Say what you will about the 2021 Hagah canon contest–and there’s a lot that could be said–but I’ve really warmed up to the winning entries’ designs over the years, with my only real gripe about any of them being that the art makes Gaaki’s ostensibly copper armor look orange; I’ve even gotten over my grudge against Pouks’s grey armor because it does genuinely look pretty good. 5 years ago, I made mocs of Toa Lhikan and the rest of the Toa Mangai, sizing them up to be closer in scale to the later Inika build sets, and for some reason it’s taken me this long to tackle the Hagah. Better late than never though, so let’s get started.
Before we begin, let's go over some ground rules:
- All of the Toa are taller than the original figures, with the goal of scaling them up to Inika/Mahri-size.
- I typically try to go purist with my mocs, but (as mentioned in the Demon Battalion’s post) since none of the contest winners could be made purist, I allow exceptions to be made specifically for Toa Hagah characters.
- Since Norik and Iruini were originally released as sets, they are excluded from this exception.
- Instead of gear functions, all of the Toa use these angled connectors and ball joints to form the shoulders. This is because I greatly dislike the Metru gear function and how limiting it is.
- With one exception, the angled connectors are the same color as the gears inside the original characters.
- Each of the male Toa has a gear on their back that you can spin just for fun. Gaaki doesn’t because I forgot.
- With one exception, all of the Toa have something covering up the bottom two pin holes on their hip joint, mainly to try to make them not look so skinny.
Norik, Toa of Fire
Norik is made from 89 pieces, and was by far the easiest one of these revamps to design. Even after foregoing the purist waiver, there’s no shortage of silver pieces I could use (but not the Metru shoulderpad, strangely enough; but I was able to get buy with a couple extra pieces). The only real trick is the axle inside the shoulders. Norik’s (and later Pouks’s) chest armor is a bit too wide for a 3L axle to do the job, but I feared that a 4L would be too long. I was pleasantly surprised that Lego started producing a 3.5L axle in 2026; it’s still not perfect, but it’s the best I can do. Other than that, there’s no real trickery to report; most of the building techniques are things you’ve seen before, even from me.
The set’s black torso piece gave me an excuse to add black elsewhere in his color scheme (hips, thighs, shoulders). I can’t explain why, but I really like it. It adds a je ne sais quoi to Norik’s design that subtly changes the vibe.
Gaaki, Toa of Water
Gaaki is made from 83 pieces, and is one of the least changed of the group, at least in terms of visuals. From the stomach up, she is almost identical to the original model, so most of the changes I did make are in her legs. I chose the webbed Inika feet because I thought it made sense for a Toa of Water to look like she has feet designed for swimming. I decided to add a Mahri blade to her legs to go along with her dorsal fin chest plate and Pridak spear tip, and swapped out the original Piraka leg for a Rahkshi leg, simply because I thought the Rahkshi leg’s design synergized better; as a result, Gaaki’s calves are almost identical to Tuyet’s. The Piraka armor plate on her thighs is also there because it’s vaguely sharp and spiky.
Iruini, Toa of Air
Iruini is made from 72 pieces, and is the second and final one of these that tries to be purist. This time, however, it was quite the challenge. As I’ve previously stated, dark gold only lends itself to about 37 useful pieces to choose from, most of which are hard to use in any way except as originally intended. I acknowledge that using Mata heads as thigh armor was certainly a choice of all time; but honestly I was just really sick of having to rely on the Metru foot design seen on Lhikan and Kojol, and this was basically the only way I could think of that successfully covered the thigh gap.
Bomonga, Toa of Earth
Bomonga is made from 133 pieces, and I genuinely thought he would be the easiest to upscale since he’s already a big boy. Instead, I had to redesign his torso from the ground up because the original looked disproportionately small when the legs were extended. I still don’t think he’s burly enough, but making him any wider would probably require me to ditch the Metru torso, and I didn’t have it in me to make a new one completely from scratch. I think the Rahkshi foot goes a long way into making him look bigger than he really is.
Pouks, Toa of Stone
Pouks is made from 70 pieces, and is the little guy of the team. I couldn’t give him longer legs since I wanted the calves to be thick (and I couldn’t bulk them up with Metru feet bc they’d clash with the thigh armor), and I was forced to make a custom designed thigh since the Inika-size double socket was never released in light brown; the longest I could manage was 4L using the Uniter piece. As a result, I did not feel the need to extend Pouks’s torso as I did all of the others. I also changed the spear tip back to the original HF blade from the Chima blade seen in the artwork because I think the original looks better and have no idea why it was ever changed.
Incidentally, the obvious exception of the mask aside, Pouks can be made completely purist. Unlike Norik and Iruini, this was a complete accident.
Super Secret Seventh Render™
Yes, I still unironically think Pouks looks good in pink. I don’t care if it breaks the team theme. I voted for it 5 years ago because I genuinely wanted it to win. Fight me.
Kualus, Toa of Ice
Kualus is made fom 84 pieces (not including the bird). The only real trick is that I had to change the way the chest plate connects; that assembly just would not stay together on my prototype and would fall off at the slightest shake, so I added a thin 4L liftarm to give the chest plate something to actually plug into. I never liked how the original’s biceps were black for a number of reasons (mainly because that meant they had to be the brittle 2008 joints), so I swapped them out for white ones; although I did keep the shoulder joints themselves black and made the hip piece black, like I did on Norik.
The shadows hide it, but Kualus is my one exception to the “connector is the same color as the gears” rule. I always thought the original figure had a clever way of introducing friction to the gear function, but found it strange that the piece used to do so was bright red (not exclusive to Kualus, all of the designers entries had this quirk). As a little cheeky reference to this, I made Kualus’s axle connector red.
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Happy 810inicle day everybody! 
