I’m curious, then. Besides the quote from Lego, where are the signs of G2 success?
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No, it’s not. I’m tired of long posts that try to explain how G2 failed to me. I was in the community, guys. I know this stuff. I’m just saying that we don’t have evidence like sales figures; all other “evidence” is pretty useless.
I would have found that quote if you guys gave me a sec. I can only type so fast.
I’ll be straight up, because it’s what I do - there aren’t many other signs that could be taken as hard evidence. In most places, they sold eventually, and I think that we can all recall that they were stocked very heavily in some places to begin with.
But that’s not what I’m debating, because I’m not saying that I know for a fact that it did well. I don’t need to prove that it did well, because I never said that.
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Hate to break it to you, but we don’t need to see exact numbers to say that something had failed. Do you need to have footage of a crime to say that a criminal is guilty? Under most circumstances, no. Why? Because they have other kinds of evidence to prove otherwise. Sure, you need to speculate to form such a conclusion, but when everything has been laid out and points to a very obvious answer, it might not be a bad idea to say that said answer is correct.
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Maybe not financially successful, but isn’t one of LEGO’s core ideas supposed to be that their product helps imagination and creativity? Sure, the line didn’t sell well, or didn’t sell as well as it could have, but boy did it our gears turning.
TTV has hours of podcasts dedicated to discussing their hype for G2, how they wished G2 could improve as it’s happening, and then what G2 could have done and what it did wrong when it failed. They even started a new podcast on how they’d handle things if they had their way with a G3. There’s people on these boards that have done some pretty creative stuff with CCBS (although that could be attributed to HF, I’ll admit), and I’ve started a stop-motion series to give G2 a proper story that doesn’t suck and have roped in a bunch of other boards members to help out.
Sure, G2 didn’t really do great numbers and the public at large probably didn’t even know it existed, but for some of us, it did exactly what LEGO is supposed to do and got us to be creative. It probably doesn’t matter at this point, but in that way I’d say G2 was a great success.
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Not commercially though, which is what’s being discussed. But yeah, you’re absolutely correct.
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This topic is starting to sound more like: “Reasons for why LEGO will never ever make another Constraction line… Ever”
I mean, seriously. Should we really keep the viewpoint of G2, being such a bomb of a Constraction theme, that it killed any future for CCBS or other LEGO Constraction themes?
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G1 wasn’t planned to run for very long. However it ended up running for nearly a decade. G2 was planned to have a three year run. It was cut short by a year.
It shouldn’t be our only viewpoint, but it is a valid and realistic one that should not be scrutinized.
Look at constraction right now. It still doesn’t sell well on the shelves, like Star Wars constraction. I know we want to be optimistic, but we can’t shut out these possibilities.
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well spoken bro
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Moving past all the other filler, I definitely agree that the assumption that constraction struggles to sell well is a good one to have. I mean, I made the point on G2’s success because one you was trying to make the case that it would be a surprise if they promoted a constraction line. It’s good to keep an open mind - most of the time, I’d say that we’re truly surprised about what TLG does with a new theme. However, it’s always good to prepare for the worst. That’s what I always try to do; just expect the best. 
Actually, at least near me they are selling fairly well. There were hardly any TLJ figures the last time I went to Target. But a little more on topic, would it be possible for LEGO to try one last time with an original constraction theme? I think we can all agree that LEGO didn’t do the best job with commercializing G2. Maybe they are going to try what they did with Ninjago if this rumor is legit.
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They’d have to work really hard at it. Commit this time. Don’t give us a bad attempt and put quality into all waves of the sets.
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Don’t you love how this became a debate on “If G2 sold well or not?”
Anyways, I’d love a new theme. There’s so much more freedom when making something new. You don’t have to worry about the original fanbase.
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I love it.
A new theme would be great - even if you don’t take into account the constraints from the fanbase on TLG from doing a reboot, there’s a whole world of opportunities for detailing and world-building out there.
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I don’t believe the leak.
Why would we be getting 2018 leaks this early?
It’d be cool if it’s real, but I’m not holding my breath.
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That’s the most charitable way to say that, the marketing team was comically inept to the point of, Imo, nearly single-handedly being the cause of g2’s failure,
I know I bring it up pretty much every time I talk about how g2 died, but the solid gold masks were one of the most brain dead allocations of resources I’ve ever seen, I want to repeatedly slap whoever’s responsible for them.
I just hope Lego realises that marketing was their biggest failure for g2 and that in the blue moon chance this is real, which I doubt mind, that they don’t neuter the story or some other part of the line.
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This doesn’t make any sense to me.
Why would they start another IP based around the same principles as Bionicle when that flopped so hard they had to discontinue it before the third year? G2 certainly paid tribute to Bionicle, but it absolutely did not expect its audience to be familiar with G1- For anyone new to constraction it would be effectively indistinguishable from any other IP with colorful good and bad robots.
Why in the world would they expect an upstart IP of the same nature to work significantly better without the brand recognition and already devoted fanbase…?
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They would expect that for a ton of reasons… it’s tough to even know where to begin, but the really clear one is that it’s easier for people to get invested. It’s also easier to promote the line to kids and change direction midway through - both because people aren’t going in with expectations or baggage either way.
Because relying on the old fanbase and doing nothing for new people didn’t work so well last time?
~W12~
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I get where you’re coming from, but the pre-established fanbase really isn’t lego’s target audience. They’re already not relying on this market to carry them- or at least they shouldn’t have been, so that whole baggage factor is kind of moot when the people who care aren’t the intended consumers anyways. The kids who would be getting into Bionicle now would probably think they’re just cool looking robots, the name wouldn’t mean anything to them.
In fact the only important party who would be apt to scrutinize that point are the retailers. And maybe they’re to blame, with the whole de-shelving thing? But we’ll really never know what happened on that front.
But they weren’t, at least not on paper. If it was purely fanservice they probably wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to fully reboot the line, simplify the names, streamline the story, etc. As I recall there was a lot of talk of how the actual content of the line was intended to market towards more general audiences. If they really were relying on the fandom exclusively would it not have been a collector’s line or a G1 spinoff?
Perhaps their efforts just weren’t enough to make it accessible, but it seems like G2’s failure comes down more to how poorly it was marketed than the actual content of the line.
Of course everything I’ve said here is completely invalid if Lego really did design G2 under the assumption that it would be carried by old fans, but by all means that’s not how it was presented. So it puzzles me as to why they didn’t just put the effort into marketing it when they had what appeared to be a standalone line that’s interchangeable with any other similar IP- And why they’d feel the need to just start over. That pins the blame on it being Bionicle specifically, not that constraction IPs aren’t marketable anymore.
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