Well, a lot of watery eyes, vicious scowls, and tired fingers here. And everyone’s finding something to blame Lego for… Even TTV.
I hate to be that guy, but I told you so.
In my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn’t going to win. If LEGO learned anything from G2, it’s that Bionicle, in this day and age, won’t sell well. That may be their fault, or anyone’s fault, or mine for trying to collect every single Akaku on the planet but the one thing they certainly weren’t going to approve was a nostalgic love letter which would only sell to the 10K people who voted for it and not anyone opposed to the minifig character representations. Whereas Seinfeld and Home Alone have massive nostalgic fanbases with the money to afford collectibles like that, and a functioning typewriter (as hinted by the LEGO reps in the video) or even a non-functional one would have a specific targeted market, Bionicle would have nowhere near as much people with the interest, money, and nostalgic attachment willing to buy the product.
No, it wasn’t going to happen. Any competition would have beat it, not because of its design, but it’s an incredibly poor choice for LEGO to make. As TDPrince said earlier in the topic, LEGO made the commercially smart move and not the one to please the incredibly small amount of people who freak out because of a sticker in a Hidden Side set.
Now I’m not going to quote anyone in the topic (unless you quote me and/or contest something I’ve said) but I do want to address something Meso said in the video:
We’re just trying to convince LEGO that we’re here, but they know we’re here, and they don’t care.
I’m sorry, what?
LEGO’s put up with the Bionicle fanbase for all of this time, and because they don’t give you an Ideas set (which got 10,000 likes in an incredibly fast and from a big company’s perspective rather suspicious amount of time) they don’t care? Why does LEGO have to cater to us at all?
And this isn’t just towards Meso. If not getting an Ideas set is really ticking you off (as some people here seem to be), you need to calm down. LEGO isn’t your dream company, they’re a multimillion corporation whose primary incentive is (and rightly should be) continuing as a multimillion corporation, not becoming plastic build-a-bear for a handful of needy people in its massive market.
To quote… Me,
Let’s pretend, for a moment, LEGO doesn’t care and G2 was entirely a marketing campaign to get money and nothing else at all. We hated it, shot it down, refused to buy it, and wondered why it died.
Why would LEGO in their right mind give us an Ideas set? G2 wasn’t good enough, so why should they care?
Alright, time to wrap things up a little.
If you’re getting legitimately heated or depressed because of this, go sit down, read a good book, take your mind off the topic.
…
Okay, you finished? Good. Now let me finish with a few painful reminders:
LEGO does not owe us anything.
LEGO does not refuse to acknowledge us.
LEGO will not approve a Bionicle ideas set if it has any competition.
Sokoda does not deserve an angry mob of people tearing each other to shreds online and dramatic, three-hour text walls on message boards.
Sokoda does deserve support in his future endeavors.
If you forgot to calm down, you should do so.
TTV does not need to deal with the fallout of the Ideas project so don’t give them a hard time please.
LEGO will always have the option to renew the Bionicle IP for the next 70 years by American copyright law.
None of us are the only hope, the final line of defense, the sole defenders of constraction, Bionicle, or anything.
There is always another chance.
And on a final note, I want to applaud Sokoda for having the guts to respond to the Bionicle community - THE Bionicle Community - after he received the Ideas review results. Probably knowing full well the angry comments, the walls of texts, the sad videos, and all the vitriol about LEGO.
Now, I would really like to see if Sokoda would be willing to release the instructions/custom prints for the stud.io file (unless he has and I missed it).