless appeal. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be any references to other years in the future of the revived BIONICLE theme, but complaining about them not showing up right away is like complaining about Picard and Worf not showing up in the recent Star Trek reboot. The LEGO Group is not going out of the way to exclude anyone. But they can't possibly include everybody's favorite characters, artifacts, concepts, and settings in a single wave. What about the document leak makes it seem dumbed down? Do you really think an FAQ to BIONICLE ought to include every bit of jargon in the theme? The reason this FAQ exists is so that store employees will be able to answer customer questions in a way that they will be able to understand. They don't need to know the entirety of the new story in complete detail to do that. If a customer asks what the BIONICLE story is, it won't do anybody any good for salesperson to say "sit down for a couple hours while I tell you about protodermis". Describing the story in its simplest, most relatable form tells the customer everything they'll likely need to know to make a purchasing decision. And anyway, making something more accessible isn't the same as dumbing it down. The intelligence and sophistication of a franchise isn't measured by how confusing it is or how difficult it is to explain or how many words it can make up.
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Using the names of the Toa Mata, introducing new mask designs that echo the original masks, introducing the first physical version of the Mask of Creation, directly soliciting help from certain advanced builders within the community (still no telling what that consisted of, but I'm sure we'll find out in time), keeping the logo similar to how it's looked traditionally, sending out New York Comic-Con tickets to major AFOL fansites... Frankly it doesn't matter how long fans stuck with BIONICLE. I stuck with it from 2001–2010 and I think most of what I've seen looks amazing. There are other people who were only BIONICLE fans for a shorter time, either towards the beginning, towards the end, or somewhere in the middle, who will probably still really like the new BIONICLE, and others in all of those categories who won't. Sticking with BIONICLE to the very end doesn't make you, or me for that matter, any more deserving of the LEGO Group's attention than people who only enjoyed it for a short time or even people who never experienced it. And expecting to see a lot of fanservice for long-time fans in what little we've seen is a bit selfish and impertinent. We've hardly seen anything, but already you're saying not enough of it has been targeted towards fans like you and me than what we've gotten! The fact that you don't appreciate either the things that have been kept the same or the things that have changed (neither of which is inherently a bad thing for long-time fans) has nothing to do with how the LEGO Group feels about what you've put into BIONICLE and everything to do with how you feel about what they've put into it.
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They've done plenty to honor the fans who stuck with it. Just not the needlessly picky and demanding ones. I apologize if you fall into that category. His latest book The Ocean at the End of the Lane could be a great place to start! What? No he didn't. He wrote five books and a handful of comics for the theme but wasn't on its story team and had no role in its story development that I'm aware of. Most of the comics were adaptations of the TV episodes, but saying that made him responsible for those episodes' story is like saying he was responsible for Legends of Metru Nui or C.A. Hapka was responsible for Mask of Light. But with that said, treating Greg as the ONLY person who can do BIONICLE justice is beyond silly. Yes, he did a lot for BIONICLE. But he's not the ONLY person who did a lot for BIONICLE. And he's not the only person who COULD do a lot for BIONICLE. For every good story Greg wrote, there are hundreds that he DIDN'T, and hundreds that nobody has written — yet. And anyway, if in the end it turns out the new BIONICLE isn't for you? Well, I guess that's unfortunate. But that doesn't mean it's a bad story. Other people might prefer different types of storytelling, for completely legitimate reasons. To some people, Greg's writing was the pinnacle of BIONICLE's storytelling. Other people preferred the movies. Other people preferred the Mata Nui Online Game. The new BIONICLE story doesn't have to cater to all those different storytelling preferences to remain faithful to the theme's concept. BIONICLE was a story about powerful and righteous elemental heroes, magic masks, and dark forces bent on conquest. Even without using all of its characteristic jargon, that description is no less accurate.
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...Or AWUWDPAUW for short! Wait, that's not short at all. Something else to keep in mind is that starting BIONICLE with a more fantasy approach will help it stand out from Hero Factory for new users, just like its tribal-inspired masks and torso decorations.
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I don't get that impression at all. When I think magic, I think mysterious supernatural powers. Have you read any books by Neil Gaiman? He writes some wonderful fantasy stories that are not the least bit subtle about invoking magical ideas or even the word "magic" itself. Another interesting fact: The term "magic" is actually fairly commonplace in girl-oriented marketing whereas boy-oriented marketing will often favor more "macho" terms like "Power". BIONICLE was no stranger to this. Find the Power, Power Lies Beneath, Battle for Power... those kinds of cliche slogans almost started to feel like a bad joke by the end. I'm not saying that the new BIONICLE will be marketing itself with less ridiculously masculine approach, but if it were to do so... I sure wouldn't complain. A little less testosterone won't kill anyone. I actually can't hear "pure energy" without thinking of the final episode of Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension. "You wanted power... let's see if you can handle it!" That's... actually one of maybe three or four episodes I've seen.
