I agree about that, recently I went to a local toystore and asked if they knew anything about bionicle, and their answers were that they knew nothing about it, but that they might come with the rest of the new lego sets, by the way where do you live, I am just curious
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Serbia, they are even saying that they had a shortage of Lego products for some time now. Not sure if thats just in that store or something far larger.
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Time for more input on this.
Honestly, I really think Lego will put more story into it as it goes. As for now, the story is simpler for a reason: We are starting out, and BIONICLE is trying to come back up to the top. I have no doubt when Chima ends these sets will get popular again. They just need some time to grow. We have a full year, guys. 365 days since BIONICLE officially was back. I think LEGO will truly develop the story in time so we change our minds.
Besides, you see Ninjago and Chima. They had background stories, started up from the ground, may have seemed childish at first, but now are appreciated by the younger generation. As such, BIONICLE can go the same route. As long as LEGO gives us something surprising, something that will sweep us off our feet.
That’s what we need. We need LEGO to catch us by surprise with the new BIONICLE and get all the younger fans back into it.
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All right, I haven’t been able to respond and this has gotten way more comments than I can possibly answer, but one prevailing theme I’ve noticed are these two things:
- G2 Bionicle is still developing. Yes, I know this, and this leads me to my next point.
- I think people are confusing complexity for depth, and that’s my fault. I worded the original editorial wrong. Basically, a lot of the new storylines are very shallow. There isn’t much world to them. Instead of a well-developed world with its own mythologies and terms that give it a unique flavor, they give us a really simple and inane that’s horribly oversimplified.
When I mentioned the Hobbit, I literally meant just the Hobbit. Now, Tolkien easily could have just made the Brown Dwarf, the Blue Dwarf, then Green Dwarf, and so on travel with Bob the Hobbit and the Wizard over the Big Mountains and through the Big Forest to the Dwarf Kingdom. Instead, though, he gave them names, and developed the world around them. We didn’t just get the Grey Wizard. We got Gandalf the Grey.
Same goes for Transformers Prime, a show made arguably for the same audience as Bionicle. It is very deep without leaving the show, and has developed characters, plot, and world. Heck, we even get a lot of the Transformers’ mythology shown.
Avatar is also like this, with defined locations and settings with extremely unique names. With all of these stories, they have a unique flavor that comes simply from the naming and the background.
But Lego doesn’t give their stories this “flavor” anymore. Instead, we get “Jungle Planet,” and “Crystal Beast,” which lack memorable flare and flavor. G2 Bionicle’s moving in the right direction, but giving generic names like “Region of X” and “Protector of X” sort of cripples the setting and makes it far less original and therefore less memorable and interesting.
Sorry for the lack of clarification. You guys have raised a lot of good points here, and I’m definitely hoping G2’s develops more as it goes on.
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I agree, but I understand why. Marketing. Having specific labels for things makes those things harder to remember than if you just gave it a descriptor. Protector of Fire is easier for the modern consumer to remember than Vakama. This is because we all know what a protector is/does, and we know what fire is. But what the heck is a Vakama?
So yeah, simple names n stuff.
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They can easily put a more traditional name for the protectors. For example, Toa can stand for Masters in ancient Okoto-ish and it wont clash with the marketing thing. If you want to understand more about the ancient language, then there would be the books for that, it would actually be very easy to hold on to the old words without making it too confusing for someone starting with the series.
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I hope Lego doesn’t create this amazing thing and then suddenly quietly try to take it back because they realize the reception of the target audience isn’t as overwhelming as the more mature audience. That’s what happened to me with Tron Uprising and now my favorite show probably isn’t gonna get a second season even though its arguably one of the most beautifully animated, scored, written and casted children’s TV show of its time. It would be pretty disappointing to have to go through that again.
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I don’t lego underestimates its audience I mean it had a reason to cancel bionicle… this has already been discussed on tty’s youtube channel as to why bionicle got cancelled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm6kdMUDlxM