I don’t think it is; BS01 archives canon, but they don’t get to make decisions on it.
Right now, there’s no objectively correct answer; every Greg Quote about the Mahri masks includes something like “as far as I know”, or “at least this many changes”. While it’s possible that the official Faxon piece is the standard shape, it’s also possible that it’s not, and we can’t know unless Greg gives some clarification. He’d probably be more willing to give a definitive answer if there’s an actual alternative to the standard piece, rather than having to say “the parts aren’t standard and I don’t know what is”.
Personally, I’d prefer that the standard Faxon didn’t have sockets for tubes and lightbulbs that aren’t part of the standard mask, but that’s not my decision.
That’s what I meant when I said “I wonder which side [of Willess’s two proposed interpretations] BS01 [would] fall on.” Strictly speaking they’d have to label it as “an unknown mask,” but I don’t know if they necessarily will do that.
Just to be clear, this is what the standard Faxon looks like. No visor, no breathing tubes/gills, no Barraki eye on top. It still has the sockets obviously, but personally they don’t bother me. I mean, the standard Pakari has sockets on the side of it, and nobody complains about those.
As far as I know, there is no source that confirms that to be a standard Faxon. There is the quote Jerminator posted above that says Lesovikk’s is normal, but his has a visor and a tube on one side.
The preponderance of evidence does. Greg qualifying his answers with things like “as far as I know” comes from him not knowing what the set designers would be doing a year or two down the line, or what the story team would necessarily be doing and what the needs of the story would be.
It obviously never became an issue with the sets or story.
Unless there’s a source that directly says the picture you posted above is the standard Faxon, it’s not confirmed. Probable, sure, but not confirmed.
I don’t care.
I actually have no strong feelings one way or the other. I would definitely be fine with having that as the standard Faxon, but I also see the possibility of something different being the standard shape.
I just begun to question. Are really Mata and Inika are different things? Here are some points:
2 Matabuild Toa were represented in stars literally same way as Gresh, who is Inikabuild. “Piraka” set, Nektann, also uses same body type. And Skakdi did before look like Inika.
Takanuva go from Mata to Inika and in reverse by… changing his size? Pretty strange thing that he changes his build
Toa Nuva, after they started to use AA, portrayed as Inika.
Inika themselves are Inika, not Mata. Yes, I know Greg said that their appearance comes from unnatural way of transformation, but, well, it started to make more sense actually for all this thing, that they actually transformed into what they would’ve seen as their appearance as Toa. And not same look as the some random Toa who later became Turaga of island they travel to.
1: minor nitpick, I wouldn’t call Takanuva 08 a Inika build. More like a titan build.
2: well, yeah, he’s a different build, it’s not like they could just make the same pieces bigger.
Anyway, yeah, characters change build all the time. My point is that we have an oversaturation of default Metru build Toa. Over half of the individual Toa are Metru build.
This is actually something I just thought about yesterday, too.
Basically, my stance is - if it’s canon, it should fit in somewhere in the universe. Meaning at least for me personally that Inika-scale is the most preferable. Then again, I have to point out that I’m not someone who puts sets/models on display. And if I ever have the room to do so, those would likely end up being MOCs. Hence, I do not care whether Nidhiki and Tuyet fit in with Metru Lhikan (in fact I’d just rather revamp Lhikan to Inika scale - as I’ve already done…)
I’m frequently revamping stuff, so it’s more about the core features of what’s canon than what exactly is canon that I care about - as long as contest winner and canon information do not contradict each other (of course, a MOC should also be well-built, but that’s purely contest relevant).
And the core features for me are (and this ties into why purism matters to me):
