Did Anyone Else Like Hero Factory?

I’m with you. I quite liked the sets and style, especially during breakout (my favorite two waves).

I also really liked breakout, I thought that was when the ccbs design really found its footing and gave all the sets more solid feels in my opinion

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HF was never intended to be a reimagining of BIONICLE. It was the successor to BIONICLE, but never to be a reimagined version of BIONICLE. It’s its own thing.

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Exactly. I feel it’s unfair to constantly compare the themes and granted they’re both themes based of buildable figures, but hero factory was not meant for fans of Bionicle it was purely its own entity designed specifically for a younger audience.

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Also, another thing:
Between 2003-2006, Bionicle was by far Lego’s most popular product.
It got a toy of the year award for most innovative toy in 2001.
Lego may have originally planned to have it run until 2020, it was so big.
At one time, 45% of boys age 6-12 owned at least one Bionicle set, and 85% had heard of the theme.
How could HF compete with that at a time when construction was less popular?
To me, it did very well for being in the shadow of Bionicle.
I think it did fine. I liked it.

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Seriously? That’s awesome!

That’s an a really good point. I liked hero factory, not because I liked bionicle but because I thought it was a decent concept with interesting set design. Comparing hf so closey to bionicle is like comparing a kids show to a prime time drama, they’re similar in that they’re both tv shows (constraction themes) but different in concept and target audience.

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Yeah I agree HF was meant for kids but don’t you think a television show or movie is better when it can appeal to everyone instead of using the excuse “it’s just for kids” to cover up problems in their work?

The excuse that HF is meant for kids doesn’t really work for me. When I was 10 or sumfin’ I looked at Wave 2 of Breakout and in a Toys R Us muttered “Wow, LEGO has gone down in quality…”

Also when I watched that 2.0 Thing episode as a kid I got really bored.

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The story was nothing too special, but the sets were pretty nice. What really made HF amazing for me, though, would have to be the parts! THE CCBS SYSTEM! Seriously, it’s the best thing the could of been introduced to Constraction! It’s revolutionary and can be very effective when used right.

HF always had some potential, and I think the CCBS System helped fill this out. I think the best year would have to be 2012. That year had nice heroes and villians all around.

As a lighthearted, fun constraction line, I loved Hero Factory. Sure, it was very different from Bionicle, and it’s potential was squandered in terrible writing, but the sets were incredible; arguably better than some of Generation 2 Bionicle. I loved Breakout, particularily.

Hero Factory isn’t going to be remembered for much, but introducing CCBS will definitely earn it a spot in the annals of Lego history.

I liked the “build your hero”, the factory setting and whatever concept, but I feel like the execution (of the story, at least) leaves more to be desired.

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That’s it. I’ve had enough of the baseless bashing of Hero Factory. The upcoming wave of beasts BIONICLE is releasing just doesn’t appeal me in any way aside for Umarak and Ekimu. They just look scrawny and lack consistency in the thickness of their limbs, resulting in an unsightly and poor aesthetic. Lava Beast’s lower legs look particularly bad, which is a shame since the rest of the set looks pretty decent.

As for senseless, irrational hatred of Hero Factory and the negative connotation attached to it, I think that is a mistake. I don’t understand why people speak as though the brand is a single individual responsible for the demise of Generation 1 when it was simply created to fill the constraction niche in BIONICLE’s absence during it’s hiatus. In fact, I think Hero Factory produced many exceptionally good models like Witch Doctor and Core Hunter and personally, I quite like most of them.

I even think the summer 2016 beasts are frankly inferior to a great many Hero Factory villains. Take Toxic Reapa, for example, and compare him to Storm Beast. Toxic Reapa’s lower section starts quite thin at his lower legs and feet but gradually thickens the further up on his body you go until you reach his beefy arms and shoulders, a logical progression in thickness which results in a unique and pleasing look due to a cohesive aesthetic (not unlike Umarak the Destroyer. He even has a similar colour scheme.) Now let’s look at Storm Beast. We start with scrawny lower legs which awkwardly protrude backwards and are bent at a 90 degree angle. Then we reach his thighs which jarringly transition to medium sized dark blue shells and then to an incongruous rib cage chest plate. (I mean, they’re not meant to be skeletons, so what’s the point?) Finally, we reach the arms and head. Exposed ball joints, no elbows, and puffy arm armour that don’t flow with the rest of his arms. Not to mention the abysmal lack of dark blue, among other things, which is just the the cherry on top of of an otherwise poorly conceived set design.

