It’s been nearly a decade since since Bionicle g2 began and subsequently and abruptly ended. Now there have been new leaks regarding Bionicle’s return in 2025. With Lego creating more action figure sets such as with their super hero lines, the new sccbs parts, and the two $20 dreamzz sets (the robotic z blob set having sold out in many areas) what direction do you think G3 will go?
Keep in mind that the mata hand and socket parts recently had a new mold created. What sort of system do you think will be used for G3, Mixel joints (like with the Tahu gwp/ sccbs), traditional ball and socket, or ratchet joints (like in dreamzzz zblob and galador) or all of the above.
I have a feeling that we will be getting mostly 20$ sets or even 15$ sets, and because if inflation they will technically be cheaper than g2 on average. What do you think Lego might do as to not have Bionicle sales be eaten by Ninjago, advertise to an older generation? Lego has been doing that more, but mostly with the flower and special anniversary sets for both Lego and their licensed ips.
The mobile game and video game market has vastly expanded, but so have multi media franchises and parents desires to have kids not be “iPad” kids. So maybe it’ll be marketed to an even younger audience?
Lego’s licensed movie ip’s have been slumping more at the box office, Star wars, dc, and marvel, with people being fatigued on these franchises, so maybe that’s why Lego is planning to bring back Bionicle in 2025, when their major licensed themes are not as popular?
Of course the leaks could be false or could have leaked that Lego is considering a Bionicle relaunch in 2025, not actually that they are fully developing it.
Anyway, what is everyone’s thoughts on the matter if g3 were to be real?
imma frame out some of my reasons why I have doubts about this.
This leak (to my knowledge) originally came from a thread/instagram story describing a bunch of alleged scrapped content and behind the scenes drama with ninjago. (I won’t directly link it here just to be safe as it did include some leaked images, although I believe all of the sets in said images have been released now so maybe it would be safe?) The thread included the Bionicle mention as an aside near the end, not specifying any detail other than the release year.
Ninjago youtuber BricksByMind made a twitter thread pointing out various errors in the leak thread, and ninjago writer Doc Wyatt outright said that the thread was fake. (again, not linking to be safe, since there’s a link to the leak thread close to there, I’ll edit in the links if mods are alright with it.)
This point is mostly speculative, but the timing of this seems a little off to me. If the theme is planned to release in 2025, that means LEGO probably started working on/planning Bionicle around this year or earlier.
LEGO most likely sees bringing back bionicle as a risky venture after G2, and the only thing I could see changing their feelings on that is if current constraction products sold really well. (I doubt they would go the minifigure route, as I don’t see minifigure Bionicle being able to coexist with ninjago, which I don’t see ending any time soon)
To me it doesn’t really seem like those products have had enough time to evolve and prove their market value yet.
Small mechs appear to be doing very well, but those aren’t constraction figures per-se, and the included minifigures may be a strong influence on their appeal.
The superhero construction figures have lasted longer than the minecraft bigfigs at the very least (those only ever got 2 waves, with 5 sets in total) but from what I’ve seen the superhero figures don’t exactly seem to be flying off shelves either.
The dreamzzz figures can’t really be judged yet as they’ve only been out for around a month, not to mention that, despite not being mechs, they still include and are designed to interact with minifigures.
Some might argue that the 90th anniversary poll may have influenced LEGO to consider bringing Bionicle back, but if those results were that strong I feel like they would have given it some kind of proper widely released set for the 90th anniversary (not the $400 ideas poll winner spot neccecarily, but something smaller on the side like the galaxy explorer) rather than just leaving the GWP team to pick up the scraps at the end of the year.
Anyway, that’s my rambly and speculative two cents.
Best case scenario I could see is there’s a new constraction theme coming out in 2025 and the leak source just jumped to the conclusion that it would be Bionicle. I don’t think it’s impossible that Bionicle could come back but 2025 seems a bit too soon.
Doesn’t really make sense to call them “mata hands” when only one of the mata actually used one as a hand.
Yeah, but then again, the first leaks and rumors of G2 came out roughly two years before its launch. (Feel free to correct Me on this, though. )
Assuming this, and of course, the leak is credible, the earliest we could see anything from G3 is mid-2024. (Similar to G2 in mid-2014…)
TBH, I, for the most part, agree with your points, but there’s always one thing we should keep in mind about subjects like this:
“We have almost close to zero ideas, about what is going on behind the closed doors at TLG.”
I mean, a lot of people around 2012-2013 were skeptical about Bonkle ever returning, and for better or worse, It eventually did in 2015.
Granted, as you’ve pointed out, the brand’s perception has changed for the worse since those days.
Then again, Lego had surprised us before, so we can’t be sure 100% on this either.
All I’ll say is this: We should take this very carefully, but we shouldn’t rule out the possibility of another Gen’s debut.
to my knowledge the earliest info about G2 was the linkedin page of someone who worked on hero factory mentioning a “new action theme in 2015.” That was late 2013. We didn’t get any explicit mention of it being Bionicle until the store display pictures leaked in mid-2014.
(With the current “leak” on the other hand, all we’ve got to go on is one vague mention from a potentially dubious source.)
I first glanced at the rumors about G2 by reading a topic on BZP at the time. (mid-2014.)
So… I guess You’re correct, and I probably miss-remembered the date of the G2 news. “Mea culpa!”
As for the current leak and its “dubious” source, who knows?
If you think about it, re-launching another iteration of Bionicle around the mid-2020s would make sense, as most fans pointed out after G2’s abrupt cancelation that it came out too soon.
In 2025, G2 will be ten years old, and most people, especially kids who may have experienced it while it was still around, have moved on from it. (Either because they’ve outgrown it, or it just didn’t make a strong enough impression on them.)
Not to mention that there’s been a noticeable rise in nostalgia for Bonkle on social media lately.
So, reintroducing Bionicle to Lego’s newest target demographic would be a great move by TLG, and I’m sure their market researchers are aware of that, too.
But only time will tell, OFC.
I take a lot of issue with this mindset tbh. Like, yeah nothing I’ve said is concrete evidence that this leak isn’t real. The leak source could have nuggets of truth to it. My speculation is, of course, limited in its perspective, and there’s probably plenty of other factors going on at LEGO that none of us would know about.
At the same time though, the speculation and dubious nature of the leak source still has a basis in reality. (Doc Wyatt’s debunking of the leak thread most notably.) There’s relatively reasonable cause to believe that the leak is fake, and little to nothing to substantiate that it’s real beyond confirmation bias and blind hope.
I don’t think it’s a smart idea to vague away reasonable causes for doubt just because “who knows?”
I understand if you’re excited about the possibility of this being real. Heck, even I can’t help but entertain it to a degree, but anyone can write “Bionicle 2025” on an instagram story. If that’s all it takes to get us to genuinely believe that something is coming, it’s only going to lead to disappointment.
Maybe I came across as overly optimistic and too confident regarding the leak because I have autism spectrum disorder, which often manifests as being caught up in the moment.
I am sorry if what I wrote in my previous post came off as too excited or dismissive of the facts.
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