LEGO has officially opened a fan survey that will be open until to end of this month, 30th of April, in which they also specifically ask what LEGO themes you like, how satisfied you are with the current state of the LEGO brand, and what themes you want to see. I would highly encourage you all Bionicle fans to complete this survey (it only takes about 10 minutes) to make your voice head before LEGO and let them know that we as Bionicle fans exist, and we want to see more Bionicle from LEGO.
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Good to know I’m finally getting acknowledged as a Bionicle 
To me, the survey reads like they’re not asking for specific, individual themes (i.e. Bionicle), but rather broad theming groups of topics and aspects that you’d like Lego to handle. Still, this is an interesting survey, I didn’t expect so many questions regarding the fan community.
I also find it curious how Lego is using Microsoft Forms for this, I’d have expected them to use their onsite survey thing (the one they also use for the product feedback).
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I filled this out last week. It was definitely an interesting survey, but it was also very narrow in focus, and I feel like that will exclude some various viewpoints. For instance, I believe at one point they ask how long one has been building with LEGO as an adult, but they never ask how long one has been building in general outside a fairly unspecific question, which might lead to unhelpful answers from people like me who haven’t been adults for very long.
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Good resource to potentially get Bionicle back on LEGO’s radar, but maybe an even better way to get LEGO to improve their current business model.
If you’re taking this, be sure to also express any dissatisfaction with the lack of original themes, the stronger focus on the Smart Brick and digital experiences rather than physical, creative play, the over-reliance on licenses and merchandise products, and over-pricing.
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Checking my submission now, I think I expressed my annoyance at the lack of cohesive fandom locations for LEGO fans in general, their current original themes in particular; I said that there should be some place for older fans to interact a la the TTV Boards combined with the LEGO Message Boards (which I never experienced but have heard about). I also complained about the fact that so many recent Ninjago seasons have leaked–whether the whole season for seasons 1 and 2 of Dragons Rising or a specific, spoilery cast list for the most recent season–and wished that LEGO could better ensure the security of the seasons to improve engagement among dedicated fans. I would have talked about more, but there was a word count limit, and I couldn’t think of anything to cut at the time. I also would have talked about BIONICLE and the recent refocus on display rather than play, but the form specified that what one talks about should be something unchanged with LEGO in the last decade.
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Responded to the survey shortly after it came out. Yammering at LEGO that Bionicle totally needs to come back do not begin to resolve the tremendous logistics issues with just “bringing it back” with constraction officially dead and the last attempt stamped into oblivion.
It is not remotely easy to just reinvent or revitalize a massive catalog of pieces for a building system almost entirely unsupported by LEGO today. If you do choose to demand LEGO repent of their Bionicle-abandoning sins, remember that you might not get what you like in return - and a third chance might be the last you get.
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We now have more actual Bionicle fans who grew up with the theme working as official deisgners at LEGO than ever before… Certainly more than there were during the era of G2. I am certain that any third attempt at Bionicle, even one not planned to last beyond the usual three years, has the potential to turn out much better this time than it did during G2.
Also, nobody here is demanding that LEGO bring back the G1 system or even CCBS, I think most people have accepted that that is off the table. But I do think we can suggest bringing back Bionicle as a System theme in some way to LEGO.
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Completely irrelevant. Every new piece requires thousands of new molding machines, assembly lines, and other such manufacturing equipment. It’s impossible to conjure it out of thin air because a small group of people on the internet begged for a return to form (which the new CMF wave has technically granted).
Evidently you haven’t read as many of the recent discussions surrounding the topic of a Bionicle return on the Boards as I have, nor kept up with the opinions of most of the community. Most people do not want a Ninjago clone, which is what a standard system Bionicle would be. They want a very copy-pasted return.
Also, most of the community don’t realize the negative effect they have likely had on LEGO over the past… ever really, but especially the last decade. They know we want Bionicle back. They also know the last time they tried that, Bionicle fans deliberately shot the theme down and trashed it into oblivion.
And no, critiques of their execution or the lackluster story or the nonexistent marketing budget aren’t actual arguments here. In LEGO’s eyes, they gave us what we wanted, and we nearly bit their hand off in return. Telling them to do it again has to be worded in a really appealing way, otherwise they’re likely to see the word Bionicle and dismiss the entire form.
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I will tell lego i don’t want bionicle back 
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An utterance set forth.
We desire not Bionicle, but for Galidor with proper minifigure sets. Nicholas Bluetooth never received a proper epic “Avatar the Last Airbender” type of conclusion. The possibility of comic book sales or an animated series alone would thrive.
And Jack Stone for kicks.
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So you are saying Bionicle fans themselves were to blame for G2’s failure and that LEGO themselves think that? I would really like to see some sources backing that up. To me, it seems pretty clear that G2 was not really intended to appeal to the older generation of fans much at all, but to the generation of kids of the time. As far as LEGO was concerned, Bionicle did not appeal to the 2015-2016 generation of kids, and (especially at the time, before they were doing so many explicitly adult nostalgia sets) they wouldn’t have cared much whether Bionicle fans actually bought them.