In brief, the beasts look like they had potential, but I feel as though the finalized models deserved to remain in the preliminary stage of design until we got a more refined product.

I can’t see Hero Factory doing that. It just sounds so much more like Bionicle to me,

That’s the thing that a lt of people don’t really get; Hero Factory was not only supposed to be different from Bionicle, it was supposed to be the antithesis of Bionicle. Way more fun and cheery, it was a new style for a new era in 2010 when Lego cancelled Bionicle. It was an experiment, and it lasted for a decent period of time in its own right.

By the way, I don’t play Warhammer 40K, but I have a few friends that do, and it takes some serious skill to paint figurines like they do.

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I liked it, but it was a little childish at times

I have been a fan of constraction for almost a decade and I thoroughly enjoyed the Hero Factory sets. They were unique and creative in their own way and the line produced many interesting and memorable sets. Just because it didn’t try to emulate its predecessor by repeating its mistakes does not make it bad by any means. Of course, it wasn’t perfect either and pushed out its share of poorly designed sets (Fire Lord, Voltix, Evo Walker) but that is to be expected as not every set can be perfect.

We got a towering titan in Witch Doctor, whose size is yet to be matched or surpassed by any set in a non-licensed constraction theme, and unconventional yet aesthetically cohesive characters like Thornraxx, Toxic Reapa, and Core Hunter. We even received completely original characters whose very concepts were unconventional like Queen Beast and Speeda Demon. When’s the last time you saw a spider-dragon-humanoid hybrid with a pincer staff or a four armed green demon wielding golden katana and riding a purple motorcycle with lightning bolts shooting out of the handle bars and exhaust pipes? For me at least, many of the Hero Factory sets had their own wacky charm to them, comparable to many comic book supervillains.

Hero Factory only did what it was supposed to do, it is true, but to its credit I think it did that very well: be a toyline with fun toys that was not tied down by having an overly convoluted story attached to it. Its simplicity was its strength, not its weakness, and to think of it as a weakness is the mistake that all the Hero Factory-hating BIONICLE G1 fanboys seem to make, this misconception the result of a nostalgic bias towards a flawed and obsolete system spawned by a franchise that accumulated far too much lore until it became too complex for its own good. For the simplicity of Hero Factory allowed for a tremendous amount versatility and flexibility design-wise and in the concepts of its sets, much like the CCBS system it introduced and which was founded on the same principles. This was Lego’s intention when they created Hero Factory, and I think the line fulfilled that purpose exceedingly well.

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Well put, my friend.
Extreme G1 fans all say “oh it had no story”, but I think that’s part of why G1 lost some popularity - unless you were a kid who liked long, complicated, and even at times confusingly convoluted stories, you couldn’t get into G1 easily. Glatorian helped me slide into liking it more in depth, but it was all but over by then.

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I love that kind of story!
Even when I was six…

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It was good in the sets especially. The story I could handle.

My first lego hero/bionicle set PERIOD Was mark surge 1.0, And i’m still making the occasional hero MOC. The newest one I made tonight. I was young at the time of HF’s release, and was obsessed. Sure I had heard of bionicle, but my first exposure to it as far as I remember was at the end of the mistika/phantoka era. I wasn’t as absorbed because my mom was scared of them. And mom was almost as scared with HF, I only got surge because I said this; “They’re heroes. They will protect the minifgs.” Eventually I got the Furno Bike as another Report card present, and then the collection sprung everywhere. I collected the entirety of the 2.0 line, and was done by 5.0. By the time Bionicle came back, I had read the entirety of the lego book, and I knew what I thought was everything about Bionicle. Boy was I wrong. I think that Hero factory is a good bridge to Bionicle. Even so today. Thanks for reading! Gosh, this took a long time to type!