After seeing the interview I now know that the set couldn’t have been ready for production at that point. The poll apparently also served to find out what castle themes could be implemented in a castle set. So there was system to the madness. But then, wasn’t there already the possibility to note down preferences or do I remember that wrong? The setup of the poll is just so bizarre.
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While I see your point, the poll still feels completely arbritrary. Like its no suprise that castle and space(still shouldn’t have gotten a set) got a set. LEGO would have made similar sets either way.
However again my main problem with the poll and the result isn’t that Bionicle didn’t get a set but that LEGO break their own rules. Like sure they maybe didn’t plan for the castle subthemes spilt to backfire but it still feels like they were biased towards castle to begin with
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I am a little upset that Pirates and Castle continue to get re-represented in plenty of individual scenarios, and that Classic Space just got a new set (despite not even winning), and while I love Tiny Tahu, I don’t think he really was made to make us happy. Every theme that lasted more than 3 years pretty much got something. Also, Castle, Pirates, and Space all got represented in the 90 Years set, so they basically all cancel out.
If sets are important to you, as they are to me, then yeah, we can feel upset. But Bionicle is so controversial right now that LEGO doing something and not doing something faces essentially equivalent amounts of backlash. If it doesn’t fit someone’s own personal opinion of what Bionicle should be, they don’t want it.
If it doesn’t have the right story, if it switches to System, if it’s made for kids, if Lewa’s a girl, if it’s the same as G1, if it’s different from G1, a large group of people are going to be angry and vocalize it. LEGO doesn’t dislike or even ignore Bionicle, they just can’t make us happy because we’ll never be happy. Maybe our perspectives matter too much to us.
I am decently upset that Bionicle is the only one of the four winning themes not getting their own set in these few years (2 just now), but it’s not the end of the world, and it’s not the end of LEGO for me. It’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to be sad, it may even be okay to be upset with the people who are angry or sad, but there will need to come a time when we accept that Bionicle may just be a good thing that’s gone, and one day, hopefully, we’ll be very pleasantly surprised if it returns.
Thank you for reading my own rant. Have a day that is good.
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You just basically summed the whole thing up so beautifully. Thank you
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It has to be intentional that the four options were the four finalists in the 90th Anniversary poll, right?
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But not as original lines.
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For those that cares the Galaxy Explorer instructions says that it was choosen from the poll to be made as a set as well:
Just to reiterate:
Also the Galaxy Explorer remake was concieved in 2013 by the designer
Source: text from 10497 instruction
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interesting topic and my gut tells me yes. it tells me they are probably sick of it and sick of the years of being bugged to revive it. i feel like greg’s dismissal was part of that cause he was still a large remaining connection to it within the company. they want it to fade from memory and for the fanbase to slowly die out so they can just forget about it altogether and get on with their other, lets face it, less ambitious or creative projects.
but thats just my view
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No. Just no.
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If anything they just needed to give him a break from us demanding that he convince LEGO to bring it back. Besides, they also had him working on Ninjago, so I doubt that he would have had the time to do much between that and his other work.
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This viewpoint massively overestimates the amount that Lego as a company cares about Bionicle, or, more specifically, the Bionicle fanbase.
What, did they fire Greg because he was tying up a bunch of resources by answering questions online in his free time? And if Lego sees the Bionicle fanbase as being influential enough to affect the sales of future projects, wouldn’t they just be making more Bionicle sets?
At the end of the day, Lego doesn’t want to “get rid” of Bionicle and its legacy, and I don’t know why so many people see it that way. They simply don’t want to make it any more.
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To LEGO, Bionicle’s legacy seems to be “Remember that time we were so broke we had to sell buildable action figures and a bunch of unappeling themes, well lets give it a laugh and move on with our day.”
Basically its less about LEGO wanting to get rid of it and more like LEGO wanting to brush it under the rug and diminish its impact. It just comes of as a little bit disrespectful.
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They did a 90th anniversary contests for all of the winning themes from the poll except Bionicle. Maybe they really don’t want to acknowledge it anymore
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Too late: they have a Bionicle LEGO Ideas contest going on right now.
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That’s quite the timing.
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Do they?