Invasion From Below worked fine, but to have constraction pieces being used for mechs, and characters that were previously constraction turned into weird minifigures…is kinda strange to me. Although, there were a good deal of mechs that I liked. My favorites were the Surge and Rocka Combat Machine and the Furno Machine. What really killed IFB was the TV special. That ending…ugh. It was SO stupid!!!
I’ve looked it up, and frankly…I’m kinda glad it was canned. But I would definitely like for Lego to do an original idea. That was one of the things I liked about Hero Factory-it was an entirely new concept that felt fresh.
Uh…yes. Hard yes.
In this day and age, a TV show is probably the best way to market a Lego theme. I mean, look at Ninjago. It’s gotten such a big following, the Ninjago wiki has people that actually sit down and transcribe episodes to post on the wiki. (I love it.)
Yeah, I agree. I don’t think Lego really understood what made G1 so awesome and successful, so they thought that if they simply brought back Bionicle, then it would be a success. So when it failed, they just shrugged their shoulders and ended it, since they were still making money off of Ninjago, Star Wars, and the ever-repetitive superhero lines. (Not to go off-topic, but I don’t feel like they’re putting any effort into the superheroes sets anymore. Every single set is a rehashed Batman or Spider-Man vehicle that’s somehow even crappier than the last. The only good superhero sets are the ones based on movies, and even those are hit-or-miss.)
Back to the point. The way 2010 went down makes me think that, as long as G1 was still going, they still had “it.” That is, they still had some of the Bionicle lightning captured in their bottle. I’ve talked to some people who think that cancelling G1 in the first place was a bad idea, and in some ways, I agree. There were several more story arcs that were planned to come, but they never came to be. It’s hard to say how Lego as a company would’ve been affected if Bionicle had never ended, but one thing’s for sure: there wouldn’t be any angry fanboys complaining that their favorite theme was canned.
Which brings me to my original question: what could Lego have done to prevent Bionicle’s demise? When I wrote the original post, I wasn’t referring specifically to either G1 or G2, but now, that question can easily be applied to G1. I’ve poked around the Internet, and it appears that Lego decided to cancel Bionicle because 1.) the lore was getting too complex to draw in new fans and 2.) the toy sales were declining.
The lore getting too complex…this, I sort of agree with. There was so much going on within the Matoran universe, so by 2008, it was pretty hectic. That’s probably why they shifted over to Bara Magna for 2009. The premise there was much simpler: a hero named Mata Nui has been exiled from his homeworld, and now he has to find a way back. I mean, the reasons for that were complicated, but that’s a decent enough premise for any newcomers to follow.
As for the toy sales declining-there’s a couple possibilities. It might be connected to the previous point. If the story’s too complex to attract new fans, then less fans=less consumers buying the product. But I mostly blame this on the quality control issues. It started with the infamous lime green joints in 2007, then came the 2008 socket redesign. Because of this, I think that if Lego had put more care into designing their Bionicle pieces, then the theme might’ve lasted longer than it did.
Of course, those are just my thoughts…