Ahhhhh, combo models. Despite often featuring horrific color schemes and gangly builds, I’ve always had a soft spot for them. In the ever-expansive world of Bionicle, the character list was often limited by the current product line. Combo models were an ingenious way to shell out new characters within that limited set roster.
Through combo models we received many prominent characters. Jovan, Trinuma, The Shadowed One, Botar, Akamai and Waiuhra to name a few. Many had surprisingly good builds despite their limited palate of hyperspecific parts. Many… didn’t…
One combo model of 2008 which had a particularlly bad build (in my opinion) was the disgraced member of the brotherhoood and the subject of this topic, Makuta Spiriah.
I actually made this MOC a few months ago, but I jumped at the chance to finally polish it off and share it for Senit’s Brotherhood of Makuta Collab.
It was very important to me to keep this Spiriah MOC a combo model. He still uses parts exclusively from 8686: Toa Lewa, 8691: Antroz, 8944: Tanma and 8947: Radiak, just like the original from 2008. The whole purpose of this MOC is to present a semi-realistic fix to a previous mistake rather than to completely redesign of Spiriah.
This Spiriah is very much inspired by his original build, embracing many of its original features but ignoring the qualities I found too… distracting. But, to keep the spirit of that original build, he still has a strange poor excuse of a Rahi to display the 2008 “riding” feature.
With this abomination on his back, he does bear a striking resemblance to his canon form.
Extra Parts
In case you’re curious…
1x 60909
1x 60914
1x 60911
2x 60899
and I used an extra red pin but Lewa and Antroz both have an extra so who cares
This concept of creating new characters through combo models is one that I’d certainly like to explore more. But due to the limited palate of 2008 parts on Stud.io / Biopack, I think I’ll wait to post the other two…
Thanks for reading, and please, go check out the other fantastic Makuta MOCs made for @Senit’s collab.
