Hello everybody, my name is Dan, i’m 17 years old and currently living in VIetnam. As some of you may know, Lego retail price in foreign countries is higher due to the ship payments ,taxes and other fees. In my case, distributor for Lego in Vietnam has to do all sort of payments to get Lego sets ship from Denmark.
As a result, the price for Lego in Vietnam extremely expensive, especially in recent years. The price tags for the normal Lego theme is double and the license theme such as Star Wars is almost triple the amount of the original retail cost.
So it’s very difficult for me to buy Lego theme like Bionicle because I haven’t made a lot of money yet and I think the price is not very good. But fortunately for me, as the Lunar New Year holiday arrived, some of the Lego themes were on clearance, included Bionicle.
At this point I also have to mention that the contraction line from Lego in Vietnam hadn’t been selling well in recent years due to the high cost and the lack of Interest from consumers. You can see how this reflect as I went to my journey to get the Bionicle 2016 Lego Sets.
So i began searching for Bionicle in some of the stores I usually go to. Here a some photos of the first one i went to:
The “My Kingdom” in Vietnam is the equivalent to ToyRus in United States. The Store sell mostly Lego, but also some other toy lines.
I went there and the store had Lewa, Pohatu, Onua and Umarak.
529.000VND (The Original Price) is roughly transfer to about 23$. And the discount price is 265.000VND (about 12$). The original price in US is 15$, which is not saying much for this being a discount but i still think it is good enough not to pay double for Bionicle sets.
Here are somes left over sets from 2015 and some Hero Factory sets ( this is saying a lot about constraction sets)
As you can see, the black and brow sets weren’t selling well. No ones seem to get the skeleton sets as well.
There were few creatures sets but no Tahu, Gali or Kopaka because they were sold out. From whatt i have been seeing, I can make a conclusion that the most bought sets are the red, blue and white ones (colors of the American Flag lol, coincident?). But seriously the Red figure always sold out first, so I was quite worry that I might not get Tahu like last year (I havent got the 2015 Tahu Master yet).
So the next day I went to another store and I was able to find all the sets i wanted:
Got The Last Tahu set.
Was so excited I cant even focus the camera to take the picture lol
Also there were somes left over here as well:
I got all the sets. Here are some photos I took and a few thoughts:
I will start with the ones I like the most:
Tahu is my favorite set of the wave. I think his Unity mode with Ikir works the best out of all the Toa.
Onua is the second best looking in my opinion, both on his own and Unity mode. Terak is also very good, definitely one of the best creature sets.
Umarak is worth the money I spent. In my opinion one of the best villain set Bionicle has ever released. He looks very menacing, even cooler when combine with the Creature of Jungle.
Kopaka is very cool on his own, a little better than his 2015 form in my opition. But I think they shouldnt have put him in a “Unity Set” because the set just looks incomplete, especially in the case of Melum where he just looks like a rehash of Terak. I do like his Unity mode but not as much as Onua’s. Overall I do like Kopaka and his little companion.
Gali on her own seems to be less awesome than her 2015 form in my opinion. Nonetheless, when combine with Akida, her Unity mode is so cool looking and make the set looks more complete. I think these are the best Unity form of the smaller Toa.
Pohatu is acutally my favorite of the less pricey Toa. Despite of his questionable color choices, I do enjoy his look when take the weapon apart like in the photo. Ketar on the other hand, I have nothing left to say for this set. The Unity mode of Pohatu looks fine but it is very hard to pose due to the flimsiness of the Creature of Stone.
Lewa should have been better in my opinion. His arm is the weak part of the set because I think it’s just werid looking. Uxar however, is actually a very good set. When combine with Lewa, they make a perfect duo. Lewa is not my least favorite but I just think the others Toa’s combination look better for me.
Three smaller Toa Sets.
Three big boys of the wave.
Seriously, they just look so good when line up together.
In conclusion, I am very happy to get these sets, even though i got them a year late. The purpose of this post is to share with you guys my opinion on the first wave of 2016 Bionicle and share a bit of information of how Lego is selling in Vietnam. Asking for the second wave of 2016, as some of you might already know that the sets did not get release in Asia and few others part of the world. The reason for this I think is because of the lack in interest of contraction line in general. However, seem very odd but I dont have intention of getting any sets from the second wave of 2016. I think those sets are fine but I only have interest in the Toa sets as well as some other good sets like Umarak. Thank you for reading my first post on the TTV message boards. If you have any question or opinion, just let me know.
