Could There Have Been More Toa Sets?

Every Bionicle knows the six main elements like the back of their hands: fire, water, earth, air, ice, and stone. But of course, as the storyline went on, it revealed even more elements that were supposedly “secondary elements.” According to the official wiki, these are all the secondary elements of G1:

Light
Shadow
Plantlife
Lightning
Iron
Magnetism
Gravity
Plasma
Sonics (pretty much sound)
Psionics

And then the “Legendary Creation” elements were Life, Creation, and Time.

To my knowledge, there were only two Toa sets released that weren’t Toa of one of the six main elements: Takanuva and Toa Ignika, the Toa of Light and Life, respectively. And the 2008 version of Takanuva encompassed Shadow as well. Plus, there was the whole Voriki rumor back in 2001…

But what about the rest of the elements? There were a fair number of Toa of the other elements in the novels, serials, and other story material, so I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like if we’d actually gotten sets of them. The formula for Bionicle set waves was that each wave, we’d get a set of six canisters, all of which were sets of characters that were the main colors-red, blue, white, black, green, and brown/yellow/orange/tan. This was the case all throughout the 2001-2008 story arcs, since every character was of the six main elements. But that made sense, because 2001-2003 introduced us to the six main elements, and 2004-2008 was taking characters from those years and making them Toa. And Bara Magna’s set of elements was pretty much the same.

So, hypothetically, if we did get another set of six canister sets that encompassed the secondary elements, what would it look like? Here’s my idea:

1-a Toa of Plantlife (in green and blue)
2-a Toa of Lightning (in blue and white)
3-a Toa of Sonics (in grey and black)
4-a Toa of Gravity (in purple and black)
5-a Toa of Magnetism (in gray and black)
6-a Toa of Psionics (in blue and gold*)

Which, of course, leaves us with Plasma and Iron. But maybe those could be supplementary sets like the Toa Hagah, or Lesovikk, or something along those lines. What do you guys think?

*sounds like something out of Cub Scouts :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes

I think LEGO would never do it because it’d be a very dumb move.

You have the established Toa color palettes and their variants as of 2008. Why, then, would you introduce variants of said colors (some of which, like blue and white, had already been introduced for water) and then intentionally confuse your audience by insisting these very similar designs were new elements not seen before in sets?

It doesn’t make sense from a marketing perspective and set designers would never suggest the concept.

2 Likes

You missed your “Capeesh?” :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I’m not here to demean.

2 Likes

Some elements colors are only that way due to the sets they’re based on. Sonics is grey and black because Krakaua was, magnetism is gunmetal because of Jovan, etc.

If other elements were released as a set wave, I’d imagine LEGO would change their color schemes. They already replaced brown.

3 Likes

Seems like it sometimes, but I get it.


I agree with @Ghid here, I think the B-side Toa powers remaining lore-only would probably be the logical move for LEGO, it’d be awful confusing for some fans.

I’d certainly hope they didn’t just replace their color schemes like what they did to brown though, that’s atrocious

At the end of that all though, implausibility and all I think it’s still a neat idea, I especially dig the Plasma + Iron supplementary combo at the end, that’s clever

1 Like

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Oh, you mean like what they did in 2009, with jungle and iron?

Edit: and before you argue “those aren’t Toa”: do you think there was a fan who was aware enough of the lore to know that these sets that look just like the Toa of the previous year aren’t Toa, but unfamiliar enough with the lore to be confused because the black guy isn’t earth?

Yes, they were well established and consistent. Stone is brown! I mean yellow! I mean, orange! I mean… Black? No, no wait, it’s burnt orange and green. No, now it’s burnt orange and brown and green.

(Yes, I know those last two are g2, but they’re still bionicle/I wanted to continue the joke)

Here’s the problem; Lego always had six colours: red, white, blue, green, black, and brown/orange/yellow.
With this, you have a green/blue, a blue/white, a blue, and 3 blacks

Here’s how I would do a secondary elements team:

  1. Red=Plasma, in red and white. Since the colors for plasma were never depicted (and I’m pretty sure were only canonized after g1 by Greg) this wouldn’t conflict.
  2. White=Sound, in white and silver. Since the mistika happened, I can absolutely see Lego doing this; and it’s similar enough to Krakua that it could be a variation.
  3. Blue=lightning, in blue and white, OR psionics in blue and gold.
  4. Brown=iron, in burnt orange and gunmetal.
  5. Black=magnetism, in black and grey, OR gravity in black and purple.
  6. Green=jungle, in green and blue. Or green and brown, perhaps, to have a color that isn’t on one of the other 5.

This is how I see Lego tackling the secondary elements as sets, if they wanted to do a set of six with no primary elements.

1 Like

One is a person who lives in the plant area and has the power of air, the other is a person who lives in the plant area and beats people up. The packaging and obvious Glatorian head/label helps any extra confusion, but the identity of the individual remains the same - green means jungle.

As for iron, the only Iron individual ever produced as a set was Telluris, who was in the largest set that year and had a distinctly different color scheme compared to Hewkii, being predominantly Keetorange with zero black. Mata Nui was the same color, but no person on the planet who knew anything about Bionicle could fail to know who he was.

Again, the drastically different character design should be enough to symbolize the Orange Toa of Stone with rotor blades in his arms is very different from the scraggly, ornate red-and-black edgelord and the squat, bulky ball of right angles the next year.

Nothing about the Skrall/Stronius indicates that they have anything to do with Pohatu/Hewkii/Onewa, who have all worn colors on the orange spectrum. The issue I’m mentioning here, as I’ve already said, is you can’t take a color scheme which is near identical to an existing one and expect people to automatically comprehend that this person is of a completely different element.

