Ever since Bionicle’s cancellation was announced in late '09, and especially more recently, I’ve been so confused by LEGO’s choice to do so. I get that the sets in '08 weren’t selling that well. Whether it was because the story was getting too complex or because the set designs were starting to get stale though, both problems were pretty much going to be taken care of in 2009 and it baffles me that the LEGO execs didn’t have enough faith in a soft reboot and better and more innovative Inika designs. In fact, if I recall correctly, Bionicle was originally going to end after the Ignition trilogy, but the LEGO execs pushed for Bionicle to go on for more years.
What most people don’t realize though, is the painful irony of the timing of Bionicle’s cancellation. Because right around the time the announcement was made, guess what book had just been published:
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I’m no expert in economics at all, but considering this book and the planned 2010 both had colossal shifting mazes as themes, you can’t tell me there wouldn’t have been some sort of synergy that would have contributed to sales.
The planned 2010 story of Bionicle would have involved the Valley of the Maze. I’m saying that there possibly could have been some positive effect on sales for both parties.
I don’t know, maybe I’m looking a bit too much into this…
Yeah, I think that might be the case. I don’t see a relatively obscure novel affecting the sales of a multi-billion dollar company just because they have a common thread.
That being said I could be wrong about the books being obscure, maybe I’m just uncultured. They’ve only sold 6 million copies in 11 years, though … And even if the books were super famous I don’t think it’d have affected it.
I remember the book being popular in school - and it did get a movie adaptation, so I don’t think it was obscure.
Still, it’s not like you can plan on any effect like that happening. Lego would’ve had no way to know that the book was coming beforehand, and therefore no way to bank on any saving grace.
Yeah, most people I know seem to have heard of it. I think it even got a sequel.
Of course, I’m not sure if the book was as popular as the movie. In any case, I don’t think it would have had a huge impact on sales. Interesting coincidence nonetheless, though.
The sets weren’t selling well, but still pretty good.
they had the choice to either keep selling sets until bionicle it ran itself into the ground, or cancel it while sales were still decent.
by cancelling it while sales were still good, the theme kept a good reputation with retailers, meaning that if they were to bring back bionicle again, retailers could expect it to sell at least as good as it did at the end of 2009, if not better.
if they kept selling the sets until the theme was no longer viable, they would never have been able to bring it back. retailers wouldn’t want to sell the sets because of how badly they sold last time.
A movie depiction of a book does not mean the book was wildly popular, especially compared to other popular books with movie adaptations.
For example, the first Maze Runner book sold about 6-7 million copies - the first Hunger Games book alone sold 5 times that. All of the Maze Runner books sold about 14 million copies total in the US across all formats. The Hunger Games trilogy sold 65 million copies in the US. Both Maze Runner movies combined grossed ~184 million USD, while the Hunger Games books grossed 3 freaking billion.
All that aside, let’s say that the Maze Runner books were super popular. I still really struggle to see how it would’ve had an effect on LEGO sales simply because one of the parts of the story had a common thread with the books.
