Dark Hunter Winners List Search

LEGO BIONICLE
, , , ,
1

Over the past month or so, I’ve taken an interest in recovering as much as I could from the various LEGO Magazine contests. And in that time, I’ve discovered quite a bit, such as:

But one thought has been in the back of my mind for weeks.

Phantom.

As a refresher, there were 35 winners for the Dark Hunter contest, and, unlike the Rahi Contest, being featured in the DH guidebook was specifically one of the prizes. However, only 29 made it into the book. Three more would later be featured in Brickmaster magazines from 2006 to 2007, bringing the total to 32. Three are still unaccounted for. The Updated Encyclopedia from 2007 had an entry for a Dark Hunter called Phantom, but no photo. This is presumably one of the 3 remaining winners.

Two years ago, Casey Kinsey, creator of the Furnace Salamander, shared that he was one of these winners. Initially people, myself included, thought this was Phantom, but Casey’s essay had little to no correlation with Phantom’s BEU entry. There are still two winners out there, and either one of them could be Phantom.

Just as the winners of the Toa and Rahi contests were listed on the BIONICLE website, so too were the winners of the Dark Hunter contest. You can see that there was a news article about it here. Unfortunately, it was never archived (this is partially due to the fact that the website’s news articles did not have permalinks). I have bled the Wayback Machine dry, and there’s nothing. I’ve tried searching old forums that may have talked about it. BZPower’s was never archived either, and while MaskofDestiny’s was, there’s nothing helpful.

If that list is still out there somewhere, it would identify the last two unknown winners, and would be a major step towards finally recovering Phantom’s appearance. I’ve wasted enough of my time on this, so I’m putting this up in hopes that someone can get closer than I have, or that one of those two winners somehow see this.

12 Likes
2

If you’ve incurred headaches in your search you could equate it to amputation since you would have suffered phantom pains

lifetime comedy award 49, I’m so close

Man, you’ve put in the work for this one. I just hope someone on the Boards happens to know something that may aid you here, because it sucks to cover so many bases and come up empty handed.

6 Likes
3

I’ve found some more information, although it only opens more questions.

According to Greg, all but one of the entries would be featured in the book.

How many DHs will there be featured in the guide?
Oh, don’t remember offhand – all but one of the contest ones and probably 10 more or so

Several fans discussed why this was.

I wonder why one of the Dark Hunter contest winners won’t be in the guide?
It probably wasnt sent for photographing or something like that.
Yeah, I sent my entry in like, 3 days before the deadline, and Greg said that only 1 other guy besides me hadn’t sent in their entry yet.

For context, the last user in this post is the creator of Darkness.

We know that actually 6 entries were cut from the book. This was probably due to a decision by Scholastic after Greg said this to shorten the book. Again, 3 would later appear in the magazines.

But if only one entry was never sent in, why were the remaining three never featured anywhere, with only one, Phantom, given a mention in the BEU with no appearance?

One possibility that popped into my head is that there may not have actually been 35 winners.

For the Rahi Contest, it said there would be 1 grand-prize winner, and 50 first-prize winners. However, if you count up the names on the list, there are only 49 first-prize winners. Whatever the reason for this may be, perhaps something similar happened with the Dark Hunter contest. This would explain why two are never mentioned anywhere, and so perhaps Phantom is the one remaining winner that was never sent in, meaning Phantom must be Casey’s entry.

The problems with this are, as already stated, Phantom’s BEU entry does not match nearly at all with Casey’s essay. Greg said that he kept to the essays as close as possible, and this is evidenced by Primal. It also disagrees with what Casey said:

I sent this off to LEGO, but I guess some wires got crossed and it just got sent back to my house a few weeks later.

It’s possible that it never did actually arrive, or it arrived past the deadline, but to me, this sounds more like Casey guessing on something that happened 15 years ago in order to rationalize why his entry never appeared in the book.

But regardless, this is all mere speculation without the list of winners.

3 Likes
4

What if, rather than to shorten the book, these entries were cut because of potential issues?

This is purely a theory, but maybe the entries were removed due to some issue or another, and then three were released later after the issues were cleared up, while the others couldn’t be resolved. I just think it seems a bit odd that they would cut five entries (six if you include the one that simply wasn’t received in time) to save space when being featured in the book was explicitly one of the prizes.

With the Rahi Contest, the difference just comes from the fact that the grand prize winner got lumped in with the first place winners; there ended up being 50 winners total, rather than 50 additional winners. That’s quite a bit different from the out-and-out incorrect information that would be required for the Dark Hunter contest to claim 35 winners and only crown 33.

The fact that Casey’s essay doesn’t really match up with Phantom seems to support the idea that there are additional winners out there.

EDIT:

This quote seems to imply that the entries were accidentally left out by Scholastic, rather than out of any intentional decision to save space or avoid issues:

Q: Do you know if LEGO plans to keep introducing new miscellaneous characters into the storyline like they did in the most recent magazine? I think it would be a great idea, since you’re not planning to do any more guides, and they were really the only way fans could hope to have their creations included in the story. Perhaps you could reveal some new fan-created Dark Hunter, Rahi, or Brotherhood creation (or Order member? [/wishfulthinking) in each magazine? It would be fun for the fans, and us storyline buffs would certainly eat it up…

A: I wouldn’t mind. In this particular case, that was a DH model that won the contest last year, but was accidentally left out of the DH Guide by Scholastic. So putting him in the magazine was a way to make it up to the entrant.

Ii still leaves the question, though, as to why the other two entries that were received in time didn’t get some form of “consolation prize”. Maybe Lego just ran out of time to use the images?

3 Likes
5

The problem with this is that it doesn’t mesh well with Greg’s statement. When he said that all but one would be featured in the book, all the winners had been decided and the deadline to send their entries in to be photographed had passed. If there were any issues with the entries, they would have already been known.

We cannot say with absolute certainty why only 49 first-prize winners were listed for the Rahi Contest. The fact that it’s 50 total instead of 50 first-prize may simply be coincidental.

I’m not saying this to advocate for this theory, just pointing out that there is so little that we know about.

I do agree that Casey’s entry most definitely isn’t the only lost entry out there, but that also doesn’t mean this theory isn’t partially true. What if there were only 34 winners?

This quote seems to imply that the entries were accidentally left out by Scholastic, rather than out of any intentional decision to save space or avoid issues:

I have my doubts about this. If it were just one, maybe two entries, I could understand if it were an accident. But we’re talking about five entries. That just doesn’t sound accidental.

2 Likes
6

This isn’t much, but it’s something:

1.how come my dark hunter entry didnt show in the guide? (i created katerak.)
2. how about my piraka fusion? ( mine had a keerakh staff, a blunt shooter, and hordika whenua’s head.)

Were you a winner of either contest, or did you just submit entries?

This is probably just a child that didn’t understand how the contest worked, rather than a legitimate winner, but at least we get a new entry name.

3 Likes
7

I can confirm that because FRGT/10 was my username on BZPower. As far as I know I never heard back from Lego on any entry I ever sent in any contest, but truth be told, I didn’t really understand the operation of the contests that early on. I was around 11 years old at the time.

6 Likes
8

image

3 Likes
9

Well, that’s news to me.

2 Likes
10

That’s what they get for not accepting my Dark Hunter entry into their guidebook (i created katerak.) :triumph:

3 Likes
11

That’s pretty cool. Would you happen to be able to show either one of your entries? I’m particularly interested in seeing what some of the other Dark Hunter entries looked like.

Also, a possible lead for the Dark Hunter contest

I have found multiple references to a supposed winning entry named “Shakuto”, though it seems that this was the fan-name, rather than the final canon name of the character. In chronological order (note that the two Greg Archive quotes are meant to be read together):

Keetongu - PFB

Official Greg Discussion | Page 121

Official Greg Discussion | Page 121

LHIKAN i jego drużyna - PFB

Dzieje Mrocznych Łowców. POSZUKIWANI 4 BETATESTERZY - PFB

I’m not really sure what to make of this.

For starters, it’s entirely possible that Shakuto is entirely fabricated, along the lines of Voriki.

The first post on the Polish website above almost reads as if Shakuto first appeared in Time Trap, alongside Lariska, Triglax, and Voporak. Could “Shakuto” simply be a mistranslation of some other Dark Hunter, such as The Recorder? I haven’t found any language in which “shakuto” means “recorder”, but I easily could have missed something.