1 Like

First off, looking back at my post, it’s rather sarcastic in tone; I apologize, and i don’t mean to ridicule your arguments or imply that I think they’re dumb.

In fact, I think you make a very fair argument. However, I don’t think it’s as big a deal as you’re making it out to be, for a few reasons:

  1. As you say, box art can help clear confusion. You want it to be clear that this is the lightning girl and not the water girl? Give her lightning weapons, and put lightning on the box art. Heck, that’s what they did with Surge when hero factory came along. Sound could be sound waves, plasma could be magma… I’ll admit psionics, magnetism and gravity are a bit difficult to convey, though.
  2. You point out the similar environment that the glatorian shared with the Toa. Okay, then put the plasma guy in a volcano, put the iron guy on a mountain, maybe even put the gravity guy underground. I’ll admit I’m not sure what to do with sound, though…
  3. I think only a small percentage of people will be confused. Those familiar with the lore will know they’re different elements, those who aren’t will say “oh, there’s the red guy,” or “oh, there’s the guy who’s always underground.” Only a small few in the middle would be confused.
  4. Lego did change the elements, when they made green jungle, and to a lesser extent, stone to sand and earth to rock. I’d say that they could have done it again, had g1 continued.
1 Like

-Lightning weapon
-Okay heavy downpour isn’t exactly lightning

Uh

Aside from littering a character’s body with speakers (Stringer) how would you accomplish this? Kohrak Kal’s Bohrok shields use sound, and uh… They’re massive snowflakes.

Far too close to fire. Extra confusing if you use the sun. Blood plasma would be extra extra confusing, but I gotta admit I’d like to see a Toa of blood plasma

Hey, the Fire guy!

Yo, it’s the Goat guy!

Aaand the Earth guy.

Without some heavy symbolism (and a lot of guessing) it’s hard to make the boxart direct in any other direction that what people would naturally assume these areas represent.

Put him in front of a speaker

Red is fire, blue is the girl. Elemental attachments to color is so prevalent in LEGO themes that Ninjago did almost the exact same thing.

Yes, but it also took abandoning the typical character design style in favor of proper proportions and vastly different aesthetics, and entirely changing the world it was set in. They could do that again, but I don’t think they should.

2 Likes

I’d argue that is a harpoon, unless you know the story and know that it’s a laser harpoon (which technically isn’t lightning, but that’s semantics). I’m talking lightning shaped, like surge’s blades.

I would say concentric circles would get the point across.

That’s exactly the point, it’s the same logic as putting the air guy and the jugle guy in a forest, or putting stone and sand in a desert.

Again, that’s the point; people either know he’s plasma, or they don’t care.

Yeah, I admit that one’s a stretch.

You want to talk about Ninjago? Okay, it had Jay. Lightning, not water. Need I say more?
and Lloyd, master of… Green

I honestly think that had g1 continued, we would’ve seen Toa of at least some of the other elements; almost certainly lightning, based on what both Ninjago and HF did. I’d also say jungle and iron were likely. Sound, psionics, plasma, magnetism, gravity, are less likely.

1 Like

…Confusion?

Hey, these guys are almost the same thing, but they aren’t. Read the books.

And at that point why go through all the effort to make it obvious? Just slap the same background on all of them so they can fit in the same wave.

The effort LEGO went through to signify Jay was in fact lightning and not water was monumental, and the aesthetic designs for the ninjas early on kinda suffered because of it.

Also, Nya.

Iron Toa are all dead, and if it had continued it would have likely changed the way canon ended/would’ve followed Greg’s plans a little closer. Introductions of different, side story characters as sets, such as Toa Orde, more focus on Bara Magna, an eventual Angonce set to square off against a fully restored Takanuva - maybe the set designers would’ve come up with completely out of left field color palettes, like
white and olive green, or maroon and lime green.

1 Like

My bad.

I like the way you formatted it. Although, I do have to concede to Ghid’s point about Lego not releasing a whole wave of secondary-element Toa. With all things taken into consideration, it probably wouldn’t work out very well.

And I’m pretty sure that set was the largest Bionicle set ever, at least piece-wise.

But…wasn’t the fire guy already in a volcano? And the earth guy was already underground?

I really don’t know why they left Air out of G2. Since they kept Ice and Stone…it just seems weird.

Though, to be fair, all of the Toa Inika sets had the lightning-storm background on their lackaging.

Yeah, I always found that kinda weird.

That sounds pretty gross. Is there a grossed-out emoji that I can use here?

WHUT?

Back when Ninjago first started I was a little confused as to why Lightning’s color was blue, and there was no water. I got used to it after a while, but in hindsight, it’s kinda odd that they made Water’s color gray. Shouldn’t those elements and colors be the other way around? Like, lightning gray, and water blue?

To quote myself…

Eh, maybe. But I still don’t know how you’d do that with Gravity or Plasma.

Based on all the points that have been raised in this topic, the most feasible way to do this would be in a supplementary set, like Lhikan or Takanuva. I myself brought this up in my opening post.

*mostly.
And there’s still matoran, so we can see new Toa.

Just to be clear: that is how I would make a team of six of all secondary elements, not necessarily what I think Lego would or should do. I can see them making a new team of Toa with, say, fire, ice, lightning, iron, earth, and green jungle, for example.

2 Likes

B-but that’s five

The sacred rule of six canister set waves must never be broken

EDIT: No wait I’m stupid

3 Likes