Official LEGO Survey - Tell LEGO you want Bionicle back!

[Ghid]

@DuneToa

Tell that to the people who buy the Star Wars battle pack sets.

Minifig collectors =/= fans of characters.

A kid who wants the superman mech because it has superman is not buying every minifigure of superman ever made. LEGO is built off of casual fans first, and has thrived when targeting that audience, not the ones who buy twenty copies of an overpriced battle pack to army build.

Nothing wrong with folks who do, but there’s not hundreds of thousands of them, and so they aren’t the primary driver of sales. We can see that in action with the formerly exclusive captain rex fig rereleased in a highly affordable set.

@DuneToa

Heck, for another example, look at sales of the set a few years back that featured Mando’s speeder and a Tusken Raider. It had 2 rare minifigs (one with arm printing and a cape), a decent-looking speeder, and a mid hut and catapult/mounted gun build. Why were people buying it? Not for the builds, you can bet on that.

Again, collectors =/= fans of characters. The Mandalorian had enough crowd appeal left to justify a set focused on his existence where a market was guaranteed.

If LEGO was focused exclusively on collectors, they wouldn’t be making figures of the most popular characters in their licenses. They would be making those not yet depicted and selling them at a high price, such as appear at comiccon.

@DuneToa

Also, it’s contradictory that you say “minifigure collectors aren’t behind sales of the Star Wars mechs” and “kids who like the characters are the ones buying them”. It’s the same freaking mentality behind both, just one has the budget to buy more and chooses not to.

It’s… Not though?

Having been young once many years ago, before the great war, I had the opportunity to buy army builder sets as well. And neither I, nor anyone I spoke to at the time, had any interest in cultivating a massive collection of figure varieties, accurately-scaled armies, or every variant of an existing character.

@DuneToa

The desire to complete a set of characters or get all versions of a character isn’t exclusive to 50 year old men with thousands of dollars to burn, everyone wants the same when they’re a kid.

Maybe this is a result of how long I’ve been in the afol community, but there is certainly a difference between the people who want their favorite characters and people who want to collect an existing set of whatever it may be - stamps, minifigs, coins, diecast vehicles, preserved butterflies. Fan mentality and collector mentality are not one and the same, and the collector who sees the Bionicle cosplayer as another LEGO minifigure with increased resale value due to theme association is different from the fan who sees it as Tahu.

@DuneToa

So it’s actually disingenuous and incorrect to argue that anyone buying a set for specific characters is going to affect sales whether it’s constraction or System.

To be clear, I’m not saying kids don’t want all of a certain set of figs, accessories, masks, or whatnot. LEGO’s been gaming that system for years. What I said was collectors - who do indeed have a different mindset to kids who like characters - are not the primary driver of sales on $15 mech suit sets which continue to sell well enough to justify their existence across multiple themes. This isn’t incorrect and certainly not disingenuous.

LEGO doesn’t provide sales data of their products publicly, but it’s not hard to figure out where money is being spent by talking to fans in the community. I can’t cite a link for the conversations I’ve had in-person, but I did have them.

This would probably be better off in a separate topic as it’s getting a little away from the survey discussion. I’m not sure if LEGO will keep it up indefinitely and stop looking at a certain point or provide an official end of feedback period.

@Racie02

I was also around back then, active with the ttv channel and these boards

TTV is the exception - I not only wasn’t here until after G2 ended, it tends to be a much happier and far less critical community than everywhere else. It’s why I’ve pretty much given up being anywhere else Bionicle-related as TTV is just that much more enjoyable.

@Racie02

and Ketar’s was deserved

based

[LegoDavid]

@Dave97

Simple: Thanks to Faber & DB’s leaks, we know now that G2 originally started out as a brand-new IP of an Egyptian-themed constraction line, that got reworked into what we got in 2015 due to a last-minute idea from one of the CEOs; it’s safe to say it was just for brand recognition:

Wait… What?!?

This is the first time I ever hear about this… Where can I get access to those so-called “Magna Files”? Where can I see those Egyptian early concepts? I really want to see what that is all about. Does anyone here have a link to the file or know someone else who does?

[Ghid]

@LegoDavid

Where can I get access to those so-called “Magna Files”? Where can I see those Egyptian early concepts? I really want to see what that is all about. Does anyone here have a link to the file or know someone else who does?

It’s against the Boards rules to share or post leaked images from LEGO, probably doubly so for content that could get Faber sued if it spreads too far. You’ll have to ask elsewhere.

[LegoDavid]

@Ghid

You’ll have to ask elsewhere.

Any idea of a good place to ask? Discord? Reddit?