The interesting part, though, and the thing that makes me question if “Shakuto” is really just a mistranslation, is the fact that Shakuto is mentioned as a Dark Hunter once again in a Greg Quote, this time as an ex-Toa created by a fan for the contest. Assuming once again that this wasn’t just made up, it seems entirely possible that “Shakuto” was indeed a real winner, and the person on the Polish site heard about it after the winners were announced. If this is the case, then I see two options:

  • Shakuto is one of the missing entries
  • Shakuto is the fan-name of either Spinner, Prototype, or Savage

I feel like it will be easier to prove or disprove the second option.

4 Likes
12

I have one potential hail mary that might get my hands on some old photographs, but it could take a little bit before I can. I can tell you he was a biped somewhat reminiscent of Nidhiki.

That bit about Shakuto is interesting. I wonder what the odds are any of those users are still active on those sites all these years later; maybe they remember where they heard of it

4 Likes
13

Based on the quotes, this looks like the “Peter Grate” scenario from HF: someone added the name to one of the wikis, and a bunch of people assumed it was real.

The first quote references “It was written on the english wikipedia”, which could be referring to BS01, the Bionicle Wiki, or simply Wikipedia, though the last one is unlikely. The Greg Quote directly says “check out BS01”

3 Likes
14

I’ve been busy and didn’t have time to respond sooner, but I tried looking into “Shakuto.” Based on the sources you found, it was definitely on BS01. However, searching for “Shakuto” brings up no results. If it was on BS01, it must have been deleted at some point. So I started looking through the edit histories of the Dark Hunter pages.

I still haven’t found Shakuto, but I found something else.

Apparently, Spinner’s and Charger’s creators uploaded pictures that were linked to on their BS01 pages, but they were removed years ago after the links were broken.

Fortunately, I found Spinner’s, but Charger’s wasn’t archived, at least that I have found.

Given that the community knew about “Shakuto,” whether it was on BS01 or not, I seriously doubt it’s one of the two missing entries, but rather the original name for one of the canonized entries. Doesn’t really help with the search for Phantom, but it’s still very much appreciated.

2 Likes
15

It actually probably was Wikipedia; now that you mention, there have been a few instances in the past of Wikipedia containing false information:

2 Likes
16

The edit histories currently on BS01 only go back to about 2009. The original site was lost in 2007.

Source: here, plus the creation date for this page and others.

2 Likes
17

I know, but there’s no way to know when the information about Shakuto would’ve been deleted. After exhausting that, I did try looking through the Wayback, but still didn’t find anything.

2 Likes
18

I just realized I forgot to actually provide the examples here.

My point is that, based on the examples below, it seems that, back in the day, Wikipedia might just contain straight-up fabricated headcanons, never mind accidentally misinterpreted information:

There was also a period of time where Wikipedia listed a completely fabricated name for the Mask of Creation (I think?), so it’s not impossible that someone may have added an entirely fabricated Dark Hunter as well.

3 Likes
19

While that is certainly possible, it was definitely on BS01 at one time. The person on the Greg Archive who said it was is Master of the Rahkshi, who was a BS01 Staff member. Finding where it was on BS01 (or Wikipedia, if it did originate there) would give us more information.

4 Likes
20

I just realized that Spinner is one of the best Dark Hunters we could get additional information for in this scenario: assuming the existing statements about “Shakuto” are true, he’s an ex-Toa, which only applies to three current fan-made Dark Hunters (Spinner, Prototype, and Savage). If we could track down the original names of those three specific entries, it could help us figure out where “Shakuto” came from; either one of them is Shakuto, or none of them are and Shakuto is a missing entry.

(Or the existing information about Shakuto is entirely wrong/misunderstood, which is still a very real possibility)

Add-on Edit:

In general, I’m surprised by the lack of talk I’ve been able to find on the Greg Archives about the contest, whether it’s about the winning entries, losing entries, or missing entries. You’d expect that people whose won would be asking why their entries weren’t in the book (Shakuto or otherwise), but that doesn’t seem to be the case; even if “Shakuto”'s creator announced their success to the community before the book was published, the lack of mention about its absence from the book (if Shakuto was a missing entry) seems to be par for the course.

3 Likes