Well… So I found them. This is what sets 1394 through 1399 were going to be at some point.
We can presume these were canned before 1388 - 1393 were finished, as they still have the Turaga tools which, as said, were only able to be held in an earlier iteration of the mold. Thus, the versions of 1388 - 1393 that these would have been available alongside were probably different (note the lack of, for instance, sand purple). With the exception 1397, these all use light grey heads.
This is pretty cool! It’s good to see Nobua again. (Or maybe it was Onepu at this point?)
Based on this, it seems that the “Wizard” parts were a coincidence after all. Unless there was another matoran with a purple torso in the other group. The disks for the two matoran in the middle are odd to me, as if they didn’t have a particular village in mind when they were chosen.
May I ask where you found this information?
Either Onepu or Taipu, probably.
Yeah, there’s still six other torso colors (red, white, orange, brown, dark grey, tan), five feet colors (yellow, brown, sand purple, yellowish orange, medium lime - so one more duplicate, like violet here), six masks, four staffs, and the remaining two disks unused. Seems they were probably going for 1 staff and 1 disk per tribe? Might have been split up based on left hand/right hand.
All I can say right now is that it is inventory data from LEGO.
impressive.
Wolk is great for this. This knowledge is insane to me. Now we just have to figure out who’s supposed to be which element haha
I think the first two are Kotu and Maku, due to the trident and Kaukau disk, and then I guess the Pakari one is somehow fire, then ice, earth, and air. 1388-1393 probably had two stone characters instead. This is all working off an assumption about the tools though.
Are you be able to get any information on the other six McToran? Also, is there a reason why the other five have two colors while one has three?
The prototype inventories for those would have been overwritten by the released versions sadly. We surmise what masks and tools they would have had, though it’s harder to know what feet and body colors would go with each one.
No idea why choices were made, but at least two* of the other six would have to have feet that do not match their mask color. We could also count the Kaukau as a “mismatched” one.
This is my best guess at what the other six might have looked like:
I’m a little confused here; where did these six come from, and how is their origin different from the six you posted previously? Were there three sets of Mctoran?
No, there were only ever two sets of them as far as I know. At the time 1394 - 1399 were scrapped, the sets were not finalized (which is further evident by the inclusion of Turaga tools, which the final arm design cannot wield). Sets 1388 - 1393 would not have been the same as what we eventually got. That is where these come in.
Prototype arm for context:
While we only have the prototype inventories for 1394 - 1399 (because 1388 - 1393 are overwritten by the finalized versions), we do largely know what parts 1388 - 1393 would have used, though not how they pair. Remember, this all started with this list:
There are certain things here left unused:
We can surmise that the disks and staffs correspond with the tribes (i.e. the ice pick would be wielded by a Ko-Matoran, and the Pakari disk by an Onu-Matoran). I would guess the staffs are all wielded by either left hands, and the disks by right hands, or the other way around (hard to say which way).
We can also surmise that there’s six Matoran with dark grey heads and six with light grey heads. Since five of the six in the second range used light grey, there should probably a sixth one with light grey for 1388-1393.
Thus, I came up with this estimation for what 1388 - 1393 could have looked like, but it is ultimately nothing more than guess work. We don’t know how these parts would pair up, or what the duplicate foot color would be (I used dark grey here). I could be way off, given how silly the sand blue “Ta-Matoran” (?) gets.
1394 - 1399 are the only ones we have prototype inventories for.
Since the medium blue Trident came from the production mold, I thought it was initially a Gahlok Va tool that was later swapped for the Blue voodoo hook since Lego already had so many of those already. But it’s cool to see that it was actually in earlier plans! The disk assignment does seem very odd. Since it seems half of these don’t line up with the color schemes, I wonder if some of the disc descriptions changed when they reduced the 12 Tohunga to 6 instead of removing the disk from the BOM and replacing it with the one that had the correct name. If so, that might mean the sand green Rau is from Onu- Koro and the sand blue Pakari is from Ko-Koro, which could allow some other color combos that might make more sense.