[Ghid]

I’m not going to advise you on where to locate contraband LEGO images. You’ll have to either put in the work yourself or be content with not seeing them, like most of the folks on TTV are.

[LegoDavid]

@Ghid

My sources are people I’ve spoken to and events I’ve personally witnessed. I apologize if that is not satisfactory for you, but they happen to be satisfactory for me.

That’s no evidence that fans were to blame for G2’s failure at all. That’s just an anecdotal personal experience, your claim would be the equivalent of me claiming LEGO Star Wars doesn’t sell well because fans of Lego original Space Themes keep hating on it (just go to Eurobricks, you’ll encounter those people a lot there). Your particular experience with Bionicle fans who really hated G2, first of all, represents only a subset of Bionicle fans as a whole, mainly those ultra traditionalist fans that would hate absolutely everything that isn’t a 1:1 carbon copy of G1 with the exact same story continued from where G1 ended, and an even smaller subset of the target audience for the G2 sets, which were mostly kids, not the old fans who grew up with G1 (as proof of that, look no further than the G2 2015 animations that were clearly targeted at a much younger audience).
And even within the Bionicle community, your experience isn’t universal at all. Back then, I distinctly recall there being a huge surge in G2 stop motions on YouTube that were getting hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of views, many of them even directly recreating the G2 story in Stop Motion form, which kind of flies in the face of the common consensus that nobody cared about the G2 story at all. Noah Productions, Lumaken Studio, DTingalia Studios were just a few of the creators I can think of off then top of my head who did a lot of G2 stop motions at the time, and completely stopped doing any more Bionicle stop motion content as soon as G2 was cancelled. To put things in perspective, most other LEGO themes in general with the exception of Ninjago never got nearly as much dedicated Stop Motions about it as G2 did during its short years of activity. So even if some of the older fans hated G2 as much as you claim, there were clearly also others who liked it at least enough to be inspired to make all sorts of fan content like Stop Motions with it.

[Ghid]

@LegoDavid

That’s no evidence that fans were to blame for G2’s failure at all. That’s just an anecdotal personal experience, your claim would be the equivalent of me claiming LEGO Star Wars doesn’t sell well because fans of Lego original Space Themes keep hating on it (just go to Eurobricks, you’ll encounter those people a lot there).

I didn’t say my experiences were purely anecdotal or that I took the word of others at face value. I’ve seen enough information and had sales figures confirmed through verifiable sources to be personally very convinced of the level the community is responsible for the downfall of G2. You’re welcome to do your own research.

@LegoDavid

And even within the Bionicle community, your experience isn’t universal at all. Back then, I distinctly recall there being a huge surge in G2 stop motions on YouTube that were getting hundreds of thousands of views, many of them even directly recreating the G2 story in Stop Motion form, which kind of flies in the face of the common consensus that nobody cared about the G2 story at all.

I never said nobody cared about the G2 story or that nobody liked the products. Please don’t put words in my mouth.

As I said before, this is getting quite off topic. I’m not going to be talking about it any further here as it’s not why we’re here. Maybe there’s enough to be said on the matter to warrant an entirely separate topic just to discuss the downfall of G2, but such a topic likely already exists.

[LegoDavid]

@Ghid

I never said nobody cared about the G2 story or that nobody liked the products. Please don’t put words in my mouth

You said the fans were entirely to blame for the failure of G2 because the fans completely rejected G2 entirely, and I pointed out that there have been, in fact, many fans who did actually get at least some enjoyment out of G2 and were inspired by it to create MOCs, Stop Motions, and other fan media, which contradicts your claim that fan rejection was entirely to blame for G2’s failure.

[Ghid]

@LegoDavid

You said the fans were entirely to blame

@Ghid

The fans’ poor behavior was not the only factor.

Please don’t put words in my mouth.

[LegoDavid]

@Ghid

Please don’t put words in my mouth

You’re still making it sound like the fan reception was the biggest factor in its failure, which I simply do not see any good evidence for at all, and all that you have provided so far to me seems entirely anecdotal.

[DuneToa]

@Ghid

Please don’t put words in my mouth

@Ghid

the last time they tried that, Bionicle fans deliberately shot the theme down and trashed it into oblivion.

Right. So you really want it to come to this? I’m sorry to have to say this, but you have not provided any substantial claims to back this up other than generalizations and personal claims. Most of the rest of us aren’t buying evidence that’s a whole lot of “I recollect…” and “Well I remember the opposite effect…” and finally “Let’s ignore the fact that basic marketing concepts for a toyline were ignored blatantly, and still blame it on the fans.”