A little while ago, a certain Boards user posted this controversial take:
He then posted further reasoning
So I thought: why not get at least a small statistical analysis? Of course, this community is hardly indicative of all bionicle fans, but it might give us an idea.
So here’s what I want to see: share what broken joint pieces you have, as many as you can find, and what colors they are. If you can, whether they are pre-08 or post-08 pieces
For me personally, this is what I have:
Completely broken: One Lime Green tanma leg, one lime green pre-08 Nuva hand, one dark blue post-08 Piraka thigh, one mata red post-08 Piraka thigh
Significantly cracked: one lime green Tanma leg, two Dark Blue post-08 Piraka thighs, one Dark red post-08 Metru thigh
Small but noticeable cracks: two Dark Green post08 Nuva hands, one lime green post-08 Inika thigh, one dark tan pre-08 Metru thigh.
(strangely enough, I don’t have any broken pre-08 Piraka thighs)
This is not based on memory; I have all of these pieces in front of me as of making this post. Some of them I had already set aside, others I found while preparing to make this post. There might be more that I was unable to find.
I think I agree? I’m not the best to ask for this but I did have Hahli with those miserable joints!
I guess what makes me call sus on lime is that we had a Keelerak with flimsy joints when I was growing up. That was produced in ‘05, two years before the infamous Mahri lime crackage
Miraculously I have a lime Av-Matoran arm whose only sign of deterioration is a small crack on the side. I also have a black Av-Matoran arm whose socket broke.
I have way to many broken pieces to even begin to list them all, but I can honestly say that probably around 80% of my like joints are broken, and the other 20% are cracked. That ratio definitely doesn’t exist in any other color of socket that I own, though I will admit that I have far more lime joints than any other
The lime green issue is supposed to only be in the 07 batch. I have green joints from at least 2 Hahli sets for sure, and the majority of them are cracked, if not totally broken. The cracks I’ve gotten in them have been muuuuuch more outright than the simple hairline fractures you’ll get on other sockets.
I have a perfect Tanma and a slightly broken Ehlek, so i’d say it depends on how vigorous you are with the set. if you throw Tanma across the room, it’ll probably break. if you throw Solek across the room he will fly
yes I believe the only lime joint issues were from the 07 batches, from then on all joints were fragile because of the brittleness of the 2008-09 joints.
I honestly think that they are all around the same but obviously because lime green joints are a bit less common I guess you just notice it more when they break or crack?
Short answer: no. It doesn’t seem that lime parts in themselves are particularly brittle. Rather there was a bad batch of parts in 2007 and that batch happened to be lime.
I’d be very interested to see more detailed widely-researched info though if there is any. But for now it seems to be a misnomer arising from the 2007 lime issue.
I have Ehlek and Hahli Mahri with no broken parts. The two broken joints from my 2006-2007 collection are Fenrakk’s gunmetal leg and Matoro Mahri’s foot.
I have two dark bluish gray 1-pinhole double socket joints (2008) that are broken but are miraculously still functioning. I have a ton of CCBS Y-joints whose axle slot has broken, both in gray and black. I have a white snapped protector foot, and a cracking gray one. My Metrutoran feet from Dume and my Toa Mata feet from Mazeka have very noticeable cracks in them, and one of my dark bluish gray 3-pinhole 2008 double socket connectors is partially cracked. 2 or so of my 2008 black Y-joints have fractures in the socket, and are almost completely rendered unusable. I also have a bunch of part 32039 that are unusable because they broke (well almost all of them)
That should cover my broken parts, I don’t have any lime green joints but I do have lime green Bionicle pieces that haven’t broken.
Ive had plenty of joints break, pre-08, post-08 especially, but I do own a broken CCBS joint or two (I got them that way secondhand though). I havent really had any of my lime joints break more often than others, though the few I have broken died violently and/or got very misshapen compared to similar breaks.
yeah, Ive found one kind of silver to be kinda brittle, but I only have a dozen or so pieces in that kind, and only so many are sockets
From my experience, lime green is far more brittle than any other colour. I’ve had at least 30 lime sockets break, with the majority of them completely shattering as opposed to just developing hairline cracks like other colours.
The transparent sockets used on Takadox and the Inika also seem more prone to cracking, but not to the insane extent of the lime pieces.
As for 2008 onwards, I’d say lime is still the most fragile colour, although it’s harder to determine due to every colour being more fragile. I’ve definitely got many more cracked lime 2008 sockets than other colours, through dark red comes in close second.