I think Ghid summed it up nicely. Lego is as any company is these days: not a producer, so much as a reactor, and it’s waiting to react to an audience that indicates a positive response. Greg Farshtey and Christian Faber have both said it a hundred times, each in their own way: this thing is completely in our hands. Until we collectively learn to broaden our pallettes and accept the thing we love in it’s variable forms, we will never really be given another form. Just look at the 90th Tahu backlash; it wasn’t even billed as a true return and it got dragged.
Bionicle fans, in a general sense, may be a little too spoiled rotten to deserve a new iteration of Bionicle. I mean, we love it and sustain it on sites like this, but any time Lego tries to offer an olive branch, the community slaps it away because they still like their noodles plain with butter and refuse to eat anything else.
Granted, maybe that part of the community isn’t quite as large as it seems- the voice of hate is frequently the loudest voice in the room- but it’s loud enough to keep us on spinning wheels.
The future of Bionicle may be in our hands, but I don’t think that means the hands of the community- I think that really refers to us as individuals, and it calls on us to reevaluate what we define as ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’. Until we broaden our horizons, we likely will never reach them.
Something to note is that lego doesn’t give attention to most retired original themes other than huge generic themes like space and castle. To my knowledge, there’s been little mention of fan favorites like power Miners, Chima, Alpha Team, Exo-Force, Mars Mission, space/castle subthemes, etc…
Bionicle had it pretty good with a 10 year run, and a reboot on top of that.
But no matter what, bionicle and all of the other beloved themes will forever live on through the passion of us fans
I don’t know what it is with Bionicle, but I don’t really agree with this idea.
Fan communities, even for “dead” franchises, can and do exist. And they can exist without the direct support of the original IP holder.
I don’t at all believe that something needs to be actively being produced/worked on/updated to be special and engaging. I don’t think something needs to “feel like there’s a future” for it for it to still thrive.
But for some reason, this idea is pervasive in the Bionicle community. I understand that a lot of us were younger when it ended, and we never got closure for that. And then G2 came along and did the exact same.
But a fact of life is that things end. Nothing lasts forever. Franchises die. Products get discontinued. But that doesn’t mean you need to forget about them, even if others might.
If it matters to you, and you’re inspired by it, then do something with that. You don’t need LEGO to give you more Bionicle. You don’t even need them to care.
Personally I’d like Lego to create more Bionicle pieces in new colors but also it’d be great if they can just continue making technic based constraction sets. Technic itself is a pretty successful non brick theme so why can’t Lego do the same with Bionicle?
Personally don’t mind the 90yop Tahu. I like it its cute, its better than nothing and from what I’ve seen that has been the common sentiment around the community.
However I don’t feel like LEGO should have made more sets than one of the poll results. (That’s is if the castle even was based on the poll. According to designer during LEGO con it has been in the works for 9 years)
The problem with this is that some fans are going to feel neglected because LEGO clearly showed that they had a budget to do more sets but deliberately decided to only do 2. Now I’ll let y’all judge if it was fair or in the spirit of the poll or not but personally I find it upsetting not because LEGO didn’t make a BIONICLE set but because they made a conscious decision to change the outcome of their poll.
Which makes me wonder once more: Why was the poll required? Why did people rally up to get their favourite set get the first place when the set was already there? Was this whole thing necessary?
Everybody knows castles and spaceships are popular. They weren’t featured in the Lego Movie just by coincidence. The poll was probably the most toxic way this could have went. Especially how bad they selected the choices and the resulting adjustments for round two. The winners are not unforseen and Bionicle and Pirates fans got disappointed. Just imagine they wanted to launch the castle and noticed that castle lost in the vote.
Bionicle as an official Lego IP is dead, long live Ninjago. The reboot was a mixed bag and I can understand anybody dismissing it after watching Journey to One. The new Bionicle disregarded a lot of things that made the matrix of Bionicle. Greg Farshtey’s works to establish the world of Bionicle barely find any resonance in G2, as does Faber’s cryptic and metaphorical visual storytelling.
Ninjago’s story is too similar to G1 for a Bionicle G3 to not be considered an inferior version, and Lego certainly doesn’t want to be its own competitor, as it would only result in the loss of profit of one theme in favor for another.
Lego apparently doesn’t really know what Bionicle actually was. Considering how many times this gets discussed in fan forums the fans -including me- do neither. So whatever move, googly eyes, canon contests, ignoring it, demanding to bring it back, trusting in Biovival is a considered move to the wrong direction by one fan or another.
Sets are difficult to make, as there are no parts left anymore and the new mech systems are too expensive for a collection-based theme.
Small nods like googly Tahu are probably the best thing we will get from Lego for a long time.
Bionicle to me these last few months was talking with people about the stuff I love and seeing other people show their passion for Bionicle. And yeah I will not see the day where Bionicle can rival with the MCU in terms of being a pop-cultural phenomenon. The likeliness that I will be able to randomly start conversations with people I see IRL about Bonkle is downright zero. But the internet is a thing bs01, Mask of Destiny, Duckbricks’ Contest, the Biological Chronicle, 810nicle, BioCup, TTV and BZP. Even if sometimes there are moments where I wish for something more, well, official, there is enough out there to explore and build.
If Lego came around tomorrow and would say G3 is now a thing I would die of hype within the first week and my remains would then be scared of what is to come, because G2 already showed that it’s not all gold that glitters. So much that I’d probably immediately silently start to complain when something new would get revealed. That’s maybe not rational, but has been like that, always.
The whole 90th anniversary thing for me was a roller coaster ride of emotions. At first I thought awesome we are going get a cool bionicle set like matanui robot or something. But then it also made me aware of a lot of hatred towards bionicle. Which I knew existed but didn’t think it was as bad as what I was seeing. Which was basically a bunch of people having a temper tantrum over bionicle getting the most votes. So then I just wanted the 90 th anniversary set to be bionicle to stick it to those haters. Then with the weird way lego handled the votes I began to see that clearly bionicle doesn’t have a chance when it’s own creator is trying to to forget about it. And sure Lego is a company at the end of the day and they want to make what sells. But why they couldn’t just make all four of the final themes sets and make more money from everyone I don’t know. But all I can say to that is they won’t be getting my money now.
Lego’s issue with Bionicle (and constraction in general) isn’t that it’s “non-bricks”. The issue is that it is a fairly unique construction system.
Technic parts in general are fairly generic, with a ton of reuse value; a lot, if not a majority, of non-Technic Lego sets today still use some degree of Technic, whether it’s to provide structural support for a large model, transmit power for a gear function, or even just provide a simple pivot.
Constraction parts, on the other hand, can really only be used for constraction figures. While there are exceptions to this , and constraction parts sometimes find their way into System builds (I particularly like the use of Hero Factory fists on Set 10246, Detective’s Office), it’s not nearly as generic (and resuable) of a system as Technic.
IMO it would absolutely be!
It could appeal to both old and new fans while striving the theme back to its roots.
It would please the hard-school G1 fans who disliked CCBS, while it could grab the newcomer’s interest with its unique style and aesthetics.
However, a hand full of specialized molds would still be required on the sets since some parts on the figures would be almost impossible to make with pre-existing pieces. (Such as the heads, feet, and hands/fists…)
Check the instruction book of the Tarakava set. It shows an ad in the back of two kids battling with Tarakava. One Tarakava is the Mata blue one from the set, the other is Mata green, with a Mata green Kakama on its face.
