(Like a Kanohi quest?)
Hey, folks! I’m Gonel, one of the admins on BS01 (among other things) and I’m spearheading a new project for the site. Biosector01 is a great resource for BIONICLE canon and set information, but one area where it is woefully lagging is on the subject of official Bonk merch apart from the sets. For anything along those lines, you’d have to head to sites like Brickipedia or Bricklink.
I’m looking to change this.
There’s actually a vast array of official merchandise that isn’t even on those sites–they only scratch the surface. If you peruse ebay or similar non-English sites, you’ll quickly find rabbit holes of promotional BIONICLE items. Many are obvious fan creations, but often you’ll find two different photos of the same item, photos with official tags or trademarks of the LEGO Company, or people responding and attesting to having gotten the item themselves. Sometimes too, an item will fit into a known product line, as is the case with the ungodly host of BIONICLE backpacks.
Pending the release of LEGO’s official list of BIONICLE third-party merchandise, we have to track images of/information about these items down ourselves. There are a lot of items we know exist, but of which no pictures are known to exist. There are also a lot of sites where people sell old BIONICLE merchandise, but the items listed there are always changing. Moreover, there are sometimes undiscovered web archives of old Lego sites where official product images exist–I’ve found a handful of old images and set numbers that way.
There are three pages on BS01 so far where I’ve added my research. The first is Gallery:Merchandise for everything we have an image for, as well as links to where that image was sourced. The second is the actual Merchandise page which will be a broad overview of Merchandise–in the future it will link to smaller pages where the information currently on it will be moved. Finally, there is List of Sets for any item where we know a set number, if not also any product details.
I’ve added pretty much everything I can find or think to add (except for grinding through BZP/MOD news articles and the BrickLink index) but even now in the Obscure BIONICLE Product Discussion folks are still finding official items I’ve never seen before.
So… if anyone knows of anything or has any ideas where to look to find new items (or official information about old ones), Biosector01 would love to get your help! Let me know if you have any questions!