Castle fans continually begged for a return to Castle, and LEGO has increasingly started to listen to them. Not by bringing back any fully fledged lines of Castle playsets, but by giving them some big 18+ sets. So no, LEGO actually listening to fans and giving them what they want (even if to a limited extent) even by producing new molds isn’t unprecedented.
I have said this before and I will say it again, a line of System-Constraction Bionicle sets would not be that difficult to produce. The only new molds that would be required would be the masks, that’s literally it. Heck, Ninjago has been giving us so many Bionicle-style blades and weapons in their recent sets that LEGO could even just easily re-use some of those without any problems.
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Who do you think review bombed sets on retail sites until retailers refused to accept any new inventory? Who do you think drove retailers to discount G2 sets until they dropped to a tenth of their price? It certainly wasn’t the LEGO company sabotaging themselves and destroying their own product line.
LEGO themselves think that because it happened. It wasn’t the only factor, and LEGO’s intense tunnel vision played a significant role, but it was a major contributor to the theme’s eventual early cancellation.
That is a bit goofy. LEGO not caring whether or not people buy sets is simply not what has ever happened. And LEGO has always been greatly concerned with nostalgia bait - look at the rereleases of old castle and pirates sets over the years to squeeze a couple extra bucks out of the market. Nostalgia bait has simply become mainstream in the meantime, and so LEGO’s efforts are allowed to be more blatant.
And quite frankly, if they didn’t care whether or not Bionicle fans bought the sets, they wouldn’t have called it Bionicle.
Castle (and every other system theme) has a significant advantage over Bionicle in that they appeal to the mainstream to a much larger degree than Bionicle ever did. Robot warriors on a tribal island collecting masks of power to stop an ethereal evil simply doesn’t have the same crowd appeal that a giant castle or a cool spaceship does. The bet is far safer with even a Ninjago set recycling a mech from 2019.
You also havs a significant problem in that any system-style playset would have to reference something tied directly to the story, which most people do not know or care about. You would have a much easier time convincing the general audience to buy, say, a brick-built mask or a single minifigure than an entire playset which doesn’t make sense to them. And hey, guess what?
Now a one-off niche reference set with one minifig for five bucks is a significantly less risky gamble than a massive playset aimed at adult collectors with a high price tag covering an element of the theme so niche only the smallest niche would understand it. It’s no surprise that the deepest reference both this figure and the GWP set have is the Tahu canister box art because nobody knows the story except the few.
And it’s also why the head under the mask is that of a cosplayer and not a Bionicle one.
And right here is where the whole argument falls apart.
LEGO needed to put Bionicle in the minifig title to keep people from confusing it with Ninjago. A red guy holding a flame sword with his face obscured? Must be Kai; those ninja minifigs have been getting crazy lately with their dragon forms and whatnot.
Ninjago is an absolute juggernaut of a theme. It might not pull in the same kind of revenue Bionicle did in its hayday, but its brand recognition is through the roof. People are spotting Kai and Lloyd on a scale similar to recognizing Super Mario and Jesus Christ.
Asking the general public - the one group LEGO deliberately wants to target - to accept another minifig-focused playset theme about color-coded elemental warriors with obscured faces on an island (which Ninjago has done before) as a totally different, unique theme with no correlation, and then tack on the possibility of much more expensive nostalgia bait sets being the primary form it takes, is like asking LEGO circa now to cancel Ninjago entirely because it hurts Bionicle’s chances of a comeback.
Unless you find a way to use that official survey to convince LEGO with the best argument ever constructed that somehow Bionicle in minifig form and Ninjago can coexist as separate themes and still both be profitable, this idea will simply never happen. LEGO is in this current age is absolutely terrified of anything short of double-digit growth, and asking them to make a copycat theme to their biggest cash cow with only the most niche appeal and no guarantee of profitability outside of the smallest margin of their most vitriolic and irritable fanbase is asking for the impossible.
The most we can hope for is some kind of art set focusing on a mask or other such symbolic references. The most we can expect is more stickers reminding us it once existed. There’s a slight possibility we might see another Bionicle cosplayer pop up in CMF form, but I wouldn’t count on it. LEGO is still sore from the financial backlash against G2, and along with everything else I’ve said in this topic, the reasons for why they would never do it again are everywhere.
They already have that.
Cheap, multi-theme, and comes with a minifig. And most Bionicle people hate them. But the general public likes them well enough that they’re still making them, even if the logic behind the execution and theme becomes more inane over time.
Is this the Bionicle you want?
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Frankly, this all would be solved if Lego went through with the effort of making mech/action figure sets that weren’t made by absolutely lazy designers. For the same cost as 5 of those battle suit mechs, I can buy Star Wars action figures from other brands that are much more accurate and don’t look like garbage. Used to be, Lego actually tried making sets that could both look good and be fun to handle, with articulation that doesn’t make Star Wars Black Series KOs look like a better deal.
