But then Plural’s incoming Master Rank destroyed the young boy’s dreams.
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I thought it had to do with the injection-mold points? When they include the axle in the mold, it creates that weird circle-mouth. But by having the axle a separate piece, it gets rid of the circle mouth to preserve the look of the mask, and allows it to look smooth.
IDK how to explain it, but I’m pretty sure that’s why important masks (like the Ignika) got the special treatment.
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this was always weird, I didn’t really like it
it made the masks feel kinda cheap for some reason
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That makes a lot of sense.
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To be honest like @Plural said, it may have been due to prevention of broken molded pins to the masks ?
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I always saw it as a result of the strange new mask-molds. They tend to be larger and/or thicker than typical masks up to that point, so maybe they used up more plastic.
So maybe the axel was added so the bigger masks could still function as without going over the limit, or to make them more versatile?
Those were my thoughts at the time.
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We´re getting lots of great answers, I´m really happy, know I think we´ve got two great answers by @Neowulf and @Clone_01354_Productions
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I know that the following sets had the pin. Maxilos, Vultras, Toa Ignika. Toa Mata Nui. Not sure why though
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Wait. There are golden axles!!!
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I prefer the red axle mask attachment, as it allows the mask to be more versatile if it is used for anything other than a face.
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It was to make it more realistic. In real life, when people wear masks, they don’t hold the mask in their teeth; they attach a piece of red licorice to the mask and hold that in their mouth. It tastes better. It took the Bionicleans a long time to figure that out, though.
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To answer the original question, I think it had to do with mold cooling.
Attaching axles directly to the masks wouldn’t be as simple as just replacing the axle hole with an axle; that offset is still necessary for geometry reasons, so the axle would instead be attached to a large chunk of plastic where the axles holes currently exist. In addition to taking more plastic, injection molding doesn’t really like large blocks of plastic; they cool weird.
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