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That post I made... wasn't even directed at you. And when I mentioned people calling the theme childish for using terms like "raw magic" I was referring to comments I'd seen on other sites, not to yours. I'm sorry if you got confused and thought I was stereotyping/attacking you. =/
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We don't know that the movie scheduled for release in 2018 is a Ninjago movie. Technically, we don't even know it's a LEGO-related movie. What we do know is that it's a Warner Animation Group movie, and The LEGO Movie has been maybe their most successful venture either, so it wouldn't be out of the question for them to be working on more movies with the LEGO Group.
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Skylar's costume is Flame Yellowish Orange, and her skin is Bright Yellow. Same as it appeared in the prelims.
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We've seen literally nothing to suggest the new BIONICLE will be any less creative than it was originally. It's just an assumption people seem to want to make every time they notice a single difference from the old BIONICLE, no matter how insignificant it might be. It's childish and generic because the logo's too thick, or because it describes magic by actually using the word magic, or because they describe the work of evil forces as darkness, or because the set names are actually descriptive for a change, or because one of the terms sounds slightly more Japanese than Polynesian. Everybody's jumping to the same conclusion for the most pitiful reasons. I'm not saying the new BIONICLE will be no different than the old BIONICLE. But why don't we wait until we know something that actually matters before we pass judgment, instead of jumping to conclusions based on the most tenuous clues and assumptions? I don't know what kind of "cookie-cutter series" you might be referring to, though. Hero Factory definitely wasn't something like that — there was a lot of effort put into making its own thing and not just BIONICLE under a different name. And in the meantime we've seen lots of brilliantly creative series like Ninjago and the LEGO Movie. You don't have to like all of these series, but calling them "cookie-cutter series" and arbitrarily giving BIONICLE a pass because you grew up with it is uncalled for.
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This might seem a bit ridiculous... but do you think the robot could be Joel (from the episode "Codename: Arcturus")? His face looks similar, and he's colored blue and black, and while I can't read his name it does seem short. Plus he's driving Nya's truck! If it IS Joel, that is the silliest and most wonderful thing to happen to the Ninjago sets and story in a long time. Nya don't need no man! She got a robot sidekick! And a female ninja? It seems many people's prayers have finally been answered! The new sets and minifigures look AWESOME! It just makes me more excited to find out what happens in next year's story!
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Congratulations! You've discovered a couple things that BIONICLE has always, always had in common with Power Rangers! And realized for the first time that BIONICLE was ruined in 2001, but you were able to ignore it because like Power Rangers it was part of your childhood! Have a cookie! In all seriousness... calling it ruined because they're described battling the darkness (i.e. a colorful way of describing exactly the same thing they've always done) and because the setting has a different foreign-sounding name than previous foreign-sounding settings seems incredibly stupid and premature. Sorry I can't really mince words about that. It's just yet another stupid reason to be worried about the new BIONICLE being ruined, on a similar level to people complaining about the new logo being a few microns too thick. I can't fathom why so many supposed "fans" are reaching for any excuse to declare the theme ruined when they haven't actually heard any meaningful story details.
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Well that's very interesting! A lot of obvious corporate waffling with some of those answers, which is to be expected (and which lends credence to its authenticity). But it's good that they've prepared answers to all the questions that store employees will inevitably be asked once the line is re-launched. A few story spoilers but nothing which should ruin any major surprises for anyone who chooses to read the leaks. One thing that seems to be a bit of a flub — most of the prices are given in pounds sterling, but the Lord of Skull Spiders price is given in Euros. All the prices are consistent with what we'd expect in those currencies, though, so it's probably just a case where they forgot to convert LoSS's price when localizing the FAQ.
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I don't quite get what you mean by that last sentence. Part of the point of combi models has always been to get a person who owns one set to want to buy the others that combine with it. And it seems to me the reason the Toa are combined with the corresponding Protectors is so that the final models will still be color-coordinated, not because the designers think $10 sets won't sell on their own. I know some people were hoping for Kaita to really drive home the nostalgia that these sets offer. It's not wrong to feel disappointed that you don't seem to be getting those. But that doesn't make the LEGO Group's reasons for doing Toa+Protector combi models less legitimate than their reasons for doing Toa Kaita back in 2001.
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Yeah, Hordika necks are definitely still current! The Exo-Suit uses six of them. They also appeared in three other sets this year and in four sets last year, including three Hero Factory sets. Yeah, I generally agree with this. Onua stands out, but he doesn't look bad from what I've seen. On a visual level I am enthusiastic about seeing what the team looks like together. The Avengers in the recent movie all had fairly normal human proportions aside from the Hulk, but they still look fantastic together because the others all stand out in ways besides their body proportions. I expect the same to hold true here.
