[spoiler]You know, this can easily result in arguments like those in the speculation topics.
But hopefully, we can civilly discuss why G2 was ultimately cancelled. [/spoiler]
One large reason that G2 was cancelled because of the lack of mystery or lore (and sales, if anything the sales are the main reason for G2’s cancellation).
Explaining everything that happened prior to the current story isn’t a good idea. Some may argue that G1 did the same thing, what with the stone stories, but that still had a realm of depth and mysticism behind it, one that drew would-be buyers in.
What G2 did was a premise. A prompt for a story to be built off of. But the way that G2 built the story was significantly less interesting, and was plagued by predictable writing.
To be fair, G1 was often predictable in it’s early years, where the Toa would be beaten back because of stubbornness only to return with the SUPER POWER OF TEAMWORK and win. But at least that was mostly ironed out later or had more diverse character interactions between the bickering teams, thus creating more tension and feeding the suspense. In addition, it made many of the characters more likable.
Now pulling off an air of mystery that makes the targeted demographic want to become invested in a toy line is extremely hard, but Lego has done this in the past, and thus should at least have some ideas to use for marketing from the old line. The wildly successful G1 commercials usually followed this formula:
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Create an original concept.
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Only hand out some information, invoking the viewer’s appetite to see what happens next, be it through showing off the heroes/villains or by subtly telling parts of the story.
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Give more of that information via the sets, bios, and short stories.
The G2 promotions and story telling was rather straightforward, and left little for the audience to wonder what would happen next aside from obvious cliffhangers (I say obvious due to the easy-to-predict writing). And because of this, the targeted consumer was not as interested, and did not become invested in the sets.
Now, this may ultimately be the ramblings of a jaded, older fan. But the point still stands that one of the crippling points of G2 was its promotional and story material. What do you think?