But unfortunately, people seem to think kids under the age of 35 don’t want their figures to have functioning knees and elbows, they just want a prebuilt brick like 80s Transformers that barely has “points of articulation” or anything to distinguish it from the many other cheap pieces of garbage companies put on the kid section of the toy aisle.
We used to have themes that could make stuff like Power Miners vehicles where functions were the selling point of sets over strangely collector-oriented features on smaller sets (that’s literally what the Star Wars troop builder sets and mech sets are - stopgaps for collectors who don’t want to shell out $80 for a set with Luke Skywalker’s or Captain Rex).
Right now, Lego won’t bring constraction back because they’re focusing on only the extremes of their customers: the young children and adult collectors. Not casual buyers, not people interested in original IPs, but big spenders and parents who just buy what sells. Bionicle or any constraction theme could change that if it had sets like the $10 HF sets from 2011-2013, but all I ever hear people saying is either make Titan sets or Exo-Force-style remakes.
Bionicle won’t work as a System theme because it never was really built around that in the first place. It won’t work as a hybrid because the licensed attempts at that ruined how anyone looks at a CCBS figure with a gearbox, and most mechs now are pretty lackluster compared to Exo-Force anyway (no knees, no elbows, no real functions, and the selling point is just minifigures anyway). It’ll only sell if it goes for having its own audience (something similar to the customer base for other action figure lines, ages 12-35 for Transformers, for instance). And with that come the expectations that it won’t just be like the Star Wars mechs, because you’re no longer selling an expensive minifigure, but a large-scale character.
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Yikes. Looks like I stumbled from one war zone to the next.
I’ll be honest, I would love to have Bionicle back- every bone in my body yearns for such an idea, a world that’s actually rich with storytelling and possibly more then some new fetch quest every 23rd season or whatever.
But… that’s not gonna happen. Or at least, maybe it shouldn’t happen just yet. The issue is, LEGO has been pushing some rather dubious ideas, what with price hikes and smart bricks.
I don’t think anyone wants to see an overpriced G3 abomination get toppled because they put a 3% discount on all of their Ninjago sets for a few days.
But, that’s not to say there isn’t a possibility. The castle theme resurgence is a good point. But so are the mechs.
In my personal opinion, LEGO could release a sort of taste test- a mix of Bionicle themed pieces like they did before, to see if the waters are good enough to be properly sustaining.
Ninjago’s always gonna be around- but there’s tons of ways LEGO’s found to get around the recognition problem. Sans Monkie Kid.
If just a bit of wiggle room is afforded, there are possibilities.
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I would enjoy something like this. I really liked the 2016 Bionicle sets because they started using more Technic in character skeletons over pure CCBS. The rerelease of the Vorox armor and Rakhshi staff pieces were nice, too. I wouldn’t mind sets using some CCBS-style armor if they went back to using Technic for the core skeleton. Allows for much more versatile bodies and more freedom with armor placement, plus it saves on the need for totally new structural parts in sets.
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The fate of a dead toyline that hasn’t been relevant in a decade is at stake my brother
They’ve already done that.
The problem is, it’s all through Ninjago.
Now imo, I think LEGO is legitimately interested in reviving Bionicle as a theme if it means a guaranteed audience. But that’s a very slim guarantee, and the Bionicle fandom is notorious. So the most logical thing to do - and what LEGO has already confirmed is happening - is to try a new format for the theme on a miniscule scale, with virtually no risk and the potential for a somewhat reasonable reward.
The Tahu minifig.
Monkie Kid is dead. DREAMZzz (official spelling) is dead. Nexo Knights is dead.
If Bionicle came back as a standard theme with any of the elements Ninjago has co-opted it’d likely wind up dead too. Obviously what we need is everything Ninjago hasn’t absorbed: we need a smart brick-compatible mindstorms-adjacent mold-reusing theme with a vr-focused tie-in app with shallow levels of interactivity and absolutely no marketing.
Surely this can’t fail 
mods this is sarcasm
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I have a lot more to contribute to this discussion later, but funny thing about Castle.
I’m too lazy to directly copy paste so have a screenshot.
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To be fair, all those corridors castles did start to look the same after a while.
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Personally, I didn’t advocate for bringing Bionicle back.
But I did say LEGO ought to do something with the IP other than sit on it.
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Even if they end up doing just that, I will be happy. I am a MOCist, what I want the most is to get new pieces. The Bionicle-like pieces we’ve been getting in Ninjago are a good place to start, however it would be much better if we could get those pieces either by themselves as part of Pick-a-brick walls or in cheaper sets.
Funny you should mention that, because the Bircklink design program has recently modified their rules, and now they explictly allow for builds based on retired LEGO themes… So us Bionicle fans could do the same…
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