(Forgive me if the shades in my picture makes you think I’m colorblind; it does run in my family). If that’s the case, Owls’ Kanohi might indicate they narrowed down the colors first (and the sand purple Kakama/sand blue Pakari just got lost) and after the colors were set (and they decided purple would be better than sand green), they decided the Tohunga should share masks with their Toa to improve clarity. (Except for Maku, which needs to have a Kanohi that matched the leg color for aesthetics, so it couldn’t be a Kaukau, so it obviously stayed a huna. Since a blue huna would be exclusive, might as well change the color to blue since that is a more common color, and they probably had better pricing on that. Amazing work finding these inventories!Sand Purple would have been such a cool colour to have. If it had survived in a McToran set, what are the odds we could have gotten more Sand Purple down the line?
This is a very good point! The disks as they are now line up with the set numbers, but obviously they couldn’t have back then. So they might not have had the same prints at all.
I like your take on the color combinations too, that does feel more haphazard, much like the other six. 
I made one of them match the Lava farmers from MNOG, but that one and the dark red Akaku still look like misfits in my opinion.
I do really love the sand green with the black though, and I think it even overcomes the grey feet. Ziontyro does a great match.
I also like the idea that sand green would be great for an Onu-Matoran.
Personally, I can see the one wearing the dark red mask being a Po-Matoran, as well as the one wear the dark orange mahiki with grey feet.
The dark orange, brown, and yellow color scheme could work for either a Ta-matoran or Po-matoran. Same for the one wearing the yellow ruru
The one wearing the sand blue pakari could be either a Ga-Matoran or Ko-matoran.
IMO
It seems to me that they go in order alphabetical order of the names, just based on a cursory glance:
Does that look right/plausible? If so, then my guess as to what the first six would be as follows:
As for which one gets the tool/disc (left or right hand), it does seem likely to me still that right hand gets disc, and left gets tool (hence why I gave those out for Stone/Fire based on the story bible in my reconstructed list); but that would imply these were either designed at a point after Onepu/Taipu’s positions were swapped, but not yet Kongu/Tamaru’s; or perhaps, the designers mixed up their names; which either one seems plausible to me, if my theory seems like it holds water.
Interesting… Have to also wonder how this lines up timeline wise.
The old names Ahi, Toka, Inu, Tio, and Maro, had already been proposed to be replaced with the final names in the 3rd draft story bible, and at that point it doesn’t look like the Matoran were designed yet. The name swaps… yeah. With Tamaru and Kongu, it’s interesting to note that they were seemingly getting their traits constantly confused in 2001 material, so maybe it was a later change?
For reference:
I also noticed (though I assume I’m not the first, but now that we have the inventories of 1394-1399, it’s essentially confirmed) that the order of the of the arm, launch device, body, and foot pieces do seem to be “in order” with one-another, forming a specific pattern (with gaps, based on parts that already had IDs). We can now fill in those gaps as well, to get a complete picture of the body/foot line-up for these prototype sets:
With that in mind (plus the idea that they were probably originally supposed to be in alphabetical order), here’s how I would have imagined all 12 Tohunga would have originally looked like, assuming that mask color and foot color were roughly correlated (as shown in both the final sets as well as 1394-1399), that there were six sets with dark grey heads and six with medium grey, and that the right hands get discs, while left hands get tools:
If this is accurate in any way (which I am not really all that sure of; especially for the two stone characters), we see a few things that are kind of interesting:
Nice work! I didn’t even think to make that connection. I don’t normally like to make assumptions based on part number order, but the patterns you show with the torso and leg colors have convinced me! And I love how you connected the grey torso to the Lehvak-Va! Now that you mention it, purple as a tertiary color for Ga-matoran makes a lot more sense when you remember Gahlok-Va had a purple Krana.
Wow! I did not expect those to line up so well! Really good catch! I’m unsure they’d give a tan tool to a Matoran with a tan arm. Perhaps Huki and Hafu were still switched as well?
Personally I find this more likely, timeline wise. The names of the Toa masks would have had to have changed at some point as well, after all.
Good points about the Bohrok Va colors…
If it helps any bit, here’s what I believe happened with Kapura:
